I was an eleventh-century swordsman born in the wrong era—the twenty-first century.
I rose with a sword and stood at the summit of the world.
Then I lost my sword and fell to the bottom.
***
I loved swords.
Japanese swords, Korean sabers, Western swordsmanship, fencing.
I loved swords themselves, the way they were wielded, and everything they symbolized.
I started with kendo and Haidong Gumdo in elementary school, then pursued Western swordsmanship alongside them from middle school onward.
“You like swords, right? Want to join the fencing club?”
The fencing club I naturally joined was nothing short of heaven to me.
“Eight to fifteen! Jeong Jae-ha wins!”
They say the diligent cannot defeat the gifted, and the gifted cannot defeat those who enjoy what they do.
I was one of those who enjoyed it.
“Five to fifteen! Jeong Jae-ha wins!”
“Three to fifteen! Jeong Jae-ha wins!”
From city competitions to provincial competitions.
From provincial competitions to national competitions.
From national competitions to world competitions.
As I kept winning and winning, I found myself boarding a plane with the Taegeuk emblem on my chest and the Olympic rings on my back.
“Are you nervous?”
“No?”
“Are you happy?”
“Yes!”
After bidding a final farewell to the coach who often compared us to medieval swordsmen, I stepped into the ring.
All right. Let's have some fun.
Just as martial artists have a ring called an octagon, fencers have their own ring.
The piste (fencing strip).
A battlefield fourteen meters long and two meters wide.
On a piste like a single-log bridge, I faced my opponent.
“Jeong Jae-ha! Jeong Jae-ha! Jeong Jae-ha!”
“Andre! Andre! Andre!”
Tens of thousands of spectators shouted our names, and tens of millions watched this stage, but at this moment, there were only two of us here: my opponent and me.
“Salute (Salut)!”
Beneath the pouring lights, we offered each other a classical salute with our swords.
The same greeting that knights of the eleventh century must have offered before kings and noblewomen.
“On guard (En Garde)!”
We pointed our swords at one another and prepared to charge.
Our stances were low, our eyes fixed on each other, our left arms lightly raised, and our right arms holding the swords relaxed.
“Are you ready (Êtes-vous Prêts)?”
At the question asking whether I was ready, I gave a small nod.
“Begin (Allez)!”
With that cry, now familiar even to ordinary people, I pushed off from the piste.
“Ha!”
CLANG! CLAAANG! CLAAAANG! CLAAAAANG!
I swung my sword at Andre's torso.
Several times a second, our blades collided and bucked through the air again and again.
The blades thrusting in from above, below, left, right, front, and back were like sunlight viewed with the naked eye.
I raised my head and looked into Andre's eyes through his mask.
His expression carried the gravity befitting an athlete on the world stage, full of passion and fighting spirit.
I was not like that.
“Ah, hahahaha!”
I laughed.
RATATATAT!
I drove my sword in from above, below, left, right, front, and back.
“Attack, attack, attack! He is pouring them on without pause!”
I advanced one step at a time along the fourteen-meter piste.
“Fencer Jeong Jae-ha! Parry Sixte, followed by a riposte! A fantastic counterattack!”
I parried Andre's counterattack high to the right, then countered and scored again.
I felt the weight of the sword in my hand.
I raised it high into the sky.
“Gold medalist in the men's foil individual and team events, Korea's Jeong Jae-ha!”
Before the Olympic rings, I smiled with a sword in my hand and a gold medal around my neck.
The coach, who loved web novels, began calling me the Greatest Swordsman Under Heaven from that day on.
Right. Out of the world's seven billion people, I wielded a sword better than anyone.
I loved swords more than anyone.
I was seventeen.
It was summer.
***
At seventeen, they called me the Greatest Swordsman Under Heaven.
“You were really born in the wrong era. Instead of being an athlete in the twenty-first century, you should have been a swordsman in the eleventh.”
“I think so too.”
At eighteen, nineteen, and twenty, they still called me the Greatest Swordsman Under Heaven.
A gold medal at the World Fencing Championships.
A gold medal at the FIE Grand Prix.
A gold medal in fencing at the Asian Games.
My name was always on the podium at international competitions.
“Jeong Jae-ha! Jeong Jae-ha! Jeong Jae-ha!”
Honor, wealth, popularity.
It was a time when everything followed the one sword I loved.
At twenty-one, I stood beneath the Olympic rings once more.
On the fourteen-meter piste, I faced my opponent.
The opponent I had met four years earlier stood before me.
“Begin!”
I knocked Andre's sword aside and stabbed him in the chest.
BEEP.
The light did not come on.
It must have been a malfunction.
It's fine.
I still had a wide lead, and with exchanges happening over such short intervals, referees could make mistakes too.
As an athlete, I had to respect the referee's authority.
I raised my sword again with a smile.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
But after the same thing happened three more times, I could no longer force a smile.
I looked to the coaching staff and signaled, asking what was going on.
The referee also looked at me and our coaching staff with bewilderment.
Instead of cheering, the crowd erupted in boos.
Even Andre lowered his sword in confusion.
Yet our coaching staff said nothing.
It was silent, as though someone had pressed a mute button.
Andre took that year's gold medal.
I did not resent him.
He had done his best within the established rules.
“Why did you not say anything to the referee then?”
Our coaching staff, however, was another matter.
“No. You should have told the referee at the time.”
“What do you expect us to do now? Huh? Take the medal away from Andre?”
“How about taking some time off while you're at it?”
They only went on saying things that made no sense.
They even tried to interfere with my selection trials for the next Asian Games.
“Jae-ha. I looked into it……”
“Gambling?”
The coach who had called me the Greatest Swordsman Under Heaven looked into the association's internal affairs for me.
He had not even been there that day, and it was plainly dangerous for him to get involved, yet he did it anyway.
From what he learned, the association's upper ranks were connected to an international sports betting site worth hundreds of billions of won.
They had pocketed billions of won by helping me lose.
My fury boiled over.
Of course, I did not take a sword and storm the association.
“I heard something unbelievable.”
I tipped off news outlets and gave interview after interview.
I tried to resolve the matter within the rules of twenty-first-century society.
Those efforts ended one evening.
“Chae-ha?”
When I came home, the front door had been violently pried open with a crowbar.
“Who are you people?”
The living room was thick with cigarette smoke, and tattooed pig thugs had broken in.
At their feet, my younger sister, Jeong Chae-ha, convulsed helplessly, unable even to scream.
One of them raised a sledgehammer as though he were about to bring it down on Chae-ha's head.
“What is this?!”
I immediately rushed in, grabbed the sledgehammer's handle, and twisted it from his hand.
I could not understand what was happening.
The tattooed pig turned to look at me.
“Sir, do not make a fuss over tipping off the media and all that. Just shut your mouth. We do not want to do this either.”
“If you keep making a fuss, next time we will really smash this little shit's skull in.”
The other tattooed pigs sneered.
I checked Chae-ha first.
“O-oppa……?”
Her blood-soaked hand, twisted and bent, trembled faintly before going limp.
I was at the point where I had to worry first about whether she was even alive.
Yet only one image came to mind in my blank head.
Chae-ha playing the guitar and singing.
Chae-ha's dream was to become a guitarist.
“This will not do.”
These bastards had made a guitarist's hands look like that.
“Chae-ha, Chae-ha has an audition. She cannot die.”
SNAP.
Something snapped inside my head.
She has to live. She has to go to the audition.
She has to go to the audition. She has to live.
The thought of my sister, who had simply lived diligently day after day, suddenly having to worry not about her dream but about her life, drove me insane.
“When you come back after going out again, one of that little shit's wrists will be on top of the piano, and the other will be on top of the guitar. Stay home and watch the kid. Do not think about holding press conferences outside.”
“Look at his eyes. He looks like he wants to hit us.”
The tattooed pigs turned toward me and laughed nastily.
“Good. I heard this guy was supposed to be taken care of too. We can handle both of them today.”
“All right, champion. From now on, you can hold your sword with your left hand.”
“You have never seen a real cutting before, have you? Even if you cry that it hurts, we will not go easy on you.”
“Just put your hand down and get it over with. I will chop it off nice and clean.”
One of them approached with a baseball bat over his shoulder, while the others showed me fillet knives wrapped with tape around their middles.
I never thought I would be threatened like this by scum like them.
Unbelievable.
My heart beat slowly, but my head was filled with flames.
“Blade work?”
I turned my eyes toward the real swords hanging on my wall.
“Would you like me to show you?”
They were swords I had collected happily and without issue as both an athlete and an enthusiast.
It seemed I would have to use them for something that was not enjoyable today.
There was no referee here, after all.
***
A verdict became final a month ago. I imagine you have much to say, but I will begin with the question viewers are likely most curious about. Do you regret it?
I regret it. But I have no remorse. Even if I went back, I would do the same thing.
.
.
.
Do you plan to work in fencing after you are released?
If I can, I would like to. Truly.
“Thank you for your time.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
After finishing the press interview, I rolled my wheelchair toward the infirmary.
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
As the sound of the wheels echoed down the corridor, a prison guard watched me with eyes full of countless emotions.
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
Seeing that look, I recalled the events of several months earlier.
That day, I cut down those tattooed pigs without so much as injuring a finger.
I had not truly intended to kill them.
The men holding fillet knives went down, and the one with the baseball bat threw it away and tried to flee.
That was when the police arrived.
They had not recognized the blood-covered me.
They mistook the gangster who had thrown down the bat and run away for the homeowner frightened by a crazed sword-wielder.
Because I held a sharpened real sword, they had not even considered drawing something like a baton.
BANG!
The bullet pierced through my thigh.
It ruined my step, and the sword that should have cut the tattooed pig's wrist cut his neck instead.
“Ah.”
The trial lasted more than a year.
Self-defense, excessive self-defense, injury resulting in death, aggravated murder, life imprisonment, suspended sentence, consideration of public sentiment.
Countless legal terms were exchanged, and in the end, I received a ten-year sentence.
Prison life itself was not difficult.
The facilities of the newly built prison for model inmates, located on an island south of South Korea, were quite good.
Some of the guards pitied me and granted me all manner of conveniences.
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
But when I thought of my younger sister, who had lost her dream and remained alone outside.
When I remembered the doctor's words that my leg might have to be amputated.
“Damn.”
All I could do was let out a deep sigh.
“Have you arrived?”
“Yes. I look forward to your help again today.”
I entered the infirmary.
“Mr. Jeong. I must tell you this today.”
When I greeted the medical officer who had been helping with my physical therapy, he showed an expression that was impossible to describe.
“Mr. Jeong's leg cannot be restored by modern medicine. The main nerve in your thigh is completely dead. It may develop necrosis due to complications. Rehabilitation is meaningless.”
I knew why he was saying that.
“Sometimes I can feel sensation.”
“Mr. Jeong!”
“There were movements I could not do either.”
“Pardon?”
“But when I repeated them a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand times until they worked, they eventually did. This is not about willpower. I am talking about the effect repetitive exercise has on nerves.”
“…….”
Then he knew why I was saying this.
“Even when the main nerve is dead, there are cases where the supporting nerves in the surrounding muscles develop and replace it, are there not? Ordinary people have done it. There is no way I, who was an athlete, cannot!”
“Very well.”
The medical officer let out a deep sigh and left the infirmary.
“If you make it here without your wheelchair, I will do everything I can to help with your rehabilitation.”
It was what I had been waiting to hear.
“But if you cannot make it here, then as a doctor, I will proceed with amputation surgery. What will you do?”
Conditions did not matter when something had to be done.
I gripped the handles of my wheelchair tightly.
“Please remember those words.”
Standing up was easy.
My left leg was fine.
Now I had to take a step.
But my right leg had no intention of moving even the slightest bit.
“What is wrong?”
“Nothing.”
I thought of the fencing advance step, the Advance (a forward fencing step), which moved while placing weight on one leg.
Since the front foot moved first anyway, hardly any strength went into the back foot.
If I controlled my strength properly, I should be able to perform it with only my left leg.
Of course, I did not know whether I could keep my balance.
I might trip and fall flat on my face.
“Whew.”
I faced the medical officer watching me from ahead with eyes full of concern.
I knew too.
The chance of this leg being healed was low.
One in tens of millions, perhaps.
But I was a man who had stood at the pinnacle of eight billion people.
TAP.
I performed an Advance toward the medical officer.
That step I had taken hundreds of thousands of times.
My left leg moved forward.
My right leg did not follow.
“Ugh!”
My center of gravity tipped backward, and I nearly fell over.
“Mr. Jeong!”
The medical officer shouted.
“I did not fall! I did not fall.”
“What is going on?”
Even a prison guard came running over to look at us.
I tensed my abdominal muscles and curled my body forward, barely managing to keep from falling.
Clenching my teeth, I prepared for the next step.
“I will go! I will crawl there if I have to, so please help me rehabilitate. Please!”
That day, I finally left the infirmary on my own feet.