All the lights in the inn had gone out.
It was deep in the night, when the shouting of nightmare customers and the sound of the chopping board from the kitchen had both stopped.
I was crouched in a corner of the storeroom next to the kitchen.
The musty smell of mold and fermented soybean blocks was overpowering, but none of that mattered to me right now.
In front of me was a single dim oil lamp.
And a single worn-out book.
<Yin Kill Secret Record>
This afternoon.
At the end of the massacre in the bamboo forest, Peng Hwi had tossed it to me.
The secret technique left behind by the Shadowless Ghost, the legendary assassin said to have assassinated the Emperor fifty years ago.
With trembling hands, I turned the cover.
Rustle.
The sound of the page turning seemed unusually loud.
“......What kind of ghost-shelling-seed-rice nonsense is this?”
A curse slipped out before I knew it.
What I'd been hoping for was something like this.
You hold a blade like this.
You plant your feet like this.
This is the stance for stabbing an opponent in the throat.
A kind, illustrated picture book along those lines.
But what filled the pages of the book were bizarre anatomical diagrams I'd never seen in my life and gibberish I couldn't make heads or tails of.
I narrowed my eyes and read the book again.
I read it, and read it again.
I still didn't get it.
[Qi issues forth from the Gate of Life and flows in reverse along the Conception Vessel; its form is like a scorched moon sinking into water.]
“What the hell is the Gate of Life, and where the hell is the Conception Vessel stuck on?”
I tore at my hair.
I wasn't illiterate.
I knew how to read characters.
The problem was that even when I read them, I had no idea what any of it meant.
The acupoint diagrams were tangled up as complicatedly as noodles dumped on the floor.
The so-called explanations written alongside them read less like a martial arts secret manual and more like a collection of poetry.
[Stop your breath and become a shadow. Empty your heart and erase your form, and only then shall you open your eyes in the pitch-black darkness.]
“No, how am I supposed to erase my form? What am I, smoke?”
Irritation flared up.
Supposedly if I mastered this, I could use the concealment arts of the greatest assassin of his era, but I couldn't understand a damn thing.
Could this Peng Hwi guy have given it to me just to mess with me?
For a moment, that suspicion crossed my mind.
But the bundle of bank notes inside my robes felt heavy.
A man who'd casually tossed me a fortune like that wouldn't bother giving a fake secret manual just to mess with some waiter.
‘Right, why would one of the greatest experts in the land bother scamming a waiter?’
I buried my nose in the book again.
I didn't try to understand it.
Racking my brains wouldn't get me an answer anyway.
In that case, there was only one way.
First, I'd memorize it.
I decided to just cram the characters themselves into my eyes.
If I memorized it by rote, maybe a rice cake would drop into my lap while I was sleeping.
[Calmly settle the qi of your qi center. Settled qi is the very root of concealment.]
Qi center.
They said it was somewhere below the navel.
[Walk upon fallen leaves yet kill the sound, and breathe as the dead do.]
Breathing like the dead.
That's a bit scary.
I muttered the incomprehensible sentences like incantations until the oil lamp went out.
“Issues forth from the Gate of Life...... flows in reverse...... scorched moon...... breathing of the dead......”
My eyelids grew as heavy as a thousand catties.
The characters seemed to come alive and dance.
In my head, the scene of Peng Hwi turning Dokgo Yeong into mush and these baffling sentences swirled together.
Without even closing the book, I collapsed onto the straw mat and fell asleep.
Even in my dreams, I was muttering.
Flailing as I tried to grasp an invisible energy, I chewed and swallowed incomprehensible lines of verse.
***
“Hey! Lee Gap-saeng! The sun's already high in the sky!”
At Old Man Wang's thunderous shout, my eyes snapped open.
I sprang up on reflex.
“Yes! Coming out, sir!”
Habit really is a scary thing.
Even if I'd seen a murderer last night.
Even if I had a secret manual tucked in my robes.
In the morning, a waiter's life means getting ready to make noodles.
Half-asleep, I pulled on my clothes.
The secret manual hidden in my robes rustled.
At that moment, a phrase I'd fallen asleep memorizing last night flashed through my mind.
[Qi follows intent. It flows as you think, and accumulates as you believe.]
Intent.
Thought.
Belief.
As I ran to the kitchen, I mulled it over.
What on earth was this thing the experts called ‘qi’?
Peng Hwi had said it.
That I had no inner arts, but my senses were sharp.
That I saw the essence in trivial traces.
‘Let's not overthink this.’
I came to a conclusion in my head.
‘I just have to do it my own way.’
When I stepped into the kitchen, hot steam washed over my face.
Old Man Wang was sweating buckets in front of the broth pot, stirring with his ladle.
Furiously boiling broth.
Milky white steam.
The smell of deeply simmered bone broth.
As I stared blankly at it, it suddenly struck me.
‘That's it.’
They said qi couldn't be seen with the eyes.
They said it accumulated inside the body, flowed, grew hot, and grew heavy.
Then how was it any different from that broth?
‘Let's think of it as a really rich bone broth simmering in my belly.’
It was an absurd comparison.
And yet, strangely, it clicked.
The qi center mentioned in the book was said to be three finger-widths below the navel.
I defined that spot in my own way.
‘That's where I wear my tip pouch.’
The place where I hid the small change customers slipped me on the sly and my errand money.
When the coins piled up thick, my lower belly felt heavy and reassuring.
Right.
Gathering qi probably feels something like gathering money.
I clenched my lower belly—that is, my ‘money pouch spot’—hard.
And I imagined it.
I imagined boiling broth running down my gullet and piling up neatly in my money pouch.
“Hey! You brat, what are you doing standing still? The orders are backed up!”
“Coming, coming!”
I stacked five bowls of noodles onto a tray in quick succession.
Most waiters carry trays with both hands, but I balanced mine with one hand and rested it on my shoulder.
Morning at the Heavenly Fragrance Pavilion was already a battlefield.
The inn was as noisy as a marketplace, and shouts erupted here and there.
“Hey!”
“Wine over here!”
“Bring more side dishes!”
“Why isn't my noodle here yet?!”
Normally, I'd have been completely frazzled.
I'd have been on edge, worried I'd trip over my own feet, spill the broth, or bump into a customer.
But today was a little different.
A passage I'd memorized last night came back to life in my head like an auditory hallucination.
[Let your steps be like flowing water. When you meet an obstacle, swirl around it, and when blocked, seep through.]
Flowing water.
Water that flows.
I squeezed in among the people.
A chair leg sticking out.
A fat merchant staggering drunk.
A pair of chopsticks fallen on the floor.
The lid of a wine jar left half open.
It was full of obstacles.
But strangely, the empty spaces between them looked like a path to my eyes.
‘That drunk is going to fall to the right.’
The drunk's center of gravity was tilted.
Just as I'd predicted, the merchant lurched to the right.
Taking advantage of that gap, I slipped out to the left as if gliding.
I didn't spill a single drop of broth.
This wasn't martial arts.
It was the knack of an inn waiter.
But when I fit the passages of the <Yin Kill Secret Record> onto that knack, they matched up in a strange way.
‘Breathe as the dead do.’
I breathed in and held it without letting it out.
I pressed the breath down deep into my lower belly instead of my lungs.
Like when I walked past a stinking outhouse.
Or like when I didn't want to make so much as a breathing sound in front of a nightmare customer.
In that state, I took a step.
Heel slightly raised.
Gently, starting from the outer edge of the foot.
“Hup......”
Holding my breath turned my face red.
My legs trembled.
The book said to ‘kill the sound,’ but when I actually tried it, my awkward, half-crouched posture made me look exactly like a thief.
Every time the sole of my foot touched the floor, I strained every nerve.
Thud.
Thud.
It still made a sound.
To my ears, it was as loud as thunder.
Of course it wasn't going to work overnight.
I approached from behind a fierce-looking wanderer seated at the most secluded table.
As stealthily as I could.
But when about five steps remained between us.
Whip.
The wanderer whipped his head around and glared at me.
“Hey, waiter.”
He frowned.
“Why are you panting like that just to bring me noodles? Are you sick or something?”
“N-no, sir. The tray's just heavy.”
A failure.
Far from erasing my presence, I just got treated like a suspicious character.
I laughed sheepishly and set down the noodles.
But the moment I turned around.
I felt something subtly off.
‘Wait.’
Normally, that sensitive wanderer would have turned his head from the moment I approached from ten steps away.
But just now, he hadn't reacted until I was five steps in front of him.
Just a little.
Really, just a tiny bit.
Had my presence grown fainter?
I tucked the empty tray under my arm and went back to the kitchen.
My legs were still trembling, and my head was spinning from holding my breath.
But my lower belly had warmed up to a lukewarm heat.
‘So this...... actually works?’
Old Man Wang glanced at me and clicked his tongue.
“You need to take a shit? Why are you walking with your butt stuck out like that?”
“I'm training.”
“What a bumper harvest of bullshit. Just go do the dishes!”
I chuckled and picked up the scrubber.
It was still clumsy.
To others, I must have looked like a puppy that needed to shit.
But I had seen a faint possibility.
The possibility that if I kept steeping it thick and rich like bone broth, I might someday become a real expert.
***
Three days passed after that.
My waiter training was getting better and better, like walking deeper into ever more scenic territory.
Anyone else would have called it insanity.
Even when I stirred with the ladle, I twisted my waist and put strength into my qi center, and even when I wiped with a rag, I didn't use just my wrist.
I opened my shoulders, folded my elbows, and wiped with my whole body.
Flow like clouds.
But let the end be like a blade's edge.
I didn't know what that meant, but at least it was useful for wiping tables.
Swipe.
Swiiipe.
My hand slid across the table like a snake.
“Lee Gap-saeng.”
Old Man Wang looked at me with a displeased face.
“Why do you keep wiping the tables like a snake lately? It's creepy.”
“The grime comes off better this way, sir.”
“Just watching it makes my insides feel dirty.”
Old Man Wang clicked his tongue, but I was serious.
Every single motion of wiping the tables was training.
Breathe out when extending the arm, breathe in when drawing it back.
The moment breath and movement aligned, I felt a tingling thrill at my fingertips.
The changes appeared in my body first.
For one, my fatigue lessened.
In the past, by the time the lunch rush was over, my legs would be swollen and my back would ache like it was about to snap.
But now I was strangely fine.
It felt like the hot lump gathered in my lower belly was holding my body up.
The problem was my senses.
This was the most troublesome and yet the most amazing change.
There were moments when the world slowed down.
I could see the path a fly flew along.
Its buzzing sounded not like noise, but like a steady beat.
The speed at which customers lifted their chopsticks.
The way their mouths chewed.
Even the sound of someone dropping a coin at a far corner table.
All the information came slamming into my head.
‘This is so damn noisy.’
The problem was that I could hear and see too well.
And I hadn't seen anything in the book yet about how to shut off my hearing.
The incident broke out when lunchtime was almost over.
Three big thugs had come in and were guzzling daytime drinks.
At first, they were just loud customers.
But after a few rounds of cups, their faces turned bright red and their voices grew louder along with them.
“Hey, what are you glaring at? Lower your eyes!”
“N-no, sir. I-I was just......”
“Just? This bastard's talking back now?”
The one who looked like the boss of the thugs shot to his feet.
CRASH!
The guy flung a wine bottle to the floor.
Shards flew everywhere.
The atmosphere in the inn froze in an instant.
Old Man Wang tried to come out of the kitchen, but I stopped him with a look.
If he stepped in, he'd only end up with broken old bones.
This was something young me had to handle.
I put on my business smile and approached the thugs.
“Oh my, Master. You must have had a little too much to drink. Yielding this precious Bamboo Leaf Green to the floor.”
“What's this, some scrawny waiter?”
The boss shot to his feet.
The smell of liquor wafted over.
He looked me up and down and sneered.
“Hey, you should stick to rolling noodles. Where do you get off butting in? I'll gouge your eyeballs out.”
He reached out to grab me by the collar.
It happened at that moment.
Time stretched out like taffy.
I could see the guy's hand coming toward me.
His shoulder muscles moved, his elbow straightened.
His wrist bent, and his fingers curled like hooks.
Every step of the process was as clear as a series of illustrations.
It was slow.
Slow enough to make me yawn.
‘Should I dodge?’
No. Dodging openly would be strange.
A waiter should act like a waiter.
Putting on a frightened look, I pulled my upper body back ever so slightly, just before the guy's hand reached my collar.
It really was the width of a single perilla leaf.
Whip.
The guy's hand cut through empty air.
His hand flailed, with nowhere left to go.
THUD!
The inn fell silent.
I lowered my head and looked down at the thug sprawled on the floor.