Chapter v9c16

Hyo-ryong’s misery:

“Sigh-“

“Haah.”

Again.

“Sigh…”

Hyo-ryong kept sighing deeply, one after another.

His face had become as gloomy as it could be. Lately, it seemed as if he had entered into a state of ‘bandonghwanro’ (reverting to childhood in old age), constantly sighing like an old man. In fact, ever since the tragedy at Mount Wudang, he had never been energetic. Although he forced a smile in front of the many people who worried about him, he had never truly smiled. The gloomy energy emanated from him like the pungent smell of food left unattended for two months, so much so that it was distressing and painful for those around him.

“Ah! Ah! It feels like I’ll get infected by your gloominess and rust away just by approaching you. I’ve never learned how to swim in a sea of sorrow, what should I do?”

Unable to bear it, Bi Ryu-yeon couldn’t help but speak up.

“You must be happy to have such an easygoing mind.”

Feeling a great envy towards the carefree Bi Ryu-yeon, Hyo-ryong sighed deeply once more. The burden of guilt that weighed heavily on his heart showed no signs of lifting. If anything, it was increasing. He didn’t want to blame anyone, but it all started when Eun Seol-ran came to this place.

Feeling his blood boiling with frustration, Hyo-ryong stepped outside to cool his burning heart with the cold night breeze. His mind was too troubled that he felt he wouldn’t be able to sleep otherwise.

The place he headed to was, the very place that made most of Cheonmu Academy’s males feel bitter resentment since Bi Ryu-yeon had stolen Na Yerin’s lips.

These days, when his heart was troubled, he often visited this place alone to calm his mind. However, today, there was already someone there. As the clouds covering the moon cleared and moonlight softly fell upon the earth again, the figure of the visitor became visible among the shadows of the night.

Startled, Hyo-ryong tensed up as he saw the early visitor. His eyes widened as much as the lantern lights.

“Good heavens!”

This wasn’t what he had wanted… Heaven seemed like a capricious being that didn’t help those who helped themselves.

Misfortune seemed to stick closer the more he tried to avoid it.

“Just a moment!”

Hyo-ryong stopped in his tracks at the sound of Eun Seol-ran’s call. It was too hard for him to run away after hearing her voice.

“Do you need something?”

Hyo-ryong asked sternly.

“Do you need to speak so formally? Sir! Why do you keep avoiding me?”

“I don’t have the face to see you. I don’t have the right.”

His head drooped. He truly felt he didn’t have the face to meet her.

“When I see you, I keep thinking of my brother. And I think of my sin. Please take care.”

Without waiting for his words to finish, Hyo-ryong turned and walked away swiftly. He wanted to escape the overwhelming pressure on his chest urgently.

“Sir!”

Hyo-ryong found himself involuntarily stopping his brisk walk. Despite the desperate desire to leave this place, his feet wouldn’t move.

“Don’t avoid me! Why do you keep trying to avoid me? Look me in the eye.”

Suddenly, Hyo-ryong was faced with a difficult choice. Should he continue to ignore her and walk on or respond to her call?

After what seemed like an eternity of silence, Hyo-ryong turned to look at her. However, he still didn’t have the courage to meet her gaze head-on. A corner of his heart felt painfully constricted.

Hyo-ryong wanted to avoid a direct confrontation with her if possible. He was afraid of meeting her! He didn’t know what to say to her. What was he supposed to say?

“I killed my brother with my own hands!”

Should he boldly declare that? But artificially avoiding the place had its limits, and eventually, he came face to face with her. Moreover, it was a confrontation alone in the silent night, the worst possible situation.

He hadn’t come out for a walk to relieve his loneliness. How could he have imagined encountering her in such a place!

Both remained silent.

The shadow of a person they could never forget was now shared by them both.

Countless silent conversations passed between him and her.

“Do you know how hard it was for me after he passed away? There were more days I wanted to die than live. A world without him was meaningless to me. But I couldn’t die. Because if I did, he would be truly angry with me in the afterlife.”

Tears glistened on her face, always full of smiles, scattering their faint light into the moonlight.

“Sister!”

Hyo-ryong hesitated. He couldn’t reach out further to grab her shoulder. Suddenly, his brother’s smiling face blocked his way.

“Why are you suffering so much?”

She looked at Hyo-ryong with eyes still pooled with undried tears. Hyo-ryong felt a sharp pain in his heart.

“Because it’s my sin.”

It was an answer without context.

“What is your sin?”

“It’s all my sin.”

Hyo-ryong replied in a weak voice. He couldn’t bring himself to say more. But Eun Seol-ran didn’t give up.

“I believe you know why I came to this place. But even apart from that, I think I have the right to know the truth about that incident.”

There was no rebuttal. Of course, she had more than enough right to know the truth about the incident as the betrothed of Gal Hyo Bong. But Hyo-ryong himself couldn’t bear it.

“Please tell me. What exactly happened that day?”

Eun Seol-ran asked with a pleading tone. It was a voice that could touch a person’s heart. But…

“I’m sorry for acting cowardly. but I can’t tell you. “

Hyo-ryong didn’t have the courage to tell her about the incident.

“Why are you so sad? Why do you suffer alone? Why do you alone bear this pain and sink into sorrow?”

Every time he heard the kind voice of Eun Seol-ran, Hyo-ryong felt as if his heart was being torn apart.

“Keuhuk! I’m sorry! I’m truly sorry!”

Although he repeatedly apologized, Hyo-ryong did not reveal the truth. Eun Seol-ran also found it painful to watch Hyo-ryong struggle any further.

It wasn’t long after he had returned from Mount Wudang! At that time, Hyo-ryong was alive but not in a state of being alive. Back then, he was like a body worse off than a corpse, with the soul completely drained out of him. He spent days and nights in a daze, as if he had lost his mind.

Seeing him like that, Bi-ryun coldly said,

“Aren’t you overestimating yourself too much? How pitiful to bind yourself!”

It was a verbal slash, as sharp as any blade, though no knife was held in hand.

At that sharp rebuke, Hyo-ryong’s body flinched.

“What? What did you just say?”

Hyo-ryong’s face was gaunt with worry and torment. His once handsome features were nowhere to be found. His eyes still hadn’t completely regained focus.

Overwhelmed with anger, Bi-ryun grabbed Hyo-ryong’s collar with one hand. he had been holding back, but now his anger was too much.

“Stop with your pitiful self-deprecation. You never had the power to change your fate back then. So it’s not your responsibility! You were not the master of fate, but its victim. Don’t mope around as if you could defy the heavens! I’m tired of seeing you like a lost soul.”

His words were harsh and cold. And they were the very words that managed to knock on the doors of Hyo-ryong’s closed heart. If not for Bi-ryun’s relentless words at that time, Hyo-ryong might still be silently closing off his heart. Oddly enough, those words still lingered in his heart and surfaced at this moment.

The tension that had been at its peak started to ease, and the premonition in his chest began to dull. And so, Hyo-ryong managed to return to the real world.

The scene from that time flashed before his eyes like arrows, like light, like a swiftly passing lantern show.

And then, the piled-up bodies,

My brother’s blood, my brother’s sword, my sword! And my brother’s death!

It felt as if his mind was becoming faint, tangled up like knotted yarn, with no clue where to start unraveling. Suddenly, the thought that he might go mad if things continued like this came to him. It didn’t seem likely to end as just a mere worry. The instinctual warning was fierce.

It was a nightmare he never wanted to recall.

Unable to watch Hyo-ryong suffer any longer, Eun Seol-ran consoled him with a gentle voice. She couldn’t bear to press him any further; it was too painful for her.

“I’m sorry! I won’t ask about that matter anymore today. But whenever you feel like it, please talk to me. Stop tormenting yourself! Seeing you like this would deeply sadden him.”

Eun Seol-ran firmly held Hyo-ryong’s hand, which was clenched as if it was bleeding.

“Really?”

“Of course.”

She smiled. At that moment, one of the threads of tension holding Hyo-ryong snapped. Hyo-ryong shed the tears he had been holding back.

“Kuaaaaaaaa! Kuaaaaaaaa! Uaaaaaaa!”

A mournful cry, a heart-wrenching sob filled the pavilion. Even the moonlight seemed to grieve.

Eun Seol-ran hugged Hyo-ryong, who was crying like a child, wrapping her thin arms tightly around him.

Hyo-ryong had always wanted someone to forgive him for his deep sins. Since that day, he had been craving forgiveness. But there was no one to answer his thirst.

No one had the right to forgive him. Amidst his ongoing guilt, he waited for a judge to punish himself or someone to forgive him. And then he met her.

Would she judge him, or forgive him?

However, he resolved in his heart that someday, when the time came, he would tell her everything and seek her judgment. His frozen heart seemed to be melting.

—————————————————-

Such events usually happen unintentionally. In other words, Lee Jin-seol was not following Hyo-ryong out of curiosity about his private life; it wasn’t a premeditated act. It was not intentional. There was no malice. She just happened to be at that place at that moment, nothing more. Lee Jin-seol simply liked Eun Seol-ran and wanted to have a personal conversation between women. Just that, with no personal feelings involved. Therefore, it can be said that the responsibility lies not with the person but with heaven that manipulates such fate.

It was just a minor prank of the heavens, but the frog hit by the stone suffers greatly.

Coincidence becomes fate when it’s this significant. It was an incredibly abrupt coincidence. Coincidentally, four people headed to the same place at the same time. Of course, the place was the Yun Hyang Pavilion. Yun Hyang Pavilion was a place she particularly liked because she always chatted there with Na Ye-rin. Like Mo Yong-hwi before her, Lee Jin-seol had no choice but to hide herself.

Moreover, the current situation was not one where she could calmly show her face.

How many would dare to reveal themselves confidently in front of a man and woman hugging each other in the depths of the night? Her heart skipped a beat.

The reason her heart sank was none other than the fact that the person hugging Eun Seol-ran, who she intended to speak with, was Hyo-ryong, the man she had affections for.

Lee Jin-seol felt as if her head had gone blank.

‘What… what is this? Are my eyes deceiving me? Am I mistaken?

She wanted to deny this terrible reality if possible. She wished she could write it off as a simple optical illusion due to a sudden decrease in vision.

Of course, what Lee Jin-seol didn’t know was that Hyo-ryong had no ulterior motives toward Eun Seol-ran. His feelings for her were purely out of respect for the person who would become his future sister-in-law. His current emotions were no more and no less than those of a child in his mother’s embrace.

However, the fact that Lee Jin-seol witnessed Hyo-ryong and Eun Seol-ran engaged in a serious conversation and hugging each other was unchangeable. The interpretation of this situation was now up to Lee Jin-seol, to her discretion.

Lee Jin-seol simply wanted to encourage Hyo-ryong, who had been so gloomy lately. That’s why she decided to visit him. But before that, she wanted to meet Eun Seol-ran and have a talk.

And there was Eun Seol-ran. Unconsciously, Lee Jin-seol hid herself. And then she ended up witnessing only the scene of Hyo-ryong and Eun Seol-ran in an embrace, with no context.

Stars flow in the river of the night. Time too flows along the Milky Way. And tears flow down her cheeks.