Urban Vagabond: Reload

When Choi Geon woke again, his eyes met three people staring at him with worry.

“......Ahem. Muhyuk, was this how you felt every time? I could not be more embarrassed.”

Avoiding the damp-eyed gazes of Kim Chanho and Park Jiyeon, Choi Geon made a joke to the disciple who was at least easier to deal with.

“Master.”

But the person with the most serious expression here was Kim Muhyuk.

After spending the night watching over his master as he groaned in pain, he forced himself to continue in a calm voice.

“I checked your injuries. Thankfully, nothing seems too serious. I think you came down with body aches after overdoing it in the rain...... If you rest properly, you should recover soon.”

Seeing his disciple let out a long sigh only after he woke, as though finally relieved, Choi Geon gave an awkward smile.

Then he thanked Kim Chanho and Park Jiyeon as well.

“I am sorry. You two must have been sound asleep, yet I caused you trouble.”

“Do you know how worried we were? We were going to take you to the hospital immediately, but Muhyuk said we should watch you for now.......”

“Are you all right now? Can you eat some porridge, at least?”

Kim Chanho made a fuss while clutching his startled heart, and Park Jiyeon kept checking Choi Geon’s complexion as she asked about his condition.

“Heh-heh. Porridge? Nonsense. I need to eat a proper meal if I’m to get back on my feet quickly.”

Even though he had no strength at all, Choi Geon laughed heartily and joked with the two of them.

When he slowly pushed himself upright and looked in the mirror, he had already been changed into pajamas, and bandages were wrapped around his body.

On top of that, the room was thick with the smell of wound ointment. He wondered if everyone had been so startled that they had gone overboard with treatment.

“......Isn’t this too much fuss over a little body ache from getting rained on?”

“Do you know how badly you smelled of blood when you first came in?”

“Master and disciple really are exactly the same when it comes to making people worry.”

Choi Geon let out a hollow laugh at the two of them as they glared and scolded him.

Then Kim Muhyuk asked his parents for a favor.

“He’s awake now, so you two should go rest too. I’ll talk to Master for a bit.”

“You scold him plenty for us too, all right?”

“We’ll be making breakfast, so call us if you need anything.”

After his parents left the room, Kim Muhyuk brought over a chair and dropped into it beside his master with a sigh.

“Hoo...... Do you know how scared I was? At first, I thought something really terrible had happened.”

“Are these pajamas yours? They feel soft against the skin. Comfortable, too. Buy me a pair later.”

Choi Geon deliberately changed the subject.

Because from the moment only the two of them were left in the room, he had expected what his disciple would bring up.

“So who was it? The bastards who did this to you.”

Cold killing intent settled in Kim Muhyuk’s eyes as he quietly ground his teeth.

It was the question he had not asked while his parents were with them.

Choi Geon could feel his resolve to make whoever had hurt his master pay the proper price.

But Choi Geon shook his head as though it were nothing.

“Heh-heh. I was catching and thrashing evildoers as usual and got scratched a little, that is all. This master sent every last one of them across the road to the afterlife, so it is already over. It was nothing, so pay it no mind.”

Choi Geon tried to brush it off naturally. He did not want to burden his disciple with needless worry.

“Master.”

Normally, Kim Muhyuk would have read the mood, stopped asking for details, and let it pass quietly.

He was not the sort of person to pry into something the other party did not want to talk about.

But this time, he could not possibly do that.

“You talked in your sleep all night because you were having nightmares. Do you remember?”

Choi Geon flinched, then asked carefully.

“......What did I say?”

“You said not to hurt the others. That if they were going to kill someone, they should kill only you. That whether it was the price of sin or the price of blood, you would pay all of it. That was what you said.”

Kim Muhyuk looked at his master with pity as he spoke.

Because from his master as he muttered in his sleep through cold sweat all night, he had felt a loneliness and pain that could not be explained in words.

“You call that nothing? You tell me not to worry? But you’re suffering this much? If I were you, could you pretend not to know?”

At the unfamiliar sight of Kim Muhyuk glaring at him as if angry, Choi Geon felt grateful and conflicted all at once.

“......Muhyuk.”

In the end, Choi Geon had no choice but to admit it.

That he relied on this child, on that child’s family, on Blue Wolves.

Far more than even he himself had thought.

Even the stubborn martial artist who had lived his entire life protecting his convictions was ultimately only one old man who wanted to confide his heart to someone.

“Last night, someone broke into my house.”

In a calm voice, Choi Geon told him one thing after another about what had happened the night before.

The words written in blood on the wall. The photo that had disappeared.

How, while tracking the culprit, he realized there was a trap, but still met the Nine Dragons Society’s society leader and the Black Night Gang boss to settle matters before leaving.

After finishing the not-so-short story, Choi Geon sighed with a weary expression.

“I warned them firmly, so they will not dare touch your parents. Of course, I will continue watching. So do not worry too much. If they try anything foolish...... then I will end it with my own hands.”

As if determined not to forget the ones who had lured his master into a trap, Kim Muhyuk closed his eyes for a moment and murmured.

“The Nine Dragons Society’s society leader. The Black Night Gang boss.”

Of the two, the impression of the Black Night Gang boss, whom he had once met together with the Blood Tiger Gang, was still vivid in his mind.

The masters of the Five Great Unorthodox Sects, who stood on the opposite side of the Eight Great Sects.

Both of them were also powerful martial artists who had reached the realm of supreme master.

‘Those two targeted Master at the same time? This suddenly?’

Considering the amount of force needed to bring down the Black Heaven Society, it was hard to predict how much damage they would have to endure even to strike just one of the Five Great Unorthodox Sects.

“Muhyuk, you are not thinking anything foolish, are you?”

Worried by the possibility, Choi Geon reached out and grabbed his disciple’s shoulder.

Because if, by any chance, Kim Muhyuk had set his mind on taking down the Black Night Gang boss or the Nine Dragons Society’s society leader, Choi Geon had to stop him no matter what.

“You must not act rashly. This is different from the Black Heaven Society. The current Five Great Unorthodox Sects are on high alert, so they are not opponents you can touch recklessly.”

“.......”

Choi Geon did not want Kim Muhyuk to avenge him in the slightest. If anything, he wanted the opposite. He continued, his expression anxious.

“All I need to do is go back to how things were before. If I disappear, they will quiet down soon enough.”

“......Master.”

Kim Muhyuk opened his eyes and stared at him with a stiff expression, but Choi Geon smiled as though it were no great matter.

“Heh-heh. You know this master’s skill at disguise, do you not? When we first met, even you were completely fooled by me.”

“.......”

“I ask this of you, disciple. Do not make me regret telling you this story.”

Kim Muhyuk looked at his master in silence.

Watching his master’s uneasy expression, Kim Muhyuk recalled Choi Geon’s last appearance from the videos he had seen on YouTube in his previous life.

The face of an old man, gaunt as a skeleton, who had tried to reveal all his martial arts to the world and end his life.

Choi Geon’s face right now resembled that one.

“Do you really want to go back to how things were before?”

“......Muhyuk.”

“The way I see it, Master, you did nothing wrong. Even if your methods were extreme, I think the path the martial artist named Choi Geon walked was clearly the correct path.”

Pride welled up in Choi Geon’s face. His eyes grew damp despite himself.

“It is enough that you understand. I did not do it in hopes of wealth and glory. So I do not regret the life I lived.”

“That is exactly why it makes even less sense for you to disappear, Master. That would be the same as surrendering to evil. I cannot allow that.”

While changing Choi Geon’s clothes, Kim Muhyuk had seen the countless scars on his master’s body.

Wounds he must have earned while punishing evildoers all his life.

Among them were several traces of him crossing the line between life and death.

“......I merely do not want the resentment I bought in my life to harm all of you as well. If that is all, I have nothing more to ask for. Do not worry. I will secretly come by now and then to mooch a meal.”

Choi Geon’s expression was firm, as though he had made up his mind. But his voice was exhausted.

An old man who had stepped into the world and basked in the light for the first time in twenty years was trying to return to the darkness he had lived in before meeting Kim Muhyuk again.

‘If Master decides to disappear, even I’ll have a hard time finding him again.’

Fortunately, Kim Muhyuk already knew the perfect answer to keep his master from leaving.

“I’m sorry, Master. I think it’s already too late.”

“......Too late?”

Kim Muhyuk told Choi Geon the story that Na Ilcheon, the Azure Sky Sword Elder, had told him.

That the large sects of the Korean martial world had started keeping an eye on Blue Wolves, and that they would soon begin checking them in earnest.

“It’s not just the Five Great Unorthodox Sects. Looking at how things are going, by now there probably isn’t a large sect that doesn’t know you’re part of Blue Wolves, Master.”

“So in the end, because of me.......”

Kim Muhyuk firmly shook his head at his master, who was about to blame himself.

“Even if you hadn’t been with us, it would have turned out this way eventually. They would have checked us somehow, and they would have tried to grab and use anyone’s weakness.”

Choi Geon had only become the first target. It could just as easily have been someone else.

“So never again say you’ll go into hiding or disappear. That’s the situation they want most. If you leave and Blue Wolves’ strength weakens, then they’ll aim for another target next.”

At the statement that if he disappeared, the other members of Blue Wolves might be endangered instead, Choi Geon slowly nodded with a hardened expression.

“......I understand what you mean.”

Kim Muhyuk had not the slightest intention of yielding to their pressure.

His opponents could be called the top level of the Korean martial world, but in Kim Muhyuk’s eyes, they were still only domestic large sects.

‘If I can’t deal with this much, then it’ll be impossible to face the Heavenly Demon Cult later.’

When he had first heard the story from Na Ilcheon, his thoughts had been complicated. But after learning what Choi Geon had gone through, his mind instead became clear and simple.

—The leader of an organization must know how to distinguish friends from enemies.

Recalling Na Ilcheon’s advice, Kim Muhyuk began sorting friends and enemies in his head.

“......Master. There’s something I want to ask you.”

“Ask.”

Choi Geon nodded and focused on his disciple’s words.

From experience, he knew that when Kim Muhyuk wore that expression, it was the moment he had come up with some ingenious method.

“Suppose.”

—But you must also keep in mind that friends and enemies can change at any time. If your thinking is not flexible, you cannot survive in the turbulent martial world.

Recalling the priceless advice of his great senior, Kim Muhyuk formed one plan in his head.

“Suppose we had to join hands with either the Nine Dragons Society or the Black Night Gang...... Which one would be less bad?”

At a question he had never once imagined, Choi Geon sighed deeply.

“It sounds as though you’re asking me to choose between two piles of shit that are only different in color.”