Chapter 317 - The Cutting Winds of Late Winter (5)

The scent of the Seven-Colored Flower, one I had not smelled in some time, calmly settled my mind.

The weak sunlight shining through the window in the cold winter felt warm.

This peaceful, tranquil, idle moment...

BANG!

What bastard dares to throw open the door to the academy representative's office so roughly!

That thought had me about to kick them at once, but...

"Uh... hm, Junior Sister Ryeon, you're here?"

"..."

Perhaps the Seven-Colored Flower I had just drunk had already digested, because I suddenly felt the urge to visit the outhouse for no reason.

"Jin Sow... no, Eldest Senior Brother."

Saryeon, eyes wide open, tilted her head with a creak, creak, and arrived before me as if using a form-shifting transposition technique.

"What... exactly were you thinking?"

I could tell at once what she was talking about.

First, I moved the precious cup of Seven-Colored Flower behind me to protect it, then opened my mouth.

"So..."

"Did you do that while you were in your right mind?"

"Actually, at the time..."

"You seemed to be acting normally for the last few days, but you couldn't even hold back that long and did this again?"

"No, there are circumstances behind all of this..."

"Why can't you go one whole month behaving properly! Why, exactly why!"

No, shouldn't she at least give me a chance to explain?

As if dumbfounded, Saryeon glared once at the cup of Seven-Colored Flower and let out a long sigh.

"Fine. Go ahead and tell me. Why exactly did you do that?"

"..."

I looked at Saryeon silently with my eyes.

With the question of whether she was finally in the mood to hear me out.

However.

"... Don't tell me you don't even have anything to say? You! No, Eldest Senior Brother! Were you this hopeless a person?"

"..."

Saryeon thumped her chest as if she were about to burst inside.

Watching her made my own chest feel tight too.

Let me talk already.

#

"... So, the instructor did that with intent, is that right?"

After some time had passed, Saryeon, having calmly listened to me, hinted in a subdued voice as if she had somewhat accepted it.

"Even so, turning him into a cripple was too much."

"A cripple?"

"They said you shattered his Dantian and made him a cripple."

No, even I cannot go that far.

The other party was a Hall Leader-class person and a member of Qingcheng, one of the Nine Sects.

If I had done that, everyone in Qingcheng would come running to take my head.

I do think things through, you know.

Yes, of course I do.

"Ahem, what are you talking about? I only scared him a little. I didn't shatter his Dantian."

"... Really?"

"Of course."

"... Are you sure it's true? You swear?"

"..."

No, why does this girl not trust her senior brother, the head disciple of the Taiyi Sect, who has spent his whole life with her?

When I shot her a dissatisfied look, Saryeon waved her hands as if making an excuse.

"Y-You've done so many bizarre things lately."

As I forgave my junior sister with a compassionate heart and drank the Seven-Colored Flower, Saryeon muttered as if something had occurred to her.

"Come to think of it... I think something similar happened to me too."

When I heard her story, it turned out that during the first class after school started, an instructor had given her a fierce lecture over the evaluation of a report she had submitted last year.

The contents were similar to what I had gone through.

He had used Saryeon's report, which had received the highest score, as an example, saying things like the year's level was low, so a report like this had earned good marks, belittling the overall standard.

"Tsk."

The intent behind his appointment to the academy had been so obvious from the start that even the taste of the Seven-Colored Flower felt bitter.

And this stuff is expensive.

When I looked down at my teacup and grimaced, Saryeon snorted and scolded me lightly.

"But even so, your hand was far too harsh. Attacking an instructor is grounds for expulsion."

Saryeon precisely pointed out the part I had been trying hard to ignore.

"On top of that, you even gave a pretext to people desperate to pick a fight with you... So what are you going to do now?"

Tsk.

In any case, I did think there was a part of me that had reacted a little too strongly in this incident.

'Why exactly did I do that?'

Had I been pretending to be Underworld so much that I had turned into a real Underworld figure?

It was not as if I were truly the Stronghold Master of Black Dragon Stronghold...

I felt a sense of self-loathing for acting so recklessly, as if I were someone with a place to return to.

"I did it because there was good reason to."

"..."

Of course, what came out of my mouth was not that.

Because if I looked genuinely flustered here, Saryeon would only grow more anxious.

I deliberately lifted my teacup with a relaxed air and added.

"If what they want is our expulsion, then this provocation likely will not be the end of it. They would keep building pretexts throughout the remaining semester, then set it off at the very end, at the most decisive moment."

"..."

"If that happened, we would attend the academy classes properly and still end up as failures who could not graduate."

As I spoke, I found myself persuaded by my own words.

Were human relationships not originally like that?

A person who hates me for no reason will not end up liking me no matter how hard I try to please them.

Instead, the things I did while trying to please them could later become a reason for them to hate me.

That is how irrational it is.

The existence called human.

"In that case, it is better to strike first so the other side cannot have time to prepare. Then we can at least gain time to respond instead."

Namely, "giving them a reason."

The most effective way to respond to someone who hates me for no reason.

That is to give them a reason to hate me.

If you plant a clear reason, then on the contrary.

Later, when that reason disappears, the relationship may improve.

It sounds contradictory, but that is the truth.

Because a good relationship cannot exist without respect for the other party.

"Phew... Seriously."

Saryeon also seemed to accept my words, sighing without offering any further rebuttal.

Then she asked as if something had suddenly occurred to her.

"But why 'we'?"

"Hm?"

"Eldest Senior Brother is the one who caused trouble. So why are you lumping us together as 'we'?"

"..."

"Don't tell me that if Eldest Senior Brother gets expelled, we have to leave too?"

Uh... When she put it that way, I had nothing to say.

Hmm...

"Disciples of the Taiyi Sect are always together, in death or in life."

"..."

Saryeon furrowed her brow deeply.

I knew very well what that expression meant because I had watched her since childhood.

In other words... Saryeon usually made that face when she meant, "I really, really hate that!"

Ah, that hurts a little.

It really hurts.

#

Even after Saryeon left.

BANG!

"Young Master Jin, what in the world happened!"

BANG!

"What on earth have you been going around doing!?"

BANG!

"Representative! Is what I heard true!"

The door is going to break at this rate.

"Hey, a little more gently..."

BANG!

... Because everyone kept barging in as if they were going to smash the representative office's door to pieces, the door finally ended up destroyed.

Will the academy pay to replace that?

Since I had absolutely no desire to replace it with my own money, I naturally grew worried.

But I could not exactly leave the representative office wide open like a hallway either.

"Hmm... This incident certainly may grow into a major problem."

Jang Ujae, who had entered just before the door was destroyed, spoke.

He had not barged in as if he would break the door, and for some reason had quietly entered the representative office with a strangely detached face.

Thanks to that, he bore no responsibility for the broken door.

As expected, he is a cultured fellow.

I like that. I do.

He leaned forward with a serious face.

"The problem is that even if the assault on the instructor is quietly passed over, the future course of events will change depending on the instructors' intentions."

He was worrying about the same part that worried me.

"As you said, Representative... no, as our friend Cheol Sunjik said, if they came to funnel scores to certain people, then they will begin moving even more blatantly from now on."

I looked at the murderer of the representative office door sitting beside Jang Ujae and asked.

"What do you think, person who smashed the door to pieces?"

"... Ugh, wasn't the door already smashed...?"

Ilgak wiped once at his head, which gleamed with sweat, then spoke as if that was not what mattered.

"In any case, even within the Nine Sects and One Gang, public opinion toward the newly arrived instructors is not very good. Whatever their intention may be, it was an act that disregarded them."

The reactions were roughly split half and half.

Half were indignant at the act of attacking an instructor, and the other half expressed that it felt refreshing to see the instructor end up like that.

Hm, but why are there no forces supporting me? Shouldn't there be opinions saying the representative did well too?

While I was briefly lost in other thoughts, Ilgak spoke quietly.

"What worries me most is... the people of the Taiyi Sect."

"Hm?"

"They found out, did they not? That Representative Jin is at a level they cannot handle."

"..."

Ah.

So my junior brothers will suffer instead of me. Is that what he means?

What should I do?

Would it be better to have one big scrap with the instructors instead...

"... Don't even think about pointlessly making this worse."

Saryeon's chilly voice sounded like a winter wind.

"Simply being faulted and becoming an enemy force are completely different matters. Not only us, but our junior brothers who will undergo compulsory service later may be harmed too."

True, comparing sheer numbers alone, we cannot exactly fight all of the Nine Sects right now.

Saryeon had put her finger on the heart of the matter.

Becoming enemies is not the issue, but the junior brothers who will later be assigned to compulsory service could be.

If someone harbors malice and refuses something like a branch reassignment, there is no telling what the junior brothers may suffer inside.

The Murim Alliance advocates an absolute chain of command.

In reality, that is not quite the case, but externally, it is arranged so that one follows rank within the Murim Alliance beyond sects and noble clans.

At first glance, it feels like an extremely impartial and fair system, but to the vested powers, this feels a little different.

For example, what if an elite of the Wudang Sect were in a position where he had to take orders under Jin Sowoon of the Third-Rate sect, the Taiyi Sect?

'His pride would be wounded and he would be furious.'

What if Ilgak of the Shaolin Sect were deliberately bullied by a warrior of the Iron Sword Sect?

Could they truly accept that as it was?

This was both the reason existing powers showed impure intentions before the academy's grade evaluations, which ought to be fair.

And also the reason I could not act exactly as I pleased.

"We were already prepared for a certain degree of discrimination from the start. If it is at the same level as now, we can endure it as much as needed."

Saryeon straightened her posture and sat upright.

"Things like this will happen any number of times from now on. If we did not have that resolve, we would not have come to the Murim Academy in the first place."

Saryeon stared piercingly at me and continued.

"So do not think about causing an even greater commotion or incident because of us!"

"..."

"Stop sacrificing yourself because of us!"

At Saryeon's resolute shout, Seong Moran added.

"Wow, the junior sister is more mature than the Eldest Senior Brother."

What is she talking about?

Under Saryeon's fierce gaze, which stared at me as if demanding an answer, I eventually had no choice but to nod.

Because if I did not answer like this, that girl seemed likely to cause some sort of trouble.

But just because Saryeon said that did not put me at ease.

For all I knew, the Geum-eun-dong Brothers, who had attended class today, might have suffered some sort of humiliation.

On top of that, there was no telling how rough their academy life would become from now on.

I earnestly hoped the Geum-eun-dong Brothers' spirit had not been broken.

After all, I had worked them so hard all this time...

No, no, ahem.

What I mean is, I would feel terribly sorry if boys who were just spreading their wings and beginning to fly realized their own limits and stopped there.

Just then.

PATTER PATTER PATTER PATTER.

The sound of footsteps running hard came from outside the hallway.

Even without looking, I could tell the owners of those footsteps were the Geum-eun-dong Brothers.

"Huh? Why did the door fall off?"

"Let's meet Eldest Senior Brother first!"

"Y-Yeah, okay!"

Geumpyo, who was entering the representative office, tilted his head, but then shifted his attention at Eunho's words and came inside.

Seeing the three brothers' stiff, hardened faces, I let out a small sigh.

At a glance, their expressions clearly said something had happened.

"Did something happen to you today too, by any chance..."

"Eldest Senior Brother!"

Eunho immediately cut me off.

Had something so serious happened that this polite boy would cut off my words?

Worried, I rose from my seat and approached them.

But.

"They said you crushed an instructor with internal energy? Is that true? How exactly...?"

Starting with Geumpyo's question, unable to believe the truth.

"Eldest Senior Brother, be honest with us. Just what did you eat... no, consume behind our backs? You took a spiritual elixir, didn't you? Right!?"

Eunho's extremely irreverent, dissatisfied expression.

"Eldest Senior Brother, p-please teach me that too. The method to shatter a Dantian with internal energy..."

And even Dongryong's sparkling eyes as he said something terrifying.

"You came to find me in a hurry because of that?"

"We're curious. How did you do it?"

"Eldest Senior Brother, be honest and confess. Then we'll understand and let it go."

"C-Can I learn it now? Or do I need to gather more internal energy first?"

Uh... They are more spirited than I expected.

I suppose I should think of this as fortunate, right?