Chapter 119 : Seolyoung, Cooks

Chapter 119: Seolyoung, Cooks

Lee Jaseung had never imagined that Yim Sayeon would ask him to kill her own son.

Lee Jaseung looked quietly at Yim Sayeon. At least in this moment, she let her emotions show.

Her words were sincere, yet not entirely sincere.

This time he looked at Cheon Myeongin. Lee Jaseung knew. The man had awakened. With his eyes closed, he had been listening to their conversation.

If he could sense it, then Yim Sayeon would know as well. Her son had awakened.

Lee Jaseung asked her in a flat voice.

“What would you give me if I killed him?”

At that merciless question, a single heavy word slipped from her lips.

“Anything.”

It was an answer that let him read her heart again. What did she think he would demand to answer like that? In other words, her emotions were tangled to the extreme.

“Very well.”

Lee Jaseung drew Asura from his waist.

The lifted blade flared with killing intent.

Sensing death, Cheon Myeongin could not endure it any longer and snapped his eyes open.

“Mother!”

He looked at Yim Sayeon with desperate eyes, yet the pitiless Asura was already cutting straight down through the empty air.

Swiish.

“Wait!”

At Yim Sayeon’s cry, Asura stopped a hair’s breadth before Cheon Myeongin’s heart.

Yim Sayeon let out a long sigh and spoke.

“Such insolence.”

No one could tell whom she had meant. Had she meant Lee Jaseung, who thrust without hesitation the moment she told him to kill. Cheon Myeongin, who begged for his life. Or had she meant herself.

Of course, Lee Jaseung had never intended to kill the man. He had been certain Yim Sayeon would stop him, and even if she had not, he would not have killed Cheon Myeongin.

He did not want to meddle in someone else’s private affairs, much less in matters between parent and child. All the more so when the person involved was Yim Sayeon.

“I will be outside.”

Lee Jaseung stepped out of the room.

Yim Sayeon let out another long sigh.

“...Mother.”

A single line of tears slipped from Cheon Myeongin’s eyes.

“...Please spare me, Mother.”

“If I spare you?”

Yim Sayeon asked in a cold voice.

“If I spare you, what do you intend to do? Can you leave Jianghu and live quietly?”

Cheon Myeongin’s eyes trembled. He wanted to lie to survive, yet he did not. He expelled the resentment that had piled up in his chest.

“I will erase the mountain that mocked me and betrayed me. After that I will seize this Jianghu. That has been the wish of my life. I cannot die like this when I have been wronged, Mother!”

Yim Sayeon watched her son wail and sighed. The day he left her came back to her mind.

With a sword dripping blood in his hand, Cheon Myeongin had said,

“I had no choice.”

The corpse at his feet had been someone Yim Sayeon knew. He had been a good man, someone who had cherished Cheon Myeongin like a nephew.

“Why did you kill him?”

“He figured out what I intended to do. It was something that could never be known to the world.”

It was the moment Yim Sayeon’s heart caved in. Her son’s eyes had glistened with desire. She had felt it then. She had raised him wrong.

The Jianghu she showed him had become an object to possess. The martial arts she had passed down with the command to keep the code of chivalry had become tools to achieve his desire.

“What was it that you intended to do?”

“I cannot say. I swore to myself. Anyone who comes to know it would be…”

Slap!

Yim Sayeon slapped Cheon Myeongin’s cheek without mercy.

“You arrogant brat! You lunatic!”

Slap! Slap! Slap!

She kept striking her son. She did it because she feared that if she did not, she might kill him.

Cheon Myeongin only stood there and took the blows.

How long did she strike him like that? When his face swelled till it was hard to recognize, her hand finally stopped.

“Leave.”

His eyes had shrunk and warped. The emotion in them was not resentment or rage. It was a wounded grievance, asking why she did not understand him.

Yim Sayeon still could not forget that look in her son’s eyes.

She returned to the present.

The look in her eyes as she gazed down at her son grew complicated.

She should have killed him. She should have hired some drifter assassin blinded by money and gotten it done for a few silver coins. For the sake of this Jianghu. For her own sake and his.

Lee Jaseung stood in the yard and looked up at the sky. The heavy sighs from the room drifted out even to the courtyard.

His gaze, which had been fixed on the sky, shifted to a large tree at the edge of the yard.

“Come out.”

When Lee Jaseung spoke coolly, a masked woman stepped out from behind the tree.

She was a woman with clear and beautiful eyes. Her gaze felt familiar, but he could not remember when he had seen her.

She was the woman with the Water character. She was the very one who had taken Cheon Myeongin to Yim Sayeon earlier.

“Why didn’t you kill him?”

Her opening question was a provocation. She was also testing him. Yet his mood did not sour, because the emotion she revealed was not hostility but favor.

“I do not kill people who have nothing to do with me.”

“If they do, you show no mercy?”

“Depending on the case.”

“Aha! I see.”

With exaggerated movements, Water nodded deeply. She was elusive in some unplaceable way.

This time, Lee Jaseung tested her.

“Why do your people want to kill me?”

He asked on the assumption that she stood with those behind the Alliance Leader.

Instead of answering, she looked at him and grinned.

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

She feigned ignorance, yet Lee Jaseung knew. She was with those who had tried to kill him.

She denied it in words, but her expression and tone had already given it away. It was not because she lacked skill at controlling her expression. It was because she had no intention of hiding it.

“Let me ask one more thing.”

“As many as you like.”

“Why are you so sure I won’t just kill you?”

The woman smiled and answered.

“Because men do not kill pretty women.”

“You are mistaken about something.”

“Mistaken about what?”

“I kill pretty women just fine. But I don’t kill good women. Are you a good woman?”

The woman met his gaze and asked him calmly.

“Do you have the right to judge what is good and bad?”

For an instant, Lee Jaseung’s face became cold.

She pretended to startle and spoke.

“Oh my! I am scared now, so I’ll leave. See you next time.”

She slipped back behind the tree. Soon her presence faded completely.

She was a woman who left a strange impression.

She had not hidden the fact that she and Cheon Myeongin were part of the power behind the Alliance Leader. Her appearance here had not been a coincidence. Why?

Even the keen-witted Lee Jaseung could not find an answer.

Just then, Yim Sayeon came outside.

She stood beside Lee Jaseung.

“I am sorry.”

At her words, Lee Jaseung answered quietly.

“It is all right.”

“I went through so much in my life that I believed nothing could shake my heart anymore. Now that I think about it, that was terrible arrogance. Heaven is punishing me for that.”

Yim Sayeon looked up at the sky. Perhaps it was because the sky was so clear. Her wrinkles and the sorrow slipping between them looked even deeper.

“Even so, he did not want to do something as heartless as throwing away his mother, so he kept in touch from time to time through that child Ban Yeo.”

Only now did Lee Jaseung understand the relationship between Ban Yeo and Yim Sayeon.

The fact that Cheon Myeongin had used an outsider like Ban Yeo instead of his own subordinates might mean he did not even trust his own organization. There had to be complicated knots of circumstance.

“To be honest, I wanted to save that child.”

“I understand.”

The silence that followed for a while deepened Yim Sayeon’s sorrow.

“At this rate he will die before long.”

“If we forced it, we could eke out a year or so.”

With an immense amount of elixir and Yim Sayeon’s pure Qi, it would have been possible.

“But I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Why not?”

“If a man knows exactly when he will die, he will surely run wild.”

He could be certain even without knowing exactly what kind of person Cheon Myeongin was. He would have been the same himself. To treasure the time remaining, he would keep doing what should never be done.

At the center of that dangerous path, a thought would surely take root.

He would die in a year anyway.

In the end, there would be nothing he could not do.

“Would you be able to handle that?”

At Lee Jaseung’s question, Yim Sayeon closed her eyes and fell into thought. She stayed that way for a long time, then finally answered.

“I do not trust myself to.”

She made a wise decision.

“Yes, you are right. It is something that must not be done.”

Lee Jaseung said nothing. Although she spoke that way, he could not begin to imagine how much her heart must hurt.

Yim Sayeon spoke with genuine feeling.

“Thank you.”

Lee Jaseung gave her a respectful nod and started walking.

As he stepped through the door, a fragment of the past rose up.

His father, drunk out of his mind, looked at him.

His eyes were filled with grief.

“Shall I prepare you a meal?”

Bang.

His father had shut the door.

As a child, Lee Jaseung became resolved in that moment. He still remembered it vividly.

— I will not live like Father.

Even so, as a man grows older, he comes to understand more of his father. The feeling in his father’s eyes when he looked at him back then had surely been regret. It had been closer to affection than to hatred.

Perhaps it felt easier to accept after his father passed away. If his father had still been alive, he might still have harbored resentment.

He thought that one day he should talk with Baek Seolyoung about this part of his life. She too must have carried wounds and sorrow about her parents.

* * *

Baek Seolyoung had been learning to cook from Dan Ah.

Dan Ah, who had picked a quarrel with her first, was not only skilled in martial arts but also talented in cooking.

Baek Seolyoung worked hard under Dan Ah. Fortunately, she had a knack for cooking.

“You really picked it up fast.”

At Dan Ah’s praise, Baek Seolyoung smiled and answered.

“It is because Master Dan taught me well.”

“Just because I teach you, it doesn’t make it easy, you know.”

“I know you are only being kind.”

“No. You really do have a talent for this.”

Being told she did well made Baek Seolyoung secretly pleased.

“Why did you suddenly want to learn cooking though?”

To be honest, it was because of Lee Jaseung.

There had been a dish he cooked for her once. It had only been simple grilled meat, yet she had eaten it twice already thanks to him.

Normally, it should have been something she did for him.

“Just because. I always wanted to try it at least once.”

Right then, Lee Jaseung came in. Dan Ah gave a polite bow and stepped aside.

“Have you eaten?”

“Not yet.”

“Then do you want to try this? I cooked for fun.”

“You? Yourself?”

Baek Seolyoung nodded. For some reason her heart fluttered. She had spoken in a casual tone, yet it was the first day she had ever cooked for someone.

Lee Jaseung picked up his chopsticks and tasted the food.

He said nothing even after tasting it, so Baek Seolyoung grew a little tense.

“Why? Is it bad?”

Only then did Lee Jaseung look up and speak. A faint emotion touched his face.

“No. It is good.”

“Really?”

“Very good. To be honest, it has been quite a while since I ate food made by my family.”

“Ah!”

Now that she thought of it, Lee Jaseung had also lost his parents when he was young.

Baek Seolyoung felt an inexplicable swell of pride. She had always eaten what others cooked for her, so she had never known. Cooking for someone and watching them enjoy it felt surprisingly rewarding.

The word family also lingered in her chest.

‘Right. He and I are family now.’

It was a word she had somehow forgotten, and hearing it made her chest ache in a warm way.

“I will make it for you often from now on.”

Baek Seolyoung had the feeling she would be bothering Dan Ah quite a lot in the days to come.

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