There is no way, right? (3)
“Keheuk… kkhhhh…”
The assassin reflexively seized the sword he had dropped.
“Wh-What……”
Then, with much difficulty, he lifted his head. His eyes, wandering helplessly, fixed on Seok Hanbin – or, no. More precisely, on the small creature at Seok Hanbin’s feet.
“A weasel?”
The assassin stared blankly at the white weasel, then raised his head and met Seok Hanbin’s eyes.
At that gaze that seemed to demand an explanation, Seok Hanbin opened his mouth without realizing it. Though the other man was an assassin aiming for his life, the desperate feeling in those eyes was too painfully relatable for him to simply ignore.
“…Uh, I don’t know whether you’ll believe me, but I don’t really know what’s going on either?”
“…”
“Really.”
Only then did the assassin’s eyes leave Seok Hanbin and turn towards the weasel.
“Ugh….”
It still seemed difficult for him to accept that he had been beaten by that tiny little weasel and sent rolling across the ground, but perhaps because an assassin was still an assassin, he soon rose to his feet and set his stance in order.
“…..Is it a spirit beast?”
The assassin gripped his sword so tightly that the blood drained from his hand. From him flowed a thick killing intent unlike anything one would expect from an assassin. A murderous aura incomparable to when he had rushed at Seok Hanbin moments ago.
Feeling that chilling killing intent, Seok Hanbin looked at the weasel without realizing it.
Kyuu?
But the weasel, with a completely carefree face (honestly, it did look rather cute), looked back at Seok Hanbin.
“C-Can you handle that?”
Seok Hanbin himself knew this was strange. No matter how far this situation had strayed from common sense, did it make any sense to try speaking with a weasel? But something even stranger happened immediately after.
Kiiiii?
The weasel, hearing those words, looked at Seok Hanbin once as if dumbfounded, then turned its head sharply towards the assassin. And then.
Tap.
It stretched one forepaw straight out and wagged a single claw at the assassin. As if telling him to come at it.
Seeing that, Seok Hanbin muttered in a daze.
“I really need to start going to a Taoist temple, or a Buddhist temple, or something…”
So I’ll stop seeing things… So I will.
“You……”
To Seok Hanbin, it was simply absurd, but it seemed that was not the case for the assassin.
“How dare a mere beast……”
Grrrrind.
The assassin ground his teeth so violently that even Seok Hanbin grew worried for him.
Seok Hanbin, who knew little of Gangho, knew at least that assassins were supposed to remain cold-headed at all times. But he could hardly say the man was in the wrong.
‘How is a person supposed to endure being provoked by a weasel?’
Especially a person who had learned martial arts.
If Seok Hanbin had been in his shoes, wouldn’t he have gone into a frenzy, swearing to turn that damned weasel into a scarf?
While he was sending the assassin a human sympathy that transcended friend and foe, the assassin’s foot kicked off the ground.
“Haaaaap!”
The assassin did not leap forward cursing, as Seok Hanbin had imagined. But with that brief shout, he made his intent perfectly clear.
Paaaaat!
This time, the sword aimed not at Seok Hanbin, but at the weasel, shot out at a speed still too swift for the eye to follow.
A fierce sword energy so powerful that Seok Hanbin, who knew nothing whatsoever of martial arts, instinctively shrank back…!
Paeng!
The sword veered off to the side.
“…Kkkh.”
The assassin’s eyes bulged. At the very instant his sword was about to pierce the weasel, that insane little bastard had lightly kicked the side of the blade – not even with a forepaw, but with a hind paw – and twisted its path aside.
Tap.
Then, as if mocking him, it wiggled the paw that had touched the flat of the blade in midair.
“U-Uaaaaaah!”
The assassin’s sword thrust into the air several more times.
But none of that sword energy could touch even a single hair on the weasel’s body… Yes, literally not a single tip of its fluffy fur coat.
Because the weasel raised its forepaw and tapped the sword with its claws, knocking every strike aside.
‘I’m going insane.’
Seok Hanbin couldn’t even bring himself to laugh anymore.
Perhaps, in truth, he had already died to the assassin’s sword, and this was a hallucination he was seeing after death. He had never heard of dead people dreaming, but it seemed more plausible than this being reality.
Kiiiiii.
Just then, a small cry slipped from the weasel’s mouth. If he had to interpret it by feeling, it sounded close to, ‘What a joke.’
Then, the next instant, it kicked off the ground and leapt up, striking the assassin sharply across the face with its forepaw.
Kwaaaaaang!
The assassin, hit by a paw so small the word ‘tiny’ hardly did it justice, was sent flying like a cannonball once again and crashed straight through the wall.
“Kkh….. Kkheuaa……”
The assassin, groaning beneath the collapsed wall, staggered as if trying to rise, but in the end collapsed facedown again.
“Im-Impossible……”
Thud.
The assassin’s head slammed straight into the ground.
Tsk.
The weasel, looking at the scene, shook its paw lightly as if annoyed.
“…..Uh.”
Seok Hanbin looked back and forth between the unconscious assassin and the weasel wearing human clothes, then simply laughed.
‘I don’t know anymore.’
How was he supposed to interpret this when there was no room for interpretation? How could one possibly interpret a situation where a weasel beat down an assassin hired by the Black Water Manor?
But for the weasel, Baek Ah, it was just as absurd.
Even among the spirit beasts of the distant Nanman Beast Palace, Baek Jeon ranked among the very top. Had even the spirit beast white tiger, capable of biting three or four fairly accomplished masters to death, not trembled at a single gesture of its paw?
And yet some half-baked assassin bastard had dared to charge at it.
Tak.
Baek Ah shook its head.
Apparently, after being tormented for so long by the one who was not quite human(?), much of its dignity had worn away. Or else, perhaps because Chung Myung kept tormenting it by threatening to jab it in the eyes with his fingers, saying, ‘Can’t you make your eyes look kinder?’, the imposing spirit Baek Ah showed outwardly had vanished altogether.
Baek Ah let out a deep sigh, then turned and looked at Seok Hanbin.
Kii! Kiiiiii! Kiii!
Then Baek Ah cried out, pointing repeatedly at Seok Hanbin with the small front paw.
“…Why are you doing this to me?”
Just as Seok Hanbin was about to despair at this utterly ridiculous situation.
“Is it here?”
Two people jumped down from atop the wall.
“So this is where you were.”
“You need to be scolded.”
“Uh…….”
Looking at the two Taoists who had suddenly showed up, Seok Hanbin silently lowered the stick he had been holding. By now, he no longer had the energy to be surprised or flustered.
“As expected, Baek Ah is good at finding people…. What is that?”
Tang Soso’s eyes narrowed sharply when she discovered the assassin embedded in the wall.
“Why did you hit someone again! I told you not to cause trouble!”
Kiiiiiiiii!
“No, you little…! Look at you pointing fingers? I’m telling Sahyeong everything, you hear?”
At the words ‘Sahyeong,’ Baek Ah flinched, then began pretending not to hear.
Watching that sight, Seok Hanbin smiled faintly.
‘Why don’t these people find it strange that a weasel beat a person down?’
It wasn’t as if it had won by biting him, either. It had embedded a person in a wall. Why were they accepting that as if it were nothing?
Was he the one who had gone mad, or was the whole world going mad around him?
Seok Hanbin now only wished this absurd dream would hurry up and end.
“But why is this person… Hm? He’s holding a sword?”
“An assassin.”
“What? An assassin, Sago?”
“Yes.”
Yu Iseol nodded with an expressionless face. Tang Soso narrowed her brows for a moment, but she did not bother asking why Yu Iseol thought so.
If Yu Iseol said so, then that was that. She was someone who could see far more than Tang Soso could.
“Did that person attack you?”
Seok Hanbin nodded silently.
“Mmm, really? Then he does seem to be an assassin. What should we do……”
Tang Soso looked at the man stuck in the wall in contemplation, then muttered.
“Should we just kill him? He is an assassin. No, is that a bit much? Would it be enough to sever the muscles and tendons in his arms and legs for now?”
Little by little, Seok Hanbin’s body began to tremble.
“What should we do, Sago? Just kill him?”
“No.”
“Ah…. Right, we shouldn’t kill people so easily after all.”
“If he dies like that, he won’t even know he’s dying. Too comfortable. Tie him up and take him with us. Give him to Sajil.”
“Ah, that would work. But……”
Tang Soso, who had been looking around, let out a small sigh.
“There’s nothing suitable to tie him up with. It can’t be helped.”
Hm? What did she mean, it couldn’t be helped? Then what was she going to…
Thunk.
‘Hiiiiiiiik!’
Seok Hanbin’s eyes grew three times wider.
Tang Soso had suddenly pulled a long needle the size of a man’s forearm from her sleeve and driven it deep into the fallen assassin’s body.
“If I stick them here and here, he won’t be able to move……”
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
“…”
“Mm, maybe I should put in one more, just in case?”
Thuuunk.
Each time a needle was driven in, the unconscious man twitched and convulsed.
It was a mercy he had fainted. If such a needle were stuck into him while he was fully conscious, Seok Hanbin would have been willing to recite, right there where he sat, even the color of the undergarments worn by his ancestors twelve generations back.
“Mm. All done. Then, now…”
Tang Soso turned around sharply and looked at Seok Hanbin. Then, with a flawless, bright smile, she spoke kindly.
“Could you maybe come with us for a bit?”
“…”
It was a truly innocent smile. But Seok Hanbin’s gaze couldn’t help drifting to the gleaming long needle jutting out between her fingers.
“…Where should I go?”
“I like how reasonable you are.”
Survival came first…
❀ ❀ ❀
Kiiiiii!
“Well, well, if it isn’t this little weasel bastard!”
Bam!
The kicked weasel bounced up into the air.
Baek Ah, who had proudly strutted in through the door, ended up doing an involuntary midair flip thanks to Chung Myung, who had discovered the empty liquor bottle.
“You stole the liquor and drank it again in that short time? You little…! What kind of damn beast keeps guzzling down liquor!”
Kii! Kiiiik!
“What are you screeching for, like you did something right! Why, you…!”
Chung Myung kicked Baek Ah once more as he charged at it.
Watching Baek Ah spin through the air, Seok Hanbin’s face showed he has already achieved half-enlightenment.
‘So, in other words…’
The Black Water Manor had hired an assassin because they could not catch him, and that assassin had been beaten unconscious by a weasel, and that weasel was now being kicked around and sent spinning by that Taoist bastard…
No, enough. He did not know anymore.
“What kind of weasel learns to drink liquor? This is driving me insane, seriously.”
“You taught him. Chung Myung.”
“Me? When did I?”
“……Fine. Let’s just say you didn’t.”
“Hey, where are you going! Get back here! I’ll skin you alive!”
Chung Myung, who had spent a long while pointing and growling at Baek Ah as it ran out the door without even looking back, turned around.
“What’s that now?”
“They say he’s an assassin, Sahyeong.”
“An assassin? Why an assassin all of a sudden?”
“He possibly came after this kid?”
“Eh?”
Chung Myung looked back and forth between Seok Hanbin and the assassin, then let out a deep sigh.
“Agh, just how much trouble have you been causing…”
“What should we do? We brought him here for now.”
“Should we hang him from that tree over there?”
“Wouldn’t he die, then?”
He seemed already dead… No, actually, it seemed death might have been preferable.
“Grab some passing beggar and tell him to inform the Beggars Sect’s branch that there’s an assassin here. They will take care of it.”
“Ah, that should work.”
Tang Soso nodded.
They themselves had nothing to gain from this assassin, but the Beggars Sect was different. If they could extract information about his organization, or about the people he had killed so far, it would be useful.
“And it’ll lessen the guilt a bit.”
“Let’s call it interest. Interest.”
“That does sound better.”
Having dealt with the assassin, Chung Myung finally turned his gaze to Seok Hanbin.
“Hmmm.”
Seok Hanbin flinched when he saw Chung Myung, but he did not show fear. This time, he had done nothing wrong, so surely he could hold his head high?
“First, that…… Uh. Ugh.”
And contributing somewhat to that feeling was the fact that this Taoist bastard standing before him, strangely enough, always acted like a puppy desperate to take a dump whenever he looked at him.
“Sit over there for a bit.”
“Yes.”
Seok Hanbin obediently sat down. Sitting across from him, Chung Myung frowned deeply and spoke.
“Right. So what are you planning to do now?”
“…What?”
“I’m asking what you’re going to do to make a living! In this harsh world!”
It felt like facing an older relative he hadn’t seen in a long time (though he had no such relative). A little awkward, and a little uncomfortable.
________
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