Myeongsin silently stared at the coin Geommugeuk held out.
He had said this to Salwang:
—Did you say the Young Cult Leader resembles me? Then you greatly overestimated me.
That was not something he should have said to Salwang. Because the one overestimating him was right here.
Myeongsin did not take the coin Geommugeuk held out.
"I am not an assassin who takes commissions for a single coin."
Myeongsin began walking again.
Geommugeuk followed.
"Ah, of course, I am well aware that you are the assassin with the second-highest rate in Myeongbu."
But a thought different from his words rose in Geommugeuk's mind.
'No, you are that kind of assassin.'
His accepting a single-coin commission was a matter of the future.
He had lived as an assassin who left the organization and wandered the Central Plains, accepting a single coin offered by a child as a commission fee. When someone suffered an injustice, he avenged their grudge for them. In return, he sometimes received a lump of rice balls, and sometimes he set out to carry out a killing after listening to a song.
And in the end, he was killed by Salwang.
The reason he left the organization was because he had carried out a killing in which he could not keep his principles, due to Salwang.
Salwang was merciless. The person he deceived Myeongsin into killing by making him out to be a villain was an excellent person. An exceedingly good person who received the people's respect and praise.
As always, Myeongsin had investigated the commission target in his own way, but he could not escape Salwang's scheme to deliberately deceive him.
After that incident, Myeongsin was greatly shaken and went into hiding.
The reason he lived as an assassin who helped people was likely because the guilt of having killed an innocent person was added to the innately good heart he was born with.
And Salwang eventually found him and killed him.
What words had Salwang spoken when he killed him?
Had he inflicted a great wound upon Myeongsin's heart before killing him? Or had he killed him while saying something else? That was impossible to know.
In any case, before the regression, Salwang lived and Myeongsin died, but in this world now, the one who should live is Myeongsin, and the one who should die is Salwang.
The two walked in silence for quite some time.
Myeongsin was troubled.
It was rather an opportunity. Things were rather awkward now, and it felt like Geommugeuk would follow him wherever he went.
'Shall I take him with me like this?'
Even if he did not follow, he could simply wait for the next time.
Even though an unexpected opportunity had arrived, Myeongsin hesitated. It was because of what Geommugeuk had said.
—It would be nice if somewhere in this world, there was a cool assassin who would accept a single coin offered by a little kid as commission and kill a villain for them.
The moment he heard those words, his heart trembled.
Was it because he felt the desire to truly live as that kind of assassin?
Or was it due to anger toward Geommugeuk, who was trying to bewitch him with such words?
For a brief moment, his emotions had wavered at Geommugeuk's words. If some other assassin had been trying to kill him, they would have aimed for that very moment.
Whether he knew of this complicated heart or not, Geommugeuk was at ease.
"Now, to resolve this awkward relationship, we need to have a drink, don't we? Let's hurry."
Rather, Geommugeuk walked ahead.
Myeongsin followed behind him.
'If I take him there... the Young Cult Leader dies today.'
If he could not carry out this mission.
'I die.'
Because he would be ruining the greatest assassination in history, one that had even brought in external supreme assassins. Moreover, if his relationship with Salwang was not good these days as it was, it would be even harder to avoid that responsibility.
"What are you thinking so deeply about?"
Whether to kill you or not.
"Can't we just leave?"
"Why would you say that all of a sudden?"
The Young Cult Leader suddenly ran away.
Because he had wanted to report this to Salwang. Because he did not want to kill the only person who had made him look deep into his own heart.
Was that all? From the moment he killed the Demonic Cult's Young Cult Leader, he would have to hide for the rest of his life. Salwang might have a clear reason for accepting this matter, but he did not. It was something he was not emotionally inclined to do.
"Could it be you've received an order to kill me?"
At Geommugeuk's sudden question, Myeongsin inwardly flinched but moved his steps without showing it.
"I suppose it really is so."
Myeongsin stopped.
"I did not say anything."
"Don't ordinary people deny what isn't true, if only to avoid needless misunderstanding?"
"What does it matter to endure such petty misunderstanding?"
Geommugeuk did not let a single word pass by.
"Those who say petty misunderstanding is fine are actually people who truly hate being misunderstood. Just as those who love speaking ill of others terribly hate being spoken ill of themselves."
He had seen precisely. Though Myeongsin spoke like that, he hated being misunderstood. Because he despised people who spoke carelessly without knowing him well.
"The world is not comprised entirely of your experiences."
As if acknowledging this, Geommugeuk nodded vigorously.
The more Myeongsin conversed with Geommugeuk, the angrier he became.
Because he kept making him look into himself, when looking into others was his profession as an assassin.
Whether Geommugeuk knew that heart or not, he incessantly shook his emotions.
"In your principles, am I someone who must be killed, or not?"
Myeongsin remembered that Salwang had also asked this question.
—You said you wouldn't kill if they weren't a villain, didn't you? Is the Young Cult Leader a villain? A good person?
He couldn't answer, not to Salwang, nor to the man himself.
Based only on gathered information, Geommugeuk was not a villain. The only justification for killing him was his identity as the Young Cult Leader of the Demonic Cult.
If the Young Cult Leader was not a villain, then it would mean breaking his principles. Could it be that he was now trying to gloss things over using the Demonic Cult as an excuse? Hoping all of this would just pass by.
"You tell me. Are you a villain, or not?"
Geommugeuk answered without hesitation.
"I am someone who should not be killed."
"Why is that?"
"If your principle is not to kill if they aren't a villain, my principle is that a villain must certainly be killed. I am one step ahead of your principle. In the end, we can be seen as the same kind of person."
Geommugeuk's principle was something hard to believe even hearing it directly, but it was true. Because it had come up as the most important information regarding him.
A Young Cult Leader of the Demonic Cult who does not forgive evil?
Of course, Myeongsin had thought it was deception and disguise.
If that were the case? It would truly be an incredible disguise and deception. Because he kept thinking that those pieces of information might actually be true.
Rather, the prior investigation was becoming poison. If not for it, he would never have believed the Demonic Cult's Young Cult Leader in the first place.
In the meantime, the two arrived at the main street.
"Now, as you said, today let's go to the place you chose."
Myeongsin's heart pounded.
'Shall I take him there? Or shall I endure today?'
If he had to take him there someday, was there any need to delay? Even though he knew today was the opportunity, Myeongsin hesitated.
"If it's not this village, if you know another good place, let's go there."
Though a typhoon was rising in Myeongsin's heart, his expression was like a clear, still lake.
"There's an inn I know a short distance away. Would that be alright?"
If Geommugeuk suggested eating right here, he had no intention of forcing him to go.
But Geommugeuk approached and tugged at his sleeve.
"You should have said so sooner. Come, let's go. Even if we're having a drink, we should have it somewhere delicious."
Just as he had strode up in the iron chamber, taken his hand, and pulled the handle together, today too Geommugeuk was determining his own fate with his own hands.
He should have felt at ease, thinking, 'Yes, this is all the fate you decided for yourself.'
But as he moved his steps away from the main street, Myeongsin's heart was not at ease.
The coin that had lain on Geommugeuk's palm kept coming to mind.
'I must not get entangled.'
That coin was nothing but a demonic needle that had flown into his heart.
While walking immersed in such thoughts, words flowed from Geommugeuk that made Myeongsin stop.
"Before long, your leader will deceive you by making out someone you absolutely must not kill to be a villain, and make you kill them. What will you do then? Will you kill them? Or will you leave Myeongbu?"
"Why would he do such a thing to me, the second-in-command of Myeongbu?"
But contrary to the certainty that it absolutely couldn't happen, Myeongsin was recalling what Salwang had said.
—If you established such useless principles and later make a mistake? Would you wash your hands of it because of that guilt? Or would you take your own life?
Thinking about it, that mistake was a mistake Salwang would end up making. A mistake of mistaking a good person for a villain and giving the order. The Salwang he knew wasn't someone who would make such a mistake. Why had he said that?
But soon Myeongsin thought this too was the opponent's trick.
'He found out there is conflict between me and him, and is persistently digging into that point.'
Having stopped his steps, Myeongsin glared at Geommugeuk.
"Are you trying to sow discord between me and him?"
He had expected him to say of course not.
"I am."
Geommugeuk admitted readily.
"To bring you to my side, I must resort to sowing discord."
And Geommugeuk's open sowing of discord was powerful.
"Is the one who saved you really that person?"
Myeongsin's face hardened completely.
"In your childhood, you were the sole survivor of a massacred clan. He saved you, who were dying under a fallen wardrobe."
Myeongsin was surprised. The Young Cult Leader knew the fact that Salwang had saved him. And in great detail.
'This is something no one knows.'
To the surprise of how he knew, Geommugeuk answered calmly.
"I am the Young Cult Leader of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult. If I wish to know, I can find out everything down to who the Murim Alliance Leader had a crush on at what age."
What surprised Myeongsin wasn't that he had found out that fact.
"What do you mean, he didn't save me?"
"Suppose someone pushes another into a river, then saves them again. Does that mean they saved that person?"
At the unthinkable thought, Myeongsin's eyes went wide.
"The place that accepted the commission to annihilate your clan was Myeongbu."
The reason this discord-sowing was powerful was because its material was truth.
Myeongsin was someone who had trained countless times to maintain the tranquility of his heart while living as an assassin.
But at least in this moment, he couldn't stop the surging passion and confusion.
That moment from childhood came to mind.
When the heavily pressing wardrobe was lifted, darkness receded and light was seen.
The young boy who had been looking down at him in that light.
With ice-like eyes devoid of any emotion, the boy silently looked down at him.
"You didn't know either, did you?"
No, he hadn't known.
He had been merely seven years old then. He had lived with the vague resolve to repay that grace because he had been saved.
He hadn't dreamed of avenging his clan. No, he hadn't even had the luxury to dream. Because he had begun assassin training from then on. Thus he had lived as an assassin until now.
But what dominated him now wasn't a sense of betrayal, but doubt directed at himself.
The suspicion that perhaps, as Geommugeuk said, he had known.
Could it be that he hadn't asked all this time because of that?
Why had he saved him then? No, why had he been passing by that very place?
He had never once asked Salwang until now.
Could it be he had sensed it? That Salwang would calmly say, 'We annihilated your clan. As you know, it was just business.'
Fearing he would hear those words?
Had he been deliberately turning a blind eye to all that truth?
'What are you thinking! Don't fall for such tricks!'
It was literally nothing but cunning sowing of discord. The Demonic Cult bastards' sowing of discord based on the information that the relationship between him and Salwang had grown distant.
'How vicious!'
He turned the blade from himself toward Geommugeuk, but the hand gripping that blade's hilt was asking.
'Is this not also avoiding what you must face?'
Geommugeuk asked.
"Is the discord-sowing sufficient?"
Myeongsin had wanted to speak with a leisurely smile, but now emotions were loaded in the words he spat out fiercely.
"The moment of sowing discord is thrilling, isn't it? But do you know this? With that momentary thrill, you have lost my trust forever."
Myeongsin strode forward again.
Geommugeuk walked alongside him.
"There will likely remain old commission records regarding your clan. If your leader hasn't destroyed them, perhaps he had been hoping you would see them someday."
Myeongsin gritted his molars. Though he considered it the opponent's artifice, the reason he couldn't completely deny it was because the Salwang he knew was that kind of person.
Why had that hollow person saved him?
Why had he alone been kept close to that inner ice cliff of his?
He hadn't found that answer yet.
Because of the emotional battle with Geommugeuk, one thing was good. He had been able to bring him to the safe house easily.
That small street was bustling with many travelers.
"I didn't know there was a place like this."
Geommugeuk spoke as if nothing had happened, and Myeongsin answered in a softened tone.
"It's a place I come to occasionally."
But in Myeongsin's heart, two minds were clashing.
The desire to finish the mission quickly.
The hope that Geommugeuk would leave, saying his taste for drink had suddenly soured.
Though he was someone who troubled and angered people so, he didn't know why the wish for him to keep living kept arising.
'Leave even now!'
But Geommugeuk strode into the street first. His steps toward the trap of death were ever so light.
"We received new silk yesterday. Please take a look before you go!"
As a fabric store clerk.
As the owner of a bean curd shop dozing off.
As a woman beckoning a running child.
As a merchant hawking with a tray hung around his neck.
As still other appearances.
The assassins had become one with this street perfectly. They were supreme assassins with the greatest skill even among assassins.
Can you truly endure this perfect feast of true ones who have reached the pinnacle of killing?
Myeongsin looked at Geommugeuk. He rather looked excited.
"I received a dagger as a gift, so today I will buy. Next time, you buy. Let's make peace too, and drink excitedly today."
Sorry, but there is no next time.
"Is that the tavern over there?"
"It is."
"The atmosphere is already just right. You should have suggested coming here sooner."
Thus the two entered the tavern. A good-natured-looking owner who had been chatting with guests welcomed them.
"You have come?"
The innkeeper feigned recognition toward Myeongsin.
"Please sit where you are comfortable."
Geommugeuk spoke to the owner.
"I can tell just by looking at a tavern owner's face. Whether the alcohol tastes good or not."
Geommugeuk stared at the owner's face intently and determined the taste of the alcohol.
"This, this seems like a taste one could never forget in their lifetime?"
Then the owner smiled broadly and clapped his hands with loud cracking sounds.
"Today we will serve you in an utterly unforgettable fashion!"
Absolute Regression
Chapter 487