The commotion inside naturally had an effect outside as well.
The people eating heard screams and the clash of weapons from within, and craned their necks over the wall to see what was going on.
Only Ogyo remained unconcerned, absorbed in her meal.
‘Noisy… Are weddings always like this?’
She knew at least that it was a ceremony performed so a man and woman could become husband and wife.
Even when she had been in Beijing, she had often seen such celebrations taking place, but she had never once attended one.
Wherever Ogyo went, she was an uninvited guest, and because she was considered ominous, she had been isolated even within the Jinyiwei.
Forget wedding ceremonies—she had never even been invited to a dinner table.
‘Ah, no. That’s not true.’
There had been exactly one person who invited a wild dog like her.
It was Yang Uisin.
She had been an exasperating existence who seized the wild dog by the ankle at every important moment, but during Ogyo’s days in the Jinyiwei, she had also been the only one who kept company with her.
She would often share food with her, and sometimes even call Ogyo to her own home and treat her to a meal.
Ogyo had even once bathed in the large tub at that house.
‘Now that I think about it….’
A memory suddenly came to her.
One day.
It had probably been around late summer.
At Jo Wihyeon’s command, she had once ambushed a carriage carrying an official on a mountain road.
The day had been sweltering, and the guards were tenacious.
After a long struggle, she completed the mission, but Ogyo too suffered serious injuries.
After disposing of the corpses and heading home, a heavy downpour began.
Covered in blood and mud, she staggered along.
At the time, Jo Wihyeon had given Ogyo a shabby house to live in.
It was an old, worn-down house that looked ready to collapse at any moment, but even so, she had liked having a house of her own.
She was so exhausted that her eyelids kept drooping. Blood continued to flow from her wounds, mixing with the rainwater.
When she arrived home, Uisin was standing in front of the gate, holding an umbrella.
“Welcome back, Ogyo.”
Even after seeing her dreadful state, she asked nothing and quietly took Ogyo to her own home.
She washed away the blood and mud, tended to her wounds with care, and afterward even gave up her own bed to her.
Ogyo lay down, but her heart was unsettled, and sleep would not come.
Outside the window, the sound of rain was loud, and Yang Uisin had lit a candle and was sitting at her desk, silently reading a book.
Her wounds throbbed faintly, but the soft blanket wrapped around her body eased the pain.
The strange feeling she had felt that day was difficult to explain in words.
Whenever she recalled it, some corner of her heart would always itch.
The wild dog was quick to forget things of the past, but that incident alone had remained in her memory for an unusually long time.
‘There was a time like that, too.’
Yang Uisin had taken such good care of Ogyo, yet when the order came to purge her, she had pointed her blade at Ogyo without hesitation.
‘What a strange one.’
In any case, she was now an enemy. She was probably still aiming for Ogyo’s life, so avoiding her if possible was the best course.
Before she knew it, her bowl was empty. She tried to scoop more meat from the pot, but the pot too was empty.
Ogyo held her empty bowl and looked around.
“Excuse me, food….”
Not a single person listened to her pitiful request. Everyone was busy watching the fight between the two sects taking place inside the mountain gate.
Left with no choice, Ogyo carried her bowl and wandered around, searching for a place where there might be food left.
As she walked along the wall, she soon entered a deserted path. There was only a lonely building that looked like an empty storehouse, and not a single person in sight.
Was this not the place? She was just about to turn back.
“Kyaaak!”
A woman suddenly fell from the sky above Ogyo. It seemed she had climbed up onto the wall and then slipped.
Ogyo reflexively caught the falling girl in both arms. And then she was startled.
‘…Light.’
Even though she had caught a woman falling from a high place, almost no impact passed into her arms.
This woman seemed to have no weight at all.
“What are you?”
“You…”
The woman blinked for a moment in Ogyo’s arms.
“Are you perhaps a person of the jianghu?”
That question again.
How many times had she heard it already since coming down the mountain?
“…I know martial arts, but I’m not of the jianghu.”
“That’s enough! Judging from that movement just now, you seem to have learned some degree of movement technique. Could you please help me?”
“No. Why should I?”
Perhaps she had not expected to be refused so coldly, for the woman’s eyes widened.
“How can you treat a woman in distress like that? Do you not think me pitiful? You said you know martial arts, but did you never learn that those martial arts should be used for righteous deeds?”
How noisy.
Ogyo frowned at the woman’s rapid-fire words.
She had certainly learned something called mercy from Yohwa, but after coming down the mountain, she had been dragged into trouble with bothersome humans day after day. Ogyo’s patience was slowly reaching its limit.
She jutted out her lips.
“Helping others is only troublesome. Nothing good comes of it.”
“Isn’t helping others fulfilling?”
Had Yohwa said something like that too?
But the wild dog found those words difficult to understand, both then and now.
Another loud noise came from beyond the wall.
The woman flinched, then naturally wrapped her arms around Ogyo’s neck.
By the way, how long did this woman intend to remain in her arms?
“I-I must leave this place quickly.”
“Then go.”
“I don’t know how to use qinggong, and my body is weak. Even if I run away alone, I’ll be caught in no time.”
Was someone chasing her?
Ogyo did feel that she was a little pitiful, but stepping in was still a nuisance.
“Will you really not help me?”
“Yeah. I just want to eat.”
How could she be so heartless? For a moment, the woman almost felt her heart grow cold, but soon a clever idea occurred to her.
“Now that I look at you, you must be a guest who came to congratulate me on my wedding.”
“You’re the one getting married?”
“Yes, that’s right. You could say all this commotion today happened because of me.”
Why was she saying that as though boasting?
“So, strictly speaking, the fact that you got to eat for free is thanks to me. You have received a favor from me. In that case, is it not proper to repay that favor? Or do you wish to become an ungrateful person?”
Ogyo was startled by the woman’s words.
An ordinary person would have retorted, asking if she was really putting on airs over one bowl of rice, but this wild dog did not have that much common sense.
The woman’s words were long-winded and did not enter her head well. It was just that, because she spoke so fluently, it sounded as though she was saying something right.
Moreover, she had told her to repay a favor.
There was something Yohwa had emphasized several times while she was alive.
“Ogyo, if a person wants to live like a person, there is one principle they must absolutely keep. And that is repaying grace and grudges.”
“Grace and grudges?”
“Grace and enmity. If someone harms you, you must repay that person with enmity, and conversely, if someone helps you, you must repay that person’s grace.”
What a troublesome thing.
Ogyo had never lived with anything like beliefs or principles. She merely acted according to the feelings she had at any given moment. Like a beast.
Of course, if Ogyo suffered humiliation, she naturally did not sit still, but she was not the type to chew over a grudge again and again.
Forgetting everything easily. That was both her strength and her weakness.
Even if she came to hate someone, those memories would soon fade.
In fact, when she first entered the Jinyiwei, she had regarded Jo Wihyeon as an enemy, but after a few days of full stomachs and comfortable living, she quickly stopped caring.
“…Do I really have to?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
When Ogyo made a reluctant face, Yohwa spoke sternly.
“If you do not keep this principle, heavenly punishment will descend upon you.”
“Heavenly punishment…”
“Yes, heavenly punishment.”
Yohwa had said it.
The heavenly punishment that descended upon the ungrateful.
That was… death!
“I-I’ll help. I’ll help, all right?”
In the end, when Ogyo lowered her tail, the woman’s face brightened.
“You’ve made the right choice!”
“…So, what do I have to do?”
“First, please carry me like this and run away! Before those people realize I’m gone.”
At her urging, Ogyo, without knowing what was going on, first began running while carrying the woman.
As she followed a side path, a dizzying precipice appeared at once. Beside it, a steep plank road had been built along the cliff.
The plank road broke off halfway, and beyond it was a rugged rocky canyon. Sharp, bizarre rocks stretched toward the sky like brush tips set upside down.
“There’s no path here…”
“Hold on tight.”
Ogyo adjusted her hold on the woman, then leaped lightly down from the plank road.
Stepping on the tips of the protruding strange rocks, she advanced as though flying through the sky.
The wind tossed the two women’s hair.
The girl was so astonished that she lost her words for a while.
“You… Your qinggong truly is remarkable! I did not know it would be to this extent. You look extremely young…”
“I’m an adult. I just don’t grow taller.”
“You don’t grow taller? Why is that? Is it an illness?”
“I don’t know. Master said it’s because of the mental cultivation method I practiced.”
Before she realized it, Ogyo had called Dan Gohyeong her master. She was no longer in a master-disciple relationship with her, but she could not think of any other way to refer to her.
“Then how old are you?”
Ogyo could not answer that question right away and hesitated for a moment. It was because she often forgot her own age.
Originally, she had lived without paying any attention to it, but because Yohwa had often reminded her that it was best to at least count her own age, she now remembered.
“…Twenty-three.”
“What?!”
The woman was so surprised that she nearly fell out of Ogyo’s arms.
Beneath their feet was a dizzying precipice, and if she fell, she would certainly not escape death.
“You were joking, weren’t you? Are you saying you are older than me?”
“I don’t know how to make jokes.”
After hearing that answer, the woman merely blinked, seeming bewildered.
“What is your name?”
“Ogyo.”
“I am Cheongdam. When I was young, my name was Damcheong, but some Daoist came and said there was ill fortune in my name and told me to change it, so I became Cheongdam.”
She rattled on about things Ogyo had not asked.
“Those who have known me since childhood sometimes call me Damcheong as well. It is something like a nickname. You may call me that too.”
“Whatever.”
“What should I call you?”
“I don’t know. Do what you want.”
Cheongdam paid no mind to Ogyo’s blunt answer and tilted her head cutely.
“If you really are twenty-three, I ought to call you elder sister… but I simply cannot believe it. Did you not lie? If you have a waist tablet, show it to me.”
“What’s a waist tablet?”
It was absurd.
Because Ogyo had been swept into war the moment she was born, her name had never been entered in the Yellow Registers, and afterward she had lived as a wanderer all along, so she had no proper identity.
She had said she was twenty-three, but even that was inaccurate. When Dan Gohyeong took her in, she had been roughly five or six, and Dan Gohyeong had looked at Ogyo’s appearance and guessed she was about six. From then on, that became Ogyo’s age.
“Judging from what you say, you likely do not have a travel pass either, do you? In that case, you would not even be able to pass through checkpoints. How have you been living all this time?”
Just as she said, at each checkpoint, the identities of those passing through were checked thoroughly, and cities like Zhangye or Wuwei, where armies were stationed, were even stricter.
However, Ogyo had a knack she had gained during her long life as a wanderer.
“You just hide and pass through.”
“Hide?”
“Hide in someone else’s carriage, or crawl up the city wall where there are no sentries.”
This time, Wi Pungso had accompanied her, allowing her to pass the gate, but in Jangaek, she had secretly clung to the underside of a merchant’s carriage to slip through.
While staying at Geumuiwi, she had at least possessed a newly granted status, but now that she had been expelled, she was once more reduced to the plight of the nameless.
“You seem to have endured quite a lot yourself.”
Cheongdam gently patted Ogyo’s head, as if feeling sorry for her.
“Ah, I’m sorry. You’re older than me, yet here I am treating you like a child.”
“……It’s fine.”
No matter where she went, she received similar treatment, so she could no longer muster any fresh anger over it.
Rather, Cheongdam’s affectionate touch reminded her of Yohwa—a welcome feeling. Come to think of it, even when surrounded by courtesans at Manhwaru, she had felt a strange sense of relief.
“Hey, pat my head again.”
“Oh my, did you like it that much?”
At Ogyo’s request, Cheongdam broke into a bright smile and patted her head once more.
In her good mood, Ogyo purred like a cat.
‘S-so cute…….’
Completely addicted to the feeling of the girl’s fluffy, soft hair, Cheongdam forgot when to stop and ended up stroking it for quite some time.
Ogyo, too, liked that touch so much that her expression naturally softened.
The two were still running between the steep crags of the canyon, but lost as they were in their own little world, their vigilance had faded away.
Though Ogyo was five years older than Cheongdam, it never felt that way.
Though she herself had spoken the words calling herself an adult, in truth, Ogyo placed little meaning in the division between child and adult.
The same held true in how she treated others. Whether the other was a child or an elder, to Ogyo they were simply the same kind of human being.
Mengzi once said that courtesy is the gate through which people come and go, and that one who lacks the heart to understand courtesy is not human.
Ogyo was bound by neither etiquette nor restraint, and she did not judge others against the standards of benevolence, righteousness, and morality—truly, this was the behavior of a beast.
Incapable even of distinguishing right from wrong, and forgetting everything all too easily, relationships with others never accumulated in the heart of a stray dog.
What was sweet, she swallowed; what was bitter, she spat aside.
She had neither friends nor enemies.
As time passed, all memories faded as if swept away by waves.
Only Yohwa was different.
Only that celestial maiden had guided this beast to the door through which humans come and go.
While living with Yohwa, humanity had sprouted and grown in Ogyo’s heart, as if a seed were taking root.
Perhaps, had they spent just a little longer together, she might have become a proper human being.
But Yohwa had left, and Ogyo had been left behind.
Only the words she had left behind in life shook the stray dog’s heart and spurred it onward toward some destination, yet they were incomplete, and at the same time, they threw the stray dog into confusion.
Human hearts were still difficult to fathom.
Would everything be forgotten like this, bit by bit?
Yohwa’s words, her face, and the promise made with her.
Chasing an uncatchable moon in a headlong run, perhaps when she finally stopped, she would not even remember why she had been running.
‘I… don’t want that.’
She couldn’t explain the reason.
Somehow, that was simply how she felt.
When she thought of Yohwa, her heart always grew tangled.
Joy and sorrow mixed together so thoroughly that she could not tell whether it was a good thing or a bad thing.
Some memories made her feel happy and full, as if wrapped in a fluffy quilt; some memories brought a smile to her lips.
And some memories left her reeling with a pain as sharp as a dagger’s thrust. The memory of the day Yohwa left was especially so.
It was radiant bliss, heartrending tenderness, and longing.
The stray dog did not know what name to give them when bound together as one.
Yet though she alone was unaware, the truth was self-evident.
A yearning heart.
This was love itself.