Three Years Ago

There was no argument from Dan just how impressive the manoeuvre was. It was possible that no one spent more time watching the movements of others than Dan in the past few months, so he was a fair judge of it. Park Man-Shik walked across the river like it wasn’t a force of nature. He seemed to step on the waves and rapids, but that must have been a trick of Dan’s eyes. His goal, a jutting rock right at the edge of the cliff face.

“As I said, simple.” Dan’s bearded master turned gracefully on his heel when he reached the stone. The river roared it’s rage at the blacksmith, as though it could tell he absolutely did not belong there. Still, he was unaffected by the waters that did their best to buffet him. “Then you, again simply, split the river.”

The motion was quick. Almost too quick, and if Dan had not been prepared for it, there was no chance he could have perceived it. As it was, Dan’s mana covered much of the surrounding area and clung heavily to his master. Dan’s perception of his mana, the control to which he could direct it and it’s purity all combined into his most basic, most potent ability.

He felt his mana part as his master took a precarious stance. On the rock, stood with one foot touching the ravenous waters. His other foot was planted with the large man’s entire centre of gravity upon it. The muscles of his shoulders tensed with incredible pressure, but lowered. At the same time, he unballed his fists before slashing downwards with his arm.

This all took place in the fraction of a blink of an eye. It took everything Dan had learned over the last year in practice at once to achieve the feat of observing this. Such was the precision of Dan’s ability that he was able to comprehend the action before the river did. Another tenth of a heartbeat later, his master returned to a relaxed posture.

The crashing typhoon that tore over the cliff into a glorious waterfall stopped. To be more specific, in its entirety, the water was pushed back. It lasted two full seconds, as though the world held its breath in fear of Park Man-Shik. Then, suddenly remembering natural order, the crashing waves pounced even more fiercely. The build-up of force exploded out across the horizon from Dan’s position of safety to the side.

If Dan was only using his eyes, he may have shielded them. To the naked eye, there was no way that his master would have been able to weather the force suddenly assaulting him. Dan’s mana said otherwise. This was easily more impressive than stopping the river itself. He saw how his master controlled and danced with the chaotic flow while barely moving.

It made Dan’s insides growl with a hunger that wasn’t for food. He wanted that power. He wanted to do what his master could.

“Now you do it. Simple.” That was his master’s favourite word, easily. Often, Dan wasn’t entirely sure if he was describing difficulty or Dan himself. Sometimes he felt like his name was Simple.

“Yes, Master,” Dan said, not bothering trying to hide his scepticism at his own ability. “At least when I die, I won’t have to carry any more pig iron.”

“Exactly so. It is good that you see the silver lining in these things.”

“I do my best, Master.”

“That is all I ask.” Park Man-Shik was nowhere near as wet as he should be, stepping from the edge of a waterfall. Dan shook his head, knowing that his master’s level of mastery made such wonders casual in his mind. Things that he claimed were simple could take others decades of intensive study to master.

Dan wouldn’t wait decades though. Until today, the boy’s training had been… hellish. He refused to think of the last year as anything other than a nightmare. A nightmare from which he was finally waking up from. Today, he would be able to use his muscles and mana. He wasn’t going to waste a second. Just as his master had, Dan stepped onto the waves.

His foot fell through the water tension, ankle hooked by the waves as though they were just waiting for a victim. His flight over the edge of the falls, his master told him later, was spectacularly ungraceful.

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Dan felt a little like that river. Time had stopped, as far as Dan could tell. People still blinked, birds were still chirping and the forge crackled lightly. No one made a full movement though, the young master Guan Yo Shen was still smiling casually. Guan Ah Hana was so desperately out of her depth that she rather wished she had never accepted the Lizard’s offer. The two bodyguards of the young master were stoically impassive.

The words continued to hang in the air like they had been cast into metal.

“You’re being adopted by the main family. Collect your things, you’re leaving now.”

And that was it? There was no preparatory period for a complete shift in Dan’s life? When he had left the orphanage a third of his life ago, it had seemed natural. He had been ready to leave there from the day he met Elders Baba and Yaya. This was different. It was so different he stayed speechless and slack as he turned around and did as he was told. Dan felt numb. He stopped spreading his perception for the first time in years, sheltering his consciousness inside himself where he couldn’t feel Park Man-Shik’s troubled breathing.

The scuffle with Bo, his thugs and the rescued girl all felt very far away right now, even as their hair was still drying in the heat. Dan moved past Hana to go into his room. The girl was still frozen, caught in a loop of staring straight at the ground and then meeting Guan Yo Shen’s sharp gaze for an instant before burying her eyes into the wood of the floor again. When Dan stepped into the solitude of his room, the pain of it hit him. He always was a crybaby when it came to pain.

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His chest was in agony.

With his orb in his pocket and his dagger at his side, there was only one thing that Dan cared for. It would look strange only bringing some potted plants, especially common flowers such as these. Dan debated internally for a moment before scooping up his three small pots, freshly watered from the water that fell through the roof. He would look strange walking into the main house regardless.

The main house? Dan was incredulous now he had a moment to think about it. What on Jaia had occurred since his master left a few days prior? It was no great secret that the strange blacksmith from a dead clan had an apprentice with potential, Dan had received offers from others over the years. That was always just a greedy merchant looking for a spy or a surveyor who believed that Dan could sense minerals in the ground.

This was different. If the main family came calling, there was nothing his master could do, Dan knew that. If they wanted him, it was because they knew something or suspected something with enough strength to make a move. Worrying about it wouldn’t fix anything, but Dan’s mind was racing.

“Are you ready, my new little brother?” Shen asked as Dan left the room, the plants bundled into some fabric for now. They were hardy, and Dan would be careful. Dan looked over to him in time to see a glint of gold pass between Hana and his master. An icy dagger shot through Dan’s heart and he cast out his perception once more, verifying what his fallible eyes might have missed. Eight new gold coins sat in the pocket of his master. Dan couldn’t hold it in and grunted, the knowledge of his cost had winded him. Bought for the price of a nice sword.

“I’m ready, Guan Yo Shen.” Dan looked at his master as he said this. He bowed deeply, as respectful and precise a bow as he had even performed. There was a cloud in his mind, red and violent, but Dan squashed it. Years of learning the flow of nature, anticipating the next moment before it happened, made it possible for Dan to see there might be more to the scene than he knew. “Your student thanks you from the bottom of his soul for the kindness you have shown me. I shall strive to live in a way that does not shame you.”

His master had always been a man of few words, and this would be no different. However, instead of a poignant silence like Dan had hoped, Shen burst out laughing. “You’re definitely going to do well around the old stuffies, they’ll love you, seriously.”

Dan held back the retort he wanted to spit. “I don’t care who likes me or not. Clearly that doesn’t matter.” Somehow, he managed to keep the magma in his chest rather than spewing it out into the forge. With a steeling breath, Dan simply continued from the place he had called home for years, expecting never to return. It was only fitting that he walked out into heavy rain.

“Ah DAN!” Dan had sensed that Guan Ah Bo and his thugs were waiting around for their chance to catch him when he reapplied his mana to the surrounding area. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

Maybe Dan’s own lens was a little skewed but to not see how inappropriate this moment was to interrupt seemed intentional. “You can’t be serious.” One of the bodyguards stood between my back and Shen, and the young master was being held up by this distraction. Dan took another few steps outward, the thugs tracking his movement but not the people behind him. The heir to the entire city, in which they had spent their whole lives, was leaving the smithy but they had no clue.

“I’ve been looking for you for years.” Bo grinned as he said this, attempting to be intimidating. In truth, he had avoided those he had known from the orphanage. Not for any specific reasons - Dan had avoided Hana, Bo, others he had considered friends. He just considered it part of his practice.

Dan turned to face Guan Yo Shen. “Master Shen,” he began to say but was interrupted. Dan stepped back, not breaking eye contact with the heir to the main branch, as a fist fell through the air. “This one is most pained.” Dan’s words were unstrained as he continued to effortlessly dodge the blows. Guan Ah Bo was becoming infuriated. “If it would please the young master,” the first interesting move Bo threw, a low kick, was hopped over like a jumping rope, “may I deal with this before joining you?”

The absolute cackle that erupted from Guan Yo Shen’s chest was enough to bring a smile to even Dan’s face, angry and dripping with rain as it was. Dan had rarely shown off, his master never praised it and actively forbade it from others. Park Man-Shik was no longer his master though, and showing Shen that he was not just a polite young man could be to his advantage later. “Absolutely, little brother. We are all teachers and students, please teach this one how to deal with this situation.” It was the careless confidence of a life of luxury, Dan was sure, but something about Shen was very disarming.

Dan could almost convince himself that Shen was actually being friendly. In fact, to him, this would seem like nothing but a gift to poor, lowly Dan. Dan didn’t want to leave, though.

For some reason, Dan was reminded of the time he fought a river.

His body felt light, a swaying dance keeping him out of reach of the increasingly furious Guan Ah Bo. Dan felt as though all the rain in the world was falling right on top of him, and that he was nearly a ghost, the rain falling right through him.

A quick hop back put Dan out of reach of Bo’s final attack. He stopped because a moment later, Dan caught his jaw with a swift snap of his open palm. The large, foolish idiot who had once been Dan’s bully dropped to his knees. His head lolled uselessly as consciousness evaded his grasp for a moment.

“Shall we go?” Dan could hear that his own voice was as cold as the falling rain. His mood was not lifted by the act, feeling almost as though he had put on a show for Shen and his guards. Like a jester dancing around a wild animal for a king. He shook the thought away and waited for a response. None of Bo’s retainers jumped to his aid, as he lay face down in the squelching mud.

Shen looked around at the small number of gawkers. “Yes, I think we should go.” There was still a big smile on his face as he began to walk, flanked by his bodyguards, through the rain-soaked alleyways back to the main boulevard. Dan took one last look at the smithy, his home for the last four years and the first place he had felt truly happy. Then he turned and followed Shen, and continued walking the path his destiny had laid out for him.

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Guan Ah Hana wanted nothing more than to be back at the orphanage, doing paperwork or something equally inane. Instead she was consoling an old man. Park Man-Shik looked old. Not particularly ancient, his hair was still mostly black. There were streaks of greys but you wouldn’t call him elderly. Normally. He seemed like a deflated bellows, all the puff gone from the man.

She had followed the situation well enough. Being in a room with the Guan Yo Shen was causing an absolute whirlwind of emotions inside her, but she would fawn over that later. Right now, Hana’s heart was hurting.

“It’s okay Elder Man-Shik,” Hana made her voice as positive as possible, “Guan Ah Dan is going to live with the main branch family! That’s incredible!”

As though being pressed by an actual weight, the air in the room seemed to get heavier and heavier. Hana’s smile disappeared, soon replaced with a forced frown as her cheeks pulled. Gravity intensified and she dropped to her knees. She couldn’t breath, her lungs weren’t strong enough to pull the air in.

It had happened in an instant, and Hana had no recourse. The blood began to pool in her feet and her thinking slowed. Did I just die? She thought, and fell to the floor. As her vision continued to fade, Park Man-Shik began to suck in a breath. It sounded like he was pulling the oxygen through a straw, a tight and forced inhale.

As he did, the pressure in the room dissipated. The invisible foot pressing on Hana’s lungs and head vanished, and she could breathe again. She still gasped on the floor, but she was able to gasp at the air and draw it in. No part of her brain was looking for an answer to what just happened, the only thinking in her brain was how good it felt to breathe.

The blacksmith had calmed down. He looked at the young girl and felt remorse for letting his emotions leak out like that and cause her harm. When you are as strong as he is, you have to be more careful than that. He appraised the girl before stepping outside into the rain. She would survive, and soon her strength would return and she would scurry away from him like they always do.

The street was empty, Park Man-Shik’s ward vanished like he had never been there. Empty, save for the unconscious youth splayed out on the floor. The blacksmith saw that he was breathing, snoring even, and left him in the mud for now. He felt the rain on his face and arms, cooling his skin which had become nearly feverish.

He fiddled with the pieces of gold in his pocket. He didn’t need them, just took them from the girl because it finished her job and he was too shell shocked to say no. Park Man-Shik had thought he would have more time with the boy. Instead, he had been taken as soon as those old farts thought he was ready. Park Man-Shik couldn’t decide whether it was Dan who was not ready, or himself.

After some time standing in the downpour, the blacksmith gathered enough of his wits to change his mind about leaving the two children to their own devices. A devilish thought planted itself in Park Man-Shik’s head and he began to craft a plan.

If the world was about to go insane, he may as well add a little chaos of his own.