Chapter 23
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Floaties for Everyone
Swim lesson at the water park, and she's demonstrating on you
Thwack!
Kim Jooseon's fist landed squarely, jolting Baek Yeonhwa's head hard.
Her pupils trembled, and tears gathered at the edges of her golden eyes.
She was certain once again.
She had already returned.
"Grrr-."
Baek Yeonhwa staggered back.
She barely managed to steady herself by stamping her tail down, but it wasn't her body that was shaking—it was her heart.
"Are you still going to keep trying?"
Instead of answering, a ragged breath escaped her.
The growling breaths slowly changed, little by little, into human breathing.
"Hng...!"
Before long.
The dragon's roar vanished.
What remained was a girl's sobbing.
"Hic! I'm sorry, sorry. I'm sorry."
"......"
Baek Yeonhwa, broken down, kept repeating her apologies.
Words poured out blindly, so indiscriminately that it was impossible to tell who they were aimed at.
"Pull yourself together, Ms. Baek Yeonhwa. What you need to do now is not kneel."
Kim Jooseon did not step closer.
He did not extend a hand.
What was needed now was not an apology, but action.
"Don't you know? If things keep going like this, it'll turn into an all-out war between the 3rd and 5th floors. Another inter-floor war will break out."
The weight she carried was different.
Even if she had been forced to carry it, once she had, she had to take responsibility.
"Hah, but how am I supposed to do anything about what the Azure Dragon is doing-."
"The Azure Dragon is coming down because of you, Ms. Baek Yeonhwa."
"That—."
"Think about it. Why did the Azure Dragon suddenly start descending? Why now, of all times?"
Kim Jooseon interrupted as he asked, because the situation was urgent.
Baek Yeonhwa slowly looked down at the wound on her abdomen. The injury inflicted by the assassins had already healed, but the bloodstains on her white dobok were still vivid.
"......It was because of the assassins."
She explained cautiously, but clearly.
"At first, I thought they had come to test Mr. Rucal. But that wasn't it."
Recalling the past, she went on.
Baek Yeonhwa's face grew paler and paler.
"They had some other purpose. Their goal was to injure me and make the Azure Dragon come down here."
After that, Baek Yeonhwa ran amok and was swept up in the Azure Dragon's power.
I don't know what the assassins' real goal was.
I know that on the 4th floor there is a prestigious title called Dragon Slayer, though—.
If they were only capable of being taken down by Baek Yeonhwa to that extent, then their intent probably wasn't to hunt the Azure Dragon.
Their goal was simply to bring the Azure Dragon here.
Then were they aiming for a second floor war?
I don't know, but that's not the important thing right now.
"Ms. Baek Yeonhwa, you must have realized it yourself as you were speaking."
"W-what?"
"That the Azure Dragon is coming down here to save you."
With her mouth closed, Baek Yeonhwa slowly looked up at the sky.
Lightning was growing fiercer by the second, and now it was even striking nearby buildings, setting off fires.
The lightning rods installed on the buildings couldn't withstand it.
A disaster, plain and simple.
A divine calamity was descending, willing to bear any cost for just one person—Baek Yeonhwa.
"I know the Azure Dragon is not a welcome presence to you."
"......!"
Baek Yeonhwa flinched and looked up.
Her expression seemed to say it was blasphemous, and at the same time that she'd been caught.
"But I want to ask you something."
Baek Yeonhwa.
"Have you ever once refused?"
"Y-yes...?"
"I heard about Cheonjeongrok. And about the way your life had unfolded."
Baek Yeonhwa's head dropped.
"Or have you ever once shouted at the top of your lungs?"
Her hands slowly clenched.
"What does that even matter?"
The resentment she'd chewed and swallowed down spilled out. What do you know?
For the first time, her voice carried a faint edge of rebuke and anger.
The room with Cheonjeongrok written on it, the descending Azure Dragon's voice.
The time she endured the oppressive weight of those things with her small body was not something anyone else had the right to judge lightly.
"What do you mean, what does it matter?! In the end, all my time came from that person! My friend's death! The reason I built up my life! My dream! In the end, it was all—! All of it...!"
It wasn't mine.
A lament spilled out with her tears.
Her life had been a novel.
To put it more simply, it had been a movie.
Every background was a set, every person an actor, and every story was a script.
Having arrived at this point, could she really.
be called 'Baek Yeonhwa'?
Or.
Was she merely a 'character' named 'Baek Yeonhwa' within Cheonjeongrok?
Answering that would not be particularly difficult, but.
What Baek Yeonhwa felt was unquestionably the latter.
It wasn't that she had been empty from the start.
Everything she had believed was her life had suddenly been taken away.
The woman who had lost her bearings had no choice but to keep following.
KWAANG-!
"Even this very moment—."
Kim Yeonhwa's voice pierced her ear along with the fierce lightning.
"Is it written in Cheonjeongrok?"
The epic that records your life.
In the cruel future sight she'd read until it was worn ragged—.
"No."
There was no such scene.
At the very least, she'd never once had her life threatened before her forties.
"Then, in that case."
He took her arm and pulled.
Ironically, the crisis created the one and only moment.
"Isn't this moment—this very moment—the first time you can be Baek Yeonhwa?"
Of the 23 years she'd lived so far.
The only day not recorded in Cheonjeongrok.
With a push at her back, she stumbled forward one hesitant step at a time.
The black path written with the brush called Cheonjeongrok.
Baek Yeonhwa, who had been walking over the text, veered off course for the first time and moved into the blank space.
"Go on, say it."
One step, then another.
As her footsteps began to stain Cheonjeongrok like smudges.
"The feelings inside you right now are definitely yours."
* * *
Looking up at the sky, Baek Yeonhwa could feel it.
The Azure Dragon's gaze was clearly looking down at her.
Her throat felt completely blocked.
Something huge and thick was lodged in it, and she simply couldn't speak.
Even so.
What he had said had made her stand here.
Twenty-three years.
The moment she first stepped onto the blank space of Cheonjeongrok.
Before long.
The role disappeared.
And the woman hidden within it was revealed.
Then, at last, it felt as if whatever had been blocking her throat had vanished.
Not as a role forbidden from saying anything outside the script, but as Baek Yeonhwa—.
"Please answer me, my god."
Her first words spilled out.
"That all life flows within a predetermined cage—."
A clenched fist.
Was the trembling because of fear?
"What I like, what I hate—."
No, it was because of an inexplicable feeling of release.
"My happiness—! And my unhappiness—!"
Everything.
"It was all fake!"
KWAANG-!
A massive bolt of lightning struck down.
Yet it was clearly different from the blue lightning stained with earlier anger.
Baek Yeonhwa strained her throat even harder.
At this moment, the Azure Dragon was clearly hearing her voice.
A plea reaches the heavens.
"Even my efforts were all meaningless! That—! That, I mean! The truth is!"
KWAANG-! KWAANG!
"It wasn't me! Anyone could have done it!"
Lightning struck near Baek Yeonhwa.
Even so, Baek Yeonhwa did not retreat an inch.
"At seventeen! Was it you who killed my friend Misohwa? I cried and cried for three days and nights, but in the end, the promise I made while smiling in front of that child's grave—!"
"The promise I made to carry on Sohwa's dream of becoming the greatest martial artist in the world—!"
In the end.
"Wasn't it all just the script you wrote in that damned Cheonjeongrok!"
KWA-! KWAANG!
Just as the Azure Dragon had been deeply involved in Baek Yeonhwa's life.
She, too, was the only human who had formed the deepest bond with the Azure Dragon.
Baek Yeonhwa knew what the falling lightning meant.
This wasn't anger.
It wasn't judgment or punishment, either.
Nor was it wrath over betrayal.
What was falling from the sky right now—.
"Are you crying?"
Tears.
"Are you sad?"
Of having offered the wrong kind of love.
Because he had never loved, nor been loved.
It was the tears of a hopelessly incompetent father.
Only after the girl escaped the coercive scenario she had taken for the Azure Dragon's love did she realize it.
She wasn't simply a role, but a daughter.
Her chest ached with a sharp, cold pain.
Baek Yeonhwa's heart also ached at the sorrow of the being who had shaken her life the most.
In the end, the time they had spent together certainly existed.
And the most frightening, yet also most reliable, ally had always been him.
"My god, my god—."
But.
"If you truly love me—."
A bond is beautiful only because it has an ending.
And twisted knots that can't be undone sometimes just have to be cut.
"Now, please, let go of me."
A parent is a role that embraces a child.
But that is not something one can do forever.
One day, inevitably, that day will come.
A parent's duty is to let go of the child's hand and watch them move forward.
Beyond the wrath-stained sky.
She could hear something crying.
However, the fierce lightning hid that cry, and in the end—.
The dragon's form slowly disappeared beyond the sky.
"Ah—."
She opened her mouth.
But no sound came out.
So much had rushed in at once that her throat was blocked.
For several breaths, the sob that could not become a scream came out like breathing—.
"Huh-."
A small breath slipped out.
"Huu-."
The breathing gradually grew stronger.
"Huuugh-."
Before long, it clearly changed into sobbing.
"Waaahhh-!"
The cry that burst out until her throat felt torn soon came apart, unable even to remain a sound.
The woman who had gained freedom cried her heart out like a baby seeing the world for the first time.