Chapter 365: The Final Memory (4)
Suddenly, Tang Sowol crawled over and started tugging hard at Cheon Hwi-da’s cheeks.
“Sword Demon...... you usually look fine, but seeing you like this, you’re kind of ugly. Hehehih.”
“Are you drunk?”
Her words and actions were completely unlike her usual self. The smell of alcohol wafting from her was strong enough to sting the nose. Anyone could see she was drunk and making a scene.
Needless to say, it was absurd. The Tang Clan had been destroyed, and some of its secret legacies had been lost, but Tang Sowol was still a Sub-Perfection master.
And one who used poison arts, at that.
Could someone like that really get this drunk just from drinking a little alcohol?
“This is insane.”
This time, with Tang Sowol pressing his cheeks inward until his lips puckered like a duck’s, Cheon Hwi-da wore a dumbfounded expression, but that did not make the drunk in front of him disappear.
It was a sudden drunken fit that Cheon Hwi-da did not understand, and that the drunken Tang Sowol herself did not understand either.
But for the person watching this, it was a different story. She immediately realized why the version of herself in this memory had suddenly gone off the rails.
“Oh my god! Was I an idiot before I regressed?!”
Cheon Hwi-da and Tang Sowol had gone into battle one after another lately, and the fatigue from it had reached its extreme.
So once things had somehow settled down, they held a small drinking gathering, both to celebrate and to console the dead.
Wouldn’t even a brief moment of letting themselves unwind ease their mental exhaustion and let their bodies rest properly as well?
But there was one problem here. Most martial artists, no matter how tired or short on internal energy they were, only got drunk a bit faster than usual.
Even Cheon Hwi-da’s face had been slightly flushed because the intoxication had risen faster than normal.
But Tang Sowol, who had been born with the Poison Spirit Constitution, was different.
The Poison Spirit Constitution was the body of a poison wielder, one that could absorb poison, store it, and reproduce it again according to one’s internal energy and willpower.
And strictly speaking, alcohol was also a poison. The term alcohol poison did not exist for no reason.
So then, what would happen if alcohol suddenly entered a Poison Spirit Constitution that had only been expelling its poison, with no time to replenish it and not even enough internal energy to spare?
It would absorb it like mad to make up for the lacking poison.
And this was the result. She had not even drunk that many cups, but thanks to the Poison Spirit Constitution diligently absorbing the alcohol poison, she had become completely drunk.
Of course, Cheon Hwi-da, who did not know this, could only be bewildered, while the pre-regression Tang Sowol was already too drunk to think straight.
What was about to happen from here on out was entirely for the current Tang Sowol, the only one with a clear mind, to bear witness to.
At that moment, as she watched this with trembling fingertips, scenes from the past began to surface in Tang Sowol’s mind.
Seol Lihyang’s pleasures of cloud and rain, so intense that ordinary erotic paintings could not even compare. Seo Mun-Hwarin, who had reached the Flowering Stage and still stole undergarments.
And herself, having completely lost her reason from being drunk.
Compared to those two, maybe this would be better.
But embarrassing was still embarrassing.
“N-no! That’s enough, so hurry up, wash your feet, and go to sleep already!”
Tang Sowol waved her arms, trying to push her drunken self away......
But no matter how vivid it felt, this place was ultimately only a space that replayed scenery from memory.
Tang Sowol’s gestures only passed helplessly through her other self. And even amidst such meaningless struggling, time flowed on.
Her snow-white hair swayed, revealing half-loosened green eyes. What filled them was neither the businesslike attitude nor the desire for revenge she had shown until now.
A trace of playfulness, unmistakable goodwill, and faint gratitude.
As if, just for this moment, she had returned to her childhood, Tang Sowol—now honest with herself—seemed about to let go of Cheon Hwi-da’s face, but then slowly began to feel it instead.
A hand that traced his forehead, eyes, nose, lips, ears, cheekbones, and jawline in order.
No. It did not end there.
Tang Sowol brought her face closer, then examined Cheon Hwi-da’s face carefully from a distance just short of their foreheads touching.
No matter what, he had not expected her to go this far, and perhaps he thought this was a bit too much. Just as Cheon Hwi-da was about to carefully pull the drunken Tang Sowol away—
“Ah. Only now can I see your face properly, Sword Demon.”
“What?”
Let it be said again: Tang Sowol was a Sub-Perfection master. Compared to an ordinary civilian, she was practically superhuman.
And yet she was saying she could only see his face now, after getting this close.
It was clearly a strange thing to say.
“Did you hurt your eyes or something?”
Cheon Hwi-da asked in a voice that was still blunt, but if one listened carefully, carried a little more concern than usual.
Noticing that, Tang Sowol broke into a loose smile and shook her head firmly.
“No...... My eyes have just always been bad.”
“Always?”
“Yes. Sword Demon, didn’t you know that too?”
As she said that, Tang Sowol lifted up the bangs she always let hang long over her face.
There, her skin was melted and stuck together, and her eye had turned cloudy and discolored.
It was quite a grotesque sight, but Cheon Hwi-da merely stared quietly at her eye as if it did not bother him at all.
Still with concern in his gaze.
At that, the smile hanging at Tang Sowol’s lips deepened further, and before long she began to laugh out loud.
“Heheh. You really never change, Sword Demon.......”
“What nonsense are you suddenly talking about? Enough of that. Just answer the question from earlier. Are your eyes really okay?”
“Yes, they’re fine. They did not suddenly get worse. They have been getting worse little by little for a long time, so there is no real problem adapting.”
“So they’re still getting worse.”
“As long as I keep hiding this face, won’t they? I overwork one eye too much, and my bangs keep poking at it too.”
Cheon Hwi-da fell silent for a moment, then after a long period of thought, he carefully asked,
“It’s certainly an ugly scar, if one were to call it that, but is there really a reason to go that far just to hide it?”
“Everyone has wounds they cannot do anything about. Isn’t that true for you as well, Sword Demon?”
Tang Sowol poked Cheon Hwi-da in the chest with her index finger.
It was not hard to realize that she was referring to the Heart Demon he had resolved to swallow without forgetting his own past.
Cheon Hwi-da and Tang Sowol might not often have spoken of personal matters, but they had plenty of experience fighting back to back.
Even if they disliked it, they would have had no choice but to understand what was contained within each other’s martial arts.
A moment of silence passed.
They simply exchanged gazes without a word, and then the first to speak was Tang Sowol.
“There was a time when I was called the greatest beauty in Sichuan.”
“I can see that.”
“Hehe. Thank you, even if it’s only empty flattery.”
“It isn’t empty flattery. By ‘there was a time,’ you mean before you got that scar, don’t you?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
She nodded, then slowly began to tell the story of her past.
The time when, newly entering Murim, she had run afoul of people who bore a grudge against the Tang Clan and nearly lost her life.
The time when, in order to somehow turn the situation around, she swallowed the Purple Flower Poison Enhancing Grass she had found by chance and immediately sent it into a rampage.
How she had barely survived as a result, but half her face had melted away, and she had spent her days shut up inside her room.
How she neglected her martial training, skipped clan events, and did not even attend the Dragon and Phoenix Gathering she had once looked forward to so much.
How she had become the Tang Clan’s troublemaker, and yet her family had always embraced her warmly.
Thanks to them, it had taken a long time, but in the end she had managed to stand up again, and the moment she finally reached the Sub-Perfection realm.
And not long after that, the Heavenly Demon had smashed through the Tang Clan’s main gate and invaded.
Even as her family and the retainers who were no different from family were slaughtered, she had only been able to hide herself miserably and flee.
Tang Sowol fumbled through everything she had felt—her regrets, her despair, and her loss—and laid them bare.
In a way, it was the sort of story that could burden a person.
For both the one telling it and the one hearing it.
But Cheon Hwi-da listened seriously to the very end. As someone sunk in a hell of his own making, it was not a story he could lightly brush aside.
And after hearing everything, instead of comforting Tang Sowol, Cheon Hwi-da began to tell his own story.
“My oldest memory is hunger.”
He had been hungry.
Hungry enough to crawl into the enemy’s lap of his own will.
But in the end, Cheon Hwi-da had succeeded in his revenge, and then wandered Zhejiang Province living like a beast.
And then he met them.
The people who turned him from a beast into a man.
But what came afterward was not a happy future.
Only continued loss.
In that calm tone, Cheon Hwi-da spoke of everything that had happened up to the present.
Tang Sowol listened in a daze, and when he finished, Cheon Hwi-da added in an awkward voice,
“I rather like you.”
“Wh-what?!”
Tang Sowol bit her tongue at the utterly unexpected words, but Cheon Hwi-da continued as if he did not care.
“You have confidence in your swordsmanship, but your internal energy is sorely lacking. You are confident you can defeat a powerful individual, but against a large number of ordinary opponents, you tire easily. On the other hand, your poison makes it easy for you to gain the upper hand against the many.”
“Ah. So that’s what you meant.”
Tang Sowol nodded with a somewhat sour expression.
Just as Cheon Hwi-da said, their martial arts complemented each other.
That was why they had often fought together as comrades-in-arms until now.
But his next words carried something a little more personal.
“So do not blame yourself too much. Instead, direct your anger at the enemy. And if a time comes when even that becomes too difficult, .... then share a drink with me like this.”
“Ah…?”
“If you have something pent up, let it out. We already know all of each other’s shameful sides, so it would not be all that embarrassing, would it?”
Cheon Hwi-da had already come to understand Tang Sowol.
The details might differ, but the texture of the wound called loss was the same.
So the words Cheon Hwi-da was saying now were something even he himself did not fully realize the meaning of.
And sometimes, words that come without awareness dig in all the deeper because of that.
“Tang Sowol. It would be troublesome if anything happened to you. You have to stay with me from now on as well.”
Tang Sowol, who had been silently mulling over his words, slowly nodded.
“Yes. I promise. If necessary, I will rely on you, Sword Demon.”
“Mm.”
“So when it truly feels impossible for you as well, you should lean on me.”
“What?”
“Wouldn’t that be fair? We are people who fight side by side shoulder to shoulder, not a relationship where one side gets carried by the other.”
“That’s true as well.”
Cheon Hwi-da let out a faint chuckle and picked up the bottle to refill his empty cup.
Then, as if she had been waiting for it, Tang Sowol held out her own cup.
He shook his head and filled it to the brim, and this time Tang Sowol snatched the bottle and poured into Cheon Hwi-da’s cup.
There were no particular words.
The two of them simply raised their cups and drank at the same time.
A man born with nothing, and a woman who had lost everything she once had, did not need much of a reason to grow close.
But if there had to be a beginning to even such a shabby little reason, then surely it was this very moment.
Well.
There was the minor problem that Tang Sowol, who had already been quite drunk, completely lost her reason after downing one more cup.
Spreading both arms wide, Tang Sowol spoke with a slurred tongue.
“Give me a huuug.......”
“That’s a bit much.”
“Then pat me.”
“That too is a bit much.”
“Ah, do it!”
“Just do it!”
Now Tang Sowol was sprawled on the floor, flailing her arms and legs as she threw a tantrum.
Cheon Hwi-da let out a long sigh and slowly patted her head, and only then did she calm down.
Especially whenever his hand touched the half of her face she always kept covered, Tang Sowol relaxed even more comfortably.
But whenever he stopped for a moment because she seemed to have fallen asleep, she would wake up at once and start causing trouble again.
In the end, Cheon Hwi-da had no choice but to indulge Tang Sowol’s demands all night.
Thus, worn down by all the fatigue that had built up until now and the sudden all-nighter, it was only around sunrise that Cheon Hwi-da finally collapsed into sleep as though passing out.
Tang Sowol, on the other hand, had only woken a few times in between, and must have slept plenty, because she opened her eyes beside the defenseless Cheon Hwi-da.
“Ah! Hngh! Nghaaah!”
As soon as her now-clear mind recalled the previous night, Tang Sowol writhed in shame.
Amazingly, the present Tang Sowol, who was watching this, let out the exact same noises and squirmed in exactly the same way.
But it did not end there.
The Tang Sowol in the memory barely managed to compose herself, then stood there looking down at the deeply sleeping Cheon Hwi-da, lost in thought.
After agonizing over it for a long while, she nodded......
And without hesitation, undid Cheon Hwi-da’s upper garments.
“What all of a sudden?! Why in the world?!”
Tang Sowol was horrified by the abrupt charge of her pre-regression self, but......
There was nothing she could do except jump in shock.
Cheon Hwi-da, his fatigue piled up, slept on without reacting even if someone touched him. And while Tang Sowol slowly felt over his upper body for a moment—
She suddenly buried her head into his torso and started licking him.
And she did it thoroughly, making sure not to miss a single spot.
It was an incomprehensible action......
But to the current Tang Sowol, who had mastered poison arts, it looked a little different.
“Th-that’s too much......”
The Tang Sowol in the memory was not simply licking Cheon Hwi-da.
She was coating him in poison.
Poison that let her know his location. Poison that gave off a subtly unpleasant scent when another woman smelled it. Poison that made the scent of its paired poison seem fragrant. Even a weak aphrodisiac that only activated when combined with a specific poison.
She was practically pickling him in poison.
It was such a level of possessiveness that even Tang Sowol herself, forced to watch it, was horrified.
“Y-you crazy bitch.”
She spat out a curse at herself, something she normally never said lightly, but that changed nothing.
Her pre-regression self was still carefully applying poison to Cheon Hwi-da.
Then, after finally finishing the poisoning(?) all the way up to the back of his neck—
She dressed him properly again.
As though nothing at all had happened.
After that, Tang Sowol writhed between satisfaction and shame that rose belatedly, then left the room.
The current Tang Sowol, forced to confront her own gloominess, could only stare blankly at that retreating figure.
And it was right then.
“Wow...... Sister Tang. This is totally......”
“At the very least, this lady did not pounce on Cheon Hwi-da while he was sleeping........”
“Huh??”
Only then did Tang Sowol realize how her actions had looked to those who did not know poison arts.
It looked like a sticky marking of territory.
Or indecent assault aimed at a sleeping Cheon Hwi-da.
Tang Sowol’s already frantic face turned even paler.
“N-no, that’s not it! It’s not what you’re thinking right now!”
“If Sister Tang says so, then I suppose that’s what it is.”
“Mm. This lady had only intended to do his laundry for him. In any case, it was something like that.”
Though they nodded, Seol Lihyang and Seo Mun-Hwarin subtly edged farther away from Tang Sowol.
It was summer.