Sword Whisperer

What should I say when I meet Lopo?

Let's call him Master for now.

I've thought about it before.

"Teacher? Why am I your teacher?"

"You didn't want to be a teacher, but you taught me a lot."

"A writer who has never seen his face.... What the hell are you? Ghost or my fantasy? Am I finally crazy?"

"You're not crazy."

Lopo was a confused color. He was as persuasive as a rock, and here too was an imperfect and less open period. It gave Van a subtle comfort.

Van felt the world go down. But he wasn't embarrassed. Van once again asked the question.

"Teacher, what the hell are you talking about? What the hell am I supposed to cut?"

Before I heard Lopo's answer, the world changed again. Lopo was always holding the sword with hopeless eyes. Van spoke to him, but Lopo did not listen.

Then Van hesitated to sit by Lopo's side again and listened to his silent screams for ever.

Van only dreamed of a day when he could talk to Roppo again, a few times and threw himself into Roppo's memory. But that memory wasn't so easy to stutter. It was easier to come now and hear his voice twice, even though he had never been able to talk to him before.

.... How is this possible? '

Van asked him all about what he had experienced. The best thing about coming to the Sunwoo family was this.1 There is someone to ask about 'Moxo Lee'. It was quite a change to have an advisor compared to the last day, when I only had to see my voice for a simple guess.

Nevertheless, no one answered Lopo's memory. It is not possible to have a 'two-way' conversation with the voice, unless it is a lizard. That was their answer. Even if you say "communion," it's an integral part of that voice, far from having a conversation.

But it was true enough that Lopo heard his voice. Van was beautifully submerged in thought. If he's not talking to Roppo's memory, what kind of cases?

"…… It's not a miracle that 'The Voice of the Knife' made."

That was the only conclusion. It's not Van's power. It was the power of Lopo. His gaze, which is not tied to the future, the past, anywhere, his perception, one moment…… outside of the presence of Van who read Lopo in the distant future.

Perhaps Lopo had already finished all the conversation with Van a long time ago. In his youth, in his old age.

'Do you..... already know me?'

Van came up with that idea. If so, Lopo saved half his life and made him a disciple, but he naturally understood it more.

I lived every day waiting for half a night dreaming. During the day, he finds Eugene and knocks on the hammer next to her, and Chinnie just takes it off so that her stomach doesn't hurt. Eugene seemed to be worrying half the time. When Van got a good knock on the iron, Eugene slowly opened his mouth.

"Comfort."

"Why?"

"Do you like knives? Or do you like swinging knives?"

It was a question I hadn't thought about. Van asked the opposite.

"I don't know. Do you like blacksmith's work or hammer?"

"To be sure..... I think it's best to hammer the blacksmith's work."

"I don't know…… I think it's better to swing the knife than the knife itself."

However, it was true that when I read the voice of the sword, when I heard the stories that were in them, I didn't even feel like I liked it more.

"Sometimes I get all frustrated when I see myself training."

".... Is that enough?"

"You don't look happy. Going forward, it may be greed to catch happiness, but... Well, isn't all this to be happy in the end?"

"Probably."

"Are you happy?"

In addition, it was a question I had not thought of.

Van ended up not answering the question.

It was that evening. Van climbed the mountain where he cut down the trees. Jeong-hyuk was just returning in a wagon full of trees. Van looked up at those trees and said,

"He had me cut a few dozen of them, and he didn't seem to cut ten at all."

"It's not just about cutting a lot."

Jeong-hyuk spoke comfortably.

"What brings you here? Now I know you don't have to cut down trees."

"I'm here to borrow wisdom."

"I have no wisdom."

"Well, I'm here to borrow it for years. I got a decent magazine."

Van flinches with a bottle of liquor.

"Are you really going to send it back like this?"

There was no euthanasia, but being stuck was the perfect drink to eat for the moon. They each sat down looking for a stump on my butt. Whether the dew had already fallen or not, the stump was a little damper than I thought.

"I'm the one whose guardian has nothing to do with getting close."

"Do you have someone like that?"

"…… even younger than I am, I have more memories. Voices are that kind of power. With one life, you have hundreds of lives to experience. The memory of the sword that you have accepted as a guardian is longer than the memory of your life."

"Nevertheless, I think I'm still too young."

"…… the old man who welcomes the last morning with his wrinkled face will probably think the same thing. We all die as children. But that doesn't mean the Guardian's experience is shallow."

"I don't know how to say that."

Van shrugs.

"You can see that you're here to hear that from your elders."

Jung-hyuk didn't say anything more. It's too stuffy to stretch out the sound. Van slowly looked at his wagon and asked.

"Do you always cut down trees?"

"Sometimes I close my eyes. Sometimes they build walls, sometimes they harvest herbs. Where there are too few things to use Sunwoo's hand, I should always be there."

".... But why are you here?"

Maybe a little sensitive question. And after asking that question, Van realized what kind of answer he wanted to hear from this old man.

He wanted answers. Unlike those who learned how to swing a sword, but did not learn where to swing it, Hyuk knew where to swing the axe. I knew where to drive his wagon and lay down his miserable body.

"I'm proud to be a half Sunwool Jeong,"

"…… even though other Sunbaes don't value you properly?"

"Sunwoo has done my fair share."

So even though I'm older, I still don't know if I'm with them.

Van listened to it and felt that he was more proud of my life than he thought. It was strange. Sunwoo, who had devoted his entire life to him, considered him just a Hudred, and he was really fond of the blood flowing through his body.

"They trust me. I believe in everything they can't reach, no matter what they do, that I will be perfect."

Jung-hyuk quietly looked at Van's knife.

"I can't hear a sword, a sickle, an axe, a book, anything. But because I don't see any special voice in anything, I can see everything in the world more straight. I feel like I'm warming up the bodies of the librarians who write firewood. The dirt that I spread would become a pottery, and the sand that I brought would become a brick. I won't leave a single line in the world, but every line left by the Sunwoo family will have my mark."

"......."

Hearing Jung-hyuk's heart, Van couldn't say anything. It was not the Sunwoo family who ignored Jung-hyuk and didn't know. Van was the one who didn't know the history more than anyone else. Van bows quietly.

"I'm sorry."

"That's enough."

Jung-hyuk still didn't laugh.

"The Guardian is a good man. So whatever your problem is, you're going to find the answer to it eventually."

"Is there a relationship between finding answers and being a good person?"

"Anger. Sadness. Anger. Hate. Evil emotions not only drown people, but they don't know where to walk."

And yet, it seems that Hyeong-hyuk is smiling lightly.

"Don't look for answers from others. Wisdom and the experience of the elderly are sometimes wrong, and even justice is sometimes evil, but good faith is not wrong. Don't miss the light in your mind. The answer is always at the end of good faith."

§

"Good faith."

Even the knights learned the same thing, but it's never been half the principle. Of course, I didn't want to live a bad life, but it was true that I didn't want to live a life of good faith. He lived a life of greed, and every time my greed was filled, I felt a real life.

"You planted the tree in good faith?"

Van asked a question. Lopo didn't answer. Because Van's voice touched him, there were too long years between them. Van expected his teacher to see him every day beyond those years, but that happened more rarely than he thought.

Nevertheless, those rare encounters helped me to raise half the questions one by one.

"What do you need a knife for?"

Are we using knives to cut people, or do we just like knives? "

"What is a knife?"

Not all of those questions were answered by Lopo. Even when Van's voice was touched, the answer could always be different depending on Lopo's condition. Lopo sometimes replied with a nervous attitude, sometimes ignoring Van's own existence. Nevertheless, Van didn't stop asking questions. I knew that one day Lopo would break all those thorns and bear my fruit.

The memory was on a clear day when the apple fruit was clouded like a flower.

"... It's you again."

Lopo smiles at Van.

"I still don't know you. Why you call me a teacher. Why do you keep asking me that question? Whether you're a ghost, an angel, a demon, or a witness to my madness."

Van didn't answer. Lopo slowly looked back at my apple tree field.

"I've been farming this field for a very long time. I had no intention of planting this field, but you still don't do apple farming?

I always thought of apple farming as a lifelong task. I was forced to chew on those questions for the rest of my life. It's silly. After putting the knife down, I reached the level I wanted. "

"It must have been a long time."

"Yes, it was a long time. By the way, since you don't seem to be of any age..... are you also a vampire? This sunshine suits you so well. No, it's not that important anymore. You've been my guide. One of the questions you asked, it was a task that would save me years."

Lopo's words sounded strange. Van thought of Roppo as his guide, but Roppo thought of Van as his guide. The lives of the two became each other's answers and questions. Lopo opened his mouth.

"I swung my sword to keep it from swinging."

"I loved Carl, so I had to hate him."

"I had nothing to cut, so I had to put a knife in everything."

It was Lopo's answer. But still, Lopo's answer was not Van's. And that's all Van realized. In the first place, it was not understandable to hear the explanation in words.

"... If there is one regret, there is nowhere to leave my sword..... but if you can see this."

Lopo pulls out the bamboo sword. And it was that moment. Like a leaf falling in the wind, his blade is a salamander and begins to pierce all over the world. Between the leaves and the branches, between the sky and the earth, between the legs of the beetle and the tail of the passing wind. His examination was countless, but at the same time there was nothing to cut the blade.

And at some point, Van realized that I was looking at all of this at the time of Lopo. Van saw where Lopo's blade touched, with Lopo's eyes. Destiny of the prosecutor, who is forced to hold the knife, even though he doesn't want to cut anything.

A knife that has already touched everything, even though it has not cut anything.

— And with my sword, cut off what no one in the world could cut.

His hand becomes Lopo's. His sword becomes Lopo's. It is not just to cut at his point, to hear at his point, to see at his point. From the mind to the mind, at least at that moment, Van was a Lopo.

And Lopo said to Lopo, Van said to Van.

"......."

When I woke up, Van's body was not wet with sweat. His eyes were distinct, and his mind was more pronounced than his. Van puts down the bamboo sword in his arms and looks at the Guardian's dagger.

Even though no one told me directly, the young prosecutor realized that I had no choice.