Two weeks went by at the training camp without much event. They were awoken every day at dawn by the first bell and, after being given time to eat breakfast, the earlier part of the day was set aside for foundational training in close combat, spells, enchantments and weapon-work, followed by two hours of studying the history and evolution of spirit beasts, and the different ways to hunt them to reap optimal benefits.
Then, after lunch there would be an hour of meditation or quiet reflection, before the rest of the afternoon was spent in training with Ricky. Sometimes a senior or two from a different sect would come over and watch them and give comments. Sometimes they were assigned to spar with other pairs.
Gyuvin and Ricky won most of their matches, though every now and then there’d be a close fight, like the time they were pitted against Hanbin and Zhanghao. The four of them had traded blows for more than an hour; with three holy weapons and four top-ranking cultivators, no one expected any less. Gyuvin had pulled out every single attack talisman he knew and Ricky’s celestite sword Tianling danced like rays of glaring sun as he slashed, but they were so closely tied and the match dragged on at a stalemate for so long that by the time Gyuvin and Ricky finally won, the rest of the field had stopped training and come over to watch them.
Ricky had disappeared to the infirmary after that fight. Gyuvin had tried to follow him, but Zhanghao had stopped him and said he’d go instead. When he reappeared through the doorway of their courtyard later in the evening, he didn’t look injured in any way, but Gyuvin still came out of his room to ask him if he was okay.
“I’m alright,” Ricky had answered. “Please don’t worry. You fought well today.”
“But if you’re alright, then why are you in the infirmary all the time?” Gyuvin persisted. “If you’re injured anywhere, don’t you think you should at least tell me? I can’t protect you if I don’t know you’re hurt.”
The courtyard was wide, four walls made of brick and the ground paved with sand-colored stone slabs, the entryway occupying one wall and the sleeping quarters occupying the other three. In the empty space between the rooms there were patches of grass, a willow tree swaying in the wind on each patch. Gyuvin liked the willows. There was a grove of willows at the lake near Meteor Court that his father often took him to when he was a child. He hadn’t seen his father in more than a decade now, but the sound of willow trees in the wind sounded a little like his childhood still.
“You shouldn’t have to take care of me,” Ricky answered. “I never asked you to.”
“Yeah?” Gyuvin sat down, leaning against the entryway of his room, a jar in his hand. It wasn’t an alcoholic drink, of course, just some flowery-tasting fruit concoction Gunwook had brought back from the town below the peak. “Well, you shouldn’t have to ask.”
Ricky was across the courtyard from him, sitting on a large willow tree root that had grown out of the ground, his light hair fluttering in the evening wind. They were a distance away from each other, but it was quiet enough they could hear without raising their voices.
“Don’t be worried about me going to the infirmary,” Ricky answered finally, after a short silence. “It’s just that when I was born I was a little weaker than everyone else, so my constitution is naturally a little fragile. There’s a senior from Moonrise Palace here who specializes in the study of medicine and cultivating healing techniques, so I go to him every now and then. That’s all there is to it.”
“Oh. The tall one, in the blue robes?” Gyuvin recognized that senior, the one Ricky had been speaking to in the infirmary that first week, the one he’d learned later on was named Ahn Yookyung. He wasn’t really involved in training the younger cultivators or any of the other activities on the peak, but Gyuvin saw him every now and then, when he was called to the field after someone accidentally injured someone else. “Are you close to him?”
“Yookyung-sunbae?” Ricky said. “My father died before I was born and my mother died in childbirth, so he took care of me a lot over the years. I think he feels responsible for me, almost. He wasn’t going to come here originally, but when he heard I was selected for the training camp, he requested to be one of the seniors to come.”
Gyuvin nodded, setting the now-empty drink jar down beside him. “I don’t think he likes me all that much.”
The breeze carried the sound of his soft laughter. “I don’t think he likes anyone all that much,” Ricky answered.
Gyuvin watched Ricky from across the courtyard, the willow branches shaking tiny specks of green onto the ground. He thought about the night he’d looked in through Ricky’s bedroom window, and the way his eyes had glowed bright gold. Ricky’s eyes were normal now; he was too far away to see it at that very moment, but every now and then during training, he’d notice the way Ricky’s eyes looked almost amber in the sunlight, like the color of honey.
He put the thought away in his head. Maybe he’d been imagining things. It had happened so fast even Gyuvin himself wasn’t sure if it was real.
“My mother died in childbirth too,” Gyuvin continued. “My father was exiled when I was five, so I was brought up mostly by my sect leader.”
“Sect leader Baek…” Ricky trailed off, like he was connecting the dots in his head. “Kim Jaeyoung is your father.”
“Yeah he is.” It didn’t bother Gyuvin that nobody used the right honorifics for his father anymore; he’d heard people call him too many worse things over the years to care anymore. “The more you know, huh?”
News of his father’s exile had spread far and wide the year it happened, through towns and cities, across lakes and mountains. Cultivators being formally exiled from sects was no common occurrence, and the reason had made the whole thing all the more scandalous; how could the esteemed Kim Jaeyoung, master of a holy weapon, a respected figure in the field of talisman study, and the right hand man of the sect leader himself, turn out to be a treasonous lowlife? The fact that the Meteor Court sect chose to withhold all details of the circumstances of himself, combined with the fact that Kim Jaeyoung disappeared to some corner of the world and became an untraceable recluse afterwards, only served to fuel the flames of the commonfolk’s imaginations.
Gyuvin had heard a billion versions of the same story of the same person with different facts. He turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to them as much as he could. He was just five the year the scandal occurred; not many outside of Meteor Court even knew he had a son, let alone who his son was. Sect leader Baek took him in and raised him as his own, and as far as he could tell no one really knew or cared who his father was.
Gyuvin shook his head. “It’s okay. To be honest, I don’t really know either. The official sect records state treason as the reason for his exile, but they don’t go into any more detail. Sect leader Baek didn’t like to talk about it, so I stopped asking. He and my father were very close in the past. I guess it hurt him too.”
“I couldn’t imagine having to be the one to exile a friend,” Ricky said. Evening was beginning to give way to night now, and the light of yellow flickering lanterns illuminated the courtyard, enchanted not to blow out during the night. “Are you angry about it?”
“I don’t know,” Gyuvin answered, like he’d thought about it a million times over. “I don’t think my father was a bad person, but I know there must have been a good reason. There’s nothing else I can do about it, so I try not to dwell on things I can’t change. It’s the only way you can move on.”
“You’re right. It is the only way to move on.”
The two of them sat facing each other in the courtyard until late into the night, only the sound of willow branches swaying in the wind surrounding them, the moon high up above the clouds covering the peak, just watching the leaves fall in each other’s silent company.
Gyuvin only moved from his place when the sound of an incoming communication array broke him out of his thoughts.
“It’s getting late,” he said, stretching the stiffness out of his legs where he’d been sitting in the same position for too long. “I’m going to turn in for the night. Aren’t you sleeping?”
“I will soon,” Ricky answered. “I want to stay out here a little longer. It’s always nicer to be outdoors than indoors.”
Gyuvin slid the bamboo-paneled doors closed until only his head was peeking out of his room. “Okay. Don’t sleep too late, alright?”
“Alright. Goodnight, Gyuvin.”
“Goodnight.”
Gyuvin closed the door properly, then on second thought, turned back and placed a silencing talisman on it. It wasn’t good to take risks on things like that, he thought to himself, as the array opened up.
“I’m sorry I made you wait, I was just talking to someone.”
“It’s okay. How was your day today?”
“It was good. I’m still getting used to life here, so I’m not sleeping very well these days.”
“You’re not? Have you tried using sleep talismans?”
“…the ones they use for babies?”
“Well, like they say, beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Funny. How are you doing recently?”
“I’m feeling better these days. It’s going to be your birthday in a few months, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it is. You remembered?”
“I couldn’t forget even if I wanted to. I have a feeling we’ll be able to meet again soon.”
“Really? You found a way?”
“I’ll always find a way to come to you. Do you trust me?”
“More than anything.”
“Good. I’ll talk to you again soon, okay?”
“Goodbye.”
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