Chapter 31: Correction

The sash fell.

Then the practice jacket. She shrugged it off her shoulders slowly, not looking at me, like she was alone in the room. Under it was a tight white chest binding. The kind sword-women wear. Wrapped around and around and tucked at the back.

She turned around.

Showed me her back. Her bare shoulders. The tucked end of the binding, right between her shoulder blades.

"First test," said Instructor Cha. "Unwrap it."

"...That’s a test?"

"Your hands shake when you’re nervous. I’ve watched you hold a practice sword for three weeks. If your hands shake when Gu Seung-hwan is in front of you, you’re dead." She looked at me over her shoulder. "So. Unwrap it. Without shaking."

I stepped closer.

My hands were shaking.

Of course they were. A woman who’d put me on my back forty times was standing half-naked in front of me in her own training room, and she’d just told me to undress her as a lesson.

I found the tucked end. Pulled it free.

The binding loosened. I started unwinding it. Around. Around. Around. My knuckles brushing her skin every time. Warm. Smooth. She didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. I could feel her heartbeat through my fingertips on her ribs.

She was nervous too.

That made my hands stop shaking.

The last loop came free. The binding dropped to the floor.

She didn’t turn around.

"Better," she said quietly. "Your hands stopped. Why?"

"...Because you were nervous too."

She went very still.

Then her lips twitched. "Hm. Lesson one. When you realize your opponent is just as scared as you are, you stop shaking." She stepped out of her practice trousers. "Remember that in thirty days."

She walked to the massage table and climbed onto it. Slowly. Knees first. Then lay down on her stomach, cheek on her folded arms, her long ponytail spilling over the edge. Bare from head to heel.

God.

I’d seen her on top of me, hair down, in the lamplight. But I’d never seen her like this. Stretched out. Still. Every muscle in her back defined from twenty years of sword forms. Long legs. Strong thighs. And that ass — Gi-chul’s painting had it completely wrong. He hadn’t even come close.

"Oil," she said, eyes closed. "Jasmine. Third bottle."

I found it. Poured some into my palm.

"Now. Here’s the real test." She didn’t open her eyes. "While your hands are on me, you push qi through them. A thin thread. Steady. Into my muscles. Healing qi. The way Hwang drained you, but backward."

"I’ve never done that."

"I know. That’s why it’s punishment." Her mouth curved. "Every time your qi stutters, I’ll feel it. And every time I feel it, you owe me fifty sword forms at dawn."

"Fifty?"

"Each."

I looked down at her. At her bare back gleaming in the lamplight. At my oily hands.

I was going to be doing sword forms until I died of old age.

I put my hands on her shoulders.

She was tight. Unbelievably tight. Knots like walnuts under her skin. Twenty years of swinging a sword, six years of a cold marriage, three weeks of failing remedial students. All of it sitting right there in her shoulders.

I pressed in with my thumbs. Pushed a thread of qi down my arms. Into my hands. Into her.

It stuttered immediately.

"Fifty," she said.

I tried again. Thinner this time. Slower. I closed my eyes and pictured it — one silver thread, like the ones Cha had used to braid my yins. Out of my dantian, up my spine, down my arms, out my palms.

It held.

For three breaths. Then she sighed — a long, low, soft sound, the first noise I’d ever heard her make that wasn’t an order — and I lost it.

"A hundred."

"You can’t make sounds like that and expect me to focus!"

"Gu Seung-hwan will make sounds too. He’ll shout. He’ll insult your mother. He’ll say your father disowned you because you’re worthless." She opened one eye. "Will your qi stutter then?"

I shut up.

I tried again.

This time, I didn’t picture a silver thread. I pictured Elder Gu. Standing on the noodle shop roof. Sword humming. That mountain of qi pressing down on my chest.

And I pushed my little thread of qi straight through it.

It held.

I worked down her shoulder blades. The thread held. Along her spine, slow, my thumbs pressing on either side of each bone. Held. Her lower back, right where the long muscles bunch up above the hips. She made the sound again. Softer. Longer.

It held.

"...Good," she breathed. "Oh. That’s... good."

I could feel it working. Her muscles loosening under my hands like ice melting. Every knot I pressed into just... let go. Gave up. Turned soft.

And something weird was happening to me too.

The thread of qi going out through my hands was pulling my own qi along with it. Smoothly. In a circle. Down my arms, into her, and then — somehow — back up my own spine. Like water going around a wheel. And every time it went around, my cracked ribs hurt a little less.

[Focus state detected.]

[Meridian repair accelerated.]

Huh.

I kept going.

The backs of her thighs. Long strokes, slow, all the way down to her knees and back up. Her breathing changed. Got deeper. Then shorter. Her fingers curled on the edge of the table.

Back up. Higher. The crease where her thigh met the curve of her ass. I pressed my thumbs in, very slowly, very deliberately, and kept the thread perfectly steady.

She gasped.

The thread held.

"Mu-jin," she said. Not "Baek Mu-jin." Just Mu-jin.

"Instructor."

"Your qi isn’t stuttering."

"No."

"Even... now?"

My hands slid higher. Over the curve. Kneading. Slow. The oil making everything slick and warm. She pushed back into my palms like a cat.

"Even now," I said, and somehow my voice was steady. My hands were steady. My qi was steady. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done in either life, and it was steady.

She turned her head on her arms and looked back at me. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes were dark. Her lips were parted.

"How many sword forms do you owe me?" she asked.

"A hundred."

"I’ll forgive fifty." She swallowed. "If you keep doing exactly that."

So I kept doing exactly that.

For a long time.

I found every knot. Every tight place. Every spot where twenty years of a sword had settled into her body and never left. And I pressed into each one with my steady little thread until she was just... gone. Melted. Boneless. Breathing in long, slow, shaking breaths with her eyes closed and her fingers twisted in the sheet.

Then I moved my hands up her sides. Slowly. Along her ribs. Up to where her chest was pressed against the table.

She made a sound I’d never heard from anybody. In either life.

The thread stuttered.

She felt it. Her eyes snapped open.

And then she laughed. A real laugh. Breathless and wrecked and so surprised.

"Fifty," she gasped. "Back to a hundred. You were doing so well."

"That one wasn’t fair."

"Nothing about Gu Seung-hwan will be fair."

She rolled over.

Onto her back. On the massage table. Right under my hands. In the lamplight, flushed from head to toe, oil shining on her skin, her ponytail coming loose, looking up at me like she’d been waiting six years for someone to make her laugh like that.

"Front," said Instructor Cha Mi-ran. "Same rules."

I looked down at her.

My qi was not going to hold. There was absolutely no way my qi was going to hold.

"Instructor—"

"Same. Rules." She grabbed my oily wrist and pulled my hand down onto her stomach. Right over her dantian. Right where I’d shown her the spark three days ago. "Show me your focus, Mu-jin."

I owe her four hundred sword forms.

I’m going to be doing them for a week.

Honestly? Worth it.

Afterward, she lay on the massage table with her arm over her eyes, still breathing hard, while I sat on the floor with my back against the table leg because my legs didn’t work anymore.

[Focus state: sustained.]

[Meridian repair: +3 days.]

[Harmony formation: locked. 25 days remaining.]

Three days. Off the lock. Just from that.

Not a Harmony. No yin. No big jump in power. Just my own qi, going around in a circle, steady, while my hands were on a woman. Fixing something I broke.

I didn’t get stronger.

I got better at holding still.

Which, honestly, against a man who could cut a falling rat in half, was probably more important.

"Mu-jin," said Cha, from the table.

"Mm."

"You know you can’t beat him."

I didn’t answer.

"In thirty days, you won’t be First-rate. You won’t even be Second-rate. Nobody becomes Second-rate in thirty days. Not even with six women." She took her arm off her eyes and looked down at me. "I’m not saying that to be cruel. I’m saying it because you need to know."

"...I know."

"So you can’t fight him the way he expects you to fight." She sat up. Slowly. Hair everywhere. "You need to know what he’ll do before he does it. Every opening. Every habit. Every weakness." She looked at me very seriously. "Who knows Gu Seung-hwan’s sword better than anyone alive?"

I blinked.

Then it hit me.

Twenty-one years.

Twenty-one years of watching him practice in the courtyard every single morning while she poured his tea.

"...Seol," I said.

"Bring her to my training room," said Instructor Cha. "Tomorrow. After the last bell."

She reached down, grabbed her practice jacket off the floor, and shrugged it on.

"And Mu-jin," she added. "Bring the oil. If she’s anything like you’ve described..." Her lips curved. "Somebody’s going to need correcting."