His goal, his inspiration, his idol
For Lee Sungmin, Wijihoyeon was exactly that. He had held their relationship in regard like that for quite some time.
But… Lee Sungmin also knew that wasn’t all he considered of their relationship. He knew inside how much she meant to him, but was too scared to express himself openly and admit it. He was scared to get rejected.
Lee Sungmin and Wijihoyeon were different. That was simply the factuality of it all within his head.
What he had, how he had lived. His natural talent was vastly different from hers. Unlike Lee Sungmin, who had utterly ordinary qualities, Wijihoyeon was a genius recognized by everyone she had encountered.
So, it seemed simply natural to him that he didn’t deserve something further than that with her. It was already a miracle that he was friends with such a person. He shouldn’t step out of his lane.
He had a total crush.
That’s how Heoju had put it.
Lee Sungmin couldn’t refute the remark. Because Heoju was correct.
He only thought about such things in his head, he couldn’t openly express such concerns. But it at least didn’t hurt to think about right?
Their relationship should remain how it was. It was the most comfortable way at least for Lee Sungmin to think about it.
That way, he would at least be able to see her from afar. He would be willing to keep a safe distance from her, but still have her in his life and admire her.(T/N : Ultimate loser settlement)
He didn’t want to be greedy, so he only wanted a situation where he didn’t have to be put in that position.
Lee Sungmin stood there and a lengthy silence passed. Wijihoyeon waited patiently for Lee Sungmin’s answer.
“……I’m no different.”
The silence was over.
“So am I. I didn’t think of you as just a friend. I had always thought about it. I’d been thinking about the day I’d be able to meet you again. I even almost died a few times, and I’ve been struggling with what regret I would over our relationship would be if I really had died.”
That’s how they had come so far. To this very point in time, revealing their honest thoughts.
“I thought I wasn’t… qualified enough. You were always so different from me, and you were better than I in every aspect of both martial arts and maturity. So……. I didn’t want to drag you down. I was afraid. That if I ever did say how I truly felt, I would just get a ‘no’ from you.”
“You’re a coward.”
“That’s right.”
Lee Sungmin smiled bitterly.
“I’m a coward. The relationship with you was so precious to me. What would have happened to me if I hadn’t met you, What if you didn’t ever stay my friend? What if you somehow found out that I considered you more than just a friend?”
Among the nightmares he had experienced on the Mountain of Mush, he had many nightmarish dreams regarding his worst thoughts about the outcomes of their relationship. It drove him near insane every single time.
“That’s why I was afraid. If I kept it to myself, I would be at least able to stay a friend to you. It has nothing to do with being my goal or aspiration anymore. I want to be with you.”
When was it? When he first met Wijihoyeon? No, it wasn’t that early. Was it when he started learning martial arts from Wijihoyeon? Yes, it was probably right after then. When she told him to make her, his goal.
“It was something I held within myself for so long.”
Lee Sungmin gazed up at the trees with a reminiscent look in his eyes.
“It wasn’t truly 11 years, but much, much longer for me. I kept thinking about you for a very, very long time. I wanted to get closer to you. But I also wanted you to be farther away from me. I was afraid of being hurt, cast away even. But, I told myself, that if I did in the end, somehow reach you and surpass you….It would be hard to hide my true feelings from you.”
“You don’t have to hide it from me any longer.”
Wijihoyeon said.
“I’m the same… It’s strange. I’ve been scared of things like this, too. It’s probably also because I’ve never really felt this kind of feeling before.”
Wijihoyeon raised her hand and caressed her hair. Her long, untied hair, waved through her fingertips.
“I’m also not the person you once heard of, or knew, in your previous life.”
Wijihoyeon closed her eyes.
“You said in my previous life, I hid my identity as a woman. It’s confusing. Even if it’s me, it’s not like either of us would really know. But…… I can kind of guess as to why. It was probably because I merely didn’t care to reveal it. Since after all, l am sort of a tomboy.”
“And now……it’s different?”
“Yeah, because I met you.”
Wijihoyeon answered resolutely, without an ounce of hesitation present in her voice.
“I have my hair down, I’m even wearing a dress and not hiding my chest size through bandaging. I thought it would be okay if it was you at first, but I realized there was no need to hide from you in the first place.”
The distance between Lee Sungmin and Wijihoyeon, was gradually growing closer as she edged towards him slowly.
“I wanted… to have everyone see me as a woman in this life, I didn’t want to hide it. It was because I wanted to let it be known to you, wherever you may be. I wanted to let you know that you were the one who changed me. And, well… despite all of this I’m dressed up like a silly girl, do you know what that means to me?”
“……I don’t.”
“That you definitely have never seen me like this. Not then, and certainly not now.”(T/N : Author references ‘now’ as to this life; just making sure you understand this convo)
Wijihoyeon smiled brightly.
“I can be sure of it. That the ‘me’, in front of you now, is the one you know and the one that only has their eyes set on you, and you only.”
Time seemed to stop at that moment.
“I don’t consider you to be only my friend. Friends aren’t enough for me. I’m greedy, so I want more than that.”
Wijihoyeon’s eyed Lee Sungmin assertively.
“What about you?”
“..me too.”
“Then don’t just say it… and prove it.”
Wijihoyeon’s voice had lowered. It brought out emotions from within the two of them that had been kept pressed down for a long time.
Lee Sungmin’s thoughts stopped. All of his thoughts and dreams that ate away at his conscience. The ones that told him, he wasn’t enough, or that he wasn’t strong enough, not worthy enough, disappeared in that moment. His ‘rational’ mindset got thrown right out the window, and he acted purely on his emotions at that moment.
Lee Sungmin grabbed Wijihoyeon’s shoulders with both of his hands. When he dragged her away in his arms, Wijihoeyon did not resist him and fully embraced him.
‘How small.’
He always felt like her back was so immense, whenever he chased after her, the countless amounts of times in the past. But, looking at her now in his arms, Wijihoyeon appeared so small and comforting to Lee Sungmin.
Lee Sungmin gazed at the lowered head of Wijihoyeon that was touching his chest. Wijihoyeon slowly lifted her head up to look at him.
Her eyes were hoping for something, and Lee Sungmin did not hesitate to meet his lips with hers at that moment.
Lee Sungmin could not even feel a thing, as everything still seemed surreal to him at the moment.
There was the murmuring of the fairies, the swaying of the leaves from the branches of trees. None of it was registered in his head. There was only one thing.
He was focused on the first kiss he had taken in this life.
“……this is my first time kissing anybody.”
As his lips fell, Wijihoyeon giggled. At the words, Lee Sungmin chuckled, as well, snapping out of his reverie.
“What about you?”
“It’s the same for me too.”
“But you’ve certainly kissed others in your past life, haven’t you?”
“I have…….”
“Well, it doesn’t matter.”
Wijihoyeon licked her moist lips with her tongue and laughed coquettishly.
“Because in this life, I’m your first kiss.”
Wiihoyeon hugged Lee Sungmin’s waist and smiled brightly.
* * *
The feeling of returning felt unfamiliar.
Baek Sogo slowly lifted up her sitting body. The years of her penance at the Mountain of Mush had finally ended.
In fact, she wanted to go on longer, but unlike Baek Sogo’s will, her human limits had completely been pushed to the limit.
“If I did more, I’d be dead.”
In front of Baek Sogo was Mush. The goddess of trials and tribulation, wearing bandages all over her body, was watching Baek Sogo with a tired look on her face.
The Mountain of Mush existed in this world, and many aesthetics and warriors had come to this mountain, her holy place in search of strength to surpass their own ordeals.
Most of them came in search of redeeming themselves with a bit of hard work and strenuous effort, but when they were faced with such arduous and horrific conditions and penances, they realized just how foolish they were to try and live in such brutal conditions.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
Mush had no choice but to admit Baek Sogo’s utter resilience with complete respect. Baek Sogo, which had been heavily restricted under all kinds of conditions and penances, had a near impossible chance of surviving on the mountain, let alone train on it.
Nevertheless, Baek Sogo endured and survived.
Her body stank, and she couldn’t eat much due to the horrid taste of anything she ate, so she was nothing but skin and bones. And yet, here she was breathing, standing… alive.
Baek Sogo’s eyes, which had endured terrible days and nights and continued to suffer from nightmares, were blissfully peaceful, as if they were not human. Mush sighed as she watched Baek Sogo.
“………I, Mush, the goddess of trials and tribulation, cannot allow you to undergo any more torture despite your will to go further.”
“I can do more though.”
Baek Sogo opened her mouth. Baek Sogo raised her hand and touched his neck because her voice sounded so awkward since this was the first time she had used it in such a long time.
Baek Sogo felt her body’s malnourishment and hesitated to glance at her own skinny hands. She moved her hand slowly and touched her face with the bony fingertips. It had been a long time since she had even noticed one of her six senses.(T/N : yes, six mentioned here by the author. Martial artists have that extra sixth sense in this novel just like pretty much any other, so it makes sense I guess.)
Baek Sogo smiled bitterly, touching her sunken cheeks and dried up skin, that stretched thin on her bones.
“Ah. What an ugly sight haha…”
“I suppose so.”
Mush murmured.
“You don’t have to do it anymore. Even if you say you want to, I won’t let you.”
“But, this much is not enough.”
“There’s no point in these penances anymore. You can’t grow from them any further.”
Mush looked at Baek Sogo as she spoke.
“You’ve received everything you could possibly achieve from this mountain. Any more penances you undertake, will only ruin your body and it won’t give you any more strength either.”
“Then what should I do?”
Baek Sogo staggered to her feet. She took a few breaths in to recollect herself and looked straight at Mush.
“……Do you remember what I said when you first came back here?”
Mush raised her hand.
“I told you that if you lived to leave this mountain as you are today, I myself will give you my blessing as a God.”
“I remember.”
Baek Sogo nodded her head. She did, indeed, faintly recall Mush saying something like that a while back, but Baek Sogo didn’t think too deeply about it at the time. It was because she had no idea what God’s blessing was truly like.
“Of all the people that have come to this mountain, you have survived the longest. You have survived and passed through ordeal after ordeal, and for that accomplishment, I have a duty to give you my blessing and help you further.”
“Oh…I did, didn’t I?”
Baek Sogo nodded her head once again, realizing just how long she had spent here. Mush squinted her eyes at Baek Sogo, who rarely expresses her feelings even as she went through countless nightmares and hellish conditions in the trial.
“For overcoming my trial, I will introduce you to Denir, the God of Time. When you meet him, his trial will be an entirely different class on its own from the trials you faced here……It will be absolutely hellish. But I believe you will be able to overcome it.”
“Hm…The God of Time.”
Baek Sogo muttered. When Mush reached her hand out to Baek Sogo, information about Denir became engraved in Baek Sogo’s head, as was the case with Lee Sungmin when he finished his trial at the Mountain of Mush several years back.
“And I will also give you my blessing….”
A gray light bloomed from the tip of Mush’s hand.
“The boy whom you followed after before, was indeed amazing, enough to the point that other than you, he was the first to surprise me so much. But he was not nearly as amazing as you are in the sense of how firm your will is, and thus I did not feel the need to give him my blessing.”
“What do you mean?”
“You will be the incarnation of I, Mush, the Goddess of trials and tribulation.”
Wooeeennn !
The light from Mush’s fingertips shot forward and embraced Baek Sogo lightly.
You do not need to stay here any longer, since with this blessing, you will be able to enjoy the benefits of my powers beyond the realm of this mountain. This will also serve as a great advantage for you in Denir’s Trial of Time.
Baek Sogo nodded her head with a blank look. Mush didn’t say anything else regarding the details of the trial which was understandable.
But what was the role of someone being the incarnation of a God or Goddess? What would that mean for Baek Sogo down the line?
Mush read Baek Sogo’s thoughts with a bitter smile. Baek Sogo would have to find out later down the line. It was sad that she could not mention it, but it was what it was.
Of course, even Mush didn’t know yet. The world’s fate hadn’t been decided yet. It was ever-changing, though it did have a general course it followed.
‘Luckily I don’t need to introduce Baek Sogo to Erebrisa, since she is already a member.’
If Baek Sogo was already large enough as a variable in the world’s flow of fate, she would have already become a member of Erebrisa without Mush needing to introduce her to it.
Erebrisa’s criteria for membership was roughly known between its members, but the truth in the criteria was very specific. Those who played variables in the world’s fate were all contacted to become members, so that way they could track the variability through their own eyes and how the flow was being altered.
After saying goodbye to Mush, Baek Sogo came down the mountain. Her malnourished and skinny body was not handling itself well despite all the restrictions being lifted.
‘Not yet.’
Coming down the mountain, Baek Sogo recalled Lee Sungmin. She wanted to go see him, but……it was not time yet.
Baek Sogo knew she wasn’t ready to face him yet and repay him for saving her life. Mush’s trials and tribulations through the several penances had helped her grow, but Baek Sogo had yet to reach the threshold of the Peak Realm, which was Lee Sungmin’s level of strength at the time of when he saved her.
She had gained quite the advantage for her cultivation through going to Mush’s Mountain, and her body and internal energy would cultivate much faster than before because of Mush’s powers and blessings.
‘But, it’s still not enough.’
She was done following orders mindlessly to pursue her ideals. The Murim Alliance, and the orthodox’s beliefs and ideals, were becoming more and more uncertain ever since the Black Dragon Association had become the leading faction.
That’s why it was not enough. She needed enough power and strength to pursue her own ideals and make them become reality in the world. She did not want to rely on others for her decisions.
She thought herself to be a monster for abandoning her faith in the Alliance, but it was necessary.
Or rather… she was hoping to become one.