Chapter 71: Chapter 70
Ji Cheol-muk could not help but cough.
“Ahem. Ahem ahem.”
He was quite surprised, but he knew that this was something to congratulate Kang-hyuk of.
“Congratulations, elder Hyung-nim!”
“Thanks, but I don’t think that this is something to congratulate me of.”
“You deserve it! This is something worthy of congratulation!”
“Well, if you say so.”
Kang-hyuk then continued, “So, when do you plan to return to your place of retirement?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have any plans as of yet.”
“Well, since you’re here in Nakyang, I have something you can do for me.”
“Sorry? Wh-what kind of task do you have for me?”
“I need you to erect a building for me.”
Ji Cheol-muk tilted his head to the side.
“What kind of building do you want me to make?”
“Well first of all, it should be a solid, strong structure which is small in size, but has a large storage capacity.”
“But Hyung-nim, as far as I know, don’t you already have warehouses where you can store quite a few things already?”
“I do, but how could I show those warehouses to the students? They’d faint from shock.”
“Hm, hm, that’s true.”
Ji Cheol-muk nodded, and Kang-hyuk continued to speak afterwards.
“I need a building that others can also use, that even the students or my teaching a.s.sistant can fetch tools from.”
Ji Cheol-muk paused in thought for a few moments, then asked, “Where should I erect the building?”
“You can erect it within the small practice plot I have within the academy. Around six metres in height should be okay.”
“Sorry? A practice plot?”
“What I want you to make is a shed for the storage of gardening tools.”
“A shed for the storage of gardening tools?”
“Yes. I am the school’s horticulture teacher, am I not?”
“….”
Byeok Ae-rin suddenly raised her hand up and cried out, “I’m Seonsaengnim’s maid!”
Kang-hyuk took a shot of his drink, then spoke, “It would be even better if you could make the tools that will be stored inside the shed along with the shed itself.”
“You said that you would be using the tools right, Hyung-nim?”
“Indeed.”
“U-understood. I’ll do as you wish.”
Kang-hyuk looked quite satisfied at Ji Cheol-muk’s response.
‘A storage shed and tools made by Cheol-muk will be rather strong and st.u.r.dy indeed.’
Kang-hyuk took some money out of his sleeves.
It was a type of cheque that was worth fifty gold coins.
“Huh?! Hyung-nim! It’s too much!”
Kang-hyuk shook his head at Ji Cheol-muk’s reaction.
“No, it’s not. It just means that you should make a shed and tools of the best quality. Also, they have to be extremely st.u.r.dy. If the amount isn’t enough, please let me know.”
“But I also have funds of my own.”
“Oho!”
Kang-hyuk continued, “This is something that I have commissioned you to do, so I obviously have to provide you with funds for the construction. And so, take the money.”
“But….”
“Will I have to give you a beating for you to accept it?”
“Huh?! No!”
Ji Cheol-muk reluctantly accepted Kang-hyuk’s funds.
One silver coin was enough to cover a household’s yearly costs, and one gold coin equated to twenty silver coins.
Therefore, Kang-hyuk had given a huge amount of funding to Ji Cheol-muk for the construction.
The huge amount of funding, along with Kang-hyuk having emphasized the st.u.r.diness of the building and tools, caused Ji Cheol-muk to have a slight misunderstanding.
‘If it’s this much, I can obtain plenty of thousand year steel and iron, and make the st.u.r.diest tool storage shed to exist! If he wants it to be six metres in height, there will be more than enough storage s.p.a.ce for the tools….’
Ji Cheol-muk had already began to draw out a blueprint of the shed within his mind.
‘That will be fine!’
The construction of the finest storage shed that would remain in the history of Hwacheon Academy had begun.
At the same time.
At Ok Hae-mi’s residence.
Kki-i-ik
The bedroom door opened.
Ok Hae-mi emerged from the room. She then sat on a bench in the courtyard.
She sighed as she looked up at the moon in the sky.
She was holding a letter in her hands.
Wa-rak!
Putting strength into her fists, she crumpled the letter.
“These awful old men!”
Hwa-reu-reuk
She used the Sammaejinhwa [1] technique to ignite a fire of Qi on the palm of her hand, tracelessly burning the letter.
“It would be great if I could just kill all of them!”
She wanted to rest for some time after returning from the field trip, but the arrival of a letter from her family soured her mood.
She neither wished to receive correspondences, nor concern from her family.
She wished that they would just leave her alone, just as they had once abandoned her and her parents long ago.
But alas, this was limited to being a mere hope of hers.
After her parents pa.s.sed away, she had entered her ancestral home once more for the sake of a man that was her grandfather.
Their first encounter with one another was when she had been nine years old, and she found him scary.
Under the tutelage of her grandfather, she would wake up early in the morning, before the sun had risen, and spent her days overstraining her young body in training.
When her hands were covered in blood to the extent that she was unable to hold a sword, her grandfather would wrap the hilt of the sword in cotton cloth, and she would have to continue her trainng once more.
One day, she came to a realization. That realization was the fact that the only reason her grandfather had brought her back was because she had the talent that came from being a descendant of the Ok family.
To become the head of the family, having this talent was a necessity.
Realizing that she no longer wished to live in this way, when the opportunity had come her way to become a teacher of Hwacheon Academy, she took it, and left the Ok household.
To do this, she hid her true level of transcended cultivation, and put down the sword that was familiar to her, instead picking up a whip.
But the elders of her family hadn’t given up on her. This was obvious to her from the contents of the letter they had sent.
“These old fools! If you dare to croak at me again in the midsummer, I’ll kill you….”
She inwardly cursed at them for a while, but despite this, she still wasn’t feeling too good.
“Hah, times like these make me feel sorry for the students that think of me as a fairy. Let’s go and have a drink!”
She sprang up, heading for Jungcheon.
A river in Jungcheon was flowing.
The river wasn’t very wide, so there was a lot of empty s.p.a.ce on each side of the river.
The s.p.a.ce by the river was also quite clean, so many used it as a place to come and rest.
Ok Hae-mi had bought a bottle of wine, and was sitting by the river.
“Why is the river called ‘Middle River’ just because it’s in Jungcheon [2]? It’s so tacky.”
Ok Hae-mi was muttering away.
She looked at her bottle of wine. It was a liquor she had bought from Wolsoru, called ‘Smile of the Moon Wine.’
It was quite an expensive liquor, but she didn’t have any shortage of money.
“Hah!”
For whatever reason, when she looked at the wine, she was reminded of the incident at Wolsoru involving the first-year teacher Kang-hyuk.
When she pondered on it, she felt that the teacher named Kang-hyuk was a rather strange man.
He was a man that had a somewhat unfathomable ident.i.ty.
“He’s a strange man.”
Words had fallen out of her mouth unconsciously.
“Who’s a strange man?”
“Huh!?”
She screamed out in surprise. Kang-hyuk suddenly appeared next to her.
“Ah. I apologize if I scared you.”
“It-it’s okay. But why are you here?”
“I had a drink with Chu Seonsaeng, then with an old colleague of mine, and I was on the way back to my residence.”
“I see.”
“It’s quite late in the night.”
Ok Hae-mi nodded at Kang-hyuk’s statement, then replied concisely, “I know.”
“Do you have any concerns?”
“Why do you ask?”
Kang-hyuk pointed at the bottle of wine in Ok Hae-mi’s hands, then spoke, “It’s late in the night, you’re sitting here by the riverbank alone as a female, with a bottle of wine in your hands. It’s obvious that you have some sort of issue on your mind.”
“Hm? Is that so?”
She grinned.
“But leaving me aside, I have something I’m personally curious about regarding you, Kang Seonsaengnim.”
“What is that?”
“Kang Seonsaengnim. Who on earth are you really?”
“Who am I?”
Ok Hae-mi nodded. “Yes. That’s what I really want to know.”
“Why are you so curious about that?”
Ok Hae-mi sighed.
“I knew it would be like this. That there would be no point…”
Plop
Ok Hae-mi’s eyes widened. She was rendered speechless as Kang-hyuk unexpectedly sat down next to her.
There was an unspoken rule that men and women should have some distance from one another.
Despite there being a certain amount of freedom in the relationships between men and women in Moorim, there was careful consideration taken in the actions of the people of Baekdo Moorim.
But Kang-hyuk had casually sat down beside her, taking no notice of the unspoken regulation.
“Why are you next to me?”
“Didn’t you want me to tell you who I really am?”
“What does that have to do with sitting next to me?”
Kang-hyuk spoke coolly, “My legs hurt when I speak standing up.”
“Ah… I-I see.”
“Then I’ll let you know of my ident.i.ty. Firstly, my name is Kang-hyuk. Secondly, I’m a teacher at Hwacheon Academy.”
Ok Hae-mi spoke, pouting, “I already know that much.”
“Hm? Then what more are you curious of?”
Frustrated, Ok Hae-mi cried out, “What a strange person! Even if you were a martial teacher and not a liberal arts subject teacher, I’ve never met a person like you!”
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say Ok Seonsaeng. When you ask about who I really am, aren’t you referring to my true, original self?”
“I am.”
“My current true self is a horticulture teacher called Kang-hyuk. What’s so strange about that?”
Ok Hae-mi sighed, as though she had nothing left to say.
There was no room for refutation.
“Leave it. It said that you were twenty-four in the doc.u.ment…”
“I’ll be ninety-eight this year.”
“….”
Ok Hae-mi blinked.
“Really?”
“Really.”
But his words were unfathomable to her.
He looked at most twenty-four, ninety-eight seemed completely ridiculous.
“Hah…it’s my fault for asking about the ident.i.ty of a person who’s clearly trying to hide it.”
She picked up the bottle, and attempted to take a swig.
Tak
But her attempt was unsuccessful. Kang-hyuk had taken the bottle away from her.
“What is it? What’s your problem?”
Kang-hyuk shook his head at her protestations.
“I’ve had this liquor before, and I know how strong it is. If you keep on drinking it like water, you’ll ruin your body.”
“It’s fine! I’ll just discharge the energy out of my body!”
“Why are you wasting such precious liquor if you have such intentions? And also, is a person of Moorim not a human? You should take care of your health when you’re still young.”
“….”
She was slightly disconcerted by his remark.
‘Is-is he worrying about me right now? Why?’
Kang-hyuk sealed the lid of the bottle with a stopper, then returned it to Ok Hae-mi.
“The stopper won’t release until tomorrow evening, so don’t uselessly exert any effort in trying to open it. We should go back now.”
He stood up, and offered a hand to Ok Hae-mi.
“I can escort you.”
She had no choice but to return. She stood up and spoke, “I can get up on my own.”
“I see.”
Kang-hyuk withdrew his outstretched hand, showing no sign of embarra.s.sment at her rejection.
“Let’s go then.”
“…yes.”
It was the next day.
Kang-hyuk headed over to Yeongyowon early in the morning.
Cheon Hae-gw.a.n.g was looking at each individual students’ plots, as he went through a roll of the students’ names.
He was present at Yeongyowon in the early morning, despite him having drunk a large amount of alcohol late into the night.
‘Is it because of my practice of Ice Qi?’
One of the special effects of practising Ice Qi was that one would quickly sober up, the effects of alcohol wearing off within a short period of time.
Regardless of this, Cheon Hae-gw.a.n.g was a sincere and diligent man.
“Seonsaengnim, you’re here.”
The other students quickly stopped what they were doing and bowed at Cheon Hae-gw.a.n.g’s greeting.
Despite not being able to say anything under the vow of secrecy, the eyes of the students that had been kidnapped and witnessed Kang-hyuk’s martial ability in the cave were sparkling.
“Yes. I see you’re all working hard.”
Kang-hyuk gave some encouragement.
The a.s.signment he had given the students before leaving for the field trip sprang into his mind. Their task had been to dig up a plant of their choosing, complete with intact, undamaged roots.
The majority of the students had dug up the plants without damaging the roots, but Kang-hyuk had later found out that this was because they had asked Cheon Hae-gw.a.n.g for advice regarding the task.
‘Cheon Jogyo informed them about the task.’
But Kang-hyuk didn’t scold them.
He instead praised the students for more actively trying to investigate the task they had been given.
Being more proactive towards a goal that one was trying to attain was a good attribute to have for a person of Moorim.
He also praised the fact that the students had gotten closer to Cheon Hae-gw.a.n.g.
It was a fact that there was a certain unavoidable distance between a teacher and his students.
But the person that filled this s.p.a.ce was a teaching a.s.sistant, and Cheon Hae-gw.a.n.g was fulfilling his role very well.
[1] A technique of burning things using your Qi energy
[2] Jungcheon literally means middle region/city