Urban Vagabond: Reload

I was alone on the rooftop, in the middle of training, when the two of them arrived together. I stared at them with a puzzled look.

“How’d you two end up coming together?”

“Hey, move it!”

Kim Bokja grumbled as she shoved Shin Kangheon aside, even though he was easily twice her size.

“We ran into each other out front. Anyway, you said there was some amazing pork bone stew place around here! You are so getting chewed out by your big sis today—”

The big hand that had pushed her away from him now pushed her away from me, cutting her off as she rolled up her sleeves and strode toward me.

“Quit yapping and move.”

“Hey!”

Pushing Bokja aside, Shin Kangheon stepped forward and cracked his neck from side to side.

He was wearing a tight compression shirt, and from the way heat was rolling off him, he’d clearly sprinted all the way here.

He swung the sword that had been strapped across his back down into his hand and flashed a savage grin at me.

“Kim Muhyuk. To make up for the humiliation last time, I’ve analyzed you thoroughly. From now on, you’re—”

“Why is your tongue so long?”

I stepped back a few paces to open the distance and crooked a finger at him in open provocation.

“Less talking, more charging.”

Snorting hard through his nose, Shin Kangheon came at me like a wild boar with its tail on fire.

I didn’t dodge. I stepped in and swung my practice blade to meet him.

Clang-clang-clang!

The moment we collided and started trading blows, Bokja backed away, shaking her head with a fed-up expression.

“Idiots whose brains are made of martial arts and nothing else.”

I crashed swords with Shin Kangheon to my heart’s content for the first time in days.

After about fifty exchanges, I finally saw an opening and drove in, slamming the hilt of my sword hard into his midsection.

Thud!

The blow landed cleanly on his solar plexus, and Shin Kangheon clutched his belly and rolled across the ground.

“Guh! You bastard, you really did get stronger...”

“Looks like you haven’t exactly been slacking either.”

“Arghhh! Fuck, this pisses me off!”

I calmly curled one corner of my mouth to tease him, but honestly, I was pretty surprised on the inside.

‘This guy really is a genius, huh.’

Apparently that line about “analyzing me” wasn’t just empty bragging. It hadn’t even been a week, and he was already keeping up with my sword far better than before.

‘If I hadn’t been getting guidance from Teacher...’

It would’ve taken at least ten more exchanges to seize the initiative the way I just had. Thinking that made the corner of my mouth tug upward all on its own.

Heh.

“...Are you a pervert? Why are you smiling at a guy you just floored?”

“Because I’m in a good mood.”

“He’s really insane, isn’t he. Loves hitting people...”

Bokja saw my expression and started to edge backward, so I hurriedly threw out bait.

“We’ll go to that pork bone stew place later for dinner. I actually called you two here because I have a favor to ask.”

“A favor?”

Bokja still looked suspicious as she stared at me. Shin Kangheon was sitting on the ground, rubbing his solar plexus.

“I’ll explain the details.”

At the sudden voice, both Shin Kangheon and Kim Bokja whipped their heads around in shock.

My teacher had appeared behind them without a shred of presence.

‘Between that Bone-Shrinking Art last time and this... sometimes I could honestly believe he used to be a professional assassin.’

Even I sometimes lost track of Teacher’s presence.

And that was after a previous life spent dealing with no small number of assassins who’d learned stealth arts.

Teacher came up onto the rooftop, back scratcher in one hand, and gave a faintly amused smile.

“I’m Choi Geon. Just an old man who knows a thing or two about the sword, and at one time, they used to call me Sword Demon.”

At the name Sword Demon, both of their eyes went wide at once.

Bokja, flicking her gaze rapidly between me and Teacher, finally dropped her guard and spoke.

“So you really did find him in the end... Wait, isn’t this near where we fought last time?”

“There’s a lot to explain, but I’ll tell you later. Teacher, this is my friend, Kim Bok—”

“I’m Red Rabbit. A freelance spell-caster blessed with both brains and beauty.”

Bokja cut me off and introduced herself to Teacher.

...Sometimes I honestly think introducing herself as Red Rabbit in front of other people is more embarrassing than calling herself Kim Bokja.

Apparently she didn’t think so at all. She even took out a business card and handed it to him.

“You can call me Rerae for short. That’s fine.”

“Heh heh. All right. Rerae it is then.”

Meanwhile, Shin Kangheon—still massaging the solar plexus I’d nailed—sprang to his feet and gave Teacher a martial-artist salute.

“Hello, sir! I’m Shin Kangheon, and I dream of becoming Korea’s Greatest Blade!”

“...Sir?”

“Of course you’re a huge senior, sir. You were one of the top five swordsmen in the country back in the day!”

So the bastard had no idea who Sword Demon even was at first, and now he was buttering him up with stuff he’d heard from me.

I gave his shameless face a look of utter disbelief, but Shin Kangheon pretended not to notice and rubbed his hands together in front of Teacher with oily enthusiasm.

“I’ve really wanted to meet you. Please take good care of me and guide me from now on!”

Anyway, the guy was thick-faced and surprisingly quick on the uptake.

Teacher stared at Shin Kangheon with the same bemused look I had, then let out a brief chuckle.

“All right. I’m glad to meet you too. Judging by your looks alone, I thought your spirit would be like a tiger’s, but I see you’ve got a fox side as well.”

“Sir, don’t be fooled. Kim Muhyuk over here is way more of a fox than I am.”

“Ha ha! Yes, that much I already know. But...”

He reminds me of someone I know...

Teacher tilted his head slightly, muttering that like a private aside, but Kim Bokja’s question cut into his thoughts.

“So what’s this favor from earlier?”

I’d almost forgotten the main point.

Nodding, Teacher began to explain to the two of them.

“The martial-artist license exam next year isn’t far off. I want to put Muhyuk through training tailored specifically to it, and I thought it would be good if the two of you could help.”

He asked Shin Kangheon if he could serve as my sparring partner for the next few months, and asked Bokja if she could use spell-casting to create environments similar to the license exam.

“I’m in!”

Shin Kangheon nodded without even needing to think about it.

He might not be a fellow swordsman, but with a master like Teacher giving him pointers, there’d be a lot for him to gain.

He gave me a fierce glare and added,

“First try, first-rate license. If you pass on your first shot, I’m definitely passing too.”

I snorted at the sight of Shin Kangheon burning with competitive spirit, and, as expected, he got all worked up and started huffing.

I’d already known he’d say yes. The important one was getting Bokja’s help.

“Mm...”

There wasn’t much in it for Bokja in helping with my training.

She’d just be pouring in time for several months on something that didn’t bring her any direct financial return.

The Kim Bokja I knew would normally have turned this down flat.

‘She’s actually thinking way longer about this than I expected.’

But apparently it was still a stretch. In the end, Bokja shook her head.

“Sorry, but I don’t think I can. Maybe once in a while, but for several months straight? That’s too much.”

Bokja made pretty good money in the underworld with her spell-tech procedures.

Even I had to admit it was a lot to ask her to give up that time to help with my training.

So my original plan had been to offer to pay her, but Teacher had told me to leave it to him for now.

“What if the payment isn’t money, but something else?”

“...I feel like I’ve heard that line somewhere before. Something else like what?”

Bokja shot me a glare and kept her bored expression fixed in place even as Teacher reached into his coat and took out a thin, old-looking booklet.

“It’s a spell manual a late friend of mine left behind. He had no family or disciples to pass it to, so he entrusted it to me, told me I could sell it or give it to someone, whatever I wanted... It’s useless to me, so I’ve just been holding onto it all this time.”

Bokja stared at the booklet in Teacher’s outstretched hand with a face that said she really wasn’t feeling this.

“Things like that are usually all cheap trash... Ah, sorry.”

“It’s fine. Just in case, why don’t you take a look inside first.”

Bokja took the spell manual from Teacher almost reluctantly and started flipping through the pages.

But somewhere in the middle of skimming lazily, her eyes went wide, and her mouth fell open before she even knew it.

“Th-this... Who did you say gave you this?”

“It belonged to a late friend of mine. A spell-caster I used to work with at the Martial Alliance.”

Judging by Teacher’s satisfied smile, he’d been expecting exactly this reaction.

Half-stunned, Kim Bokja clutched the spell manual tight in both hands.

“You can’t buy something like this even if you’ve got the money... And you’re really giving this to me?”

For a spell-caster, a spell manual was the same as a martial arts manual was to a martial artist.

These days you could learn the basics of spell-casting off YouTube, but real spell-casting was still mostly passed down one-on-one to children or disciples.

But Kim Bokja was a genius who had self-taught herself spell-casting with nothing but YouTube and whatever books she could find at the library.

‘One of the big reasons she busts her ass making money is to track down spell manuals that are on her level...’

That spell manual was an offer Bokja couldn’t refuse.

Even to someone like me, who didn’t know spell-casting well, the way she swallowed hard told me it was something incredible.

Having seized complete control of the situation, Teacher casually shrugged his shoulders.

“Consider this an advance. Depending on how things go later, I might even give you another one.”

“When do you need me here? I’ll make time even if I don’t have any and show up for work!”

And just like that, the three of us began joint training—license exam prep wrapped up in cultivation.

*****

Time flew.

Pouring myself into training day after day, before I knew it, the last winter break of my senior year of high school was over and the new year had come.

“Happy New Year!”

“Wishing everyone a lot of blessings this year!”

This year, I saw in the new year with my parents—and my teacher.

After a few trips back and forth bringing lunch boxes and small gifts, my parents had become close enough with him to invite Teacher over to our place for dinner on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

“Ahem. I hope an old man isn’t overstepping, showing up too often...”

“Teacher! Don’t say things you don’t mean. Here, have another drink.”

“We didn’t prepare much, but please eat a lot. You too, Rerae, you should eat a lot, okay?”

We also invited Bokja, who had gotten acquainted with my parents after running into them a few times on the rooftop, to have dinner with us at my place.

She looked overwhelmed as she stared at the dining table, packed edge to edge with dishes.

“This is ‘not much’? I don’t even know where to start, there’s so much...”

“Since Muhyuk’s training in martial arts, he eats a ton. This is just a little more than usual. We heard you eat well too, Rerae?”

“Not as much as he does... but anyway. Thank you for the food.”

Bokja was a little awkward with how warm and friendly my parents were, but she didn’t look uncomfortable.

Seeing her picking at her food in a way that didn’t suit her at all, I bumped her shoulder and asked,

“Why aren’t you eating? You don’t like the food?”

“...What are you talking about. I just added your house to my list of best places to eat.”

“Oh my. That means it’s delicious, right?”

“Come over all the time, really! This is the first time our son’s ever brought a girl home...”

“Stop saying nonsense. Our Muhyuk’s always been popular, okay?”

It was a noisy, happy start to the new year.

Even if there were a few mortifying moments, like my parents getting a little tipsy and vividly reenacting all my childhood embarrassing stories while everyone but me howled with laughter.

There was no doubt this was the kind of happy everyday life I’d once only been able to dream about.

“What about Shin Kangheon?”

“He can’t make it.”

We’d invited Shin Kangheon too, after spending months smashing into each other and rolling around together up on the rooftop, but he’d only messaged that he was spending the new year with his uncle.

[God Kang-heon : Hepyu Nyear. This year, get ready to get your ass kicked by me.]

The bastard never got tired of saying the same thing over and over.

Bzzz—

[Bu-YH : Muhyuk. Happy New Year. Our sect is holding a little New Year’s event right now—if you’re interested, you should try taking part.]

Even after several months, Bu Yeonha from Azure Sky Sword Gate would sometimes message me first.

[Kimoo : Happy New Year to you too, ma’am.]

Every time, I’d send back at least a brief reply out of courtesy.

A few of the other Eight Great Sects had also contacted me asking to meet, but I turned all of them down, saying I wanted to focus on preparing for the license exam.

“By the way, son. The license exam’s coming up—aren’t you nervous?”

As the exam drew closer, my dad seemed more nervous than I was. I grinned and answered.

“Not at all. If anything, I wish it would start already.”

My second time turning twenty.

In my last life, I hadn’t even been able to try for it.

So right now, I could hardly wait for the martial-artist license exam.