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Chapter : 19
Yeonhwa slowly looked over the Hyeonmu Unit members surrounding her.
And then, one last time, she gave them another chance.
“Nothing has been decided yet. You know that even if an engagement ceremony is held or a marriage happens, it’s extremely rare for someone’s position to change.”
No sooner had she finished speaking than they objected.
“That may be true in ordinary cases, but your situation is different, miss.”
“My situation, you say.”
There had been a strong push from Mu-ryeong Tak Museong behind her becoming the commander of the Hyeonmu Unit.
And now, with rumors that her marriage had caused discord with the Samryeong—and considering that once she married, even if they were sworn siblings, a man and a woman could hardly remain as close as before—
They believed she would fail to keep her position and end up in an ambiguous, unstable standing.
Yeonhwa let out a sigh.
“Even if I promise that no trouble will fall on you because of me, you wouldn’t believe it, would you.”
Such cowards.
Nothing had even been decided yet, and they were already thinking about tucking their tails and running.
How did people this timid become so bold only when facing her—throwing tantrums and making outrageous demands?
How lightly must they think of me.
Shaking her head, Yeonhwa spoke.
“You’ve always been wary of me, so I assumed you’d secretly welcome the day I left the Hyeonmu Unit. But I never imagined you’d grab my ankle and demand compensation.”
What exactly had they suffered so much from?
It wasn’t that she had never tried to calculate things—it was that she had chosen not to.
Museong oppa had treated the Hyeonmu Unit harshly using her as an excuse, but it was also true that, thanks to that, the once-hollow unit had gained powerful backing.
There was no one in the world who didn’t know Mu-ryeong’s willful and violent temperament—had they really not expected this outcome when the Hyeonmu Unit fell into his hands?
If they hated being pushed around, they should have left the moment he first tried to reorganize the unit.
If it were anything else, maybe—but if they had simply admitted they lacked the ability to keep up, he wouldn’t have cared in the slightest.
Yet they endured—before Yeonhwa arrived and even after she became commander.
That must have been because they held onto a faint hope that someday they would finally be properly acknowledged.
But coldly speaking, that was only their situation.
Just as it had been her situation—having to hunch herself small to keep them from being caught between Samryeong and herself, enduring scorn and finger-pointing while trying to protect them.
“When expectations collapse, the proper emotion isn’t betrayal—it’s disappointment. Disappointment is tied to lingering attachment, so you should shake it off without regret, not try to take revenge.”
And if, being human, they couldn’t help but harbor resentment, then that resentment should have been directed at the true source of all this chaos.
But they never showed a single impure thought toward Museong oppa—and instead poured everything solely onto Yeonhwa.
Anyone in the Hyeonmu Unit, who had watched from the closest distance, should have known that she too was merely being tossed around by the absolute power that was Samryeong.
I thought this was their worst… but apparently there was an even lower bottom.
Regardless of how things had happened, they had come under her command, and she had felt responsible for them. But now that that obligation vanished, she felt free once again.
As if by habit, Yeonhwa brushed her fingertips along the hilt of her sword and raised her head.
Standing before the Hyeonmu Unit members, she declared:
“As of this moment, I will step down from my position as commander of the Hyeonmu Unit.”
Their eyes widened in shock at the sudden announcement.
“W-what do you mean?”
Park Jeongdo, who considered himself the center of the unit, stepped forward in protest. Yeonhwa answered calmly.
“It means I won’t be forced out or demoted in a way that leaves your positions ambiguous, as you fear. Since I am stepping down of my own will, whatever happens to me afterward won’t cause trouble for you.”
She explained that the academy would select the next Hyeonmu commander according to regulations, and that the unit members would simply follow the new commander and lead the next generation of the Hyeonmu Unit.
When she finished, silence fell over the area.
The members looked as if they wanted to say something—but none of them spoke.
Among the group, the first to recover his wits was Park Jeongdo.
“What benefit does that give us?”
That was exactly what Yeonhwa wanted to ask.
“Why are you looking for your benefit from me? Whether I hold the commander’s seat or not, I’m still just a fellow academy student like you. Don’t forget that.”
It was natural for a division commander to act for the greater good of their unit—but if she moved for the members’ personal gain?
Well.
She’d earn not a good reputation but a scandalous one.
“This is… really…”
The Hyeonmu members felt deeply uncomfortable as the situation unfolded completely differently from what they expected.
Up until now, a few sharp words from them had always made her shrink back—yet now she stood stiff and unyielding!
Some of them had even felt a strange thrill in seeing the beautiful, dignified young lady unable to talk back to them—always giving in—and now they couldn’t bear the change.
“This is running away! Are you trying to leave us behind and make things easy just for yourself, miss?”
If they formally examined their own arguments, they were full of holes and arrogance—so all they could do was keep pushing forward the way they always had: by browbeating her.
Since her earliest days as a young and fragile new commander, they had unconsciously trained her this way—and surely it would work again this time.
Especially since Park Jeongdo still had a final card he had long kept hidden.
Lowering his voice as much as possible, he sneered.
“Was it the same back then? When a large number of Hyeonmu members died and you came back with only Ji-won hyung? Did you choose to live alone then too—without caring whether your subordinates died or not?”
Thud!
He never finished his sentence.
Because a person whose jaw has been smashed cannot speak.
Staggering, Park Jeongdo thought the young lady had struck him and even considered using this to demand compensation—
But—
“Who the hell do you think you are, spouting that kind of bullshit! You rat who didn’t even qualify for the mission and got left behind!”
The attacker wasn’t the young lady.
It was Ji-won hyung.
No one knew when he had appeared—he had recently been disappearing from her side often—and by rotten luck, he showed up at exactly the wrong moment and caused an uproar.
Ji-won hyung’s eyes had gone wild, and he didn’t even let Park Jeongdo fall.
Grabbing Park Jeongdo’s left arm, he yanked him forward.
As Park Jeongdo lost his balance and pitched forward, Ji-won drove his knee into the man’s abdomen.
Thud!
Park Jeongdo’s body jerked violently, his upper body thrown backward.
But Ji-won had no intention of letting him off that easily.
He pulled the tightly gripped left arm again.
As Park Jeongdo’s body bent forward, Ji-won slammed his knee into his stomach again.
Thud, thud, thud!
Three rapid strikes in an instant.
“Guek—!”
Blood burst from Park Jeongdo’s mouth.
The pain was so intense he couldn’t straighten his back—his body curling in on itself even when lifted.
The Hyeonmu members, who had been frozen in shock, finally came to their senses and rushed toward Ji-won.
“Die!”
Already frustrated that things weren’t going their way, it took only a moment for madness to spread among them.
But Ji-won wasn’t alone.
“So much for ending things quietly.”
Yeonhwa suddenly appeared beside him and spoke.
“I’m sorry. That rat was squealing so loudly I must have lost my head for a moment.”
Ji-won lightly kicked Park Jeongdo—now completely limp and unconscious—by the arm he was holding.
At the same time, he released the arm, and Park Jeongdo’s body flopped onto his back.
Lying there with his limbs spread toward the sky, he looked utterly pitiful.
The Hyeonmu members rushing forward were startled—but they couldn’t bring themselves to stop.
They had formed two or three layered lines in a semicircle, and as they all surged toward a single point at once, the distance between them rapidly closed.
In such a situation, if those at the front stumbled even slightly, the pushing force from behind would make them collapse forward, while those behind piled on top.
The people crushed at the bottom would suffer the worst injuries.
But…
“H-huh? What—?”
If they didn’t stop and kept pushing into that single point, the entire formation—from front line to rear—would inevitably crash together and collapse into chaos anyway.
If this place had been wide or spacious, both the targets and the charging members might have had room to dodge—
But even though the Hyeonmu Hall’s front courtyard wasn’t small, it was only about seven or eight jang across and currently packed densely with people.
More importantly, the Hyeonmu members suddenly realized two crucial facts.
First: they couldn’t just trample Park Jeongdo, who lay sprawled on the ground—so as they tried to avoid him, their movements tangled and collisions between them increased instantly.
Second: the one they had rushed at in a fit of anger was the Hyeonmu vice-commander—but the person now standing beside him was none other than Namgung Yeonhwa, the young lady of the Murim Alliance!
Even if they had intended to act first out of fear that her ties to Samryeong might weaken—
That absolutely did not mean they could harm her!
“Eeeeek!”
“Step aside, miss!”
Screams erupted everywhere.
