By Zephyria 
……He remembered.
Baek Ryeo-il trembled as memories rushed in like a flood. The strength left his legs, and his knees hit the ground one after another.
He remembered everything.
He had been lying right here.
The image of his younger self was vivid before his eyes—lying on his side with his back against the wall, waiting for someone who would never come.
Because they promised they would definitely return, he vowed to keep his promise as well, and he did not move a single step from that spot.
Even when the darkness that returned each night terrified him, he would shed tears but never let out so much as a loud breath.
He was able to barely endure the first day because Jegal Yeom-mi had left him a single piece of flatbread wrapped in paper and a bamboo tube.
However, as one day turned into two, his strength gradually drained away. At some point, he no longer had the strength to even lift his body. Still, he stubbornly remained lying on his side against the wall, staring only at the cave entrance where the light entered.
Whether it was his mother, his father, or Jegal Yeom-mi.
He believed that at least one of the three would surely return.
By the day he was rescued, he had nearly reached his limit and frequently lost consciousness for brief moments. Even then, the area around the cave remained deathly silent.
Finally, a few villagers, while cleaning up the ruined battlefield, happened to discover him on the verge of death.
It was the warmth of another human being that he had longed for so desperately, yet Baek Ryeo-il rejected their touch. During the days he spent enduring the terror alone, there was only one thing the young child repeated to himself.
〈Don’t make a sound, and don’t move.〉
He had repeatedly comforted himself with the belief that only by doing so could he see his parents and her again.
At first, he hated them for not returning. I’m being good and quiet just like you told me, so why aren’t you coming?
But at some point, Baek Ryeo-il’s mind began to distort.
Thinking that they might return if he were just a little quieter, he held his breath and waited. But even when he held it until his face turned bright red from suffocation, the entrance remained silent.
Such thoughts grew increasingly obsessive.
They aren’t coming back because I’m not good enough. If I do better, they’ll come for me.
Later, no matter how much his legs tingled, he continued to endure, only cautiously shifting his posture at the most agonizing moments, whipping himself into submission.
By the time the villagers found him, Baek Ryeo-il’s obsession had reached its peak.
He missed his mother and father terribly, and he longed for Jegal Yeom-mi so much. He wanted to meet them again. To do that, he must not move, and he must not make a sound.
He desperately avoided the villagers who reached out to take him away. It was a mystery where a child who had starved for days found such strength, but he nimbly slipped through the villagers.
Even while doing so, he made no sound and refused to leave the cave.
Before long, exhausted, Baek Ryeo-il was finally caught. The moment he left the cave, the faces of his mother, father, and Jegal Yeom-mi flashed through his mind in succession. He felt a deep despair, as if the world were collapsing.
He had broken the promise.
Now, he would never see those three people again…….
A terror dozens, hundreds of times greater than spending the nights alone in the cave struck him, and Baek Ryeo-il lost consciousness. He survived only thanks to a kind-hearted couple.
But after that day, he lost his voice.
“…….”
Before he knew it, Baek Ryeo-il was leaning both hands on the dirt floor.
He didn’t remember much after being rescued. Only fragments of memories, like leftover dregs, passed by as blurred afterimages.
Baek Ryeo-il felt he understood why his memories were such a mess.
Back then, he had been so busy struggling internally to survive that he had no capacity to listen to the outside world.
Baek Ryeo-il had waited, believing the three would return even if he failed to keep the promise. In one part of his heart, he knew they would never abandon him.
Yet, in another part, he believed that the moment he left the cave, the three would never return. However, the distorted thoughts he had repeatedly added within his twisted mental world were not easily changed.
Returning to Mount Hua didn’t help much. Although it was a familiar place where he had lived since birth, to a child too young to understand death, a world where his parents had vanished looked the same everywhere. It was like drifting on a single plank of wood in a vast, stormy ocean. To a child who cannot protect themselves, parents are the sanctuary where one can rest in peace.
Every time he realized the absence of his parents, the only emotion the child could feel was deep despair.
While these conflicting inner selves clashed and fought, Baek Ryeo-il was shattered into pieces.
One year passed, then another…… after three years, Baek Ryeo-il reached an age where he could understand death. Only then did he realize that the three had died, and that the dead do not return.
Only then did Baek Ryeo-il give up the fight. Regardless of whether they had abandoned him or not, they had gone to a world where they could never meet again.
After that day, Baek Ryeo-il slowly returned to the real world.
Only then could he see the sadness dwelling in the eyes of the Sasuk who looked at him, and feel the texture of the wooden sword in his hand. He tasted food and smelled the plum blossom fragrance carried by the wind.
He finally stood with his feet on reality, but the sensations were incomparably faint compared to what he had felt before. The once vibrant, colorful world now felt achromatic, approaching him without any emotion.
It was because half of him still remained in that twisted mental world. Occasionally, he would fall into his own thoughts, trying to figure out why Jegal Yeom-mi, who had left the cave, never returned.
She was dead. But was death truly the only reason? Was it not because she decided I wasn’t worth returning to, since I can’t do anything right?
There was another problem. He frequently encountered traces left by his parents throughout Mount Hua.
That path between the roadside trees was where he had walked holding hands with his parents, and that wooden platform was where he had napped while his parents practiced their water lily fragrance.
Even the people passing by wore sad expressions whenever they looked at him. Since much time had passed, they seemed to try not to show it, but he could tell from their eyes, tone, and attitude that they were thinking of his dead parents.
Every time that happened, Baek Ryeo-il became sad, and he had to feel with his entire body the fact that he had lost people who were so incredibly important.
It wasn’t just then. When he opened his eyes in the morning, while changing clothes and eating, when a cool breeze blew during training and he paused to cool his sweat and catch his breath, and even when he ended his day listening to the nagging of Ma Jin-cheon, who had now become his Master—he felt the absence of his parents every single moment.
The pain that scorched his throat now felt like a companion that would stay with him for the rest of his life.
Only when he held a sword could he escape the pain.
He could forget how dark and unstable his future life would be—no, he could forget the fact that even tonight, he would have to fall asleep alone without anyone watching over him.
He could forget the sense of loss of not having someone who always observed him meticulously without him having to say how he felt, and who was always ready to offer a warm embrace.
It was only natural, in a way, that he clung only to the sword to escape the pain.
He swung the sword to forget his parents’ smiles. He swung the sword to forget how warm her hand was when she stroked his head.
By forgetting memories one by one every single day, it seemed they had truly been erased at some point.
“…….”
But only the memories had vanished.
Half of him still spanned across the inner world, repeating a fight that would never end. Because of this, he was always anxious and uneasy. After losing his memories, even when he was overwhelmed by immense anxiety, he had no choice but to endure until the moment passed, not even knowing the reason why.
He had endured like that for thirty years.
Even now, when the small child had become a celebrated rising star representing the future of the Martial world, he had not improved in the slightest.
Whether he had memories or not, his inner self had not grown at all from the child who sat huddled in a dark cave, swallowing tears.
The Baek Ryeo-il of that day was still waiting in the darkness for those three to return.
Though he knew they were dead and could never be seen again, the child within did not understand at all. As long as he was trapped in the cave, that child would never grow. The three people who could pull the child out no longer existed.
Baek Ryeo-il clenched his fist. Dry soil slipped through his fingers.
“…….”
Ah…… I shouldn’t have come here.
It would have been better to live in ignorance, enduring the anxiety that occasionally surged like waves.
In the end, he realized he was destined to spend his life waiting for people who would not return until the day he died, or doubting whether they had abandoned him.