Bastion 2 - Chapter 7

“Stop, hyeong, it’s not funny!” the student—a boy with black shoulder-length hair who’d missed his growth spurt—reached up for the disc Tae-do held just out of reach.

“You might not think so, but I’m having a great time,” Tae-do said with a smirk as his hand grasping the schedule flickered with ma munje.

“Should we do something?” Cho whispered next to me as we watched the bullying.

I sighed. It was the outer-city way to take care of our own. Though I wasn’t sure this boy came from an outer-city, he was a Bastion, and that made him one of our own.

“Tae-do,” I boomed with an infusion of ry as I stepped from the doorway. The hall went silent as twenty pairs of eyes fell on me. “Give it back.”

Tae-do’s face screwed up with confusion. I hadn’t changed that much over the summer, but I was certain he hadn’t saved space in his memory for a fujek ganhan like me. Tae-do, on the other hand, had changed over the summer, and while I knew his face, he was much bigger—and far angrier—than I remembered.

His short brown hair was parted down the center and held in place with wax. His neck was about twice the circumference of my upper arm and joined with broad shoulders that were more muscular than seemed natural. His nose was crooked from repeated breaks that never healed right, a sign of weak healing zo, and there were more than a few scars decorating his face and arms. One scar in particular stood out over his left eye—a burn—something that looked to have been done to him in cruelty.

Tae-do looked down at the shorter boy with a malicious leer. Black zo encircled his hand. He made a fist as he bared his teeth and said, “I hope you memorized it.”

The metal crunched in his closed fist. He grabbed the shorter boy’s hand and dropped the crushed disc into it.

“I’ll be seeing you around, ganhan,” Tae-do said to me as he turned away. His entourage followed, except one: Shin-soo. The rival from my first year stared me down. Not with anger, or the malice that Tae-do had, but something else. What was he thinking?

“Soo-boi, c’mon!” Tae-do yelled over his shoulder and Shin-soo grimaced, then turned away from me.

I stepped up to the short student and said, “I might be able to fix it, if you’d like. What’s your name?”

“Ko-nah,” the shorter boy said as he rolled the schedule over in his hand. Little blue sparks fizzled and died as the device went dark.

I held out my hand to receive it and he passed it to me. I closed my eyes and inhaled as I began the cyclical breathing for ma repair. My mind’s eye traveled along the device’s highways as I assessed the damage. He’d bent the case up, but the insides weren’t irrevocably broken.

“I can fix it. I’ll need a few hours, though, so you’ll have to sit with us for lunch,” I said as I offered for him to walk with me.

“Do you have a room yet?” Cho asked, a welcoming grin on his face.

Ko-nah shook his head.

Il-sung bowed shallowly as he showed Ko-nah into the room. “You’re in luck. We have one bed left.”

Ko-nah scowled. “Why are you being nice to me? You don’t know me.”

I shrugged. “Would you prefer we left you alone?”

“No,” Ko-nah blurted, then composed himself. “That’s not what I meant. I… I just mean, no one has ever stood up for me, especially not to Tae-do.”

“You know him?” Cho asked as he showed Ko-nah to the empty bed.

I kicked off my shoes and sat cross-legged as I diverted half of my focus to repairing his schedule. I felt Mae’s presence as she guided my ma munje through the circuits, using her full attention to expedite the process. Since it wasn’t specifically a school project, I didn’t decline the assistance.

Ko-nah sighed as he set his bag on the plush bed. “He’s my brother by marriage. My mother was widowed when I was six, and Tae-do’s father took care of us.”

“My condolences,” I said as I put my fist to my heart and knocked my chest twice. Il-sung and Cho echoed my sentiment, leaving Ko-nah puzzled.

“You’re all from outer-cities?” he asked as he put away his belongings.

I hummed acknowledgement as I felt my munje hit a blockage. Cho and Il-sung carried on a conversation with him as I diverted more of my attention to the obstacle in my path. It appeared a bit of the glass from the projector had shattered and pierced through the hard plastic. Well, that was a problem.

My breathing deepened and I turned the double bands on my core until ma and en aligned over the crystal. I pushed the energy through to create a spell that would heat the plastic to pliability without melting it outright into the other components. I’d used that spell at least a hundred times at the Rabbit, and was well acquainted with it, giving me the mental bandwidth for another task.

I turned the top band and aligned my second en block, giving the next spell additional complexity and strength. I used the resulting munje to deconstruct the piercing piece of glass, and ferry it back to its proper place on the lens and reconstruct it. There was a small fragment of glass missing, but it wouldn’t prevent it from displaying.

Ko-nah’s somber tone brought me back to the present as he said, “Tae-do is closest to me in age, and I thought we could be friends, but instead he’s been horrible to me. The other brothers ignore me, like I don’t even exist. I’m not sure which is worse…”

Cho patted him on the back and Ko-nah shriveled under his touch. We were used to friendly touch from strangers in outer-cities, it was just what we did. But kingdomite strangers rarely touched casually, unless they were bumping each other on the street.

Cho cleared his throat and backed away with a grimace as he said, “It’s probably not at all because of you. It’s because of his father. From what you’ve said, wansil Wong overworks all his bloodline sons. It’s no wonder Tae-do is high-strung, all he ever does is fight his brothers.”

Ko-nah sighed as he said, “For a while, it bothered me that wansil Wong didn’t push me to be stronger, to join the fighters in the Dojang like the others, but I got over it.”

I could see in the way he faked a smile it still bothered him. I kicked off the bed and put the schedule away in my pocket as I said, “You don’t have to prove anything to him, or to Tae-do. You’re here for you, right? What’s your strongest munje?”

Ko-nah hummed. “Bastion wasn’t my choice; my mother sent me. None of my munje are great. I don’t know… ry is my strongest, I suppose. I spend a lot of time hiding from Tae-do.”

The overhead speaker in our room came to life with the voice of Min-hwan, the Grandmaster of Bastion. “Welcome first-year students, and welcome back everyone else. We will be hosting lunch in the dining hall in forty minutes. We will explain the ground rules and this year’s tournament. That is all.”

“Well, we have a whole six months to get those skills up,” Il-sung said to Ko-nah as he patted his back. Ko-nah winced and held his shoulders close to his ears. He reminded me a bit of a badgermouse; small, good at hiding, adept with ry munje—

“Don’t forget fierce when threatened,” Mae interjected, and I hummed. He had yet to show any fierceness. Perhaps I was wrong.

“I don’t know if I can,” Ko-nah sighed with a look of defeat. “Honestly, I was hoping I would fail out of last year so I could find work somewhere in the city.”

“Why didn’t you, then?” I asked as I straightened my back.

Ko-nah’s cheeks flushed for the briefest of seconds as his eyes narrowed on me. Then, his expression smoothed, and I wondered if I’d seen it at all. “I suppose I wanted to see if I had what it took.”

Cho nodded. “And you did. So, why not do it again?”

Ko-nah’s scowl deepened. “I was in the high three-hundreds last year. I barely skimmed by—not like Jiyong,” he added with a nervous laugh. “I’m not like Tae-do either, and never will be.” He looked away, pain knitting the space between his brows.

How could he think Tae-do was the best thing he could emulate? Why would he ever aspire to that? I wanted to shake that sad look off his face. More than that, I wanted Ko-nah to stand tall—as tall as he could—in front of Tae-do, unafraid.

“Tae-do isn’t a Bastion, he’s a bully,” I said with heat and all eyes focused on me. “Becoming a Bastion is to be your best self. We’ll help you, if you want.”

Cho beamed. “That’s a great idea! Jiyong and Hana helped me with my zo all year, and with a few practices over the summer too. Look—” he pulled up the sleeve of his dobok and flexed to reveal a substantially bulkier muscle than was there last year.

“And Cho helped me with li,” I said. I didn’t want Ko-nah thinking the group was so lopsided. It wasn’t as if Hana and I were the only ones with gifts. Cho was talented far beyond Eun-bi’s skills with li munje. Yuri was a wizard when it came to water and electric en. I had yet to see Il-sung’s true gifts, but then again, we didn’t hang out much.

Ko-nah shrugged, his face soured in confusion. “Why?”

I wasn’t certain if he meant why should he try, or why were we helping him.

Il-sung put his hands on his hips and guffawed unnaturally before bellowing, “Because we’re the good guys!”

We all shared a laugh, and Ko-nah’s scowl melted away. He even had a genuine smile on for a moment.

Ko-nah bowed shallowly. “Okay, teach me your ways.”