## Chapter 217 – 217. Jeon Seo-Ha
#217. Jeon Seo-ha
Experiencing extreme stress in the past that resurfaces in similar situations, causing psychological anxiety, is commonly known as trauma.
In reality, trauma sounds grand, but everyone has at least one.
Like being stung by a bee as a child and being afraid of bees even as an adult, or feeling your heart pound only when going to the dentist, even though other hospitals are fine.
However, most symptoms aren’t that severe.
At most, you might get nervous or break out in a cold sweat?
But that wasn’t the case for my mentor.
“Mentor…?”
“Haa, haa, haa…!”
Cold sweat poured down her pale face like rain.
Her trembling body was pitiful, and she was sitting on the floor, breathing heavily, showing classic signs of hyperventilation.
“Mentor!”
Panicked, I immediately went to her.
Her face was hot, but her hands were as cold as ice.
Her unfocused eyes indicated that her condition was serious, and I was about to call an ambulance, but.
Thud.
“N-no…”
My mentor grabbed my wrist with a trembling hand.
“Hospital… no…”
Thump.
After uttering just those two words, she fainted.
I checked her pulse, but I hadn’t learned enough in that area to know what was wrong.
Logically, taking her to the hospital would be the right thing to do in this situation, but her eyes looked too desperate.
‘Haa…’
Reluctantly, I gave her some Holy Water as a temporary measure and laid her down on the bedding in the corner of the office.
In the midst of all this, a pleasant scent wafted from the bedding, brushing past my nose.
‘What is it? It’s a scent I’ve smelled before?’
Ah, I remember.
It was similar to the scent that sometimes came from Noel. I think I smelled it on Lumina too.
Maybe it’s a unique scent of beast-kin.
Anyway, after that, I spent a hectic time nursing my mentor, soaking a towel in water and placing it on her forehead, and infusing her with Diamond Energy.
Of course, Diamond Energy didn’t have healing abilities like Holy Power. At best, it just replenished her energy.
It was one of the minor skills I gained after reaching the 3rd level of the Unbreakable Diamond Physique.
For reference, most of the martial arts of the Unbreakable Diamond Physique that I had learned were Energy Arts that displayed their true power from the Transcendent Realm and above.
But how could a master at the Peak Realm, who couldn’t even use Energy properly, unleash their true power?
Of course, I was strong enough now, but it was somewhat lacking to call it a Divine Art.
‘I should ask my mentor if there’s a way to reach the Transcendent Realm when she wakes up later.’
Of course, there probably isn’t, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.
Anyway, thanks to the Holy Water, my mentor’s complexion was much better than before. She seemed to be sweating less too.
I gently pressed her furrowed brow, and she didn’t frown as much.
Mm-hmm, wrinkles shouldn’t form on a pretty face.
I spent a long time holding my mentor’s hand like that.
Of course, I wasn’t trying to fulfill any personal desires. Physical contact was simply essential to infuse her with energy.
While my palms were sweating, the hands of the clock ticked steadily.
***
The existence of a child is the desire of the parents.
Therefore, parents must fulfill their responsibilities for the child they have given birth to.
It’s a perfectly natural thing to say, but just as everything in the world doesn’t always follow reason, there are children who are hated as well as children who are loved.
Just as light and darkness are inseparable.
Unfortunately, Jeon Seo-ha was one of them.
Her mother was a courtesan at a high-end bar called Myungwolheon (明月轩), frequented by political figures and businessmen.
Of course, she was a Cheonggi, not a prostitute who sold her body, but one who offered laughter, music, and dance.
Unfortunately, she caught the eye of Cheonju, one of the leaders of the Triads, and through a night of forced intimacy, she became pregnant with a daughter named Jeon Seo-ha.
This caused an uproar in Cheon (天), one of the three factions that made up the Triads.
Of course, in this day and age, an illegitimate child wasn’t that big of a problem. In the first place, the Silver Wolf Tribe was short on numbers, so it would have been something to welcome with open arms.
But the problem was that Jeon Seo-ha’s mother was human, not a beast-kin.
The elders of Cheon (天), who wanted to protect the pure bloodline of the wolf, rose up in protest.
The opposition from the family, as well as the entire tribe, grew stronger day by day, but despite this, Cheonju recognized Jeon Seo-ha as his daughter.
No one dared to object to the decision made by the leader of the pack.
After much difficulty, Jeon Seo-ha was registered in the family, but no one welcomed her.
-A dirty bastard child.
-Ugh, human smell.
-To think that thing is a Silver Wolf, the end must be near.
-What on earth is Cheonju-nim thinking…?
-Tsk.
Naked hostility was poured out on the young Jeon Seo-ha, who had just begun to babble.
Cheonju didn’t take care of his daughter.
If he had been the kind of person to do so, he wouldn’t have forced himself on a woman in the first place.
He was a complete bystander.
In that way, Jeon Seo-ha and her mother were abandoned in a den of beasts, surrounded by enemies.
Every day was a continuous torment like hell, but Jeon Seo-ha was able to endure it.
Because she had a mother who loved her more than anyone else.
She could endure the contempt and neglect of the adults around her, and the terrible bullying of the other children, as long as she had her mother.
But.
-…Mom?
Her mother was not the same.
She couldn’t withstand the bullying of the beast-kin with her weak human body. It was an unwanted pregnancy and childbirth.
Even so, she loved her daughter.
She had endured through her strong maternal love, but even that had reached its limit.
In the end, she chose to abandon her young daughter and run away from the family. She couldn’t run away with her daughter. If she ran away with her daughter, who was already registered in the family, a pursuit team would chase after them.
In that way, Jeon Seo-ha was left alone.
The fear of being left alone, the sadness of being abandoned by her mother, became daggers that mercilessly stabbed her heart.
-…Mom.
It was the moment she fell into true hell.
Even so, Jeon Seo-ha didn’t let go of the thread of hope.
She firmly believed that her mother would come back for her someday.
But as the wait went beyond a month to a year, 5 years, 10 years, and 15 years, when the young girl became an adult.
-…
Only then did Jeon Seo-ha realize.
Ah, my mother isn’t coming back.
I’m alone forever.
At that moment, a suffocating loneliness crushed her.
She couldn’t bear it any longer.
-Haa, haa, haa…!
So she ran away.
She crossed several rivers and climbed countless mountains along a road stretching hundreds of kilometers, finally reaching a country called South Korea.
If it weren’t for the Silver Wolf Tribe’s unique physical abilities and the magic and supernatural powers she had accidentally awakened, she would have been eaten by monsters long ago.
South Korea, which she had arrived in that way, was unfamiliar.
Of course, China was just as unfamiliar.
Everything was unfamiliar to her, as she had lived almost imprisoned within the family her entire life.
Fortunately, she had learned various foreign languages from a young age, so the language barrier wasn’t a problem.
English, Japanese, and Korean.
Jeon Seo-ha’s foreign language skills were so good that she could be mistaken for a native speaker.
Of course, it wasn’t because of her exceptional linguistic talent.
It was the product of abuse under harsh discipline.
If she didn’t memorize the assigned characters each day, she would be beaten with a switch and go without food.
Studying was a kind of torment for Jeon Seo-ha.
How could the process of forcibly cramming knowledge into her head in a scary and difficult process be enjoyable?
But in order to survive, she had to use the knowledge she had learned.
She sold the valuables she had secretly brought with her to raise capital, as she might be tracked down by the family if she had a job.
They were unrefined gems, so there was no chance of them being treated as stolen goods.
Even so, she was poor. She didn’t have the luxury of bringing a lot with her.
She stayed in the cheapest places possible, and when she was short on money, she raided the offices of nearby loan sharks and stole cash.
The reason she started a swordsmanship dojo was to avoid suspicion if she kept getting money from somewhere without having a proper job.
Of course, she had no intention of taking on students.
Not only did she have no intention of running the dojo properly, but she didn’t think she had the skills to teach anyone in the first place.
Besides, no one in their right mind would go to a shabby dojo tucked away in a poor neighborhood.
So there was no need to worry unnecessarily.
That’s what she thought.
-What is it? Is no one here?
One day, someone who wasn’t in their right mind appeared.
To think that someone would want to attend such a shabby dojo…
It was suspicious.
The thought that he might be a spy sent by the family crossed her mind.
‘…Should I kill him here?’
But if she did, it would only reveal that she was here.
For now, she had no choice but to accept him as a student.
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
There was no point in running away now, as she would be caught before long. So she needed to extract as much information from him as possible.
But there was one problem.
What if he ran away and reported her existence?
It was a checkmate, really.
She couldn’t kill him, and she couldn’t run away now.
Jeon Seo-ha quietly lay down.
Ting-
An alert arrived on the cracked phone screen, notifying her that a large sum of money had been deposited.
‘…Beef.’
She was scared of being dragged back to that hell, but she wanted to eat as much beef as she could before she went.
Starvation was a daily occurrence there.
That night, Jeon Seo-ha ate imported beef that she bought from a nearby butcher shop and shed tears.
But even after several days, the thing she had feared didn’t happen. Instead, an anomaly in a different sense occurred in her daily life.
Her first student, Kang Hyun-woo, was a strange person.
A mage doing swordsmanship?
Even though her common sense was very narrow and biased, she knew that mages didn’t learn swordsmanship.
Moreover, she was even more surprised by how quickly he learned.
He called her “Mentor.”
Why?
She hadn’t really taught him anything.
Everyone knew the importance of the basics.
Rather, it wouldn’t be strange if he suspected her of being a fraud for not teaching him a single martial art.
But he didn’t.
Even though he grumbled, he approached every lesson with a serious attitude.
Instead, he sometimes made strange jokes…
Honestly, it wasn’t bad. No, it was actually closer to good.
Even if it wasn’t funny, it felt like warmth was seeping into the cold dojo.
Above all, thanks to his eccentric behavior, she was able to gradually forget her anxiety. Each of his small actions told her that he wasn’t a spy from the family.
In fact, she never thought she would be able to form a relationship with someone in this unfamiliar foreign land where she had run away.
She had been careful not to get close to others, as she didn’t know when or where she would be dragged back to the family, and who might be a spy from the family.
But.
‘One person…’
Wouldn’t it be okay to get close to just one person?
When she received a snack as a gift from him, she was filled with a strange feeling all day long.
‘…Delicious.’
She closed her eyes as she chewed on the jerky.
It was the first gift she had received since her mother ran away.
Even though she knew that her mother had abandoned her and ran away, she couldn’t help but miss her.
Knowing that she would have to live her whole life without forming deep relationships with anyone, she couldn’t help but cling to the relationships of the past even more.
Then, suddenly, the face of her one and only student came to mind.
What if he abandoned her like her mother?
All she could give him was the family’s martial arts that she had forcibly learned, the insights she had gained from fighting monsters while coming to Korea, and a few minor skills.
Even that would surely be absorbed by him before long, given his talent.
Then what?
Was there any reason to stay by the side of a mentor who had nothing more to teach?
It was a foolish question.
He was a mage, after all.
Someday he would return to the Magic Tower, and he would never come back to this shabby dojo again.
Thinking that way made her feel choked up, and her heart felt like it was about to burst. Her hands and feet trembled and she felt suffocated, just like on the day her mother abandoned her.
But she had nothing to give him.
All she could do was beg like she did when she was a child.
‘…Don’t go.’
Please.
I’ll do anything.
Don’t abandon me.
Her pitiful cry echoed emptily.
“I’m not so heartless as to leave a patient behind, so you don’t have to worry.”
Whoosh-
At that moment, the darkness that had been covering the surroundings receded, and her vision brightened.
She squinted at the fluorescent lights for a moment, then met the eyes of Kang Hyun-woo, who was holding her hand.
“But are you serious about doing anything?”
Her brain, which hadn’t fully booted up, belatedly grasped the situation and looked around.
The warmth that wrapped around her hand and the words she had muttered in her sleep.
Before long, Jeon Seo-ha’s scream echoed from inside the office.
