Chapter 6: Chapter 6

To the Mountains Again…2

“It’s so cold…”

Jaehwang carried a 40-kilogram bag on his back as he hiked up the mountains. As he reminisced about the time when he was young he remembered when he would go up the mountains with his family and they would spend lots of time together on the mountains in their cabin during their vacations and the holidays.

It would usually take about 3-4 hours to reach their cabin on the mountain. They would typically stay only for about one hour before going back down.

As he continued to hike up the mountain, it wasn’t long before he found himself soaked in sweat. He was breathing heavily and eventually decided to take his backpack off. He then placed it on the ground and took a rest.

He soon got back on his feet a couple of minutes later and did some light stretching before getting back to hiking again.

“I guess I forgot how much I hated gym class when I was in school until now.”

If someone heard that then they would pass out screaming but, it’s true to Jaehwang. His mom and dad worked at the bottom of the mountain and they have done this every single day. They didn’t carry much so it was so much faster. His father would never get tired, he definitely did not grow up to have that same energy

“Phew…”

A mountain cabin soon appeared in the distance. It was a structure built out of trees and wood with fence all around it. There weren’t any other houses nearby. There used to be a cabin that his father’s parents lived in but now it was just his parent’s house that was the only one left standing…

“It’s a relief that no thieves came by,” He said to himself as he examined the entrance door.

The lock combination to the front gate still worked just fine. Although the people that lived on this mountain vista that area from time to time, everything was still as it should be.

After dealing with the impact of losing his parents and all his injuries, he was ready to finally relax and focus on his training.

The thought that he may never get back to the way he was before ever again crossed his mind many times.

“Phew…”

The mountain was very tall making him very exhausted after climbing so, he fixed his tangled hair as well as his messy clothes. He then took a white plastic bag out of his backpack and went to the backyard of the cabin. He followed along the broken wooden fence and saw his mom’s vegetable garden. It reminded him of his past with his family as he slowly walked by it.

He greeted two small burial mounds that were made in a sunny spot on the ground in the backyard of the cabin. There was a bottle of soju and a pack of dried Pollack for his dad and rice cakes stacked on a plate for his mom, right next to her grave.

“Dad, mom… I’m here.”

So far he had struggled to handle everything on his own. He didn’t want to neglect them there, especially when there’s nothing else around them but the mountains, snow and wild animals. He didn’t want his uncle nowhere near the cabin after he took everything from them and disappeared.

“Mom… I’m sorry.”

He gave up archery and rejected to follow her footsteps. She never pressured him about it but he couldn’t help but to feel terrible. He knew that his mother loved archery just as much as he did and she never gave up and worked hard to achieve her dreams. He always received endless support and help from his mom but, now that he had quit archery and school, He felt like he had let her down.

He stared at his parents grave for a moment before he took out a pair of gloves from his plastic bag. There was someone who came by from time to time to tidy up every now and then but the weeds grew so fast in the mountains. He put the gloves on his hands and just when he was about to start cleaning, he noticed something.

“Huh?”

When he looked ahead, everything was intact but when he turned around, he saw the tracks of a wild animal that had made a mess digging around his father’s grave. Jaehwang then used his hands to cope with his injured left eye to feel the tracks with his fingers.

“Wild pigs… Those stupid animals…”

It was impossible to avoid things like this from a wild animal in the middle of the mountains. Wild pigs are always around on that slope but Jaehwang can’t help but get angry after seeing his father’s unkempt grave.

He jumped back on his feet and took his arrows as he planned to hunt them right away but, he took a deep breath and calmed himself down.

‘Relax.’

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He learned from his father… Well…

A group of people who specialized in hunting tigers was formed during the Joseon Dynasty. That group of talented hunters passed down their skills to the next generation until his father passed it onto him. Thinking of that helped him managed to blot out the anger in his heart.

His family.

At the same time, the tiger hunter group knew every root of martial arts. So with that special skill, they were ranked the highest in the military in the time of the Joseon Dynasty. The ancestors passed through the Japanese invasion of Korea and then they passed the last Korean war. Now they are settled here in a remote mountain village.

“Phew….”

He learned relaxation from his father’s strict training when he was young. Jaehwang has been learning the basics of that little by little in archery. The Gagseogs didn’t use things from others, they made their own.

He calmed himself down and repaired the grave with utmost care knowing that cleaning through the smallest of odors could keep the pigs away.

He opened the lock and went inside the cabin after he finished up. Jaehwang stepped inside the house and gathered his family’s ancestral tablets. He placed them in the shrine before he started to clean the cabin. It already got dark in the mountains even though it was only early in the evening. He soon finished up cleaning and went to a bathhouse in a different location.

Whirring…

He turned on the boiler and the bath began to fill itself with warm water. The boilers here were great but his parents would always buy an expensive boiler when they would come here. He remembered the time when his dad carried a huge expensive boiler on his back up the mountain. Thinking about that made him miss his father and with that, he felt sad once again.

“I’ll quickly wash up.”

He had to get back to cleaning the next day so Jaehwang took off his clothes and sunk himself into the warm water of the bath. He let out a sigh of relief as he felt all of his stress and fatigue of the day melting away.

His father would always say that it was not good to use a wet towel when you’re tired. He mentioned that a person’s body was always honest. For one’s strength to improve, he/she should use a wet towel but soon that method would not work anymore even if it felt refreshing. So when one had to rest, he/she needs to make sure that it would be a good one.

Jaehwang got out of the boiler and dried himself with a towel. He had a tall slender body with detailed muscles. He didn’t get many muscles through working out or medicine, he just went and let his archery sculpt his body for him.

He had a small tattoo on his chest. He didn’t know exactly what it means but its shape resembled that of an animal.

Jaehwang didn’t even know where this tattoo came from. It just showed one day out of nowhere but he knew that he shared the same tattoo with his father who had the same symbol on his chest, which was only was bigger.

Jaehwang woke up the next day at dawn and after a morning workout he did a little more cleaning. Morning workouts always start with some light jogging. The sun hasn’t even come out yet but he saw others running on the course as well.

He would always only run half of the course with his father. They would spend time walking on the paths and practicing archery.

“Huu… Huu…”

He stopped to catch his breath after he reached his goal. He took a break at his favorite place to take look at the sunrise on top of a giant rock. Two black rocks showed up from the direction of the Korean river. They weren’t just any plain black rocks, they had a shiny and smooth surface with glittery silver specks just like the milky way.

The sun started to rise as breathed heavily in exhausted trying recover from his early morning workout. After tirelessly running, He did a simple and easy breathing technique that his dad taught to him when he was young. He could not do it correctly at that time when he was 9 so he just would just mimic his dad. It was another happy memory that he and his father shared.

After taking a break for some time, he opened his eyes and saw the sun rising right in front of him. Jaehwang used that as a cue to get up from his sitting spot and start running once again.

He finished his morning run and went back inside the cabin. He cleaned the shrine and his ancestor’s ancestral tablets.

“Our ancestors have done great during all those years.”

He did a deep bow towards the ancestral tablets on the shrine and closed the eyes of the tablets one by one. The tablets on the shrine were originally from Yanggang-do Province of North Korea. An independence movement happened during the Japanese colonial era in Manchuria and because of his ancestors, the leader’s surprise attacks had decreased and a 325 definite war broke out. The ancestral tablets and the family’s treasures were all packed, sent away and they weren’t able to get some of them back.

After that, the tablets slowly closed their eyes until Jaehwang finally picked them up. They were skillfully hidden behind the building and Jaehwang had to dig them out of concrete.

Snap… Piing…

Jaehwang went through the dark hallway and walked down the basement stairs with care. He then turned on the lights.

To the Mountains Again…2, The end.