My Younger Siblings Are the Greatest Masters in the World - Chapter 1

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

1.

Seol Mujin’s face was so mangled it was hard to recognize.

Having joined the Performance Troupe at age three, he was accustomed to beatings—the days he wasn’t hit over the past ten years could be counted on one hand.

Even so, that day was the worst.

Oh Bangdong, the Performance Troupe leader, leaned against a tent pole and met Seol Mujin’s eyes at the same level.

“I’ll ask you one last time. Will you do as you’re told from now on?”

The children of similar age sitting around them with frightened faces hoped for a ‘yes’ to come from Seol Mujin’s mouth.

But Seol Mujin betrayed their expectations.

“No. I won’t do bad things anymore.”

Oh Bangdong’s fist slammed into Seol Mujin’s already swollen and split face once more.

Seol Mujin, his head striking the pole behind him, collapsed forward.

Whether unconscious or dead, Seol Mujin didn’t move a muscle.

“Donggu!”

Wang Donggu, who had been standing blankly in one corner of the tent, limped over.

“Take this bastard and bury him.”

Wang Donggu, wearing a hat pulled low to cover even his ears, wordlessly brought an A-frame Carrier and loaded Seol Mujin onto it.

It was a day when the bitter wind was particularly sharp.

Wang Donggu covered Seol Mujin with a Straw Mat and left the Village, limping up the hill step by step.

Leaving the path people could travel, Wang Donggu continued struggling up the mountainside.

His steps were unhurried, taking brief rests when tired.

When the white breath he exhaled drifted backward, the Straw Mat stirred.

Wang Donggu spoke like a monologue as he stepped over a small rock.

“Your life is tenacious too.”

Seol Mujin lifted the Straw Mat and looked at the swaying sky passing by.

“Uncle, where are we going?”

“To bury you.”

He said it as casually as if answering ‘going for a walk.’

“I guess the troupe leader wasn’t really a father after all. Just like the parents who abandoned me.”

Seol Mujin, heading to his burial, was equally emotionless.

“Why are you acting like this is suddenly new? You’ve been doing what the leader told you to do just fine until now.”

Thievery when it was Thievery, Pickpocketing when it was Pickpocketing, Assault when it was Assault. Oh Bangdong had made them do every bad deed except murder.

He picked up children, taught them Performance Arts, and used them for such purposes.

“There was an old man. An old man I pickpocketed. It was three hundred coins, and I even got praised by the troupe leader father. The next day I saw that old man at the Market. He was sitting on the ground begging, and the money I pickpocketed from him was for his grandson’s medical treatment. He was trying to make up that lost money through begging… How could he possibly gather three hundred coins by begging? Right?”

“There are countless pitiful people in this world. You’re one of them too.”

“But pitiful people shouldn’t make other people pitiful. How many pitiful people must have been created because of all the bad things I did over five years?”

“Did you feel pangs of conscience or something?”

“Food tastes like sand and when I wake up from sleep, it’s hard to breathe. I was so tormented that I told the troupe leader father about it.”

“Did you think the leader would say ‘okay’ and let you go?”

“I didn’t know you’d kill me like this.”

“If you go back now and beg for forgiveness, the leader might spare you.”

“What for? You could just spare me yourself, mister.”

Wang Donggu’s steps came to a halt.

They stood before the massive Guardian Tree, adorned with dangling red, blue, and white cloth strips, so enormous that ten grown men would barely be able to touch fingertips if they encircled it.

Wang Donggu set down the A-frame carrier.

Ugh—! Seol Mujin groaned as he raised his upper body, but didn’t get down from the carrier.

Wang Donggu grabbed the axe hanging beside the carrier.

The Guardian Tree bore several scars.

Wang Donggu pressed the axe blade against each of those scars.

The marks that fit perfectly indicated how many times Wang Donggu had come to this place.

“Do you remember the children who disappeared before?”

“There were four of them. They said they ran away.”

“They ran away, alright. To the afterlife.”

“You brought them here and killed them, mister?”

Wang Donggu held up the axe.

It was a well-sharpened axe with not a single nick in its blade.

“There was hardly any pain.”

“Why did you kill them?”

“Because the leader ordered me to. I had to bring back their ears as proof.”

Seol Mujin touched his own ear.

Some grandmother had once said his thick ears meant he’d have good fortune, but that was bullshit.

“Do you cut off the ears now, or after you kill me?”

“After I kill you.”

“That’s a relief.”

It was a surreal conversation.

Wang Donggu slipped his hands under Seol Mujin’s armpits and lifted him up.

Propping him against the Guardian Tree looked like setting up firewood.

The axe handle Wang Donggu gripped was worn smooth from countless hands.

Seol Mujin asked Wang Donggu, who held the axe.

“Should I keep my eyes open, or close them?”

“Never seen anyone die with their eyes open.”

After thinking for a moment, Seol Mujin closed his eyes.

He considered running, but it would be a futile struggle.

In these mountains, with this body, he’d be caught before taking three steps.

He heard the sound of Wang Donggu’s clothes rustling as he moved.

With his eyes closed, he could picture Wang Donggu raising the axe high.

Whoosh—! Thunk!

A dull sound rang out above his shoulder, right below his ear.

When he opened his eyes and shifted his gaze to the left, the axe blade loomed large.

Seol Mujin moved his eyes again to look at Wang Donggu.

Wang Donggu, leaning on his axe like a walking stick, asked.

“Do you remember the hat I’m wearing now?”

“That’s the one I gave you on a really cold day a few years ago.”

“It was the first gift I’d ever received in my life, and I haven’t received one since.”

“You wore it even during the hot summer, didn’t you?”

“I got heat rash on my head because of it.”

Wang Donggu hung the axe on his A-frame Carrier.

“You’re not going to kill me?”

“I can’t kill someone who gave me a gift.”

Sometimes, very rarely, trivial things can save a life.

Seol Mujin asked Wang Donggu as he shouldered his A-frame Carrier.

“What about my ear?”

After asking, he regretted it, thinking ‘Should I not have asked?’

Wang Donggu lifted the ear flap of his hat and put his hand inside.

When his hand came out again, it was holding an ear.

“It’s fake.”

“As expected from the Performance Troupe! But it looks different from mine.”

“The troupe leader won’t look closely anyway.”

Wang Donggu gave his advice as he walked away.

“Go as far from this place as possible. My life is on the line too.”

The two men parted ways without saying thanks or making a show of it.

He would never see Wang Donggu again, who quickly disappeared into the pathless forest.

Finally, he felt the reality of having narrowly escaped death.

Seol Mujin let out a long sigh and leaned against a tree.

“Ah shit, I pissed myself.”

He was lifting his damp pants when he stopped and looked at the distant forest.

Suddenly he felt lost.

He had been with the Performance Troupe since his earliest memories, and Oh Bangdong had always decided what he should do.

But now, for the first time in his life, he had to find his own path.

“I should start by praying to the village guardian spirit.”

Though he had never prayed before, he remembered seeing it done, so Seol Mujin put his hands together and walked around the tree.

But he had to stop before completing even one full circle.

He saw a large basket crudely made by twisting straw rope.

Seol Mujin’s eyes widened as he slowly approached and checked the contents of the basket.

“What is this?”

The thing wiggling its tiny hands and feet was a newborn baby.

And there were three of them!

Seol Mujin spoke to the tree.

“I never asked for children, you know?”

There must be countless women coming to the Guardian Tree to pray for children, so why give babies to a twelve-year-old kid!

“It can’t be for me. The Guardian Spirit wouldn’t make such a mistake.”

He turned around and moved away from the basket.

He had only taken five steps.

“Sigh—! What kind of babies don’t even cry.”

He went back and crouched down in front of the basket again.

“Kids, try crying. That way if someone passes by nearby, they’ll pick you up.”

The sun had already begun to set behind the western mountains, so it didn’t seem like anyone would come here today.

If left like this, they would freeze to death or become food for wild beasts.

Or freeze to death and then become food for wild beasts.

Seol Mujin complained to the Guardian Tree.

“Living alone is already tough enough, so what am I supposed to do if you give me three big burdens like this? Really, no compassion at all.”

He couldn’t abandon them.

He had been abandoned by birth parents whose faces he didn’t even know, and then abandoned again by someone he had considered like a father for ten years.

Knowing the misery of being abandoned, Seol Mujin couldn’t bring himself to abandon the children.

Especially since leaving them here would mean abandoning them to die, which was even more unthinkable.

“I’ll somehow keep you all alive. I’ll never abandon you.”

***

Shimyang’s Wife sat on the wooden porch, holding babies on both sides while nursing them.

They were sucking vigorously, apparently having been quite hungry.

“Tsk tsk tsk… You’re all suffering, but the eldest will have the hardest time.”

Shimyang’s Wife turned her gaze to the eldest, Seol Mujin.

She had told him to just leave it be, but he insisted he had to earn his keep for the babies’ nursing, and was chopping firewood in one corner of the courtyard.

Though he was only twelve years old, his skill with the axe was quite impressive.

His speed at chopping firewood was no less than Janghan’s.

Fortunately, she had plenty of milk and after feeding the triplets their fill, Shimyang’s Wife went to the kitchen to prepare a meal.

In the meantime, Seol Mujin had chopped quite a large amount of firewood and straightened his back.

“Come here and eat. Drink some cold water first.”

“Just nursing the babies is already more than enough…”

He was a child who possessed both shame and manners, which made her heart ache even more.

“The food isn’t much. Our household isn’t well-off either.”

Most common people lived such impoverished lives that their goal was simply not to starve to death this winter.

“I will eat well.”

Seol Mujin ate well but wasn’t greedy about it.

Shimyang’s Wife looked at the firewood piled in the courtyard and lamented her fate.

“You’re better than that rice-waster in our house.”

She was talking about her husband, who was into gambling, womanizing, and assault—there was no garbage like that garbage.

“If that bastard would just drop dead somewhere, maybe my fortune would change.”

Those words somehow didn’t sound like a joke.

Just then, the brushwood gate swung open and a man in his mid-thirties entered.

The tall, gaunt man frowned the moment he saw Seol Mujin.

“Who’s this little bastard eating food in my house?”

When the flustered Shimyang’s Wife explained the situation, the man exploded in anger.

“You could chop that damn firewood yourself! Lounging around the house all day doing nothing! I should just—!”

Just seeing how Shimyang’s Wife cowered showed she had been beaten many times before.

The only way Shimyang’s Wife might avoid getting hit was if Seol Mujin quickly left.

So Seol Mujin, having only half-finished his bowl, stood up.

“I’ll be going now. Thank you.”

Seol Mujin bowed to Shimyang’s Wife, shouldered the basket with the children, and crossed the courtyard.

“Hey!”

He turned his head at the man’s call.

“Aren’t you going to greet me?”

If only he could, he wanted to break the man’s arms so he could never hit Shimyang’s Wife again.

Being powerless was heartbreaking and sad at times like this.

Seol Mujin nodded his head only because of Shimyang’s Wife.

As Seol Mujin tried to leave, the man muttered behind him, “Look at that bastard’s pathetic excuse for a greeting.”

Seomun County was such a small county that there seemed to be no place for Seol Mujin and the triplets to rely on.

All twelve counties they had passed through so far had been the same.

“We need to go to a big city.”

They had barely survived for two months relying on people’s sympathy, but they couldn’t live as wanderers forever.

Seol Mujin’s weary steps turned onto a mountain path.

His steps stopped as he was slowly climbing the winding pass, blocked by two men ahead.

One of the men had a familiar face.

Shimyang’s Husband. That parasite he had wished would just die.

“How about it?”

The husband asked a cryptic short question to the man standing beside him.

The bear-like giant of a man let out a sinister laugh.

“Pretty little thing.”

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————