The Gate That Won't Close

Jang Wi laid a hand on the baby's forehead as well.

"A fever, all right. Not a high one, mind... but if it keeps on like this, you'd best be showin' her to Physician Heo." As he spoke, he loosened the swaddling cloth, his brow creased with worry.

While he fussed, the baby's eyelids drifted slowly down. All that lively energy from moments before was gone as if it had never been — she looked utterly spent.

And come to think of it, this wasn't the first time...

The memory surfaced unbidden, and Sowol's eyes went wide. The day after the village chief had floated up into the empty air, the baby hadn't woken until the sun stood high past noon. On the night she'd lifted the chopsticks, she'd sunk into an unusually deep sleep. And today — the very moment he'd untied that knot, her strength had drained away.

So this was no power that came free of charge. Every use might be quietly sapping the child's vitality.

As Sowol's face turned grave, Jang Wi spoke up for the others.

"Let's call it a day, boys. Only once we're out of your hair can Brother Yeon look after the little one properly."

The hunters, who had been hovering uneasily at the edge of things, promptly gathered themselves and rose.

"Fine meal, innkeeper. We'll come again."

"That somyeon broth is somethin' else. You'll sell plenty of it, I reckon."

"Take good care of that baby now. She'll come through just fine."

"Get home safe, all of you."

Each man tossed a parting word over his shoulder as they filed out through the front gate.

The last one out was the man from the far end of the table. Halfway over the threshold, he paused and looked up at the doorframe.

"What's that talisman?"

"A charm a Taoist wrote up for me. Drives off ghosts."

"I see. First time I've seen those characters, so I figured I'd ask."

The man flashed an easy, affable grin, tipped his head in a nod, and trailed off after the others until he was gone from sight.

It was a curious thing for a hunter to say. To a man who couldn't read, every character would have been a first.

Sowol watched until the man's back had vanished down the road, then closed the gate and slid the bar home.

Late that night, Sowol sat alone in the main hall, the last of his guests long gone, and studied the cradle.

Shh. Shh.

Inside the cradle, the baby slept the picture of peace.

Over and over, he pressed a worried hand to her forehead. The little body was still warm, but the fever showed no sign of climbing any higher.

"Doesn't seem to be any kind of fever sickness, at least."

With the greatest care, Sowol uncurled the sleeping baby's tiny hand. Had he still carried internal energy of his own, he could at least have read her meridians — but that was beyond the Sowol of today.

Not that reading her meridians would have told him much. From the very start, he had known every way to end a life and not one way to save one.

What he needed was a physician versed in the martial arts... and no such person was to be found. Physician Heo was a fine doctor, but he knew nothing of inner energy. Beopgong might know someone who did — but that boozy monk hadn't shown so much as the tip of his nose.

"Beopgong, you son of a bitch. Never around when you're actually needed."

Grumbling, Sowol pressed a palm to his throbbing forehead.

It wasn't that no face at all came to mind. But she was already run off her feet just playing at family head, and dragging her out for something like this didn't sit right with him.

Just then — thud, thud, thud. Someone was knocking at the front gate.

Sowol held his breath by pure reflex. The man from the far end of the table that afternoon had flashed through his mind.

But as he crept toward the gate, a familiar presence reached him, and he let out a rueful chuckle at his own wariness.

"Big Brother, you up?"

They did say even a tiger came running the moment its name was spoken. He slid back the bar and opened the gate, and a woman in green robes beamed up at him.

"Thank goodness. You're still awake."

"You must be dead on your feet. What brings you out at this hour?"

"Put the kids to bed and stopped by for a minute. Big Brother, boil me some wonton soup."

It was Sohye — Sowol's one and only younger sister.

Snorting a quiet laugh, Sowol swung the gate wide. "All right. Come on in."

Lightly brushing the powdery snow from her hem, Sohye stepped over the threshold of the inn.

"Big Brother, what on earth did you get up to while I was gone, that there's talk of a ghost haunting your inn? What happened?"

"That rumor's spread that far already?"

"There isn't a corner of Sichuan the Tang Clan's ears can't reach. Big Brother — am I the head of the family or am I not?"

Murmuring to herself, she stepped into the main hall — and stopped dead. Eyes glazed with disbelief, she looked back and forth between Sowol and the cradle, and her pupils trembled ever so slightly.

"...Big Brother? Whose baby is that?"

"Not mine."

"Then whose is it?"

"Well..."

Sowol's mouth opened and shut awkwardly. It was a genuinely awkward question — there was no clean way to say whose child she was.

The longer he stalled, the thinner Sohye's eyes grew.

"The ghost story isn't the problem anymore. Big Brother, look me straight in the eye and tell me. This baby isn't really yours, is it?"

That suspicion-drenched grilling left Sowol feeling a little wronged.

"Sohye. Your big brother has never once set foot outside this inn."

Only then did relief loosen her expression.

"And here I thought you'd gone and married late behind my back — you scared me half to death. So why is there a baby in your inn?"

"Well, it's like this..."

And so Sowol began laying out the whole of it, piece by piece — how Beopgong had appeared without warning; how the baby's mother had died in the Murim Alliance's prison. He spared her nothing: that the child had been born with her Baihui acupoint open, and that she could float objects through the empty air.

By the time the story was done, Sohye looked ready to seize Beopgong on the spot and beat him within an inch of his life.

"Seriously! Has Master Beopgong actually lost his mind? How could anyone think of leaving a baby with you? And you're just as bad — who takes that on without a word?! Why didn't you tell me?!"

"I didn't exactly get a moment to..."

Sowol smiled sheepishly. There had been no need to pile fresh worries onto a sister already swamped with her duties as head of the family.

Only after she'd had her full shout did Sohye finally move toward the cradle.

"Aigoo, Big Brother, you're far too soft for your own good. How's a man your age supposed to raise a newborn all on his own..."

Still clucking and scolding, she turned the sleeping baby this way and that, examining her — and then her mouth snapped shut.

Sowol asked, tensing. "What is it?"

"...You've been taking good care of her?"

"Have I?"

"Mm. Not a raw spot on her bottom, not a patch of rash anywhere, and she's filled out just right."

Thrown by the unexpected answer, Sowol could only stare blankly at the baby. All this while, he'd assumed he was doing no more than keeping her fed — merely managing to keep her alive. Hearing someone else pronounce it good care left him with a strange, unnameable feeling.

"Raising a child is no small undertaking... You must have had a hard road of it, all by yourself."

"Hardly. It's one more mouth to feed, that's all."

Scratching his cheek in embarrassment, Sowol steered the talk elsewhere. "Sohye. Since you're here anyway, would you take the baby's pulse for me?"

"Why? Is something the matter with her?"

"I can't say for certain, but whenever she uses that power of hers, her body seems to wilt. Today she untied a sack knot, and she's been sleeping without a spark of energy ever since."

Sohye's expression turned serious. She gathered a single thread of internal energy into her fingertips and let it flow into the baby's meridians, and a jade-blue glow settled softly around the child's body.

"I don't see anything particularly wrong, but—"

The murmur died in her throat. Her eyes flew wide.

"Good heavens — her Baihui acupoint really is open."

At that very moment, the sleeping baby woke. Perhaps the blue-green energy wrapped around her body tickled — she squirmed her arms and legs, then opened her eyes, slowly.

But it lasted only a heartbeat. The golden light guttered out as quickly as it had come, and the teacup fell still — and in the same instant, the baby's body went utterly limp.

"Baby!"

Startled, Sowol swept her up into his arms. Sohye, too, seized the baby's wrist at once and poured her internal energy in.

And yet before that energy could so much as skim the baby's meridians, it rebounded and was flung back out.

"...?"

Frowning, Sohye laid a palm on the crown of the baby's head. As she traced the flow of qi, her face grew darker and darker.

"This is a problem."

"What do you mean? Is something wrong?"

"The qi she's taken in through her Baihui acupoint is raging around inside her body like a storm."

"Is that bad?"

At Sowol's question, Sohye nodded.

"It is. You know how it works, Big Brother — you take in only as much as you need and let the rest flow back out. But this child is still too young; she doesn't know how to open and close that door yet."

"So every time she uses her power..."

"The Natural Qi comes flooding in all at once. Far more than her little body can bear."

Sowol looked down at the baby cradled against his chest.

"So that's what raised the fever."

"Mm. She isn't worn out from running dry — she's sick from taking in too much."

"And if she keeps using it? What happens then?"

"If it goes on like this... her body won't hold out."

Silence settled over the hall. Nothing filled it but the thin, delicate sound of the baby breathing.

Sohye looked at the baby, then at Sowol, and back again. At last, she opened her mouth.