A year passed, and Hyeon learned that some lessons couldn't be taught—only lived through in pain.
Seven years old. A whole year spent mastering what I had already achieved. Consolidating. Perfecting. Running in circles like a chained dog that sees freedom at the end of its leash but can never reach it.
The First Breath had become. . . easy. Too easy. I was now holding sixty seconds. A full minute where my body operated at full capacity. Where my senses sharpened. Where the world slowed down just enough for me to see dangers coming and react to them.
Sixty seconds. For a seven-year-old kid, it was prodigious. Extraordinary. The kind of thing that would have made me a legend if anyone knew.
But for me—for whoever I had been in that past life—it was crap.
My body remembered. Not consciously. Not with clear images or narrative memories. But my muscles carried the echo of far greater power. The Sixth Breath. Perhaps even beyond.
Levels where Gi didn't just circulate. Where it exploded. Where the body surpassed its biological limits and touched something. . . more. Impossible.
And now, I was stuck here. At seven years old. With a child's body that refused to keep up. That protested at every attempt to push it beyond what it could bear.
It was like being a violin virtuoso trapped in a beginner's hands. I knew the music. I could feel how it was supposed to sound. But the fingers couldn't keep up. The strings wouldn't respond.
So I trained. Again. And again. And again.
The three forms had become instinctive. Rock. Water. Wind. I transitioned from one to the other without pause. Without thought. My body knew the rhythm. The dance. The flow.
Mansoo had introduced the fourth. The Lightning Form. But that one. . . that one was different. More complex. It required something the other three didn't demand.
The Second Breath.
. . .
"Lightning is the apex," Mansoo explained. We were in the barn. As always. The lantern cast our shadows on the walls like deformed giants. "The first three forms are foundations. Defense, adaptation, attack. But Lightning? Lightning is the synthesis."
He took his stance. Not Rock's. Not Water's or Wind's. Something between all three. A posture that seemed off-balance but that I knew was perfectly calibrated.
"It combines everything. Rock's stability for anchoring. Water's fluidity for dodging. Wind's explosiveness for striking. But instead of switching forms, you make them coexist. Simultaneously."
He moved. And it was. . . mesmerizing. His body stayed stable. Anchored. Yet fluid. Flowing. And when he struck, the stick split the air with a speed that produced an audible crack.
"That's why Lightning requires the Second Breath. Because running three circulation patterns at the same time... demands more Gi than the First Breath can provide."
He straightened up. Looked at me. "You're not ready. Your body still needs to grow. Your circuits need to develop naturally. In two years. Maybe three. Then you can attempt the breakthrough."
Two years. Three years. An eternity.
"But—"
"No." His voice was firm. Final. "I know what you're going to say. That your body remembers. That you can force it. That you've already done impossible things. All of that's true. But Hyeon?"
He placed a hand on my shoulder. Heavy.
"There's a difference between pushing your limits and breaking them. The First Breath—you reached it too early. It cost you. But you survived. The second? If you force it now... you might not survive."
I didn't answer. Because arguing was pointless. Mansoo had made his decision. And as long as he was watching me, I couldn't experiment.
But he couldn't watch me twenty-four hours a day.
. . .
Three weeks later. A night when the moon was hidden behind thick clouds. When the village slept deeply after a day of labor in the fields.
I slipped out of my futon. Silently. Mansoo and Eunbi were asleep. Minjun snored softly in his corner—that kid could sleep through the apocalypse.
I went out. Not toward the barn. Too risky. Mansoo was a light sleeper. He'd hear the door.
Toward the woods. Fifty meters from the house. Far enough that sounds wouldn't carry. Close enough to return quickly if needed.
The forest floor was covered with moss. Silent under my bare feet. The air smelled of pine resin and damp earth. No sound except the murmur of wind in the branches.
I found a clearing. Small. Just enough space to move. Took my stance.
Breathing. Slow. Deep. The GI entered. Familiar now. Like an old friend who always answered the call.
It descended toward my Danjeon. Accumulated. Swirled. Waited.
The First Breath activated. Easily. Effortlessly. My body lit up. My senses sharpened. The world took on that particular quality where everything seemed sharper. More real.
But I didn't stop there.
Mansoo had explained. The Second Breath wasn't just more Gi. It was a qualitative transformation. An expansion. The Danjeon didn't just contain more. It. . . compressed. Densified. Transformed the Gi into something purer. More powerful.
To get there, you had to push. Force the Danjeon to expand beyond its current capacity. Create pressure. Until something gave.
Either the Danjeon cracked. And then you died slowly in agony that lasted months.
Or it expanded. And then you reached the Second Breath.
Simple. Binary. Energetic Russian roulette.
I pushed.
The Gi in my Danjeon swirled faster. Denser. The pressure rose. Not painful. Not yet. Just. . . present. Like a bubble inflating in my chest.
More. I pushed harder.
The pressure intensified. Became uncomfortable. My muscles tensed automatically. My body knew something was wrong.
Ignore it. Continue.
I visualized. The Danjeon as a sphere. The Gi compressed inside like water under pressure. The walls are resisting. Holding. Refusing to yield.
Yield. Yield, damn it.
The pressure peaked. Something cracked. Not physically. Energetically. Like a dam beginning to fracture.
Yes. A little more. Almost—
The pain exploded.
Not like before. Not the familiar cramps or the manageable nausea. Something new. Terrible. Fundamental.
My Danjeon wasn't expanding. It was burning.
No. Worse. My circuits were burning. All of them at once. As if someone had injected acid into every meridian. Every path the Gi used to circulate was on fire.
I fell. My knees struck the ground. My hands sank into the damp moss. My mouth opened to scream, but no sound came out. Air refused to enter.
The Gi surged back. Violently. Not gently returning to my Danjeon. Exploding. Spreading everywhere it shouldn't be. Into my organs. Into my bones. Into spaces that weren't meant to contain raw energy.
My body convulsed. Muscles contracted. Relaxed. Contracted again. Uncontrollable spasms. Like I was a puppet whose strings someone was pulling at random.
Hot. Too hot. I felt like my blood was boiling. Like my skin would split open. Like something inside was trying to get out by tearing through everything in its path.
The phantom pains returned. All at once. The torn side. The pierced shoulder. The slashed cheek. Scars from a life I didn't remember, all awakened simultaneously. Screaming their presence.
And the void. That void in my chest. That absence where memories should have been. Faces. Names. It opened like a gaping wound. Reminded me of everything I had lost. Everything I would never find again.
I vomited. Violently. The evening meal came back up in an acidic jet that burned my throat. Then just bile. Then nothing. Just dry heaves twisting my stomach.
My eyes watered. Not from sadness. From pure pain. Tears flowed. Warm. Salty. Mingled with the sweat soaking my clothes.
And my nose. Warm. Wet. I touched it. My fingers came back red. Black in the darkness. But I knew. Blood. A lot of blood.
Move. You have to move. Get back. Before someone finds you.
But my body wouldn't respond. My legs were like lead. My arms trembled too much to support me. All I could do was stay there. On all fours. Drooling and bleeding and convulsing like a wounded animal.
Pathetic. You're pathetic. In your past life, you would have survived this. You would have forced the breakthrough. But now...
Now, I was just a seven-year-old kid who had overestimated his abilities. Who had believed that muscle memory and impatience were enough? Who had ignored all the warnings because he thought he knew better.
Idiot. Pretentious, suicidal idiot.
Darkness crept at the edges of my vision. Not tonight. Something deeper. Loss of consciousness. The body decided that staying awake was no longer an option.
No. Stay awake. If you pass out here...
But the choice wasn't mine.
The darkness closed in.
. . .
Hands. Warm. Rough. Shaking me.
"Hyeon. Hyeon, damn it, wake up."
Mansoo's voice. Tense. Panicked. Rare. He never panicked.
My eyes opened. With difficulty. Eyelids stuck with dried blood. The world was blurry. Distorted. Like seen through murky water.
Mansoo's face above me. Pale. His eyes were wide. His hands on my chest. Feeling. Searching. Assessing the damage.
"What did you do?" His voice was low. Dangerous. "What the hell did you do?"
I tried to speak. My mouth moved. No sound came out. My throat was too dry. Too burned.
Mansoo swore. A stream of words I'd never heard him use. Then he lifted me. As if I weighed nothing. Carried me against his chest.
"Hold on. Just. . . hold on."
He ran. I felt every step. Every impact resonated through my battered body. Every movement awakened the pain that had begun to fade.
The house. The door. The warmth inside.
"Eunbi. Wake up."
Noises. Hurried footsteps. Eunbi's voice. High-pitched. Terrified.
"What. . . oh my god. Hyeon!"
"Don't ask questions. Not now. Bring water. Clothes. The herbs you use for fevers."
She didn't argue. Disappeared. Came back with what Mansoo had asked for.
He set me down on my futon. Cleaned my face. The blood. The sweat. The bile dried at the corner of my mouth.
"You forced the Second Breath," he said. Not a question. A statement. "I told you. . . I damn well told you not to—"
He cut himself off. Took a deep breath. He forced himself to calm down.
"How long were you unconscious?"
"I. . . don't know." My voice was a rough whisper. Broken.
"Your circuits are damaged. Not ruptured. But close. Too close." His hands probed my chest. My abdomen. Stopped on my Danjeon. "And your Danjeon... there are micro-fissures. Not enough to break it completely. But enough to leak."
Leak. Gi is slowly escaping. Constantly. Like a bucket with holes.
"Am I I.. . . going to die?"
"No." His voice was firm. "No, you're not going to die. Because you're young. Because your body can still heal. But Hyeon?"
He looked me straight in the eyes.
"You won't touch the Breath for months. Months. Do you. hear me? No training. No circulation. Nothing. Your Danjeon needs to repair itself. Your circuits need to heal. If you force it before. . . the fissures will widen. And then yes. You'll die."
. . .
The following days were. . . difficult.
The pain didn't go away. It settled in. Took up residence in my body like a permanent tenant. Every movement awakened something. A damaged circuit. A torn meridian. A protesting muscle.
The phantom pains came back in waves. Without warning. The side that burned. The shoulder that pulsed. The cheek that throbbed. As if my body decided to remind me of every wound I had suffered in a life I didn't remember.
Eunbi didn't understand. How could she? She treated me with herbs. Broths. Prayers. Thought it was an illness. An unexplained fever.
Mansoo knew. But said nothing. Just kept checking regularly. Probing my Danjeon. Assessing the healing.
"It's progressing," he said after a week. "Slowly. But it's progressing."
Minjun came to see me. Sat at the edge of the futon. Four years old now. Old enough to understand that his big brother was sick. Not old enough to understand why.
"Is Hyeon-hyung going to get better?" he asked. His eyes are round. Worried.
"Yes."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
A lie. I didn't know. Mansoo said yes. But Mansoo wasn't omniscient. The fissures might not heal. The circuits might remain damaged. My Danjeon might leak forever.
But Minjun deserved a comforting lie. So I lied.
. . .
Two weeks. Three. Four.
The pain faded. Gradually. Became manageable. I could walk without grimacing. Sit without my chest protesting. Eat without my stomach rebelling.
Mansoo checked. Again. And again.
"The fissures are closing," he said after a month. "Slowly. But they're closing. You were lucky."
Lucky. A generous word for "I almost killed myself through stupid impatience."
"In three months," he continued, "you can start again. Slowly. Very slowly. We'll go back to the beginning. The basic forms. Without active circulation. Just the physical movements. Let your body find its memory again without forcing the Gi."
Three months. Twelve weeks without progression. Without real training.
"I'm sorry," I said. Because it was true. Because I'd been an idiot. And Mansoo had to pick me up. Again.
"Don't be sorry." He placed a hand on my head. "Be smart. The difference between a dead warrior and a living one? The living one learned when to stop."
He stood up. Headed for the door. Stopped.
"Patience isn't a weakness," he said without turning around. "It's a weapon. You just learned why."
. . .
That night, lying in my futon, I felt my Danjeon. Delicately. Gently.
The fissures were there. Invisible. But I could feel them. Like scars inside me. Permanent reminders of my stupidity.
The GI was leaking. Slowly. One drop at a time. Not enough to kill me. But enough that I could feel that constant loss. That energetic hemorrhage.
It would heal. Mansoo had said so. In three months. Maybe six.
But the lesson was learned.
Some things couldn't be forced. Some walls didn't yield to brute pressure. Some limits had to be respected.
Even for someone who carried the scars of a warrior's life in a child's body.
. . .
"Patience isn't a weakness," Mansoo said. "It's a weapon. You just learned why."