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laikaflash · 3 months ago

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Daughter of the Bladed Rod

(For the March 2025 SC Community Prompt. I swear I don't mean to send these in at the last minute every time. Didn't help that this one got a bit lengthy. Mi-na's off-screen mother and brother don't have canon names, so I took some liberties.)

Out of all her father’s blades, it was the ancestral woldo Scarlet Thunder that Mi-na longed to master. It was the pride of Seong Han-myeong’s collection, seldom used to teach in his dojang, but well-kept as an heirloom. From the moment she could lift it, straining at first, she held up the curved blade toward the sky in triumph. Mi-na squinted in the noon sunlight glinting off steel. Her little brother watched her attempt a tentative swing over the ground, burbling with excitement.

“Let me try it!” he said.

“No,” Mi-na said firmly. “It’s heavy. And Father would kill you if you dropped it.”

“No, he wouldn’t!” He crossed his arms and pouted. “Father said it’ll be mine!”

Mi-na gritted her teeth. Then came the creak of the inner courtyard gate. Jae-yeong whipped his head behind his shoulder and froze in wide-eyed panic. Before she could turn back to the armory, Han-myeong came running. She froze, clutching at the woldo with its blade parallel to the ground.

“Give that back at once!” Han-myeong commanded furiously. At his hip was a scabbarded Chinese sword. He had to have just come back from the dojang.

Reluctantly, Mi-na surrendered the woldo. Her heart sank as he held Scarlet Thunder upright and scowled.

“I told you to stay out of the armory.”

“But Father,” Mi-na said, “I was only—”

“This is not a toy, and certainly not for little girls. Back into the house with the both of you.”

Mi-na and Jae-yeong slinked beside him. In such moods, their father had a way of making a walk back to the anchae feel like it could go on for miles. Their mother was bound to give them an earful on top of that.

“Father, may I try it?” Jae-yeong ventured.

“When you’re older and strong enough,” Han-myeong grumbled. “And no sooner.”

Mi-na hung her head, kicking a stray pebble aside. She was the eldest and as much of a Seong as her brother, but only he was promised training as a warrior. The cold comfort that Jae-yeong was only six years old would not last. Only he would become Father’s pupil, if she were to have no other brothers. When the time came, the dojang and Scarlet Thunder would be his. That, Mi-na hated to imagine, would perhaps happen after a husband had been chosen for her.

When Han-myeong herded them into the anchae, their mother Ji-won’s expression echoed his disappointment. “I caught them playing with my woldo again,” he told her.

Ji-won touched his shoulder. “Dear, please leave them to me. You don’t want one of your students to come knocking again.”

“Very well.” Han-myeong said with a resigned sigh. “I’d better head back to the dojang.”

Mi-na suppressed a smirk at the memory of one of her father’s students, Hwang Seong-gyeong, stopping him cold in the midst of his scolding for sneaking into the dojang. A lad of seventeen, he was big enough that she had thought him to be already grown up.

As he shut the door behind him, Ji-won took Mi-na aside and knelt down. “Mi-na, you know you’re not supposed to play with—”

“I wasn’t playing! I was trying it out. Father never lets me do that.”

Ji-won shook her head. “Mi-na, it’s not something for young ladies to fool around with. And don’t let Jae-yeong play with blades, either. Understood?”

“Yes, Mother,” Mi-na acquiesced.

She had followed her father around before Jae-yeong took his first steps, even into the sarangchae, the outer quarter. It was there that Hwang lived since the loss of his parents. Mi-na had never been content to play with dolls. Sometimes, she ended up fighting Jae-yeong for one of his wooden toy swords. But Scarlet Thunder had sparked in her a fascination that no amount of kitchen chores could vanquish. Only once, in a fit of anger, had Han-myeong entertained the idea of forbidding her from the dojang altogether, until Ji-won told him that Mi-na would almost certainly sneak into it more often.

Late in gray winter, Jae-yeong fell ill with persistent coughing fits. The boy had been virtually confined to his bed, as per the physician’s advice. Despite the medicine, he grew weaker and his cough began to make his little body shake. Ji-won stayed longer by his bedside. Han-myeong could not pass by without casting an anxious eye on him.

Mi-na, too, became afraid. She caught her parents’ fears through whispers in the evenings. She could hear it even in the tremble of her father’s voice. That something contagious had been going through town. Something that made her mother feel her forehead before she went to sleep.

“He’ll get better, won’t he?” Mi-na asked her one night.

Ji-won only hugged her and wept. Mi-na, resting her head on her shoulder, had never before seen her so exhausted. Then she heard Jae-yeong coughing again and wished that she had not asked. As her mother left, she stifled a cough.

A few nights later, Mi-na found her parents huddled by Jae-yeong’s bed. Jae-yeong’s body was completely still. Ji-won let out a wail that chilled her while Han-myeong covered him with a white shroud.

Days after the burial, Ji-won’s cough worsened. When she grew too weak to leave her bed, Han-myeong could not even bring himself to stop Mi-na from following him and Hwang into the dojang.

The rest of her father’s students hardly minded Mi-na. It had not gone unnoticed how his son’s death and his wife’s illness had worn on him. His lessons and, at times, his temper had been shorter. Even so, Mi-na had been thrilled to watch him teach sword moves. She recounted the sparring sessions to her mother with great enthusiasm.

“And then Hwang blocked Father’s sword, like this!” Mi-na mimicked a defensive stance, swung a wooden toy sword, and made a sudden stop. “Clang! Then he pushed him toward the wall. I thought Father would drop his sword, but he yielded and bowed.”

Ji-won smiled wanly. “You are indeed a Seong.”

Mi-na felt a rush of pride. “I just wish Jae-yeong could’ve seen that.”

Ji-won’s eyes softened. Suddenly she turned over, holding back another coughing fit in vain. Mi-na quickly fled the room. As the coughs echoed through the anchae, she sat hiding her face in her hands. When Hwang once told her that his parents had been killed by robbers, the grief seemed unimaginable to her. Now she was sure she understood. For Hwang, it had happened too fast to prevent, and all that had been done for her brother and mother was to no avail.

On the morning Ji-won died, Han-myeong hugged Mi-na to his chest. In the moments before he spoke, she had never felt so small.

“I’m so sorry, Mi-na,” he whispered. “We did everything we could…”

She buried her face in his robe and wailed. And for the first time, she heard her father sobbing.

For the duration of the funeral, Mi-na hardly left her father’s side. Though Han-myeong maintained a stoic façade, his hopes of raising a son to succeed him had already crumbled. He silently prayed that whichever evil spirits had plagued his house would leave him and Mi-na unharmed. In time, he would need an heir, but in his heart, he could not bear to bury another child.

Lessons resumed with the arrival of spring. Not content with merely watching them or imitating woldo strikes with sticks, Mi-na followed her father to the armory. Han-myeong at first said nothing after unlocking it, but he watched her closely as she admired his collection of weapons. On a rack by the curved blades, he laid a long and straight sword.

“That one is Blue Storm,” he told her. “And this curved one with the red hilt is White Storm. Both of these have been in the family for generations.”

Mi-na pointed toward the two woldo. Next to Scarlet Thunder was a green-handled one. “What about that green one at the end?”

“Ah, that’s Emerald Nimbus. A gift from King Seonjo himself.” He gazed upon it with reverence. “That was about a month before you were born.”

“Wow,” Mi-na breathed, but her eyes fell on Scarlet Thunder, perfectly within reach. Her father’s voice caught her off-guard.

“You still want to try Scarlet Thunder?” he asked.

“Yes,” Mi-na said without hesitation.

Han-myeong raised an eyebrow. “Move aside,” he said. He took Scarlet Thunder and led her out and onto the grass. Mi-na could hardly stand still, almost giddy at the idea.

“Stand straight!” Han-myeong barked.

Mi-na quickly did so.

“Now, before you do anything, I want you to feel how heavy this blade is.”

“Father, I know.”

With a nod, he carefully placed the woldo into her waiting hands and gave her a wide berth. “Not bad. Keep your left hand closer to the blade, and your right hand closer to the back. That way, you can control it. If that doesn’t work for you, try it the other way around.”

Mi-na tilted the blade upward, then thrust it forward. She yelped as the weight of it jerked her off-balance, but in a few steps, she regained her footing.

“Careful,” Han-myeong warned. “You can do worse than drop it in the dirt, you know.”

“You make this look so much easier!”

After several experimental swipes, Mi-na tried to hold the blade high over her shoulder, nearly straining to keep it steady. Holding it up against her shoulder, it was daunting to see the blade high above her head, and yet the challenge of it beckoned to her. With the blade against the clear blue sky, she felt ready to train.

Han-myeong looked at her proudly. “You’ll grow into it.”

“I hope so!”

“Well, then. I’d say your training has already started.”

With her head held high, Mi-na carried Scarlet Thunder into the Seong Dojang and her lessons continued in earnest.

#soul calibur #soulcalibur #seong mi-na #seong han-myeong #hwang seong-gyeong #i may have dwelt on some things longer than i needed to but shh! it's thematic

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