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He gets a body with a history of violence.
It's not something he notices immediately when hunger and weakness bring his grievances to the forefront; when he was in a hurry to get back, in a hurry to get home to Huashan; when he was just running and rushing, not stopping in cities for real.
The truth was that this body, given to him by someone's joke or intent, had its own secrets.
They were scars: small and old; too heavy to have been received by accident; too obvious to make themselves known to the world, but weakened by the whiteness of time. They are burns, they are cuts, they are broken bones aching for rain, they are something like teeth marks. This is what Cheong Myeong knew, but he never added these places to the ridiculous stories when asked — he didn't think it was fair to the child whose body he'd stolen.
But the clearest thing was the touching.
Cheong Myeong, Plum Blossom Sword Saint, was tactile enough to grab onto his sahyoung no matter how old he was; to hold onto his sajae's shoulders when they were drinking; to pull Tang Bo's cheek when he was acting like the bigger kid of the two of them.
The body of this child, whose name he doesn't even know, knew an evil that no child should know.
It's a fear that doesn't belong to him when third generation kids try to touch his shoulder and he dodges (otherwise — he'd break their arms); it's cold when he sits side by side with people above him, when someone towers over him, and Cheong Myeong either hits those people or kneels down (sometimes, in the case of the Huashan elders, where the head of finance wants to rub his cheeks and the sect leader wants to stroke his head, he takes a smooth step back; sometimes, he does it too abruptly and pulls a smile to smooth the edges when talking about something important or useless; it bothers people, he knows it, but he can't help it); it's the bitterness when Yu Iseol or Tang Soso's hands touch him that makes him want to peel off his skin.
They're dreams that don't belong to him, where there are no faces, but there are hands-hands-hands on his body that remember pain.
Cheong Myeong hates it.
Rage is what characterizes him when he thinks about all this; when he feels the phantoms of those hands not where he would ever want them to be (he might be begging his sahyong to find the boy, the owner of this body, to protect this child to whom the world has been unnecessarily cruel); when his children, those sweet naive children, only want a little of his affection, but the only thing they get from him — rejection.
And Cheong Myeong is sure he hasn't gone unnoticed after years; he's sure everyone has their own theory about it (his favorite is the one where his touch can heal, but he'd rather they suffer through training; brats). He could see their unease from across the region by the way they tense up if someone not of their clan tries to be fraternal; maybe his children just feel he's one step away from being killed, who knows. Not to mention that he had to teach the children with a stick (not to touch any of them; in the beginning, even the thought of touching someone was repulsive).
Even more so, he wouldn't have been able to answer any of the kids' questions even if he knew the answers.
Cheong Myeong doesn't think the owner of this body would have anything to say about why he'd rather jump off a mountain than shake someone's hand. (Those damn nonexistent hands on his thighs, on his face as he sits in lotus pose; Cheong Myeong wants to kill, but instead goes to try to wash himself of something he hasn't felt himself, which he guesses; and even his inner sahyeong doesn't call him to discretion this time.) An unfortunate child who has known no good from anyone. Cheong Myeong wants to kill someone very badly.
But he can't even bear to see other eyes on him without wanting to break someone's bones. Cheong Myeongis used to the stares in his direction, he knows that people were attracted to his strength and looks in his first life; even now, a hundred years later, he can catch something between interest, greed, and lust in those stares. And he wants to tear those people's eyes out, especially at a time when this body hasn't even grown to the age of twenty.
Cheong Myeong thinks he might have bared his teeth once or twice, with the express intention of clawing at throat, if it weren't for his stupid kids keeping him from doing totally inappropriate things (in their opinion, of course; Cheong Myeong doesn't think the deaths of those who covet his young body of seventeen years would even affect his sleep). They're good kids, he knows that, but they touch him, and this body's legs want to run away, and Cheong Myeong wants to destroy something because of it. Preferably all the people this tormented child was afraid of.
Maybe sometimes the heavens hear him.
One day, somewhere between their sect and the shadow sect, somewhere after he had broken a few insolent children's bones and left them chewing the ground with a little more force than they should have, to relieve some of his undying anger, he meets a man in a town he had managed to forget about. A place not so far from where he first opened his eyes, seeing in the reflection a skinny face he couldn't recognize. He didn't think then that there could have been anyone here who knew this child (someone he should have strangled with mangled, thin hands that couldn't stop shaking if someone tried to take his hand).
It all starts with a name that doesn't belong to him, that he doesn't recognize:
"Cho Sam!" he hears among the crowd, but pays no attention; none of their group looks back at it, scattering around the city market, between shopping, finding lodging and food.
Cheong Myeong ignores all of this, in favor of deftly maneuvering through the crowd, dodging and avoiding contact.
But then, from behind, someone's hand rests on his shoulder; he lets this stranger call out to him, even though he doesn't want to; and— Cheong Myeong is struck with a shiver so strong he hasn't felt in a very long time.
"Is that any way to greet an older brother?" voice says, and he sees a face remarkably like his own, a little older, with wrinkles between the creases of his brow and dark eyes. "It's been a long time since I've seen you, Cho Sam", and that hand clutches at his shoulder.
Cheong Myeong can't even take a breath, realizing that if he does, he won't be able to stop himself from chopping that bastard's head off; how dare he, how dare that thing do this to his little brother, how—
Cheong Myeong hates this man with the strength he thought he had reserved only for the Heavenly Demon.
He's nearly massacring himself in the middle of a busy city when that damn gaze slides over him and this body, this no longer weak and frail body, shrinks; and there's nothing Cheong Myeong wants right now, like to hug this scared child, like to tell him that no one will ever dare to touch him again, that everything will be okay; but this child — Cho Sam, his name was Cho Sam — is dead, and his tormentors are not, and this drives him into a rage that would blacken the heavens.
Then, in an instant, his sago, Yu Isoel, another kid who also gets too many stares without ever realizing it, approaches them.
"Cheong Myeong?" she asks, not too talkative, with squinted eyes and a tilt of her head; Cheon Myung knows this without turning around.
Perhaps he should have shaken off the bastard's hand and told him he'd mistaken his identity to come after him in the night; perhaps he should have been smarter, as he's often told himself over the years; perhaps he was holding back too much.
This creature in the guise of a man, the one who dared to call himself Cho Sam's older brother, when this body remembers his sins, when he saw the marks of crime on the child's skin, when it took Cheong Myeong only a split second to realize, this bastard dares to look at his sago with the same gaze, and—
Cheong Myeong snaps.
It was so easy, so quick that no one could stop him; one moment they're standing on a busy street, the next moment there's — blood everywhere from ripping someone else's head off; his sword is too clean for such garbage. So easy it's almost laughable. He hears screams, ordinary people, his children, he feels Sago's hand when she moved too late to stop him (he wouldn't have let her stop himself anyway), strangely enough, this touch burns differently than previous times.
And Cheong Myeong is breathing.