Past Life Story

Your birth was recorded nowhere. You were no one's son, no one's daughter. You grew up in a small village in your earliest years, and at five your village was burned. Your parents died, and only you survived. A wanderer took you. He was an assassin. Your childhood was training. From dawn until night, you learned the arts of the sword and of concealment. How to kill a man, how to leave no trace, how to erase emotion. Your master said, "You are a shadow. A shadow has no name, no form." You never forgot this for the rest of your life. At thirteen you received your first mission. It was a small mission, but for the first time your hand was stained with blood. That night you could not sleep. Your master came and said, "I pray this once is the last. Yet there will be another mission. From then on, do not waver." From that day, you did not waver. By twenty you had become a first-class assassin. Your name was unknown, but your skill was known throughout the peninsula. Powerful men sought you in secret. To remove enemies, to keep secrets. You were on no one's side. Whether the mission was just or unjust, you did not distinguish. That was the way of the assassin. In your twenty-fifth year, you received a mission. To kill the son of a yangban household. You infiltrated his house and reached his room. Yet that day, for the first time, you hesitated. On the man's desk was a small drawing. His young sister had drawn it. You looked at that drawing and remembered your own childhood. You left without killing him. You had broken a mission. Your client tracked you, and from that day you became a fugitive. Your former companions hunted you. You hid in the mountains, and lived that way for a long time. In your thirtieth year, you settled in a small mountain village. You hid your identity and lived as a farmer. There you met a woman. That woman did not ask about your past. She only saw the calluses on your hands and smiled once. You lived together. It was an ordinary life, but for you it was the first peace you had ever known. In your thirty-fifth year, an old companion came searching for you. He had come to kill you. You lured him outside the village and fought your final duel on a mountain. You won, but you too suffered a great wound. When you returned to the village, your woman saw your wound but asked nothing. She only applied medicine each day. In your fortieth year, that old wound at last laid you upon the sickbed. Your woman tended you with the utmost devotion. On the last night, you held her hand and for the first time told your story. She listened to it all and said, "Whatever you were, to me, you are you." That night, for the first time in your life, you wept. At dawn the next day, you departed. Your final words were not "Only the shadow is my friend." Your final words were "Thank you, for being here." You were a shadow your whole life, but at the last you stood in the light. That any life can be redeemed by one person's love—you came to know at the very end.