BW C62

Chapter  62

“…….”

“…….”

Silence settled. The white-stew cooling between them moment by moment. With his gaze lowered, Hoeun traced the patterns carved on the scabbard. Then, as if recalling something, he let the tips of his brows fall and made a careful request.

“Ah—and if possible, um… n-next time, please don’t make it hurt quite so much.”

“…”

“I can’t be laid up for five days every time.”

He gave an awkward smile. In truth, he didn’t want the act at all, but he knew that could not be. So long as monsters did not vanish from this land, Taemuk would have to keep fighting. Then a day would come when he was hurt again, and then once more—this act would be needed.

He already feared that day, but believed he could adapt. Had he not adapted to fevers and chills. He had confidence in enduring pain.

Drawing a deep breath and letting it out, Hoeun calmed his nerves.

“You’re strange,” said Taemuk, staring at him without so much as a blink.

“Have I done something wrong again?”

Tension returned to Hoeun’s eyes. Taemuk set the sword down with a toss and spoke in a tone tinged with peevishness.

“What would you have done wrong.”

“…Sir?”

“There’s nothing you do wrong.”

“…”

“That’s what’s strange.”

“…”

Hoeun scraped the scabbard’s pattern with a nail. Strange, because he did nothing wrong. He didn’t know what it meant, but if he had done nothing wrong, then at least it wasn’t a scolding.

Just then, a flash glancing off the blade grazed Hoeun’s eyes. He aligned the mouth of the scabbard he’d been holding with the sword’s tip. As he moved to sheathe it, Taemuk snatched the scabbard from his hand and slid the blade home.

With the vanishing of that gleam, Hoeun’s shoulders loosened. Setting the sword down, Taemuk said,

“If I get hurt like that again, run.”

“Run? From you, General?”

“Yes. When I’m hurt, I’m not in my right mind. Not even human.”

“…”

“I’ve already had a taste of you—next time I might really tear you apart like a monster. Ointment and the like won’t do a thing for that.”

“…”

“So run. Go to Oh Gilsang or—anyone. Hide.”

“…”

“After a day or so, when the wounds are half-healed, I get better. You can come then.”

Hoeun listened seriously. Then, at that last bit, he couldn’t help a small laugh. “You can come then”—anyway, it was saying to come to him, which was funny, and pleasing. Even after hearing that just before, he might be torn like by a monster.

“I’ll see to that myself.”

He answered as he lifted his spoon. At that, Taemuk’s eyes scrunched with displeasure. He glared as if he disliked that Hoeun was fair-skinned, neat, upright, straight-backed, even decorous.

“Why are you so arrogant? Is it because you’re a yangban?”

“Perhaps so.”

Accustomed now to Taemuk’s harping on yangban, Hoeun, with a calm face, scooped a spoonful of porridge into his mouth.

“…”

Taemuk looked at him as if wondering how he ought to deal with this. Knowing that gaze, Hoeun still brazenly ate on—one spoon of porridge, one of broth—and still did not touch the meat. Seeing it, Taemuk furrowed his brow deeper. Hoeun, moving his spoon, spoke.

“Just now—what you said, General.”

“What did I say.”

“You said that when you’re hurt, you’re not in your right mind.”

“So.”

“Then—may I think that, that day, the way you treated me so harshly was because you’d lost your reason.”

“…”

“So—if you had been sound, you wouldn’t have treated me so harshly—may I think so?”

“…”

Taemuk was silent. His chest rose slowly with a breath in, then fell more slowly with the breath out. Hoeun took the silence as assent.

“That will do.”

A quiet smile touched his lips. He no longer needed Taemuk’s apology.

“You don’t think you’re a horror to me.”

“How did something like you become my guide.”

During the coupling, those words had hurt worse than the organ that tore him. Whatever Taemuk did to his body, it would heal in time. Having been ill all his life, Hoeun knew better than anyone that the body’s pain could not be forever.

But wounds to the heart are not bound by time. They may heal very slowly—or never at all.

If Taemuk had not been in earnest, though—the heart could return to before the wound, to when it did not exist. That was the privilege of a wound of the heart.

And Taemuk said he hadn’t been himself. And that he regretted that day.

Hoeun felt the wound in his heart heal moment by moment. Then, at last, it vanished without a trace. His face light, he set his spoon down. He shifted and changed his posture.

At that, Taemuk asked something out of the blue.

“What, want the sword?”

He must have thought Hoeun had changed his mind about revenge. Indeed, he even reached for the sword set beside him. If Hoeun agreed, he seemed ready to draw it at once. Hoeun chuckled and shook his head.

“No.”

Gathering his uncomfortable body, he knelt, straightened his back, and placed his hands on his thighs—proper seiza. His back and buttocks ached, but he bore it. Then, fixing Taemuk with a steady gaze, he began to apologize.

“You said I’d done nothing wrong, General—but that isn’t so. I did wrong.”

“What did you do wrong.”

“Saying things like ‘I hate you’ and ‘you’re a horror’ without knowing anything.”

“…”

“I was rash. I should have trusted you. I am sorry. Please forgive me.”

Hoeun lowered his head. He had believed only what he saw. In truth, in this world the unseen is greater than the seen, yet he had not grasped that, and in the end he had hurt Taemuk. Whether Taemuk had been hurt by his words or not, he could not know—but in any case, he had hurt him, and that was surely wrong.

“…”

Taemuk gave no particular reply. Hoeun grew anxious—perhaps his apology didn’t satisfy him. Still, he had no courage, like Taemuk, to tell him to stab him with a sword. Pain he could bear—but death was the problem.

Scratching at his thigh with his fingertips, he stammered,

“T-to tell the truth—I like that you are my Military God. I’m proud of it—gratified.”

“…”

“I mean it.”

When Taemuk spoke of the villagers, Hoeun knew he pitied them. He knew he loathed the noble who had taken their lives.

To feel such things meant Taemuk was profoundly human.

More than that Taemuk had done vile things to him, that he was truly a hero in this time of chaos, a righteous man saving the country—that mattered more. The more it was so, the more special he, Hoeun, as his guide, became.

Call it sly, call it base—he could not help it. Hoeun had longed all his life to be special, to be useful. And Taemuk was one who could sate that hunger more than fully.

As he fixed bright eyes on Taemuk, Taemuk slid his gaze away.

“…Eat your food. What sort of yangban talks so much while eating?”

“I’ve finished.”

Hoeun answered lightly. Taemuk’s face slowly crumpled. In his black pupils, shock and bewilderment filled to the brim.

“…What did you finish.”

The white-stew was nowhere near a state that could be called “left some.” It was, by any reckoning, “not eaten.” More than half the porridge remained, and both drumsticks sat untouched. Had Dongja or Mansu seen it, they would have flipped their eyes and collapsed in a faint.

“Eat more.”

At Taemuk’s words, Hoeun shook his head. He even looked at the chicken, its white flesh laid bare, as if it were disgusting.

“I can’t eat any more.”

“Why. Does this not suit your taste, too?”

In an instant, Taemuk’s eyes turned cool. Hoeun spoke gently.

“No. It’s delicious. Only—I never could eat much. My digestion is slow, and I take ill often. So I don’t take much pleasure in eating.”

“…”

“Since I eat little, isn’t that rather a good thing on the battlefield?”

He gave a thin smile—pleased with his own half-jest.

“…”

Taemuk said nothing. He looked at the spoon that had entered Hoeun’s mouth fewer than ten times, then loosely closed his fist under the table—as if gauging the size of that rice ball he had once made him eat.

Sitting before the mirror, Hoeun tied his ribbon tight. Then he smoothed it straight so there were no creases. When he had first tied his hair by himself, it had been a mess—strands astray everywhere—but his touch had improved, and now he could bind it neatly.

He turned his face left, then right, inspecting himself in the mirror. Suddenly, he smiled.

Last night, he had asked Taemuk, casually, if there was a mirror. It was hard enough to set himself in order without one. And this morning, Taemuk had gone and procured a mirror the size of two palms from somewhere.

Recalling Taemuk’s reluctant face as he held out the mirror to him, a laugh bubbled up on its own. He had scolded him—what use is that sort of thing—then went and got it anyway. It was, truly, just like him.