Da-on sprang up as if launched from his seat. He rubbed his eyes and raised his head.
Far away, a group of people was truly approaching. They moved slowly across the desert, with tents to block the sun and things like camels.
‘People.’
Without further thought, Da-on dragged his heavy legs forward. With every step, sand swallowed his ankles. Waddling as if walking underwater, Da-on squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again.
If he missed this chance, it was really over.
“Over here! Help me!”
His worn-out voice burst out. Desperately waving his arms, Da-on approached the people.
Lines scored the sand behind his dragging feet. They too seemed to have spotted Da-on; he could feel the group stirring.
A half-naked man waving his hands in the middle of the desert. He could understand how hard it would be to lower their guard. As expected, the first to step forward were soldiers with spears. The spearheads reflected the sunlight, flashing.
Even at the sight of the weapons, Da-on didn’t slow. Better to be stabbed by a spear than to dry up and die slowly. Whatever they were, they were his last hope.
***
Tashishi was in the middle of a long journey to offer tribute to Quantara, the empire nicknamed “the lily bloomed in the desert.”
The empire that had never once been invaded by a foreign nation, whose soldiers trained on the rough sands were unrivaled in military might — the true, undisputed foremost empire.
Quantara.
They said you had to be born as a child of the goddess Anais to invade Quantara. Because endlessly around it stretched a desert so harsh that not even a cactus could grow. In a word, a military stronghold gifted by nature.
Going to such a Quantara meant being prepared to sacrifice the lives of several companions even after completing a mountain of preparations. With his tension unreleased, Tashishi was advancing through the harsh desert — when he doubted his own eyes.
“……A person?”
Because far away, the silhouette of a person was visible.
Some man was shouting something and waving his arms wildly. It sounded vaguely like he was crying for help.
“Huh.”
Shaking his head, he let out a hollow laugh. Tapping the arm of the companion beside him, Tashishi asked.
“Hey. Am I seeing things?”
“I see it too.”
“Right. No matter how I think about it, it makes no sense.”
A person, in this isolated place. Not a desiccated corpse, but a living person. How could that be possible?
Shaking his head, Tashishi concluded.
“Ah, it must be. It’s that mirage I’ve only heard tell of.”
For a mere illusion, it was so realistic. If you didn’t keep your wits about you, you’d be taken in. Muttering softly, Tashishi wiped the sand caught in his compass with his thumb.
But the mirage didn’t fade — instead it drew closer and closer to the delegation.
“Over here! There’s a person here! Help me!”
The torn, cracking voice desperately called out to the delegation. Tashishi stretched his philtrum and made a dumbfounded face.
How could such a thing be possible? For at least several hundred kilometers around, it was wasteland with nothing but sand. Even so, if he’d kept to the path he might be found as a corpse, but one wrong step and he couldn’t escape ending up a lonely mummy.
“Captain. Step back.”
The spearmen raised their spears and ringed the delegation. They glared at the approaching man, their wariness peaked as if seeing a ghost.
Da-on staggered toward them, waving his arm once more.
“Please, I beg you……ugh!”
His legs gave out. His sand-buried feet couldn’t pull free, and his body toppled forward.
The soldiers’ expressions turned strange at the sight. Too perfect a castaway to be a ghost.
“Wait.”
Tashishi raised a hand, making the soldiers lower their spears.
“I’ll go look myself.”
“It’s dangerous, Captain. What if it’s an assassin or a demon……”
“Look at him. Is that the garb of an assassin?” At Tashishi’s question, the soldier fell silent and stepped back.
Tashishi approached Da-on, who lay face-down in the sand, unable to move. A faint, dying groan could be heard.
Feeling his presence, Da-on squirmed and reached out a hand. His dirt-covered hand seized the toe of Tashishi’s shoe.
Tashishi examined Da-on closely, very closely.
In the fallen man’s arms was a strange object he’d never seen before. That wasn’t all. The silk-like hair, the hands without a single callus, the skin whose fairness couldn’t be hidden even under the dust. Tashishi’s mustache twitched.
“Bring water.”
“But, Captain!”
When he asked for water — life’s water itself, in this place — several companions bristled. Surely he knew that a single bottle of water could change the fate of the whole delegation!
But Tashishi didn’t waver, and brought the water bottle to Da-on’s lips. Da-on, momentarily bewildered, opened his eyes wide at his wetting lips. Then he began to gulp the water down frantically.
He’d never known water on a parched tongue could be this sweet.
Like a young beast seeking milk, Da-on clung desperately to the canteen. In a few seconds he emptied the canteen and drew a deep breath.
“……Keuk, heu-eok, huk!”
Tashishi looked pityingly at Da-on, his chest heaving.
“You seem quite exhausted.” Exhausted to the point of — nearly dead.
Da-on had suffered dehydration too long. One canteen couldn’t fully quench his thirst.
He was still thirsty, but he couldn’t ask for more. He’d heard the whole conversation over a single bottle, and knew that the moment he offended this group, death awaited.
But with water inside him, he felt his halted organs moving again. His stomach rumbled, joyfully greeting the life-giving water that had entered it.
Da-on put his hand on his parched belly skin and unsteadily rose. Sand that had clung to him poured off in clouds of dust.
Da-on bowed politely to Tashishi and his companions. When he gave his thanks, Tashishi narrowed his eyes. The crow’s feet around his eyes deepened.
“Your looks and manner of greeting are what you’d see in an eastern nation, but how did you come to be left alone in the Quantara desert?”
Tashishi asked in a sharp tone. Da-on barely held on to his fainting mind and opened his mouth.
“I, I don’t really…….”
“Spare me the ‘I don’t know.’ In a place like this, we can’t easily add companions.”
Even facing Da-on, who looked about to collapse, Tashishi was firm. He meant he’d abandon him if his reason for appearing alone in the desert wasn’t convincing.
Da-on gathered his saliva and swallowed over and over. There was no chance his bone-dry mucous membranes would get moist that way.
Moving his lips, he answered in a cracking voice.
“……I don’t really know. When I opened my eyes, I suddenly, suddenly fell into the desert.”
“Were you part of an eastern delegation heading for Quantara?”
Da-on weakly shook his head. He didn’t even have the strength to answer, but he had to answer for there to be a next step.
“I’m just, a, citizen of the Republic of Korea…….” Da-on’s voice, weak and mumbling, trailed off at the end.
This was the desert. The people before his eyes were unmistakably foreigners in appearance. And yet communication was working without a hitch?
And “the Quantara desert”? He’d never heard of a desert by that name. It was enough to make him doubt this was the Earth he knew.
When Da-on hesitated, Tashishi spoke first.
“The Republic of Korea? There’s no such country.” “…….”
“Tsk tsk. His mind seems unsound.”
Clicking his tongue, Tashishi turned away. He gestured briefly to his companions, and several people stepped forward and supported Da-on.
With their help, Da-on barely managed to climb onto a camel’s back. The musty camel smell stabbed his nose. Normally he’d have jumped off in disgust at this level of stink, but this time he felt no aversion at all.
Tashishi, who had taken Da-on in, raised his voice and shouted.
“We’ve a long way to go! Move out!”
The moment the order fell, the delegation began moving as one.
Only then could Da-on be sure he’d been accepted into the group. He’d worried — but they were accepting a suspicious castaway more easily than he’d expected.
Gripping the saddle on the camel’s back, Da-on exhaled in relief. He’d given only clumsy answers, yet somehow that had been a pass.
His tension released all at once, and Da-on laid his forehead thwap against the camel’s hump. He couldn’t sleep with his body swaying with each of the camel’s steps, but he could half-lose his wits while holding the saddle. A rest of sorts.
On Da-on’s slumped crown, Tashishi’s gaze landed.
Tashishi, on the march, turned his whole body to look at Da-on intently. His gleaming eyes were less like looking at a fellow person and more like appraising the worth of an object.
***
Weeks had already passed since he’d crossed the desert with the delegation.
The people who’d taken Da-on into their group said they were a delegation that had set out from a place called the Aruna Principality. The delegation bore the great mission of presenting tribute to the emperor of Quantara.
Among them, Tashishi Ran — the one who’d first spotted Da-on — was the delegation’s captain. The highest-ranking person, they said. Lucky for him that someone as kind as Tashishi was the captain.
Now accustomed to desert life, Da-on was tearing into jerky softened with a little water while talking to a delegation member whose name he didn’t know.
“Why cross such a harsh place just to offer tribute?”
“It can’t be helped. Aruna is a small principality.” The member shrugged and tilted back some milk, holding it long in his mouth.
It was a flat reason for risking his life. One of Da-on’s eyes squinted slightly.
“You’ll die offering tribute. Well, thanks to that, my life was saved…….”
“More will die if we don’t offer it. Our opponent is His Majesty the emperor of Quantara, after all.”
“If he kills people for not giving a few gifts, is he an emperor?”
Da-on said with an expression of utter incomprehension. At that, the member shook a raised finger through the air as if to say, you know nothing.
“It’s because you don’t know His Majesty at all that you say that.”
“What’s so special about him?”
“Hey! Mind your tongue!”
The member put a finger to his lips and frowned. There was no one listening, but he was being excessively careful, wasn’t he?
After carefully looking around and confirming no one was there, he clenched his fists and said as if speechifying.
“His Majesty the emperor, you see. If a musician’s bow slips the slightest bit, execution. If a dancer stretches an arm the slightest bit less, execution. If there’s one extra grain of salt in his royal meal, execution!” He stopped his impassioned, spit-flying speech and breathed deeply.
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