← A Fate Tied by a Single Thread
Chapter 4
The sky, which had only been blue, had also turned crimson by now. When the sunset faded, night would soon come. Heesa, who all day long had moistened his throat with collected rainwater whenever his throat burned and he was hungry, gazed emptily at the sky.
The ominous thought he had heard before falling asleep came again. Why was he confined here? If no one came for him…. what would happen?
Trying to think with his still hazy head made his forehead feel as if it would split. But one thing was clear: by the time the sun set on the third day, no one had come to the shabby detached palace.
Was it what the empire wanted, for him to wither and die like this? Common sense said the premise itself, that they would bring a prince from a vassal state a thousand li away, lock him in a remote palace, and starve him to death, made no sense, but Heesa, exhausted as he was, did not notice that it was strange.
A fear greater than ever rushed over him. The fear that he might die like this paralyzed Heesa’s reason.
He had come to the empire without any explanation, but someday he wanted to return home. Heesa, stained with fear of death, raised his body as if about to fall over. Running across the damp yard in his stockinged feet, he headed for the main gate with the thorn branches before it.
Timidly grasping the door handle, Heesa pulled it toward himself with all his strength. As expected, the door only rattled, firmly locked. Rather, startled by the rattling sound, which was far too loud, Heesa pressed his hand hard over his heart.
“…Th-there…”
Heesa was someone who had never once raised his voice loudly in his life. Raising one’s voice was not something royalty did. The rules of etiquette he had heard since he was learning to walk, until his ears grew calloused, did not even come to mind. Heesa shouted with effort.
“Is there no one there!”
His throat stung. Even though he had shouted, squeezing his lungs, and no answer came back, Heesa shouted once more.
“Ah, no one…!”
He shouted nearly a dozen times until his throat burst, but no one answered. Heesa swallowed dry spit. He had no leisure to feel the pain of the saliva passing over his sore throat.
Retreating as if stepping backward, Heesa stood on tiptoe to see over the wall. He could not see outside.
Even jumping in place several times was not enough.
Heesa, not knowing what to do, spun round and round in place. He was confused. The fear of being left alone with no promise was great.
How long must he stay here? Forever? How would he solve his hunger, and his drinking water? Must he live a life of catching rainwater and waiting for someone to come? Was that the reason he had no choice but to leave his homeland without warning?
Heesa, biting the tender flesh inside his mouth hard, turned pale. His face, already like blank paper, turned deathly white, so that even a corpse-like eeriness could be felt. But Heesa was in shock at the thought that his situation sounded like a story he had heard somewhere many times.
His father, who had seventeen princes and nineteen princesses as children, naturally had many concubines. Heesa, born and raised in the palace, knew well what happened to the women who fell out of his father’s favor.
Confined in a cold palace no one visited, without water or food provided, going mad or dying. A dreadful punishment from which one could escape only after becoming one of the two.
In Heesa’s homeland, a person who went mad was said to be tainted with impurity and was stoned to death. Either way, going to the cold palace was a punishment in which only death awaited.
Heesa was a man, but was his situation not similar? After arriving at the imperial palace, no one had sought Heesa. Yesterday he had filled his hunger and thirst with rainwater. For three days, no one….
“…No….”
Heesa denied it in a small voice. He even shook his head.
Heesa was now in the empire. Heesa, who had lived his whole life in a remote palace and had almost never met other people, how could he have committed a crime against the emperor? Even if Heesa had committed a wrong deserving confinement in the cold palace like a concubine, there would have been no need to follow General Kang Shin for a thousand li.
His vision spun. Whether it was because of violent fear, because he had eaten nothing but rainwater for three days, or both, he could not tell.
Bending at the waist and enduring the dizzy sensation, Heesa’s eyes fell on a flower bed overgrown with weeds. More precisely, on a plant whose roots had been exposed, washed down by yesterday’s rain.
“Ah….”
Letting out a short, groaning sound, Heesa approached the flower bed as if spellbound. He had not seen wrong. A round shape. It was a potato, which he often ate as a snack in his homeland.
Quickly kneeling, Heesa dug at the earth. He did not even notice his knees becoming a mess of dirt.
Not exactly plump, but a couple of finger-sized potatoes came out. Staring at the potatoes with his mouth gaping, Heesa’s stomach rumbled loudly.
Realizing it was food made his stomach ache until it burned. To the point he wanted to roll around. A slight hesitation was quickly erased. He was far too hungry. Heesa again crawled over the dirt floor and hurriedly rinsed the potatoes in a puddle formed by the rain.
As the dirt washed off in the muddy water, the familiar color Heesa knew was revealed. Forgetting basic thoughts like cook them, peel them, wash them a little more thoroughly, Heesa’s breath stopped as he was about to bring one to his mouth.
On a surface that should originally have been only yellow, black mold had grown thickly. Staring blankly at the rotten potato, Heesa let his gaze drop emptily.
He had thought it seemed like a place where no one had lived for a long time. It was because there was no trace of a human hand. Naturally, the flower bed would have been the same. A flower bed with no one to tend it is bound to fall to ruin. Even knowing that fact, Heesa could not hold back the tears welling up.
“….Heu, eu, euu, ah…!”
Crouching before the puddle and shedding large, round tears, Heesa made a sound as if the world were ending in his weeping. He did not know it was embarrassing to wail like a child.
The sorrow he had shed in secret until now, and the fear of a lonely future with no promise, fear, loneliness, the reality of having left his familiar homeland as if cast out, and the hunger he had never experienced before all combined into a complicated heart and became simple tears.
Heesa, who had sobbed until just before collapse, raised his reddened face. His nose was so clogged with sorrow he could not breathe. Heesa, a mess of tears and snot, gasping piteously, opened his swollen eyes.
Someone was looking down at Heesa, both arms loosely draped over the wall.
For a moment, Heesa did not realize what he had seen. The man looking down at Heesa as if curious was utterly incongruous. Whether it was because he was the first person Heesa had seen in days, or because the man’s appearance was unrealistically handsome, he could not tell.
Heesa blinked blankly and still did not grasp what situation this was. The corners of the mouth of the man looking down at Heesa with an interested gaze curved refreshingly.
The man whispered playfully. Heesa, coming to his senses belatedly, let out a faint scream as if he had truly met a tiger, and fell on his backside.
“Hahaha.”
Heesa, who had fallen hard, clutched his fluttering heart. Because of his timid nature, Heesa was usually easily startled, but it was a little embarrassing to have fallen at a tiger’s cry that was clearly a joke.
Whether the sight of Heesa, eyes wide open, fallen backward, was amusing, the stranger burst into hearty laughter for a long time. His heart, already beating violently, beat all the more roughly.
Shame at having let out an unsightly scream before the stranger, and joy at finally meeting someone, mixed together at once. His chest heaved. A person. It was a person.
He had wished for someone to come, but Heesa had not thought about what came after. Moreover, at this late night, Heesa, who had just been weeping loudly, could not grasp how to begin. While Heesa hesitated,
the man, who had laughed for a long time, spoke to him first.
“I thought I heard a puppy whimpering somewhere.” The voice, still with remnants of laughter, was as soft as if it would melt the ears, and at the same time playful. At the thick, manly voice, Heesa could not help swallowing his spit. The other party, leaning a little more toward Heesa, asked gently.
“For what reason are you showing tears?”
It was natural informal speech. A handsome appearance and a noble air. Heesa, instinctively realizing that the person before his eyes was of fairly high status, answered politely.
“…I-I’m hungry….”
Even if he was of prince’s status, Heesa was from a vassal state. In a situation where he did not know the stranger’s status exactly, he had no choice but to be careful first.
As if Heesa’s answer, that he was crying from hunger, was unexpected, the stranger briefly raised his eyebrows. Indeed, even thinking about it himself, it was a paltry reason. Heesa stammered, adding an unbidden excuse.
“I-I haven’t had a meal for three days, s-so, so I’m hungry…. I found a potato…. but it was rotten….”
Once he had listed his own actions in words, they seemed all the more trifling. It was as if admitting he had wailed loudly for only this much of a reason.
Heesa, his cheeks reddened, pressed his lips tightly shut. He had eaten nothing for three days. He had trembled in fear that no one would ever come and he might starve to death. The moment he explained his situation directly to the stranger was utterly embarrassing.
The stranger wore an expression as if thinking for a moment. Furrowing his brow slightly, he seemed to be searching his memory. Heesa somehow thought he looked as if he wore a solid mask.
“Have you eaten nothing for the past three days?”
“Yes…. Ah, water…. water, yesterday it rained, so…. with that….” The stranger, understanding Heesa’s terribly stammering words perfectly, this time wore a surprised expression. Again, it seemed as if he expressed it openly. It seemed less that he deliberately did so to tease Heesa than that it came out without his knowing, hardened into habit.
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