← A Fate Tied by a Single Thread
Chapter 5
The other party, looking at Heesa as if pondering for a moment, suddenly stepped back. Since he was the first person Heesa had seen in days, as he vanished from sight in an instant, Heesa unknowingly tried to rise awkwardly.
At that moment, the stranger, using the wall as a support, leapt lightly inside. At the sight of him easily jumping over the wall, which was as tall as Heesa himself, Heesa’s mouth fell open.
Brushing off the hem of his dark blue dopo, he held out his hand to Heesa. When he had been outside the wall, Heesa had not known, but the stranger was as tall as General Kang Shin. Heesa, who had thought the general was the tallest person in the world, was a little shocked.
Still with his mouth open, looking at the man’s hand, Heesa came to his senses only at the moment that hand gripped his forearm firmly and pulled him up.
Heesa’s thought that he seemed as tall as General Kang Shin was accurate. When he was with the general, his gaze had reached the general’s lips, but with the stranger, it reached his protruding Adam’s apple. It was clear that all people of the empire were of great build.
“Th-thank… you….”
“There would be nothing to fill your stomach with.”
Muttering to himself as if displeased, the stranger gave a short “Hm?” and looked toward the main gate. Before the main gate lay the thorn branches that had signified thorn-branch confinement. He kicked the branch far away with the tip of his foot.
The thorn branch, sent flying by the stranger’s kick, was something Heesa would not even have thought of touching.
Staring with his mouth open at the sight of the thorn branch flying far away, then turning his gaze back to the man, Heesa corrected his short-sighted view that he had simply thought him unrealistically handsome.
He was beautiful beyond measure, like a moon jar. It seemed that no matter how many beautiful modifiers in the world were attached to him, they could not express him.
A halo shone behind his already elegant face. The halo emanating from the stranger became blindingly bright when he took a small lunch box out of the pouch he wore at his waist.
***
“Eat slowly. I won’t snatch it away.”
Heesa made a sound, “Yes,” and ate the rice balls hurriedly. It was the third time he had heard the words to eat slowly, but he could not slow down.
The small lunch box handed over by the stranger, who had seated Heesa on the old main wooden floor that creaked with only his weight placed on it, was truly enchanting. Rice balls, fresh seasonal fruit, and colorful rice cakes, made so delicately it was a shame to eat them, all became Heesa’s.
Faced with food that was sure to be delicious, Heesa, who had starved for three days, was on the verge of losing his mind, but he mustered the last remaining pride of a prince. Even while making nominal refusals a couple of times, saying it was fine, Heesa’s gaze was entirely fixed on the lunch box.
“I’m fine, I’m fine….” Heesa, who had been crying from hunger just before, mumbled words he did not mean. Heesa did not know how desperate his expression was.
Only after the stranger, who kept letting out hollow coughs to hold back his laughter, gave his third permission, “It’s fine if you eat it all, please do eat,” did Heesa touch the lunchbox, and this was the state he was in now.
Heesa demolished the food in the blink of an eye. It was so delicious he thought he might cry. Heesa, who had a small appetite and had given his nurse no end of worry, was not that person in this moment. A simple rice ball seasoned with nothing but salt tasted like honey.
It was so delicious that Heesa could not stop a strange, breathy sound from escaping him. At the sudden nasal noise, the stranger glanced at him.
Heesa, his cheeks puffed full with rice ball, stole a look at the other man. He thought he had eaten too greedily. Imagining how ravenous he must have looked, his cheeks flushed red. At the sight of the cowed Heesa, the man curved his lips as if to reassure him and opened a wine bottle that had come from who knew where.
“Y-you should eat too, my lord.”
Not knowing what to call the other man, he used an honorific for now. Heesa pushed the lunchbox, which had been the man’s, slightly toward him. The stranger burst into hearty laughter.
“No need. Eat plenty.”
After one more cautious look, Heesa bit into a new rice ball. It tasted so very good. Afraid another strange breathy sound would escape, Heesa clamped his throat tight, and his nostrils flared.
The stranger, dressed in a dark blue robe with a sleek sword sheath at his waist, seemed to find Heesa funny. He kept stifling laughs as he naturally drank his wine. Watching his Adam’s apple bob several times, Heesa offered him again the lunchbox of sweets and fruit.
“If you drink without any side dishes, you’ll hurt your stomach….”
The other man looked down at Heesa leisurely, as if observing him. Nervous for no reason, Heesa pushed the lunchbox a little further. Before long, his lips, moistened with pine-scented wine, parted.
“You seem to enjoy wine and women. You sound like you know them well.”
“Wh-what? No, I don’t! Absolutely not!”
“Well. You don’t even look fifteen yet. You shouldn’t be all grown up and loose already.” The stranger muttered in a teasing tone that could have been jest or earnest. Heesa, who had never been drunk on wine or women, was most startled by being told he looked not even fifteen. The adult Heesa blurted out his own age without thinking.
“I’m twenty this year! Ah, I haven’t yet had… that sort of experience… but… I have lived twenty years!”
“Hmm….”
The stranger, who knew perfectly well that Heesa was past fifteen, pretended to doubt him for no reason. Heesa, who had no idea that the man was doing it all the more because it was fun to watch him react so readily to teasing, hurriedly added more.
“I-I really am!”
“Who said anything?”
Heesa closed his lips for a moment, then dodged by eating another rice ball instead. Thanks to the inexplicable fondness he felt for the man who had given him delicious food in the midst of three days of starvation, even words that were clearly teasing could be recast as something like “a playful nature.”
The stranger, rubbing the neck of the wine bottle with his closely trimmed nails, looked down at Heesa’s head. Unlike the empire’s custom of tying the hair up in a topknot after marriage, in Heesa’s homeland both hair and beard were cut neatly short.
Heesa’s body was naturally nearly hairless, so no beard had grown yet, but thanks to his neatly cut hair, his small, neat head was plainly revealed. The stranger’s gaze traveled from Heesa’s head to his cheeks, puffed full with rice ball.
Unable to ignore a stare that seemed about to bore through him, Heesa cautiously raised his head. This time the stranger’s gaze rested on Heesa’s moving lips.
“Hmm….”
At the other man’s repeated appraising sounds, Heesa quietly lowered his eyes. Had he smeared food on himself while eating? Or had he eaten too greedily? Heesa discreetly wiped around his mouth with a forefinger, but nothing came off.
The stranger, watching Heesa poke at his own cheeks, next turned his gaze to Heesa’s neck. Naturally, the inner jacket Heesa wore caught his eye. The thin inner jacket let his skin show faintly through.
“…Hmm….”
The stranger kept letting out sounds for no discernible reason. His narrowed eyes, as if appraising something, came with them.
It was a piercing gaze, as if it looked past his outer layer to his very bones and innards.
Heesa, shoulders hunched, rolled his eyes this way and that as he ate the remaining rice balls. At a few glances, the already timid Heesa was utterly cowed, and he swallowed a rice ball that had gone to mush. Heesa, eyes lowered, sat frozen with his lips tucked inward, and then the stranger spoke.
“You seem to be a foreigner.”
The piercing gaze had been meant to guess his homeland. Heesa, without realizing it, relaxed his shoulders, which had stiffened warily.
Realizing it was not an appraisal of his worth, relief washed over him like a tide. Heesa’s lips naturally curved into a bright smile.
From the stranger’s dress, Heesa had guessed he was a man of the Won Empire, but at the word “foreigner” he was fully certain. “Foreigner” was the word Won people used for people of the vassal states.
“Yes. I came from Seon.”
Watching Heesa instantly relax and smile brightly, the stranger brought the wine bottle to his lips. His Adam’s apple moved up and down. Because the hem of the man’s robe hid half his face, Heesa did not notice that he was turning over a cool-headed worry.
But when the stranger righted his tilted head, he wore a kind smile, as if he had never done otherwise.
The man picked up a not-too-sweet rice cake from the lunchbox Heesa had pushed toward him and ate it. At the sight of the man not dismissing his goodwill, Heesa’s cheeks flushed with joy.
With just a little kind speech and kind behavior, all of Heesa’s wariness vanished. The man let out a small laugh like air escaping, and with a careless tap, pushed the lunchbox back toward Heesa.
But unlike the kind gesture, scolding words burst from between the man’s lips.
“But… how is it that a foreigner is locked up in the palace?”
“Pardon?”
As the man, who had seemed nothing but kind, suddenly hardened his face, Heesa was flustered. Heesa, in whom until just now not a speck of wariness could be found, was suddenly seized with fear. The man pressed him harder in a stern voice, more severe still.
“Locked up for three days with no one looking for you… just what grave crime have you committed?”
“N-no, I haven’t!”
“Do you even know where this place is, to say you haven’t?”
Heesa, who until just now had been smiling brightly, turned tearful and shook his head. A crime, indeed. It was absurd. No crime came to mind that Heesa, a man of Seon, would have had to commit to be locked up all the way in the empire, and he had committed no such crime. Frightened at once, Heesa babbled out an excuse in a fluster.
“I don’t know! When I opened my eyes, I was here! I left my homeland in a hurry, following the general….” Heesa stammered even more under the man’s suspicious gaze. Nothing was more flustering than being treated as a criminal, and it was all the more so when the one treating him that way was a person for whom he had felt a faint fondness.
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