← A Fate Tied by a Single Thread
Chapter 6
“You mean General Kang Shin.”
“Y-yes…. I, I’m a man of Seon…. Suddenly the general came for me, and me, I, I…” So flustered was Heesa that he did not notice anything unnatural about the stranger mentioning General Kang Shin.
The stranger again made a sound as if deep in thought. In that brief interval he had clearly figured out how to handle Heesa. Heesa, completely caught up in it, swallowed a tense gulp of saliva.
“I’m sorry.”
The man’s tone turned gentle again, and he personally picked up a sweet yakgwa and placed it in Heesa’s mouth. At the yakgwa, so sweet it made his tongue ache, Heesa’s eyes went round.
While Heesa’s mind was briefly bewitched by the sweet yakgwa, the man began to soothe him softly. His softened expression was so unlike the man who had just scolded him coldly that it was hard to imagine they were the same person.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you. Only… I thought it would be better not to tell someone you don’t even know that you are a man of Seon, or by whom you came to the empire.” Heesa, whose mind had briefly gone blank over the yakgwa that crumbled softly as he chewed, stiffened his shoulders tightly. His lips, which had been busily working, stopped moving too.
The man was right. General Kang Shin had brought Heesa with nothing but the unkind explanation that “the empire needs you.” That he had been locked away in a place no one set foot in might have been because they did not want Heesa to be discovered by anyone.
He had made a mistake. To the man who had spoken to him and given him food for the first time in days, he had blabbed things he need not have said. A familiar disappointment in his own useless self washed over him gloomily.
The man tapped Heesa’s pale cheek. A faint smile came with it.
“Of course, from now on, I mean. Fortunately, I’m close with Kang Shin.” Large eyes looked up at the man. They were eyes already slightly wet. The man clicked his tongue and muttered to himself.
“Still a child….”
Belatedly embarrassed, Heesa blinked rapidly, trying to blink away the tears that had gathered. But it did not go as he wished. Beaded tears rolled down Heesa’s white cheeks. The man hurriedly spoke teasingly to Heesa, who was wiping his swollen eyes.
“Shall I punish Kang Shin?”
That alone was enough to stop Heesa’s tears abruptly. It was because the startled Heesa stared at the man with rabbit-wide eyes.
Punish the huge and fearsome General Kang Shin, indeed. With the thought that the man’s station was even higher than Heesa had guessed, and not wanting anyone to be punished, Heesa shook his head vehemently.
“N-no, no, I don’t! I don’t…!”
“Why not? He made you cry.”
“I-I won’t say anything from now on! I absolutely won’t say anything! Pl-please don’t…!” The man stifled a laugh. With a face as if holding back laughter, he this time placed in Heesa’s mouth a strawberry, dipped in honey and chilled until cold. Heesa bit into whatever was given him without even knowing what he was eating.
The fruit cracked crisply and was sweet. Heesa could not keep up with the strange shifts of feeling, good, then frightening, then sweet again.
“Good boy.”
It was a kind soothing. Heesa chewed and swallowed the exceedingly sweet fruit, resolving again and again that he would tell no one where he came from, for what reason he came, or with whom he came.
“It’s all right. You didn’t know, did you? Just don’t do it from now on.”
“Y-yes….”
“That’s right.”
The man, who had so easily toyed with Heesa’s feelings, once again placed a sweet in Heesa’s mouth. Heesa sniffled as he gobbled them down. The man’s lips, having quite stolen Heesa’s soul, kept twitching.
By the time he had eaten all the sweets the man fed him, much of Heesa’s fear had also faded. It was thanks to the man soothing him diligently with sweet food and an even sweeter tone.
Heesa, utterly unaware that the man had deliberately frightened him and then treated him kindly, was full of a vague fondness for the person before his eyes.
Heesa’s eyelids gradually grew heavy, his empty stomach now filled with sweet things. He had cried a great deal, and been tense a great deal. With the fullness he felt for the first time in a while, drowsiness washed over him, as was only natural. The man looked up at the now fully darkened sky, then began to tidy the lunchbox and the wine bottle.
Realizing the other man was about to leave, Heesa bit the tender flesh inside his mouth in regret. He was a person met after days. Since such a person had given him delicious food and awakened him to something he had been missing, it was only natural to feel regret.
“You’d best go inside and sleep now. Your eyes are half closed.” The other man soothed him gently. Heesa nodded, gripping and releasing his soiled trousers. It was a movement dripping with reluctance. That showed in Heesa’s sluggish gestures as well.
But the man still wore a smile as if drawn on as he watched Heesa lie down on the worn bedding. Unable to ignore the kind gaze, Heesa pulled the musty blanket up to his neck.
Soon this unexpected meeting would clearly come to an end. Regret washed in like the tide, but Heesa knew his place.
He thought he would likely never meet the man, whose station was clearly noble, again. Heesa wanted to ask at least the name of the man who seemed about to leave at any moment.
“Um…. My lord. M-may I… ask your honored name…?”
The stranger narrowed his brow slightly, as if troubled. At the small change, Heesa hurriedly mumbled his words away.
“Ah, no, I was out of line. I’m sorry….”
“I’m sorry. Today’s meeting must remain a secret.” The man, cutting off Heesa’s repeated apologies, answered in a gentle tone. Heesa nodded quickly. The man rubbed his smooth chin with his thumb as if thinking for a moment, then made Heesa a vague promise, as if to soothe him.
“If fate brings us together again, I’ll tell you then.”
“..Really?”
Faint as it was, Heesa’s reply was strangely drained of strength. Since there was almost no chance of meeting again, it amounted to being refused twice.
The sulky Heesa covered himself with the blanket. Heesa tried hard not to show it, but the problem was that the man saw it all.
The man, with the moonlight at his back, let out a deliberate “Ah.” as he half-closed the lattice door. Heesa’s gaze, which had been lowered sulkily, went straight to the man.
“You said you were twenty, didn’t you?”
“…Yes, my lord.”
“Then what you said, ‘of age, but I haven’t yet had that sort of experience,’ does that mean you’ve never drunk wine, or that you’re a virgin?”
The man retraced Heesa’s words without warning. Heesa’s face flushed bright red. The man’s lips curled upward.
Heesa, who had not expected to hear his own excuse-like words thrown back at him in this situation, had his large eyes wavering with embarrassment. The man had clearly guessed the answer from that look.
“Both?”
Because the man deliberately asked even more roguishly, Heesa’s ears flushed red to the very lobes. The man’s roguish smile deepened.
It was the first time he had been teased this way. Tears gathered at the corners of Heesa’s eyes, which had turned like a well-ripened persimmon.
The man, who had so easily made Heesa’s lingering regret and disappointment hide away completely, burst into hearty laughter as if delighted. It was an unfeigned laugh born of pure amusement.
“I’ll see to it that you can eat proper meals from tomorrow.” Heesa, every bit of skin outside the blanket turned red, looked at the man with tearful eyes. The man’s promise carried a strangely weighty trust, as if it would come true right away.
“Then you’ll learn why you came from Seon to the empire too. Jeongnam.” The words tacked on at the end were clearly teasing him as a virgin. Heesa, a walnut-like crease forming under his chin, answered timidly.
“…I’m not Jeongnam.”
“You weren’t, you say.” “Heesa. I’m Heesa.”
“Heesa.”
Though it was a name he had heard hundreds, thousands of times in his life, the name rolled in the man’s mouth was exceedingly sweet. For a moment it was so unfamiliar that his breath stopped.
“Yes….”
The man drew out the end of his words. The man watched the flushed Heesa. Seeming to wait a moment, gripping the lattice door with a hole in it, the man gave a kind good night, his lips curving.
“Sleep well, Heesa.”
Heesa, gazing as if bewitched at the man’s curved lips, only came to his senses after the lattice door had closed.
He realized his cheeks had grown hot like those of a feverish person only after all trace of the man had completely vanished.
***
The young emperor of thirty, Cheon Yeon-yun, had one habit he had never corrected since childhood. It was his wanderlust, which made him leave without a word, going wherever his feet took him.
Free-spirited from birth, he had gradually grown more dignified under the weight of being the sole imperial grandson and crown prince, but his nature of disappearing somewhere without a word remained unchanged. It continued steadily even after he ascended the throne at a young age.
That did not mean his wanderings led him to befuddle his head with wine and side dishes and take up with courtesans.
The emperor simply enjoyed his own time as if he had become an ordinary man. Because of it, General Kang Shin, who had to escort the emperor from morning to night, had long suffered headaches, but the emperor paid it no mind.
An unusually beautiful moon was enough to stir the emperor’s wanderlust. The impulse was a moment’s work, and putting it into action was even faster. His hands, donning a dark blue robe and a sword for self-defense, were unhesitating.
Enjoying light wine alone while moon-viewing was his small, long-held hobby. The imperial palace was his from birth. The emperor, who knew very well where to go to easily shake off anyone following him, moved his capricious feet.
Heading to deserted places, and wherever his feet took him, a path came out leading to a secluded flower garden he was rather fond of.
Because no one thought the emperor’s interest would lie in a run-down flower garden, it was a place managed only a couple of times a year. The emperor, knowing well that the moment he mentioned it, his own private place would vanish, pretended not to know, and so it was.
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