← A Fate Tied by a Single Thread
Chapter 12
His fine jade-colored robe grew wet. That was because of Heesa, who, clinging to the man’s waist, shed every secretion that could come out, tears, snot, and spit alike.
Hwaaang, weeping sorrowfully, Heesa spat out words no one could understand. It was not the language of Seon, but simply babbling sentences whose beginnings and ends did not match as he poured out his indignation.
Favorite concubine, love-making, hometown, want to go home, I don’t like it, His Majesty… The man caught only a few words. With his stuffy-nosed sounds and crying sounds combined, nothing he said could be understood at all.
“There, there,”
The man patted his back. At the kindly soothing manner, Heesa made hiccuping sounds and tried to burrow further into the man’s embrace. It was an instinctive act, seeking stability from a person who would soothe him kindly forever.
At the warm body heat, the firmly embracing arm, and the hand patting him with a shh, shh sound, even his pained crying abated somewhat. Though he was gasping for breath, at the sight of Heesa gradually calming down, the man ruffled his hair, wet with cold sweat, this way and that.
His neatly cut hair moved softly in whatever direction his fingers moved. The feel of the straight hair slipping between his fingers was unusual. Pushing back the forelock that came down to his eyebrows to cool his fever, the man murmured.
“Seems he has a fever…”
At last Heesa, who had been burying his face in the robe, lifted his reddened face. It left a dark mark on the man’s jade-colored robe.
His eyes, always large as if frightened, were so swollen they could hardly open, and his skin, once pale, was entirely red with fever. His lips were twice as swollen with scabs, and beneath his nostrils a small bubble kept swelling and popping each time he breathed.
The man gave a hollow laugh, caught between pity and amusement. Heesa was a little embarrassed, but liking the feel of the man’s large hand covering his forehead, he closed his eyes as if wheedling. This time watery snot ran down in a stream.
The man looked down at his own robe, now darkened in color, then took its hem and held it to Heesa’s nose.
“Blow.”
Heesa, his eyes closed, blew his nose as told, not even knowing where he was blowing it. Having, now that the robe was dirty anyway, wiped away even the tear and spit marks, the man met the eyes of the general, who looked at him as if not knowing what on earth he was doing.
General Kang Shin, always stoic with no ups and downs of feeling, was dumbfounded enough to show how extraordinary a thing the man had done. But the man, without a trace of embarrassment, brazenly held out his hand.
Only then did Heesa realize another person was there, and his eyes went round. To put it precisely, because they were so swollen, his eyelids only twitched as if trying to go round.
At General Kang Shin’s sudden appearance, Heesa lost his wits. Even the faint hiccuping sounds stopped.
The man and General Kang Shin were in one place. Heesa looked back and forth between them, as if he could not believe it.
He remembered the man’s words, that he was close to the general, and that he would punish him. The man was a far greater person than Heesa had expected. Heesa gaped, staring blankly up at the general.
“There’s a rumor going around the private houses these days.”
The low, mid-range voice was full of playfulness. Heesa turned his head toward the owner of the voice.
“They say that to stop a child’s crying, you should frighten it by saying General Kang Shin will take it away.” The man, who tapped the tip of Heesa’s dazed nose, mischievously raised the corner of his mouth. From the spot the man’s hand had touched, it felt as if heat flared up. At his suddenly quickened heartbeat, Heesa flustered faintly all on his own.
“Seems it’s true.”
The man, having said a worthless aside, chuckled at whatever was so funny. The general silently withdrew to a place out of Heesa’s sight.
Heesa, utterly bewildered, only blinked his eyes. The man slowly eased Heesa, who had stopped crying thanks to the general, out of his
arms.
“Uh…!”
As his posture changed, pain shot through his calves. At the sharp pain, Heesa gripped the man’s arm hard by reflex, then, startled at himself, apologized.
“I-I’m sorry…” “It’s all right.”
The man, more slowly, laid Heesa face down on the room floor. Even the slightest movement hurt his swollen calves, but Heesa gritted his teeth and endured his groans.
Even the simple act of lying face down on the floor took an age. Cold sweat beaded again on Heesa’s face.
The man, who had carefully laid Heesa down, rolled up the lowered trouser hems to his thighs. His body flinched. Remembering the sorrow of that time again, Heesa buried his face in the bedding.
Pretending not to see Heesa, who began sniffling again, the man examined his calves. His thin legs, which looked as if they had never done a day’s work, without a single prominent muscle, were full of dark red marks.
The wounds on skin white as a snowfield stood out all the more. His calves had all turned red, and the color was especially darker where the switch had struck. Whether pus had seeped out, sticky scabs had already formed in places.
Tsk, tsk, the man clicked his tongue softly and opened the medicine. Taking a generous amount of translucent ointment on his finger and carefully bringing it to the afflicted area, Heesa’s body flinched again.
“Uh…?”
“Does it hurt?”
“N-no, I’m fine.”
Heesa, who had been weeping secretly, let out a slightly suppressed sobbing sound because he had answered. The man pretended once more not to have heard and took even more strength out of his finger.
The cool ointment cooled the heat that filled his calves. The touch that applied the ointment so as not to hurt was kind.
Heesa wept soundlessly, then sniffed his snot in and secretly rubbed his face on the bedding again. Of course, the man watched it all.
Having generously applied ointment to his red calves, the man wrapped them in clean cotton cloth. Neither too tight nor too loose. Just enough not to inconvenience him in daily life. Having wrapped the cotton cloth, the man lowered Heesa’s trouser hems again.
His calves, which had hurt so much that tears sprang to his eyes at the slightest movement, felt considerably better once the ointment was applied. A throbbing sensation remained, but compared to just before, when he could not move at all, it was a relief. The man helped Heesa, who had been lying face down, so that he could lie properly.
The man’s face bore a look of pity. Not a put-on expression as before, but one that came sincerely from the heart.
That there was a person who worried about him. That alone made Heesa’s chest feel full. The man, who had pulled the bedding up to Heesa’s chin, gazed at Heesa for a while.
A large hand pressed Heesa’s forehead. Surprisingly, the man’s hand was cold. He had expected it to be warm, like the man’s kindness, but it was rather cool.
“His fever needs to come down.”
But at the man’s following words, Heesa realized that he had felt it so because he himself had a fever.
Heesa quickly comforted the man.
“It will come down. It will…”
For a while the cool hand pressed his forehead firmly. It was cool. As the man moved his hand as if taking Heesa’s fever away, he opened his mouth. Surprisingly, the man remembered Heesa’s name.
“Yes…?”
“Will you tell me what happened?”
At the question, gentle as a spring breeze, sorrow welled up in Heesa once more. Heesa made a gulping sound, trying to endure the emotion that surged up.
Fortunately, when he swallowed dry saliva, the heat caught behind his Adam’s apple went down. Heesa, who had thought he had almost succeeded, opened his mouth to speak in an orderly way.
But the moment his eyes met the man’s, all of Heesa’s efforts came to nothing. His mouth, which had opened neatly, at once twisted with a hwaaang sound.
His floodgates burst, and Heesa told him everything that had happened, in full detail. The one person in the Empire who had treated him with any
kindness, meeting him again, felt like his own ally. Since he also seemed close to the general who had brought Heesa to the Empire, before long the man had become the person Heesa trusted most in the Empire.
It was the moment the bolt of the promise the man had hastily locked was unlocked again by the man himself. The man’s eyes, gazing at Heesa who wept loudly even as he talked, sank lower and lower.
“Huu, how long, huh, must I stay here, my lord, huu, I want to go home…” Having found his tongue, Heesa brought out the question hidden deep in his heart. The man wiped Heesa’s tears with his sleeve. He still wore a lowered gaze, as if lost in some thought.
“You should sleep for now today.”
Heesa’s large eyes had swollen entirely and become small. To the man, it was plain that though he lacked the strength from crying so much, he was forcing his eyelids open.
The man’s words magically summoned sleepiness. His tensed muscles loosened languidly. When he let the strength out of the eyelids he had been forcing, it felt as if he could fall asleep at once.
“When you wake up tomorrow… I think I may be able to answer what you were curious about.” Though it was an uncertain promise, Heesa was reassured. It was because of his groundless trust in the man. Feeling his vision blur, Heesa nodded his head slightly.
But belatedly, the thought came that someone other than the man might answer him. Heesa recalled the people he had met since coming to the Empire. General Kang Shin, the head eunuch, the lady, and… as he felt now, apart from the man, he did not want to face any of them.
“Will you, my lord?”
At Heesa’s faint question, the man’s lips closed. Even without opening his closed eyes, Heesa knew the man was hesitating. He must surely have wheedled too comfortably. Just as Heesa was about to apologize, saying he was sorry,
“Yeon-yun.”
But the man uttered words he could not guess. Heesa asked back hazily.
“…Yes?”
“Did I not say I would tell you my name if fate brought us together again.” Ah, Heesa’s lips parted slightly, then at once curved into a bashful smile. As he tried to force strength into his eyelids in order to say a proper thank you, the man’s hand covered the corners of his eyes. A strange sense of stability came over him.
“Then… will Lord Yun tell me?”
Heesa, drunk with sleep, asked, correcting his form of address. Thinking Yeon was his surname, he called him Lord Yun. The man, whose eyebrows had rounded for a moment, soon began to chuckle softly at whatever was so funny.
“Yes.”
The answer that followed a long laugh was quite hearty. Reassured, Heesa felt his mind go hazy in an instant. By the time the man took his hand away again, Heesa was already fast asleep.
There was no grubbier puppy that kept drawing the eye out of pity. The man, killing all sound, quietly slipped out of the room.
“Your Majesty.”
The general, who had been waiting silently, bowed his head. Beside him lay a soft silk quilt, folded. General Kang Shin mumbled an excuse no one had asked for.
“I received the medicine from the head eunuch, and brought the quilt as well. It looked very dirty…”
“How kind of you.”
The emperor did not say the next words, but the general could guess the words that would follow from the emperor’s pointed gaze. And why are you still unmarried? It was a nagging he had heard a hundred times.
While the kind but unmarried general covered Heesa with the soft, sweet-smelling quilt, the emperor approached the low table set to one side of the main wooden floor. Opening the meal cover on the table, only marks as if gnawed by mice remained.
“Does he eat so little?”
No wonder he is so thin. The emperor raised one corner of his mouth, then relaxed it again, and covered the meal cover.
Only after covering the grubby puppy with the quilt and closing the paper doors so the wind would not come in did the two leave the cold palace.
The original plan to go out in disguise to the private houses had gone awry, but the emperor and General Kang Shin had long since completely forgotten it.
The occasion that brought the prince of Seon to mind was truly a coincidence. In the midst of setting out in disguise, a faint sound of crying had brushed past on the wind.
But the crying sound vanished as if it had been an illusion, and Kang Shin seemed not to have heard it either. He must simply have misheard. But for some reason, the emperor kept thinking of the prince of Seon.
Since he was going out anyway, checking from a distance would not be a bad idea. Thinking the child who had whimpered from hunger might today have fallen asleep patting a plump belly, he soon grew cheerful.
But not even the emperor under heaven had expected a prince whose calves bore, intact, the marks of a severe beating. Recalling the prince who had thrown himself into his arms, weeping loudly, the emperor, sorting out where things had gone wrong, asked a very grave question.
“Shin.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Do you know when the prince’s wedding is?”
“I believe it was after this.”
The emperor, who seemed to ponder for a moment, spotted the head eunuch running toward him from far away, his face gone blue-green. He muttered.
“Clear your evening.”
“…Yes?”
“You will be free of odd jobs for a while. What shall I do with the time?”
“Oh, Your Majesty! I, I…! It is all my fault, please kill me!” General Kang Shin only blinked his eyes. That dull man could never have dreamed why the head eunuch had gone blue-green.
The general had told the head eunuch the reason he had to receive the medicine and the quilt. General Kang Shin, who had no talent at all for metaphor, must have told him honestly.
What state the prince had been in, who had discovered it, how the emperor had treated the prince. With no consideration at all for the head eunuch’s position, whose heart must have shriveled so that he had aged twenty years more, honestly. Very starkly.
“Shall I try teaching the child myself?”
At the emperor’s murmur, this time it was General Kang Shin who went blue-green. Whether he had expected the general, whose eyes bulged as if not understanding what was going on, the emperor playfully shrugged his shoulders. He laughed hollowly, unable to understand himself why he was meddling.
“Is he not pitiful?”
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