When Gene came and stood before him, the general nodded and spoke.
“Have you rested well?”
“Yes.”
“And your injuries?”
“They are all right.”
There were wounds large and small all over his body. Quite a few were things he had discovered only after sleeping for a good while and waking. Leaning back in his chair, the general folded his hands beneath his chin.
“With five hundred and twenty-odd men, you killed seven hundred Jandana. And five hundred of your men were local greenhorns who had never been trained, farmers, clerks, and potbellied tavern keepers. Let me tell you something frankly.”
The general moved away from the back of his chair.
“I truly did not expect Your Highness to be such a man.”
The general leaned back again. Gene said nothing. Taking a sip of tea, the general frowned. He too seemed to need liquor.
“There is something I am curious about. Why did you not run? Could you not have done as Hanbun did when he escaped? This is not even your home. Was there a reason to stake your life on it?”
“There was not. It simply seems to have turned out that way.”
“It turned out that way? Was it not a sense of responsibility?”
Gene thought for a moment, then answered.
“More than responsibility, I think I simply did not want to show myself in a wretched state.”
He had answered, but in truth even Gene was not certain. Of course, he did not want stories of his having fled on his first campaign to follow him about. Was that something worth exchanging even for his life?
“The surviving soldiers follow you closely. Judging by the result, the dead would have done the same. This is your first campaign, is it not? Those men have spent years in the army. Yet they became one in body and mind with you. I asked Hanbun about you, and he described you as ‘humble.’ Those men are common soldiers, and you are a prince! Do you think that makes sense?”
“It must be because I was not a prince from the beginning.”
The general looked as though he had heard something unexpected. Gene thought it was something his mother would have told him never to say aloud. That made him want to answer all the more. As he spoke, he even felt a strange pleasure.
“Because I became a prince, I think I have come to understand well things I would not have known had I been a prince from birth.”
Even after Dalsad learned he was a prince, she did not come to his bed.
His ring was back on Gene’s hand. Hanbun had returned it. Thinking about the twists and turns it had gone through after leaving his hand made him laugh. And with that, he wanted to see Thea. He had never had such a thought before. Perhaps it was because he had come far away and experienced all sorts of things.
Seven-year-old Thea had been truly tiny. Dressed in a grand ceremonial robe, with a towering hair ornament on her head, she had looked as though she might be crushed and die beneath it. When they had sat facing each other to supposedly spend their first night together, the seven-year-old and twelve-year-old had merely stared blankly at one another, not knowing what to do. Unable to stand the boredom, Gene had said a few words, and Thea had burst into tears. It had not been anything important. He had only said he missed his mother. Gene, who had at least spent time with all sorts of children in the past, had expected it would be difficult to get along with a seven-year-old girl. So he had always prepared toys that might interest her.
Then there came a knock at the door. It was already the middle of the night. Gene sprang to his feet. Because of what had happened the day before, the tension ingrained in his body had not yet faded.
“Who is it?”
The door opened. Gene widened his eyes in confusion. It was Dalsad.
“Fortunately, you aren’t asleep yet.”
“What is it? At this hour?”
“I seem to have disturbed you. Were you waiting late into the night for someone?”
It was only that, having collapsed and slept during the day, he could not sleep that night. Gene watched Dalsad with dismayed eyes as she came in and closed the door. As she drew closer, Dalsad burst out laughing.
“I am not a Jandana. Please don’t look at me like that.”
“It is too late an hour.”
“You are worrying in my father’s place, Adjutant.”
“Since your father is ill, I suppose someone else must worry.”
Dalsad did not answer further and sat on a chair beside him. Then she took something from inside her clothes. It was a long-necked bottle and a cup.
“This is a reward especially for you, Adjutant.”
She removed the stopper, poured a cup, and held it out to Gene. A fragrant yet pungent scent spread.
“It is spiced liquor I made myself several years ago, and there was exactly one bottle left in a corner of the kitchen. I suppose someone hid it. That means they disobeyed an order, but I decided not to pursue the matter.”
Gene accepted the cup. In truth, he was delighted, but not wanting to show too much pleasure, he deliberately asked gruffly,
“Why are you giving a reward only to me?”
“You protected the castle, didn’t you?”
“Ah, so I did.”
When Gene put his lips to the cup, Dalsad placed the bottle on the table beside him, stepped away, bowed, and went outside. Belkun was certainly a fellow who spoke nothing but nonsense. Finding his own tension ridiculous, Gene drank several cups without refusing the liquor. Soon, he grew sleepy.
When he woke, it was broad daylight. His surroundings were bright. But the floor swayed violently. A bed should not do that. Had something happened to the castle? Gene tried to sit up at once. Then someone spoke to him.
“Your Highness, are you awake now? How do you feel?”
He had not risen after an illness, so he did not know why they asked like that. When he raised himself halfway, his head hurt as though it would split. Only then did he see his surroundings. He was lying on a wagon. To either side, guards rode on horseback. Gene wondered if he was still dreaming.
“Where are we? Why am I here?”
The person riding in the wagon with him was a physician. He explained that they were on the wilderness road to the capital, three days’ journey from Saemgeuneul Castle. Gene had slept so deeply that he would not wake, so they were taking him back in the wagon. At first, fearing he might have caught some local illness, they had summoned a physician and a shaman, causing an uproar. But once the diagnosis was that he was merely sleeping without anything particularly wrong, they had decided for the moment to move him to a large castle.
That he had slept for three whole days was an unbelievable story. When he told them to call Zamallik, the man appeared almost at once and brightened at the sight of Gene awake. It seemed Zamallik had told the others, for since Gene had not woken, his unit, with only a few men left, had been disbanded, and Zamallik, Hanbun, Gaiar, and the rest had joined Danil’s unit. Since they were returning after the battle, the disappearance of one adjutant’s unit had little effect, but for some reason Gene felt offended. Simply because he was a little tired after the battle, the decision to spend the expedition as an adjutant had vanished without warning, and he had somehow reverted to a prince under escort. What he wore, too, was not the simple clothing in which he had fallen asleep, but silk underclothes. There was no need to dress a sleeping person in clothes like that. The instant he realized it, Gene’s face burned as though he had been dressed as a woman.
When Gene ordered them to bring his horse, the physician spoke.
“It would be better for you to rest further. We still do not know why such a thing occurred. If it is not a local illness, perhaps you have fallen under some evil spell. There is said to be a sorcerer at the castle we will soon reach, so until then…”
While the physician was speaking, Gene had already pulled off his upper garment, thrown it aside, and jumped down from the wagon. When Zamallik brought Daylight, he mounted at once and rode to the front of the column. When he reached the general’s horse, the general too looked surprised. Gene thanked him for the kindness he had shown, but said he would now return to being an adjutant. The general frowned.
“There is no need. This is enough. No, it has already gone too far. Do you wish me to be scolded by His Majesty?”
“If I return home in such a ridiculous state, I think even the meaning of having accompanied the army as a prince and a mere adjutant will be tarnished. Please permit me to return to serving as an adjutant.”
When he chose to be stubborn, Gene, being royalty, could only prevail. Finding his armor and putting it on again, then gathering and leading the mere five men left under him, he could finally breathe a little easier. Suddenly remembering Asabel, he asked, and was told they had not been able to bring him. Amid the commotion over Gene’s sudden loss of consciousness, there had apparently been no opportunity to suggest taking even a little boy along. Zamallik and Gaiar might have been called captains during the siege, but in fact they were mere soldiers without even a right to speak. Gene told them not to worry, since he would summon the boy as promised, but in practice he could not stop the army’s march on the boy’s account, nor could he have him come to the capital alone. It seemed things would become complicated.
“But why on earth did you sleep so long? Was there anything suspicious before you fell asleep?”
At Hanbun’s question, the liquor Dalsad had brought came to mind, and Gene’s expression changed a little. In truth, he had suspected it from the beginning, but Dalsad was already three days away. It was not that he had never thought of going back to question her. But if it had been a plot worth questioning, Dalsad would already have fled. Otherwise, he did not want to turn the army back over a private matter. Above all, he did not want to reveal the process by which it had happened in every detail. If he mentioned that Dalsad had visited him in the middle of the night, everyone would share the same suspicion. No, the same certainty.
Hanbun spoke again.
“In my home region, occasionally there are people who fall asleep like that. We call it cocoon sleep. The cocoon of a butterfly, that cocoon. At the shortest, they sleep a day and a half; at the longest, three days. People who wake from cocoon sleep are said to have received a calling, and priests or shamans come and ask them various questions. Depending on their answers, a temple may take them in and make them priests. Sometimes, people go into cocoon sleep and never wake. So in truth, I was very worried about you too, Adjutant…”
“What sorts of questions?”
“About dreams. Usually, they have very vivid dreams.”
Gene tried to think what he too had seen in his dream. In that instant, the scene before him changed. The wilderness and sun vanished, and unfamiliar plants appeared, tangled together. White flowers, red stems, green leaves, and yellow moss densely covered ancient bricks. How old were they? A thousand years? Ten thousand? A cool air seeped into him, making his body tremble. The dewy plants seemed to breathe out mist. An unknown forest lay beyond them. Surrounded by walls. There was a paradise of supreme perfection. Merely thinking he wanted to enter felt as though it would break that perfection, so he had only watched, not daring even to think of it. There was a door in the middle of the wall. An unlocked door that seemed it would open if someone gave it a light push…
“Adjutant?”
Coming to himself, Gene looked at Hanbun. He was about to speak, then shut his mouth again. Somehow, he still felt this was not something he should tell just anyone. But he was not sure whom else he ought to tell. Priests? Gene shook his head and looked ahead again. Yet the image that had just come to him, the image of a door leading to a perfect place, would not leave his mind.
In his dream, had he laid his hand on that door?
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