Chapter 38

He wasn’t a man who admitted weakness.

He must be hugging me because he’s cold.

Thinking that, Hisa grinned soundlessly.

She assumed Hong Yeom-rang was the kind of man who would never say he was cold, so this was how he was acting instead.

She rubbed his back all over with her palm.

Hoping the friction would warm him.

“Should I take off my clothes for you.”

“Miss, stop saying crazy things.”

Hong Yeom-rang said through clenched teeth.

He did not want to imagine Hisa running naked through the forest.

Hisa had no idea fury fierce enough to catch every goblin, gouge out all their eyes, and burn down the entire mountain had slipped out through his teeth.

* * *

The workers and servants were restless.

Watching General Hong’s face, they only read the room, seeing he looked ready to explode at any moment.

Hearing they had combed through the mountain like hunting lice and still couldn’t find the second young master, veins stood out in the neck of General Hong, who had always suppressed his temper and pretended to be a quiet scholar.

“Set fire to the mountain at once! Then he’ll come running out like a dog with its tail on fire!”

It was not the sort of thing a nobleman should say.

The villagers gathered to help search for Hong Yeom-rang went pale.

They feared General Hong might really set fire to the sacred mountain.

This is why outsiders are no good, they whispered among themselves.

The son would return safely after one hundred days anyway, and they were already searching.

Even if they were being paid to pretend to search, they worried next year’s harvest would be ruined, or if the tiger appeared again and merchants stopped coming here.

“My lord, set fire to the mountain?”

General Hong realized his second son had openly ignored him and run off somewhere.

Of course.

He was never the type to stay quietly buried in the mountains.

The brat’s head was always full of ways to drag down his father’s dignity.

“There’s a limit to smearing shit on your father’s face!”

General Hong glared at the black mountain.

It couldn’t be helped.

He had two sons.

If one vanished, he could send the other.

He shouldn’t have listened to the shaman in the first place.

Wasn’t the royal family, after all, merely making a plausible plan to summon the troops of generals loyal to him in this unstable time.

Still, since fate had been pointed out by the head shaman, he had wanted to use it as a stepping stone.

A marriage destined from birth.

That shaman surely failed to account for his second son’s temperament.

The boy didn’t just throw ashes onto a finished meal.

He had the rare talent of flipping the whole table over.

Even if sent into the royal family, a son his own father couldn’t tame would only bring disaster.

Even thinking that, rage boiled inside him.

“It’s too late at night, my lord. What shall we do?”

In his heart he wanted to order them to search through the night.

But he restrained himself.

Even General Hong knew the villagers hated the mountain being disturbed.

“Everyone withdraw. At dawn, I’ll go up the mountain myself.”

If he was still somewhere in the mountain, surely he wouldn’t fail to appear when his father came.

For the last time, he placed hope in the unfilial brat.

People scattered in all directions.

Even the servants dispersed.

General Hong alone remained in the yard.

He hadn’t entered that mountain since he was young.

To the villagers it was a sacred mountain.

To him it was an unsettling mountain he preferred to turn his back on.

He had ignored strange rumors and stayed quietly in this village under the excuse of treating his wife’s illness.

Demotion or not, he had expected the state would summon him again one day.

He already knew the royal family intended to bring him back to the capital as the father of a royal son-in-law.

The times were unstable.

No one knew when northern barbarians might descend.

And the movements of the raiders beyond the sea were no less troubling.

“My sons, every one of them…”

Would it improve if he fought beside them in war, back to back.

That thought came suddenly.

Forget a royal son-in-law.

What if he dragged his son to the battlefield and faced life and death together.

After his wife died, he could not handle both sons.

Especially Hong Yeom-rang, who looked at him with the same eyes as his dead wife.

He couldn’t endure it.

The eldest, Hong In-nam, would at least cower if severely scolded.

The second did not.

If someone claimed they had caught a venomous snake in some mountain, torn out its tongue, and put it into Hong Yeom-rang’s mouth, he would believe it.

“Traitor. Isn’t this exile exactly what it is.”

The heated eyes of Hong Yeom-rang, looking straight into his own as he said that, burned fiercely.

His hand had moved on its own.

Even after striking that small cheek hard enough to burst red, his anger did not fade.

Saying what did a child know to speak carelessly of the family, he had all but cut ties and sent him straight to the capital.

Had his own father not turned his back on his lord, even Hong Yeom-rang would never have been born.

He had told himself the boy was young.

Too young to understand.

Yet even when his son returned, affection never grew.

There hadn’t even been time.

His son returned taller and harder than him.

The only thing unchanged from childhood was the gaze that so resembled his dead wife.

General Hong only came to realize bitterly that even in the capital, Hong Yeom-rang had not bent that stubbornness.

“…M-my lord…”

The servant who had climbed the mountain several times just today returned to the inner yard looking worn out.

Then called carefully to General Hong.

“What is it.”

“…Well… tomorrow… what if we boil some pork and take it up. The young master goes c-crazy, I mean likes it very much.”

“You mean he hasn’t come out because there was no meat?”

Unbelievable.

Suddenly he remembered the servant talking about pork not long ago too.

Come to think of it, he didn’t even properly know his son’s tastes, and the anger rising in him softened.

“Pig or cow, slaughter as many as you like.”

Rustic bastard.

I didn’t raise him in want, yet he likes pork more than beef.

Even his taste displeased him.

At General Hong’s words, the servant brightened and answered as if ready to slaughter every pig in the village.

“He’ll definitely come out!”

That too was maddening in its own way.

If he didn’t come out when his father searched, but came running for pork, then whatever anyone said, he was a damned brat.

“Good grief.”

At this age he had even been prepared to go to the frontier just to make one son a royal son-in-law.

At this rate he’d die bursting from anger before that.

He looked down blankly at the hand that had once struck his young son’s cheek, opening and closing it.

Exile.

Had he struck him because he was ashamed the boy exposed that he thought so too.

…Perhaps that was true.

His young son had been too perceptive.

The memory of feeling stripped bare still lingered bitterly in General Hong.

* * *

The moment they returned to the cave, Hong Yeom-rang noticed the stained padded mat under the lamp and threw the blanket over it before Hisa could see.

Unaware, Hisa washed her feet in the little pool, scrubbing them clean, then sat down on the padded mat.

Then she lay down, realized it didn’t feel like before, and popped back up trying to pull the blanket aside.

“Leave it.”

“Rang-ah, lie here.”

Calling him by his childhood name familiarly, Hisa sat and pointed beside her.

She seemed still worried about how he had been in pain and feverish.

Standing there, Hong Yeom-rang looked down at Hisa curled up small.

His hand automatically brushed through his hair.

Then suddenly he realized it was even shorter than when he had cut it himself.

About half a month had passed since then.

At this rate, feeding her morning and night for the days remaining, there’d be no roots left.

Watching Hisa sitting where traces of him still remained, he absently touched his hair.

Then at last reflected on his own temper.

As the old saying went, hair should not be cut.

“Ha…”

A damned temperament even dogs wouldn’t bite.

Now he understood why Hisa had looked horrified seeing him hold the cut hair.

At the time, inwardly he had been pleased to have gotten one over on her.

“How am I supposed to keep that one fed.”

If it were clothes or food, he could tear as much as he wanted from the shining stores his father possessed and feed and dress her.

But hair.

The damned hair he cut with his own hand.

He didn’t even know how much grew in a day.

He had never thought about such a thing.

Touching the short hair by his ear, Hong Yeom-rang reflected for the first time on what he had done and regretted it.

The only thing he knew was that Hisa ate faster than his hair could grow.