Chapter 18
Chapter 18
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 18
Chapter Title: Junni
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Doyoung realized that Tora intended to knock him out.
"Tora! Stop!"
Rustle.
The resounding shout startled birds into flight.
Tora's foot, just about to strike Doyoung, froze in place. At that moment, a rush of air pushed against their faces like a gust of wind. Doyoung shivered as he stared at the foot halted mere centimeters from his own face.
Standing tall amid the reeds, Gamal exuded an unfamiliar air of authority for the first time.
Tora turned and said,
"Matty."
Gamal shifted his gaze from Tora to Doyoung.
"Doyoung won't give up. He'll find them eventually."
Before Doyoung could ask what "them" meant, Gamal muttered to himself,
"But it's Doyoung, so it's fine."
Tora glanced at Doyoung once more and lowered his foot.
"Agreed."
Doyoung stared at Tora in disbelief.
"If that's the case, why'd you go to all that trouble to stop me?"
Tora grinned.
"Because playing with you is fun, Captain."
"Doyoung, come here."
Gamal spoke and walked ahead. When Doyoung looked back at Tora, he gestured forward as if to say, go on. Doyoung followed Gamal.
They pushed through the forest for quite a while. Doyoung glanced back at Tora trailing behind and said,
"If you're planning to bury me somewhere no one will ever find, at least make it painless."
Tora looked amused by the remark.
"That's why. We're in a place outsiders can't find."
What?
He wanted to ask, but doubted Tora would answer, so he didn't. Besides, it seemed like they'd explain soon enough.
Gamal walked ahead without a word. Doyoung turned to Tora again and asked,
"What about you two?"
"Me?"
"What's your relationship?"
Instead of answering, Tora countered with a question.
"Isn't it obvious?"
If it were, I wouldn't be asking.
At that moment, Gamal turned back and said,
"Tora is my son."
"Son...?"
Doyoung looked Tora up and down. He appeared a few years older than Gamal. Of course, as a vampire, looks were deceptive....
"I gave him my blood."
Gamal's follow-up cleared up the confusion.
"Ah, that kind of son."
It meant a beneficiary who received blood to become a vampire—what was commonly called a "cliente" these days. Makes sense; they weren't the same race, so he couldn't be a biological son. Tora looked like a mix of native and white.
"So you have a cliente."
As Doyoung muttered, Tora asked with an amused expression,
"Did you think he was your husband or something?"
"We're here."
Gamal spoke and led the way. Doyoung replied to Tora and followed.
"I figured third time's the charm."
"Why third, of all things?"
Tora grumbled from behind as he followed. But Doyoung no longer heard him. It was because of the crowd of people suddenly before him.
It must have felt like this for John Smith meeting Pocahontas's tribe, or Jake Sully meeting the Na'vi.
All these people, who looked like the island's indigenous natives, were staring at Doyoung. Mostly curiosity, rather than fear.
Doyoung scanned the tribe from one end to the other. He got it now. Gamal hadn't hidden Tora. He'd hidden these people.
Doyoung turned to Gamal.
"You hid these people? Why?"
"Because we couldn't trust you, Captain."
Tora said.
"You're different from the other visitors. That's precisely why we couldn't introduce our tribe to you. We had no idea how you'd react."
"The 'you' in particular...."
Suddenly, Gamal walked toward the tribe. Among them, he spotted several who looked like mixed-bloods similar to Tora.
Gamal extended a hand to an elderly woman, helping her step forward one pace. Blue eyes, like weathered tree bark, gazed at Doyoung from her lined face. She was a native-white mix too.
Gamal said,
"Angela. Johannes's granddaughter."
Johannes's granddaughter. Doyoung stared, slow to grasp the meaning, until it hit him.
"He had a wife and kids outside...."
Gamal shook his head.
"Johannes fell in love with Angela's grandmother. He said he didn't want to go back."
"Then what was that letter about?"
"I asked him to write it that way."
Tora answered with a grin.
"Johannes was a writer, you see."
While Doyoung stood stunned, Tora walked toward the people too. He turned back and declared from their midst,
"Welcome. We are the Satadi tribe."
***
Everyone seemed joyful. Across the bonfire in the village clearing, they cracked open peanut-like nuts and laughed boisterously.
Doyoung wondered what they could have to talk about with people they'd seen every day of their lives, but no one in the tribe spoke a language he understood, so he couldn't ask.
Though Gamal had no connection to the ancient Satadi tribe he'd been born into, this tribe called themselves "Satadi." They all shared the same surname too: Satadi, equally and fairly.
Their language was the same. Linguistically unrelated to the ancient Satadi Gamal spoke, yet they called their tongue "Satadi."
Doyoung looked at Gamal sitting beside him. Gamal was cracking peanut-like nuts too. He noticed Doyoung's gaze and offered some he'd already shelled.
"Want some?"
Doyoung took one and tried it. Bigger than peanuts, coarser texture, but similar taste.
As he ate, Doyoung glanced around at the people and muttered,
"I thought you lived alone all this time."
Gamal deftly shelled more as he replied.
"When I first came, no one was here. I woke up, and people were around. They were hostile at first. But gradually, more came."
Likely migrants from other islands while Gamal slept. With his laid-back nature, he wouldn't have driven out people already settled; they'd just ended up living together.
"But there were no human traces on our side at all."
Even if deliberately hidden, erasing every sign that thoroughly was no easy feat. Traces always lingered somewhere, yet Doyoung—whose job was spotting them—had found none.
"The tribe doesn't go there."
Gamal said.
"Why?"
"Because it's my land."
"Do you have a deed or something?"
Doyoung couldn't hide his sarcasm. But Gamal, seemingly giving up on unfamiliar words, didn't ask and just said,
"I told them they could go. They don't."
Doyoung ate the peanut-like nut in silence. Then, casually, as if it just occurred to him—not that he cared much—he asked,
"Why live alone? Plenty of men in the tribe."
"The tribe sees me as something else."
Gamal answered as if the question was natural.
"Something else?"
When Doyoung turned to ask, Gamal shrugged and said,
"A god."
Come to think of it, no one from the tribe sat near them. Not rejection, but treating Gamal as the eldest elder.
Fair enough. With superhuman physical prowess and eternal life, why wouldn't he be a god? The only difference from gods elsewhere: he had flesh and blood, alive.
Being alive meant he could protect them more reliably.
The tribe originally had a different name—not Satadi.
More precisely, multiple names. Long ago, dozens of tribes dotted this modest island. But as they unified, they took their name from their god.
Doyoung nodded toward Tora.
"What about him, then?"
At least as a fellow vampire, he wouldn't see Gamal as a god. But Gamal looked puzzled that Doyoung even mentioned Tora.
"Tora's my son. I watched him be born and grow."
It was obvious, really. Tora lounged on a large woven mat like a beanbag, entwined with a young tribe woman, giggling intimately.
He whispered in her ear—nothing profound, by the look of it—yet she laughed as if breathless with delight. Gradually, their affections grew bolder; if Doyoung were more innocent, he'd blush.
But the tribe seemed to find nothing odd about it.
Doyoung came from a world where vampires and humans loving each other wasn't strange, but the Satadi accepted it almost as natural law.
"That guy's been out in the world, right?"
Doyoung asked confidently. Tora had the look of a native Mars, but carried the scent of civilization. Gamal nodded.
"Tora and Rato bring news from the world. And phlos too."
Hearing Gamal mention eating phlos felt jarring. A twinge of betrayal, even.
"You eat flowers raw?"
"They're all gone lately."
"But who's Rato?"
"Tora's twin."
Doyoung paused.
"He's a Luas too?"
Gamal nodded.
"Yeah. Tora and Rato are both my sons."
"There's another guy identical to him?"
Doyoung couldn't tell if that was good or bad news for women. But....
"Twins...."
Something tugged at his memory, but it slipped away. So he shelled another peanut-like nut and asked,
"Where's the other twin?"
"Out there. Tora and Rato take turns going outside. It's Rato's turn now. Bringing news and goods."
That explained the outside items among the tribe's possessions.
"By any chance, have you heard anything about Rato?"
Suddenly, Tora plopped down beside Doyoung and asked.
Doyoung eyed Tora oddly as he reached past him to grab a handful of shelled nuts from Gamal's knee.
"Why ask me about your brother?"
The woman Tora had been with stayed put, looking dissatisfied at his abrupt departure.
Tora munched on the nuts and said,
"Rato hasn't contacted us in a while. He checks in at least every couple weeks, but it's been over a month now."
"Sorry, but I've been stuck on this island for a month and a half. How would they even contact me?"
Tora grinned.
"Like you'd answer anyway."
Doyoung sighed.
"I told you, I don't talk about the tribe."