The Weight of Choices
When I finally returned from my meeting with Lord Pingyuan, it was already late afternoon. The sun had not yet set, but the shadows were stretching longer, whispering of the night soon to come. It felt exactly like looking at my own situation, and a bitter smile rose to my lips unbidden.
I trudged back to the mansion, where the one waiting for me was none other than Jing Ke, who had been detained. I already knew the decision regarding her punishment from Lord Pingyuan, but seeing her face to face at last brought a wave of relief.
“…Jing Ke.”
“Oh, Young Master Yeon. You’re back?”
Even though she had been locked up for half a day, Jing Ke greeted me with her usual carefree attitude. Her face showed she had been through quite a bit, yet her spirit remained as bright as ever. Watching her wave lightly made my earlier worries feel ridiculous.
“How’s your body? The wounds didn’t flare up, did they?”
Considering the hygiene of the place where she had been imprisoned, there was a real risk of secondary infection. Jing Ke shrugged and shook her head.
“I’m fine. But look at you, Young Master—your expression is anything but refreshed.”
How could it be? In the end, I had made Jing Ke pay the price for my own selfish desires.
Fortunately, the punishment handed down to her was not execution. It had been treated as nothing more than a quarrel between commoners. The fact that the other party had drawn a weapon first and that her actions had been aimed at subduing rather than killing had been accepted. Of course, it went without saying that Lord Pingyuan’s influence had played a major role in getting that argument accepted.
Instead, the penalty imposed on Jing Ke was banishment from the state of Zhao. She was to be completely expelled from Zhao, and if she were ever discovered within its borders again, she would face severe punishment. It was essentially being placed on a blacklist.
Leave Handan before sunset. The bundle slung over Jing Ke’s shoulder was the mark of a traveler setting out alone on a long journey.
“Don’t beat yourself up too much. Even if I hadn’t met you, Young Master, I would’ve ended up clashing with that old bastard Nogucheon and getting kicked out anyway. I just stayed a little longer, that’s all.”
Jing Ke’s words were sincere. Even when I thought about it, without my intervention, she would have lost her bet against Nogucheon. And Jing Ke, refusing to accept such an incomprehensible defeat, would have left Handan. Having spent time with her, I could easily picture the sequence in my head based on what I knew of her personality.
“So there’s no need to feel sorry for me. Instead, you should take a good look at yourself, Young Master.”
“At myself?”
“You felt it clearly this time, didn’t you? How much impact your decisions have on the people beneath you.”
Because of my arbitrary decision to withdraw from Ying Zheng, everything around me had collapsed. Lord Pingyuan had withdrawn his support and abandoned the idea of a next-generation Yeon-Jo alliance. Jing Ke, despite acting on my orders, had taken responsibility and received a sentence of exile. And it wasn’t just the two of them. The lives of Han Jing and the rest of my household had also been cast onto stormy seas.
When I couldn’t answer and simply hung my head, Jing Ke let out a small snort of laughter and suddenly ruffled my hair wildly.
“Look at you, all wilted. That’s just how it is. If everyone got it right from the start, why would there be a difference between children and adults? Everyone grows up by making mistakes like this. And look—there are adults like me, right?”
She pointed at herself and chuckled. Even though some people cause trouble and then run away, she said there was no need for me to be discouraged when I had chosen to shoulder the responsibility myself. Jing Ke encouraged me.
Then, in a more serious tone, she continued.
“Meet more people. You don’t have to do everything alone. Now that you’ve realized your own powerlessness, fill the space around you with people who can make up for it.”
It would have been perfect if she had stopped there, but Jing Ke couldn’t resist adding one last jab.
“Well, looking at you right now, that might be difficult for the time being.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
When I snapped back, Jing Ke responded with the same expression I had seen once before. When was that again…? Right. It was when I had taken her in and was heading to see Lord Pingyuan. That was the face she had made when she tossed a joke at me while I was frozen stiff with tension. Once again, she was teasing me in a roundabout way, telling me not to be so down on myself and to have more confidence.
Jing Ke turned her head and gazed toward the west. The sun was sinking, and a red sunset began to blanket the earth. The time left to her was only until that candle-like sunset gave off its final light.
She clapped a hand on my shoulder, then brushed past me.
“Big sis is off. Next time we meet, make sure you’ve grown up a bit more, Young Master.”
Without once looking back, Jing Ke’s back grew smaller in the distance. As if both of us instinctively understood that today’s farewell did not mean we would never see each other again, there was no need for any grand ceremony.
My first retainer—and perhaps the one who would become my last. I stood motionless in that spot, watching her back until it completely disappeared from sight. Turning over and over in my mind the words she had left behind.
“She’s gone?”
“Yeah.”
When I returned after seeing Jing Ke off, Ying Zheng came trotting over and asked. Since Jing Ke had been her benefactor as well, it was natural that she would be worried.
“Are you sad?”
Sad? It would be a lie to say I wasn’t. No matter how certain I was that we would meet again, the emptiness of losing someone who had been by my side was not something that could be easily resolved. Moreover, Jing Ke was the first historical figure I had taken in as one of my own. What made it even more special was that she and I were destined to become so deeply intertwined that we would one day entrust our lives to each other in a grand gamble.
The void left by someone I could trust so completely was enormous.
But I couldn’t just stand still, forever mourning only those who had left. Not when there were still people remaining by my side.
“I’m fine.”
So I had to be fine. Instead of drowning in sorrow, I needed to find those who would stand with me again and prop up the collapsing tree with supports. For that, I couldn’t afford to remain discouraged like this.
“Can you lower your head a little?”
“My head?”
When I bent my knees slightly to match her height, Ying Zheng reached out and began tidying my disheveled hair.
“Hey, Dan… why do you go so far to help me?”
Before I could answer, she continued.
“Is it because I’m a princess of Qin?”
“What?”
“But Dan, I have no value at all in Qin. My father is a worthless bastard who abandoned his wife and child to save his own skin and fled to Qin.”
Her tone was calm, but the words she spat out were incredibly harsh. It seemed like resentment toward the father who had abandoned her, but to me it sounded different. It was closer to grief—that despite my risking everything to help her, she herself had nothing to give in return.
“Did you know? The capital of Qin is a place called Xianyang. I heard I have a half-sibling there. After abandoning us, he immediately went and had another child.”
Ying Zheng was frighteningly intelligent for her young age. She understood the structure of power and clearly grasped the position she was in. Born between a father who was a collateral member of Qin’s royal family and a mother from a wealthy Zhao clan, she was not treated as official Qin royalty, while in Zhao she was looked down upon precisely because of her Qin royal bloodline.
Thanks to her maternal family pouring all their assets into her, she had barely managed to survive. In the midst of unconditional hostility, the people of Zhao must have pointed fingers and mocked her. A child abandoned by her parents. Your mother has fallen from a ruined family and become a dancing courtesan selling smiles. Your father has already forgotten you and fathered a son with another woman in Qin.
How cruel were the people of Zhao who deliberately told her the truth about her father, Ying Yiren, who had returned to Qin, just to wound her? I couldn’t even begin to imagine the pain Ying Zheng must have endured. Just thinking about what kind of thoughts and values she must have developed while living through such a childhood was both horrifying and heartbreaking.
“Even if you treat me well, there’s nothing I can give you in return, Dan. On the contrary, I…”
I took hold of Ying Zheng’s hand, which was still arranging my hair. Why was she saying such things? The reason she dragged out her own wounds and hurt herself like this was probably because she didn’t know how to accept the goodwill directed toward her. A child who had grown so accustomed to hostility that she could not endure goodwill without endlessly doubting and testing it stood before me.
“You don’t have to push yourself so hard.”
Us. Just now, Ying Zheng had said “us.” Herself and her mother. Even though her mother treated her like a child she had cast aside, she still could not let go. She was still hoping. For attention, for warmth, for love.
That is simply how humans are. Because we are social creatures, because we cannot live alone, no matter how much darkness and ugliness we witness, no matter how much we suffer from distrust and hatred, a corner of our hearts still yearns for connection with others. Knowing that, we empathize with others’ pain and reach out our hands. That is what is called compassion.
It is not cheap pity for the sake of my own superiority, nor is it sympathy for moral satisfaction. It is simply unconditional love for others that naturally blooms from the depths of the heart. The answer I gave to Lord Pingyuan. It is Agape.
An emotion asserted by countless religious figures, thinkers, and philosophers throughout both East and West. To put it grandly, that is what it is. To put it simply, there is no reason. I simply want to help, so I help.
It seemed the people of Zhao had shoved Ying Zheng onto me as if to say “go choke on this,” but for me, it was something to welcome instead. Still, I couldn’t just stagger along exactly as those bastards hoped.
Jing Ke called me a child, but I possess memories from a previous life that others do not.
Until now, I had barely managed to patch together fragments of that knowledge like rags, but from now on, things would be different.
I will gather people. In the end, that is the path I must take. But right now, who will help me? So first, what I need most is…
Money. A great deal of money that would bring me both freedom and talented individuals.