Escape - 1
The next day.
The atmosphere at Heokho Fort was like water on the verge of boiling—ominous, yet eerily still.
I used that charged silence to slip toward a place normally reserved for the fort’s officers alone.
“Halt. No one gets past here unless they’re an officer.”
The moment I showed myself from a distance, the two bandits on guard instinctively drew their blades and blocked my path.
“Hard at work, I see.”
I approached them with a faint smile.
“You crazy bastard, don’t come any closer— Hah! P-Party Leader!”
“Party Leader! What brings you here?”
The moment I drew near, the guards in the red headscarves snapped to attention in shock.
I’m not the Party Leader, damn it. Everyone I’d run into since yesterday kept calling me that; correcting them had already gotten exhausting.
“I’d like to see the face of a certain companion of mine inside. Would that be all right?”
“Of course! Please, go right in!”
The two bandits sheathed their swords and cleared the way. Coming during the red-headscarf shift had been the right call after all.
“For the One Party.”
I gave them the greeting—right fist lightly thumping over my left breast—then stepped inside.
I hadn’t gone more than a few paces when the awed voices of the guards who’d just let me through floated after me.
“The Party Leader greeted me! He actually greeted me!”
“It was me he greeted!”
“The One Party! The Party Leader is going to lead us all into the One Party!”
The place I’d come to was the VIP section among Heokho Fort’s prisoners.
Of course, the only escort agency in this region foolish enough to get completely overrun by Green Forest bandits while guarding a guest of honor was the Jade Spring Escort Agency, so there was only a single occupant here.
“Hey. Holding up okay?”
I spoke toward Dang Hwarin, who was crouched in a corner beyond the bars.
“Why’d you come.”
Her voice was completely deflated.
She looked exactly like a young lady who had dressed up in brand-new clothes for a day out, only to get drenched to the bone by a sudden downpour and mud, now sitting at a bus stop with her soul gone from her face.
“Why else? Because I could. You’ve looked completely drained for days now.”
I came so we could break out together later, but she’s way too dejected.
I kept my tone light, yet I watched her with genuine concern. Hwarin glanced up at me, then dropped her head again and spoke.
“…Because I’m a complete fucking failure.”
“Why all of a sudden?”
“Because I can’t do a single thing right. Everything about me is pathetic… me.”
She let out a tiny sigh, still staring at the floor.
She had every right to feel crushed. From her perspective, recent events had been nothing but one disaster after another.
Driven out of the Seong Family Manor. Abandoned by her mother. Servants cursing her as they fled. People around her calling her a leper. Her body in constant pain. No money.
Then, just when she lucked into meeting me and was told not to worry about escorts… she got captured by the Green Forest without putting up any real fight.
No wonder she thought nothing ever went her way and that she herself was hopeless.
“That’s just how it is once you step out into the world.”
“Hong Gildong didn’t have it like that.”
Even you with the Hong Gildong comparison?
“There’s a reason Hong Gildong’s a hero.”
“Back when I left the Seong Family Manor, I used to think I was kind of like him too.”
“You?”
“Yeah. I’ve been looked down on and treated like trash since I was little, just like him. Servants and everyone else around me cursed me out. And my mom—no, that crazy bitch—she used to say I was nothing but a burden on her life. Whenever she drank, she’d throw cups at me and scream.”
“Hah. That’s a parent?”
I let out a quiet sigh, letting a low, simmering anger show.
What kind of person does that to a child who came out of her own body? Parental love at that age is everything. No wonder the kid grew up with a huge chest and an even bigger mouth full of curses.
Hwarin glanced at my angry face again, then spoke with that same dark expression.
“I wanted to go out into the world too. Because of my face. Leaving the Seong Family Manor terrified me, but part of me thought things would change once I got out. …But what is this? Other people become righteous thieves and even found countries. Me? No money, can’t even use martial arts properly. Without you I can’t even book a single guest room. A fucking failure. Failure.”
She buried her face in her knees and kept pouring out her self-pity.
I simply listened in silence while she laid out the miserable story of her life.
“…Why am I such a useless piece of shit? Why am I the only one who has to be this miserable?”
Moisture finally crept into her complaining voice.
It was a hard problem.
Before she stepped into the world she must have been full of confidence. Growing up in a wealthy house meant she never wanted for anything, and her martial skill far outstripped others her age.
That martial prowess had given her a solid sense of self-worth.
But the moment she left the protective walls of the Seong Family Manor, every trial she met had smashed that confidence to pieces.
All that remained now was trampled pride, rock-bottom self-esteem, and the powerlessness that always follows.
Some people might call what she was doing right now wallowing, but to me it looked like the first real trial of adulthood.
The growing pains that come with being a proper adult.
Reminds me of myself at twenty.
Twenty years old, cracking open a can of beer one night and staring up at the moon while bitterly complaining about life.
The pain and trials I’d felt when I first had to take full responsibility for my own life as a newly minted adult.
It had felt like I was dying back then, but looking back after getting older, those hardships were nothing compared to what life would throw at me later.
Even so, if someone asked me which period had been the hardest and most painful even after growing older, I’d still point to the me at twenty.
The trials a kid faces the moment they step out of the family nest as a brand-new adult.
I overlaid the me from those days with the girl in front of me now and gave a bitter little smile inside.
Because I had lived through that time, I knew exactly what she needed.
I picked the lock on the cell door and stepped inside.
“Wh-what? How did you—?”
Hwarin looked up at me with wide eyes, clearly unable to process that I was suddenly standing inside the cell.
“Lie down. I brought fresh bandages and trauma medicine.”
I pulled the supplies for treating the wound on her thigh out of my robe.
“Give it here. I can do it myself.”
“Forget it. Lie down.”
Maybe I’d been thinking about her all wrong.
A woman who had curses ready on her tongue at all times, who defaulted to suspicion and hostility whenever anything happened. Somewhere along the way I had unconsciously equated her with the original villainess character, Dokjeop Dang Hwarin.
When in reality she was just a girl who had only just stepped out into the world.
A girl who puffed herself up like a hedgehog, when what she was really waiting for was someone’s gentle touch.
“Shit! Ah, seriously! What the hell.”
When I lightly pressed her shoulder and guided her onto the blanket, she grumbled the whole way but still lay down.
She looked exactly like a hedgehog that bristles its spines the second a human hand approaches, then immediately flattens them once it realizes the touch is affectionate.
This was what she needed.
Someone who would keep offering a kind hand and stay by her side no matter how hard she pushed them away.
I flipped her skirt up in one motion. Between the discolored patches of skin, the wound on her thigh was clearly healing.
Thankfully it had closed up a lot in just a few days.
“Hey! Are you ou-out of your mind?”
Hwarin twisted her head back with a startled cry.
“I’m not. If it’s about your skin, don’t get so embarrassed. I’ve seen plenty when I was testing medicine on friends.”
People made such a huge deal over a little discoloration. To someone used to endless shitpost spam, Hwarin’s skin was just cute panda-level.
All right. Receive my tender care.
“Th-that’s not—! Hngh! Hnn!”
Was it still that tender? It looked much better already. Hwarin let out a sharp cry of pain the moment I started applying the trauma medicine.
“I’ll even throw in a special massage.”
You haven’t just been sitting around depressed until your muscles seized up, have you? You need to be able to walk properly if we’re getting out of here.
“Hey. Don’t— Mmph! Hey! Where do you think you’re touch— Hhk!”
Her muscles must have been terribly knotted; the sounds that slipped out of her were breathless and overheated.
“I want to die.”
Hwarin was back to crouching, staring at the floor with a flaming red face.
The earlier gloom and dejection were gone; all that remained in her voice was a baffling, pure embarrassment. So a tender hand really had been the answer.
Thankfully it looked like we could actually talk now.
I plopped down cross-legged right beside her.
“Haha. You really want to die?”
I gave a light laugh, then turned my head and looked at her with eyes that had gone completely serious.
“That’s not what I meant… What? Why?”
She started to snap at me, then caught sight of my face and her expression froze.
“So stepping out into the world and finding that nothing works makes you miserable?”
“…Yeah.”
Realizing I was actually listening to her worries, she gave a small, hesitant nod.
This isn’t the time to just keep comforting her forever.
I couldn’t sit here leisurely listening to her life complaints, offering empathy and consolation, gazing at the moon while we drank, then staring at each other’s faces while we drank some more, until we both woke up the next morning clutching our heads on the same bed like some freshman romance story.
I have to get her back on her feet and fired up.
I needed her help to escape and head for Yichang. If she stayed sunk in this depression and helplessness, even a possible escape would become impossible.
I needed to pour some emergency motivation into her—enough that she’d actually want to break out.
“You’re right. Life’s full of misery. One day a perfectly fine family can collapse overnight. The family and friends you love can all die. You can end up wandering the Central Plains getting spat on as a barbarian and starving like a beggar.”
I spoke lightly, but I wore an expression of deep, quiet sorrow.
First, invite some empathy.
“That’s… your story?”
“Whose else would it be?”
I stared up at the ceiling of our little cell like a man with an old, unhealed wound and spoke mournfully.
“You were miserable too…”
“No. You’re the most miserable one.”
I cut her off in a firm voice.
“Are you mocking me right now?”
“And I’m the most miserable one too.”
“…What are you talking about.”
Her eyes sharpened for a second, then turned puzzled again.
“People always think they’re the most miserable ones, you know. One person goes from rich young master to losing his entire family overnight and ends up sobbing in despair as a beggar in a foreign land where he doesn’t know a soul. Another gets hated by everyone and finally betrayed by the last person she trusted, then thrown out into the world crying.”
Dang Hwarin. I’m just as miserable as you.
“….”
“Everyone thinks their own life is the most miserable one.”
So as your senior in misery, let me teach you how to stand back up.