Escape - 2
How pathetic. How wretched.
That thought refused to leave Dang Hwarin’s mind the entire time she was locked up in Heokho Fort.
“I thought once I got out into the world, I could live without watching anyone’s face.”
Hwarin whispered the words into the empty cage where no one could hear her, and let out a small sigh.
Back at the Seong Family Manor, everyone—from the servants to her new family to even her mother—had looked at her with either disgust or contempt.
To forget that, Hwarin had thrown herself into martial arts. Objectively speaking, she had grown strong enough to believe almost no one her age could match her.
A stifling birdcage. That was how the increasingly powerful Hwarin came to see the Seong Family Manor.
Someday, when I leave this place, I’ll be able to do anything. Inside that stifling cage she had truly believed it. Reality proved otherwise.
The moment she was driven from the cage called the Seong Family Manor, her own mother abandoned her first. The servants cursed her and vanished. She had no money in her pockets and had never once earned any. On top of that her body was sick, so she could do nothing at all.
She had no idea what to do or how to do it.
The bird that had always longed to leave the cage only realized, the instant it was cast out into the world, that it knew how to do nothing.
From the day she stepped into the world, Dang Hwarin had grown endlessly small.
“I wanted to be useful…”
She thought of the man who treated her with kindness. When he was beside her, every problem somehow solved itself. It felt like a trembling bird that had left its cage had perched on its master’s shoulder and found its courage again.
Just as a bird that has regained its confidence sings the one song it knows for its master, all Hwarin needed to do now was protect him with the martial arts she was so sure of.
She had thought she had finally found a way to live outside the cage.
She had been wrong.
“I’m a fucking useless bitch.”
Locked in the cage, Hwarin cursed herself.
The man who had always made everything ordinary again was gone. The confidence she had in her martial arts had vanished, and even the pain of being a Dokin that used to cloud her thoughts was gone. In their place a crushing sense of powerlessness filled her head.
“If I can’t even use my martial arts properly, then what am I?”
A foul-mouthed bitch. A girl who threw tantrums. A girl with a skin disease. A bastard child. A girl everyone despised. Right. She was nothing.
Only after the bird was locked back in the cage did it finally understand reality.
Misery began to flood her heart, and misery always dragged other dark feelings with it.
The mental wall that had been her confidence in the martial arts that protected her crumbled. The moment it did, every miserable thing she had endured from the past until now came rushing into her mind like a tidal wave.
Why am I this unlucky?
Misery was painful to chew on, yet it was an addictive emotion. Endless resentment toward her own life, powerlessness, rage, pity—and then the self-pity that followed.
Even though it was self-destructive, she could not stop drowning in that addictive self-pity.
Not until a single voice reached her.
“Hong Gildong said! Even if trials crash down upon me! I cannot simply sit and do nothing!”
From afar Hwarin heard a voice that seemed to be scolding her—familiar, a man’s voice.
The man who had been locked in the same cage was somehow already out and calling the vicious bandits “big brother” and “little brother.” The sight was so absurd it almost made her laugh, yet part of her found it impressive.
A man who, even when thrown into the same situation as her, reacted in a completely different way.
“When the government troops set out to capture Hong Gildong! People from every village under heaven cried out, ‘I am Hong Gildong! Arrest me!’ Did they not?!”
As she listened carefully to his words, the dark thoughts slowly drained away.
Hong Gildong.
A man who had been in a situation much like hers, yet became a hero.
Perhaps Kang Yunho had started telling the story of Hong Gildong so that she, depressed in the distance, would hear it and take heart.
“Heh… no way.”
Hwarin thought it was ridiculous—yet she also thought that if it was that man, he really might do something like that.
With that thought, the thick self-pity that had filled her heart began, little by little, to be replaced by something warm.
Hwarin found comfort in Kang Yunho’s story, but she still could not completely shake off the self-pity.
“You managing okay?”
“Why’d you come?”
Even though his voice had given her comfort, even though she had wanted to see his face again, when he actually stood in front of her a strange emotion rose up and she could not speak honestly.
“What do you mean why? I came because I could. You’ve looked completely drained for days.”
Because if it weren’t for me, you could have run away.
And yet he had not run. He had come to see her like this. The fact that she felt happy and glad about that only made her feel more like a pathetic idiot, and she was ashamed.
“…Because I’m a total piece of shit.”
Hwarin sneaked a glance at the man’s face.
He was looking at her with genuine worry. That expression made every miserable thing that had tormented her for the past few days surge up again.
This man would listen. He would understand. He would keep comforting her without end.
So Hwarin began to pour out the past that had made her so unhappy—to the man who had supported her for the past several days, no, throughout the entire journey.
Inner troubles she had never once spoken to another living soul. The more she pulled those things out into the open, the lighter her heart became.
“…Why am I such a fucking wreck? Why do I have to be the only one this unlucky?”
Even after she had dragged everything out, the gloom remained.
Kang Yunho simply watched her for a while.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.
Feeling dejected, Hwarin stole a look at him. Maybe she had only burdened him for nothing.
There was nothing he could actually fix. Yet the man did something completely unexpected—he stepped closer.
A touch that was both careless and gentle. A hand that refused to give up even when rejected, offering comfort. He tried to soothe her not with words but with actions.
“You’re not crazy. If it’s about your skin, don’t be so embarrassed. I’ve done a ton of experimental stuff with friends’ medicines.”
“Th-that’s not it! Hnngh! Hnn…”
“I’ll even give you a special massage.”
“Hey—don’t you d—! Ugh! Hey! Where do you think you’re touch—! Hhk!”
She was embarrassed, yet the her who could not tell him to stop was right there.
Once the embarrassment drove the gloom away, the man began to speak of his own life—the kind of story that was just as hard to put into words.
What kind of life he had lived. What kind of misfortunes he had endured. She only heard a few fragments, yet it was enough to understand that he had suffered tragedies she could barely imagine.
“Everyone thinks their own life is the most miserable.”
Kang Yunho looked at Hwarin with gentle eyes as he spoke.
It was the expression of someone who understood everything. For a black-haired barbarian with nothing to his name to survive in the Central Plains must be just as hard as living with a face like hers.
They were the same. Yet they were different.
“So what am I supposed to do about it?”
You’re suffering too. Why do you talk about it like it’s nothing? The words shot out sharp with defiance.
I poured heavy feelings out to you, so how can you just brush them off so lightly? How do you keep living like nothing’s wrong?
When Hwarin glared at him sulkily, Kang Yunho propped his chin on his hand, looked straight ahead, and opened his mouth.
“Why am I this unlucky? Why do only bad things happen to me? Those people walking over there don’t seem as miserable as I am. Why am I the only one like this? Ever since I came to the Central Plains I’ve thought that every single day.”
In a voice steeped in real experience, he spoke exactly the way Hwarin had just poured out her own unhappiness.
It was the thought she had every day. She tried not to show surprise that the man had shared the same thoughts.
“Because of the unhappiness that was dumped on me, I wanted to just collapse and stay down. No—I did collapse, and I couldn’t get up no matter what.”
Kang Yunho turned his head and looked at Hwarin with a sorrowful face.
“But you didn’t, did you?”
Unlike her. The man was getting up and moving forward.
“I realized something.”
His sorrowful face bloomed into a soft smile.
“Realized what?”
“The reason a person who’s been through unhappiness can get back up again.”
“How?”
“Turns out I had two solid legs that could shake off the unhappiness and stand.”
Kang Yunho brushed off his legs, stood up straight, and looked down at Hwarin with a lively face.
Even while carrying unspeakable misfortune, he showed her that he could always rise again.
Hwarin stared up at that sight in a daze.
Why are we so similar yet so different?
They were the same age. Their environments growing up had been similar, and both had suffered great misfortunes. Yet she could not do what he did. For days she had been drowning in gloomy thoughts, too powerless to stand.
He had two sturdy legs. She did not.
She could not do it.
Just as crushing powerlessness tried to fill her chest again—
“And I also have hands that can grab hold of someone else who’s unhappy.”
Kang Yunho’s hand was gently extended right in front of Hwarin’s eyes.
“Let’s go together. We’re escaping this place.”
It was a big hand. Completely different from her own endlessly small self.
Did she even have the right to take that hand? This man always helped her one-sidedly. How was that any different from the people who had openly tried to use her?
Self-loathing surged up inside Hwarin.
“Why would I? You don’t need someone like me. Just go by yourself.”
If she were not here, he would be free to escape.
—You deadweight bitch! Even without you I—!
The words her mother had always spat at her like a curse. She hated to admit it, but to this man she was just baggage. Completely useless.
“Hwarin.”
For the first time Kang Yunho called her by name, gently. Hwarin flinched and looked up at him.
“I need you.”
As if he truly needed her help, he held his hand out even more firmly. His sincere face and gesture made her pupils tremble.
“Really… you need me? You’re not lying?”
“When unhappy people take each other’s hands, it doesn’t mean one side is just helping the other. It means they rely on each other and help each other. So let’s go together, Hwarin. Help me a little.”
He spoke tenderly, as if he could do nothing without her, and simply waited for her to take his hand.
Hwarin looked back and forth between his face and his hand.
In truth she was probably not needed. Even the one thing she could offer as atonement was something anyone else could do.
Yet this man still held his hand out to her.
He was trying to pull her—this miserable girl—to her feet.
She had wanted to dig into the wounded places in his heart as a friend. Instead this man walked right into her heart with muddy feet, far too easily.
Sometimes ordinarily. Sometimes carelessly. Sometimes tenderly.
Even if she wanted to give up, this man would stubbornly keep coming into her heart. And Dang Hwarin did not dislike the man who came to visit her heart.
“Yeah. Let’s go together.”
And so Hwarin carefully clasped Kang Yunho’s hand.
“Let’s go, Hwarin!”
Pulled along by Kang Yunho’s hand, Hwarin ran out of the prison.
Bandits would be swarming ahead. Could they really escape together? She would protect him with everything she had. If escaping together proved impossible, she would send him on alone and face the bandits herself.
That would be the least she owed the man who had reached out his hand.
Looking at the reliable back of the boy her own age who ran ahead, Hwarin made up her mind.
“Fuck! Get behind me!”
The moment they burst out of the prison, a huge crowd of Green Forest bandits bristling with weapons blocked their path. Hwarin startled and shoved Kang Yunho behind her.
This many bandits… had they already noticed? She had resolved to protect him somehow, but the sheer number of bandits before her eyes sent a thread of despair flickering through her.
Then the Kang Yunho behind her stepped forward with a grin and stood in front of her.
“Hey, get ba—”
I’ll admit your back looks reliable, but now is not the time. Hwarin was about to snap at him when Kang Yunho opened his mouth toward the bandits who had barred their way.
“Everyone’s gathered, I see?”
“You’re here!”
“Dangsu! We’ve been waiting!”
“Shall we begin right away?”
The bandits approached Kang Yunho with delighted faces.
“W-what the hell is going on?”
Hwarin asked the man in a dazed voice.
Kang Yunho laughed like a mischievous boy and answered her.
“Well, you see! I started a revolution!”