Chapter 264
Chapter 264
The Iron Emperor — Chapter 264
"Let's set worries like that aside and talk about the most important issue here."
—Important issue?
"Brother-in-law, which of your sisters is the prettiest?"
—.......
At Gerard's question, the internal conflict over whether introducing them was even permissible kept churning in his head, impossible to escape.
Chapter 85: I'm Sorry, I Loved You
The midsummer heat that seemed ready to melt the world had finally broken, and autumn arrived, dyeing the fields golden. The crisper breeze rustled gently, as if soothing the weary bodies and minds of soldiers preparing for war.
"You bastard, stop rustlin' around, will you."
"Hmph, when did I ever rustle?"
Sometimes people rustle too.
With the soldiers sprawled out resting, the sight of Samdopyo shifting his steps delicately among them, nostrils flaring at who knew what, was genuinely harmful to the eyes of any beholder.
It stood in stark contrast to the gentle rustle of the breeze.
"You climbin' a mountain or somethin'? Read the room and scram. Before I split your head in half, that is."
"Nngh."
Eulji Buru, who witnessed the scene while passing by, was one of the casualties. Fortunately, Dupyo tucked his tail and crouched in a corner; otherwise, powerless soldiers worn down by brutal training would have been mentally devastated on top of their physical exhaustion.
"Kheuheung."
"You bastard, ain't got a serious bone in your body."
Crouched under a tree, nostrils flaring as he giggled, the sight was unmistakably reminiscent of a wild boar snuffling around for arrowroot.
As if he'd given up, Buru shook his head and clicked his tongue, approaching Buyeo Gi-yul, who was talking with the training instructors off to one side.
"That whippersnapper eat somethin' spoiled?"
"Looks like an old bachelor caught a case of autumn fever."
"Huh."
Buru looked at Dupyo grinning with his mouth hanging open and sighed, shaking his head.
"What's he gonna do with autumn fever? Look at him. What kind of woman's gonna take a likin' to that?"
"Pff-haha."
At Buru's comparison, Giyul burst out laughing. In that moment, the training instructors nearby were struggling to choke back their own laughter. Seeing that, Buru let out a scoff and turned away.
"Go on and laugh. They say laughin' brings good fortune, don't they."
Leaving those words behind, Buru slowly retraced his steps the way he'd come.
The moment Buru was out of range, the instructors let loose the laughter they'd been holding in.......
"Bwa-hahaha!"
"Pff-heehee!"
They weren't laughing because of Dupyo. Sure, Dupyo's behavior was ridiculous, but what was funnier was Buru, of all people, commenting on someone else's looks.
After all, wasn't it a universally acknowledged, absolutely incomprehensible fact among all Gauri people that Buru and Uru had each married Sara and Haidia?
What stopped their prolonged laughter was none other than Dupyo.
"Alright, alright, time to train."
"Yes, sir!"
"Break's over!"
Dupyo spoke in an impossibly gentle voice, and the soldiers sprang to their feet like lightning.
Lately, Dupyo's changed behavior had some of the soldiers growing steadily uneasy.
Think about it!
If just the day before, half of a man's words were curses and the other half were threats, and then suddenly he turns nice?
You'd be utterly unsettled. That was exactly how the soldiers felt right now.
"Tch. What on earth is going on?"
Now curious himself, Giyul tilted his head as he walked toward the soldiers, growing increasingly suspicious.
Buyeo Gi-yul's eyes went wide as if he couldn't believe it.
"Seriously?"
"Sure, of course."
The reply that came back to Giyul, who'd asked to confirm whether what he'd heard was true, was full of confident assurance.
"That Gomtaengi is just one-sidedly into her, right?"
"Seems like it might not be so one-sided."
At Giyul's remark, Mong Ryu-hwa tilted his head, avoiding a definitive answer.
The two were deep in a serious conversation. They looked exactly like a war council of staff officers deliberating before battle—even though the content of their discussion gave absolutely no reason for such an appearance.
"Heul-heul-heul, hey fellow trainees! What are you two up to over here?"
Naturally, the two of them couldn't help but catch the eye. A voice accompanied by a light, buoyant step.
"Dammit, speak of Gomtaengi and he appears......."
"When did a tiger turn into a Gomtaengi?"
"Just now."
"......."
The owner of the voice was Samdopyo.
Dupyo came up to the two of them, completely unaware that they'd turned him into a bear, and wedged himself in between them, wrapping his arms around both their necks.
"Urk!"
"K-ugh!"
"Heul-heul-heul, what's this you two men are up to? So shabby and pathetic."
At Dupyo's excessive display of affection, the oxygen supply to the two was forcibly cut off and their faces instantly went bright red, but Dupyo simply kept chuckling and pulling them tight as if they were adorable.
"You bastards need to get married too. Heul-heul, I'm off."
"K-hurk!"
"Cough!"
At Dupyo's increasingly inscrutable behavior, the two gasped for air and stared at his retreating back.
"Dammit, Gomtaengi."
"Still, you don't suppose... it's mutual?"
Dupyo is in love!
That fact was what made it impossible for the two of them to believe. The intelligence, of course, had been gathered by Ryu-hwa. But if Dupyo was bouncing and skipping around to this extent, it might not be a mere one-sided crush.
Giyul's mouth slowly fell open.
"......No way."
"You're still at 'no way'? We've nearly been beaten to death dozens of times after saying 'no way.'"
"......."
When Ryu-hwa reminded him of those fragments of the past, Giyul shut his mouth and kept silent. Then Ryu-hwa suddenly raised his nose to the air and sniffed.
"Is that the smell of flowers?"
"Yeah, seems like it."
"That Gomtaengi's even started bathing with flower water now......."
Ryu-hwa shuddered and then sprang to his feet.
"Why?"
At the strange fixation that had settled in Ryu-hwa's eyes, Giyul felt a sense of unease and asked. In response, a bizarre smile tugged at Ryu-hwa's lips.
"Pff-heh, I'm gonna tail him. I have to see who the woman is. Reckon she's probably his equal match?"
"Ohhh!"
Giyul burst out in admiration at Ryu-hwa's resolve and stood up.
"You wanna come too?"
"Dammit. Don't you know I'm in charge of night training?"
As Giyul grumbled, crumpling his face, Ryu-hwa patted him on the shoulder and lifted the corners of his mouth high.
"Kheu-heut, your big brother here will check it out first and let you know later."
"Dammit! I'm counting on you."
"Love for our fellow trainees!"
"Love for the nation!"
After sharing a baffling display of camaraderie with Giyul, Ryu-hwa faded into the dusky glow of sunset where Dupyo had disappeared.
"Tch."
Watching his retreating figure, Giyul simply stared after him endlessly, his eyes filled with regret.
Tap-tap tap! Tap-tap tap!
"Heul-heul."
Seeing Samdopyo now moving his feet to match the rhythm, Ryu-hwa, who was following behind him, shook his head. Fellow trainee or not, this was really too much.
Every now and then, a couple of children who'd come running out of an alley would see Dupyo like that and collapse on the spot, bursting into tears.
'Well, I can't get used to it either.'
Ryu-hwa shook his head and sighed, then suddenly flinched as if about to bolt out.
'That crazy bastard!'
His eyes had caught Dupyo's next action: scooping up a child who'd collapsed in tears, beaming, and trying to soothe it.
Even just trying to soothe the kid normally made it shriek in terror, and now he'd gone and attempted the one kind of soothing he must never do. Ryu-hwa was about to dash out and stop him, but then closed his eyes at the soothing that had already been carried out.
'Dammit.'
Jin-cheon's Dokmun technique for calming children—the Air Throw—and the Flying Boy that followed it: Dupyo's forms silenced the child. A moment later, the child's mother let out a horrified shriek, and Dupyo, with an awkward face, handed over the limp child.
But even that brief commotion couldn't stop Dupyo's light steps. Leaving behind the mother's desperate voice as she shook the child awake, he pressed onward without a backward glance.
Yet Dupyo's rampage did not end there.
Even with the evening glow gone and darkness slowly descending, Dupyo spotted something and headed toward a masonry wall off to one side.
'No way.'
Seeing him approach the wall, a single word flashed through Ryu-hwa's mind.
'A bride kidnapping?'
They called it bride kidnapping, but this was abduction. Driven by the mission to stop a fellow trainee, Ryu-hwa dashed out at once. But then came the thundering crash.
Boom! Rumble-crash.
"K-hurk!"
Along with the thunderous sound, the wall collapsed.
Dupyo's goal was neither kidnapping nor destroying the wall. It was simply a single flower that had been on top of the wall.
"That Gomtaengi's gone completely insane."
At Dupyo's recklessness, Ryu-hwa, who had bolted out to stop him, clicked his tongue and passed by the ruined wall. Dupyo was already fleeing far ahead.
"Aigoo, my wall!"
Just as Ryu-hwa clicked his tongue and quickened his pace chasing after the distant Dupyo, the despairing wail of the homeowner, apparently having come out, sounded from behind.
And at that sound, people poked their heads out one by one, and the homeowner's furious shout erupted.
"Catch that bastard!"
"He's running!"
"D-dammit!"
At the tip of the homeowner's pointing finger was Ryu-hwa, running, and the people who had more or less grasped the situation took off after him. One way or another, Ryu-hwa was going out of his mind.
"Hmph, almost got caught there."
Dupyo looked back and breathed a sigh of relief. He'd bolted out of sheer surprise when someone sprang out from behind the moment the wall collapsed.
"Hmph, I just clung on a little, who knew it would collapse."
He took absolutely no responsibility for his own excessive strength.
"Heul-heul, she'll like it, right?"
His worry over the collapsed wall already gone, Dupyo gazed at the flower in his hand and smiled contentedly. In his hand was a Frenzy flower, which blooms only at night.
If he got caught, it'd be utter humiliation.
Even if he were caught, the common folk wouldn't be able to harm him. But if word reached his subordinate commanders or the Eulji Brothers, he'd clearly have a hard time showing his face for a while.
Knowing Dupyo's sense of camaraderie all too well, he'd had no choice but to run. That man would absolutely deny everything even if you begged him to clear your name.
After a long pursuit, an all-too-familiar back standing in front of a neatly kept house, even in the darkness, caught Ryu-hwa's eye.
'Found you, damned Gomtaengi!'
Having finally tracked down Samdopyo, Mong Ryu-hwa lowered his posture and crept up to an old tree nearby. Then he swiftly launched himself up into the tree.
'At this distance, he shouldn't spot me.'
The spot where Dupyo was now was a house situated somewhat on the outskirts.
Having secured a safe spot, Ryu-hwa held his breath and began to quietly observe. After a bit of hesitant loitering, Dupyo was peeking here and there over the low wall.
"Jeylia~."
He apparently thought he was calling softly, but the voice reached Mong Ryu-hwa's ears perfectly clearly.
'Is the woman named Jeylia?'