The Choice of the Exile
Exile. The name given to those cast out from the city is the saddest yardstick by which humanity is measured in this modern age. Whether we find it convincing or not, and sometimes for reasons beyond our understanding, those separated from society have had to learn how to survive in the harsh and unforgiving wilderness.
The fate of those who became exiles due to false accusations that were never cleared is no different. Therefore, to become an exile in this nation is, in other words, to be abandoned by everything that makes up a life.
Is the malice they direct toward those living ordinary lives truly their own from the start? Or is it something we created? If we created it, how can we set it right? We must ponder this with the utmost seriousness.
While keeping in mind that the power that invokes unreasonable justice is the very thing that creates malice without cause.
—Excerpt from a speech by those claiming the rights lost by exiles—
[……Sa.]
[……Akasa…… Sa.]
Akasa opened his blurry eyes. As he barely managed to wake, the sound of lapping water and a voice flowed into his mind.
[Pull yourself together, Aka……!]
“Ugh, um…… Ugh? Urnil……?”
Akasa barely lifted his left arm to check the bracelet of the contract, Karmatio. He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them again.
“Huh?”
Suddenly, Akasa bolted upright and looked down at his stomach.
“The wound…… it’s gone?”
Akasa raised his hand and brushed over his abdomen. He had definitely been bitten by the eel and left with a hole. But now, it was as smooth as if nothing had ever happened.
“You’re awake.”
It was then that a strange voice reached Akasa’s ears as he was fumbling over his stomach, unable to understand what had happened. Akasa jumped in surprise and lifted his gaze. Only then did his surroundings come into focus. He was on a small rowboat, and in front of him sat a person draped in a black robe.
Akasa instinctively recoiled, his guard up.
“Where would you go in such a small rowboat?”
Akasa’s body flinched at the robed figure’s words. He looked behind him.
Creak. Cold river water surged and slapped against the hull of the rowboat.
“Calm down. I have no intention of harming you.”
“Where…… am I? And who are you?”
“I found you drifting in the river and pulled you out. So, you could call me your savior. As for where you are…… hmm. Let’s just say it’s the point where the desert is coming to an end.”
The point where the desert ends. Akasa’s heart hammered at those words. He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious, but it was clear he had drifted a significant distance.
“Who…… are you, my savior?”
“Care to take a guess?”
The man’s demeanor was gentle throughout. Thanks to that, Akasa’s tension eased slightly, giving him the leeway to calmly observe his counterpart.
The voice was androgynous, making it difficult to gauge a gender, and while the build was slender, it didn’t seem to be a woman. After carefully observing the stranger, Akasa concluded that he was, first and foremost, a man. The man was slowly rowing with a long oar, and thanks to that movement, the figure beneath the robe was revealed. The man was covered from head to toe in tight-fitting clothes and fabric, and he wore a mask on his face with only eye holes cut out.
It was an outfit that made one feel stifled just looking at it.
Just then, Akasa’s gaze landed on the oar the stranger held. More precisely, on the small engraving carved into the middle of the oar’s shaft. It was a pattern Akasa knew well. A single circle with eight lines wriggling like snakes.
“The Ferryman of the Sun……?”
The man nodded and spoke.
“Indeed. Who are you, and why were you drifting in the river? As the one who saved you, I’d like to ask at least that much.”
“Ah, I am……”
Akasa, about to open his mouth, faltered. To whom could he tell the truth? That he was the Prince of Cellabris, and that he was running away after being resurrected at the National Soul Festival. Akasa suddenly scanned his surroundings and, seeing that the desert landscape still stretched on, he wore a melancholy expression.
Feeling an unusually heavy silence, Akasa looked down at his bracelet. Come to think of it, Urnil had been quiet.
‘Don’t tell me, was it you who healed my stomach?’
Now that he thought about it, he seemed to remember Urnil calling out to him desperately when he woke up. This meant that Urnil had exhausted all the Essence he had collected in one go to heal Akasa. If so, when this Ferryman of the Sun had pulled him out, he must have been in a perfectly fine state. Akasa carefully opened his mouth to answer the man’s question.
“I was just traveling. My name is A…… Asdin.”
“Nice to meet you, Asdin.”
Revealing his real name to others might be dangerous for now. Having reached that conclusion, Akasa changed his name to the first word that popped into his head. Fortunately, the adult before him didn’t seem to doubt it.
“By the way, do you have a hobby of attempting suicide?”
“Pardon?”
“Otherwise, there’s no reason you’d be drifting down this river with nothing but your bare body. This area is home to many carnivorous fish. It’s a miracle you drifted down here safely.”
No matter how bright a child might be, Akasa was still a young boy who didn’t know the ways of the world. There were limits to what such a child could say.
“……No.”
In the end, running out of things to say, Akasa shut his mouth. The Ferryman of the Sun stared at Akasa from behind the mask with eyes that shone like deep, blue water, and spoke.
“Is there perhaps another reason you ended up here?”
“I told you. I just wanted to travel. I went into the river to find some food and got swept away.”
“A child like you, all alone? What about the adults?”
He couldn’t tell because of the mask, but the Ferryman showed his bewilderment through a subtle gesture.
“……I’m all alone. For now.”
Akasa spoke in a tone that suggested he didn’t want to talk anymore. It must have seemed incredibly rude, but now, when he couldn’t even ask for help from his only ally, Urnil, that was the only action Akasa could take. Fortunately, as the conversation unfolded this way, the Ferryman instead fell silent, as if understanding Akasa’s mood.
The boat, which had been drifting down the tributary for a long time, finally reached the shore only when the stars began to faintly appear. It was a place just past the boundary between the desert and the greenery, and with a shallow layer of soil, it was a suitable place to dock the boat.
“Wait here for a moment.”
The Ferryman of the Sun had Akasa get off the boat and then pulled the rowboat up onto the shore. Even then, he hooked a rope to a ring on the gunwale and tied a knot to a nearby tree.
“We shall stay around here for tonight.”
Just then, a tremendous sound erupted from Akasa’s stomach. The Ferryman of the Sun’s gaze landed on Akasa, whose face had turned red behind the mask.
“Ah, um. This is……”
“Come to think of it, you must be hungry. You’ve been starving for half a day.”
The Ferryman took out a small wooden box that had been on the boat. It was something that hadn’t been visible, covered by his wide-sleeved robe. The Ferryman of the Sun took out an item wrapped in several layers of cloth from inside. Dried meat, hard bread, and a pouch containing liquid.
“Here, take this.”
“Eh?”
The Ferryman of the Sun handed all the bread, water, and well-dried meat he had to Akasa. The amount of food wasn’t very much. It was just enough for Akasa alone to eat his fill and be satisfied.
“If you give me all of this, what about you, Ferryman?”
“I am fine. Eat while you wait. There’s still some time before it becomes completely night, so I must start a fire.”
Having said that, the Ferryman stepped back and began to gather dry twigs. Akasa hesitated for a moment, holding the bread in his hand, but as the Ferryman became absorbed in starting a fire as if he truly had no interest, he soon took a bite of the bread.
Excluding the desert melon, this was the first proper meal he had put in his mouth.
The savory taste of the bread and the smoked meat infused with salty brine tasted like honey. As he put the food in his mouth, the accumulated fatigue and the heavy state of his body from the cold began to improve. Reluctant to see the food disappear, Akasa chewed as thoroughly as he could, and a flash of orange light caught his eye. The fire had been lit.
“Come over and warm your body.”
The Ferryman gestured as if offering the space. Next to the fire, dry grass had been spread over the softly indented soil, to a degree that was surprising considering how quickly he had done it. There was even a low rock behind the spot the Ferryman had prepared, keeping the heat from escaping and keeping it warm.
Even though he had only been sitting for a moment, a heavy drowsiness washed over him, and Akasa’s head began to bob.
“If you’re sleepy, it’s fine to sleep. You must be tired, so don’t push yourself.”
“Ah, no, I’m not.”
His lowered head snapped back up. Akasa, barely lifting his heavy eyelids, opened his mouth somehow to chase away the sleepiness.
“Um……”
The Ferryman poked at the fire with a suitable twig without speaking. The embers flared up, dazzling his eyes.
“Do you have something to say?”
“Um, thank you.”
Akasa said, hesitating. A faint, ringing laughter seemed to come from behind the mask.
“Only now are you speaking your true heart.”
Akasa felt ashamed at the Ferryman’s words. In any case, this was his savior. Yet, because he had been on guard against him, he hadn’t even offered a proper word of thanks for his kindness.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. It’s not a matter worth receiving thanks for. I am more grateful that you have opened your heart.”
“Ah……”
Akasa bowed his head slightly at the Ferryman’s words. In this situation, excluding Urnil, these were the words of the first person to offer him warmth. He didn’t want to cry, but tears kept welling up.
Then, the Ferryman’s words reached Akasa’s ears.
“I am very curious about your current situation, but I will not ask. Surely, you have your reasons.”
Akasa nodded up and down instead of answering. It was because he felt like he would cry if he opened his mouth.
“Still, you’re of a certain age, so you know what a Ferryman of the Sun does, right?”
Another nod.
There was no way Akasa wouldn’t know. The remote regions that lie between nations. There, the laws of the wild exist, which even monarchs cannot easily touch. Those who were driven out by the law, or who fled the law, have built their own code of conduct there.
And the Ferryman of the Sun can become a kind of extraterritorial existence for those passing through.
“I’ve never seen one before, but I’ve heard that exiles roam places like this. That the Ferrymen of the Sun are those who protect and escort people from them……”
“You are right. I am a person who escorts people to move them safely. But you know it a bit differently, so it would be good to correct it.”
“Pardon? Did I say something wrong?”
Akasa asked with curious eyes.
“The people who ride my boat just move along with the flow. They don’t set a destination and go. Even now, I was just drifting down the river.”
“So I was just picked up?”
“That’s right.”
“Then are you just moving by boat without a destination?”
“Sometimes I am docked. But there is no particular reason for that.”
The Ferryman stared at Akasa from behind the mask and asked.
“Is there a place you want to go?”
“I don’t know.”
Akasa, as children usually do when they don’t speak straight, supplemented his words a little more.
“Because I don’t know where I should go.”
“Is that so? Looking at your lightly tanned skin and the location where you drifted from, you seem to be a Cellabrisian.”
“I have no intention of returning to Cellabris!”
Akasa shook his head violently and shut his mouth tight. The cut ends of the dry grass he held in his hand stung his palm from how hard he was gripping them. Only after a long while did Akasa part his lips again.
“I, I’m sorry. For shouting at you for no reason, Ferryman……”
“It is not. It is because I was thoughtless. Let’s stop here for today. Get some good rest.”
The Ferryman said kindly and made the bonfire a little bigger. With the cessation of conversation, his body pleaded for rest. Akasa, who had been bobbing his head in sleep, eventually fell asleep.
The Ferryman of the Sun looked at the child from behind the mask, then took off his own robe and covered the small, curled-up child with it.
The Ferryman of the Sun, who had been poking at the bonfire with a suitable twig, stood up slowly at some point. A deep dampness, enough to make the bonfire falter, began to seep around his sturdy and slender body.
“The moon is bright tonight.”
The Ferryman of the Sun, who had been looking up at the sky from the spot where the bonfire was, moved to his tied-up boat and took out an oar.
“Foolish moths will come flocking.”
It was clearly a simple oar.
But from this moment on, it was not.
Like the clear starlight reflected on a lake, the Ferryman of the Sun’s gaze shone coldly.