Such a thought briefly crossed my mind, but when our eyes met, I instinctively averted my gaze. Then I turned my attention toward the collapsed man for no reason.
The hem of his shabby uniform was soaked with dirt.
His worn military boots had old mud hardened on them, and an old sword hung at his waist. A soldier, or perhaps a guard working at the frontier. Anyone could see he wasn’t an ordinary passerby.
As my gaze stopped while examining him, Damian’s words came back to me.
Right, monster or human aside, what if that man wasn’t a simple passerby but an assassin targeting my inn? And if it weren’t for Damian, the one collapsed on this floor right now might have been me.
“No…”
My lips were parched as I spoke. Still, I barely managed to open my mouth.
“What you said isn’t wrong. Even humans aren’t all good. Rather, they can be more cruel if anything.”
Right. Damian’s words weren’t wrong.
Humans use you with a smile when they need you, then discard you when you’re useless. More cunning and dangerous than any beast.
To me, who lived with modern knowledge, Damian’s actions seemed excessive, but in an era where status equals power and a single scream can make a person disappear easily, his methods might actually be the natural order.
In this world, my approach of trying to talk things out first is closer to abnormal.
Thinking that way, chills and relief washed over me simultaneously.
“…Thank you. Damian.”
A brief silence flowed, and Damian turned his head slightly. Then, seeing my fingertips trembling faintly, he let out a low snort.
“Hmph.”
Even though he turned his head away sharply, the tips of his ears were perked toward me. That small reaction eased the tension a little. Just as I was barely raising the corners of my mouth and patting my chest.
The body of the man collapsed on the floor twitched.
“Kugh, keh-hek…!”
“Eek!”
I knew he was alive, but when someone who’d been lying there pale as a corpse suddenly twisted their body and gasped for air, I couldn’t help but be startled.
“What, are we filming The Walking Dead here?”
I instinctively pressed my body toward Damian, and surprisingly, Damian didn’t push me away. Rather, he naturally extended his arm and grasped my shoulder.
“Kheuk…. Keh-hek….”
Only the man’s rough breathing tore through the silence. After coughing repeatedly, he steadied his blurred vision, and the moment he saw Damian, his face turned deathly pale.
“Mon, mon… Monster…!”
It was a voice close to a scream.
As he immediately sat up and staggered backward, I reflexively shouted in absurdity.
“You’re the one who barged in here!”
At those words, the man turned to look at me. His chest heaved up and down from coughing, and Damian’s handprints were clear on his neck.
Only after confirming that color was gradually returning to his face did I slip away from Damian. Then I placed my hand on my hip and asked, regaining my composure as much as possible.
“So, what business brought you to someone else’s inn?”
“…Inn?”
“Yes, an inn!”
The man still looked dazed as he looked around. In his field of vision would gradually appear the neatly arranged tables, chairs, the lit kitchen, and even the curtains by the window. The appearance of an inn.
“…Wasn’t this place a ruin?”
“What?! This is a hot place these days, don’t you live without hearing the rumors?”
“Hot… place…?”
As if not understanding the unfamiliar term, the man blinked a few times, then awkwardly lowered his head.
“I’m sorry. …I came because I remembered it being a ruin, but I guess it wasn’t.”
“No, normally people don’t sneak into even ruins, you know? Even abandoned houses have landowners! This is trespassing, trespassing!”
At my words, the man’s face instantly flushed red. He hurriedly bowed his head and apologized repeatedly.
“I’m, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to….”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. Just get up.”
Though I waved my hand dismissively, the man’s state caught my eye. His neck bruised red, his worn clothes, his gaunt cheeks, and a face that clearly hadn’t eaten properly for several days.
…Seeing how he crawled all the way to the kitchen, he must have been looking for food. In the end, I let out a deep sigh.
“…Sit down. I’ll at least give you some food.”
“Par, pardon?”
The man looked at me with a bewildered expression. At that look, I tied on my apron and muttered.
“I’ll just think of it as preparing to open a bit early.”
At those words, Damian turned his head. His red eyes held subtle dissatisfaction. However, when I entered the kitchen and pushed a piece of sliced boiled pork into his mouth, he immediately opened his mouth and chewed it, filling both cheeks.
The man watched Damian with a peculiar look, then carefully left the kitchen and sat at a table.
I just shrugged my shoulders and immediately put a pot on the fire. As the broth began to boil, a savory aroma spread and pushed away the chilly dawn air.
Steam rose from the surface where oil droplets floated. Soon I plopped the boiled pork in, plop, plop. Along with the sound of the meat juices spreading, the aroma became even richer. I put the fluffy cooked rice in a bowl and placed a few side dishes on the tray.
Then I carefully lifted the tray and brought it to the table where the man was sitting.
“Please eat.”
He stared blankly at the gukbap for a moment, then carefully picked up his spoon.
One spoonful, then another.
At first he was careful, but soon his eating speed increased.
When the bottom of the bowl was visible, I sat across from him and asked.
“What’s your name?”
“It’s Joel.”
“You’re a frontier soldier, right? What brought you here?”
At those words, Joel’s hand stopped. Broth dripped from the tip of his spoon. After a brief silence, the answer that flowed out lowly was unexpected.
“…I deserted.”
“…Pardon?”
…Did he just say he deserted?
“De…serted?”
I asked as if denying reality, but Joel calmly nodded.
“……”
Above the ttukbaegi still steaming with warmth, I could see Joel’s face hazily diffused. My heart pounded, and soon cold sweat poured down my entire body.
So now I’m hiding a deserter?
And even feeding him?
I’m fucked, aren’t I?
An assassin would have been better. I could just report that and be done with it, and Damian would smash them before that anyway. But this—if caught, I’m an accomplice.
As my face instantly turned ashen, Joel glanced at me. Then he quietly put down his spoon, and that sound rang out particularly loudly.
“…No one knows yet.”
“…Haah….”
At those words, a long sigh escaped. Just when I thought that was at least fortunate, his voice continued.
“I received a mission, but it… in the middle….”
“Did you go down a different path? What, did you get assigned a suicide mission or something?”
Even to my somewhat lightly delivered tone, Joel didn’t laugh. He swallowed the end of his sentence and paused for a moment, then continued in a low voice.
“No. I received orders to deliver a message to the Knight Commander who is currently carrying out a mission.”
“The Knight Commander?”
If it’s the Knight Commander, that would be Theorde…. I rolled his name around in my mouth a few times, and my mind flashed.
Theorde. And the Saint. That very first journey mentioned in the original work. …To be precise, officially. The unofficial first journey had already started last time, when they stopped by Gilbert’s inn.
But no matter how much I racked my brain, the name of a soldier called ‘Joel’ had never appeared even once.
Why?
Of course, it could be that I don’t remember. But this part had quite a lengthy narrative devoted to it even in the original work, yet he was completely erased from the records as if he’d never even existed.
Could it be, just as Joel said, it ended in desertion and the letter was never delivered?
Just then, Joel let out a weak laugh—pfft. That laugh was mixed with resignation, self-mockery, and deep fatigue.
“It was a trivial message. It was a report about an unidentified corpse.”
“…!”
An unidentified corpse?
In the original work, the corpse near the Boundary Line had only briefly passed by as the prologue’s catalyst, the spark that started the story. But now, listening to the words flowing from Joel’s mouth, that gap which had seemed like a sloppy blank in the original was being vividly filled right before my eyes.
I clenched and unclenched my hand once for no reason. Trying not to look anxious, I carefully lowered my hand below the table and asked with a face feigning composure as much as possible.
“If it was just a mission to report, why didn’t you go?”
Joel let out a sigh. Then he raised his head and looked into my eyes.
“That unidentified corpse was examined in the place where we live, away from public eyes. As a result of the investigation, it was revealed that the cause of death was poison. At first we thought it was simple poisoning, but that poison was different. It was a contagious poison that spread through the air. Because of that, several soldiers who were nearby… died just like that.”
Joel’s voice gradually cracked.
“I told my superiors that we needed to reduce the investigation personnel. But all I got back was the answer that ‘failure to follow orders means punishment.’ The people in charge evacuated first, and only those knowledgeable about herbs and a few soldiers remained. …In the end, all those people died too, and it was those soldiers who remained and died who discovered the identity of the poison.”
The corners of his mouth twisted briefly as he continued speaking.
