"Why did I end up there?"
The thought hit him quite suddenly. From the moment he returned, he had been so focused on his mother and the rest of the townspeople that he hadn"t stopped to think about what had happened to him. Shouldn"t he have pondered over that first and foremost? When he had been stranded in the other world, he hadn"t dwelled on it for long, since it took all his strength and mentality to just adapt and survive, but now that he was back, he couldn"t just brush it off. Even now, he was actively avoiding "the chair," in the fear that it should send him back to the other world should he sit or lie down on it again. Without the necessary information for logical deduction, the boy was left with no choice than to fear the illogical conclusion.
"What don"t I know?"
There was too much that he didn"t know. In the first place, he had grown up without knowing letters or numbers. Though he had seen and learned a great deal through school and books in the other world, he was still only a "first-grader." Higher grade students, or middle and high school students above them learned so much more, but fact remained that his knowledge was still severely lacking, as he hadn"t gone through that process. Surely, that was why he couldn"t find a suitable answer for his many questions.
As if reflecting his inner turmoil, a gust of wind swept over him, and the boy hugged his knees to his chest. He fell asleep like that, curled up on the bed.
****
The early sunlight slowly crept down from the mountains, but it didn"t take long to engulf the fields beneath. The morning mist gave way, letting the warm light take its place among the spa.r.s.e trees. Just when the warbler birds had begun their flight across the sky in search of food, a loud cry erupted from the base of a great oak, signaling morning.
"Ungh!!"
Though he had used his thick robe as a sort of blanket, one of the basics of sleeping in the open, he was still stiff from the morning chill. He rose from his spot to stretch, and a long wail came from his mouth before he could stop it. After struggling a bit to get out of the robe he had so tightly wrapped around himself, his bird"s nest of hair fell to his shoulders, as white as ever. Even his thick skin, though used to the roughness of sleeping in the open, was looking worse than usual.
The man had more wrinkles on his face than the years he had lived, and his lips, cracked and split, pulled apart to let out a huge yawn. He also had thick eyelids, and his eyes drooped at the ends. The man, named Pincheno, looked around, listening for any sort of sound, and surely enough, there was the sound of flowing water. He got up slowly, dusting his robe off haphazardly before draping it over his shoulders. Small huffing noises came out of his mouth every time he moved his limbs, and that was ridiculous, even to him. Perhaps his time had come. He had lived longer than most and had seen and experienced much more. He had begun traveling to prepare for the end, knowing that he had lived more than enough, but things had changed from the first time he had taken off. Not surprising at all, considering the fact he had traveled (and slept out in the open) for ten years now. He was just an old man who had lost sight of his goal."I am starving, and there is nothing to eat, there is nothing I own. I wonder if I can find anything?" Pincheno approached the stream he had found while mumbling to himself in a singsongy voice. He dipped in his finger in the water, but quickly pulled it back when he noticed it was freezing cold. Though it was now springtime, traces of winter were still found here and there, which was a real ha.s.sle in times like these. Winter meant there was no food readily available in the wild. Had it been a little closer into spring, he could have easily found some mulberries or wild cherries, and even later still would have meant apricots. Currently, however, there was nothing in sight.
He wiped some water on his face in a lazy attempt to freshen up and then proceeded to rummage around his robe. He patted the pouch at his waist and even checked inside his sleeves, but there was no trace of food anywhere. At this rate, he had to rely on nearby villages and ask for something to eat, but no matter how hard he looked around, he couldn"t detect any signs of fire nearby. Smoke rising in the sky meant people making fire to prepare their breakfast meals, but he could see no such thing.
"It can"t be helped," he mumbled as he readjusted his clothes, "that"s just how my life is." Nothing would come from just sitting around like this, so he decided to venture out. Perhaps things would sort themselves out in time, Pincheno thought as he started walking again.
He had traveled far and wide during his years, but he had never seen this place before. The city he had visited before he had arrived here was, as far as he knew, the westernmost city in the country. Continuing down this path led to the "Great Mountains," a mountain range which stood tall from the north all the way to the south, dividing the west and the east. On the eastern side of the mountains, there was the Princ.i.p.ality of Buono, where Pincheno had stayed for the past few years, and a few dozen other countries. Countries which, for decades on end, had waged war on each other, and countries which, riddled with political strife, rose and fell and rose again. Such was the history of the continent east of the Great Mountains, the continent known as "Debussy."
The people of Debussy had few reasons to venture towards the Great Mountains, and there was almost no reason at all to come so close to them as Pincheno had. There were no specialties in this region, no products of value to attract merchants, and the land had no political significance for authorities to pay much attention to it. As such, the people referred to this land as "Acrystos," emphasizing its uselessness.
Under normal circ.u.mstances, even Pincheno would have thought twice about coming to the Great Mountains. The mountains weren"t something that people could cross, and people who attempted it never returned. Only those who wished to meet their ends actively sought to reach the mountains. And Pincheno was just that: an old man who thought about his own end. So, he came to this place. Still, his idea of his own end was not through starvation, which led him to wander about the land, gripping his stomach in the hopes to appease his growing hunger.
****
The wind swept over the hill following the light of dawn and twice shook the house the boy slept in. He rose, startled by the sound of the rattling windowpanes, and fell asleep again when all he could see was darkness around him, and all he could hear was the wind blowing outside. He repeated this all throughout the night, which made it a rather long night. For the first time in a long time, the boy was unable to sleep properly.
Perhaps the chill of the morning had gotten to his head, as the boy felt a faint dizziness take over him when he got up. Thinking that he ought to get some sun, he made his way to the large rock outside his home. Though it was still rather cold, he thought it was still better than his bed, and laid down on in without much care. It had been a while since he could act as boldly as he wished to without care about what others thought of him. At the inst.i.tute, he could never bring himself to lay down on the gra.s.s or the courtyard like the other kids did. Even his morning excursion to the mountain was done in secret at the dead of dawn, and he had taken all the care necessary to make sure no one would find out. But here he was now, lying down on a rock, arms and legs spread wide without a care in the world. The boy couldn"t help but smile as he took in the morning sun.
As the warmth of sunlight fell over his closed lids, it felt as though the chill of the night was leaving his body. He was fully immersed in the moment when the reality of his situation suddenly struck him.
"I"m an idiot."
Had a sorcerer come during the night? Perhaps the chill from last night had been enchanted to turn him into a complete fool. How else could he explain his utter lack of awareness? The boy shook his head to stop himself from spiraling into a pit of self-hatred and guilt and looked around as he got up. There were no signs of people, and there hadn"t been any when he first left the house either. In the end, no one had returned during the night.
He briefly wondered whether he should go out and look for everyone, but the thought of leaving the village by himself filled him with fear. Perhaps waiting here for someone to return wasn"t a bad idea at all, though there were a few issues. Namely, the boy had no idea how long he should wait, and even if were to wait for an indefinite amount of time, he didn"t know whether he could survive by himself for such a long time.
"Still, it"s better than leaving by myself."
He continued to rationalize and weigh the pros and cons of leaving or staying. He turned his eyes to face the tall mountains ahead and saw the mist draping over them like curtains. If the villagers had gone away into those mountains, that meant that he had to go into the mountains, and no matter how experienced he was at foraging through forest paths, there was no way he could make it in the mountains.
His thoughts strayed as he kept his gaze on the mountains, and soon he was taken aback by them. Those misty peaks were a wonder in themselves. No matter how bright the sun shone, the clouds looming over the mountain peaks and the mist stretching across the whole range never receded, and they had stimulated his imagination ever since the boy was young. And yet, those mountains were forbidden.
The adults only ventured up to the edge of the forest, and never beyond, and made sure others did so as well. However, it is human nature to want to do something even more if forbidden, so when the boy had asked his father about it, his father had knitted his thick brows and firmly yelled at him to "just don"t." There were no reasons given, other than the fact it was dangerous, and the boy didn"t have the courage to go against his father. He had never seen him so stern. An unspecified danger provoked the boy"s curiosity just as much, but he wasn"t so reckless as to go somewhere even adults feared to go. So, he stayed and listened to his father without arguments, but he would often sit with his brother or friend on the rock to look at the tall mountains.
"What are you looking at?"
The boy whipped his head around, startled. There, he saw an old man with his back to the sun, wearing an odd grey robe reminiscent of the cleaning rags they used at the inst.i.tute. The boy stepped back in surprise and tripped over the edge of the rock he had been standing on, but the old man grabbed him before he could fall. Though he had been spared of the danger of falling on a huge rock, the boy felt that having his wrist held by a stranger was the much graver danger. He twisted his whole body and jumped down from the rock, landing his feet firmly on the ground before taking a few steps away from the old man, who had let go of his wrist without much resistance. The old man, still standing on the rock, turned his head in various directions to get a good look at the small village. "Hmm," he wondered aloud, "doesn"t anyone live here?"
The boy scrutinized this strange old man, fully distrusting of him. Perhaps it was due to the different angle he was looking from, but the boy could now see things that he had missed when the man had his back towards the sun. The old man was rather tan, and wrinkles covered his face. That was the most wrinkles the boy had ever seen on someone. His hair, his beard, and even his eyebrows were white, and the boy couldn"t help but be reminded of the underwear Myeong-su sometimes hid under his bed. But all in all, it was a rather impressive beard, easily reaching the man"s waist. The boy wondered whether sorcerers looked like this in novels, but everything about this old man, starting from the stray blades of gra.s.s in his beard to the odd stains on his clothes, seemed to shout "I"m a beggar!" at the boy. The old man held a cane in his left hand, though it looked more like a dry, dead branch he might have picked up from the ground. What looked to be like leather sandals on his feet were, upon careful inspection, regular shoes of which the front half had ripped off.
On the other hand, the boy was a marvel to the old man. To put it simply, he looked as though he didn"t belong in this place. Maybe it was his prejudice talking, but children who grew up in such peasant towns were usually thin to the point of emaciation, and their faces would be splattered in yellow. This boy, however, more closely resembled the children of aristocrats in the big cities. And his eyes! The boy"s eyes as they observed him could have put any scholar to shame. Such bright, intelligent eyes. Though he was wearing tattered clothes, his skin was fair and his face glowed healthy. Surely, this boy had a story to tell.
The two individuals stared at each other for quite some time, one completely quiet and wary, the other fully amused.
"Who are you?"
The two spoke in unison.
End