Chapter 69
What happened afterward unfolded much like what he had told Seo Dan.
He followed a man who said he would help me find his grandmother, only to be kidnapped, locked up in some unfamiliar room, transferred several times by carriage, and eventually escape by firing a paralysis needle.
If there was one thing Sahyeon had overlooked, it was that the world was far less like a novel than he had imagined.
At first, Sahyeon had held onto hope.
According to novels, there were many good people in the world. Although he had been captured by bad people, if someone discovered him, surely they would help him.
But hope was merely hope. In reality, Sahyeon was discovered by several people.
It happened when the kidnappers changed carriages or briefly got off to take care of some business. Sahyeon, tears streaming down his face, was obviously being dragged away against his will.
Yet no one stepped forward to help Sahyeon. Instead, they would flinch upon seeing Sahyeon with the men and hurriedly avoid the area, or pretend to be busy with something else so they would not even have to make eye contact.
Then, just once, Sahyeon made eye contact with someone else. But the man stared directly into Sahyeon’s desperate eyes before quietly turning his head away and muttering,
“Ugh, what rotten luck.”
Sahyeon could never forget those words. As the same thing happened again and again, Sahyeon gradually lost hope and eventually realized.
‘Heroes are just an illusion……’
There was no one in this world who would come to save him.
At the same time, Eom Papa’s advice came back to him.
“There are hardly any people in this world who would risk themselves for someone else. Even if you find yourself in danger, there won’t be anyone to help you. So you have to protect yourself. I’ll give you a few hidden weapons, so…”
In the end, Sahyeon had no choice but to fire the paralysis needles while they were off guard and run away. But they quickly realized that Sahyeon had escaped and closed the distance in an instant. Just when he thought he was about to be caught, his foot slipped, and he fell down the mountainside.
Fortunately, perhaps even the heavens had not abandoned Sahyeon, because there was a small rabbit burrow right beside where he had fallen. Sahyeon hurriedly crawled inside.
Sahyeon spent an entire day inside the burrow.
Originally, he had only intended to hide there for a little while, but he could not move at all because he could hear the men’s voices nearby. He thought he might have even passed out for a while.
When he finally came out of the burrow, the men were gone. His entire body ached, and his ankle in particular hurt as though it were being stabbed with a knife, but he had to escape as quickly as possible. Limping, Sahyeon continued deeper and deeper into the mountains.
Then, he could no longer walk.
Sahyeon collapsed beneath a tree.
Tears came.
‘Why did I do that?’
Why hadn’t he been suspicious?
Hadn’t Eom Papa explicitly warned him? That the outside world was dangerous. That there were many bad people outside, so he must never trust people easily.
He was the one who had ignored that advice. He was also the one who had kept insisting on going outside despite being warned of the danger.
“Ugh…”
Only then did Sahyeon regret it.
‘I shouldn’t have gone with Eom Papa. I shouldn’t have thrown a tantrum about wanting to go outside.’
No, if only he hadn’t harbored such fantasies in the first place…
He sobbed and dwelled on his regrets.
Rustle.
“……!”
That was when Sahyeon met him. That person.
“Um… are you okay?”
His first impression of that person was ambiguous.
Judging by his build, he seemed to be three or four years older than Sahyeon, but judging by his face alone, he looked like a boy, while the skirt he was wearing made him seem like a girl.
Just like Sahyeon himself… At that moment, Sahyeon realized.
‘Could that older brother also be cross-dressing because of circumstances beyond his control, like me?’
Even as Sahyeon was thinking that, the older brother kept talking to him.
“Did you get lost?”
“I was traveling with my family when there was an accident. I got swept away by the river and ended up drifting…”
“What about your parents? Who did you come with?”
At the last question, Sahyeon finally came to his senses.
He almost told him everything without thinking, but quickly shut his mouth when he remembered all the people who had pretended not to see him while he was being dragged away by the men.
‘What should I do? Should I tell him the truth? But then he’ll be scared too… What if he turns away from me again? Who can I ask for help? I can’t even walk anymore.’
While Sahyeon was at a loss for what to do, surprisingly, it was the older brother who changed the subject first.
“You’re hurt!”
It was truly something Sahyeon had never expected to hear.
Apparently, he had noticed it in the midst of everything, because the older brother was looking at Sahyeon’s ankle. And as if that weren’t enough, he suddenly lifted Sahyeon’s ankle and examined it from every angle.
Sahyeon was flustered. But something even more bewildering happened.
The older brother tore a long strip from the clothes he was wearing and began wrapping it around Sahyeon’s ankle.
‘W-what is this? Why…’
To make matters even more surprising, the older brother was quite skillful with his hands. Somehow, he carefully wrapped Sahyeon’s ankle with the makeshift bandage, and the pain truly diminished as if by magic. After tying the knot firmly, the older brother carefully lowered Sahyeon’s foot.
Then he smiled brightly and said,
“How is it? It hurts less, right?”
For the first time, Sahyeon realized that a person’s smile could be so dazzling.
At the same time, a thought occurred to him.
‘Maybe I can trust this person?’
Wouldn’t they help him if he asked?
Just once, just one more time… if he dared to place his hopes in someone.
“Please, help me!”
In the end, Sahyeon asked for help. But Sahyeon was a coward.
Even after asking for help, he was afraid to tell the truth, so he left out the important parts and made up a vague story instead.
The problem was that Sahyeon was terrible at lying.
Having lived his entire life in the mountains, he had rarely ever had a reason to lie. So the more he lied, the more tangled his words became, and the expression on the older brother’s face grew increasingly uncertain as he listened.
When Sahyeon could not answer anything to the question the older brother finally asked after sensing something strange, he felt humiliated, as though he had been stripped naked in front of someone.
‘I’m screwed.’
Why had he tried to lie when he couldn’t even lie properly?
Wouldn’t it have been better to simply tell the truth?
But he was still afraid to tell the truth.
What if even this older brother turned away from him like everyone else?
What if he left Sahyeon here and went away…?
‘I’m a coward.’
Just as he finally began rambling something that he himself could not tell was an excuse or a plea–
“That’s because I… Huh.”
The older brother collapsed forward.
Sahyeon was extremely startled. The older brother, who had been perfectly fine just moments ago, suddenly clutched his chest and began writhing in pain.
Sahyeon called out to him, not knowing what was happening and not knowing what to do.
Then he soon discovered the reason. A vivid blue handprint was stamped across the older brother’s exposed chest. Suddenly, something Sahyeon had read in a book flashed through his mind.
Sahyeon cried out,
“Frost Palm!”
At the same time, he hurriedly rummaged through his clothes and pulled out the Hundred-Poison Stone-Sea Pill that Eom Papa had given him.
Originally, Eom Papa had given him this medicine along with several hidden weapons at the beginning. It was in case Sahyeon accidentally stabbed himself while using one of the hidden weapons, or in case he was poisoned by an enemy instead.
However, as Sahyeon repeatedly followed Eom Papa to the village, he had gradually left those hidden weapons behind one by one, until all he had left were the paralysis needles in his sleeve and the Hundred-Poison Stone-Sea Pill.
‘I never thought I’d end up using it like this…’
Of course, the Cold Poison in the older brother’s body could not be cured with the Hundred-Poison Stone-Sea Pill.
The only way to remove the Cold Poison that had seeped into the meridians was to receive treatment from a proper physician. Fortunately, Eom Papa was not only highly knowledgeable about poisons but also exceptionally skilled in medicine.
Sahyeon’s expression brightened.
‘Maybe I can help, too.’
“I don’t think that’s going to work.”
But the older brother rejected Sahyeon’s offer.
He said he had urgent matters to attend to and that he probably could not take Sahyeon any farther than the nearby village, apologizing once again.
Truthfully, Sahyeon was grateful even for that. He had no hope of finding Eom Papa, who was all the way in Guangxi Province, and he had decided that anywhere would be fine as long as he could escape from those men.
But the older brother would surely suffer greatly if he could not receive treatment right away…
‘Could there be some reason behind this?’
He had said that he had been attacked by some strange men, but very few masters capable of using the Frost Palm existed.
According to Eom Papa, the master who possessed that technique was a notorious Demon Head who had once made a terrible name for himself in the martial world, but had disappeared a long time ago.
So how had the older brother ended up being attacked by a master of the Frost Palm?
Perhaps the older brother also had circumstances he could not talk about.
“I’ll give it to you.”
Instead of asking the older brother, Sahyeon held out the medicine.
He had no right to ask about someone else’s circumstances when he was hiding his own as well. But Sahyeon did not want the older brother to be in pain anymore.
Because he was a good person.
Because he was the person who had noticed Sahyeon’s injury and treated him first.
“Thank you for saying you’d help me. I was really happy.”
That helping hand extended to him for the first time, truly…
Had his sincerity reached him?
The older brother stared blankly for a moment before giving a gentle smile and saying,
“You’re making me out to be a shameless person…”
Sahyeon was glad that the older brother seemed happy, too.
***
Afterward, the older brother carried Sahyeon on his back and set off.
As they walked along the mountain path, they talked about this and that.
Sahyeon gave his name as “Pyeonghyeon.” Even if he revealed that he was being pursued, he absolutely could not let this name be discovered.
He had simply made it up on the spot, roughly meaning “ordinary.” Still, the older brother affectionately called him “Pyeonghyeon.”
Thinking that the sound of it was pleasant to hear, Sahyeon secretly hoped,
‘I hope that someday I’ll be able to tell her my real name…’
And there was one more thing Sahyeon learned about the older brother…
“I’m a woman!”
The older brother… wasn’t an older brother at all, but an older sister!
Sahyeon was more flustered than he had ever been in his life.
Until that moment, Sahyeon had firmly believed that the older brother… no, older sister, was a man.
Her behavior was so uninhibited and boisterous, and her hair was even short, making it difficult to think of her as a woman. In fact, it was precisely because he thought she was an older brother that Sahyeon had so readily climbed onto her back.
Thinking she was another man, he had comfortably leaned against her back and even wrapped his arms around her neck.
‘W-what am I supposed to do…?!’
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