The commander growled at the man who had been about to stab me.
“A conch-shell sound? What does that have to do with us?!”
“Anyone who hears the war-horn signal in Raechia must stop without exception. Then again, you are trash, so perhaps you do not know that.”
“Damn it! I do not care about that! What is an outsider doing here?!”
The pressure of someone towering far above ordinary people, and the hostility in his low, deep voice.
Together with the soldiers glaring at them from behind him, the effect was overwhelming.
Even the men who had poured endlessly out of Subura and now numbered in the hundreds hesitated.
The commander looked contemptuously at the frightened ruffians and stated his purpose.
“We came because we heard you were trying to murder decent citizens of Raechia. Having seen it myself, it is true.”
“Decent citizens? Did you leave your eyes at home?! Can’t you see all those bastards lying dead over there?”
Was it the recklessness of a man with nothing left to lose?
The man who had been stopped from stabbing me gritted his teeth and pointed all around him.
The place was filled with men Uncle Aldo and I had beaten and cut down.
Of course, the unnamed commander did not so much as blink.
“They are decent citizens indeed. I see they are voluntarily working hard to clean up the trash.”
“You call that an answer?!”
“You are the filth and garbage of Raechia. Killing trash like you is a virtue for Raechian citizens.”
As the commander spoke in a voice as cold as frost, the horse he rode reared up.
The man who had challenged him collapsed at the sight of hooves that looked ready to stomp in his skull.
Fortunately, no human head was crushed, with brains spilling out.
The horse’s forehoof merely drove down between the man’s legs with a THUD.
The commander stared at the ruffian, who had wet his pants from that alone, before turning toward me.
I flinched for a moment, then looked him in the eye proudly.
“Can you walk?”
“Yes. I am not seriously hurt.”
“Good, boy. Go to my soldiers first. They will protect you.”
“Thank you.”
I supported Uncle Aldo, who was a little more injured than I was, and crossed the boundary.
The commander’s eyes lit with interest when he saw my limp, but he did not mention it.
Instead, he shouted a warning to the ruffians.
“Listen well, you trash! If you dare dream of revenge over today’s matter, I will burn this entire garbage bin to the ground!”
The commander’s threat blended with his horse’s threatening snort.
The ruffians did not dare respond when a voice, as sharp as an iron skewer, came from behind them.
“Have you not considered that they violated the treaty?”
It belonged to an elderly man with a head full of white hair, leaning on a cane.
With eyes as chilling as a snake’s, he asked the commander,
“The treaty that says Raechia and Subura are not to involve themselves with one another. You are not going to claim you do not know the treaty from eight hundred years ago, are you?”
Was the commander surprised that a Subura ruffian would invoke history, or simply displeased?
His eyebrow twitched.
“You are mistaken about something, old trash. That treaty was made so trash could only play inside the garbage bin.”
“So?”
“It means cleaning you up does not fall under it.”
At that humiliating answer, the old man’s eyebrow twitched this time.
The commander only went further when he saw it.
“And a treaty is something people make with people. Do you understand?”
It was an arrogant attitude that said, What could you do if we did not keep the treaty?
No, it meant they had never been subjects of the treaty to begin with.
Because Suburans were not people.
The old man only bit his lip at that insult, but the other ruffians were different.
“What is an outsider bastard who does not even look human saying?!”
“You dog bastards are the trash!”
The commander raised his left hand against the ruffians’ uproar.
At once, the soldiers waiting behind him lowered their spears forward.
Their severe military discipline instantly crushed the spirit of the ruffians, who were nothing more than violent.
The commander gave the men, who had flinched again, a short laugh.
“You nobodies should not act above your station. Live like the trash you are.”
“I will not forget today....”
“What will you do by not forgetting? No, do not forget. Do not forget, and do whatever you want. The day you do will be the day we incinerate the trash unfit for Raechia.”
The ruffians could not attack the commander as he turned away in mockery.
They could only glare at him with eyes full of resentment.
Watching them, I felt satisfied, but I also had questions.
Why had they come to hate each other so much?
Why did it have to be that way?
My thoughts did not last long before the commander approached me and spoke quietly.
“You must be Jeong Johan.”
“What? How do you know my name?”
“You do not need to know that. Just remember that someone great has their eye on you.”
My mind filled with questions at that cryptic answer.
Someone great had their eye on me?
Why?
Objectively, I was just a limping boy trying to become an Adventurer.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Naturally, I tried to question the commander to clear up my confusion, but he cut me off.
“More importantly, are those children all right? I see some who need treatment immediately.”
“Ah, right! Emilio! How are the kids?”
“They’re okay for now... but I think they still need treatment.”
Surrounded by soldiers and able to do nothing but watch nervously, Emilio looked a little pitiful.
But there was nothing to be done about that right now, so I dealt with the urgent matter first.
“Excuse me, General?”
“General is a title for someone far above me. I am merely a military officer.”
“Ah, yes. Then, Officer, could you help us?”
He stared at me with deep eyes, then suddenly asked,
“I pull a drowning man from the water, and now he asks me for his bundle too?”
“If you have pulled a drowning man from the water, should you not take measures to make sure he lives? Otherwise, it is just wasted effort.”
“My assignment ended with saving you and that fellow.”
That was not wrong.
But it was also true that people should not act that way.
I calmly answered the officer.
“A soldier’s duty may have ended, but a person’s duty has not.”
“Hm?”
“If you are a person, is it not your duty to help someone you see dying? If you need repayment, I will give you something later.”
At my bold words, the officer gave a disbelieving laugh and shook his head.
“Forget it. What repayment? By your own logic, expecting repayment for saving a person would not be a person’s duty either, would it?”
“Th-that is right?”
“I can see why that person has their eye on you.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Flying Tiger First Unit!”
I tried to ask about his mysterious words again, but he did not answer. Instead, he called to the soldiers in a booming voice.
His call was met with an equally booming response. The officer immediately gave his orders. “Take the children to San Marco Cathedral. Get a stretcher or something for this child and carry them.”
“Yes, sir!”
“You should come too. You do not appear to be badly hurt, but you need treatment as well.”
“Yes, thank you!”
The soldiers pried door panels off from somewhere and placed the unconscious children on them.
The military officer smiled instead of answering, then began walking ahead with them.
After exchanging a look with Uncle Aldo, I trudged after them.
As we followed Raechia’s roads, now fully bright.
I finally felt that the long night had come to an end.
***
San Marco Cathedral was named after the saint who protected Raechia.
Two women stood atop the highest bell tower of that magnificent building.
Watching the boy approach the cathedral with a gait noticeable even from afar, the shorter of the two women smiled.
“Is that him? The one who made you, an old woman living in the back room, come all the way here?”
“Can you not speak a little more kindly?”
“If you only hole yourself up in the Adventurer’s Guild, you are an old woman living in the back room.”
“Sujeong, even as you grow older, you have not changed since childhood.”
“Unlike some people, I have too much on my shoulders to grow old.”
The woman called Sujeong returned the sharp answer with a broad smile.
As though mocking her older sister, who had been born from the same mother but walked a different path.
“Answer me, then. Jeong Sujin, the great Guardian of Raechia, came to the clan she hated so much and even asked them for a favor, all to save one little kid?”
“Because it was necessary.”
Sujin answered calmly, even in the face of her younger sister’s barbed question.
Instead, Sujeong was startled by that answer and narrowed her eyes.
“Necessary? Why?”
“We must prevent the tragedy of the next Guardian of Raechia dying in vain.”
“Are you serious? You are considering that child as your successor?”
“Have I ever lied to you even once?”
Sujin might choose not to speak at all, but she never lied.
Sujeong knew that better than anyone, yet she asked again.
She had to.
“You want to make a child who is not even a Fairy into a Guardian? He will live for only seventy or eighty years at most.”
“Since when has being a Guardian been decided by one’s lifespan? There are only two qualifications for a Guardian: strength and character.”
“Ah, well. That is true. Does he have the skill, then?”
The Guardian was an honorable position that had continued from the days when this land was called Dongnae, before refugees from the former Empire swarmed in and founded the city of Raechia.
To think that Sujin was considering a human child, and a limping one at that, for such a role.
Sujeong wondered if her older sister had grown senile with age.
But Sujin smiled gently and soothed her younger sister.
“Johan is strong. He is strong even now, and he will become stronger still. I guarantee it.”
“Hm... if you say that much, I cannot say anything about his skill. What about his character? Can you trust it?”
Sujin did not answer immediately. After pausing for a moment, she carefully gestured with her chin toward Johan, who was entering the cathedral.
“Has his character not already been proven? Who would risk his life to keep a promise made to the children of Subura?”
“That... is not necessarily welcome.”
“It might not be for a politician like you. But there is no greater proof that someone values bonds and keeps faith.”
Sujeong frowned at her sister’s words, then sighed.
The Council of Twelve ruled Raechia.
Sujeong was the current head of the Dongnae Jeong Clan, which always held a seat of honor there.
Naturally, Johan did not look favorable to her. He had stirred up a jar of filth that would have posed no problem if its lid had simply been kept shut.
Even so, she had no choice but to acknowledge it.
Johan clearly possessed an upright character, and the Guardian needed to be someone like that.
“So What are you going to do? I sent the soldiers because you asked. Are you bringing him here and starting his training?”
“No. Johan will leave here next year.”
“Are you insane? Where does a Guardian think he is going? Just because you traveled wherever you pleased for a hundred years does not mean everyone else can do the same.”
“Sujeong.”
Sujin looked seriously at her younger sister, who had questioned her sharply.
This time, Sujeong did not yield and met her gaze.
“Do not try to persuade me. It will not work. If he truly has the caliber to become a Guardian, I will keep him here by whatever means necessary.”
“A bird that has hatched from its egg leaves the nest when the time comes. People are no different. To grow, one must leave one’s hometown and experience the vast world.”
“Why do you not mention that far more people die screaming than grow?”
“Then there is nothing to be done.”
“You do not cherish him?”
“Keeping what you cherish only in your arms is, if anything, abuse. It may be difficult for you to understand, but that is the way of a Martial Artist.”
Sujeong could not understand Sujin, who looked at Johan with such affection, as though she could already see him inside the cathedral.
Yet even without ever fully understanding, she came to accept it.
For hundreds of years, she had felt the difference between herself, who believed that what she cherished had to be held in her hands somehow, and her older sister.
In the end, all she did was ask mockingly,
“I will see how great the child you are trying to raise becomes.”
“You will see him even if you do not wish to.”
As she looked at the red sun rising beyond the horizon alongside the bells that announced the morning.
Sujin murmured in a voice full of certainty.
“Even with your eyes closed, sunlight is bound to pass through your eyelids.”
As though she had seen the future.