King Of Fools.

King of Fools.

“…It is all empty, isn’t it.”

Perhaps, far longer than she herself had ever realised, this man had been thinking of her. That was what Aspara, all of a sudden, came to feel.

If so, what of now? With what heart had this man meant to show her this old flower field, now turned to so desolate and empty an expanse?

“Are you trying to say that I am the one who made it this way?”

At his wife’s mutter, words he could not understand, Gus tilted his head to one side.

“I know it too. I just —”

For the first time in a long while, a surge of emotion welled up in Aspara and rushed against her like a current in reverse. A backward-flowing feeling, as if it were crawling up her stomach into her throat.

“That is why I asked, didn’t I — just spurn me — just —”

The woman’s lower lip trembled faintly. Eh? Aspara was thrown. The feeling she was feeling now, she found hard to name.

Like a long-starved child tasting sugar for the very first time, Aspara worked her mouth for a moment, trying to digest the feeling that had filled her throat to the brim.

“…I am sorry.”

《——? My, my wife, —, ——…》

Gus stammered in a flustered voice.

“I am sorry. I, ah, I —”

《My wife, —, ——! — ——!》

“Just a moment, I am… ah, do not keep tapping my shoulder. I am… no, my shoulder…”

Aspara had buried her face in her two hands, trying to settle her flushed-red cheeks. Only at Gus’s hand — which kept tapping, tap, tap, against her shoulder — did she at last lift her head.

“I am… ah.”

《——, ——!》

Only then did Aspara notice what Gus’s fingertip was indicating. With one arm he had wrapped her shoulders, and with the other hand he was pointing at something on the ground.

“A sprout.”

A sprout. A pale-green sprout no bigger than a baby’s pinky-fingernail. A tiny life, downy and soft.

The field that had once been full of flowers had, at first glance, become a wasteland. A wasteland of nothing, frozen hard beneath the white snow.

But when she looked closely, she could see, between the melted patches of snow, little sprouts poking their heads out one after another.

《——!》

“——. So that must be how you say ‘sprout’ in the northern tongue.”

Gus could no doubt not understand the woman’s words, but for the moment he nodded with a pleased face.

“A sprout… So even in the north there is a kind of spring.”

Only then did Aspara look out once more upon the field that had seemed a wasteland. With the help of the moonlight, when she looked carefully, the soft pale-green and the small dew clinging to that pale-green light glittered like a carpet stretched out before her.

《— ——?》

“Ah, thank you.”

The castle lord pulled out a water flask from beneath the saddle of his horse and handed it to her. The flask, carved from the thigh-bone of some beast, held a thick drink within. Warmed by the body heat of the running horse, it was still pleasantly warm.

“And you also.”

《Thank you.》

The two shared the drink between them, then settled themselves down with a thud at the foot of a tree where the snow had not piled. They simply gazed quietly out over the snowfield.

A snowfield in the dead of night had, of course, never been all that good a place for a date. Though for sitting quietly and looking out in the same direction together for a very long time, it might be just right.

Aspara, who had sat there blankly for some time, turned her head and looked at Gus’s face. Beneath the black eye-patch, she caught a brief glimpse of his injured eye.

“…”

《…》

The two of them sat very quietly there for a very long time. Were a young pair of lovers to be meeting in secret, one would suppose there were any number of things they ought to be doing. But the two of them, tacitly understanding that the moment a kiss was exchanged today’s date would come to an end, simply went on sitting quietly there for a long, long while.

“Mmh…”

Aspara, who had been dragged out in the middle of the night, in the end leaned her head against the horse’s body and fell asleep there. Half-asleep, she felt as though someone had kissed her on the mouth; but that, along with the deep sleep itself, slipped softly away beyond the threshold of consciousness.

[28.]

The next morning, Aspara opened her eyes in her own bedroom. Rolled up in the bedcovers like a caterpillar, her hair neatly arranged off to one side.

“Was it all a dream…”

But it most certainly had not been a dream.

For proof — there, on the floor beside her bed, lay Jack, stretched out flat on his back. Not in the uncomfortable hunched-over posture she had seen him in last night, but laid out straight along the floor.

His body was wrapped up like a quilt in a thick mantle, and on his forehead sat a small bump, as if he had been struck there. And yet, despite all that, he was sleeping snug and sound — snore, snore — completely out.

“Jack. Hey, Jack!”

Aspara gripped the youth’s shoulder and shook him to and fro. Only after she had shaken him so hard that his head waggled limply, like a flag whose tie had come loose, did the fellow at long last drag himself out of sleep.

“Wha— whu—! Yes! I wasn’t sleeping. Yes? What is it?”

“I told you to go inside and sleep. Your face will set crooked.” [TL: Korean superstition — sleeping in cold or awkward positions is said to cause facial paralysis (입 돌아간다, lit. “your mouth turns”).]

While Jack stretched out long with a still-half-asleep face, Aspara unconsciously fingered her own lips.

The scene of the sprout-field she had seen last night — she could not tell where reality ended and the dream began.

She would have to step out of her room for a bit today. To meet briefly with the castle lord this morning —

《Jack!》

“Aigoo.”

With a bang, the door of the room was thrown open all at once. The owner of the face that had appeared behind the great door was Ugli, breaking out in a cold sweat.

“You are without manners.”

“《I am sor—》 I am sorry. Right now, um, right now —”

“Catch your breath. Close the door and come in. What if somebody overheard you.”

“I am sorry.”

Only then did Ugli compose himself and step into the room, then pulled the door tightly shut behind him. He made sure that not even a sliver of space remained at the doorframe before he steadied his breathing.

“What is it? Are you all right?”

“You vanishing on me too — I really was caught off guard. Damn it, that…”

“Jack had been by my side, keeping watch over me. Who else has vanished?”

Ugli, troubled by something or other, glanced around once more before he finally managed to open his mouth.

“The castle lord is gone. And one horse with him.”

The castle lord, and one horse. Could it be that he had not yet returned from yesterday’s outing? Aspara thought.

But that was strange. There was no reason for him not to have returned by the time the morning sun was up. And besides, the fact that she had opened her eyes in her own bedroom meant that he had stopped here, did it not.

“Do you have any idea where he has gone?”

“That is…”

Ugli furrowed his brow and let out a deep sigh toward the sky.

“I am afraid he may have gone south.”

“South?”

Aspara and Jack asked back in one voice. South. What in the world would the castle lord have to go south for?

Of course, if one were to think of a reason, there was something one could guess at. The talk all through the castle these days had been of nothing else.

Revenge against Flower!

But that was not the kind of thing a castle lord should be undertaking on his own. What in the world could one man, charging off all alone, possibly accomplish?

“Aaah, what a complete fool!”

In a tone of voice that gave no clue who he was addressing, Ugli clutched his face in his hands and cried out, smothering his voice. Lately he has been showing quite a bit of his unpolished side. — Is it because he has grown more comfortable around me? Aspara thought, with a small measure of pleasure.

“Lately… lately there have been all sorts of problems, haven’t there. The castle lord was wounded, so the voices clamouring for retribution — call it reprisal or whatever — have been loud; but if we mount a full sortie, war breaks out; and if war breaks out, the common people die… But then again, if we ignore it, the castle lord’s dignity is broken; and if his dignity is broken, they say things like the warrior died in a woman’s skirts —”

“Right — so the most rational option would be to pin it all on me, dispose of me, and have done with it.”

“Don’t even joke about that. There was an actual person who came out and said exactly that at the council, and oh, the bedlam it caused. Split right down the middle, fighting like mad.”

“Was there anyone on my side?”

“You — you are not as unpopular as you yourself seem to think.”

“You don’t say.”

“In any case… the minutes from that council reached the castle lord, and… the castle lord, perhaps feeling a sense of crisis…”

Once more letting out a sigh, Ugli at last met Aspara’s eyes.

“He set off, alone, for Flower’s residence.”

“He’s a fool, is he?”

For a moment Aspara reflexively bit back her own slip of the tongue, but Ugli did not particularly contradict her.

“He has been dosed with so many antibiotics and painkillers recently, that… his head is, just now, in a bit of an idiot state. The castle lord, that is.”

“Aha.”

Could last night’s sudden bout of strange behaviour have been because of that? Aspara thought.

“He left a letter for me alone before he went. Fortunately, the others do not seem to have noticed, but, aaah, god damn it…”

“What shall we do?”

Jack, his face full of worry, looked at his mistress. Aspara closed her eyes firmly and pressed her lips together, as if turning something over in her mind.

A moment later, the woman opened her eyes and her mouth, resolute.

“We are going after him.”

“Pardon?”

Aspara walked straight to her wardrobe, flung open its doors, and pulled out her thickest overcoat together with a set of southern-style outdoor wear.

“We are going after him. Ugli, we will be back shortly, so until then, see to it that you cover for the castle lord’s absence well.”

“Y-yes?”

Catching Jack — who had just happened to be standing there fully armed, sword in hand — by the scruff of the neck, Aspara made her way out through the balcony door.

Aspara’s personal horse, the one she had tethered the night before, was still resting in the same spot.

“Why is the horse here?”

“Because a date is the kind of thing you have to ride a single shared mount for.”

“Pardon?”

“Just a moment, Lady Aspara! Wouldn’t it be better if you took me instead of —”

“No.”

Aspara swung herself up onto the front of the horse, stretched out her hand toward Jack, and called,

“Hurry and mount, Jack. We must make haste!”

“M-me too?”

“Just a moment! Wait —”