WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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Episode 2: Exile Ends (1)

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The End of Exile (1)

'Ugh.'

Yu Yeop-kyung looked at the two bandits skewered against the tree and felt his stomach turn. He felt no guilt, no real unease, because if they hadn't killed these men, the two of them would be the ones lying dead instead. Still, there was no way to look at corpses and feel nothing.

'I wonder if the boy is all right.'

Bandits or not, they were people he had just killed. If his own hands were trembling and his stomach churning, and he had years on him, how much worse must it be for the young one?

'Hmm...'

But Mumu seemed far steadier than he had expected. Even while looking at the corpses, the boy was calmly gathering them into one place. Yu Yeop-kyung frowned and asked, "Son. If you're feeling sick or anything, you can go throw up."

"I'm fine, though?"

"You're really sure you're all right?"

"The smell's nasty and the blood's all sticky, so touching it's gross, but maybe because I've caught so many wild animals, I'm not at the point of puking like you, Father."

'...When did he see that?'

A little earlier he had slipped off behind the outhouse and thrown up. Yu Yeop-kyung frowned. The boy might be a master at catching wild animals, but surely a beast and a person were not the same.

'Did I raise him too differently from other children?'

There had been some contact with the merchants of the peddler trade caravan, but only ever in passing. Apart from his adoptive father, Mumu had never really exchanged words with anyone else, never formed any bonds. Even so, the man had once made his living as a teacher. He believed he had at least instilled in the boy the basic refinement and character a person ought to have, yet somehow his sense of life and death seemed duller than other people's.

'Is this something I should worry about? Or... hmm.'

Ah, forget it. As long as the boy grew up healthy and didn't cause any big trouble, what more was there? The Mumu he had raised and watched over for so long had an upright nature and wasn't the sort of child to go badly astray or turn crooked over something like this. That was enough. Just then Mumu pointed a thumb at the carrying frame stacked with the bodies and said, "I've gathered them all up."

"Well done."

Looking at the corpses, Yu Yeop-kyung sank into thought. They had killed those men to protect themselves, true, but the words the one called the Fan Master had spoken afterward stuck with him.

[Y-you, are you not afraid of the consequences? When I, the Fan Master, am dead, the people of the bandit fort will come looking for this place. Do you have the confidence to handle that many men?]

Honestly, the consequences frightened him. But Yu Yeop-kyung had killed the man so boldly partly out of fury that someone had targeted his son, and partly because the outcome would be the same whether he killed him or not. One way or another, the dead men's comrades would come swarming. If anything, sparing them would only have brought them faster.

'This is a mess.'

But the real problem lay elsewhere. If they had been ordinary commoners, they could simply have fled right after killing these men. The trouble was that Yu Yeop-kyung himself was here in exile. It was written on the marker post too.

[Do not stray more than ten li from the place of exile.]

'This is maddening.'

It amounted to being told to sit there and take whatever came. Ten li was not exactly short, but it was nowhere near far enough to feel safe from the bandits. Just then Mumu said, "Father. We can't go beyond ten li, can we?"

Mumu, too, had grasped the situation well enough. At that, Yu Yeop-kyung bit down hard on his lip, then spoke as if he had made up his mind.

"Son."

"Yes."

"You can leave."

"......"

At those words, Mumu's expression turned sorrowful. When the old man usually joked around and told the boy not to abandon him, it had meant nothing. But hearing him say something like this now, his heart ached.

"You can't leave, though, Father."

"What kind of father would tell his son to die alongside him?"

"Can't we just run past the ten li together?"

"No."

"No one's come for five years now. Hasn't that office or whatever forgotten you even exist, Father?"

Just as Mumu said, the officials who used to drop by once a year for inspection had stopped coming five years ago. Maybe it really was so. That he had been left off some list, or that no one paid him any mind at all. But Yu Yeop-kyung shook his head.

"Son. Your father may be living out this banishment, but in all my life I have never once acted against what is right or done anything to shame myself."

"But Father..."

"If it's discovered that I left the place of exile, your father becomes an even greater criminal. And that guilt would fall in full upon our family back in Kaifeng, and upon you as well."

This was what Yu Yeop-kyung worried about. Since he had not been formally pardoned, he wanted no one else to come to harm. Yu Yeop-kyung spoke as if his decision was final.

"Son. Your father will be fine, so at least you should get away from this mountain..."

"Father."

"What is it?"

"First we hide these bandits' bodies far away, and later, when Mr. Oh from the peddler caravan comes, we tell some nearby government office that bandits have entered the place of exile and ask them for help. What do you think?"

"Huh...?"

"And in the meantime we hide somewhere nearby."

'This boy.'

At Mumu's words, the face of Yu Yeop-kyung, who had braced himself for the worst, brightened. He had only resolved to save his son and die himself, so where had the boy dug up such a clever scheme?

"Son, you've got a whole plan, haven't you."

To think he'd worked himself up to face all that, only to be this happy about a way out. Father really was better when he was honest. Mumu didn't say any of this out loud and went over to the carrying frame stacked with the bodies. Even though there were five corpses, Mumu hoisted them up lightly, as if they weighed next to nothing.

Footnotes:

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