219 – Dealing with the Past (3)
A black merchant I met in a slum, a subordinate and friend of Chester who used to play captain in my childhood, but a man whose name I don’t even remember… So, Aiden gave Chester his name and grumbled that he should never forget it again.
“Yes. Aye, Aiden.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“If you quit being a black trader and live a proud life in a bright world, I will remember your name.”
“Keuugh.”
Aiden couldn’t say anything if he pointed out that part.
After getting caught up in the war, he fought as a soldier for a long time, and when the war got too big, Aiden, who escaped the war and stowed away on a boat to the Matoto continent, sold his armor and weapons, really a little bit. Financed the life of
“But, well, how much could I have gotten from selling cheap armor and spears? In addition, people who fled from the war were flowing here and there, so the atmosphere of excluding outsiders was a bit strong at that time.”
Unable to find a job at all, Aiden was forced to look for other ways to live and went into the slums.
“Don’t you usually go into a slum there?”
“Noisy. Rather, who are you?”
“Did you just tell my wife that you are noisy?”
“Wife?!”
Surprised, Aiden finally saw Monia, who couldn’t see properly because he was focusing on Chester, and Rex clinging to Chester.
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“What?!”
And I was surprised to see Monia’s face.
“…… With such a beauty as a wife…… ! No, wait. Didn’t you say something about the butler earlier?”
“Because he was a nobleman.”
“Noble?! A noble as a wife!!”
As a friend I haven’t seen in a while, a lot of shocking things happened.
Marriage. Yes, let’s say marriage is very natural. Perhaps, if Aiden hadn’t left town either, he would have married her when the time was right, because her village elders had matched her with a suitable woman.
‘But it’s not just a marriage, but a nobleman and a beautiful woman!’
Aiden trembled with jealousy welling up in his heart.
“Ugh.”
In the past, he would have been angry with jealousy, but after running away from the village and experiencing the cold and bitter reality, Aiden let go of his jealousy with a single sigh.
“This is my home.”
Aiden’s house was set up in a corner of the slum.
“Is it near Changgwan?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you here?”
“There are many customers who come here looking for pleasure and easily open their wallets, and the streets are clean.”
Aiden entered the house through a crack in the wall, leaving the door unusable as the house was half-collapsed.
Upon entering, he heard the sound of people searching the house, and Aiden sighed and told him to wait, pulling out the weapon he had hidden in his bosom.
“What? Person?”
“This happens often. Would you pay for a house in a slum? If you find a house you like and sit down in, that’s your house.”
“Hmm.”
“Well, I’m watching.”
Aiden lightly drove away the intruders with his hidden weapon.
From the perspective of the Chester family who knew Urgo, it was difficult to say that it was a strong move or a good move, but it was clear that he was accustomed to fighting and was good at it.
As soon as you start, sprinkle what you can get your hands on on the enemies, then cover your vision with dust and subdue them one by one.
Grabbing and pulling by the hair, biting and pinching were commonplace, and when I was caught from behind and thought it would be dangerous, I tried to help, but I grabbed the other person’s genitals with my hands and twisted them to get out.
“Oh, oh, oh, I’m going to die.”
Aiden, who had been caught by the intruder and straightened his messy hair, sat down on a chair and told him to sit down in a suitable place, taking pieces of wood that appeared to be the wreckage of a building and lighting a fire.
Aiden tapped his back while making a fire with a flint and began to filter the dirty water and boil it.
“Do you want some tea?”
“I hate it.”
“I think I’ll get a disease that I didn’t have before.”
“Are you stupid? Why are you drinking?”
Aiden frowned when he saw the two men and a mysterious beast.
“Oh, then don’t drink. Fools who don’t know how much clean water costs.”
“Drink this.”
Chester pulled out a water bottle from his waistband and gave it to Aiden.
Receiving the water bottle as a reflex, Aiden saw the clear water lapping in it, and his eyes rolled back and he began to gulp down.
After Aiden drank so fast that he couldn’t tell if the water was going down his mouth or his nose, he trembled with the pleasure of drinking the fresh water, shaking his body as if he had been drugged.
“Kuaaa… ! Kill!”
Seeing that, Monia said.
“Chester. Except for Urgo and Sena, I don’t have any friends, so I don’t have anything to say, but I think it’s better to choose more friends.”
“Sure.”
“Ah! I don’t know how long it’s been since I drank water like this! I know that? There are people in this slum who fetch river water and sell it for money.”
After Aiden returned the water bottle to Chester, he inspected the mousetrap he had placed in the corner of the house, took out the caught rat, and started roasting it over the bonfire.
“So, why did you come all the way here, Captain? A honeymoon?”
“A honeymoon is a honeymoon.”
“I see. Don’t you know the country’s situation? They don’t seem to know that a war has broken out.”
“Anyway.”
Monia’s banishment from the wandering island was a major event that caused quite a stir in the country, but it was only a major event in the aristocratic world.
Below that, there are more people who are cut off from the aristocratic world and don’t even know about Monia’s existence, let alone Monia’s exile.
Aiden also didn’t know about the circumstances of the nobles, so he started talking without knowing about Monia’s existence.
“It started as a duke. I heard she waged her war for her own daughter.”
Monia’s expression became strange after hearing her words. She looked as if she wanted to say, ‘Is that human?’
“That’s why they gathered nobles and raised a rebellion.”
“She must have wanted to put a crown on her own head. …… Isn’t Chester very surprised?”
Monia asked a small question, and Chester nodded her head. Seeing that, Monia, she noticed that Chester had a premonition of war from the moment she was exiled to the island.
‘…… Did the war break out because of me?’
She thought Monia herself was also one of the culprits of the war. For she has given her father an excuse to start her war.
But, feeling that, Chester said.
“You did nothing wrong. Your only fault is that you followed your father’s faulty education. Even more so, it’s not your fault, it’s your father’s fault who educated you that way.”
Make Jordi your own man thoroughly. Do not dare to approach Jordi from any other woman.
Of course, from Chester’s point of view, Monia did something stupid too.
To be excluded, only a woman of a certain level is eligible for exclusion, because T-ara, a commoner, would disappear if left alone, let alone excluded.
But at the same time I could understand.
She couldn’t hope for the flexibility to act differently according to her thoughts and judgments from Monia, who was like a doll who behaved according to the duke’s instructions due to her very limited education close to brainwashing.
In the past when I didn’t know her Monia well, I resented her for being stupid, but now I know she’s just a victim.
That’s why Chester was able to speak firmly.
“There is nothing wrong with you in that war.”
Chester spoke in the language of the desert so that Aiden couldn’t understand him, and comforted Monia, saying that it was okay.
Aiden, who spoke in a low voice but was able to hear everything because he was close by, spoke in a language he did not understand, and the couple’s solemn atmosphere was dumbfounded.
‘Are you usually like that when you talk to others?’
The person you’re talking to doesn’t seem to care at all.
‘If anyone sees it, they’ll think I’m a person who has lived in a world where only the two of us live for a long time.’
After Aiden cleared his throat, he roughly told the flow of the war he knew.
At first, the Duke’s army pushed ahead, then the Kingdom’s army also started to oppose, and then at some point, the neighboring countries intervened, and the kingdom was eventually destroyed.
“Hmm.”
After hearing the story, Chester shook his head.
‘There may be differences in details, but the general flow is as I expected.’
Monia seemed to have deep thoughts.
She decided to return to her hometown first. And she decided to rob the duke’s family’s secret warehouse.
That was the purpose of Chester and Monia’s trip now. There was nothing more than that.
However, it is said that her hometown has been destroyed.
It might even be a dangerous land still engulfed in the fires of war.
‘Can I go back like this?’
Chester said that Monia was only a victim and not the cause of the war.
The culprit is Jordi, the tiara, the duke, and the king, not Monia.
However, the human heart cannot be cut so precisely.
If someone found out that a war broke out because of something related to them, would anyone be able to cut it off with just saying, ‘It’s not my fault’?
As Monia’s heart seemed to get heavy, Chester stopped Aiden.
“Rather than that, how did you come into the slums and settle down? I’m more curious about that.”
“Huh? Than a war in your hometown?”
“My home village was destroyed, so the war doesn’t matter. I hope the graves of the villagers won’t be burned.”
Aiden’s expression darkened a bit at Chester’s words.
“Hey, then tell me about Chester this time.”
“Me?”
“Yes. …… How was the town?”
Aiden spoke cautiously, but with a slight impatience.
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“What about our friends? Me, my parents? …… I heard the news, but I couldn’t go back to town. It’s also why it’s hard to take care of my own body…….”
Chester read Aiden’s guilt.
Perhaps, because of the possibility that the village would not have been ruined if they had lived as they were without running away, Aiden’s heart could be seen tied to a chain of heavy guilt.
Perhaps that guilt prevented him from daring to return to the village to investigate the situation.
“This is my village. Right.”
Chester nodded, then opened his mouth.
“I heard the news from the village…….”
* * *
When the record-breaking drought that swept the western part of the kingdom began to take its toll on the food supply in other parts of the country for an unusually long time, Chester looked at it whenever he had the time and touched a crumpled letter he hadn’t received yet. He picked up the horse and hurriedly headed for his village.
He heard about the drought and was worried about the village, so he sent a letter, but it took quite a while before the letter was answered.
Even the news he barely received wasn’t very good news, so Chester hurriedly explained the situation and got some personal time so he could go back to check out the town.
I could feel the impatience emanating from the depths of Chester’s rough body movements as he urged his horse.
As if feeling Chester’s impatience, dark clouds were slowly gathering in the sky stretching westward.
For some, it was a gracious dark cloud that signaled the end of the drought, but Chester’s heart only grew heavier.
Chester hurriedly picked up the letter he was holding with the reins in his hand and read it.
The outline of the letter was as follows.
A story about a neighboring village being attacked by bandits, so the town, which is close by distance, decided to prepare for the bandits in advance.
Considering the delivery speed of letters from poor villages, a month must have passed since this letter was sent.
‘Please be safe. Please be safe.’
Chester prayed.