Sowol Inn - Chapter 22

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Episode 22
At the far end of the road stood a man in a Black Hat.
The moment Baek Ya raised his sword to strike, Sowol held him back.
“Baek Ya. Leave it.”
Baek Ya hesitated briefly before lowering his blade, and the man stepped into the Inn.
Click.
As the door shut, silence descended.
The man surveyed the interior of the Inn with an expressionless face.
An empty rice bowl.
A bib left on the table.
A cradle beside the long bench and animal fur scattered across the floor.
And a child cradled in Sowol’s arms.
A flicker of bewilderment crossed the man’s eyes.
He had known of the child’s existence, but he had not anticipated seeing it nestled so naturally in Sowol’s embrace.
Yet the man soon erased all expression and moved forward.
He approached slowly and stopped before Sowol, then removed his Black Hat.
The man’s face beneath the hat was ordinary, but his gaze held something unsettling.
Kneeling, the man looked up at Sowol with reverent eyes.
“It has been long since we last met, Mangryang.”
“I abandoned that name long ago.”
Sowol’s reply came cold as ice.
The man paid it no mind and spoke on.
“He has sent a Letter.”
“Number 71?”
“Yes.”
“Go back.”
“He specifically asked that you read it.”
He extended the Letter.
Sowol did not take it. He merely exhaled with a weary expression.
“I am already a finished man. A Dantian Disability. Why does he seek me out?”
“There is a way. He has prepared…….”
“I don’t need it. I have no intention of taking up a blade again.”
“Please reconsider. Mangryang, if anyone could……!”
“Tell Number 71 to stop his foolishness and leave me to grow old and die as a simple villager making noodles.”
Sowol’s words cut off the conversation decisively.
The man searched for a response, his lips parting and closing in silence, before finally tucking the Letter back into his robe.
“Then I shall take my leave today. Please take care of yourself.”
He regarded Sowol with an expression that was neither resignation nor regret—something between the two.
The man’s gaze settled on the hem of Sowol’s robes.
Instead of crimson bloodstains, pale gruel smudges were scattered across the fabric.
The moment he furrowed his brow, Riri began to whimper.
“Mmm, sleepy, are we?”
“Whimper……!”
“That’s right. You ate, so now you sleep. Come on, off to bed.”
Watching Sowol lull Riri to sleep with practiced ease, the man’s expression cracked.
“……Forgive my intrusion.”
He bowed his head, pressed the Black Hat down upon it, and departed the Inn.
Once the man’s presence had faded into the distance, Baek Ya spoke up.
“Should I keep him from coming back?”
“Leave it. He only came on an errand—no need to kill him for that.”
At Sowol’s restraint, Baek Ya readily sheathed his sword.
Yet his tone soon turned petulant.
“Number 71’s mean. He’s bothering you!”
“He’s not trying to be troublesome. He’s simply thoughtless by nature.”
Sowol swallowed a bitter smile and gazed at the space where the man had stood.
A gaze that had dogged him in the Marketplace.
A gaze that had swept over Riri from the rooftop.
“……So it was him.”
He had said he wanted only to live quietly now, yet why did Number 71 keep seeking out this long-since-discarded Discarded Product?
Number 71 himself had once been nothing more than a Discarded Product, which perhaps explained why he could not so easily let Sowol go.
Sowol laid Riri in the cradle and rotated his aching wrists gently.
Children always died in the Cheonma Shingyou training hall.
Hating that, Sowol would sometimes take in a child classified as a Discarded Product.
Number 71 was one of them.
Number 83 as well.
“Does your wrist hurt? Should I brew you some medicinal tea?”
“I’m fine.”
Baek Ya too.
That was how their bonds had formed.
But all of it happened decades ago.
The Cheonma Shingyou fell, and Mangryang vanished.
Sowol wanted no more entanglement with the past.
His remaining years would be lived in quiet.
That was his only wish.
“Wah!”
Though with one little bloodstained bundle, there hadn’t been a quiet day since.
Sowol chuckled softly and drew near the cradle.
Riri had kicked off the blanket and was flailing his limbs about.
“What a temperamental sleeper you are.”
Sowol tucked the blanket back over the child and began to rock the cradle slowly.
Creak. Creeeeak.
The tenderness in his gaze as he looked down at the child seemed almost impossible to reconcile with a man once called Mangryang.
* * *
Number 71 opened his eyes.
Blood-red irises gleamed in the darkness.
He gazed quietly through the window where moonlight filtered in.
Beneath the pale glow, his face bore the unmarred beauty of a handsome man, yet his pallid complexion cast about him an air of cool detachment.
Number 71, with his rippling crimson hair hastily gathered up, ventured out for a night walk.
Lying still would only summon old memories, rising one by one.
On sleepless nights, Number 71 would climb the tree behind his quarters.
Sitting astride the thick branch and breathing in the night air, the turmoil within him would gradually settle.
It was a method someone had taught him in his boyhood.
One night when he’d slipped away from the training hall.
‘Can’t sleep?’
At the voice from above, Number 71 looked up.
A broad-shouldered man was gazing down at him from the tree.
‘No, sir.’
When Number 71 answered, the man gestured.
‘Come up here.’
Number 71 couldn’t respond, only swallowed hard. The boy he’d been then was small and clumsy, unable to reach such a height in a single bound.
When Number 71 hesitated, the man laughed softly and leaped down from the tree.
He scooped Number 71 up lightly and bounded back into the branches.
Number 71 held his breath without thinking.
As they cut through the air and he blinked, he found himself sitting on the thick branch.
The man patted the space beside him and spoke.
‘Get some fresh night air before you go back. Sleep well at your age, and you’ll grow strong.’
They spoke a few more words after that, but Number 71 couldn’t recall exactly what the man had said.
He remembered only the warmth of the hand that ruffled his hair, and the moonlight scattering across the man’s crimson locks with crystalline clarity.
Number 71 slowly lowered his gaze.
The hand that had ruffled his hair, the man who’d sat with him on the branch—neither remained.
All that was left was the old habit of climbing into the tree on sleepless nights.
He’d thought once that he would never see him again.
When the Cheonma Shingyou fell and word spread that Mangryang was dead, Number 71 had not believed it.
He’d seen no corpse, so he believed he lived.
And then, at last, word reached him.
Mangryang was alive.
After hearing that joyous news, sleep had scarcely come to him.
From the moment he’d learned the truth, his heart had been in ferment, and he could not close his eyes.
Joy bloomed across Number 71’s face.
He wanted nothing more than to go and see him at once.
But he could not bring himself to do it.
To hide in a remote mountain village meant he wished to escape the eyes of the world.
To seek him out knowingly, despite understanding that intention, was not loyalty—it was rudeness.
For this reason, Number 71 did not move directly.
Instead, he sent a subordinate to watch over him from a distance, confirming only that he was well.
After verifying he was safe, Number 71 sent a letter, humbly requesting an audience.
He rewrote it countless times, expressing that he had not forgotten the old debt of gratitude, and that there were still those who wished to follow him.
And four days later.
The subordinate returned.
Kneeling beneath a tree, the subordinate could not lift his head for a long time.
“And him?”
“He did not open the letter.”
“What did he say?”
“He said to stop meddling and let him grow old and die as a simple peasant tending noodles.”
Number 71 closed his eyes without a word.
Noodles.
A peasant.
Growing old and dying.
How could such words ever be placed beside him?
He was one whose gaze alone could freeze an opponent in place.
He was one who never wavered even in the depths of the Blood Sea of Ten Thousand Mountains.
That man.
Tending noodles.
Living as a peasant.
Waiting for the day he would grow old and die.
The fact of it was sorrowful and unbearably offensive.
The subordinate, reading the silence, ventured carefully forward.
“And… there was a child.”
“A child?”
“Yes. He was caring for an infant.”
“Did he marry?”
“I could not confirm that much. The villagers believed it to be his own child. Though the child has only been there for less than half a year, they say.”
“…… Another thing he’s picked up.”
A bitter smile crossed Number 71’s lips. It was just like him.
He had no thought of blaming him for taking in the child. He had no reason to hate the child.
But if that child was the reason he remained bound to the mountain village—that was another matter entirely.
Number 71 slowly clenched his fist.
Eyes red as blood gleamed in the darkness.
“Prepare yourself.”
“Prepare for what, sir?”
Number 71 looked up at the moon instead of answering.
Red hair caught the wind, scattering wildly beneath the moonlight.
Standing silent in the night breeze, he opened his mouth slowly.
“A reason for him to return.”

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————