Chapter 256 – 2. White Watch (2)
In some places of the great rivers, the lifeline and blood vessels of the empire, there were sections of aqueducts built with stones on the riverside to keep the water level and wait for ships.
Some places forcibly connected rivers by digging artificial canals for this purpose, and countless prisoners and slaves were forcibly mobilized for the construction, and many people died while doing labor, and I heard that there were many unfair people among those who died. Was just an old story.
And. The boat that his brother wants to see was located in the harbor of an artificial waterway built to connect lakes and rivers in the past.
Since the ship was so huge, it seemed that they were surveying whether it was possible to pass through the artificial waterway.
Looking at the huge ship with a white, smooth, long hull, the girl looked at the jade hanging all over the ship.
If I had just one of those, I wouldn’t go hungry for the rest of my life.
“Hey…”
The girl looked at the boy with an expression of incomprehension at the sight of her younger brother looking at the ship, looking at the ship with a hazel look as if he was crazy about what he could not have.
It could be called admiration, but that’s what people who can do it to the end do it.
In the meantime, the girl suddenly saw a statue of an athlete hanging in front of the boat and felt something strange.
What should I do?
It was really the first time I felt it.
A vague, strange feeling that cannot be explained.
But the girl who had been watching her for a long time, with her gaze nailed to her statue, was somehow offended by this unknown feeling and jerked her head away.
“Do you want to see more?”
“Wait a minute. Maybe I’ll get a job on a ship.”
“…”
I know that it is a futile wish.
However, in the meantime, the girl felt a strange feeling.
The strange feeling that the boy and the girl have been able to survive in this rough back alley until now.
The girl hastily grabbed her girl by the back and gave her three silent tugs.
In response, the boy quietly shut her mouth and looked at her girl, and the girl also quietly nodded her head.
It was like a code that the girl and the boy had worked out beforehand.
For some reason, I don’t know if I should have a good touch. Should I feel good? It’s not particularly lucky or anything like that, but the girl was bizarrely sensitive to a crisis situation and was always able to avoid such a place in advance.
At first, the boy didn’t think much of it either, but the boy, who was able to escape the crisis many times with her girl’s ability, acknowledged her girl’s ability and came up with a password for her.
He tugged at her back three times, and when the boy turned around, he nodded her head.
It was the password I had chosen because in a truly critical situation, I wouldn’t even be able to make a sound.
Immediately, the boy and girl who left her seat flinched at the sound of screams coming from behind her, giving her goose bumps, but she quickly ran away without even looking back.
And the girl felt like she knew why her aunt had told her not to come.
It seemed that something dangerous was about to happen in this town.
* * *
“Sister, is that boat okay?”
“I don’t know. That ship might be the main culprit that caused the incident.”
“If so, would my sister Shuk have been silent when she saw the ship? As soon as she saw the ship, she would have screamed out loud and would not have gone anywhere near the ship.”
“…”
Come to think of it, what her brother said was not wrong.
She thought she couldn’t be hired, but the girl also thought that if she could be employed on the ship, she would be very happy to work on the ship.
“What is it?”
“Don’t worry. It’s better to just not know about these things.”
There is a variety of information in this world, but the more you know, the better the information, and the more you know, the more hurtful you are.
And the girl’s senses were screaming furiously that this time was the latter.
“Just give up the ship”
“Are you feeling?”
“Yeah, it’s a persimmon”
The boy was very sorry for his sister’s words, but he weakly nodded.
Her senses have never been wrong.
Of course, she said that sense is not omnipotent, so there are times when it is activated and there are times when it is silent. My feelings were never wrong.
“How is that ship going?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to know”
With that in mind, her brother and sister went on living day by day again. One day the sun is not so good. She said one day she was very good at work.
As I progressed through her back alleys, there was bound to be news that I would come to know naturally, even if I didn’t want to know it.
It seemed that the owner of the white whale had a quarrel with some official.
The contents of the rumors were all different. It seems that the owner of Baek Kyung revealed the corruption of her management.
Since the owner of the white mirror is the most beautiful woman in the world, it seems that the official was embarrassed and embarrassed.
The owner of the white whale is incredibly wealthy, so the official called in a huge amount for tolls, so there was a dispute.
Anyway, one thing’s for sure, he wants the white whale to cross the canal. She was as far as the fact that she hadn’t crossed the canal yet.
However, there were only rumors, but no reality.
Who is the manager It was not known what kind of official he was, and he just said ‘the official said that’.
There were one or two managers here.
While continuing their usual lives amidst such rumors, the boy and girl encountered a very strange person.
No. It was something that wasn’t a person.
On his head, there were round horns resembling the horns of a young deer, and even though both the eyes and pupils were black, the pupils that were vertically split could be distinguished for some reason. Even though the pupil is also black.
For some reason, her hair, which had a black-blue color as a whole, had a bright blue water color towards the ends, giving it a very mysterious feeling.
In fact, if it hadn’t been for the fact that the color became lighter and brighter towards the end, it was so dark that her hair would have looked black rather than black blue.
In fact, are her eyes not black, but black-blue?
Most important, though, was the presence of a long tail extending over her hips.
Its very sturdy tail, surrounded by blue-black scales, had a rich tassel at the end, and no matter how you looked at it, it looked like a dragon’s tail.
And when the mouth is slightly opened, the jagged teeth peek through.
Putting it all together, the girl came to a single conclusion about the existence of that woman in front of her eyes.
‘Imoogi… ?’
No, it can’t be.
Of course, the Imoogi, which is almost like a dragon, can also transform into a human form, but looking at that figure, it was clumsy that it couldn’t even transform properly, and the dragon part mixed in the human figure looked very young.
Is that why? Her appearance seems to be very ferocious, but on the other hand, she has a very round impression, so I even felt like a puppy.
It seems that if you offer something to eat and come here, even people you don’t know will follow you.
Of course that wouldn’t be the case.
But where did she come from?
If there was someone with such a peculiar appearance, there would be no way that rumors wouldn’t spread.
In the meantime, what about the girl? And one thing came to mind.
Isn’t there a place where it can appear?
‘Is that person the owner of the white whale?’
At that moment, the girl’s mind was filled with various imaginations.
Baek Kyung is the ship sent by the Dragon King, and that girl is the Dragon King’s messenger.
It is said that the lion, who had no chance to live in a human form, had to take on a human form, so he was inexperienced in changing into a human form and became such a clumsy figure.
“Chung! Were you here?”
“Oh, this way”
A tall young man with black eyes and black hair was running fast from afar.
Why? As soon as the girl saw the young man running from afar, she could sense that he was not human.
‘Is it really like an envoy sent by the Dragon King?’
The girl moaned and watched the two of them.
After talking about this and that, the two disappeared into the street again, and the girl sighed a little regretfully and returned to her back alley again.
Her own nemesis herself knew all too well.
To the extent that beings like them couldn’t go out into the sunny streets.
“…”
Know.
For someone like herself, the word future is nothing more than a luxury.
Now I know That selling her body was never good.
But in the end, it was just a luxury that only those with a future could argue with.
They do not have a future like theirs. For those who do not develop day after day and live day by day, the word of a better future is like a luxury, but for what reason do you want to refrain from going there as much as possible, as your aunt in Gibang said?
“…”
Does he still believe that there can be a better future?
I don’t know any such method.
It might be there if you work on something and save money, but there was no place where no one wrote things like them.
The life of a rat that lives day by day, scavenging through garbage, begging, and relying on people’s mercy.
It’s bittersweet, but that was the reality.
“Sister, what’s wrong?”
“…No, I’m a bit depressed.”
Bleeding again? Why do I suddenly feel like this?
It must have been a while before the blood started to bleed again.
I was kind of annoyed.
Ever since he began to bleed, he felt himself becoming more sentimental.
I live like this, but I don’t need anyone…
“How do you think your sister is?”
“It’s pretty. It’s really pretty. More than anyone else in this town.”
“Then how does it compare to Baek Kyung’s player statue?”
What about your brother? I stopped talking and started thinking for a while.
Probably. Even in her opinion, the statue of Baek Kyung’s athlete was hardly man-made.
What kind of human being can express such extreme beauty?
“I know. The beauty of the figure of the white whale is not human.”
“Oooh… Mi, sorry”
Still, she said she couldn’t beat Baek Kyung’s player award, but when she heard that she was the most beautiful in town, the girl seemed to smile for some reason.
Even if you look pretty, there’s no use to anything.
It wasn’t terribly useless though.
Thanks to this beauty, she has an edge in the back alley food waste scramble.
To the extent that there were quite a few cases where the leftovers that had not yet been discarded were brought right away.
However, that made her even more regretful.
If he hadn’t been living in a back alley like this, what would he have been like?
If she had a life where she could dream of the future, wouldn’t this beauty be of great help in her own life?
For some reason, when she thought about that, she felt like a soggy darkness was consuming her mind, so she quit right away.
If she continued to think like this, she would go in the direction of resenting something infinitely, and the direction of that resentment would be…
“Sister?”
“…”
Let’s not think If I come to resent even my younger brother who is the only one in this world who gives for me and supports me, what on earth am I supposed to believe in?
I hate that.
Then it’s not living even if you live. That moment is when you really lose the meaning of living.
No matter how much a rat’s life is, why is it possible to live like this…
“Nuna, but have you seen her? She’s almost as pretty as her.”
“Huh?”
“So, my sister with green hair. Her eyes were sparkling and pretty gold.”
The girl couldn’t understand what her brother was saying. Was there such a person?
At that moment, the girl had a terrifying feeling. She has no sense but she has a feeling that something is wrong.
“Later, let’s go home and talk again”
“What’s wrong with you sister?”
“I don’t think it’s something to talk about here.”
The boy wondered why his sister was doing this and tilted her head.
Is it because you say other girls are pretty?
The boy was more confused because she had never been like this before.
But seeing his sister’s expression, the boy shut her mouth for now. For some simple reason, my sister’s expression was the same as when facing a dangerous situation.
Even that day, when she was preparing to eat after returning home, collecting scraps to eat and picking up useful clutter, the girl’s younger sister looked at her and wondered what was going on. Suddenly, she remembered what had happened during the day.
“You want to tell me about the green-haired beauty?”
“Huh? Huh? It’s not like that, but it’s related. What was the situation at that time?”
“Um… Listen carefully. Noona didn’t see that kind of person there.”
At that, her brother tilted her head.
“There was only one person who could guess who her brother was talking about.”
“Do you have any doubts?”
“Coming to think of it, it was strange. People didn’t show any reaction even though I was dressed like that.”
The girl told her sister about the strange woman she saw today.
Half man, half dragon? Half man, half dragon?
She is a strange woman who looks very ferocious but also very docile.
She is the woman who thinks she is a lion that came up from her dragon palace and something non-human that seems to be her colleague.
“Wow… Then is Baek Kyung really a ship from the Dragon Palace?”
“I don’t know…”
Anyway. Thanks to her brother, the girl realized one piece of information. That dragon can only see his real face. Or that only her herself was looking at her in a distorted form for some reason.
She wasn’t sure of anything yet.
The next day, although she herself doesn’t know why, she woke up earlier than usual and woke up her sister, who was still sleeping, and left her house early.
The girl herself couldn’t understand why, but the boy didn’t understand why his sister was doing this, although the boy whined and was led by the girl’s hand without much complaint and half-dreamedly followed her girl.
He just trusts his older sister, and his head is still too sleepy to think about anything, and he’s just too busy walking by her girl’s hand.
Could it be that the boys and girls who went out so early in the morning were lucky? She has obtained twice as many scrap plantings of better quality than usual.
If the quantity is this much and the quality is good, it is enough to eat tomorrow as well as today.
At first, even the younger sister, who was full of dissatisfaction with why she woke up so early, sent eyes full of respect to her sister with twinkling eyes.
“As expected, sister had a plan.”
“Ah, aha… Ha…”
The girl couldn’t bear to look her sister right in the eyes.
I just came out a little earlier than usual, but I didn’t expect the income to be this good.
Even the girl herself couldn’t understand why she had come out so early, she couldn’t understand her own actions, but she only tilted her head, wondering if she had some kind of intuition when the harvest was so good.
As the girl pulled up her heavy sack and tried to return to her house, with her brother supporting her from behind, she felt something strange.
She has a strange sense of unknown reality.
This was the first time she had felt this, so she tilted her head and didn’t understand, but the feeling grew strange the closer she got to her house.
The girl stopped at the feeling that the reality was gradually becoming clearer. Cuddled by the wind, the boy who had followed her, cradling her sack behind her girl’s back, stopped, snuggled up and burying her face in her sack.
“Oops! What is it, older sister?”
“Wait a minute, something, something strange”
What kind of feeling is this?
I don’t know, but for some reason she had a strong feeling that she shouldn’t go home.
“Let’s go to the dog hole”
“Eh… To that place?”
Creep.
Boys and girls talked about secret places hidden everywhere.
She had no secrets whatsoever.
These places were places of no value to people, and sometimes they were like temporary shelters that this stepbrother had made to escape her body when it rained while she was rummaging through her garbage cans or begging, or when another filial son quarreled with her. .
Now, even if I just stand still, the feeling of not knowing why is getting stronger and starting to come with anxiety.
A place where people usually throw away broken furniture or items.
Behind it was a slightly indented seat.
It was the dog hole here that made this spot more concave.
From the beginning, these temporary shelters were not called dog holes, but one day, when they saw that dogs were entering these holes, the siblings began to call these holes dug here and there.
They came into the dog’s hole and were eating the inside, scratching the outside of the burnt bread and scraping the outside of the clean vegetable slices that did not need to be washed, when they heard the sound of people passing in front of them, so the brother and sister stopped eating and held their breath.
“Damn, where did those little kids disappear? They say they were there by this time.”
“You know Nandle.
The boy trembled at the group of people passing by grumbling and looked at his sister.
The girl’s body trembled as well.
Looking at the situation, it was them they were aiming for.
Why?
Then, for some reason, the girl suddenly remembered what her aunts had told her not to come to her.
Some kind of strange attitude of aunts.
Did the aunts and sisters, who thought it was no big deal if it was simply selling their bodies, because they really thought that selling their bodies would be bad for the future of a kid who has no future anyway?
They themselves will know.
That the life of a courtesan who sells herself could be better than the life of a rat.
Even at the bottom of life, there is a water supply.
I don’t know the details.
It was clear, however, that while working there, he had been noticed by some dangerous entity, and that made his aunts regret having allowed him to work there.
How long has it been since they passed? Her brother took the girl by the hem of her dress with trembling hands.
“Who, sister…”
“It’s okay. It’s gone now. It’ll be okay now.”
“Hey, what about now? Who are they? Is my house safe now?”
“…”
It is difficult.
As her brother had said, the house was no longer safe.
At least the house they lived in was open enough for anyone to know, since no one was aiming for a lower-class life like them.
The remote and secluded place is just an abandoned place that no one uses, yet it is just a place that was selected after looking for a place where water can be easily obtained.
“Let’s throw away the house… From now on, I have to go around and live in different dog holes from time to time. Staying in one place might be dangerous.”
“…”
They decided we weren’t home and left, but that might be a trap too. One or two remained, or maybe they prepared something to leave a trail when we got home.
There was nothing in the house that I really regretted, but the girl was very sorry for only two things.
A piece of a broken mirror that is his treasure.
And an environment where water was always available.
Although it is a life of a rat in its own way, it was now goodbye to the environment that provided minimal comfort even in the midst of poverty.
Not knowing if it might be dangerous, the boy and girl endured another day in the dog hole, sparing the food they had saved to be cautious.
And the girl, who wrapped her leftovers tightly and tied them behind her back, came out carefully and looked around her, making sure that she was not in any danger and signaled to her younger brother.
Her younger brother, who had been hiding behind her broken furniture, jumped out and joined her sister and headed towards the village again.
Just because there was a rat catcher, they couldn’t afford to neglect looking for food.
A rat’s life ends the moment it stops.
Thus, the suffocating life of the two siblings began.
What I thought was the bottom of the bottom was still not the bottom. How deep underground the life of the brother and sister was.
What is the value of these poor people?
It’s hard to rummage through trash cans properly, and now I couldn’t even dream of begging.
Prime time, when food was readily available, was now a dangerous time to avoid, and more and more, even dogholes were no longer a safe place.
More than anything. It was only recently that the girl realized why the ability she called ‘sense’ appeared so sparsely.
This ability, which I thought would have nothing to do with her physical strength, surprisingly consumed more physical strength than I thought.
But even so, if this was not done, situations in which life could not be assured would occur one after another.
“Sister…”
“…”
The girl thought she couldn’t live like this forever.
She had to make a decision.
But even this was difficult.
Even if you sell yourself to someone and entrust it, what if the entrusted person is weaker or lower than the person who is targeting them?
It was just a form of specifying her own location.
No, it might be fortunate if they don’t sell it at a high price to someone who is looking for them to become a trustee.
What should I do?
Who the hell is looking for us?
Is it our destiny to give up everything and be caught meekly like this?
Tears flowed from the girl’s eyes.
