Chapter 235 — The Man Named Lee Yeongu 2
Case 1.
It showed that the world Yeongu looked upon was far wider and vaster than theirs.
He requested difficult things far too easily, almost as if asking a favor.
Yet strangely, those requests did not make people shrink back. Instead, they gave courage.
The first was the matter of Jeok Jan-hwi.
At that time, the soldiers entrusted to Jeok Jan-hwi numbered only two hundred riders.
With that force, he had to break the enemy's flank.
On the front, the allied force was pressing forward, but if the flank did not open, the entire line would harden in place.
Jeok Jan-hwi stopped his horse and studied the terrain.
The front was narrow, the side looked too far to circle around, and between them the enemy's defensive line blocked the way densely.
He was being told to push into that gap with two hundred riders.
The words were easy, but once he tried to go, it looked like a road into death.
If he was a little late, he would be isolated.
If he struck a little too quickly, he would crash into the spear wall at the front.
At that moment, Yeongu drew a half circle in the air with his finger.
As if he were showing a child the road, he spoke far too easily.
"I think you can go like this. Why are you not going?"
Jeok Jan-hwi was speechless for a moment.
That road was not one he had failed to see.
He had seen it, yet had not regarded it as a road.
It looked too thin, too dangerous, and too far, so he had discarded that direction from the beginning.
Yet Yeongu saw it as a road.
He saw not the front the enemy was watching, but the space outside the place the enemy believed it was watching.
Or perhaps he had seen it from the enemy's side.
He pointed to the gap hidden by the spear wall, banners, and dust, to the low slope where barely two or three horses could pass side by side, to an empty breath the enemy had not yet regarded as part of its battle line.
Jeok Jan-hwi clenched his teeth and drove his horse.
The two hundred riders stretched into a long line.
At first, it seemed they would all die.
Whenever the horses' hooves stepped on the slope, their bodies tilted, and only the backs of those in front were visible. If they were pushed even slightly to the side, they seemed likely to fall under the enemy's spearpoints.
But as they circled in a half arc and entered, the enemy's flank came unexpectedly close.
They struck the side at the very moment the enemy had its attention stolen by the shouting from the front.
The enemy spearpoints that had looked so fierce were dull, and the shields were facing the wrong direction.
When two hundred riders bit shortly into the flank, the enemy line collapsed in an instant.
A line that collapsed once did not recover.
At the moment the enemy soldiers holding at the front turned their heads toward the side, the pressure of the allied force drove forward.
It had been a road that seemed certain death.
It had been a road that seemed absolutely impossible.
Yet once they did as Yeongu had said, it opened with astonishing ease.
Jeok Jan-hwi realized it for the first time then.
Yeongu was not reckless.
They were the ones who had been seeing the world too narrowly.
---*
There was another case.
It happened when they were roasting meat.
It may have been after a battle, or on a night when a long march had stopped. People were sitting around the fire, sharing a few pieces of meat and roasting them.
There was not much meat.
The pieces skewered on one stick were not large, and the smell of the meat browning over the fire only stirred people's hunger further.
At that moment, Yeongu stuck his head in.
With a face as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he reached out his hand.
"Give me that for a moment. Let me have some too."
The man holding the skewer handed it over without much thought.
He thought Yeongu would take one piece and return it.
Between men who had crossed deadly passes together on the battlefield, it would have been laughable to begrudge one piece of meat.
But Yeongu took the skewer, stared blankly at the firelight, and slipped one piece into his mouth.
Then he ate another.
With his eyes half lowered, as if thinking about something, only his hand moved diligently.
At first, people watched him with smiles.
They thought he would soon return it.
But Yeongu silently ate the third piece, then the fourth, and finally even scraped off the small fatty bit stuck to the end of the skewer with his teeth.
Only then did he look down at the empty skewer, blink as if he had just realized it himself, and say,
"Oh. I ate it all."
The gazes around him gathered on him all at once.
Even receiving those looks, Yeongu remained calm.
He wiped the grease at the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand and reached a very natural conclusion.
"We should roast more."
That was truly something.
For a man who had taken someone else's skewer and eaten all of it alone, the words were far too shameless and far too light.
An ordinary person would have apologized or at least made an excuse, but Yeongu arranged the problem in a very simple way.
The meat had disappeared.
So they would roast more.
That was all.
Yet strangely, it was hard to dislike him.
He had certainly done something annoying.
He had emptied an entire skewer before hungry people, so even if he had been cursed, he would have had nothing to say.
Even so, people could not bring themselves to get angry.
Because more could be roasted.
If there was no more meat to roast, Yeongu would somehow go and find some.
He was always like that.
He was not a person who took another's portion simply to fill his own belly. He was a person who, when something became empty, looked for a way to fill it again.
If there was no meat, he would go hunting.
If there was dried jerky, he would take it out of his pouch.
If there was truly nothing at all, he would dig up some strange root from somewhere and ask whether it could be eaten.
A certain obviousness layered over his rudeness made people feel at ease.
In front of the firelight, Yeongu still sat there with a foolish face.
He fiddled with the empty skewer with an unreadable expression, then turned his eyes toward the other meat lying by the fire.
Seeing that look, people hid their skewers first.
Even so, laughter came out.
That man would probably slip one piece after another into his mouth again.
Then he would say without the slightest concern, "We can just roast more."
That shamelessness strangely put people at ease.
It was because he did not harden his face over shortage, did not argue for long over what had disappeared, and immediately looked for the next thing to do.
When one was with Yeongu, the world always became a little less desperate.
Even the matter of eating an entire skewer ended up becoming the work of building the fire again and roasting more meat.