Wandering
Sowoon stared at the gold resting on his palm.
Ten nyang was not a small sum.
It was more than a year's pay.
And yet his chest ached as he looked down at it.
It was the first time in his life he had seen gold with his own eyes.
What price was this meant to replace.
Was it payment for the labor he had given.
Travel money to send him home.
A substitute for things no words could ever fill—yet the thirst in him did not ease.
Few people grow sad at the sight of money.
What made him sad was the fact that he would be alone.
If he left alone, where was he meant to go.
Should he return to the ruined Yu household estate and live by clutching at the dead man's spirit every night.
Should he beg General Lee to take him anywhere at all.
Should he go to Surim Mountain Manor and plead to do any work—anything—so long as they would let him live on sword-rice.
Should he, as at the beginning, climb back up to distant Haran again.
It was not only Sowoon.
Most of the White Dragon men who remained were the same.
They could not contain the bitterness as they looked at the gold Lee Hui had pressed into their hands with such care.
In ordinary circumstances they would have called it a windfall.
But all of them understood what it meant.
There was no shoulder left to lean on.
Because they had been together, there had been victory and glory.
Even starving and ragged, they endured because they were together.
Even when they lay buried in dust and wind, motionless as corpses in ambush, they endured because comrades were beside them.
If they parted and scattered, each of them became small.
Together, they were the White Dragon Unit.
Together, they could win.
Alone, a man could become less than a vagrant on the street.
Men who still had places to go—men who had nevertheless volunteered to follow the Great General all the way to Hanam—began to leave one by one.
They mounted with heads lowered and drifted away slowly.
There were no farewells.
No declarations of parting.
They simply went.
Sowoon prayed, in silence, that another time would be possible for them.
He prayed they would not be branded and despised as returning soldiers.
Though many had left, more than half still remained.
They stared forward without speaking.
The gold in their hands was not what they had wanted.
What they needed was not money.
Who had asked for wealth.
Who had demanded fine food.
All they had wanted was a place, somewhere on this broad continent, where a single body could lie down.
To want more than that had felt like a sin.
Days of begging for food, fighting, winning, marching under a banner—those had been enough.
They had never asked for this kind of reward.
They did not even know how to use it.
They did not know how to spend a night in revelry with courtesans.
They did not know how to save coin and build a household.
They had no way to send it home and help those left behind.
They had left their villages at foolish ages and spent ten, fifteen years in the army.
They had learned neither farming nor trade.
If they returned now, who would welcome them.
What had they truly brought back.
The helpless sorrow of returning soldiers filled the clearing.
If they left now, they might never return.
Their feet would not move.
Those who remained looked toward Lee Hui.
Unable to meet their gaze, he kept his eyes on the sky.
He endured the emptiness left behind by those who had gone, without a word.
His jawline thickened under clenched teeth.
It was Sowoon who broke the silence.
"General—where do you plan to go."
His clear voice cut through the stillness.
It was what everyone wanted to ask.
If he told them to go, then where would he go.
They wanted to know his road.
"Me."
"Yes."
Need clung to Sowoon's face.
"I don't know either. I have nowhere to go. Who would welcome me. Sometimes I think I might raise a mountain stockade."
"A stockade… so you would become a bandit. That is unlawful."
"That's right."
"Then perhaps you'll return home and live off your elder brother's house—begging for food. But you left after causing trouble. They won't accept you easily."
"Was it a bad thing."
"There was my reason. But home may not see it that way."
"Then something weighs on you."
As the talk continued, life returned to Sowoon's voice.
While the talk went on, perhaps he could confirm his own survival.
His own continuance—
"At every moment I believed I had chosen as best I could. When I look back, I see what was lacking. That, too, is how people live. And when I think of returning… there is much that catches under my feet."
When Lee Hui's voice trailed off awkwardly, Sowoon seized the moment at once.
"Then where will you go."
The question was relentless.
"Why do you keep asking. My heart is in turmoil as well. Stop asking."
"I have nowhere else to go either. I buried my kin and household and left my home, then went to Haran. If I follow you, I think I can at least eat."
The men who remained held their breath.
It was the voice speaking what they could not.
They waited for the answer.
"Who said I'd take you."
"I'm useful. I can hang a pot. With only a little grain flour I can make a proper meal. If enemies appear, I can cut them down. I'm a saengwon—I can handle documents. I write well. If it's urgent, I can write memorials for you. I can even hunt bears—"
His words broke into tears.
If he spoke further, he felt he would suffocate.
The skills that had been demanded to protect the realm had no price in the world outside.
No one needed them. He knew it.
They had asked men to stake their lives—yet when those lives returned, all that remained was the label of "returning soldier."
He should be grateful, perhaps, that his face bore no ink-stamped character like 軍 or 兵.
Still, those skills were all he had.
With nowhere to go, grief spilled out as tears.
Lee Hui lowered his gaze from the sky and looked around.
"So our young scholar can do so much."
He wore the same sorrowful smile.
"Come with me. Wherever it is, whatever we do—come with me. There will be some place for this small body to lie down."
Lee Hui drew Sowoon close, gripped his shoulder, and patted it gently.
They had demanded the safety of the country from this child's shoulders.
There were no conditions.
The fact of having nowhere to go was enough.
"Truly."
"Could I not keep even one of you. Come. Let's go far. Let's go together to the end of the world."
His face, after deciding, was calm.
But it did not end there.
The men who had been staring at the ground raised their hands all at once.
"Me too."
"Me too."
In an instant, more than fifty surged forward.
Lee Hui's eyes widened.
Sowoon returned his ten nyang to the officer first.
"I don't need this."
Without asking permission, the fifty followed.
They hurried to return their gold.
"Why are you copying me."
Urgency sharpened his voice.
He feared their presence might make him be refused again.
Even if Lee Hui was extraordinary—no matter how wealthy he might be—he could not support them all.
Someone cried out, almost as if wailing.
"Our hearts are the same. We didn't copy you."
They answered, shaking their heads.
Sowoon's lips jutted out.
He feared the chance slipping away.
Lee Hui accepted those with nowhere to go.
They were a remnant—what could be called the White Dragon's leftovers.
Returning soldiers who had fought for the realm, yet had nowhere that would receive them.
Once again, they stood on the road.
The end of wandering was only the beginning of another wandering.