Chapter 287
Chapter 287
“Kaichen, does my brother Julius not visit me anymore because he’s a prince? Will he come to see me more when I grow up?”
“He’ll come here every day once he’s done with his busy work.”
“When will that be?”
“Well, I’m not sure… It’ll probably be around the time you become a young lady.”
“Just like Kaichen, who comes to see the cat often?”
“I don’t come that often.”
“Mother also wants to see brother. She used to worry about what he’d do as a crown prince when he hated waking up in the morning so much.”
“You don’t have to worry about that because he’s an idiot who wakes up at dawn to practice with a sword.”
“My brother said that Kaichen, who has a soft spot for cats, is an idiot.”
“That rascal…”
“I want to grow up quickly. Then I’ll be able to see Kaichen and Prince every day, right?”
The house, which appeared as though it might soon collapse, was shrouded in creeping vines, yet, unlike the other places, it wasn’t cloaked in dust.
On the veranda lay an old book. He remembered a sweaty Julius, holding a hammer, whining about wanting to build a veranda. He used to say it was wonderful to lie there, basking in the sunlight with a cat.
A cool breeze swept through, carrying dust from the veranda. Watching it scatter in the wind, Kaichen felt a heaviness in his heart, unlike the pleasant excitement he felt when thinking of Dalia.
It was a disturbing feeling, challenging to put into words or convey.
‘I hope it isn’t you. I hope at least half of your expectations are wrong…’
Thump. At the sound, Kaichen turned his head. The person before him reacted not so differently from his own a while ago.
Kaichen couldn’t articulate the emotions welling up inside him as he observed Julius, now on his knees, staring blankly at his home.
“Ah… No… don’t…”
However, unlike Kaichen, Julius had crumbled. Julius, who had lost his sole family, eventually collapsed.
Kaichen had no parents, so he asked Hamal if he was abandoned.
His master responded with an enigmatic smile, “I was drawn to the brilliant golden magic. Lured by magic through a scorching desert and found a beautiful oasis.”
“So, my parents abandoned me in that oasis?”
Hamal explained, “That place was like another world, very different from the reality I had known. The scorching desert had vanished, and I felt like I was in a dream as I gazed at the oasis where a cool breeze blew. That’s when I found you nestled in a blue turtle shell. I knew then that this beautiful oasis was created solely for you.”
Kaichen was silent, processing this information.
“You weren’t abandoned. You were protected as a blessing in that place. There must have been circumstances beyond your control.”
But what could those circumstances have been?
Kaichen could only tilt his head, unable to remember that time. Despite recalling everything since being picked up by Hamal and entering the mage tower, the memory of their first meeting eluded him.
The oasis that was said to have shielded him beneath the scorching desert and the peculiar turtle shell.
“Do you want to find the oasis?”
“Yes, I would like to go there.”
Hamal smiles, said, “Even if you go, you won’t find anything.”
“Why is that?”
“It disappeared as soon as I held you. It was like a mirage.”
“Nothing remained?”
“That’s not true. Everything that disappeared has become a part of you.”
It was an incomprehensible statement, but the vanished oasis and shell had seeped into his young body.
They remained inside him.
Kaichen had told Julius about that story while studying magic and growing up.
“Why are you born like some ancestor from a founding myth?” Julius had laughed and teased him for a long time.
Kaichen wanted to curse him but didn’t say much because he couldn’t exactly call himself ordinary.
‘Someone didn’t make that to protect you. Didn’t you make it to prevent yourself from dying?’
“How could a newborn baby like me create something like that? I hadn’t even learned magic at the time. You should be stupid in moderation.”
“Your magic, how can I put it… It’s strange, isn’t it? It feels like it has a will!”
“Why? Did my magic act on its own to protect me?”
“Oh, right. That’s what I wanted to say.”
Kaichen laughed at Julius’ absurd words. He knew Julius felt a sense of kinship through him. After all, he was also left at the westernmost border of the empire as soon as he was born.
Fortunately, he was picked up by a benefactor.
The person who rescued him was Lydan. Still, he didn’t live an easy life after that, and Julius had to beg by the roadside at a young age.
He ate the same carrots the horses consumed to fill his stomach and sifted through trash for scraps.
Meanwhile, his adoptive mother worked from early morning to late at night, constantly haggling to make ends meet. It wasn’t an extraordinary act for her to pick up abandoned children like Julius and care for them.
So, when Julius was five years old, he took to the streets so he wouldn’t become a burden to Lydan. He wanted to help other children with the same plight.
When Kaichen blamed Lydan for saving kids even though it was a struggle to feed them, Julius merely responded with a rueful smile.
“She can’t bear to see them perish. I was five and could at least earn enough for a piece of bread, but what about babies who were left behind? How can you turn a blind eye to babies who know nothing but crying?”
He didn’t want them to meet the same fate. He wanted a chance for them to grow up and choose their paths in life.
Lydan’s kindness was foolish to Kaichen.
One day, Kaichen met Lydan, a person he had only heard about from Julius, and asked the question that had been on his mind for some time.
“Why do you give these children a chance to choose their destiny when not all of them may repay the favor?”
Lydan replied with a firm pat on his back. “They didn’t choose to be born or abandoned. So shouldn’t they be given the choice to live or die?”
There was nothing more to say. Her words were akin to a long-lost solution to an unsolved equation, a moment of enlightenment.