SPRFG 25

Chapter 25

The Runaway Lady and the Magician’s Stone (3)

His face suddenly turned to the side. A fist flew into his cheek like lightning.

Before Onam could say anything, the coachman and another servant who had been watching also joined in and began beating him. There were sounds of the man being kicked, punched, and stepped on with heels. The man, lying sprawled on the ground with both hands twisted behind his back so that he could not resist, raised his head and glared at the carriage and the people beating him. Something was burning fiercely inside his eyes.

‘Please fight without me…….’

Juaie thought that, but she did not run away.

In a good way, it was courage. In a bad way, it was recklessness.

Even though she was surrounded by large, intimidating men, this was the first time she had seen someone who was not intimidated and could still say what he wanted to say. It was also the first time she had seen someone stand up against a noble.

‘Just what kind of person is he?’

‘A poor extra who picks a fight with the protagonist or the protagonist’s friend without knowing his place, gets beaten up, and disappears after one chapter……?’

As she looked at the man while thinking that, both of Juaie’s cheeks began to feel hot.

She assumed it was probably because she had just been hit and did not think much of it.

Then her eyes met his.

At that moment, everything seemed to move slowly, as if time had stopped.

Juaie was startled.

He had smiled with his eyes as if to say that he was fine.

Had she imagined it?

When she closed and opened her eyes once, his head was already facing downward.

A servant had just wrapped his fist around the man’s hair and grabbed it tightly.

Until then, Juaie had not even noticed that the man’s hair was unusually long.

It seemed as though he was about to smash the man’s head into the ground.

“Wait!”

Just because she shouted did not mean the people would pay attention to her.

Juaie dropped to her knees.

“This man must not know what he is doing!”

Everyone stopped.

Even the murmuring among the onlookers stopped.

The man was breathing heavily as he looked at her. Whether he knew or not that his head had almost been smashed just moments ago, he did not show it.

Juaie looked at the man once, then bowed her head deeply again.

“I’m sorry. It was my fault from the beginning. This person doesn’t know anything. He only stepped in because he happened to see me in trouble, and he must have misspoken in the heat of the moment. A merciful lord like yourself surely has a brave heart that does not take offense at the careless words of a commoner, right? I am deeply sorry and ashamed for troubling you when you are such a busy lord. So please forgive him. I’m sorry. I was wrong, my lord.”

The more smoothly the words came out, the more ashamed she felt.

While Juaie squeezed her eyes shut, the servants looked toward their master.

Juaie could not see whether Onam nodded or made some kind of gesture.

A few seconds of silence passed.

Then the man’s head and hands were released.

Still lying face-down, the man crawled up onto his knees and stood.

He lowered his eyes and stared at the ground.

For a moment, the only sound was the horse stamping its front hoof against the ground.

The onlookers whispered that it had been a little too harsh, but when Onam got out of the carriage, they immediately stopped talking.

Onam spat on the ground deliberately and then turned away as if he had lost interest.

Seeing him enter the shop, Juaie grabbed the man by the wrist and pulled him away.

The onlookers dispersed.

After turning around the other side of the building, the two finally stood facing each other in an empty open space where no one else was around.

“Are you crazy?”

Those were the first words Juaie said to the man.

The man adjusted his hair a little.

Even so, he still did not look very good.

Something felt strange.

His clothes were a little disheveled, but despite being beaten so badly, there was not a single drop of blood or bruise on him.

She assumed that he must be tougher than he looked and let out a sigh of relief.

“Thank you. But you really didn’t have to do that.”

The man spoke.

She had never imagined that, after she had snapped at him and called him crazy, she would hear him say thank you in response.

She stood there dumbfounded.

“You didn’t have to do that? You don’t know what nobles are, do you? You’re Korean too, right? You haven’t been here very long, have you?”

He had an expression that seemed unsure where he should begin answering.

Whether he answered or not, Juaie continued speaking.

“You must have come to the Empire very recently. So you haven’t gotten used to things yet, right? That’s why you could talk back to a noble like that…… You think nobles are like rich chaebol families from a morning drama or something, don’t you?”

This was the part that people who had lived in Korea before possessing or reincarnating into the Ilgentavita Empire had the hardest time adapting to.

Not having smartphones was only a minor inconvenience compared to the class system.

There was not even the concept of a national election, let alone voting rights.

Young Koreans, who made up the main readership of romance-fantasy novels in particular, had spent their entire lives in a society where openly cursing the president or ministers caused no major problems.

A society where even making a minor slanderous remark about the emperor or a high-ranking noble could lead to serious trouble was, in itself, a huge shock that everyone had to experience for the first time.

People said that in the old days, nobles could freely take the lives or chastity of commoners, but apparently things were not that bad anymore.

Even so, Juaie, who had only been living in the Empire for one year, still had no idea exactly where the line was.

And for a newcomer like this man, it was even more understandable.

Perhaps her guess was correct, because the man merely sighed quietly without saying anything.

“You’re Korean?”

The man asked.

“Yes.”

When Juaie answered, the man nodded as well.

The pounding of her heart gradually calmed down.

After wiping the cold sweat from her forehead, she felt hot despite it being winter.

She wanted to drink some water.

She looked around, but there was no way there would be drinking water lying around on the street.

Instead, what caught her eye was the man looking at her.

The man was about a head taller than her.

Rather than having broad shoulders or a sturdy body, he looked slender and flexible.

His straight hair fell to a length that slightly covered his back.

In Korea, it was not particularly common for men to grow their hair long, but here it was not that strange.

His hair was light brown.

It was slightly darker than yellow paper and a little lighter than the trunk of a tree.

Although it was somewhat disheveled from rolling around on the dirt ground, its texture was quite fine.

It looked so smooth that even if she ran her fingers through it, they would not catch on anything and would slide all the way to the ends.

His eyes, nose, chin, and forehead all looked as if they had been carved with straight lines, yet somehow he had a soft atmosphere about him.

Juaie realized that it was because of his smile.

He had a smiling face.

His narrow eyes and subtle double eyelids were common features.

What drew her attention were his eyes.

His low-brightness yellow eyes were an unusual color that was difficult to tell whether they were amber or gold.

She could not decide whether they were amber or gold, but comparing them to jewels was certainly appropriate.

A gentle light seemed to sparkle inside them.

Yet, for some reason, they gave her a sad impression.

Perhaps it was simply because the shadows from his eyelids and eyelashes fell over them.

She knew that look.

It was the look of someone staring at a distant place that could never be reached again.

The shadows in those eyes must have been memories turned to stone by the past, or pessimism about the future.

Judging by the faded shoulders of his clothes, as if he had worn them for a long time, he seemed to be a man with only one set of clothes.

There was no embroidery, and the buttons were made of wood.

His clothes were ordinary, but he wore a short cape that wrapped around his body like a magician’s robe.

At least that cape was definitely made of high-quality velvet.

Whether it was his long hair, his bright yellow eyes, or his plain clothes, Juaie did not care.

He had dark-colored skin.

He was not white.

Just like Heo Hwanhee.

Perhaps he realized that Juaie was staring at him, because he opened his eyes wide.

Juaie asked in a scolding tone,

“Why did you interfere? You could have just walked past.”

The man answered with an awkward smile.

“I heard an interesting song…….”

‘He really is a strange person.’

Juaie concluded.

Even while she let out a deep sigh, he smiled awkwardly and waited for her next words.

She had seen someone with the same skin color as herself for the first time in her one year of living in the Ilgentavita Empire.

Everyone in the Ilgentavita Empire, including Juaie, was white.

Now she had to correct that from ‘everyone’ to ‘most people.’

Although she was currently living in Aiolia’s body, Juaie had spent twenty-six years of her life as a person of color.

She felt a small sense of familiarity with him because of that.

That did not mean she could suddenly ask him about it.

Juaie knew very well that asking such a question would only show her ignorance and rudeness toward a racial minority.

‘Why is your skin that color?’

If she asked that, she would probably be told that he had been born that way and that there was no reason for a person’s race.

If she said, ‘You’re the first person like you I’ve ever seen. Please explain it to me,’ then she deserved to be told not to use her own narrow experience as an excuse to treat another person like an object of curiosity.

In the first place, the population of non-white people in this world did not seem to be very large.

Then she corrected her own assumption.

Perhaps there were actually many of them, but they simply did not stand out.

“Ahem.”

When she said nothing, he gently cleared his throat.

She became embarrassed, as if he had noticed what she had been thinking.

Perhaps she was not the only one who wanted to escape the awkward atmosphere, because the man held out his hand.

“I am Philod Renatus.”

“I’m Juaie. I don’t have a family name.”

The two shook hands.

His hand was unexpectedly warm.

As soon as she lightly took his hand, he released it.

Another awkward silence followed.

The man hesitantly asked,

“May I ask your original name?”

“Heo Hwanhee.”

She was just about to politely ask Philod what his Korean name had been as well.

But he looked completely bewildered.

It was as if he had not understood her at all.

“I’m sorry, but could you say that one more time……?”

“Heo Hwanhee. Heo, Hwan, Hee.”

“Um…… What did you say?”

“Heo, Hwan, Hee. Heo from Gimhae Heo clan, Hwan meaning joy, and Hee meaning joy. Like ‘Ode to Joy’ by Beethoven.”

Juaie patiently explained it slowly and clearly.

Only then did the man seem to understand properly.

Her name was not even particularly difficult to pronounce, so she wondered why he kept asking her to repeat it.

“So, it’s ‘Eo Uan-i’…….”

The man trailed off.

It seemed he realized that he had pronounced it incorrectly even to his own ears.

Juaie burst out laughing.

She understood why he could not understand and kept struggling.

Rather than feeling offended that he could not pronounce her name, she found it amusing.

It was because the Ilgenis language had no H sound.

Even if Korean was someone’s native language, those who possessed or reincarnated into someone in the Ilgentavita Empire often forgot Korean.

Things that had once been instinctively familiar became something they had to consciously know.

When they tried to think about how their tongue had moved or what shape their lips had made, their pronunciation naturally became tangled.

The word ‘Korea’ might be easy to pronounce because it was used often, but her name contained three H sounds.

Philod looked at her nervously, not knowing what to do.

Juaie teased him.

“Try it one more time.”

“‘Eo’……. ‘Heo’…….”

She burst into laughter.

Only afterward did she realize that she had teased someone she had just met too much and felt a little sorry.

She smiled brightly at the flustered Philod.

“It’s okay if you can’t pronounce it. Actually, you’re the first person.”

“What?”

Philod opened his eyes wide.

“You’re the first person to ask me what my original name was.”

This time, Philod also smiled shyly.

“Just Philod is enough.”

And so, Juaie began calling him Philod.

From then on, Philod also stopped trying to pronounce ‘Heo Hwanhee.’