GC | Side Story 1.3

His calm voice drifted on the wind into Ruslan’s ear. In Shey’s expression while he explained, love and pride for his homeland were openly visible.

“Don’t they have one in your country too?”

Shey asked with a smile, but Ruslan said nothing, simply staring straight at the ridge of the hill. It was a look of careful observation, as though he were collecting information.

Shey found it odd that what seemed like an ordinary landscape to him might feel unfamiliar to an outsider. Just as he was wondering about it, Ruslan turned toward him.

“I see.”

His little smile was elegant. For a moment, something felt off, but when he saw that bright, smiling face, Shey nodded as if under a spell before he could even realize why.

Ruslan said they should head back down, and started walking first. One step ahead, he noticed the stone stairs were slippery and held out a hand to Shey. It was a large hand, large for his height, but about the same size as Shey’s.

Suddenly, Shey noticed that the boy’s eye level had risen a little in that time.

When had he grown so much?

Shey realized that all of a sudden.

When had he been able to understand this child’s words?

No, even before that.

“It twists and turns.”

“Shey”… who was that?

✿ • ✿ • ✿

When he suddenly came to his senses, he was in the temple. Shey looked around in confusion.

“What’s wrong?”

Moonlight poured down from the ceiling of the great temple. It seemed to wash the lowest corners of the temple in its light.

There was no one there. It almost felt as though only the two of them had ever existed in the world.

“No, nothing… What were we talking about again?”

Shey asked, glancing at the stained glass where the gods had been preserved.

“You asked whether priests could get married.”

The absurd question made him laugh.

“They can’t.”

“Priests can’t marry?”

“Of course not. We’ve sworn to serve only the gods.”

“Really? Absolutely not?”

“Not absolutely, but… there are rare cases of people renouncing their vows and returning to private life. Most people see it negatively, but I think a little differently. It must mean they love someone that much.”

“Is that what fate is?”

“Maybe.”

The quiet murmur sounded more like a question Shey was asking himself than an answer given to Ruslan.

Unlike usual, Ruslan bit his lip with a somewhat restless look. Shey gently touched his lower lip, as if to stop him from chewing it, and the hand that had grown much larger seized Shey’s wrist.

“I know fate, too. I found it after coming to this country.”

“Really? I’m curious.”

Shey laughed. He was still just a boy, yet his certainty that it was fate was both cute and ridiculous. Imagining that he might have fallen for some lovely girl was rather amusing.

“What about you? Someone like that could come to you, too, you know.”

He said it as though he wanted Shey to have such a being, too. But instead of answering, Shey lowered his gaze to the marble floor. Silence wrapped around them.

The white stone floor was clean and simple, yet full of dignity. That was because a priest loved by the gods had to remain noble, while dwelling in the lowest place. The disciples of god could not be private people.

After composing himself, Shey raised his head.

“My fate is only the gods.”

Since he had been abandoned as a newborn, he had never once gone against the will of the gods.

“What if that god wants you to be with your destined partner?”

It was a future he had never imagined.

“Well… then I’d have to accept it.”

If that were true, then that would also be the will of the gods.

“But wouldn’t you tell me where you live now?”

For the past few months, Shey and Ruslan had met three or four times a week. Since he had been staying here for months, he clearly wasn’t a traveler.

Shey wanted to know more about this mysterious and beautiful boy. It was an attraction he could not explain, one that had even made him set temple work aside for the first time. At first, he had been concerned about the child, then fascinated, and now he thought they could become good friends.

In short, he had taken a liking to the boy from a foreign land. He wasn’t sure why. Was it because they had similar hair and eye colors?

“…I live very far away.”

“Far away?”

“Very far. Do you want to come see?”

The boy asked. But Shey could not answer immediately. As a disciple of god, he could not leave the temple carelessly.

And yet he nodded anyway. He wanted to make a promise he could never keep.

Ruslan rose from the chair with a crescent-eyed smile. He had grown a span taller since their first meeting, and their eye levels were different now.

“I won’t be able to come for a while.”

“What?”

Shocked by the sudden announcement, Shey jumped to his feet in turn. Ruslan wore a rather mischievous smile.

“It looks like it’ll take quite a while. But I’ll definitely come back, so wait for me. When I do, I’ll take you to where I am.”

It was a promise full of boyish excitement. Even though he knew that promise could never come true, Shey forced a smile. He imagined leisurely traveling far away from the capital, following the boy who had come back to take him.

“All right. I’ll wait.”

The boy, with dawn light draped over his shoulders, had already reached the long road ahead and waved both arms broadly. For a boy who was never usually so restless, it was a big gesture. It made him seem as though he, too, was reluctant to part from Shey.

“Let’s meet again!”

Shey waved back, too.

“Let’s meet again!”

The promise without a date rang out like an echo. They made the promise in their hearts.

May they surely meet again.

✿ • ✿ • ✿

His eyes flew open. His heart was pounding as though it might burst.

It had been a dream where real events and hallucinations had been mixed together however they pleased. What was dream and what was reality, or perhaps memory, was something he had to sort out in his head for quite a while after waking. His memory of first meeting Ruslan and the past Ruslan had so often boasted about had blended together and created that twisted dream.

The moment Shey woke, he barely managed to suppress the anger that surged up.

He vaguely remembered thinking, in the early morning, that Ruslan had come to bother him again because he was uncomfortable in bed. As expected, when he opened his eyes, a black-haired man was tightly hugging him and sleeping with his face buried in Shey’s chest.

The sleeping face, innocent as a child’s, was disgusting and irritating. When Shey kicked him hard, the man frowned and opened his eyes in confusion. Shey looked down coldly and kicked the large-bodied man with all his strength.

“Ow!”

In the end, Ruslan rolled off the bed and let out a short cry. The thud that followed was satisfying. No matter how beastlike his reflexes were, it seemed he was helpless against a surprise attack while sleeping.

Would it be possible to kill him someday by stabbing his throat with a knife when he was in deep sleep?

Shey considered it seriously. In fact, he had already tried a few times, but every attempt had failed. What a lucky bastard, when it came to his own life.

“Shey, are you out of your mind first thing in the morning?”

“Don’t crawl into other people’s rooms.”

“How is this your room? Where in this house did you put any money?”

“Oh, really? I didn’t realize I was bothering myself in someone else’s room. Fine, I’ll get out right now.”

Shey glared fiercely, as if he had found a good excuse, and got up. Ruslan immediately lunged back onto the bed and pinned him down again.

“Fuck, seriously… You’ve gotten good with words lately. Fine, this is your room. I burst in without permission and committed a mortal sin. Happy now?”

Ruslan grumbled that it was ridiculous. Then he added a lecture about how one of the prisoners from Shey’s country had become a friend’s lover, and that woman listened well and knew how to coo, so why was Shey like this?

Listening to that made Shey’s stomach burn. He clenched his fist tightly. This madman had absolutely no empathy for the pain or sorrow of others. He had no consideration at all for how Shey would feel hearing about a national from his own country captured and reduced to a foreign enemy’s lover.

It was because he did not understand. By nature, he could not understand other people, and so he could not empathize, and therefore he did not consider them.

Shey found Ruslan horrifying and disgusting. Just thinking about him made Shey want to cry.

“Still, Shey is Shey… I don’t care what the hell you do. Except for running around with a knife and saying you’re going to die. If you’re going to act up, at least say you’ll kill me. Honestly, you’re hopeless.”

You beat me half to death and starved me for a week when I said I’d kill you.

Shey swallowed the rebuttal that had risen to his throat. He did not want to talk to him, and if he said it, Ruslan would obviously start making excuses again. Then it would be, You were too rebellious back then, I couldn’t help it, I was having a hard time too… and so on.

On the seventh day of hunger, Ruslan had hugged Shey with a rueful face and cared for him devotedly. That he was genuinely upset only made Shey find him repulsive. To Ruslan, beating Shey and starving him like a beast who refused to obey was just a painful trial he had to endure for the sake of their harmony.

“I forgot to ask. Did you sleep well?”

“…”

“Did you sleep well, Shey?”

“I didn’t sleep a wink because of you, and my head hurts. Don’t talk to me.”

When he still didn’t answer, it looked like he would drain a person from morning itself, so Shey reluctantly spoke. Ruslan rubbed his forehead against Shey’s in an almost affectionate way.

“Really? Sorry. But I can’t sleep without you.”

So be good to me, he grinned, and hugged Shey so tightly that he puShey him against the wall. It was already a narrow room, a narrow bed, and being held in that prison-like man’s arms while pressed to the wall made Shey bump the back of his head hard. When the clean sound rang from his skull striking the plaster, Ruslan’s eyes went round, and then he burst out laughing.

“Doesn’t it hurt? It sounds like an apple exploding out of your head.”

While saying that, he rubbed the back of Shey’s head, but Shey didn’t even find that hypocritical comfort funny.

A man who trampled over the homes of others and slaughtered strangers without hesitation, merely for the purpose of invasion, should not be making concerned noises over something as small as this.