Amun silently pulled out a bracelet with a blue gemstone hanging from a thin cord. Without a word, he quickly placed it on Cayden’s empty wrist, his movements too swift for Cayden to be surprised.
“I left for a moment… to buy this,” he said.
As he continued speaking, Amun kept watching Cayden’s face closely, focusing all his attention on Cayden’s reaction.
“You should be careful about bracelets given by people from Helio. It’s a way of expressing possessiveness toward someone, so you must absolutely, absolutely never accept them from others, even as a gesture of goodwill.”
“…”
“Well, what I’ve given you is fine. I don’t have any of those crude, wicked, strange thoughts at all…”
Amun’s rambling words suddenly cut off. But he looked at Cayden with his mouth open, as if about to continue speaking.
Cayden was crying.
Teardrops fell silently onto the bracelet wrapped around Cayden’s wrist.
“Your Highness.”
Flustered, Amun quickly corrected his posture. As he bent forward, the distance between them instantly narrowed.
“Is it burdensome? This isn’t an expensive item. I bought it from that stall you saw earlier. It’s an incredibly ordinary bracelet… really nothing special.”
“…”
“Or do you not like it?”
Momentarily at a loss for words, Amun then switched languages.
“If you don’t like it, you can throw it away. You can discard it right here. You can throw it outside the tent, and I won’t say anything more.”
Amun’s wandering hands suddenly touched Cayden’s cheeks. The nameless sadness spreading across his bride’s pale face choked the breath of Amun, of Assad.
Amun stopped pouring out words to Cayden. Instead, he carefully began wiping away the silently flowing tears with his fingertips.
“So… don’t cry.”
Amun whispered to Cayden. His face, which had turned red with embarrassment, was returning to its normal color.
Cayden’s tear-blurred eyes held Amun in their gaze. Cayden couldn’t understand why he was crying.
Cayden was confused.
He wasn’t scared as when he had encountered Alex, nor was his body in pain. With his heart feeling so warm, feeling so happy—he couldn’t understand why tears were coming. Since he didn’t understand his own feelings, he couldn’t give Amun a proper answer.
Cayden raised his right arm and roughly wiped his tears on his unfolded sleeve.
“Thank you, Amun.”
Like Amun before him, there was urgency in Cayden’s voice.
“Receiving such a gift… no, having someone give me something like this is a first, so I don’t know what to say. All I can think of is thank you. In both Imperial and Kingdom languages.”
“…”
“I’ll cherish it. I’ll keep it with me until I die.”
Cayden said, meeting Amun’s eyes. The man’s dark purple eyes were glistening with tears.
“…You don’t need to keep it until you die. If I’d known, I would have given you something better than this bracelet.”
“No. For me, there couldn’t be anything better than this. I guarantee it.”
“…”
“I’ll be buried with this bracelet when I die. If I can’t be buried with it, I’ll burn with it.”
“That’s extreme.”
Amun gave a hollow laugh. But a moment later, his face turned slightly sullen. He seemed to have something to say.
“But I don’t think I’m the first person to give you a gift, Cayden. You received a betrothal gift before this bracelet.”
“That… wasn’t meant for me. I thoughtlessly took a gift meant for someone else. I suddenly ended up in the position of His Majesty’s companion.”
“…”
“But this is different. Because you gave it to me while thinking of me.”
After finishing speaking, Cayden hastily rummaged through his outer garment pocket. He was trying to take out the handkerchief Amun had given him when he changed clothes.
Confirming the soft texture of the handkerchief, Cayden pulled Amun’s hand—the one that had wiped his tears—toward himself. With the fluffy cloth in Amun’s grip, Cayden wiped away the moisture, the tears remaining on Amun’s hand.
“I wish I were someone who had more to give.”
“…”
“I’m sorry I have nothing to give to someone as kind as you.”
Cayden’s soft voice spread through the darkness of the empty tent.
Amun looked at the scars etched on the back of the man’s hand as he wiped Amun’s hand—scars that seemed particularly bothersome today.
“…You don’t need to give me anything.”
Meeting Cayden’s eyes again, Amun continued.
“It doesn’t matter if I receive nothing in return. I can give you a thousand, even ten thousand more bracelet gifts like this in the future.”
Cayden, releasing his hand from Amun, who looked even somewhat determined, smiled faintly. Amun’s playful joke only felt grateful to him.
The inside of the tent with Amun didn’t feel dark at all. Going outside no longer frightened him.
* * *
The predawn moonlight circled around the feet of the man crouched in the corner of the balcony.
Cayden stared blankly at the white light illuminating his bare feet. Embarrassed to have his feet—covered with many scars and calluses—bathed in the white moonlight, he quickly hid them under the hem of his long robe.
Cayden had dreamed. No, a memory from the past, disguised as a dream, had suddenly visited him.
On some day of a season he couldn’t even recall, Alex had, as usual, come to Cayden with urgent kisses.
Cayden asked the man, the one he served, a question. It was a doubt he had harbored in his heart for a very long time. Yet it was a question with a strange meaning that even he thought was nonsense as he uttered it.
“…Do you love me?”
“…”
“So, do you hate me?”
Cayden just wanted to find a reason. No, he wanted to forcibly create a reason why that man treated him this way.
Even though he was lacking, Cayden knew that hitting, cursing, mocking, and painfully crushing someone wasn’t love. He also knew that love that changes someone’s inherent nature for one’s own pleasure doesn’t exist in this world.
Still, he had asked hoping there was a cause for all this happening. Cayden didn’t want to believe there was no reason for his suffering. He wanted this terrible time to have some kind of name.
Of course, no proper answer came back. Alex, lightly tapping Cayden’s cheek, mocked him for saying something stupid.
“Where did you learn such words? Since you can’t even read properly, you couldn’t have read it in a book. Did your only friend tell you some strange story? Or did you have a dream last night?”
Grabbing and shaking Cayden’s collar, he continued.
“I neither love nor hate you.”
“…”
“Cayden. Love is something that happens between people.”
As if bestowing rare teaching upon something lowly, Alex smiled kindly.
“But you’re not a person, you’re a worm. You shouldn’t presumptuously mention love.”
“…”
“If I thought of you as a person, I couldn’t do this. Do you think mixing bodies when I feel good is love? Is having my way with just one person love?”
Leading Cayden, who had been summoned suddenly while working, to the bathroom, he continued.
“Cayden, you’re a worm. A worm I can remove wings from, remove legs from, and no one will say anything to me. Not only will they not say anything, they’ll welcome me for catching a worm in their place.”
Being shoved into the bathtub that was being filled with water, Cayden could only nod.
“Who would like something as ugly as you?”
With that vivid voice piercing his ears, Cayden awoke from his sleep. And he left the bedroom as if fleeing.
Cayden shifted his gaze from his feet hidden under his clothes to his wrist. Afraid the bracelet Amun had given him might break, he very carefully stroked it with his fingertips.
It was such an awkward and unfamiliar object.
Amun had said this bracelet was quite ordinary. But to Cayden, it didn’t feel ordinary at all. Such a thing was something poor people like him couldn’t even get to see. Being a laborer who had to keep his hands busy made jewelry touching his hands or arms feel even more difficult to approach.
Still… Cayden liked Amun’s gift.
Cayden carefully examined the bracelet holding his wrist. The small blue gemstone barely hanging at the end of the bracelet looked more beautiful to Cayden than the large moon in the night sky.
As he carefully caressed the blue gemstone that sparkled more beautifully in the white moonlight, the old memory that had visited him in his dream gradually blurred.
Little by little, his heart settled.
Cayden liked Helio, this desert. Like the bracelet he received from Amun, he began to feel both strangeness and warm affection simultaneously.
In the capital of Helio, far from Elba in the north, there was no one who knew Cayden. Among people who didn’t know his name, he wasn’t an ugly man selling his body to Alex or a disgusting worm. The people here saw him not as something that could be beaten to death at any time, but as a fellow human being.
Even Assad, who had initially been displeased with the sudden appearance of a companion, was now showing him indescribable kindness. That was possible because he regarded him as a fellow person.
Cayden knew that he would eventually be expelled from the palace. Until then, he wanted to keep his secret. He wanted to hide how he had lived.
‘I hope they continue to… think of me as a person.’
Kissing the beautiful blue light, Cayden thought. It was a small wish he sent to the god who had brought him here.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
