يا عبد الرحمن 🌑
فصل جميل فعلًا… هادئ، ناض
They returned at dusk. The carriage swayed slowly along the dirt road, the sound of its wheels like a low, repeating moan that never complained. Saō Hyun sat inside in silence, looking through the small window at the trees passing by slowly, as if they were saying farewell to him one by one. He did not feel tired only in his body, but in something deeper — something like a mind filled with thoughts that did not know where to go. The names he had seen in the library, the symbols, the scrolls, the words he could not understand… all of them were turning inside him like small stars without orbits.
When the carriage stopped in front of the residence, darkness had already begun to descend gently upon the place. Shin Ri stepped down first, then extended his hand to Saō Hyun. The boy looked at him for a moment, then took his hand and stepped down. The ground felt firm beneath his feet, and that alone was enough to make him feel a small sense of safety.
They entered the residence. The fire was still burning in the hearth, giving off a soft warmth and the familiar scent of burning wood. Lin Hua came out from inside when she heard the footsteps, bowed in greeting, her eyes shining with a calm kindness. Saō Hyun looked at her briefly, then lowered his gaze, as he always did when he did not know what to say.
Shin Ri sat down, and Saō Hyun sat across from him. A short silence settled between them, but it was not heavy.
At last Shin Ri said, "Your choices… were not random."
Saō Hyun raised his head slowly. He was not sure whether this was praise or merely an observation.
Shin Ri continued, his voice low, as if thinking aloud. "Four arts. Four different directions. All of them require patience more than they require strength. That is rare for someone your age."
Saō Hyun did not know what to reply. He only said softly, "I… I did not understand the names. But I felt that I understood them."
Shin Ri looked at him for a long moment, then smiled a faint smile that was barely visible. He said nothing more about the arts.
He turned slightly and said, "Lin Hua."
She lifted her head at once. "Yes, sir."
"Starting tomorrow," he said, "you will teach him to read and write."
Her eyes widened a little, then she bowed. "As you command."
He hesitated briefly, then added, "In the languages of Murim first. Then the Imperial language… then the Mongol language."
Lin Hua lifted her head again, this time with real surprise, and glanced at Saō Hyun without thinking, then returned her gaze to her master. "The Mongol language as well?"
"This is his request," Shin Ri said calmly.
Everyone looked at Saō Hyun. He felt a light warmth in his face, but he did not deny it.
He said quietly, but firmly, "I want to understand what they are saying… even if I am not with them."
Shin Ri did not ask why. He only said, "Very well."
That night, nothing else of importance happened. Saō Hyun ate in silence, bathed, then went into his small room. But he did not sleep at once. He sat on his bed, looking at the wall, thinking of the letters he did not know, of the words that existed but that he could not yet touch.
The next morning, Lin Hua was waiting for him with a small wooden table and scrolls carefully laid out. She sat across from him and smiled an encouraging smile.
"We will begin with the simplest," she said gently.
She opened a scroll and pointed to the first symbol.
"This," she said, "is called a letter."
Saō Hyun looked at it for a long time. It was simple in shape, but it seemed to him complex, as if it were a closed door.
"Does it… say something?" he asked.
She smiled. "On its own, no. But when it joins with others… it becomes a word."
He thought for a moment, then said, "Like people?"
She paused, then laughed softly. "Yes… perhaps like people."
She began to explain its shape, how it was written, how it was pronounced. He held the brush with a trembling hand at first, pressed too hard, and the ink flowed, staining the paper. Each time he made a mistake, he frowned, as if the mistake itself were something dangerous.
"It's all right," she said calmly. "Paper was made so that we may make mistakes on it."
He did not fully understand the sentence, but he liked the sound of her voice.
He tried again. The line was crooked, but it was a line.
He looked at it for a long time, then said, "I… wrote this?"
"Yes," she said.
Something strange moved in his chest. Not joy. Not pride. But something like suddenly existing in a place where he had not existed before.
In the days that followed, he did not learn much. Two letters, three, some sounds, a few short words. But he learned something else that was more important: that words are not taken all at once, and that understanding is not a leap, but small steps.
And every night before sleeping, he would look at his hands and say to himself:
This hand used to strike.
And this hand now… writes.
And he did not know which was harder.
But for the first time in a long while, he felt that there was a path that did not end only in blood.
A path of ink.
Of patience.
Of letters that cannot yet be seen… but that are already there.