On the afternoon of the following day, at a corner of the market in Louxang (樓桑里), a wooden board of proclamation had been hung. It was the county’s posting. The Yellow Turbans (黃巾) had already broken three neighboring commanderies, and so volunteers were being gathered. Liu Bei stood before that board.

A single character in the middle of the board passed into his eyes. A long breath went out between his lips. That breath was a little long. The seed inside twenty-eight years was coming out in the posture of a lengthened breath.

A man had come to stand behind that breath. When Liu Bei turned, a large fellow stood before his eyes. His height ran a head taller than Liu Bei’s own. His shoulders were broad; his forearms were thick enough to equal the forearms of a straw-sandal seller put together. His round head was shaped like a leopard’s, his eyes fiery and large. His jaw curved slightly inward like a swallow’s, and his beard spread out on all sides in the manner of a tiger’s whiskers.

The voice came out first in a single line. It was a rough grain, like thunder.

“…Elder brother. If I startled you, forgive me.”

Within the center of that rough voice, a fold of softness had been tucked in. It was the kind of softness only a man who knows how to lower his own rough grain can bring out.

“I was born and grew up in this village. My name is Zhang (張), style Yide (翼德). The people of the world call me simply Zhang Fei (張飛). At home there are small fields, and outside the village a small manor. By day I butcher oxen; by evening I sell wine. Before the price of an ox I have never cheated a man; the measure of a pint of wine I have never reduced.”

After a breath, Zhang Fei’s beard moved quietly.

“Today, as I passed in front of the county office, I saw a man sighing long before a board. That breath — elder brother, it was too long. And so my own foot stopped first. At the seat of that sigh, strangely, my own sigh nearly came up first.”

Liu Bei looked at Zhang Fei’s lips for a long while. A rough mouth. Yet that mouth was the mouth of a man who had never told a lie. This fellow, even if he lived a long life, would in the end never learn to tell a lie, Liu Bei thought, and nodded again, quietly, inside that short moment. A man had stopped his foot before the length of that breath — for the first time in twenty-eight years.

“…I am called Liu Bei (劉備). Style Xuande (玄德). A saying runs that I am a distant descendant of the Han house; yet what my hand carried out today is only two pairs of unsold straw sandals.”

Zhang Fei’s eyes grew wet. It was not a strand of sorrow. When a man long alone recognizes, at a single stroke, another man of his own kind, what rises quietly from inside his eyes is closer to that kind of light.

“And the cause of elder brother’s sigh — what is it?”

“The Yellow Turbans have already broken three neighboring commanderies. I too wish to fight. I wish to save the common people. Yet I have no force. No name. No people. No blade either.”

Zhang Fei brought out no line for a long while. The tip of his beard moved in the afternoon wind. After that moving stopped, he looked up at the sky.

“Elder brother. At home I have some means. I can gather strong men. With me at your side, how about doing one great thing?”

Liu Bei could not take a single breath. The sentence that had grown without a name, for twenty-eight years, inside him, today, for the first time, through the mouth of a man who had not asked his name, was walking out quietly into the outer world.

“…Can I truly do my share?”

“Elder brother, stand in front. I shall butcher oxen behind you and carry the wine. People gather in front of a man like you. In front of a man like me, only those who haggle over the price of an ox come.”

Zhang Fei lowered his thick forearm upon Liu Bei’s thin shoulder. That was all. Liu Bei did not move from under that weight. For the first time in twenty-eight years, a hand had come to rest upon his shoulder from a man who asked nothing in return. Above the two, the westering light of the afternoon passed along the grain of the proclamation board.

The second afternoon of Book 1 deepened quietly before a single board at a corner of the market in Louxang. The fold of softness inside the rough voice had crossed to the front of a lengthened breath. The two men did not yet, at this moment, hold the posture of sworn brothers; yet the seat of one sigh had been placed at the center between them. The two characters Cheongtan (聽嘆, the seat where one sigh has been heard) were being planted, quietly, as a seed in this afternoon. From the east, the far edge of one yellow banner (Day 1) was drawing a little nearer to the front of that seed.

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