Within the small walled town of Xinye (新野), in the back courtyard of Liu Bei’s (劉備) magistrate’s hall, the rooster was crowing its second call this dawn as well. At the western corner of the yard, a few bundles of firewood that Guan Yu had chopped yesterday lay stacked neatly. The smell of cut wood mingled with the cold of the frost, and between the two, the silence of the yard held itself, composed.

Liu Bei was already up. Yesterday too. The day before too. It was the winter of his seventh year since coming to Xinye. In seven years, he had not missed the second call of this courtyard’s rooster even once.

The dawn air was cold. The thin frost that had fallen last night still lay upon the stones of the yard. Liu Bei put on his straw sandals. He wore no armor. Over his bare shoulders he wore only a single coat of dark blue cotton. Standing in the middle of the yard, he looked long up at the last star at the western edge of the sky.

That star had drifted in around midnight last night from the direction of Xudu (許都). Liu Bei had seen it yesterday evening through the window of the inner hall. Even this dawn, the star still hung at the edge of the sky. That it still hung there meant this sky was the same sky as yesterday’s.

Liu Bei was forty-seven. Since the evening at twenty-eight when, beneath the mulberry in Zhuoxian (涿縣), he had swallowed a single sentence, nineteen years had passed. Pingyuan (平原), Xuzhou (徐州), Xiaopei (小沛), Runan (汝南), Xinye (新野). Five seats, five names, had each received his nineteen years. And yet not one of those five seats had become a seat of his own.

“Forty-seven…”

Liu Bei murmured quietly. The sound scattered into white breath in the cold air.

At the western corner of the yard, Guan Yu (關羽) was already at morning drill with his Green Dragon Blade (靑龍刀). His long beard swayed gently under the thin dawn light. His breath was even and long. Seeing his elder brother risen, Guan Yu lowered the blade and bowed his head briefly.

“Brother. Up early this dawn too?”

“Yunchang (雲長). You are up before me. How long have you been here?”

“Since the end of the third watch.”

Liu Bei smiled. The smile was short but deep. Guan Yu’s sword-strokes had not rested in seven years. In this courtyard, the mornings in which the younger brother took up his blade before the elder rose now numbered nearly four hundred.

Zhang Fei (張飛) came out to the back yard soon after. His eyes were puffy — eyes that said he had had a cup or two by himself last night. But his wits were clear. In his hand was not a spear but a bundle of firewood. It meant that this dawn he would take charge of the kitchen fire in place of the spear.

“Brother. The merchants yesterday brought a piece of news.”

“What news?”

“Word that in the north, Cao Cao, inside the Chancellor’s office at Xudu, has lately been spreading two maps often upon his desk. One is the north; the other, our Jingzhou.”

Liu Bei’s eyes sank. Zhang Fei, setting the firewood down toward the kitchen, went on.

“Brother. Next spring, do you think? Or next autumn?”

“Next spring.”

Liu Bei’s answer came quickly. So quickly that for a moment neither Guan Yu nor Zhang Fei had a word. As if a man had brought out this dawn the answer he had long held within.

The three brothers sat side by side on the rock in the back yard. The morning light was climbing up over the eastern wall.

“Brother. Next spring, what shall the three of us be doing?”

Zhang Fei asked. Liu Bei was long silent. Then with the toe of his straw sandal he scraped the thin frost on the ground.

“Yide (翼德). The three of us, next spring too, shall still be seated in this yard. Only, upon this rock it may be that four, and not three, shall be sitting.”

“The fourth, who is he?”

“I do not yet know even his name. Only that he is, somewhere, and that the foreboding of him is growing inside me these days.”

Guan Yu laughed quietly beside them. Zhang Fei blinked, then took off his sandals and pressed the soles of his feet against the cold rock. Then he put them on again. The cold left upon his soles set the whole day’s beat for him.

The rooster crowed its third call. The dawn was now fully lifted.

Liu Bei rose. He began walking one round of the yard. Yesterday too. The day before too. In seven years it had not changed. Only, this morning’s round was walked a little more slowly than another morning’s. The dark blue coat over his shoulders swayed lightly with his stride.

Within the single round of walking of a man of forty-seven, the shadow of a fourth one, whose name had not yet been found, walked quietly alongside him this dawn too, one stride at a time.

—

WIA Code 스캐너로 비추면 인터넷 없이 발행 사실과 위·변조 여부를 확인할 수 있습니다.
휴대폰 기본 카메라로 찍으면 스캐너 안내 페이지가 열립니다 — 기사 바로 열기

움직이는 코드(스트림) 한 장에 기사 전문(사진 포함)이 담겨 있습니다 — WIA Code 스캐너로 약 44초 비추면 폰에 저장되어 인터넷 없이도 읽을 수 있습니다. Stream.mp4 도 여기서 받습니다.