On the dawn after Shanfu (單福) had taken the seat of Liu Bei’s (劉備) Commander-Counselor (軍師).

In the back yard at Xinye (新野), as on any morning, Liu Bei began to walk his round. Guan Yu (關羽), in the western corner, began his morning drill with the Green Dragon Blade (靑龍刀). Zhang Fei (張飛), in the eastern corner, stacked firewood for the kitchen. For years, this had been the rhythm of the three men.

This morning, though, there was one more stride in the northern corner of the yard. Shanfu. In his hand was not a staff but a slender book. The book opened lightly and closed again with each of his steps. Shanfu walked slowly round the yard in the direction opposite to Liu Bei’s round. On opposite sides of the yard, the two men’s strides passed each other, and passed each other again.

When his round had circled for the third time, Liu Bei stopped beside Shanfu.

“Master Shan. Is there a reason you are walking in the opposite direction?”

Shanfu opened his book again, lightly, and smiled.

“If I walk in the same direction as Your Lordship’s round, I walk behind your back. If I walk in the opposite direction, I can see Your Lordship’s face three times in a single round. This man’s work this morning is to look into Your Lordship’s face three times.”

Liu Bei smiled. The smile did not lengthen. Shanfu’s line was no joke. A man who walks behind a general’s back and a man who sees a general’s face three times do not stand in the same seat.

From that morning on, the back yard at Xinye held four paces. Liu Bei’s round, Guan Yu’s one-zone drill, Zhang Fei’s stacking, and Shanfu’s reversed round. Each pace did its own work. Only, when the four paces overlapped within the single space of the yard, the whole rhythm grew a little slower than yesterday, and within that slower place, a little firmer.

Liu Bei himself did not notice the change. Guan Yu noticed it quietly but did not speak of it. Zhang Fei came to stack the wood more firmly. Shanfu wrote down every one of these small shifts upon a corner of his book, a line at a time. The book had no title. Only, on its first page, in Shanfu’s left hand, four characters stood:

新野日記 (Journal of Xinye).

Around noon, Shanfu quietly called Liu Bei to the west room of the magistrate’s office.

Upon the desk, the map on which Liu Bei had written 臥龍崗 (Wolonggang) yesterday evening was still spread open. The three characters beside it, 第一步 (The First Stride), remained there. Shanfu looked long at the map. Then he took up the brush, and beneath the three characters of Wolonggang wrote six small characters anew.

諸葛孔明 草廬.

Liu Bei drew in a single large breath. It did not leave him for a long while.

“Master Shan. Today, for the first time, you have given me this name.”

Shanfu nodded.

“General. Today, I give you only three of those characters (諸葛孔明, Zhuge Kongming). The remaining four — the two of 草廬 (Thatched Cottage) and the two that complete the man’s private name — will be completed only at the ends of the three strides you yourself will walk.”

Liu Bei looked long at the six characters on the map. Zhuge Kongming, Thatched Cottage. He did not read them aloud. He only laid his finger upon them, and closed his eyes for a moment.

In the guest hall that evening, Shanfu’s words before Guan Yu and Zhang Fei were short.

“General Yunchang. General Yide. Within the coming month, both of you are to go and see, with your own eyes, the terrain at one strand of Bowangpo (博望坡) north of Fancheng (樊城). Your two pairs of eyes will read that ground more precisely than this man’s could.”

Zhang Fei unfolded his folded arms. “From when do we go?”

“Tomorrow at dawn.”

“Understood. I shall ride with Brother Yunchang.”

Guan Yu bowed his head. Shanfu clasped his hands. Liu Bei said nothing beside them. Only, at the corner of his mouth, a very small smile hung. It did not go away for a long time. Up to yesterday, Liu Bei had been the man who had to decide, himself, what Guan Yu and Zhang Fei should do each day. From today on, Liu Bei was the man who sat quietly in the seat where someone at his side decided that on his behalf. The ease of that seat was, to a forty-seven-year-old, strangely new.

That night, many stars stood above the roofs of Xinye. Beneath the stars, the fourth shadow was quietly walking one more round of the yard. Inside the slender book under his arm, another line of the Journal of Xinye was already forming in the mind, for the morning to come: that today had been the first day on which four paces had shared a single yard, and that no one in the house had yet found words for how much that quiet fact mattered.

—

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 43초 비추면 폰에 저장되어 인터넷 없이도 읽을 수 있습니다. Stream.mp4 도 여기서 받습니다.