The Sand Bride - Side Story 2.27

The next person to notice the Southern man was Hemor’s younger brother, Hakan. With his red hair tied back, he approached Hemor with quick steps to welcome her return, but then discovered a man with a deathly face being dragged along like a beast, bound by ropes.

“Who is that? Didn’t you kill the lord and all his family?”

At her younger brother’s questioning, puzzled face, Hemor shrugged her shoulders as if it were a matter of course and replied.

“Today’s trophy.”

“Another Southern man…….”

Hakan glared at the man’s hair with a displeased face. Since the man had his head bowed, he could only see the man’s bright hair.

“I believe another Southerner was brought in last time as well…….”

“That man is that man, and this man is this man.”

At Hakan’s grumbling—as he hated Southerners clinging persistently to his sister—Hemor smiled with an unconcerned face. Then, she pointed at the man’s bright blonde hair and said, as if telling him to take a look:

“What do you think? Isn’t it pretty?”

Hakan did not answer, and he couldn’t answer even by the time Hemor entered her palace, because he couldn’t see the man’s face.

Since he never once lifted his head, all Hakan could see was the color of his hair. Thus, he could only recall the man’s hair in response to Hemor’s question of what was pretty. That was all. Only that pale, bright, and seemingly scattering blonde hair…….

* * *

There were several implicit rules within Hemor’s palace, and among them, one was to be followed above all else. Befitting her name, which meant ‘One Who Does Not Cry,’ she hated the sound of crying more than anything in the world.

Yes. Hemor hated whining things more than anything. The sound of crying gave her a headache and made irritation flare up. Therefore, Hemor’s men never cried, no matter what happened.

But a man who cried appeared in Hemor’s palace. It was the Southern man Hemor had brought most recently.

Since it was a silent cry, no one except Hemor even knew he had cried, but because Hemor was the owner of the palace who had forbidden crying, she could have hanged the man if she set her mind to it. Just as she had done until now.

That was the first anomaly. That the man who had only shed silent tears was not hanged by Hemor’s hand; that instead of hanging him, Hemor looked down at his hair; and that upon seeing the color, she recalled the day she met him.

“Ah..….! Ugh, uaa..…..”

The blade thinly sliced the nape of the man’s neck. Blood leaked out in a straight line and soon soaked his collar, but the man instead stopped his wailing at the pain and glared at Hemor. Even as the blade went deeper, he did not turn away his glare from her. She liked that look in his eyes.

Hemor saw the man’s hair and eyes, gave a smirk, and sheathed her sword.

It was because she liked that the color of his hair and eyes were the same as the flowers she had seen before she burned them. Having felt regret that everything had been burned away, Hemor, thinking it would be fine to take a person instead of flowers, turned her back and headed toward her horse.

“What shall we do?”

When she mounted her horse, her subordinate asked, and Hemor replied with a shrug.

“I’m taking him. Don’t kill him—put him in the carriage.”

That was the end of it.

Hemor should have hanged the crying man, but since she couldn’t bring the flowers that were the same color as the man’s hair, she thought she couldn’t kill the man either, and that was the reason the man’s life was spared at first. It was truly just that. Because the man resembled the flowers Hemor couldn’t bring back.

The man was those burnt flowers. He was a substitute for those flowers. So, was it not natural that she was this pleased whenever she saw him?

Because Hemor liked those flowers. That was why.

* * *

At first, the man stirred a sense of challenge in Hemor.

Unlike other men who always told interesting stories to please her, that man flew into a rage every time they met and rushed at Hemor like a madman.

However, compared to that momentum, and unlike Karzhen, Hakan, or her other male siblings, the callouses on his hands were not made from gripping swords and spears.

Whenever a man like that tried his best to somehow defeat her with his reasonably soft hands, Hemor burst into an absurd laugh. He was too weak. Just like those yellow flowers she used to grow.

In contrast, she was someone born to defeat others from the moment she began living. Hemor was the eldest daughter of the royal family who had gone out to the battlefield at fourteen and was recognized as the King’s child next to Karzhen. By the time Hemor became Hemor Sha Gamore, she had already personally decapitated two of the King’s enemies and brought them back in both hands.

She had soaked her spear in the blood of countless enemies. To someone like Hemor, the fists of a man who had only used trowels or done pruning were truly so weak and insignificant that they were laughable.

“Listen closely.”