This Mr. Head certainly had an amusing way of talking.
Strangest of all: the fellow looked like he'd been dragged through the mud, utterly bedraggled — and yet not a trace of that misery found its way into his voice. If anything, it carried a faint air of... dignity.
...Xia Ya smiled.
He leaned in a little and looked the man in the eye. "Hey, fine, you're human, and I've seen you. But... can you give me one reason why I should dig you out?"
The man glanced at Xia Ya, something like disdain flickering in his look, and smiled a strange smile. He seemed to sigh, then said lightly, in a voice short on breath, "Come now, don't joke with me. I know you'll dig me out... Your eyes tell me so. If I were a dwarf or a goblin, perhaps you'd leave me to rot. But you are not the kind of man to stand by and watch his own kind die!"
At those words, before Xia Ya had even reacted, the wretch standing behind him felt something stir in her heart!
Doubts that had plagued her for days suddenly opened up. All along the road, the wretch had been troubled by one question: just what sort of man was this bumpkin?
Coarse, certainly.
But whether his temper was cruel — on that point things got murky.
The fellow was a bandit: he'd robbed her of her money, ordered her about, fought with savage ferocity when his life was on the line, and showed the goblin prisoners no mercy whatsoever — beating them, killing them when it suited him, or using a goblin as a meat shield against arrows without so much as blinking.
By that account, he ought to be a cruel man.
And yet he had, after all, looked after her too. He knew her leg was hurt, so he hauled her along on his back the whole way; when things turned desperate he never abandoned his companions; and two days ago, when she was sick and parched with thirst, he'd left her the only food he'd found. Not one of those details failed to betray the simple good in the bumpkin's heart.
A man who managed to be cruel and kind at once — the wretch simply could not see his true nature. And now this Mr. Head had said it so casually, and struck the heart of the matter!
His own kind!!
The bumpkin's defining trait was exactly this: "not the kind of man to stand by and watch his own kind die!"
The wretch immediately recalled the moment they had first walked into goblin territory, when Xia Ya said "goblins never understand solidarity," and the other time, about "the screams of their own kind" — both in a voice of deep mockery and contempt.
Clearly, in this fellow's heart, good and evil were judged by a standard.
The wretch was still turning this over in her mind when Xia Ya burst out laughing.
The bumpkin stood up, rubbed his chin, and studied Mr. Head for a while. "All right. Seeing as you're such an amusing talker..."
With that, Xia Ya drew his fire fork and drove it into the ground a few times, hard; the packed earth burst apart. Then he reached out one big hand, seized Mr. Head by his golden hair, and hauled with all his strength—
Mr. Head let out a shriek, and with a thump he finally broke out of the earth. He landed in a heap, spat out a mouthful of dirt, and snapped, "Have a heart — I'm not a radish!!"
Xia Ya chuckled and let go, and a few tufts of golden hair drifted from his hand.
Mr. Head grunted twice. He sat up with both arms hugged around his body, lifted his eyelids, and said, "I need clothes."
Xia Ya rummaged in his pack and pulled out a jackal hide... the same kill from a few days ago. Mr. Head took it, looked it over twice, gave it a sniff, and frowned slightly. "It'll do."
Honestly, a jackal's pelt was an ugly gray, its markings all crooked, with unsightly blotches besides — and jackal leather was generally so poor that even fur traders disdained to deal in the stuff.
But for a man who had only just been rescued, he still had plenty of energy left for being picky. More than that: once Mr. Head had slowly wrapped the hide around his waist, he looked up at Xia Ya and asked, in a perfectly calm tone, "Is there water? Mm... and if there's a bit of food, that'd be even better."
The wretch knew the bumpkin was not the easiest man to talk to. She couldn't help shutting her eyes, because in her view this Mr. Head, daring to speak so carelessly to the bumpkin, might well get a backhand across the face for it — and the bumpkin's backhands were no joke!
But Xia Ya seemed to have real patience for this fellow. He untied the waterskin from his waist and handed it over — and even added a strip of dried jackal meat.
Mr. Head did not, as expected, fall on the water and food and wolf them down. Instead, unhurried, he uncorked the skin and poured out water to wash the dirt from his face and hair. He did it all with easy composure, even a faint air of elegance and nobility.
And then, once the dirt had all been washed from his face and hair...
Xia Ya and the wretch both stared, dumbstruck!
There was no denying it: even by the wretch's standards, she had to admit she had never in her life seen such a handsome man!
And strangest of all — even by Xia Ya's standards, this Mr. Head was genuinely, truly good-looking!!
For one thing, he had a head of golden hair bright as summer sunlight, curling and soft as seaweed.
For another, he had a face of hard, clean angles, brimming with masculine appeal; now that it was clean, those eyes blazed with an extraordinary spirit. His brows arched high, his eyes were bright, and together with the golden hair they gave him a wild, flamboyant charm. The straight bridge of his nose made him look like a man of unshakable resolve. On all these points he matched Xia Ya's notion of good looks perfectly.
And by the wretch's standards, his features were refined to the absolute limit: brows and eyes, nose, the line of his lips — every piece looked like a master artist's most perfect work. His skin was fair and glowing with health, and when he opened his mouth to speak, two rows of white, even teeth showed.
Flawless! It was a flawless face!!
(The wretch would have wagered that if this fellow were hauled off to the royal capital, the noble ladies there — those lovelorn wives — would go wild over him...)
And then... the fellow's physique...
With only a jackal hide around his waist, his upper body was completely bare. His muscle lines were sharply defined, his proportions even, his build tall and athletic; the breadth of his shoulders against his narrow waist made an almost perfect inverted triangle, every muscle seemingly arranged in the ideal proportion... muscular, agile, and not the least bit bloated.
The wretch couldn't help comparing Mr. Head's physique with that of the bumpkin, Xia Ya.
Next to him, Xia Ya — that freak of a monster — had heavier, sturdier muscle, brimming with explosive power. But Mr. Head's proportions were simply the best: no shortage of strength, and with it a noble, elegant quality besides. Looking at the fellow was like looking at the work of the master sculptors of the royal capital...
Put it this way: Xia Ya looked more savage and formidable, while Mr. Head was simply too, too, too...
Too pretty!!
Even that ugly spotted jackal hide, wrapped around him, seemed to take on an air of art.
In that instant, the wretch and Xia Ya couldn't help exchanging a glance, and the glance seemed to say one thing: this guy really is goddamn good-looking!!
Watching Mr. Pretty nibble his jackal meat in small bites, very elegantly indeed, Xia Ya cleared his throat and announced loudly, "Hey. Seeing as I'm the one who saved you, by the rules of Wildfire Plain I have the right to declare you my suosuo for now... er, that is, my servant for the time being. But you've got the right to buy yourself out — er, and I've set your price at one gold coin! Hand over one gold coin and you can buy your freedom back from me. How's that sound?"
Mr. Pretty set the meat down, looked at Xia Ya, and wore a smile whose meaning was hard to name. "And if I refuse?"
"Then... I'd just have to bury you back in the ground." Xia Ya grinned.
"One gold coin. Mm — a gold coin of the Byzantine Empire?" Mr. Pretty mused for a moment.
"That's right."
"Done," said Mr. Pretty with a smile, and when he smiled his brows lifted slightly, a sharp, striking sort of beauty. "Then I'll pay you that gold coin as soon as I can, in return for saving my life. Until then, I'll serve you for the time being."
Off to the side, the wretch sighed inwardly...
A bumpkin is a bumpkin!
One gold coin? This fellow... with looks like that, if he were taken to a slave market and put up for sale, they could ask a hundred times as much and people would still break each other's heads trying to buy him!!
Xia Ya, though, looked perfectly satisfied. He put out a big hand and clapped Mr. Pretty on the shoulder. "Excellent! As your temporary master, I'll tell you my name. I'm Xia Ya; you can call me Master Xia Ya, or Mr. Xia Ya. And you?"
"...You may call me Darwin." Mr. Pretty gave a faint smile, and for some reason there was a hint of something unfathomable in the way he smiled.
"Darwin? What a mouthful of a name." Xia Ya scratched his head. "Too much trouble. I'll just call you Dar."
"Dar... Dar..." For the first time, Mr. Pretty's face changed color, his expression that of a man choking on jackal meat. "My name is Darwin!"
"Got it, Dar."
"Please call me Darwin!"
"Sure thing, Dar."
"Stop calling me Dar."
"No problem, Dar!"
After a few rounds of this, Dar finally gave up. Before this utterly unreasonable bumpkin, his elegance and nobility were of no use at all.
But when Dar faced the wretch, the situation was different.
"You..." Dar looked at the wretch and seemed to frown, as though he wanted to say something.
The wretch's heart clenched at once! The bumpkin was a freak; the whole way he'd taken her for an ugly man. But this Dar looked like a clever, normal sort of fellow, and he—he must have seen through her. He's spotted that I'm a girl!
This is bad...
The wretch's face went tight, and she cast about frantically in her mind for some way to hint, without being obvious about it, that the fellow must not give her away...
Dar stared at the wretch for a while, then withdrew his appraising look and said coolly, "You ought to find someone to fix that tooth. The way you look right now is genuinely hideous."
The wretch: "..."
Xia Ya roared with laughter off to the side; Dar was growing on him by the minute. He stepped up, slung an arm around the wretch's shoulders, shook her twice, and laughed. "See that, Wretch? Even Dar says you're ugly. Don't worry — once we find the treasure and get back home, I'll have a fine gold tooth put in for you!"
The wretch: "..."
"So, Dar, how exactly did you end up buried in the ground?" Xia Ya asked the key question.
Dar lowered his head in thought for a moment, then casually pushed the tangled hair from his forehead and gave a soft sigh. "Two days ago I met a group of people here. They all seemed to be mages. They were carrying out a search in these mountains. They caught me, because they'd heard a dragon was hiding in the mountains nearby; they'd searched a long time without finding it, so they asked me whether I had any information worth having."
A dragon?!
Xia Ya's eyes went round as saucers.
"Probably because my attitude wasn't respectful enough, I angered them. But they had some disagreement over what to do with me. Some of the mages suggested killing me outright, while some kindhearted mages thought that was too cruel. In the end..."
"In the end what?"
"In the end the kindhearted mages won the day. They held that mages are noble people and should not stain their hands with blood, so they decided not to kill me — instead they buried me in the earth and left me to live or die as I might."
Dar finished calmly, and the wretch cried out at once, "Buried alive? And that's what passes for kindhearted??!!"
Dar glanced at the wretch and gave a faint smile with a trace of cunning in it. "In return, I gave them a piece of information: on one of the peaks to the north, strange things had been happening these past days. A sound like thunder often came from that mountain, and in the mornings thick smoke rose from the summit."
"??" The wretch's eyes went wide. "You mean...?"
Xia Ya, though, suddenly smiled a strange smile, his eyes narrowing. He fixed them on Dar. "So that's where the dragon's hiding? You actually knew? How would you know where the dragon's hiding?"
Dar's tone was calm. "Because I came here looking for that dragon too."
Xia Ya and the wretch exchanged a look.
"But — but you told those mages where the dragon was hiding..." The wretch was baffled.
"Those fellows are no match for a dragon," Dar said coldly. "So I imagine they're all dead men by now."