I Became A Married Man in Another World
Chapter 2
002 Slave
Even a modern car jolts and rattles when driving on an unpaved stone road. One could only imagine the state of a carriage that was little more than wooden planks slapped onto wheels.
The heavy wooden carriage shook violently with every step the horses took. Juhwan’s brain rattled in his skull like a bell, and his body jolted down to the very bone.
As a result, he had been vomiting constantly since falling into this bizarre place, despite not having had a single drop of water. Eventually, nothing came up anymore, but the dry heaving continued.
Unable to bear the agony any longer, Kim Joo-hwan pushed past the others and headed toward the edge. As he dragged his body across the floor, a small scuffle broke out between him and the other men.
The edge was colder than the interior, but it offered enough space to stretch one’s legs slightly. No one wanted to give up their spot.
When he forced his way in, one man struck Juhwan in the face with his elbow.
He dodged reflexively, but his battered body was slow. The man’s elbow slammed hard into Juhwan’s forehead.
For a moment, his vision went dark.
However, during his high school years, he had been in fistfights almost every day.
He was well-acquainted with violence.
Juhwan grabbed the man’s arm just as it was pulling away.
He twisted the arm behind the man’s back and pinned his upper body to the floor.
The man’s cheek was pressed against the carriage floor, his mouth agape as he struggled to let out a sound. If Juhwan applied just a bit more pressure, the arm would snap. The man couldn’t even scream; he simply gasped in terror.
The other men who had been trying to block Juhwan’s path flinched and shrank back at the sight. They avoided his gaze and slunk away.
The world of men is the same everywhere. Once they realize an opponent is strong, they dare not challenge him.
Juhwan pushed past them and reached the edge. He turned his face away from the crowd toward the outside, letting the cold air rush into his lungs. Freed from the stench of rot, he could finally breathe.
*
The procession moved for a long time, stopping briefly to rest before moving again. It was cold and grueling. Since all his energy went into enduring the jolting of the carriage, he couldn’t even tell how much time had passed. The crowded carriage rattled incessantly as it traversed the cold winter roads.
Time bled away along with the biting wind. The sun was still high, but the air was gradually growing colder. Winter days are short. Perhaps night would fall soon. He shuddered involuntarily, wondering how much the temperature would drop once darkness arrived, given how cold it was already.
The procession finally halted as the sky began to turn red.
Soldiers busied themselves pitching tents and lighting fires here and there. Large pots were hung over the flames. The soldiers brought water from somewhere, poured it in, and began tossing various ingredients into the pots.
Juhwan watched the soldiers blankly. Though his carriage was a fair distance away from them, the savory scent reached him nonetheless.
His stomach growled. But the people inside the carriage remained silent.
Only after a significant amount of time had passed did the soldiers bring over a large wooden bucket and round, gourd-like bowls.
The bucket contained something resembling a thin porridge. It was different from what the soldiers were eating. A strange smell wafted from it as if it had gone bad. Though he was starving, he had no desire to eat it.
The other men in the carriage, however, lunged at the food in the bucket like starving animals.
The interior of the carriage descended into chaos in an instant. Men fought over the few bowls available, while others scooped the food up with their bare hands, and those in the back scrambled to get closer to the bucket.
The bucket was emptied in the blink of an eye. There simply wasn’t enough food for everyone.
A few soldiers made their rounds, collecting the buckets and bowls from each carriage.
A short while later, the soldiers lowered the thick fabric that had been rolled up at the top of the carriages. As the rag-like, worn cloth covered the carriage, the surroundings fell silent.
The material covering the carriage wasn’t ordinary cloth. It seemed to be some kind of processed leather. There wasn’t a single gap. The surface was slightly bumpy, like thick vinyl flooring.
Thanks to the thick covering, the cold became more bearable, but it also cut off the air. With no fresh air coming in, the carriage was quickly filled with a suffocating stench.
A wave of terror washed over him—the fear that he might suffocate to death from the lack of oxygen and the foul smell.
Juhwan pressed himself flat against the floor. He squeezed as close to the edge as possible to catch even the slightest bit of air.
With his nose pressed against the narrow gap between the cover and the carriage frame, Juhwan forced himself to breathe as slowly as possible.
‘Slowly, slowly. It’s okay. This isn’t an airtight space. Air is still coming in, even if it’s just a little. I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid.’
Juhwan suppressed his rising panic. He couldn’t afford to be impatient. Impatience would only heighten the fear of death. If that happened, he would instinctively try to gulp down more air, and eventually, his mind would snap from the terror of not being able to breathe.
Juhwan took shallow breaths repeatedly. He was plagued by the fear that if he fell asleep, he might never wake up.
He kept his eyes wide open in the pitch-black darkness. But whether his eyes were open or closed, the darkness remained the same. As time passed, he lost the ability to tell if his eyes were even open. His mind became a muddled mess.
How did it come to this? Was it really worth living like this? The thought crossed his mind suddenly.
He had no family. His parents had died in an accident when he was in middle school, and he had been alone ever since. He had dated women, but it never lasted long.
Every time he returned to his dark house and turned on the light, he was reminded of how lonely he was despite being surrounded by so many people.
Still, he had worked hard to survive. He had lived with his head held high, putting up a front in a lonely world. But honestly, he was exhausted. Every night before he fell asleep, he tried to recall his parents’ faces. But at some point, he realized he could no longer remember them clearly. Even his memories had become lonely.
‘Father, Mother.’
Do I have to keep living even after falling into a place like this? Is that what I’m supposed to do? I don’t want to. I want to stop now. If I’ve been cast out of the world I knew and dropped into a place like this all alone, then perhaps I don’t have to try anymore.
Despite his thoughts, his body betrayed his mind. It screamed that it wanted to live, that it needed air. His breathing grew ragged as he struggled to suck in what little oxygen remained.
Just as his consciousness began to fade, the voice of the Santa echoed in his mind for some reason. Be happy! Happy, my foot. This world or the other, it’s all the same hell.
He spent that night suppressing the constant waves of the fear of death. It was a more grueling ordeal than the cold. Only when morning came and the covers were raised did he finally feel like he was alive.
That routine continued for two more days. Every night, he wondered if he would die. But human life is resilient. It does not end easily.
He didn’t die. Eventually, even the thought of wanting to die faded away.
He just wished the pain would stop.
On the third day, the carriage Juhwan was in arrived at a desolate-looking rural village. It was around noon, with the sun high in the sky.
*
It was the first village he had seen since arriving in this world.
‘So, ordinary people live here too.’
He felt a strange sensation. Juhwan clung to the wooden bars of the carriage and looked out at the quiet rural village.
Perhaps to ward off animals or bandits, a stone wall about the height of a man stretched out against the backdrop of frozen winter fields.
However, it didn’t look like such a wall could actually stop anything.
The stone wall was crumbling in places, riddled with holes. It didn’t even surround the entire village.
As the soldiers led the carriages into the village, a few men came scurrying out from a sparsely populated street.
Juhwan held onto the wooden bars and watched the village men greeting the soldiers.
An old man who appeared to be the leader and middle-aged villagers bowed obsequiously to the soldiers.
The old man seemed to have the highest status. Though they were all dressed similarly, his clothes were the cleanest, and he was the one conversing with the soldiers’ commander. Perhaps he was the Village Chief.
When the commander said something, one of the villagers beside the Village Chief hurried off into the village.
In the meantime, the soldiers moved the carriages further into the village.
The land was vast, but the village itself was small. The houses were clustered together with only short distances between them, and in a square that appeared to be the center of the village, there was a well built of stacked stones.
The sight of the well made him suddenly thirsty. It seemed the others felt the same. The men in the same carriage as Juhwan swallowed hard.
But no one in the carriage said a word. It was eer-ily quiet. Juhwan also kept his mouth shut, sensing the atmosphere, and fixed his gaze outside.
He couldn’t afford to stand out. Before entering the village, he had seen a man in another carriage try to speak to a soldier, only to be beaten. The man had been bleeding profusely, his eye seemingly ruptured.
The soldiers didn’t care whether the people in the carriages lived or died. They were likely worth less than a single coin. It was clear there was no such thing as human dignity here. At least, not as far as the soldiers were concerned.
How did I end up in this state? A small sigh escaped his parched lips.
After a while, the village men returned with several kegs of liquor. Behind them, a few women were carrying baskets of food.
A boisterous clamor rose among the soldiers.
The kegs and wooden cups were placed on a small wooden table next to the well, and the women set down the food baskets.
The commander and several soldiers were drinking and speaking to the women. Their voices carried a certain grease. Even without understanding the language, their gazes and tones made their intentions clear.
It didn’t seem like the soldiers would be leaving this village anytime soon.
“….”
Why had they come to this village? Was it just a stop on the way to somewhere else, or did they have a specific purpose? An uneasy feeling settled in his chest.
When the Village Chief bowed and said something to the commander, the commander glanced at the village women. The women stood with pale faces and bowed heads.
The Village Chief nodded vigorously and gave a servile smile. He bowed several times.
Then, he discreetly handed a small pouch to the commander. Judging by the way the pouch hung heavy, it likely contained some form of currency, like gold or silver coins.
The commander peeked inside the pouch and then barked an order to the soldiers.
“#### #####.”
Several soldiers approached another carriage and swung the doors open.
That carriage held the most people. It seemed to have nearly double the number of the other carriages—roughly forty to fifty people. There wasn’t even room to sit; some were hunched over, leaning on others.
Prodded by the soldiers, the men inside the carriage filed out. If anyone moved too slowly, the soldiers poked them with the butt of their spears or struck them indiscriminately.
As Juhwan had suspected, the people in that carriage appeared to be criminals or slaves. Every single one of them had iron shackles around their ankles. From the look of it, they were more likely to be slaves than criminals.
What would happen to him? Even without shackles, would he be treated as a slave like the others? If he had dropped into an open field instead of this carriage, he might have found another way, but it seemed a man with no luck stayed unlucky regardless of the situation. Juhwan involuntarily clenched his fists.
As the slaves gathered outside the carriage with the clanking of chains, the Village Chief and the village men approached them.
The Village Chief and the men stood before the slaves and began inspecting them one by one.
They forced them to open their mouths to check their teeth and meticulously felt their shoulders, arms, and waists. They looked them over from front to back, making them sit down or spin around. It was exactly like picking out livestock.
Once the Village Chief and the village men had selected about twenty slaves, the soldiers led them to the commander.
A soldier placed a thick stack of papers on the table where the commander was sitting.
What were they planning to do? Whatever was happening now was what would happen to Kim Joo-hwan in the future. Juhwan held his breath and watched the scene through the wooden bars.
