The next day passed quickly.
The Republic organized the supplies and documents needed for the delegation,
and Eunwoldan adjusted their equipment, signals,
and movements on the road from the outside.
Bido did not remain idle, either.
She moved bundled baggage, carried water,
and spent the day organizing necessary items in the order Edgar had written down.
Mireong gathered people and reconfirmed hand signals and signs,
and Wollyeon tended to her heavy crossbow.
Jincheong checked to match with the Republic's guards and the shape of the road,
and Yun went back and forth inside and outside the protection zone carrying rosters and documents.
Raen was quieter than usual.
With a face that seemed to swallow something back at the end of every word, she followed the tasks Mireong assigned,
and by the time the sun began to set, only the last tied bundles remained neatly stacked to one side.
All that remained now was the night,
and the departure that would follow after it passed.
—
Night fell upon the protection zone.
The sounds that had busily come and gone during the day fell silent one by one,
and between the tents, only even breathing and the faint smell of campfires remained.
Most of Eunwoldan had fallen asleep as well.
And in the shadows where even moonlight could not reach,
a few people were still awake.
Footsteps treading low.
Tak.
Step, step.
Mireong was the first to notice that sound.
She spoke very softly.
"He's here."
Maho revealed himself from within the darkness.
He looked even closer to a shadow than when he had briefly passed by during the day.
After scanning his surroundings once, he immediately fixed his gaze on Raen.
"The preparations."
Raen answered softly.
"Yes... I'm all ready."
It was a voice weaker than usual.
Raen herself couldn't hide that.
Maho did not ask anything further.
"Then let's go."
Raen could not move immediately.
Instead of answering, she turned toward Bido for a moment.
When their eyes met, Bido, who had been standing quietly beside a tent pole, slowly raised her hand.
It wasn't a parting.
They were moving toward the same path.
But it wasn't traveling together, either.
That subtle sense of distance
felt even clearer.
Bido spoke very softly.
"See you again, Raen."
Raen bit her lip, then soon nodded slightly.
"Yeah."
Bido could tell without asking that there were many swallowed words behind that short answer.
Maho neither urged nor waited for their brief exchange.
He simply shifted his gaze toward Rangnan and spoke lowly.
"We're going, then."
Rangnan nodded briefly.
Maho glanced toward Bido for a moment, then added with an indifferent face.
"Don't worry. Now, just as much as she is to you, Bido is important to me, too."
Mireong frowned slightly at those words,
but this time she said nothing.
Raen looked back and forth between Bido and Mireong one last time.
Then she quietly approached Maho.
Maho lifted Raen lightly with a practiced hand.
The next moment, his toes touched the ground.
Tak.
Like a shadow surging upward, he leaped.
A black form slid away in the darkness toward the wall.
Only silence remained once more.
Bido gazed in the direction Maho and Raen had disappeared for a while,
then slowly walked to Mireong's tent.
Bido returned inside the tent but could not easily lie down.
The organized baggage was not much, and perhaps because of that, it looked all the clearer.
When she closed her eyes, the faces she had seen yesterday came to mind.
The warmth of the bread Bell had handed her, the familiar streets,
the rest area inside the wall where she had sat side by side with Noel.
Make sure you come back.
Those words she had heard around sunset kept lingering in her heart.
Instead of asking if she could come back, Bido quietly steadied her breathing.
It wasn't that she had no fear.
But that fear no longer stopped her.
I won't run away.
When she closed her eyes, reciting the words she had spoken once more in her heart,
the darkness outside the tent had already lightened just a little.
The night was already ending.
It wasn't tomorrow anymore; now it was truly today.
—
Dawn came faster than she had thought.
Though the night's chill still remained inside the protection zone, there were hardly any sleeping faces.
Some were already lifting baggage,
someone was tightening a cord for the last time,
and onto the Republic's wagons, documents and supplies were being loaded one by one.
Bido came out of the tent and breathed in the cold air.
Not far away, Mireong was checking on the people,
and Edgar was finalizing the last signals with the Republic's guards.
Wollyeon lifted her heavy crossbow, unwrapped from its cloth,
and Jincheong already had the eyes of someone surveying the darkness outside.
They would leave Arku today.
That fact had now become a reality that could no longer be postponed,
standing clearly before Bido like the dawn air.
Bido walked over without hesitation.
Mireong was the first to notice Bido.
Mireong stopped lifting a tied bundle and turned her head.
"Ah, you're up?"
She looked over Bido's face once and said.
"You could've slept more."
Bido shook her head slightly.
"Ah... no. Let me help, too."
Mireong looked at Bido for a moment and let out a short laugh.
"Alright. Then start by moving the water jugs tied over there."
"Yes."
Bido immediately moved toward them.
The protection zone at dawn wore a different face from yesterday.
The baggage organized yesterday was being checked once more,
and Jincheong, having already scanned the outside and returned, was
briefly reporting the road's condition to Rangnan in a low voice.
Mireong busily moved between them, giving the people one last look.
"That goes to the second wagon."
"Edgar, check that cord one more time."
"Wollyeon, don't load that now, put it on right before departure."
Short words passed through the dawn air.
No one raised their voice, but their hands did not rest.
Mireong turned toward Bido and spoke.
"Bido."
"Yes?"
"You stick with me by the first wagon. Don't go rushing ahead for no reason."
Bido nodded slightly.
"Yes. I understand."
Hearing that answer, Mireong said nothing more.
Instead, she checked the baggage Bido had moved once, then turned away as if satisfied.
The dawn was gradually growing lighter.
The final preparations inside the protection zone were also slowly nearing their end.
Bido had just set down a water jug beside the second wagon and was catching her breath.
Her fingertips were a bit frozen in the cold dawn air,
but her body was moving more lightly than she had thought.
Then footsteps of two people approached from outside the protection zone.
It was Raimon.
A secretary followed behind him.
In the secretary's arms, a registration roster and a folder of sealed documents were held neatly.
As Raimon approached, he first looked at the wagons,
then shifted his gaze to Eunwoldan.
After nodding shortly as if confirming that the final preparations were nearly finished, he spoke to Yun and Rangnan.
"Only the final confirmation remains now."
Yun turned from where he stood.
"The roster?"
"Yes. We need to do a final check on the Security Cooperation Force escort personnel."
Raimon said so and extended his hand,
and the secretary immediately took out and unfolded the registration roster.
The sound of paper turning brushed thinly through the dawn air.
Rangnan answered briefly.
"Everyone is gathered."
"Very good."
Raimon carefully finished his words to Rangnan, then shifted his gaze again.
"Escort personnel, step forward."
Mireong took the first step forward.
Edgar moved after her,
and Wollyeon and Jincheong also silently took their places.
Bido hesitated for a moment, then seeing Mireong's signal, quietly stepped forward.
Holding the roster, the secretary prepared to shift his gaze to each person in turn.
Standing beside him, Raimon slowly looked over the five people standing before him.
Raimon's gaze fell on the first line of the roster.
"Younger... than I thought."
When Raimon blurted out absentmindedly,
the secretary spoke.
"There are three Haraya."
"I know that."
He did know.
That Haraya looked younger than humans.
But knowing and seeing directly were different matters.
Mireong looked no older than a woman who had just come of age,
but the roster recorded years far longer than that face suggested.
Wollyeon had a face that could be called a young girl without seeming strange,
and Jincheong also looked like a young man, but the composure ingrained in his body was not that of a youth.
Edgar, on the contrary, was the most ordinary,
feeling like a reference point within this discrepancy.
Raimon's gaze stopped on the last person.
Bido.
Human.
Seventeen.
This time, appearance and record did not diverge.
That was why it gave him pause.
He looked again at the brief special note written at the end of the roster.
Heteromorphic ears.
His gaze slowly rose from the paper and turned toward Bido's face.
If one looked only at her ears, it was hard to call her human.
But the rest of her impression was that of a young human no matter where one looked.
Raimon was briefly speechless.
"...Is this child included in the escort personnel as well?"
After a brief silence, he asked, closing the roster.
"Even if the Haraya are one thing, this one is too young."
At Raimon's words, silence flowed for a moment.
Yun was the first to open his mouth.
"She's included."
He continued in an unwavering voice.
"This child is Mirkin. The kind that can suppress another's Mirkin."
Raimon's gaze changed very slightly.
The secretary also raised his eyes from the roster to look at Bido again.
Yun did not stop there.
"Furthermore, she is also Aslo's disciple.
She's already mastered the sword, and handles it better than most adults. She has combat experience, too."
This time, Raimon's gaze turned to the sword hanging on Bido's back.
That sword had already been confirmed sealed,
and it was not a weight one carried merely as decoration.
Rangnan continued in a low voice.
"We're not taking her because she's young. We're taking her because she's needed."
His voice was short and decisive.
"The most dangerous threat to the delegation isn't regular troops, but that kind.
Bido can respond to that."
Raimon did not immediately object.
Instead, he looked down at the roster once more, then looked at Bido before him again.
Seventeen.
By record alone, she was certainly on the young side.
Even seeing her in person, that impression was not much different.
But with the explanation he had just heard added on,
she was not someone who could be excluded simply for looking young.
Raimon tapped the edge of the roster with his fingers as if thinking for a moment.
"...To what extent does this 'suppression' reach?"
Yun answered in his stead.
"We don't expect complete neutralization.
But it means she's a card that can respond to special forces we might encounter on the road.
The difference between having one and not is vast."
Raimon slowly raised his head.
"And she knows how to use a sword... is what you're saying."
This time, Rangnan answered briefly.
"Yes."
Mireong added from the side, arms crossed.
"If you're going to judge people by appearances alone, you'd have to send me and Wollyeon home, too."
Raimon let out a small breath at those words.
He did not refute it.
Rather, after looking at Bido for a while, he finally closed the roster.
"I understand."
It was a short answer.
She is indeed young. But I shall take that to mean she is not someone to be excluded.
And then he shifted his gaze, scanning the entire escort personnel once more.
"If that is the case, then deployment and control on the road are all the more important."
Yun nodded lightly.
Raimon asked nothing more.
Instead, he handed the roster back to the secretary and spoke lowly.
"Very well. Then I shall register these personnel exactly as they are."
Behind the sound of papers closing, faint footsteps of someone approaching brushed past.
There was still one last person remaining.