The old man heard that the young Durin from his family wrote a long essay, passed the military supervisor seal of a certain emperor's little great-granddaughter, and it has now been submitted to the General Mansion... This was already something that happened two days later.
Clicking his tongue, he finally gave up the idea of going to the General Mansion for a drink today. As an old and weary man who has lived this long, he sat on the first floor of a tea house watching people come and go.
On the old TV on the rack, the news broadcast about the Three Passes and Four Seas was so familiar yet so unfamiliar to him.
Familiar because he once lived like that, endured hardships, suffered pains, crouched in trenches, and faced numerous challenges just like the soldiers on the TV.
Unfamiliar because it had been decades since he lived like that. The trenches, the smiling young men, the solitary smoke in the vast desert—all seemed so strange.
