The next couple of days passed peacefully enough.  Jongdae got Minseok to teach Seoyeon how to cut vegetables properly, and she managed to make the vegetable soup completely by herself on her second solo try, which was two days longer than she would have liked it to take, but that still didn’t prevent the unexpected feeling of accomplishment that followed her around for the entire afternoon after she’d turned to Jongdae to pronounce it done and he’d dipped his ladle in to taste it and pronounced it “adequate.  Well, I guess we can say it’s above adequate.”  He asked her to look into making a stew for the next time.  To her displeasure, they spent the rest of the day sewing shoes, though even that didn’t quite manage to kill her good mood.

Once he had left, Seoyeon found herself in a bit of a fix.  She only had vague ideas about stew — it required meat and vegetables and tasted great, but she didn’t have the first clue how to go about making it — and since it was close to dinnertime, she didn’t dare disturb Minseok about it because the kitchen was going to be extremely busy.  It was as she was wondering if there were any cookery books anywhere that might be of use that she remembered the library.  There was a faint possibility it might have the sort of book she was looking for in it, but she hadn’t yet taken the chance to go back there after Baekhyun had foiled her effort several nights previously.  Whether or not it did have books on cooking, she was sure there would be plenty of others to explore.

The second she tried to pull open the large doors to head back inside, she realised that was going to have to wait.  Hissing with pain, she cradled her hand and gave the giant door knobs a baleful glare.  Then she looked down at her fingers.  They were red and swollen, most likely from an afternoon of forcing needle and thread through tough leather, and she mentally cursed Jongdae.  If her fingers ended up with scars or calluses on them, she was going to skewer him.

For the time being, though, she needed to find some way to soothe them.  They must have gone numb while she was actually sewing: she could think of no other reason for them only being painful now.  But they were also stiff, and how was she going to open any of the thick doors in Ximo if she couldn’t even grasp the handles and pull?

Right on cue, the door opened and Seoyeon had to jump out of the way to avoid being hit.  Captain Park stepped out, checking that something was properly affixed to his belt.

“Watch it!” Seoyeon snapped at him, and he looked up.

“My apologies,” he said blandly before striding away.

Seoyeon glowered after him until the squeaking hinges reminded her that the door was closing and she might not be able to open it again, and so she slipped inside.

Fortunately, Jieun was in Seoyeon’s room when she got up there, and had also had enough experience sewing tough materials to know exactly what Seoyeon needed.  She drew a bowl of cool water and instructed Seoyeon to rest her fingertips in it while she hurried away to get a salve.  With a sigh of deep contentment, Seoyeon closed her eyes and sat waiting for her to return.  Her mind drifted as she did, and she found herself wondering what her mother would have made of Kim Jongdae, and Ximo, for that matter.  She’d always been much better than Seoyeon was at showing a pleasant demeanour to people that she really, really disliked, and Seoyeon had to admit that was something she envied.  By contrast, behind closed doors her mother had had a barbed tongue reserved for people she despised that shocked even Seoyeon on occasion.  The only person Seoyeon could really unleash to in the same manner was her father, but she knew that he wouldn’t tolerate it much because he was of the opinion that she should always be ladylike and dignified.  Thinking about her mother brought a huge bout of homesickness and grief, and by the time Jieun returned, Seoyeon was a sobbing mess.

“Ma’am,” said Jieun, alarmed.  “Is it really that painful?  Should I send for the physician?”

Seoyeon sniffled, keeping her fingers firmly in the water.  “No.  I just miss my mother.”

Jieun lifted one of her hands out of the water and dried it off with a towel so that she could start applying the salve.  “Did she stay home?  Could you not visit each other?”

“She died.”  Seoyeon hiccoughed sorrowfully.

Jieun paused for a long moment, evidently searching for the right way to respond.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said eventually in a quiet voice.

Seoyeon hiccoughed again in agreement, and Jieun continued her medical administrations in silence.

The reminder of grief made the noise and exuberance of dinner in the mess hall absolutely suffocating.  Seoyeon tried to avoid it, but her father was still dining with a handful of soldiers every night to get to know them all, and the officers took it in turns to greet her when she entered the mess hall and they would definitely notice if she didn’t show up.  Holding the cutlery was painful, but she didn’t feel like eating much anyway and spent most of the meal staring quietly down at her plate and trying to tune out all the surrounding noise.  The soldiers still tried to get her to join in their conversations every so often, but by the time dessert rolled round, they’d realised it was a lost cause and given up.  Needing time to herself where nobody could interrupt, she all but fled for the library as soon as the meal was over.

It still took her some time to find it, but she was pleased when she found herself in the corridor standing outside the carved wooden doors that she remembered.  They pushed open easily to the touch and she peeked inside.

The first thing she noticed was the candelabras.  Two had been lit, the candles burning low.  Was somebody already in the library?”

“Hello?” she called out softly as she slipped in through the door, closing it behind her.

There was no response.  She looked around.  All four walls were covered with shelves crammed from end to end with books.  There was a wooden spiral staircase leading up to a balcony that ran around the room a little way above head height, presumably so no ladders were needed, and a pair of standalone shelves stood back to back in the middle of the room near the reading desks.  Seoyeon wandered over to it to check that nobody was hiding behind it.  No one.  She looked up at the chandeliers again, frowning, and then at the ones that didn’t have their candles lit, and then at the reading lanterns on the desks.  They were old and covered with dust, and she reckoned they hadn’t been used in years.  In fact, there was no sign that the desks themselves had been used in years.

Brushing away a cobweb, she picked up one of the reading lanterns.  Its door squeaked open and swung round to hit her on the thumb, and she cursed silently, nearly dropping the thing.  Carefully placing it back on the table, she cast around for some way to light the untouched candle inside it.

After a moment or two, she realised that the only possibility was using one of the candles from the