01/26/13

Second chapter of the day~~ The action will be in the chapter! I'm not sure when I'll update, but I think I'm on a roll, so maybe sooner than expected again :O

            Victoria and Nichkhun were walking along the path that Hyunseung had told them to take. They were almost finished planning out their strategy. Thankfully, the advisors had made them memorize the map of the Palace, so they had an idea of where everything would take place. The strategy and sequence of events had already been planned out, but there was one thing that the two could not agree on.

            “I’m going to participate in the fight!” Victoria demanded.

            “No, you can’t. It’s too dangerous,” Nichkhun rejected the thought immediately.

            She huffed with exasperation. “Says the king who is nationally ranked lower in combat than the queen.”

            Even though Victoria couldn’t see Nichkhun’s face right now, she was sure he was giving her a frustrated look.

            “I still forbid it,” he said stubbornly. Then, his voice became very quiet. “What if you die?”

            Hearing that, Victoria felt butterflies in her stomach. “Eww, Nichkhun, I never knew you were a romantic.”

            “I’m not being romantic, I’m being realistic!” Nichkhun shouted indignantly. “You can die in the battlefield!”

            “Well, so can you, Nichkhun,” she countered. “Actually, you have a better chance of dying than me!”

            There was silence.

            Victoria squeezed his hand. She softened her voice. “Please, Nichkhun, stop worrying about me. Our plan will not work unless I also participate in the fight. Heck, I’ll have to, since I’ll be in the middle of it all when the battle starts.”

            “I’ll never stop worrying about you,” he stated.

            When he said nothing else, Victoria smiled. She knew she had won this fight. “Thanks.”

            After a couple more minutes of walking in silence, Nichkhun decided to strike up some conversation. “I wonder how Hyunseung knows about this cave.”

            “Maybe he used his magic to figure out the map of the cave?” Victoria suggested.

            “I don’t think so,” Nichkhun considered the idea. “He’s been pretty adamant about now using his magic for quite a while now.”

            “Ah, why is he doing that?” Victoria asked curiously. “I’ve been meaning to ask this. Why doesn’t he use magic anymore?”

            “He wants to speed up the development of his rationality,” Nichkhun explained. “Magic users naturally veer to the supernatural side and are therefore more irrational and emotional.

            “Hyunseung figured that if he stopped using magic, he could be more logical.”

            Victoria sighed. It was hard to wrap her mind around this concept. “I still can’t believe magic and rationality can go into the same sentence.”

            “You live in a world where both of them coexist, though.”

            “But magic is unexplainable through logic.”

            “Maybe magic doesn’t have to be explained by logic,” Nichkhun proposed. “Maybe the world has two sets of rules. One set can be deduced by science, while the other is completely oblivious to science. When people are using magic, they are deciding to view the world in the second set of rules, the one that cannot be deduced by magic.”

            “… That’s a very different theory,” Victoria stated. There was not much else to say about it. It seems… to make explain many things about the world I’m living in. But…

            “I’ll be waiting for your attempts to strike it down,” Nichkhun laughed.

             :::

            Hyunseung reapplied the wet cloth on Hyuna’s forehead. He gazed at her sleeping face and admired her features. Round face and full mouth. Those are the features of the girl I care about. But no physical feature compares to her heart of gold.

            Heaving a sigh, Hyunseung shook the thoughts out of his head. While he knew he should not think about her in this way, he also knew that there was no way to deny his feelings for her, especially when there is a high possibility that she feels the same for him.

            I must protect her, Hyunseung thought resolutely. I must do everything I can to protect the girl I love.

            With that thought, he was decided. Standing up, he went outside the cave to take some sand and put the un-enchanted sand in an empty pouch. It’s been a while since I used one of these. For the past few years, he gave up magic to try and think more logically. But now, there is something more important than his logical abilities.

            Going back to Hyuna, he sits cross-legged next to her and places the pouch filled with sand in between Hyuna and him. Closing his eyes, Hyunseung focuses his energy on the sand. After meditating for half an hour, he opens his eyes again, happy to find the sand in the pouch change color.

            Well, here goes nothing. Taking a deep breath, he sprinkles the sand on Hyuna.