Visitations and Tidings
PromiseAnother two weeks passed with Jaehwan stuck in bed, though Krystal came to visit him nearly every evening. She'd found that he liked sweets and had taken to bringing something from the King's dinner for his dessert. And so, when the door opened this evening, he was surprised to find Sohee instead. He was happy to see her, the magician looking drawn and tired as she entered the long white hall and came to his bed. She dawdled with the edges of her velvety red cape for a long moment, not looking at him, until he called her name and patted the bed next to his leg.
She sat, though she still did not look at him: the hood on her cape shadowed her face from view, snow melting into the fabric from where it had dusted the top of her head. She seemed distraught, her shoulders slumped and gaze lowered, and for a time Jaehwan did not know what to do. "Sohee?" he finally asked, his voice soft, and it seemed to shake her from her thoughts.
"I failed the crew, I failed you, and I failed Ki-" she cut off there, ducking her head lower and twisting her cape in her lap with pale fingers. Jaehwan wanted to interrupt and tell her that she hadn't done anything of the sort, but speaking seemed to be a struggle for the usually bright and bubbly magician, so he kept his silence. It took her a moment to steady her voice and begin again. "I should have been able to do something, and I know that you felt that. I have a small gift in seeing thoughts and I heard yours that night. And you were right."
Jaehwan was confused for the breifest moment, a bit shaken to think that she could hear his thoughts, but the core of her emotion struck him then and he gasped. "No! No, Sohee. I was angry and upset and I didn't grasp everything then. I still don't, to be honest, but I absolutely know that you were not to blame! I am so sorry for making you feel that way!"
He reached a hand toward her but she flinched back ever so slightly, so he let it fall without coming into contact. "Please," he implored, leaning to try and get a look inside that deep cape hood. "It wasn't your fault. How were you to know? You had to go with Jessica, you had to protect her, it wasn't your fault what happened at the ship."
Sohee finallly lifted her gaze and looked at Jaehwan, though her face was still shadowed within her hood. "Thank you for thinking that way. I have my own feelings on the matter and so I cannot agree with you, but I do thank you. And now that I have made my apologies," she began, and rose from the bed to turn to face him, "I will also fix this mess."
Jaehwan didn't know what she was talking about until she moved around to the other side of the bed, pulling a jar of some sort of grey mush from a pocket of her dress. "Pull your blanket down," she told him firmly.
Despite that she was still distraught and he wished that he could make her see that the deaths of the crew were not her fault, he wasn't a fool. When a magician told someone to do something, they did it. But he did pause when she reached for the bindings on his leg. She had pushed the hood of her cloak down and he saw her face fully, white and tired, and he felt guilt run through him. "Um, no offense," he began, but she cut him off.
"I'm not too tired for what I will do. No, I'm not healing you fully, I am needed for what I can do for Yunho. But I would hate for you to have permanent nerve damage in your leg from that wound, and that I can fix." She fixed him with a dire glare with those cat eyes. "Unless I need to call guards in here to pin you down."
That would be embarrassing and they both knew it, so Jaehwan shut his mouth and let her unwind the bandages from his thigh. He had removed the blankets from that leg and still covered the rest of his practically unclothed body, but he couldn't help the blush that spread over him under her attentions. He didn't have feelings for her, at least not romantic ones, but still, she was a beautiful young woman and he was nearly !
Sohee let out a sudden, shocking laugh, and leveled Jaehwan with a meaningful look. It took him a couple of heartbeats to catch on, and then he flushed bright red as he realized she had heard his thoughts. "Oh hells, that is so inconvenient. How much of my thoughts have you heard? Do you hear them always? Like... everything?"
She laughed, shaking her head as she worked with carefully removing the last layer of bandaging. It had a tendency to get stuck to the skin close to his wound, no matter the amount of cream they placed on it to try and avoid that, and Jaehwan winced at a particularly pinching tug. "No, not everything. Like I said, I have only a small gift in it. But your thoughts, like you, are particularly loud." She gave a mischievous smile at that, though a bit of sadness still clung to her despite the teasing. "But people have many ways to read what they're thinking or what they are about. For instance, since the first day on the Lion Heart, I knew t
Comments