o49

The Curse

It took two days before Jinqiong was allowed off bedrest (per Yixing’s orders, and even then, they had made a pair of makeshift crutches for her so she could hobble around the ship. The stairs proved an issue, but it was more movement than before, and Jinqiong could feel her body getting stronger, even if it was painfully slow.

Jongdae had come to visit her three times—twice with meals, once to talk—but none of it had really been the conversation Jinqiong was waiting for. They were all surprisingly casual, shorter than Jinqiong had expected, and nothing about them really felt different than before. Part of her wondered if that conversation on the ice, right after Junsu had faded—if it had really happened. She expected things to be different after that—how so, Jinqiong didn’t know, but just different—and she wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or relieved that they weren’t. Perhaps disappointed because she expected something more, or relieved because more was scary, and she didn’t know how to deal with it if it did happen.

Maybe Jongdae had changed his mind. Maybe he had figured that it wasn’t a good idea, that he didn’t want to go with her, and that it wasn’t worth it. All of those were options, and they swam anxiously in Jinqiong’s head until they were the only explanation she could think of.

Around midday on the second day, Jinqiong had decided to pick up the crutches and attempt to head up the stairs. The wounds were healing fast—especially with the poultice that Yuxuan had made for her to use—and while her chest ached, she was in a much better state than before.

She had barely made it out of the door before the one next to hers swung open. She stopped, wincing as the pressure changed to her relatively more injured leg, and looked towards Jongdae, who had stuck his head out.

Jinqiong had briefly asked Yixing about how injured he was, and the healer had given her a quick run down about his injuries. It wasn’t nearly as bad as hers, and the wound that had travelled through his hand had been healed, but hearing about it still made her feel guilty. Jongdae was apparently more capable of moving around than she was, but despite everything, it didn’t change the fact that it was because of her.

“Hey,” he said.

Jinqiong shifted her weight back. “Hi.”

He gestured inside his room. “Come inside?”

Jinqiong eyed it through the open door. There was a lantern in the back, burning cheerfully.

It would be a lie to say that she didn’t miss Jongdae’s room. There was a certain sort of coziness and homeliness to it that didn’t exist in her own cabin, probably more or less because her own cabin didn’t have a touch that made it truly… personal. Jongdae’s was full of books, his crumpled notes, and it was just him. Hers could have belonged to anyone.

Still, the only reason she had really been there in the first place was because of the sixth sector, because she had lost her sight and Jongdae was the only one who could technically help. No other reason, Jinqiong told herself.

“Well?” Jongdae asked. He had given up on whatever he had been doing, and instead, turned around fully on the chair so that he was facing her, arms folded in front of his chest. “Are you going to come inside?”

Jinqiong suddenly remembered their last conversation once more. Again, it had been painfully formal—maybe formal wasn’t the right word, but it was the only word she could think of—and all she could wonder was if Jongdae perhaps regretted it. Changed his mind. Decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

She took a deep breath and limped inside his room, shutting the door behind her.

Jongdae wasn’t as bandaged as she was, but his right hand was still wrapped in gauze, and Jinqiong was sure there were much more underneath his clothing. She remembered very clearly how Junsu had struck him with the whip down the back—that had looked like a particularly nasty blow—and the multiple injuries he must’ve sustained after they had crawled out of the water. She almost winced at the thought of it.

“I heard you’re not supposed to be up and walking,” he noted casually, and Jinqiong cringed internally. This sounded like another one of the conversations that went nowhere. 

“I’m fine,” she replied carefully.

Careful and Jongdae didn’t seem to go together. Jinqiong was used to speaking whatever came to her mind around him.

He gave her a slight nod. “Well, Yuxuan told me I’m well enough to move, but I figured I might as well take advantage of the niceness. Byun Baekhyun brings me meals at my command. It’s quite refreshing.” He tilted his head. “Have you seen Hei yet?”

Jinqiong shook her head before moving into the room a bit more so she could sit on the bed, setting the crutches to rest against the frame. Her body ached at the effort. “I was going to see her after.”

Jongdae nodded thoughtfully. Jinqiong had half a mind to get up and leave, but before she did, she blurted out, “Did you really mean it that you’d go with me?”

He raised his head at that. “Pardon?”

Her heart dropped at that. “Never mind. I—”

“No, I mean, what?” He frowned at her. “What do you mean if I really meant it? You know I can’t lie.”

Jinqiong cursed herself for not keeping shut like she should’ve. Too chagrined to talk about it more, she shook her head at him, conclusions already forming in her head. He couldn’t lie, but he could change his mind. If, at that moment, he had decided something, it didn’t mean he was going to stick with it now that he probably had time to properly think about it. Besides, she had no clue where she was even going to go, and without a definitive answer, did he want to? Even with a definitive answer, any sane person probably realized it was stupid, and Jongdae was the most rational person on the ship.

“Jinqiong,” Jongdae was saying. “Hello? Can you hear me? What do you mean?”

She shrugged it off. “Nothing. I just… I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m going to go upstairs now.”

“You’re lying,” he replied automatically, and Jinqiong had half the mind to snap at him before belatedly realizing that it was completely her fault and there was nothing she could even blame him for.

“I don’t know,” Jinqiong repeated. “Is that a lie? I really don’t know.”

“Depends on what you don’t know,” Jongdae replied. “You don’t know what you just said? That would be a lie. But you don’t know if I meant what I said that day?”

Jinqiong hoped her face hadn’t turned even the slightest bit pink. “I didn’t say—”

“But it’s been on your mind and that’s what you were trying to ask?” he finished.

She was halfway to denying it before something stopped her. Jinqiong wasn’t sure what it was and she was certain that it was something she never would’ve done before, but she conceded. “Maybe.”

“So yes?”

That was going to far, and she ended up shooting Jongdae a look. He raised his hands in faux surrender. “Let me guess,” he said, “you’re worried about it because I haven’t brought up what I said that day at all, and you think I’m beginning to regret what I said?”

That’s exactly it, Jinqiong thought dryly, but she ended up shrugging. Another part of her was slightly horrified by just how easily he had guessed that (or read—she wasn’t sure when it came to Jongdae). “Something along those lines,” she replied.

Jongdae let out a snort. “Somewhere along those lines,” he echoed. “Right. Well, if you want me to be perfectly honest, I haven’t brought it up because I didn’t think there was anything to bring up. If you had told me you actually didn’t want me tagging along then it would be a completely different story, but I thought we’d come to a conclusion. Besides, I haven't seen you that much since we’ve been back and I thought that if we were going to discuss future plans we might as well do so when we’re at least a little more healed and we’ve figured out the Taeyong thing. We’re done for the most part, but you know we’re not completely in the clear yet.” He tilted his head at her. “You really interpreted all that as me going back on my word?”

Now adamant in preserving what was left of her dignity (but at the same time much more reassured by what he had said), Jinqiong shook her head. “No,” she replied, then amended, “I just wasn’t sure.”

Jongdae was smiling a little bit. “Thought you’d trust me a bit more than that after Junsu.”

“I’m not good with trust,” she muttered back.

Jongdae’s smile turned into a grin. “I’m well aware,” he replied. “I suppose we’ll work on that. We have plenty of time.” 

***

Hei could sit up on her own, and soon, holding onto Baekhyun, she took her first small walk around the deck. The central island now seemed much more peaceful, even if the remains of Junsu’s ships still rested a couple hundred meters from them. The ice had begun to melt now, from the heat and from both Chanyeol and Luhan’s work. Most of all, it was nice to catch fresh air, though it wasn’t long before Baekhyun brought her back to the cabin with the insistence that she had to rest.

Five minutes later after having decided to humour him, there was a knock on her cabin door. Given that Baekhyun didn’t knock (and Jongdae didn’t really either), it wasn’t either of them.

“Hey,” someone called from the outside, and with a jolt, Hei recognized Jinqiong’s voice. “Can I come in?”

She pushed herself up immediately. Hei had been told that her sister was fine and healing, but neither of them could really go anywhere, and she hadn’t seen her ever since that dreadful moment before Jungwoo had taken her out of the ship. And while everyone said she was fine (and even Baekhyun had talked to her), Hei hadn’t been able to feel quite as reassured when she wasn’t able to see her sister.

“Come in,” she called hurriedly. The bit of nervous anticipation seemed to expand in her chest until it had turned full blown, and all of a sudden, Hei was much more jittery than she thought she would be. All she could think about was that very last moment she could remember, where Jinqiong had knocked her in the back of the skull with her dagger, intent on getting her out to safety. Jongdae had shown up, Baekhyun said, but if he hadn’t, or if he had been too late, then Jinqiong would’ve died. And Hei had a feeling that her sister wasn’t the type of person who would run headlong into danger without knowing the full consequences.

And if she knew the full consequences, it meant that she had been prepared to die.

Slowly, the cabin door swung open, and Hei craned her neck to look at Jinqiong.

The girl had a pair of makeshift crutches, and she swung unsteadily in the room before brushing the door shut behind her. She gave Hei a smile—or it might’ve been a wince—before hobbling over to the side of the bed. “You look like you’re recovering,” Jinqiong said conversationally.

Hei could only nod mutely. She had been relatively injured when she had been brought back, and even then, some of the cuts hurt, but it was nothing compared to Jinqiong. Hei had heard of the broken bones, but there was much more even just on the surface area: bruises on her face, bandages peeking out from almost everywhere possible.

“Are you okay?” she ended up asking in a small voice.

Jinqiong raised an eyebrow, now having settled down on the chair next to the bed. “Come again?” she asked.

“You look pretty banged up,” she tried again, but her voice sounded weaker than usual. “Are you alright now?”

“I heal fast,” Jinqiong replied, a little bit shortly. “I mean, I’ve had worse. Yuxuan healed everything major, anyway, so I’ll be perfectly fine.” A long, long pause. “What about you? And… the baby?”

Hei managed a smile and nod, but it felt a lot like the wince Jinqiong had given to her in the beginning. For some reason, it felt awkward to talk—about anything, really—when the most pressing matter hadn’t been addressed. And perhaps Jinqiong didn’t feel the same way, but Hei couldn’t bring herself to stop thinking about that moment and what it meant.

“Well,” Jinqiong said, and this time, she sounded like she felt rather out of place as well. She reached for her crutches, which she had rested against the bedside table. “You should probably rest, since you need to be well enough to go find Taeyong, and I just wanted to drop by and see if you’re alright—”

“Jinqiong,” Hei interrupted before she could lose all her courage.

Her sister looked at her. Hei wasn’t sure if it were a trick of the lamplight, but she also looked slightly nervous. “Yeah,” she muttered, slowly retracting her hand and leaving them folded on her lap (which in itself told her that her sister was at least nervous—she would never otherwise sit so stiffly).

“Thank you for saving me,” she said slowly, then pressed her lips together. “But I just… why did you do that? You told Jungwoo to take me and leave. You could’ve died. There was no way you thought you could take out Junsu alone, right? Or… did you even have a plan? If Jongdae didn’t show up, you wouldn’t be here right now.”

Jinqiong’s lips started pulling into a slight smile. “I don’t really make plans,” she corrected.

Hei shook her head incredulously. “It’s a miracle you’re alive right now. Why did you do that?”

“You’re my sister.” 

“That’s not—” Enough. That’s not enough. It wasn’t what Hei really wanted to say, but it didn’t mean anything. She had plenty more sisters and brothers. They didn’t mean anything. We’re siblings had never really meant anything.

“I mean,” Jinqiong elaborated, “you’re my sister. Not… like those back at Hua. Maybe we’ve missed out too much time already, but you’re the closest to what a real sibling should be like. And I wouldn’t just let you die there.”

“But you could’ve died.”

“Maybe,” she replied nonchalantly. “It was just a sacrifice I was willing to make.”

Hei stared at Jinqiong. She said it so easily, so simply, like it was a simple favour, when it was anything but that. And even though it was so much, Hei couldn’t find the words to put together as she struggled to reply. 

“Junsu would’ve killed you,” she ended up saying, even though it was already well-established. “You knew that?”

JInqiong let out a slight laugh, shaking her head. “Hei,” she chastised, but her voice wasn’t as cynical (and typically Jinqiong) as it was… fond? Was it fond? Hei couldn’t tell if it were or if she were losing her mind or if the impossible were actually happening. “You knew that if you stayed behind, you could’ve very well died as well.”

“If you hadn’t knocked me out and sent Jungwoo away, it would’ve been three against one—”

“You were unable to get up. All of us were injured. You saw how Junsu disarmed Jungwoo even without his power. We still wouldn’t have been a match against him, and in the state you were in, you probably would’ve been killed. You knew that too.”

Hei hesitated. “But I—”

“No,” Jinqiong interrupted. “Once, Baekhyun told me that I demanded all of your sacrifices—you, him, Jongdae, the crew—without giving anything in return. He was right. I didn’t want to get the short end of the stick anywhere, and the thought of sacrificing something for anyone—I hated it. I thought that I had lost enough already.”

She pressed her lips together, waiting for the next sentence. Bandages peeked out from the too-large shirt Jinqiong was wearing, her face still held bruises, and she looked even more beat up than Hei felt. But for some reason, she looked better than Hei remembered, even if she wasn’t able to pinpoint where the difference was.

Jinqiong had stopped meeting her eyes. “It’s funny,” she said, “because I know you would’ve done the same for me. And I knew that if I did die, if I did have to sacrifice, at least I found something to sacrifice for.”

Silence