Mirror…. Mirror on the wall….

Who’s the fairest of them all….

Yongsun’s steps faltered when her eyes fell at the life-like painting of what must have been the most beautiful woman she ever laid her eyes upon.

Distancing herself from her historian peers, she soon found herself standing in front of the canvas, her legs obeying the unmistakable pull that attracts her to look closer.

Her hand trembled slightly before her fingers brushed against the name etched on the golden plate below the life-size painting, itching to run it instead on the woman’s cheek.

                                                                                                                                Wheein, Countess Karnstein (1698)

Black curls framed her beautifully sculptured jaw line. Eyes as dark as cloudless sky at night. Skin as fair as ivory and her red… red lips…. Yongsun found herself swallowing slightly at the sight of such perfect lips.

She recalled a childhood story of a princess with hair as black as midnight, skin as fair as the snow and lips the color of blood and how she always argued with her mother that no woman could be that beautiful.

Oh, but how wrong she knew she was now.

Yes, the woman depicted in the painting was a living breathing proof that such woman did exist.

She really was the fairest of them all…

“Beautiful isn’t she?”

Yongsun nearly jumped out of her skin when a deep voice of a man emerged from beside her. His eyes crinkled as he smiled at her slightly, before focusing his gaze to the painting.  Yongsun nodded dumbly, finally recognizing the old historian slash the leader of their group as the source of the voice.

“You are not the first one that was entranced by her beauty. If only I have a dollar every time I had to trackback and searched this castle only to find them, and now you, standing before this painting, I would’ve been a millionaire.”   

“Who is she? She didn’t look Albanian. She looked Asian and her name ….”

“A lower nobility from the Joseon dynasty. She was married off to an Albanian Count as a way to form alliance. Not much was known about her, she died not long after she reached this country.”

The old man leaned forward and conspirationally gestured to Yongsun to move closer to him. 

“There was an old wives tale, passed down through generations of servants about her, that after finishing this painting, she was simply disappeared.”

“Oh?” The historian inside of Yongsun was intrigued by the story instantly and she craved to know more, she wanted to know every miniscule detail about this alluring creature.

The man nodded and scratched his salt and pepper beard lightly, “The Count was furious when he found out that his prized wife seemed to simply vanish into thin air. He was so aggrieved that he killed her hand maiden and buried her as his wife, telling the world that his wife had fallen ill. The Count put this very painting at the far corner of this castle’s west wing and closed off that section from visitors, but rumor has it that, as if lured by her beauty, he would visited this painting every night.”

“What happened then?”

“I was told that the Count could still hear the echoes of her singing voice reverberating through the hallway and that her shadow lurked at every corner of this castle. It was slowly but surely messed up with his mind, so much so, that he was declared mentally unstable before he died a couple of years after.”

Yongsun looked back to the painting and stared.

What happened to you?

She shook her head to clear her thoughts. There was no use in wondering about someone that lived in the past, but she can't help but saddened by it.

Such beauty… lost.

“Come, the rest of the group already outside.”

Yongsun nodded absentmindedly, her feet almost refusing to leave, willing to just stand there and gazed into the perfection.

Yongsun caressed the picture with her eyes once more, committing such beauty into her memory.

I wish I could know you.

She smiled slightly and foolishly whispered into the air, “Good bye, Wheein…”

A sudden gush of wind hit her body, wafting through her long hair and caused goosebumps to erupt on her forearms as shiver ran down her spine.  

Her eyes widened and for a split second, Yongsun thought that she has lost her mind.  

But she was sure… she was sure that the painting…..

That Wheein was smiling back at her.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Author's Note: 

So, this ficlet was inspired by Wheeinie's new hairdo and how vampiricly beautiful she looked. Oh, I also took inspiration from Carmilla, a gothic victorian era novella where the title character was depicted as a lesbian vampire *grin*. 

Anyway, creating ficlets in a way is more fun than writing a full blown story because I could play with so many alternate universes and so many different occupations and genres (yeaaayyyy \0/), so I hope you guys enjoy these little slices of universes.

Next uh... maybe Moonsun and then Wheebyul. 

Talk to you guys later :) 

- Gabe -