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“Rok Soo-ya.” A woman calls him, “What would you like as a birthday gift, mm?” the woman asks him with gentleness. “Anything! As long as it's from mama and papa, Rok Soo will like it!” A child with black-hair smiles “Our Rok Soo is so sweet.” A man with the same colored hair as the boy smiles back, “Papa! Eyes on the road.” Rok soo the boy frowns.
“Ah, yes yes sorry about that Rok Soo-ya.” The man chuckles at his son’s comment,
“No laughing, hmph.” Rok Soo responds, “That’s right, hmph.” The woman copies, as the family falls into fits of laughter.
*Crash
There lays the family of 3 covered in blood, “Rok soo-ya..” the woman calls out to him again, “Everything will be alright Rok Soo-ya…” the woman smiles gently at him as blood drips down her forehead “Mama?” He calls out no one answers. He closes his eyes.
He did not cry. No. He knew it wouldn’t help him but slowly it felt like he was falling into an abyss.
—
He wakes up to 3 children sleeping beside him as he calms himself, breathing in, breathing out, breathing in, breathing out.
‘It was just a dream.’ he thinks as he tries to maneuver his way out to not disturb the children sleeping beside him as he gets up from his bed, to find himself wandering in the hallways, he felt a bit lost but his feet stopped in front of a room ‘ The library…’
He walks in to grab the nearest book he can reach and started flipping from page to page, getting gradually faster and faster.
Cale can feel himself getting hotter as he unbuttons his shirt to cool himself down ‘ This is good…’ He distracts himself with the surrounding books piling around him as he reads and reads, ‘ Cale you should sleep sniff*’ The Crybaby whispers quietly to Cale, ‘ Cale, stop overworking crybaby, Sleep your family will get worried if they don’t see you in bed.’
The Super Rock warns Cale with a concerned voice.
But he doesn’t listen he drowns their voices till he couldn’t hear anything other than the flipping of the books, he unbuttons a bit more of his shirt out of habit and he reads again till morning.
—
Raon wakes up to see his older siblings starting to wake as well, he hops to look at Cale but finds him nowhere in sight “Human?” He calls out, “He doesn’t seem to be here…” On, his older sister said as she glances at the door to see it being opened by Ron,
“Cale isn’t here…” Hong voiced their concern to Ron ‘ Where could have the young master gone?’ , “My… Then we should ask the others if they had seen the young master.” Ron walks out of the room as the 3 children follow him.
—
As the children and Ron asked for Cale’s whereabouts from the people of the Villa, everyone started looking for him as no one did ever see him, “Do you think he was kidnapped nya!?” Hong said “No! I will destroy anyone who dares kidnap my Human!” Raon shouts at his Hyung’s comment, Ron sharpened his daggers behind his son, Beacrox as he thinks who would have dared to do such a thing? ‘ Have I failed to protect Cale-nim? ’ Choi Han had grown pale at the thought of doing so.
Rosalyn looked at the panicking of her family “Everyone, calm down maybe we can look for him around the Villa?” She reasons to them, ‘ though if the young master had been kidnapped the kidnapper would face a grave consequence’ she had thought,
“That’s a good idea Miss Rosaly-”
*Thud
A sound had come from upstairs they had rushed to the place of the sound to find Cale covered in books, sweating, and looking like he had gone through a terrible fever.
“You unlucky bastard…”
They had been worried just to find him overusing an ability of his in the library for who knows how long…
—
Ron wipes the sweat off of his puppy young master, as Beacrox comes in to deliver lunch, Cale had collapsed due to the heat that his body was giving out though Choi Han had caught him before he had fallen into the pile of books that scattered around the library.
Eruhaben had known about his child’s ability to ‘Record’ books as he had shown it off in the Mercenaries Guild's Directory, where he had read thousands of books and memorized them word by word with quick flips and not even glancing at a book for more than a minute.
However, what brought the concern to them was why he was doing it.
Cale stirs awake with his eyes fluttering open as he got up to see faces of concern around him, “What’s wrong?” Cale asked as he felt quite threatened by the faces of his family.
“Young master, what were you doing in the library?” Rosalyn asked, ‘Oh…’ Now he had remembered, he had a nightmare and wanted to distract himself…
Even if that was long ago, he still remembered it as he couldn’t forget his parents when he was a child as Kim Rok Soo was.. Nice.. Although it was where things had started, it had felt quite terrible to lose them, even if he hardly felt anything towards the incident now those memories were quite cherishable.
He wonders what would have happened if that day had never happened , he would have never met his current family but if he would have grown up with his parents it would’ve been a little nice too…
Cale had been zoning off onto his lap, “Cale-nim…?” Choi Han asked with a worried tone directed to his liege, after a couple of minutes have passed Cale had spoken up with an answer “I had a nightmare, and I couldn’t go back to sleep…” Cale’s voice had sounded quiet and small.
To hear Cale’s voice be that small had pained them, they had resorted to not asking questions and only gave silent comfort as the 3 children cuddled up to their guardian with the atmosphere being a bit quieter and comforting for the red-head.
Ron had served Cale some sweets and pastries made by his son, on the corner of their eyes Cale had been eating quietly with tears in his eyes, and him wiping them away.
Choi Han had sat across his liege’s side as he clicks on his scabbard to calm himself down he promises to himself to make sure Cale could not have nightmares and to protect him, as his liege seemed to have fallen asleep as well as the 3 children beside him Rosalyn and Eruhaben cast magic to make them more comfortable.
They had told the rest of the residents of the Villa to not disturb the young master.
When Cale had woken up he had felt relieved as no one asked him about his puffy eyes, he was thankful to have his current family
—
Whenever he had nightmares he had his family to comfort him, to give him sweets and silence to ease him.
Unfortunately, he had to face the bitter lemon tea and lemon-based desserts for a while…
What a nightmare…