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"…Rok Soo….. Team Leader…"
"Right, afterwards….. arrangement…"
"…funeral…..Mr. Rok Soo…?"
.
.
.
"Once this is all over—
Shuffle
—create a farm in the Forest of Darkness."
Shuffle
"Stay alive - - - -"
"…"
A dim light flashed in his vision, sauntering through the half-shut curtains.
Cale blinked once, trying to wash away the remains of sleep, and of something far more annoying.
Fwish
There was no warmth around his arms.
It must be past noon—that was the only time the children went away from him to have lunch, whether he had overslept or not.
"…"
The redhead stared at the ceiling.
A long while passed before he could find strength in his body again.
****
Tap, tap
Silence accompanied his hushed footsteps. There was no breeze around.
Tap, tap
A presence lingered near the turn.
Cale walked slowly, so leisurely he felt as if he could collapse right then and there, in a dull and comfortable sleep.
Tap
The redhead turned the corner.
"…"
No one stood there, and not a trace of laughter remained in the place he'd imagined it to be.
"Just something I said, just something I said in passing."
'Super Rock?'
A warm voice answered back.
But when the redhead thought about it, there was nothing to ask.
—Cale?
A buzz rang in his ears. Hints of an unashamed yell and a quiet chuckle, and something, something akin to a shadow, close enough he could feel it on his toes but never quite catch it.
Cale shook his head.
'It's nothing.'
It was really nothing at all.
****
A word had what started it, something which was nothing in the end.
"Cale."
The redhead used all the experience of his life—both lives, actually—to make the disrespect clear in his gaze.
From the blond's twitching eyebrow, and a mage's chuckle from aside, he could tell he had succeeded.
"What's wrong, your highness?"
A sigh answered back.
"Hyung."
Cale's smile faltered briefly.
"Call me hyung."
His palm lingered over the page he was trying to turn. A brief quake swept across his pupils before his lips curled upwards into a smile.
"Sure, hyung."
Cale had discovered, much to his annoyance, that it really took nothing at all to cause a fire. He knew because Kim Rok Soo knew, and Kim Rok Soo knew because a certain idiot with the surname Choi had lit up an abandoned factory on fire during their earlier missions, purely by accident.
The redhead almost felt impressed by the unintended arson. It took talent to be that much of a fool.
So, really, there wasn't anything in particular.
A can of gasoline that wasn't quite empty, and a lame joke-slash-question—is the can half-empty, or half-full?
It's trash, he'd answered.
It's expensive, the cheerful idiot had refuted back.
And then a monster emerged and ruined everything, and the expensive trash just happened to get caught up in the middle of a minuscule spark.
That was how it had went. A patch of burn over the idiot's leg, two on his own.
So really, if his self was void and he was trash, then the matter was nothing by itself.
A squished can could do it.
Sometimes, a word.
****
There were burials here too, in Roan Kingdom. The culture varied and the method did as well, but loss here too was accompanied by whiteness and ashes and flowers that didn't really fit but it was all they could afford.
"Young master-nim."
The redhead looked up.
'Raon will grow up to that size too.'
A dragon hovered in the air, the bony structure hardly affecting the air of dignity it presented itself with.
The black dragon who could barely fit in his arms now would grow up to that size too.
It wasn't as merry as he had imagined.
The thought mostly made him feel numb.
"It's sufficient."
The whiteness of the bones had reminded him, made him lose himself yet again.
"Your face is odd. It doesn't look happy."
Cale met Mary's gaze—clear, curious.
"It's my default expression."
"Mm."
A thoughtful hum answered back. The redhead erased the images in front of his eyes, or at least pretended to.
"Anyway, it's good. Your control has improved since the first battle."
Cale thought the same and praised the other, looking back to the past that wasn't as distant as he'd grown to assume.
"…"
Mary didn't reply back, but Cale didn't mind it.
He turned back to the plethora of an ash-like, snowy white cutting the breeze with its wing.
Whoooosh
The noise muted out the one in his head, just for a brief instant.
****
"Cale nya. What're you reading?"
Cale turned the page, extending his arm without thought.
Hong promptly jumped up, curling on his chest.
"Something from his highness' library."
"You stole it, nya?"
The redhead turned another page. He'd already saved the contents with record long ago.
"Not stolen, just borrowed without permission."
The child's giggle caught his ear.
Cale allowed himself to smile for that moment alone. It was his own fault, really. He didn't want to forget. And he didn't want to let go, either.
****
"Looks like you are fine, little punk.”
"Young master."
The redhead took the tea cup from his butler, hearing the chatter of Choi Han and the children through the open window.
"Kim Rok Soo never calls me Hyung, no matter how many times I've asked him to."
Cale muttered a brief thank you. The liquid was sweet to taste, the warmth almost reaching him, almost.
The motion was near mechanic.
They'd gather like this in the remains of nothing, a piece of debris serving as a rather lavish coffee table.
Sometimes there was only one clean cup, the rest either squished or knocked aside, alongside cold, unmoving bodies.
'We didn't share it, though.'
The three would have a small match then, rock-paper-scissors mostly, and the winner would get to flaunt a cheap can of coffee pouring into an even cheaper cup.
There was no aim to it, to pour a drink into a cup when they could just consume it from the can itself. But the meaninglessness of it all was what had appealed to the three, so the aimless tradition had continued.
Tap
A smile flickered at the redhead's face. The taste lingered underneath his tongue, the smell as if still clinging to his clothes.
That was how it went.
Their way of a funeral, that is. When no bodies remained and the sound of a person vanished with the passing breeze.
They'd chant jokes after, the most boring ones, and brag to the earth and the reddening sky above of their survival.
They'd laugh when Choi Jung Soo would flail the half-emptied can around more, hovering the paper cup in air till the smell of coffee outweighed that of blood, till Kim Rok Soo ended up smiling from the stupidity of it all.
Clink
Cale put down the glass quietly.
It was fine that the taste didn't reach him.
It was fine that a bitterness lingered instead, of something he could no longer obtain.
****
Shwaaaa
The redhead splashed his face with the water once, then twice for good measure.
The chill washed over him like a tide, gentle still.
The pale skin he wore now, Cale noticed, didn't do much to erase the scars engraved deep in his mind. He'd roll his sleeve down and feel a cold sweat over his back, until the voice of a little dragon would snap him out of his thoughts, yet again.
He'd soak himself like this, in a white cold, one that crept underneath his skin and stayed. Not quite like a buzz, but every so often he'd feel his body recoil and his mind swirl, and then, Cale, no, Kim Rok Soo would remember.
Sometimes the impact would leave him gasping for breath.
Sometimes that was also what he preferred.
Pain was annoying, but the sink into a pure, blank sheet wasn't.
His figure was like a blotch.
His skin, clear white, but never once had the exteriority of something human cleared him of what he ultimately was.
Cale drifted a bit more into the water. The cold touched his lips, then passed a bit further, then stopped.
The waves ebbed and shook the buzz out of his ears.
The redhead stayed like that. Unblinking, adrift.
Shivering, though that wasn't the most obvious.
The bluish black bruises on his abdomen were, peeking through the haze of water.
Knock
Cale stared at the tiles, then at the ceiling, then the bruises he'd shrugged off earlier because it wasn't enough. It wasn't moving enough, not-
Knock knock!
The redhead took a quiet breath.
It wasn't until his butler's tone caught his ears that he started moving again.
****
"Cale-nim."
The redhead looked on as the swordsman fumbled through his cloak, taking out a glass vial.
The latter's expression reminded him. The eyes were different, but the gaze wasn't so much so.
Cale watched quietly as Choi Han observed the open gash on his own shoulder with a healing potion in hand.
It reminded him of a lot.
"Hey, the team leader says he’s going to own a farm once he retires."
He hated moving.
More than that, he hated moving in the soil and in the heat.
"I’m going to own an orchard next to him.”
This was fine.
The fact that he'd sent the children away earlier, and that he had a spare coat to wear instead of the one with a gaping tear around the shoulder.
Cale stared and stared.
He felt as if the world might morph, that the ground might change back to something it was before if he looked hard enough.
He supposed there had to be an ability like this.
Kim Rok Soo's was a useless one—to remember, what could that ever change? But the redhead imagined another, something actually useful and something that saved and protected, an ability that could manifest instead of memorise.
"Cale-nim. Are you okay?"
Cale blinked slowly, meeting the latter's gaze through the fog in his own.
"I-"
The wound had healed.
The sting hadn't.
"Choi Han."
Whooosh
For a moment, it was there. Something coherent and acceptable. Not a plea, really, but a change of topic, a shifting breeze, a word that could make him remember and make him forget.
"I'm fine."
But in the end, it was back to where it started, to where its name was nothing.
****
"Human."
"Hm?"
Cale shifted the blanket, opening it towards the dragon who quickly jumped inside, nuzzling his head right near the redhead's neck.
'Is he sleepy?'
Ohn and Hong had already drifted to a long nap; if anything, it was a surprise that Raon was still awake.
"Human."
Pat
Cale patted the warm scales underneath his palm.
"Yeah."
Blue, clear eyes met his own.
"Are you angry?"
"…? No?"
Had he been frowning without meaning to?
"Then, do you want to have an apple pie? Are you very hungry? Are you annoyed-"
"Wait, Raon."
Cale tried to imagine what his expression must've looked like but quickly gave up. A blank slate appeared in his mind when he tried recalling what all had happened the past week.
In the end, he simply asked the child.
"Is my expression odd? Why are you asking that?"
"…Mm…"
The little dragon squinted his eyes, moving back and forth for a moment.
"…No, it's good?"
"…? Is that so?"
Pat, pat
Cale, who was left as confused as the dragon, concluded that the latter must be short on sleep. To the child who was still observing him with a frown, he spoke amicably.
"Don't you have to go out later?"
"…!"
"The wolf children will be left waiting if you end up oversleeping."
Cale doubted they'd wait properly, the children who always rushed off to bother Beacrox at any given time, but he spoke in a way that could convince Raon easily.
"…I'll nap quickly! I'll wake up quickly too, human!"
"Right, right."
Pat
Cale pulled the blanket over the child again.
'Why does he move around so much?'
Was it normal for children at that age to be this restless?
"Human, wake me up on time!"
"Sure."
Cale left that part to his dutiful butler. He'd started oversleeping too, since some days back, though he couldn't recall when exactly it had started.
'Already asleep?'
The redhead observed the three children curled up around one another, sleeping peacefully.
"…"
A quiet voice lingered in his mind, a whisper of sorts.
"What is it, you punk."
Cale closed his eyes.
Pat, pat
His hand moved without thought, patting the head of each child murmuring something in their sleep.
"Jung Soo and I are happy as well.”
A sigh left his lips.
The cold met his skin. A blanket could hardly block anything.
"I leave it to you."
Pat, pat
Cale continued caressing the children's heads one by one.
As the chill seeped deeper, and as his breaths grew rapid and then slow—
The redhead quietly drifted to sleep, curled up in a warmth that excluded his figure alone.