“Cale.” The mentioned turned around to the crazy priestess when he heard his name, questioning her when seeing the uncomfortable expression on her face. “What?” “The God of Death told me something strange yesterday night.” She seemed more worried than annoyed for once, furrowed brows and jittery fingers. “Spit it out.” Cale was getting tired. He wanted her to get on with it so he could do the many other things he needed to do. He also didn’t like how her nervousness was rubbing off on him right now, too, causing him to tap his foot in wait. “The God of Death, he said…” She hesitantly continued. “To beware of love.”
He raised a brow at those words, confused. Was that it? Well, gods weren’t trustworthy anyways. How funny, he got worked up for nothing. He scoffed as if laughing before turning around, speaking to the crazy priestess cage while leaving. “Don’t worry about trivial things like that. Just do your job.” She had her own role to play right now just as he did, they couldn’t afford to dawdle around like this. “Cale.” The seriousness in her voice refused to allow the topic to be brushed off so easily like he tried to just do. “He said that your love will turn into a blessing and curse in the future.” The words that confused him at that time continued to reverberate in his mind. “A comforting curse and the most painful blessing you’ll ever have.”
It began when he gave you a job to infiltrate the building of some human traffickers and give him the layout, a clear intent to save those poor souls in his eyes. You had smiled at the man who called himself trash on such a regular basis it grew tiring before going off on your journey, waving at him with a bright grin before you disappeared from your place on the teleportation circle.
Then he woke up confused when he felt something on his face, opening his eyes slowly to see a familiar crow with a paper tied to its leg. He was happy at first when he saw the crow you used to send things ahead of time, patting the head of the bird as he opened the map you had drawn before leaving the room to search for you since you were always only a few minutes behind the bird. Except, he realised that you weren’t in the mansion. You weren’t on the training grounds or talking with Choi Han or Beacrox. Much less, the two told him that you didn’t even come back yet.
Raon fluttered his wings in worry, asking when you were going to be back a week later, only to get either an unsure or no answer in response. Then he’d ask if something had happened to you only for Cale to butt in before he could finish the question, saying you were fine and probably got distracted on the way back. Nevertheless, he teleported to the coordinates Eruhaben had teleported you to, the two dragons, Choi Han, and him searching around for any traces of you but finding none.
They hear Alberu on the video communication device a few days later, talking about how the human trafficking issue was getting worse and that they had found some people lying around in the area. Some were too injured to even be identified while others would have to be washed of the blood they were covered in just to tell who they were. The prince asked when Cale planned to get rid of them, and he answered back. The human traffickers seemed to be busy with the chaos going around in the continent right now, not trafficking any new people according to the information he had. He needed to do some other things first. Then, he’d take them down.
Until then, his worry squirmed underneath his calm exterior, trying to convince not only everyone around him but himself as well as he said that you wouldn’t fall so easily. You, who were used to missions and tasks requiring stealth from him, would not get caught or taken down so easily. Yes, he was right. You were fine. He just had to wait; after all, you probably believed that he knew you were fine. He didn’t want to let you down.
You were scarier than Ron when he came back in pain but your touch would be softer than any of the silky sheets he could be gifted from kings and dragons. The hands searching for any injuries would come back to trace his face and go through his hair, and he’d subconsciously lean into the warmth he had never felt before while you frowned at him in worry. His first worry when in pain from using the ancient powers too much would be how he would explain to you that he ignored your behest of being careful while the first comfort would be the thought of your soft touch and caring expression.
In a room full of people, he’d somehow meet your eyes first before anybody’s. Even while your leg was shaking in anxiety at the useless nobles’ looks, you’d still be amused by him to the point you’d laugh in such a stressful predicament. When you were a strict teacher to the children at times but then gave them food the next moment, he’d wonder what it would be like to have a family with you before realising what he was thinking, grumbling while you questioned to yourself if he was drinking alcohol before coming here because his face was flushed. When he wondered if his school crush from so long ago felt this good before you looked at him, deciding that, no, this love was much sweeter than a mere crush.
“Cale, I have to change.”
“Ah. Raon, don’t come in here for a minute.”
“...Cale Henituse, you need to leave the room, too.”
“Ah, right. Sorry.” It seemed being around you made the highly revered commander turn stupid, as he awkwardly walked out the room.
When he grumbled about how people can be even trashier than him as he put his coat over your hunched over form and glared at the people who were so blatantly ogling you, he suddenly felt purified when he saw you hold the corner of his sleeve and smile at him. You never told anyone about things in your life, not because you wanted to keep things from them, but because you genuinely didn’t know you were supposed to tell them that, yes, you accidentally smashed glass on some asshole’s hand but when he said something about giving him money and spending the night with him as compensation you punched him.
You were an entity that pushed him away from his calm self while pulling him in towards yourself. A puzzle that he wanted to complete because there were still so many things left for you both to discover about each other- the nooks and crannies, the secret rooms hidden in the depths of your hearts and the invisible chains that sometimes twist around your wrists. The smiles in your eyes and the tears in your grin. The shock in your calm expressions and the nervousness in your confident visages. The slight shaking of your hand he felt when he clasped his hand around yours to comfort you, a smile on your face as you talked about who knows what while dancing in the overcrowded ballroom. And he decided that when he finally found that last puzzle piece and put it in its place, that would be the time to kneel on one knee as he held a box in his hands with a ring nestled inside.
Until then, he would love you unnoticeably.
And unnoticeable it was, as you never once suspected how there was a reason his smile looked softer than usual as he looked at you or why his hand seemed so gentle as he passed a cookie to you. But everyone else could see it, the secret glances shared between you two when someone you were talking to was, apparently, stupid. The laughs and groans falling from your lips as you watched Choi Han’s acting. The annoyance on his face seemed a little less whenever it came to you.
“Cale-nim, I’ll follow you til’ the end of the world.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“No, but what other purpose in life would be greater than following ‘Young Master Silver Shield’ on his heroic journey? The hero who’s gotten so big he’ll probably never get to slack off.”
“[Name] [last name], you’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“I haven’t the slightest clue what you’re talking about, Cale-nim~”
“Ha… Fine, do whatever you want.”
When he questioned why you, Choi Han, and Mary had destroyed parts of the castle with Hilsman watching in the background, you learnt by then the basics of his personality and said that you didn’t fight a nobleman because he insulted Cale, but because he had decided to say something regarding you throughout the banquet. When Choi Han, Mary, Hilsman, and Alberu all heard this, they wondered why you lied about defending Cale’s honour before becoming even more shocked when they heard him say that that was fine, in that case, and then ask if you at least managed to break his arm. They’d probably be even more confused if they heard his thoughts of how you should’ve destroyed the whole part of the castle like Choi Han. Hilsman stuttered and tried to speak up, saying “No, the nobleman insulted the young ma-” before you clasped a hand over his mouth, frowning and saying “No, he insulted me. What are you doing, Hilsman?”
“...I feel like my ears have been cursed.”
“You listened to Raon last night?” The little dragon had sung a lullaby of what he would do with Venion when he got his paws on him. While Cale struggled to sleep, it seemed you didn’t get a wink of it.
“I was actually surprised you could sleep at all. He was so enthusiastic I felt bad ignoring him, but it was so scary at the same time I couldn’t close my eyes.”
“You should’ve just ignored him. You’re not trash like me, but you still shouldn’t feel guilty for ignoring a lullaby of torture.” He turned and spoke to Ron in a corner of the room. “Hold off leaving for fifteen minutes.” Fifteen minutes was the latest they could start working, and you needed your rest to work properly. “Ha, you say you’re trash, then do things like this.” “...” Of course, your work performance was not the reason he was making time for you to sleep.
When he saw the children try to subtly-but-not-so-subtly nudge you towards Cale and heard Choi Han’s terrible acting on a daily basis before he left to leave you two alone-purposefully, it seemed- while Beacrox sighed in the background. When he heard you shout “you demonic temptress!” in the middle of the night before stomping to your room, seeing Rosalyn coming from the one you were just in and hiding an outfit behind her with a sheepish smile directed at him when spotting him. The outfit was black, the colour his people wore, and suited you well. It was the outfit you wore this morning, the morning he stopped in the middle of his conversation with Rosalyn and Choi Han when he saw you walk out the Super Rock mansion and stared. He grumbled, realising that while his love was indeed unnoticeable to you, it was noticeable to everyone else but you.
He would kiss you slowly when a raindrop fell on your cheek and you were gone before it reached your chin. He’d wait for hours in the room where you would meet, watching the clock tick by and get up when he finally heard the door open, your clothes coming into view. But he’d be snapped out of his imagination to reality before he could actually see you, back in his room with Rosalyn in front of him, a look of worry on her face. It felt like he was dreaming with his eyes open, a dream so vivid it was close to an illusion before he realised he was now having illusions of dreaming. How long has it been, he’d wonder, grasping the pen tightly in his hand. When were you going to come home?
You finally came. After a long time, you finally came home to them. Cale had come down the stairsteps and was greeted by Choi Han rushing to hug you when you reappeared with the children close on his heels and Ron and Beacrox smiling from their places. He was ecstatic at first, feeling like the gods finally did something right in bringing you back before the harsh reality slammed into him. Your confused movements at Choi Han and the shock flashing in your eyes at seeing Raon, as well as the two cats because wow they were actually talking- He frowned, walking to where you were and holding a strand of your hair between his two fingers as you smiled at him. “I’ve returned home.” Everyone smiled before the next words left your lips. “To the rock mansion.” They were in the Adventure and Hope Loving Inn, not the Super Rock mansion.
Cale chupsed, as if he heard something painful before giving a short order. “Ron.” Beacrox hurriedly came to block the childrens’ visions while the sharp assassin, who had noticed something was wrong, quickly took care of you. The children, annoyed at being blocked from seeing you, were confused when they finally got past Beacrox only to see a man they didn’t know in the place you were. The man fell and Cale rubbed his face, immediately asking for some alcohol before going back upstairs.
The fact they knew about the rock mansion but not that this inn they owned was not that mansion only meant one thing: You had ended up being forced to give them their whereabouts, but instead of being honest and ratting them out, you told them this destination saying it was the rock mansion. Look at you, deciding to set a trap while in trouble. Cale laughed when he remembered your shocked face from being stabbed morphing to one of a man, who was probably being disposed of downstairs now. Curse him for being so sharp. If he hadn’t noticed the person who looked like you being unsure at Choi Han’s care, the shock of seeing a baby dragon, and the disbelief at the talking cats, maybe he could have relished in the delusion that you were back in his arms. Maybe, for a little while, he would be able to pretend you were back. But that in itself was a curse, wasn’t it?
The day finally came for him to infiltrate the place you had gone to before disappearing.
He followed the map drawn out by you, and he was about to pass by the room your familiar handwriting said not to go in under any circumstances before Raon spoke in his mind. ‘Human, I feel [name]’s presence in there!’ He had frozen in his tracks before ignoring the words on the map, going into the room to find you because why were you here instead of coming back four months ago- before stopping entirely when you were nowhere in the room. “Human…” He turned his head to where he heard Raon’s wavering voice, looking at the dragon with a worried expression as it stood over some ropes dyed red in some spots. Could dragons sense a person’s presence from their blood?
He remembered your warning to not go into this room and Raon’s words before something clicked in his mind, a disbelieving laugh coming out his mouth. “Ha, haha-” How utterly like you, to hide the pain you would suffer through by telling him not to come into the room where there were ropes mottled with blood. The blood that had dried to an ugly brown sickened him when he examined it, feeling the need to empty his stomach of his breakfast that morning.
He’d become even more destructive when finishing the job, the desire to wipe the building that held you captive off the face of the world reflected in his eyes while Choi Han stood beside him with concern in his eyes. So where were you? Where were you now, if not the place you infiltrated? Cale wondered with an anxious heart before hearing a beeping sound, turning to look at the video communication device Raon held in his chubby paws while informing him it was Alberu. The prince looked worse than usual, an uncomfortable and grieving expression on his face that already told Cale that he wouldn’t like what he was about to hear.
“We found [name].” Everyone stayed silent for a few seconds, processing the information before facing the man in the call in shock. “Where is she?” The most impatient was the man who always looked calm on the outside with a stoic expression, leaning in and asking for your whereabouts with a frown. There was a silence on the other side before Alberu continued. “Amongst the people who were covered in blood…”
Cale’s world shattered at that moment, the dreams and memories he had of you rushing through his mind like a reel of a movie as he processed the fact that that beautiful and utterly spellbinding smile would be the last ones he’d ever see from you, already figuring it out from those words what had happened to you. Amongst the people they had found a month ago that had been beaten to the point of being unrecognisable and those that were covered in so much blood it was hard to figure out who they were, you were amongst the bloodied people. “The blood wasn’t only her own. She injured many people before-” Before you died.
You shouldn’t have died so early. Your story was not even halfway through before it got such an abrupt and bloody ending. If your life was a book, there would be thousands of people complaining to the authour about the sudden and terrible ending and demanding for a new and happier ending. Your story should have lasted sixty, seventy, no- more than the average human life if he could help it. You were supposed to spend his slacker life with him and be by his side with no other requirement. All you had to do was smile at him and hold him close like you’d been doing so far, but your arms suddenly felt so cold and your smile was not present in that coffin they lowered into the ground.
“It was raining.” No one corrected him, said that the day was the sunniest it had been in weeks as if it was taunting them, said that that explanation didn’t make sense as to why his face was wet and turned back to the coffin. In a sense, it was raining for them, too. He wondered what your life would be like as a book- Would it be like Choi Han’s? But your life, was it full of tragedy or happiness? If his life was a book, the pages would be filled with his wishes of a slacker life and the continuous misfortunes he’d have to go through to get there. His pages would be filled- utterly filled- with the repetition of your name over and over until it seemed strange if there was a page without a mention of you.
Did your book even have mentions of his name? Did you recount his smiles and laughs or his actions and memories together like he did you? “Lovers sometimes suffer the most,” Ron says, placing a cup of lemonade on the desk as Cale replied in disbelief. “Were we lovers?” he asked, running his hand through his hair while scoffing. “Did she love me?” He knew that he was in love, but he didn’t know if you were the same. The benign man, for once, had a different smile than a benign or cruel one on his face. “Yes.” He reminisced on the peculiar look in the eyes of his puppy young master and you, the look that reminded him of his days spent with his wife and a Beacrox much smaller than now. “She loved you so much that even though she tried to hide it, it was too much for her eyes to keep covered.”
He’d drown himself in alcohol to see the hallucinations of your face. He’d dream of dancing with your ghost before you disappeared in a wisp of wind. He’d apologise weakly over and over again to the air as if you could hear it when he was drunk and couldn’t sleep. When Raon started crying while drawing because he couldn’t remember how you looked, Cale took the crayon from him and drew all the lines the little dragon had missed and every single detail he had become enamoured with. Eruhaben would watch from beside Raon as he traced you so accurately with nothing more than a child’s crayon before he went back to his room, leaving behind a paper with you smiling on it.
He sighed at the man while holding the crying Raon in his arms, the baby dragon that loved you so much to the point he thought of you as a mother figure of sorts, the person who held him and comforted him when he was sad and laughed and celebrated with him when he was happy. He watched the cats who would sullenly walk around and sit in your room on your table, as if waiting for you to come back and sigh at them putting their paws on the table that you put your food on before you picked them up and held them. He watched Choi Han’s rage at not being able to find you when they searched for you show in his training. Even the crow whom you so carefully raised seemed to move less, an air of gloom around it as if it knew the reason its owner hadn’t come to smile and coo at it for the past month- and maybe it did. He thought of Cale, who still had the stoic expression on his face but seemed to be the most unstable one out of all of them. ‘What an unlucky bastard.’ He would probably remember how you looked his entire life, no matter how much time would have passed. ‘What an unlucky bastard, indeed.’
Cale would lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling as thoughts swirled in his mind. Did you become a transmigrator like him and travel to another world, maybe even his own, trying to figure out where you were? Or are you where the angels roam, wandering around the beautiful sights of heaven without the burdens of this world? What did heaven look like, he wanted to ask. Did you run around and walk on clouds with your other fellow angels, making friends here and there and enchanting everyone around just as you did to him? No, but if you ran on clouds, would you ever feel the rain again?
You loved the rain, the rain which you would lay under before being pulled in by him because did you want to get hypothermia? The rain that you’d pull him out the mansion for, much to his behest as his clothes were getting wet, before seeing the dazzling light of the moon reflected in your eyes. Was it the moon, he wondered, that made your eyes pretty, or was it your eyes that made the night sky beautiful? The rain that only seemed interesting with you beside him, the rain that you would cover yourselves under his jacket side by side, the rain where he would kiss you slowly and you’d disappear before the raindrop reached your chin and the rain that disguised his tears as mere water droplets.
Cale understood that pain was what made life beautiful, what made stories interesting and made life worth struggling for. But weren’t you enough? Weren’t you enough to make his life beautiful? Why would he need pain when something as spellbinding and enchanting as you that put the fireflies around you to shame was beside him? Even if you weren’t enough, wasn’t this too much pain? More pain than needed for making life beautiful? It felt like he was being played with by this damned world itself. He wanted to wrap his arms around you and lean his face into your hair, smell your scent and hear your laugh and feel your arms wrapping around him again. Just once more. He’d endure the Fire of Destruction’s lightning or the pain of his plate expanding a thousand times over if it meant that he could do that once more.
You flippantly asked a question, wondering just what his dream was to reduce him to this state while drunk.
“You still look like a mess. Would you like a story to go with your sorrow?”
“Hm? Ah, well… I heard this one story of young master silver shield the other-”
“I want to know your story.”
“Wouldn’t Choi Han’s story be more interesting? Or Ron’s? You know about everything I’ve done since I met you already.”
“I don’t want to know what you did after meeting me. I want to know your life before that.”
“...Alright. I’m not sure if you meant if I had any trauma or not, but I’ll tell you my story.”
He wanted to propose to you when he finally finished the puzzle called ‘you’, but what if even before he finished that puzzle, someone else had completely ruined it and destroyed the puzzle pieces? If someone took the book he was reading with so much delight and ruined it in front of him? He wanted to give those human traffickers hell for destroying the puzzle pieces and ripping the pages that made him smile so, that made the world that gave him nothing but trouble seem interesting and beautiful all of the sudden, but he groaned and rubbed his face when remembering that they were now under Alberu’s jurisdiction, not his. He would listen to a request from his dear dongsaeng, right?
Every time he saw you, he’d beg for you to put him under another spell, one that made him stay by your side like you did him. However, you would only laugh, smile, say that you would stay with him until he obtained his slacker life and past that point, before your hand he held turned into dandelions and fluttered in the wind. His begs fell on deaf ears the entire time. The feeling of your arms around him as he shook with the onslaught of sobs felt so very warm. He wondered if this was how you spent your life in heaven, visiting the dreams of a trash like him instead of being with the other angels. But he knew that if you were alive, you’d say that he wasn’t trash, that it wasn’t his fault you died because, in the ending, it was you who failed and didn’t tell anyone. That you wanted him to continue to live and get that slacker life because what greater happiness would you get if not sharing his? The memories of you would make his heart flutter and break at the same time. He slept more from then on, desperate for your comfort and the sight of the face of the person he fell in love with. The person he could cry in front of and they’d be fine.
The memory of a drunken night returned to his mind. You two were wasting the night away, and while you had stopped earlier on because you decided to be the Responsible Adult™ for once, he continued until he was wasted. In all honesty, it was because the bitter taste of alcohol was not kind to your tongue, but you insisted you were just being responsible. “Don’t leave me,” he had mumbled, his head on the counter while you listened from beside him. “Don’t leave me. I’m emotionless. I didn’t even cry. But if you left… I don’t want that to be why I feel emotions.” What he was saying should’ve sounded like nonsense to you, but you thought that he had a particularly vivid nightmare lately, not able to know that it was a “test” that he had experienced and not a nightmare.
“This,” he pointed to the badge on your shirt, the one he had given you the night before the battle at the Henituse estate between the wyverns and bone dragon so long ago. “Don’t ever take it off. It looks terrible next to Raon’s piggy bank.” Yes. In the test, your badge was the only thing left of you. While you were confused where Raon’s piggy bank came from, your heart tore apart at him demanding not to be left alone, leaning over him to give a friendly hug and cracking a joke to reassure him. “Why in a thousand years would I ever leave you? Ha, it’s not like I’m gonna die soon.” Your laugh calmed his heart at that time. “How about this? I’ll never take this badge off, and I’ll put off dying, just for you! So cheer up, young master silver shield. I still have to follow you to the ends of the world.”
What an utter liar you had become. He thought you were honest all this time. Cale felt like he had been scammed by your promise on that drunken night. ‘Well, at least you kept one promise,’ he mused. That badge was on your person when you were found, even while drenched in blood. You never left it behind, not then and not now with those white clothes decorating your cold skin underneath the ground. ‘Ah,’ he thought, laughing in disbelief as he remembered Cage. ‘So that’s what she meant.’ His love really did turn into the most painful blessing and curse.
His dreams still tantalised him with your form sitting beside him in flower fields or brushing his hair while fretting at the remembrance of him coming back covered in blood, the feeling that you were still there right with him so vivid before he woke up and wanted to cry at how the blatant lies he wanted to believe could only last for so long.
[...this is so long oh my god]
