He was like a curse sent from hell.

Abrial’s forehead contorted in bewilderment, and she rubbed her aching eyes.

“But…why would he do all that stuff?” she murmured aloud. “He really is crazy…He’s nuts. Outlawing magic and murdering a million magicians when you’re a magician yourself? That’s crazy! I can’t believe someone like him is allowed to be in charge…Someone really does need to get rid of him…Hypocrite…”

Her head still aching from putting so much effort into reading, she struggled to her feet and shoved the scroll back onto the shelf. That was enough reading for today. Enough for a long time, really. Reading was definitely not her thing.

Curiosity tugged her to take a quick look around the other shelves on the second platform, to see if any titles were strange like the ones downstairs.

She had just rounded the corner of a shelf that had some actually interesting-looking books on it, which seemed to all be about mythical things — The Legend of the Dragon With Scales of Ice, The Two Brothers and the Giant Yellow Squash, Little Brother and Big Sister Who Climbed to Heaven — when she realized somebody was staring at her.

Sitting huddled in the corner where two shelves met, was a ghostly pale figure in dark robes. Their hair was quite messy and rather spiky, partially covering their face and hiding one of their eyes completely. Their robes were dark as ink, and their eyes were dark blue as cold stones.

The expression on their face as they looked up at Abrial would have made even the bravest warrior turn and run screaming.

“Get. Lost!” the person glared.

Abrial blinked. She…she knew that person! Hah!

“Hey!” She took a step closer, beaming. “It’s you! I saved you in that town…What was the name of it? I don’t remember. What’s your name, again?”

Just like before, Abrial couldn’t tell if this person was female or male. They seemed equally both, with a feminine beauty, and also a masculine build. A pretty boy? A tomboyish girl? Or…neither?

The person turned their head away, gritting their teeth.

“It’s Romy,” they grumbled, as though annoyed Abrial had forgotten. “Shu Romy. You have a bad memory.”

“Shu Romy! Romy, that’s right!” Abrial snapped and took another step closer, failing to notice how Romy scooted very obviously away. “My name’s Han Abrial Chaeyoung. I’m so glad you made it to the camp! Especially with your injuries. I thought you would die for sure, or at least get a bad infection. Impressive!”

At last, Romy couldn’t seem to take Abrial closing in any longer. Romy gritted their teeth, cast a crackling, menacing lightning-hot glare at Abrial, and hissed:

“Get. Away. From. Me! Haven’t you ever heard of personal space? What’s wrong with you?”

Abrial stopped in her tracks. She frowned, looking down. Was Dohyun dripping blood and scaring Romy?

“What’s wrong?” she asked, puzzled. “Is this too close? I’m still five steps away! Am I scaring you?”

She noticed that Romy was clutching a scroll to their chest protectively. The title was visible, reading in a swirling scroll: The Tale of the Poor Orphan Adopted Into the Immortal Heavens.

“What are you reading? Looks cool! Can I take a look?”

Romy hugged the book tighter, covering the title. Their deathly pale cheeks burned pink, while their eyes burned darkly.

Romy reached behind themself, grasping a random, thick book scroll bound in a hard royal blue cloth. They chucked it at Abrial with startling force. It bonked Abrial on the head, sending her stumbling backward.

“Get out of my space!” Romy hollered. “Get out!”

They flung more books at Abrial, bombarding her all over. Abrial threw her hands up over her face, turned around, and ran for her life.

“Okay!” she shouted back. “Okay, I’m leaving! You can stop throwing stuff!”

It wasn’t until Abrial had stumbled down the stairs to the first level of the scroll tent that scrolls stopped flying at her like raining rocks. She fled the tent as if a starving wolf were snapping at her heels, hands over her head.

----------------------------------------

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Abrial ate dinner with Finley at the dining tent near the northern edge of camp. Finley scolded her for slurping down the soup dumplings as quickly as though they were made of water, but she didn’t listen. Finley pursed her lips as she carefully chewed on a dumpling.

That night, Abrial fell asleep quickly. Right away, she had a dream.

She recognized right away that it was one of those strange, vivid dreams about that boy with dark hair and obsidian eyes. What was his name? What had his mother called him? Ah Chen? Ah Cheng? That must have been it. Ah Cheng.

A scene unfolded before her

She was in a town of some sort. In the distance, there were many rolling green hills, exactly like those she had traveled through for weeks, and stony mountains standing guard in the distance. She might have thought she was in a town she had passed through on the way, if not for the fact that every house in sight was built from brown clay, with thatched hay roofs. They were all round and squat, with wide, open windows, much like Shin Minyeo’s cottage. All of them were in the style of ancient Gongkuan houses.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

A commotion was unfolding in the middle of the dirt road.

“You little bitch! This is what you deserve!”

“Take that, you dumb donkey!”

“Can’t do anything to protect yourself, can you? Not without magic, heh! Look at you! Pathetic!”

A gaggle of young children, all looking to be between the ages of eight and twelve, were crowding around a small boy. The boy was cowering in a curled position. A flash of dark hair shone through his arms that were thrown over his face, and the glare of an obsidian eye glittered between bruised fingers.

It was that boy, Ah Cheng.

He was cowering from a barrage of small stones and rocks. They seemed to be throwing themselves at him, chipping at his forearms and bludgeoning his stomach. On a closer look, several children in the circle were watching the stones with concentration and moving their fingers back and forth. They were moving the stones with magic to attack this boy. How disgusting!

Ah Cheng rolled this way and that, attempting to dodge the hail of stones. Even though he was being attacked, his eyes still flashed dark and fierce with fire.

“I’m not a donkey!” he hollered, wincing as a stone gashed his pale cheek. “I’m not dumb, I’m not spiritually dumb! You just don’t understand people who are different like me! I’m not any worse than you assholes!”

Several children in the group laughed loudly.

“Shao Cheng!” one of them called out, laughing uncontrollably. “You’re so dumb you don’t even know you’re spiritually dumb?! Don’t you know only spiritually dumb people can’t do magic?”

“My mom says you’re a curse!” shouted another child angrily. “She says you and your family should go back to the mountains where you came from, before you make us all dumb and useless like you!”

“All your parents do is carve stupid gourds and sew ugly tapestries! My Baba says you’re no use for this town, you only bring bad luck!”

The group of children echoed in agreement, hurling insults and more stones.

Shao Cheng grunted in pain as a sharp rock bashed him in the abdomen. His plain burlap clothes tore loudly, wetting with dark blood. Shao Cheng’s pale, skinny stomach was exposed.

The children laughed, pointing fingers.

“Look at him! His tummy’s showing!”

“Even your clothes are as weak as you!”

“What a joke. Ahaha!”

Shao Cheng’s face contorted, as though he was going to spit violent insults at the stone-casting children. But he seemed to be in too much pain to even do that any more. He spat out a gob of blood and he curled up in a ball there on the ground, gritting his teeth and allowing the stones to pound incessantly at his back. His grimy, bloody fingers dug fiercely into the burlap cloth of his pants, as though trying to tear it apart.

“Ah Tao! Ah Tao, what are you doing there?”

From up the road, a mother was calling out, holding the hand of a young boy. Ah Tao, one of the older bullies in the group, whirled around, his eyes wide with fear. Immediately, the group of children scattered, their magical stones falling to the ground in a hail onto Shao Cheng’s limp form.

Ah Tao ran to his mother, leaving Shao Cheng lying limply in the dust. Ah Tao rubbed the back of his head, trying to block Shao Cheng’s form from sight.

“We…were, ah…playing…” he lied badly, his brown eyes darting around for an excuse, but showing no guilt.

His mother glanced up, catching sight of Shao Cheng, who was still crumpled on the ground like a pitiful, bloodied sack. Her face contorted with disgust. At once, she snatched Ah Tao’s hand and pulled him in the other direction, clutching Ah Tao’s hand on her right and the other little boy’s hand on her left.

“Ah Tao,” she hissed, her voice fierce, “You must never go near that child! He will surely curse you with disease or spiritual dumbness. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Mama,” Ah Tao murmured, his head tilted downward.

The mother shook the hand of the little boy on her left, looking down at him sternly.

“The same goes for you, Ah Jun. Never go near that boy. If he approaches you, run!”

Ah Jun turned to look over his shoulder with large, shining brown eyes. They were warm and curious.

Far down the dirt road behind them, Shao Cheng had already struggled to a sitting position against a fence. He was wiping away the blood on his face with his dirty burlap sleeve and grimacing with a murderous look in his eye, like a small animal ready to bite.

“Ah Jun!” Ah Jun and Ah Tao’s mother shook Ah Jun’s arm again, turning his gaze back to her. “Don’t look back at him. It’s bad luck! Stay away from him, do you hear me? Stay away!”

Ah Jun didn’t answer. His mother didn’t notice; she was too busy scolding Ah Tao for getting so close to that spiritually dumb boy. Ah Jun stole one more glance back at that boy. The boy was on his feet now, using the fence as a support to pull himself down the road, hunched over.

The corners of Ah Jun’s mouth turned down. His warm brown eyes shone with longing.

The day faded into darkness, like a layer of thickening black veils had settled over the image of Ah Jun’s sweet eyes, until everything was in shadow.

----------------------------------------

Abrial opened her eyes.

She was lying on a blanket roll in Finley’s tent. Moonlight shone in a silver slice through the tent flap, making her squint.

Interesting. She hadn’t woken up gasping this time. Maybe she was getting used to these dreams. Though, when she put a hand to her forehead, it came away damp with sweat. Nothing had changed about how boiling hot she felt afterward.

The tattoo on her collarbone cast a faint red glow over the tent, something between sinister and warm. In its dim light, Abrial’s eyes fell on Finley’s pale face, which was not far from her own on the other blanket roll. Their blanket rolls had been laid side by side.

Finley’s features were soft and smooth in the dim, hot light. Her eyes were closed peacefully, long brown lashes gleaming. Her lips glinted silver in the moonlight and pink in the glow of the tattoo, steady breaths inhaling and exhaling between them. An image of such tranquility and loveliness.

Abrial jerked backward.

She realized suddenly how close she had moved to Finley’s peaceful face — close enough that Finley’s soft, warm breath puffed out onto her nose.

She pushed back, crawling furiously away until she was sitting on the far other end of her bedroll in the faint light of the moon.

Shin Minyeo’s mischievously twinkling eyes and smile materialized in her mind.

Who says that women can’t love one another like that?

“Shut up!” she hissed, holding her head in her hands and shaking it vigorously.

She went to the entrance and slipped out, closing the tent flap securely behind herself so that the moonlight wouldn’t wake Finley. Then she meandered out between the tents until she reached the edge of camp, where she lay down on the grassy hillside, staring up at the twinkling stars and breathing with the gentle summer breeze, slowly, slowly calming herself down from all these strange dreams and thoughts…