ETVC C25

Chapter 25

The sting of disinfectant alcohol pricked at my nose, and though my eyes remained closed, I knew at once I had been brought to a hospital. The searing pain in my shoulder, once unbearable, had dulled to something I could endure; the treatment, it seemed, had been successful. I opened my eyes cautiously.

“Ugh.”

The moment I tried to rise, my body cried out in protest. A sharp chorus of pain confirmed what I already suspected: I had been gravely wounded.

Propped halfway up, I surveyed the room. It was a spacious private chamber, furnished in clean white.

So… he saved my life and placed me in comfort besides.

I thought, not without irony, that Baek Soohyuk was generous to a fault. Slowly I looked about—

And nearly choked on my own breath.

They say that in great shock the voice fails—and truly mine did. Against all expectation, Baek Soohyuk stood there, arms folded, watching silently as I stirred. His face betrayed no expression, and thus no hint of what passed within him. Was he angered? Relieved? Glad? I could not tell.

Why in heaven’s name stare without a word? You nearly frightened me to death.

If he meant merely to startle me, it was absurd; Baek Soohyuk would never waste his time upon such trifles.

“Baek Woojin…”

He moved his lips, as though to speak, yet uttered no more than my name before falling silent again. Those lips, poised to open and close yet never quite doing so, made the moment stretch like eternity.

Now that I look… he himself is in dreadful state.

At a glance, his radiance still shone, obscuring all else, but more careful study revealed him haggard and worn. He still wore the clothes from Seoul Station, stained with blood, and his face was drawn, thinner than before. A mishap in the First Guild War, yes, but nothing that should have left him this gaunt.

And if so weary, why not bathe, change, and rest at home? Why sit here like a statue at my bedside, when surely there are attendants enough?

His silent vigil, his wordless staring, made me restless.

“What are you looking at?”

The reckless words leapt from my lips unbidden—crass and graceless, hardly fit to speak to the brother who had nursed me.

“Why did you do it?”

Perhaps from exhaustion, Baek Soohyuk ignored my insolence. By fortune, he let it pass.

“Do not look at me with the face of one in mourning. If you have a question, speak it plainly.”

I had meant to remain silent, yet in the end I yielded.

For silence, too, in the face of a question is its own form of disdain.

He sighed deeply, scrubbing at his face with dry hands. I had thought that saving him in the moment of peril would move him—but he seemed only bewildered, caught in turmoil. And truly, when one who had hounded you with enmity suddenly cast themselves before you as shield, gratitude might well be eclipsed by confusion. I resolved, magnanimously, to understand.

“Baek Woojin, you have a talent for driving me mad.”

Still, harsh words to hurl at an invalid. That my life had been saved, only to be met with such reproach, made me silently curse the past Woojin whose conduct had left me so poorly placed.

This damned mouth…

Yet I was bound to it, shackled by this curse of status.

“That the great Baek Soohyuk should be driven to madness by one as lowly as I—why, it is absurd.”

Resigned to my failure, I resolved to abandon all pretense until some new plan for reconciliation might be devised.

I had thought this would mend our rift. Now I must search for another way—and the prospect daunts me.

But in pain, one can scarcely devise stratagems.

“This time you flung yourself into peril near enough to self-destruction. Shall you next stage a farce of suicide before my eyes?”

That stung. My forbearance, already strained, broke in an instant. I had half resigned myself never to hear words of thanks, but to be accused of self-harm? Insufferable. Had I not thrown myself in the path to spare him the wound fated to be his? His words, spitting contempt while ignoring this truth, made my very gut twist.

“Damn it—self-harm, you say? Why in hell should I? I saved your fool hide from dying like an idiot, and for that I hear naught but vile nonsense!”

In truth, in my former life I had never cursed aloud, however dark my thoughts. Yet the words sprang forth sharp as knives. Guilt followed swiftly, as ever it did.

“So you admit—you hurled yourself before me, lest I be struck by that spear?”

Whether in optimism or self-deception, he found in my bitter words something sweet. With a long sigh, he at last stripped off his blood-soaked garments, hanging them upon a chair.

“’Tis a pity, then, that I lost the chance to see your corpse.”

Despite my flicker of remorse, the words left me spiteful.

“You would not speak so lightly, had you known how it felt to fear I should be left with your body to dispose of.”

He gave a breathy laugh, half a scoff, half a sigh.

“Better, perhaps, that you collapsed at once, and saw not the state I was in.”

“What? Did you thrash about like a madman, true to your nature?”

I could not picture it. The ever-calm, ever-rational Baek Soohyuk, unravelled by our bitter feud? At worst, I thought, he would subdue foes into surrender, as always.

“Yes. More than you can imagine.”

And I believed him not at all. To think of Baek Soohyuk unbound was harder even than to imagine Kang Gwonhoo benevolent.

“To think of you as naught but a stranger—that was arrogance.”

Arrogance, indeed. Many would sever ties with such a family. Though I, who had none, could not truly know.

What binds him so to Woojin? They share no blood. Their parents are gone. Why cling to him thus?

For me, it was survival, the need to soften enmity. But Baek Soohyuk? So cold, so exact—he had no reason to keep such ties.

“I, for my part, find it easier when you treat me as stranger. I am weary of endless comparisons.”

“No. I cannot. Not now. I must know what you truly think.”

His eyes burned, fierce and consuming. Their fire seared me until I turned my gaze away.

“I must know the true heart of Baek Woojin.”

Twice he spoke it, but the truth was cruel: the Woojin he yearned for was no longer here. However he sought, he would never find him. For I was Seo Han-gyeol.

A sudden pain throbbed through my chest.

Another remnant of the spear’s wound?

The silence stretched until at last the physician, summoned by Soohyuk, entered.

“Sir, do you feel any discomfort beyond the wound itself?”

“No. None.”

The doctor scribbled notes upon his chart, then asked again.

“And your shoulder—how fares it?”

“There is pain, yes, but nothing as fierce as before.”

“Good. We excised the weapon and foreign matter, then summoned healers of A-rank and higher. Thanks to them, the wound is near healed. Still, the body remembers great injuries, and phantom aches may linger another week. The painkillers will ease it, but if it worsens, tell us at once. And—you know you were insensate for two days?”

“Two days?”

My mouth fell open. To me it felt not even a day had passed, yet time had slipped away.

“We shall take further images, but unless some minute fragment remains, the physical wound is resolved. The curse, however—that is another matter. The spear bore a sorcerer’s curse, of at least A-rank. As you know, neither surgery nor healing arts can dispel such a thing.”

There were but two ways to break a curse. One, to force the caster themselves to lift it—though the death of a strong sorcerer only raised the value of their cursed relics. The other, to find a dispeller of higher rank than the one who had wrought it. Neither was easy.

Soohyuk’s guild had a dispeller, but only B-rank at best. Worse, rival guilds hindered him from hiring one stronger. Thus he endured the curse for a month entire.

The memory of the tale came back to me—and despair with it. For now it would be I who must suffer beneath this curse, for more than a month to come.