The whereabouts of the heart (5)
When I came to my senses, the bedroom had been cleaned up.
The day was slowly dawning. A full day had passed.
I was blankly staring out the window when I heard a voice from somewhere.
"Should I carry you?"
What is it? It's definitely the first time I've heard that voice, but it sounds familiar.
But no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't remember when I had heard those words. I stopped thinking about it and turned my head away.
Nadia was dozing off in the rocking chair in front of the fireplace. Her snorting was soft.
Rahon was asleep, sitting next to the bed, holding my hand tightly.
The eyelashes were neatly folded down. The harmony between the nose bridge that drew a perfect line below it and the slightly parted lips was as beautiful as a work of art. A look that shines even in the dark.
An exclamation escaped me without me knowing. Hearing that sound, Rahon's eyelashes fluttered and slowly rose.
I watched as the purple eyes slowly came into focus, then quickly closed my eyes.
"Ugh..."
Then as if slowly regaining consciousness, I tossed and turned, and felt Rahon waking up.
"Millenia?"
A deeply muffled voice found me. I slowly opened my eyes and looked up at Rahon's chin..
“Who... Rahon?”
"Nadia is with me too. She's passed out right now, so let's talk quietly."
I nodded and lowered my voice. We whispered, face to face, in the dim bedroom.
"What happened?"
"Don't you remember? You suddenly collapsed."
"Ah... I remember."
"A kid who had been answering without care until then suddenly collapsed. Do you know how surprised I was? I think I used more power on you than on Baba."
"I'm sorry I'm particularly sensitive to the smell of blood."
"So weak that you faint? For no reason?"
Rahon asked with a suspicious look.
I naturally changed the subject before he could ask any more questions.
"What about Baba?"
"I left him lying on the sofa."
"Is the condition okay?"
Rahon's expression became strange.
"...Do you really care about him?"
"Yes?"
"You never asked me about the condition of the person I healed. If I said I healed them, that was the end of it."
Could it be because I was the first person to overcome trauma and save someone?
It was true that I was more concerned about Baba than before when I just intended to use him.
"I'm sorry if it sounded suspicious."
"I'm not saying this because I think you don't trust my authority. l just feel a little strange."
"How is it strange?"
"There is something like that. It makes me feel annoyed and jealous...."
Rahon stopped talking and shut his mouth tightly.
The red glow that started from the neck quickly spread to the entire face.
He buried his flushed face in the bed.
"Just pretend you didn't hear it."
"Ah, you're jealous because it seems like I only care about Baba."
"I told you to pretend you didn't hear it?"
"I already heard it."
"You can just pretend you don't know. Why are you so inconsiderate?"
Rahon shook my shoulder. I rocked back and forth and burst out laughing.
It's so cute how Rahon keeps his voice low while getting annoyed, afraid of waking Nadia up.
He just keeps telling me to keep my distance, to not come near him and pushes me away. But deep down, he already thinks of me as his friend.
Rahon had this side to him too. He seemed like a little kid who got angry because I cared a little about another friend.
Suddenly, Rahon became quiet. He was looking at me with gentle eyes as if he had never been angry.
I was about to quietly shut my mouth, thinking I had teased him too much when he tapped me on the head.
"You can laugh more. When you're scared and anxious, laughing heartily is the best cure."
“Ah.”
In Rahon's eyes, I must have looked anxious.
Well, I fainted from the smell of blood while trying to save a dying person. A normal person would still be in a state of panic.
Usually, Rahon seems to act however he wants, but at times like this, I felt that he was thinking deeply.
As I was feeling grateful and embarrassed, just fiddling with the blanket, Rahon changed the subject by tilting his neck from side to side.
"Ugh. I feel so embarrassed. What should I do with Baba? Should I take him to my room?"
"It's time for everyone to wake up, so someone might see it. I'll just leave it here."
Rahon nodded with a displeased expression.
"Oh, and don't get hurt for a while."
"Are there people who get hurt because they want to get hurt?"
"Be careful. I won't be able to use my powers for a few days."
"Why?"
Rahon turned his face away as if embarrassed.
"When you fell... I was a little surprised and overdid it."
“Ah.”
Did he pour all his power into me while I was unconscious?
How surprised must one have been that he used up all his powers that he had been able to use for several days?
I was speechless because I was so sorry and grateful. In the awkward silence, Rahon let out a small cough.
"I didn't tell you to worry about it. It will come back naturally with time, so don't worry."
"I guess this is something that has happened before."
"Yeah, back when there was a plague in our country."
It was an incident I remember too.
Is it true that a plague broke out in the Vatican, causing many priests to become disabled and even kill some?
There were even rumors that they had been punished because of a corruption scandal that had just broken out in the Vatican.
When was that?
"But that wasn't a disease, it was a sexually transmitted disease."
"..."
As I distorted my expression without realizing it, Rahon burst into laughter.
"At that time, I was caught by the Vatican and they squeezed my power. I clearly warned them that I would lose my power if I continued like this, but they didn't listen. They wanted to be healed quickly before word got out."
"..."
"I passed out while healing an unknown number of priests, and when I came to, my powers were gone. It took me a long time to regain my former strength."
"You have wasted your power."
"What's even funnier is the Pope's plan. You know what he did?"
"Well?"
"They sent me to the Empire. They wanted to hide the fact that my powers had dried up while I was curing the priests of their sexually transmitted diseases."
"For a Pope's choice, it's rather petty."
It was widely known that the Pope was more of a politician than a priest and that he used Rahon for his own influence.
If you were chosen as a guardian just before you died as a slave, wouldn't it be okay to let you live a little more comfortably?
I felt sorry for Rahon, who had to be worked to death by having a father like the Pope, but I also respected him. I thought he had really held on well.
Rahon shrugged.
"Before that, he didn't use his power on me. I endured the pain because he was afraid of wasting his power. But after that incident, he started healing me first. He was so angry that he held back from healing those corrupted priests."
"You learned your lesson. So you just came to the Empire to recuperate?"
"How could the Pope just let me go? At that time, the 'First Walker' appeared in the Empire. He included me in the congratulatory delegation sent to the Empire."
"Huh? Was that then?"
When I was chosen as a guardian, I already knew that Rahon would attend the celebration party.
So that's what happened there.
Rahon lowered his voice secretly.
"At that time, I tried to erase my tattoo without anyone knowing."
...You said that there were times when you couldn't use your power.
"I can't erase the tattoo with power anyway. If it becomes a part of my body, pouring out power won't do anything."
"Then how..."
"By cutting into the tattoo."
It would have been easy to understand that if the tattoo couldn't be erased by power, then scarring it wouldn't be of any use.
As I let out a deep sigh with a pitiful expression, Rahon pouted his lips.
"I know it was a stupid idea, but at the time it seemed possible."
The self-harm attempt, of course, failed.
Rahon grumbled, saying that he had to make things worse by hurting his back.
'Wait for a second.'
The reason I excluded Rahon from the list of benefactors was because the time he got his flower tattoo was different from the time I treated the boy's back.
But if he got a tattoo when he came to the Empire, then maybe he was the boy I treated?
"How old were you at that time?"
"I think I was eighteen?"
What, that's about the same age as the boy I thought he was?
'I thought Kalit was my benefactоr... ?'
My mind became complicated because of the unexpected situation.
"I wasn't in good shape. I wasn't bleeding and I had a high fever. I should have taken some medicine, but they just left me alone. My powers were gone anyway, so they thought it would be easier to just die."
"..."
"But in the end, I survived."
"By any chance... did someone treat you?"
"Yes."
"...!"
If I am the one who cured Rahon, then he is my benefactor.
My heart started beating fast. I looked at Rahon's lips and asked.
"Who is it...? Do you remember?"
A faint smile appeared on Rahon's lips.
"The kid who kept asking me to live with him."
...Who is that?
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