collateral

hi everyone! i’m rie (21+, she/her) and i’ll be writing for princess chaeyeon, dragon of the south. an active chameleon well versed in thinking three steps ahead and speaking in tongues. rumor has it that she’s quite ruthless, despite her graceful mannerisms and petite stature. this is a new muse, so everything is a wip and it’s been an embarrassingly long time since i’ve joined a group, let alone rped a canon character tied to a rp’s storyline (there’s a first time for everything & i’m loving it!). please bear with me if characterization fluctuates a bit as i begin to write and develop her alongside the core plot! below is hopefully a comprehensive summary of chaeyeon’s background and personality + some connections to get the ball rolling 😄

please like this post if you wish to plot & i’ll message you! 💖 

( ... )

"for now, await the servant girl.” then, the room fell silent, as if siwoo had ordered all conversation to the gallows. and it stayed silent, deafeningly so, for the entire time that siwoo wiped down the rapier; as if his motions continued to command the noise. he was nearly done when he paused, and looked up across the table. he saw words jumping at their lips. “you want to say something. speak,” he said, “i’m in no mood to guess.”

everywhere she goes, the walls of the palace cave in like a trap. a forever prison. feeling suffocated, chaeyeon absconds into the night, having memorized hidden crevices and secret routes leading to freedom, she wears her defiance with skill, drapes it over her like a well-worn cloak. she has no destination, drifting wherever the path opened and led her astray. though, her rebellion is short-lived, stalled at the hands of drunken men. hands she'd have cut off for their transgression on her person had she not been outnumbered. alone and enraged, chaeyeon wonders just how much she could get away with if she leaned into her impulse. this tremor of disturbance; a kind of infectious wretchedness that lent itself to moments of blankness, of emptiness. it steals her hesitation for a moment, enough for her to seethe with a need to do something, for something to tear apart in her stead. (she’s been idle, restrained, for too long. she forgets her hands—her rage—have always been her greatest weapon.) she moves to retaliate but that too is robbed from her when siwoo’s knight in shining armor dramatics drenches her rescue in gruesome bloodshed. 

in his chamber, chaeyeon lets her anger simmer. it brings itself to a boil the longer the silence deepens. she chews on her words, on her lip, until she could no longer stand it. his nonchalance. “you should’ve removed his hands for touching me.” her fingers trace her neck, coming away bloody. her mouth flat lines. mirthless and sharp, she bends the boundaries of their camaraderie, fashioning a command out of an afterthought: “tell the servant girl not to come. it’ll heal on its own. i’m fine.”

silence suffocates and her tongue folds itself to the back of her mouth, like she’s fighting a battle against words trapped behind clenched teeth. she would’ve cleaved the tension in two had she known how to mold her frustration into something palatable, something unlike an excuse or an apology. at his prompting, chaeyeon’s mouth opens like the maws of an agitated dragon, her accusation woven in fire and frustration.

( ... )

as she turns toward him, her eyebrows frown in concern. “what have you done to yourself? oh god, look what you’ve…” gentle hands, flighty and unsure, graze over his skin. this is not hangyul. hangyul is soft skin and supple touches, volunteering to carry a stranger’s belongings and always smiling in the face of adversity. this… this is the curse that she bears unto him. 

ugh, now he smiles! just as she’s about to be mad. instead, it elicits a small laugh, a fully fledged face palm, and a hum of annoyance, followed by: “lady shin is going to kill me. one day out and i have to return you as damaged goods. oh, what are we going to do?”

affection shapes him into a boy made of light, imbued with a purity that shone in the curve of a smile and the gentle touch of his hands. a street rat like him couldn’t possibly have fathomed a stroke of desperation would’ve brought him onto a path full of warmth and kindness. 

because his heart was a carnivorous thing; it throbbed with a hunger so vast that it yawned its mouth every time he thought to deny it, fighting against instinctive urges to destroy, to ravage. his mother had found a beast and thought to tame it with love, eager to nurture it in all of its monstrous form. years now and hangyul is a collared commodity dressed to the nines in the finest of fabrics, eating his fill of food in the warmest of homes. 

some days, he feels like a fraud.

he was not made for small talk and sugarcoating. his mouth has always been a sharp thing used to cut, to bleed. boys like him had hands that clenched in fists, white-knuckled grips, and a slant of a grin. 

he was not born holy. but here, in the mouth of a dirty alleyway, he could pretend to be.

“they started it.” his shrug is half-hearted; nonchalance an excuse he uses to bring his free hand to rub the back of his neck. the hand she held so delicately in hers flexes, as if testing the pain against his tolerance. he comes away with barely a grimace. nods like it’s no big deal. “manageable. ranks at a 6 on the pain scale.” 

( ... )

“… I was trying to run away.” He admits, the brief pause measuring his own, personal parse of her then. “I thought it would be the best time, since everyone seems to still be preoccupied with indulging themselves.” Chaeseong winks, treading his little quips lightly, teasingly. “I took it as a sign when the most memorable response I felt I’d been given tonight was a woman denouncing me to my face. It gets a bit numbing, after a while.” Another silence. Further acquiescence. “Please, just let me go. I don’t know how much I can take anymore of being here. I was better off forgotten in the Spirit Wilds. I understand that now.”

“the people are kind to think of you at every turn. you mustn’t forsake their sincerity.”

chaeyeon was taught young to never take anything at face value. to always question truths, to always know how and when to decipher a lie. as a child, she’d wasted no time on people who thought she would be easy pickings, using her for target practice, as a thing to sharpen their teeth and knives on. the political court was not for the weak and she learned from the moment she could walk that smiles held a multitude of sins. 

it is why she looks upon chaeseong with quiet, untouchable sympathy. her hood slips. she makes no move to reposition it. lets the night pass them silently as she waited. for a man chaesan went out of her way to look for and retrieve, he must be capable of so much more than just this — an outsider who lingered on the periphery, who made himself scarce in the company of kin, who didn’t dare raise his voice or his head. chaesan’s successor could never be weak. because her sister was certainly no fool.

she exhales a breath and had half a thought to leave him be when chaeseong’s confession stills her retreat. she lingers on the precipice of discovery, her body angling itself to face him once more. “too much for you?” 

it’s hardly a stab. chaeyeon means nothing by it. pulling her punches didn’t seem like the best way to approach a man who looked as lost and as spooked as he did. her tongue darts out to wet her lips; her dry mouth a sign of sudden awkwardness. her relationships with her siblings have always been tumultuous. having never quite grasped the art of affection, she loved at a distance, terribly and coldly and haphazardly. often unsure of what to do with her hands, how to care with her heart, what to say with her mouth.

chaeseong is uncharted territory and for a moment, she lingered where she stood. close enough to catch his wink and read through his feigned levity. she returns it with a brittle smile, her heart twinging at the sound of self-deprecation. he begs her to let him go and something inside her tears open. sympathy propels her feet forward. chaeyeon reaches out and slips her hand into his, pressing courage and defiance between their palms.

“come with me.” 

she forgets to fear him and his presence. what threat did he pose to her authority, to her position, with him downtrodden and beaten? the throne was a terrible place. the crown, a bloody burden built on the bodies of many. nobody was ever as innocent as they seemed or as clean as they claimed their hands were. but here, at this very moment, chaeyeon was only sure of one thing: chaeseong’s hand was warm. 

( ... )

the memory fades, and she is instantly brought back to the present. ignoring the sudden throb she felt against the scars on her hands, hyunhee simply focused her riveted attention onto the princess’s injuries.

“your highness,” she calls timidly, mustering her courage to look at crown princess chaeyeon in her eyes once more. “if its alright, please let me allow me to treat your injuries.”

hwa hyunhee is an enigma.

years ago, with her body crumpled on the floor, chaeyeon had seen her slight frame bent in a perpetual curve two steps behind her mother’s back. a girl of passive solitude and shrouded by a veil of ignorance. she remembered her — for her eyes; how they looked upon her as she bled, her body bruised, her mouth refusing to scream. there had been a mutual sort of horror in being witnessed in such a state of violence, such vulnerability had no room for voyeurism and yet, her destruction always began with an extra body in the room, as if her suffering was a performance and her pain requiring an audience to be justified. her resolve, then, had been broken and brutally maimed. her dignity shattered in the face of submission. 

years later and she chanced upon her again, loitering in the gardens, in the hallways; always kept busy by some menial task. always elusive, always at the periphery; her existence is a haunting, a trailing piece of her past that strangles her the more she notices her. 

her request for a personal handmaiden had been deliberate. a nudge and a quiet suggestion is all it takes for strings to be pulled. (loneliness was such a good weapon to use.) 

hyunhee stands before her now: obedient, graceful and every bit as servile as she had been. 

chaeyeon’s mouth curls in a smile. barely indulgent, almost cruel. she feels gutted by hyunhee’s compassion. it chafes more than it soothes. her gentleness waging a war with self-inflicted violence. “it doesn’t hurt.”

pain has always been synonymous with normal. she’s used to it; her body long since numbed to the effects of wounds left untreated. it is as easy as breathing. though, her surprise is mild. a delicate eyebrow lifting at the touch of hyunhee’s hand around hers. her fingers flex against her touch; a maddening, involuntary flutter. as if unable to reconcile the realness and the warmth of her skin against hers.

it is a kindness she is undeserving of. 

( ... )

she knows what it is like to succumb: temptation is eve with the apple; the core of bliss held between blood red lips.

for all his years of traveling, hangyul had not once found a comfortable place to settle. (after all, comfort did not mean anything to a vagrant, a nomad.) a lone ranger passing through, ravaging ghost towns and river villages with his entourage of shadow warriors, born and bred through blood, fear, and vengeance. somewhere in him, he still looks for something to attach himself to — the need to claim, to belong, as prominent as ever. but it never works for a man who is tethered to the wild; a wandering beast imbued with a dying purpose.

the fire nation hums with a strangled sort of anticipation. the south is a wreckage, blood-soaked and dying. chaehwi’s wrath felt for miles; a daunting, haunting miasma that was as torturous as it was relieving. and hangyul finds himself straddling a thin line between false loyalty and misguided trust. he bends the knee for no lord, lends an ear for no traitor. he belonged to no nation. no city. no land. existing on the periphery, content to become one with the shadows. a wretched, unholy plague. a curse upon his once upon a time home and its people.

his entourage sets up camp in the middle of nowhere, taking over an abandoned warehouse and gutting it clean through to turn into a temporary fortress. their journey is cut short by a night that falls heavily. the clouds above an omen.

in an ideal world, he would take watch now so his men could sleep their fill until dawn, but something restless itches down his spine; a nasty tingle that spoke of ominous happenings and wretched encounters. his entrance into his quarters is marked with intent. plans for his next shipment, where to forage, a client to meet, an execution to deliver — nerves abuzz, brain wired. sleep is the last thing on his mind as he steps across the threshold and stops dead in his tracks.

he senses her before his eyes latch onto her figure. must be a figment of his imagination; her presence bearing all the makings of a fever dream. he draws in a breath, trying for calm, and his heart trips, stumbling on her realness. lavender and vanilla. the essence of her as intoxicating as she’s always been.

his hands clench at his sides, shoulders rolling; his body unfolds and something dangerous permeates the air. he approaches her on a prowl, predatory and languid, stopping just short of an arm’s length away. too close and, yet, never quite close enough.

here’s the joke: two mercs walk into the bar and everybody makes it out alive.

(rumor has it, pistols at dawn was declared over shattered porcelain and bruised knuckles.)

reality is — they never walked in together. (the idiot followed him.) sat at opposite ends of the bar; a whole three seats of distance masquerading as a river of lies, and ordered their own damned drinks.

sorghum has never tasted fine in his opinion. all too bitter and harsh on his tongue. he didn’t like being reminded of how his life felt in his mouth or down his throat. but habit dictates he does as the deprived do on this side of town, knocking back a round in quick succession, trying to find some semblance of solace at the bottom of a glass. he grunts his displeasure, earning a snort from his left. hangyul ignores him. no point in indulging foolishness with anything more than measured calm. doesn’t matter if he had a bone to pick with the younger man or not. (he’ll collect eventually.)

instead, he casts his attention at the corner of the dingy establishment, where the beginnings of a fight is about to ensue. he can sense it in the air: the sizzle, the crackle of it; punch-drunk impulsive anger, the distinct white-knuckled grip on the corner of a table, the red taunt of instigation. he takes a sip. adrenaline burns acidic down to the pit of his stomach. it pools like rot, mingling with the stirring of something heady and primal.

on his face, as if slashed by a knife, a cruel, twisted grin. hangyul opens his mouth and out comes a dare. “wanna die?” on the other side, a brawl comes to a head. flesh is bruised, skin is cut. blood shed in small, petty acts. his hand twitches. (he stays put.) almost laughs. (he drains half his sorghum with gusto. no grimace. a tragedy.) “now’s a good time.”

half the people in their vicinity vanishes in the span of a heartbeat, then. 

( ... )

“…princess chaeyeon.” he breathed, catching himself before he could call out her name in tender affection, but still unable to stop the cheeky smile that curved around his lips, his eyes creasing as he gave her a mischievous little wave. “i’ve…we’ve been waiting.” 

for the past few months, chaeyeon has lived life on a held breath. never knowing whether today would be the day her treachery would be discovered. she wakes every night, gasping—sometimes, silently screaming—her face wet with tears, her heart gouged out of her chest. she dreams of death (none more violent than her own; her murderer wearing the face of her own kin) and it leaves her shaken, tortured by a task she had taken upon herself to shoulder. 

oftentimes, fear strangles her with a grip so tight she chokes on her grief. her mind tells her she need not do this, enduring so much for so little; but her heart tells her she cannot abandon the brother who put his heart in her bloody hands, his eyes begging her not to drop it. she’d seen his kindness, his longing for family, for a place to call home, and almost wept with nostalgia. chaeyeon had seen herself in his tired eyes and vowed, then and there, if he promised not to forsake her, she would stand before him, sheltering him with her entire body.

in doing so, she finds herself here: behind enemy lines. a secret she has guarded dangerously behind gritted teeth. she whittles her nerves down to nothing, nails bitten raw; tames her body into a perfect curve of steady guidance (head bowed, face serene, her mouth disciplined). her lies begin the moment chaehwi had set eyes on her when she arrived in the south and has been stretched so thin, she can almost feel its impending snap. the give is inevitable. this, she feels in a dreadful, unending pang reverberating through her chest. the purple wedding is a ruse. a trap of epic proportions. every detail planned in secrecy between her and chaeseong, who waited for her back in the capital. he leaves her alone to see through a herculean task and chaeyeon, ever resentful of failure, walks into the mouth of a dragon with every intention to leave unsinged.

when chaos ensues, she is prepared. absconding into the rush of disorder and scattering bodies, she makes it as far as the edge of the holdfast. she listens for a sign. chaeseong had not mentioned who he had sent to aid her in her escape, but trust was a peculiar thing. had he wished her dead, he would’ve smite her into a pile of ashes in the catacombs when they first reunited. he would not leave her to die, not when she’d promised him she'd come back.

in the distance, something calls. a beautiful trill; as familiar as it was delicate. a flap of wings overhead. a touch of camaraderie, a sliver of hope. she runs towards her rescue, bursting through the woods like a shadowed wraith with death on her heels.

chaeyeon looks into the mirror and sees something unrecognizable: all monster and a sliver of a woman unhinged. she’s got half a heart now, shriveled and bloody, hidden away in the rotting corpse of a murderer. she looks down at her hands and where there is smooth skin, she sees ligature marks, open veins; a river of blood staining them perpetually sanguine. sticky and metallic; a thickened layer of rust that never fades no matter how hard she scrubs away. 

nonstop bloodshed has made a criminal out of her. tortured by the need to survive, she has walked a gnarly road of selfish intentions. (once upon a time, she could’ve convinced herself it was for the greater good. but that stopped being an excuse when she watched body after body drop, knowing she plays a dangerous game of double agent.) chaeyeon can’t think of any way possible for any of them to come out unscathed, unchanged. for all she’s ever known was violence and meeting it head on with her teeth clenched and blood on her face and the razor sharp edge of her blade, a flash of deadly silver light. she forgets it’s impossible to live like an innocent when she’d come out of the womb bloody and ravenous.

(mother was right all along. chaeyeon is a monster, through and through.)

sighing, she’s pulled from her reverie by a soft voice announcing a guest at her door. brows furrowed, chaeyeon considers the time. this late at night and so soon after her return to the capital, what guest in their right mind would seek an audience with her? curious, chaeyeon straightens her robes and heads to the door, opening it with genteel manners.

“akane,” her face gives nothing away. calm like still waters. though, beneath the familiar drape of expensive robes, her heart pounds a little too wildly for her liking. stepping back, chaeyeon gestures with a hand for her to come inside. “a pleasure to see you again.” 

( ... )

“ah,” she smiled, “yes. i wasn’t certain of the length you’d like the pin to be. and the blade inside…” her voice hushed as she reached to the side for a bundle of rolled up fabric and unfurled it carefully. inside, four blades glittered in the light. “it can be this thick,” sayuri motioned to a thin blade on the far right, “or this thin,” she motioned to a blade on the far left; a piece of metal no thicker than a needle. “oh, careful, it’s very sharp. my friend told me,” sayuri began, and if she meant herself or her smith or someone else was unclear, “this is used to injure chi points—like acupuncture. it’s quite useless as a knife, but the wound it will cause won’t be so easily healed, either.” a solemnity had fallen over her as she spoke—she blew it away as easily as dust when she spoke again, “of course, i would make it all,” she said with easy confidence, “but i only wondered which you would like me to make first.”

“names are peculiar things. in some ways, they define you; in others, they imprison you.” was that not the reason legacies exist? so much rested on a name, on a lineage for the sake of tradition and the delineation of power. was that not what the state of their nation has amounted to? hints of strife and internal conflicts amass. so much death and bloodshed in the span of so little time. over a name, a bloody legacy. chaeyeon wanted no part of it, but knows she hardly has the luxury of detachment. she was as entangled and as embroiled as everyone else. a shame. a smile splits crooked on her lips, her eyes gleaming with a touch of amusement. “people are pretentious. it matters not what you call something, but the meaning you give it.”

chaeyeon rests her cheek against an open palm and nods, waving her hand for sayuri to do as she wished. she was at no liberty to restrict her friend from whatever it is she desired. “komodo chicken sounds lovely. have you tried komodo rhino? a new chef arrived at the palace not long ago and i have heard great things about his skill. whatever it is you wish to try, have the maids request them for you. there is no need for you to go yourself. call them and they will come.”

absentmindedly, she runs a brush through her hair, combing languidly as sayuri regaled her with a play-by-play of her crafting. “long enough for it to feel solid. perhaps,” she pauses, trying to envision the finished hairpin in her mind’s eye. “the shaft should be an inch or two longer than a palm’s width. i need to be able to grip it with my whole hand.” at the mention of the blade, chaeyeon leans forward, her brush discarded on the vanity. she reaches out but at her warning, her fingers curl away to hover in the air, inches above the uncovered blades. “the hairpin’s blade would need to be thick. durable enough to hold up this mass of hair.” a shoulder lifts in jest. though, what her mouth says next is anything but funny. “but sharp enough to stab through flesh.”

once, when he was younger, hangyul had been tending to his family’s gardens when he found a baby bird injured underneath a shrubbery of fireplums. he did not think twice to rescue it — cupping gentle hands around its tiny body, running to his mother, begging for her to save it. later, she’d kissed his forehead. touched his face. and told him he mustn’t forget the fragile warmth he held in his palms. (your hands are made to love, to heal. today, you have saved a life. tomorrow, you will save a nation. one day, you can save the world. remember. you mustn’t ever take a life for granted. never. understand?)

years later, hangyul treats the world and its people a little too kindly, wholeheartedly. always smiling in the face of ridicule and cruelty and ignorance. he wasn’t like boys his age, who cared about one-upping each other, stroking their pint-sized egos, swaggering around wearing their prestige like borrowed clothes. too big to fit such small shoulders. a family’s legacy is a heavy burden to carry. his peers know nothing of what it’s like to come from nothingness, to hunger for a life beyond starvation and despair and emptiness. to want and want and want and still, not be satiated. it does not stop them from sneering from whence he’d come, crawling out of the bowels of hell and into the lap of luxury.

you don’t deserve this life, vagrant. do not mistake charity for love. 

he should’ve walked away, then. (his mother had taught him better: when faced with adversity, you must first be a gentleman. do not sully your hands bludgeoning the fragile pride of those who do not think before speaking. you are better than this. than them. violence, she’d said with her hands tight against his face; the beginning of a warning warm against his skin, does not become you, hangyul.)

he doesn’t.

his eyes gleam with a wickedness unfitting of a noble son. his mouth crueler than intended. he’d fashioned himself a blade made of filthy rumors. the grapevines in the backyards of nobility full of secrets to pluck from. (hangyul with his boyish smiles and charming eyes, always had an ear to the ground, his eyes watching. he knows all, but says nothing. a snake in the grass.) he hardly accounts for the blow to his face, to his mouth. the taste of blood. something feral makes him grin. he steps forward and the band of three steps back, terrified. in the distance, he thinks he hears an angel calling his name. (he ignores it.)

he is burning now. hungry. revenge, he realizes, is best served with his own hands. (he attacks.)

except a soft hand collides with his; so small, the whole of his palm envelopes hers in his heat. a body slots itself between tangled limbs, fingers latching around his wrist and pulling. running. escaping. (hangyul, the wind whispers, honey sweet.)

( ... ) 

The heavy burden of her title, and the way his family asked her to sacrifice her life for the nation, for the people, for others, pained him. Never an advocate of war, Gwanji had a difficult time understanding the Dragon of the South’s duties, where her good prestige lay. Even if he could see the weight of her position, he could not conceive her precious blood waisted in a battleground, when she could have a life without concerns, without pain, without war.

And if the sailor had luck enough, the mermaid could stay by his side.

was there a name for what it was like to disintegrate, to disappear so viscerally that all you had left was the fleeting essence of you? as her chest heaved and her body shuddered, chaeyeon wondered if, perhaps, this was what death truly felt like — not a pinnacle, not a precipice, but a parody. of heartbreak and twisted sorrow. she did not feel beautiful with the intensity of it, but wildly reckless and out of control. a torn up mess of disobedient limbs and a fracturing mind. she cannot bring herself to lower her hands for fear of seeing herself reflected in his eyes. (she did not wish to witness herself crumbling. there’s an ugliness there she refused to reconcile with. she can’t accept this. won’t.) she is starved from the madness of despair. but gwanji’s voice is a soothing balm. it comes in like a delicate ray of sunshine, a calm breeze. he is closer now; within reach, and for all her desperation, chaeyeon finds herself reaching out a hand, wanting to know if he was real.

“i do not fear death.” death should fear me. his words from earlier do not deter her from naming a taboo. chaeyeon has never shied away from such a thing before and she would not do so now, even with the marks of her narrow escape imprinted on her body. “even if it has tortured me so.” her breathing is labored now and she tries to fight it with a clenched fist against her breast. it hurt to be human; so fragile in her existence that even survival, living, felt like war. 

“everywhere.” the truth slips free from behind gritted teeth. she has had enough of enduring. it is no dramatization. she didn’t merely utter such a truth for sympathy. there was not an inch of chaeyeon’s body that didn’t ache with the consequences of battle and sacrifice. under her clothes, her skin was stretched thin. brittle and riddled with bruises and healing scars. under flesh and bone, her fragile heart beat weakly. it’s barely surviving, having worked so hard to save her from the brink of death. beneath that, her tired soul wept. life was too much for her it seemed. her recovery was to be extensive, spanning weeks. maybe, months. chaeyeon had watched with weary eyes when the healers had looked at her with pity. from their mouths, a prayer for good health fell on deaf ears. she was not to leave the premises. her body cannot suffer more damage, lest she wished to be bedridden the rest of her mortal life.

( ... )

his surprise came and went without hurry. “princess,” he addressed her respectfully. yisu placed the papers down on the table, then pulled out one of three ornate chairs that surrounded the large desk. “please,” he said, “sit.” as he walked to the closet, he dried his arms and his chest and his back, where rivulets of rainwater from his damp hair had dripped. “my apologies,” he spoke as he picked out a plain cream tunic and pulled it over his head, “i let time escape.” yisu, now decent, and holding a thin piece of green incense that he had gotten from a drawer, walked to the table. “the captain requested a blessing on deck after dinner,” he said, with a finality that closed the conversation.

he stood by the edge of the desk. he pinched the tip of the incense between his thumb and forefinger and it began to burn with the soft scent of cedar and citrus. “those are statements and questions for our first meeting,” he spoke of papers laid on the table, the ones he was holding when she came in. he motioned with his eyes to a small stack of parchment, “and those are for all other audiences we’ve requested.” he spoke as he stuck the incense into a small ceramic holder on the edge of the table. in the distance, lightning struck—a bright white light outside his closed window, accompanied by the muffled crackle of thunder. the rain worsened.  yisu took the chair beside the one he had pulled out for her. the storm carried with it a cold—a chill that melted as soon as it touched his skin, a bitterness that could never reach his bones. there was a fire in him that kept him warm; the closeness between them was kindling.

there is something dignified in the way she moves, slow and deliberate, at his invitation. chaeyeon’s bearing is every bit as befitting as her title: a dancer’s grace masked over a poisonous viper. she sits quietly, tucking her robes beneath her. on her lips, a smile of soft acquiescence. she allows him his explanations, making no move to comment or chastise. she looks at him just once — an appraisal that is equal parts bold and indignant. chaeyeon doesn’t say anything. amusement flickers in the crease of her brow and the delicate lift at the corner of her mouth. she looks away, one hand reaching for a nearby parchment. the other remains in her lap, her fingers curled into a half fist. resting, waiting; clenched with tension.

she reads in total silence, her mouth shaping verbatim words and fractured stories pieced together by deft hands and righteous minds. in her mind’s eye, she repaints the picture of that night: a cup overturned, a body slumped over. she remembers the distinct lull in noise as someone notices the deadness of vitality cut short just like that. and then, the screams came. chaeyeon closes her eyes against the sharpness of it; the sound of pain and grief so piercing, her heart thuds. her eyes open then, full of foreboding; clouded with a worry she doesn’t quite understand. 

“so many variables, where do we even begin?” the parchment is heavy in her hands. she cannot fathom a lie from the truth. “is this everything? everyone? this hardly seems enough.” her brows pinch together, easing only when she catches a waft of cedar and citrus. the pursed line of her mouth lightens, thinning to something resembling a slant curve of contemplation. unable to relax even as she allows a shallow breath to steady herself. “something is missing.” 

so focused on the next parchment of interest that when chaeyeon leans forward to pull it closer for her perusal, her sleeve slips down her arm. she frowns, teeth skimming her bottom lip as she reads, her eyes flickering steadily. “wait, look…” she begins on an exhale, shifting around to show him the statement. she expects to find him standing. instead, she finds him much closer — close enough, the warmth of his breath touches her face.