#greycurrents

ㅤ and so he sets off to the end of the hearth room with a book in his hand, passing by the residual waft of breakfast he'd accidentally skipped as he makes himself comfortable in a lounge next to the fireplace. from his peripheral vision, he notices how people begin flocking in once more and only then it registers that lunch is several minutes away; therefore, he arrived during one of the peak hours. taking a deep inhale and exhaling slowly, hajun imagines a bubble around him before casting [ ❛  Silence ❜   ] under his breath, then he settles in the comfort of the spell that enclosed him in.

like turning a radio's volume down, the background noise around him gradually transitions into quietness before all sounds completely cancels out. akin to the sensation of being submerged underwater where soundwaves travel slower, however, hajun's conditions for [ silence ] bound anything within his immediate vicinity to null, as he lived his seconds in pure stillness. his spell does not fully embody the powers of a witch whose ability manifests silence; rather, hajun can still feel the vibrations around him, the ebb of magic flows mixing with each other, the way the chair drags across the floor, but the difference is there is no presence of sound, and his spell lasts as long as he maintains it. temporarily.

next, he opens his book, turning a page before shutting his eyes.

no sound. the low-level spell lands perfectly clean.

it continued like this for a while, as the rest of his fingertips glide across the dots engraved on each page, and he feels like he's home. what constitutes a while and himself is blurry in what seems to be the next several hours. only when he consciously decides to pause his reading did he notice another presence within the invisible barrier that contained his spell, eyelashes fluttering open and adjusting to the light before his sight lands on a ...

ㅤㅤ――― cat?

the man gives it a look. the spell is still underway, so regardless of how gentle or loud a movement can be, the world within his boundaries is muted. focusing his intent on loosening the conditional magic upon himself, hajun's voice cuts through the defined zone of silence with a command, releasing the spell enough to exempt the feline from his magic.

just enough so he can hear it respond.