He lifted Dalia and carried her to the bed. He was struck with guilt when he realized how light she was in his arms. She looked so frail and thin that she could have been made up of only her bones. Damn it! He cursed himself. He hadn’t noticed how thin she had become. He hadn’t even tried to pay attention, in the first place. He had always averted looking at her and treated her with indifference, even when she couldn’t sleep or hadn’t been eating. She was suffering and still she had cooked for him with a smile. Beyond the painful memories he had buried about her, he remembered a little girl with plump cheeks and lively smile. A little girl who loved meat. She had loved food so much.
Kaichen felt awful. He blamed himself for ignoring her condition until it had turned severe. He could clearly see that her condition had deteriorated drastically since the first time he had seen her in Acrab. She looked like a different, sickly person.
He gently laid her down on the bed. Her robe, soaked with sweat, clung to her bare body. Kaichen turned his eyes away. But he still couldn’t turn away from her skinny arms and legs, and her ribcage that poked through the outline of her robe. She was really very sick.
He swallowed his guilt, clenched his teeth and covered her with a blanket. Kaichen looked at her messy desk before leaving the room. There was no way she would have been able to create a cure from the information found in that one book he gave her. If he had given her several books to help her… If I had helped her from the beginning, she might not have suffered in this way.
He had given her one book, just to shut her up and get her out of his face. He had thought it didn’t matter because she wouldn’t be able to make it anyway. But as he looked at her messy desk, she had done her own research and came up with so many effective solutions. The potion she had made didn’t look like it was made by someone who hadn’t been taught magic officially.
If she had been guided just a little, she could have been able to make it perfectly within a week. He felt pathetic for ignoring and underestimating her. He held onto his childhood memories. People change, and she might not even remember it. He had been so petty to hold her against things that had happened when they were little children. Kaichen clenched his jaw, feeling angry at himself for being so selfish. He slowly walked out of her room.
It was as if an unfamiliar, subtle rose scent had settled into his body just by being in her room for a while. At first, he didn’t know where it came from, then he recalled the rose scent that he had noticed throughout the house. Even when she had been here for just a week, so many traces of her lingered around everywhere near him. Normally, he would be irritated because of it, but he didn’t mind it. It pricked at his heart. This was the reason why he didn’t want to get close to her.
“Tsk,” he clicked his tongue. Kaichen went to his research lab. At a glance at Dalia’s table, he had understood the type of potion she was trying to make. Dalia hadn’t been able to succeed because she still lacked some knowledge regarding magic. But he had no such difficulty. He gathered the materials and measured the ingredients for it. It wasn’t as difficult. Dalia had envisioned the amount of the different ingredients perfectly but had messed up on the method. It was a combination method beyond the basics.
She came up with such a perfect combination without knowing the method! Kaichen was impressed. He frowned. It was certainly shameless pressuring him to accept her as his disciple and calling him ‘teacher’. But she did seem to have a talent.
He recalled Dalia saying that other teachers might not want to teach her because they may be jealous of her. He had thought that she was just bluffing. But seeing as how she had single handedly come up with the potion, he now believed her. Dalia, who always talked lightly about the hundred years she had spent in time magic, seemed a great deal talented than she let on. Kaichen was now truly curious about her and what she had learnt in those hundred years.
* * *
I blinked. I thought I was still dreaming when I saw the golden hair glimmering in the sun before me.
“If you have come to your senses finally, get up, will you?” said a voice.
“Ah…,” I groaned. So, it wasn’t a dream. I blinked a few times to get my blurry sight to adjust. I saw him, sitting by the bedside, with arms crossed. He was looking at me. I looked around to make sure this was indeed my bedroom. I never thought the day would come when I would see Kaichen, who has mysophobia, sitting in anyone else’s bedroom, least of all, mine.
I looked at him in a mixture of surprise and shock. Kaichen frowned in displeasure and let out a short sigh. “Get up,” he said, “You need to take your medicine.”
“Medicine?’
“I made it referring to the medicinal recipe you made,” he said. He handed me a bottle of yellow liquid. It looked like the murky pond water.
I had tried so hard to make this! But no matter how many combinations I tried, I never succeeded. I had almost lost my mind. It was touching to see that Kaichen had made this for me, and he had saved me from the hallucinations.
I guess he is not as cold-blooded. My efforts weren’t wasted! My cooking and cleaning hadn’t been in vain. I opened my mouth and gulped down the medicine. It tasted so bad and bitter, but I was so happy that I laughed.
“Thank you so much, teacher!”
“Don’t call me that,” said Kaichen but with much less contempt than usual.
“But still! As expected of you, teacher! I kept trying to make it but couldn’t succeed but you made it in just one go!”
