Uninvited Guest - 4
Miracles sometimes arrive without the slightest warning. Other times they repay every scrap of effort you have banked up, all at once.
Today was the latter.
"Huh?"
Hwarin tilted her head, clearly thrown by something she had never expected to hear. She looked as if the words refused to assemble into sense.
"You. Your face is getting better."
"What the hell kind of joke is that right now?"
Given the situation we were in, the remark must have sounded too shocking to believe. She pressed me like someone demanding a hidden gift be produced at once.
"I'm serious. The discoloration on your skin is fading."
I had been staring blankly at her face under the light, and that was how I noticed. It was only a small patch, but where the blotches should have been, clean skin was clearly visible.
"Even you don't get to mess around with my face. I won't let that slide."
A faint flare of anger colored her expression; she glared at me as if she had been betrayed.
"Do I look like the kind of guy who would joke about that? Hang on."
Where had I put the hand mirror? I rummaged hastily through the drawer that held it.
"Y-you mean it? For real?"
Her voice was still full of disbelief.
"Here's a hand mirror. Check for yourself."
She took it with the same doubtful look and studied her reflection carefully.
"......Nothing looks different to me."
"It's healing, I tell you. Here. Look."
This was the sort of change a person who glanced casually at a mirror every day would miss; someone watching from the side noticed it first.
I stepped behind her so we could share the same view and pointed, one by one, at the spots that had changed.
"Here the blotch has shrunk, and here it's gone completely......"
Places where the discoloration had lessened, places where it had vanished. The improvement was not dramatic, but there was unmistakable progress, and I marked each site with my fingertip.
Once I pointed them out, Hwarin finally saw them too. The distrust in her eyes melted into pure astonishment.
"Your face is still subtle, but your upper body definitely shows a lot more clean skin."
I had never seen her completely bare, yet she had told me once that her torso was in roughly the same state as her face. The collarbone she had just exposed, however, was dotted with healthy patches.
"Really?"
She startled and yanked her collar open again, peering down at her chest. Completely unconcerned that I was still standing right behind her.
Oh. Thank you. Truly, thank you.
The view from the back was even more spectacular. Earlier it had been the Grand Canyon; from this angle it was the Himalayas.
"Here, and here. Clean skin here too."
I fought the almost overwhelming urge to press a finger into that pale, elastic flesh and simply pointed at the newly clear areas instead.
"I-it really is...... the blotches are......"
Her voice shook violently.
"Yeah. They're disappearing."
"I...... I'm getting better? I'm actually getting better?"
Her shoulders trembled. Moisture thickened her voice, ready to spill at the lightest touch.
"Yeah, Hwarin."
I put every ounce of certainty into the words.
"Hic! Hhuk......"
In the end she could not hold the tears back. Was there a towel nearby?
"You've got a pretty face waiting underneath—why cry over it? ......Oof!"
The moment I stepped away to look for a towel, she spun around and flung herself against me, wrapping me in a fierce embrace.
"Hhuuk. I. I. I'm being healed."
She rubbed her tears into my clothes and kept crying. I simply stroked her back.
"Glad you trusted me, right?"
"Uuungh, y-yeah! Hhuuk."
I took that as a yes.
Her full-throated sobbing lasted a long while. More than ten years. A girl who had thrashed in hopeless pain had finally been given hope. Tears of hope, no matter how hard they fall, never last forever.
I kept patting her until the storm inside her quieted.
"You...... were you really about to say that earlier?"
Once her emotions settled she lifted her head a fraction and eyed me with lingering suspicion.
If she had calmed down she could let go already. The problem was that the feel of her against my chest felt far too good; I was having trouble stepping back.
"What else would I have been about to say?"
"Bullshit. No way. It definitely wasn't that."
She stared straight into my eyes, clearly unsatisfied with something. What? I had nothing to feel guilty about. Look at these clear, innocent eyes.
"What is it?"
"Forget it. Fuck. You're...... really great, and I hate it. What the fuck."
"What are you even saying?"
After all the comforting I had just done, this was the thanks I got?
"Heh. Never mind."
She laughed at my baffled expression, then gently pushed me away and stepped back.
"Hey. Cry and then laugh and hair will grow on your ass."
"What the hell does that even mean?"
"It's a Joseon proverb. Sudden emotional swings are bad luck, so as punishment something unsightly happens......"
"Hey. Are you saying hair's gonna grow on my ass right now?"
"That wasn't the point. Haha."
I had no such preference. I gave an awkward laugh to let her know I had misspoken.
"Ugh! Ugh! You're pure bullshit, you know that!"
She pounded my chest with her fists, her face already so bright no one would guess she had been weeping moments before.
"It really is vanishing."
While Hwarin stepped out briefly to clean her ruined face, I sat on the edge of my bed and murmured quietly to myself.
Yeokcheonja.
The power I had only learned of after arriving in this world—the ability to rewrite the fates of the heroines.
If I was going to be transmigrated into a wuxia world, I would have preferred martial talent. Instead, because it was a wuxia dating sim, I got heroine-conquest powers. Typical of this place, I suppose.
Seeing visible results from rising renown is pretty amazing.
Until now the ability had only suppressed debuffs. Today was the first time I had witnessed actual healing.
This was enormous news. I still had no idea how much renown Hwarin's skin required, but we had clearly crossed the minimum threshold.
I could not stop here. I had to keep getting more famous.
If things continued this smoothly, she might finally obtain the clean face she had longed for—the ordinary skin everyone else took for granted.
And if my fame kept climbing......
I might even be able to save the Star of Heavenly Slaughter.
For an instant the face of a black-haired, red-eyed girl rose in my mind.
Expressionless. A girl who seemed to have had every emotion wrung dry. Yet beneath that surface she felt more deeply than anyone, and her heart still carried a raw wound.
— See you again, Oppa Yunho.
Sohee. Where are you right now, and what are you doing?
That final night still lived vivid inside me. The girl who had promised we would meet again still lived vivid inside me.
Could I truly save her fate?
"What are you thinking about?"
Hwarin had washed her face; she returned drying the last of the water with a towel and asked.
"Just...... a bunch of things."
I answered while gazing contentedly at the first signs of recovery on her face. She narrowed her eyes at me and spoke again.
"Were you...... thinking about that friend of yours?"
Her voice held a careful hesitation, as if she were tiptoeing around a wound she knew I carried.
"Yeah. Just wondering. If my friend had been able to take that medicine, would she have recovered? Or would it still have been too little? That kind of thought."
In truth it was not some other poison human but the Star of Heavenly Slaughter. I answered as casually as I could, then looked once more at Hwarin's skin.
Strictly speaking, Hwarin was not a true Dokin.
In the original story, Dang Hwarin fell for Dang Geoho's lies, swallowed the prepared extreme poison, and became an incomplete Poison Human.
Her body succeeded in forming a poison core, yet the rest of her remained broken. Crushed, mottled skin. Constant agony she had to thrash against. Unable to control the toxins completely, she leaked poisonous powder from her body.
Betrayed by the only person she had trusted, she reached a point of no return and cursed the world into becoming a villainess.
The world, eager to mock and despise her, gave her a single epithet. Like a butterfly that sheds dust wherever it flies, she shed poison powder wherever she walked.
Dokjeop—Poison Butterfly—Dang Hwarin.
That was both her insult and her title.
In this world, however, she had never formed a poison core. She was not a Dokin but a Dokin experimental subject—nothing more than a patient suffering the side effects.
Seeing improvement in Hwarin's symptoms and overcoming a fate written by the stars themselves were clearly two different orders of magnitude.
Still, we had taken the first step.
As a writer, and as a Yeokcheonja, the road ahead remained long. Even if I collapsed from exhaustion, I would rise and walk again.
Sohee. Oppa is living hard, just like I promised. Someday—no, without fail—I want to save your fate.
"Hey. Yunho."
Hwarin's sharp tone yanked me out of the reverie.
"Hm? What?"
When I focused on her I saw her lower lip pushed out in a slight pout. A faintly angry expression. This was supposed to be a day for celebration, not a funeral. Why the face?
"Nothing. Just felt like calling you."
She wore the look of someone who had something to say yet was choosing to hold it in.
"You've clearly got something. Spit it out...... whoa."
I tried to stand from the bed and instantly lost my balance, collapsing back onto the mattress. The alcohol was making a comeback.
"Just...... go to sleep."
"I should hear what you have to say first."
"You...... once I'm cured, are you going to leav— No. Never mind. It's nothing."
She shook her head hard, as if she had nearly made a disastrous slip.
"Huh?"
"I was just going to thank you for healing me, but you looked like you were thinking about something else, so I got annoyed."
So that was it. From her point of view this was joyous news that might mean I would leave; watching me dig into gloomy thoughts beside her would naturally sour the mood.
"Yeah. Sorry about that."
"Why apologize for something like that? I was the one being a bitch, so forget it. Just go to sleep quietly."
She answered my apology at once, then fetched my pillow and slipped it under my head.
"All right. I'm still sorry. And congratulations."
"Mm...... thanks."
She was smiling with pure happiness, yet somehow the smile felt sad.
I found the expression a little strange, but the languid alcohol and bone-deep fatigue left me no strength to resist.
Dang Hwarin watched Kang Yunho in silence until his breathing grew deep and even.
Once she was certain he had fallen into true sleep, she opened a drawer and took something out.
She stared at it for a long time, then whispered so softly he would never hear.
"The medicine...... should I throw it away?"
Clutched in her hand was the fake medicine she had been taking faithfully ever since Kang Yunho gave it to her.