The Morning After Her First Night, Karin Still Reached for Her Sword First

Morning.

"Wake up! Dohyeon! It's morning!"

My shoulder shook. Once. Twice. Hard.

It felt disgustingly good.

Karin had popped up beside me and was rattling my shoulder, bursting with energy first thing in the morning. Was this really the same woman who'd lost her virginity last night and gone another round after? The recovery power of a twenty-two-year-old. A monster.

"Stop shaking and check the shoulder first."

"It's not my shoulder, it's yours!"

"Your right one, Karin."

Only then did Karin slowly raise her arm. The movement was smoother than yesterday's, but her face tightened at shoulder height. Pain, three points. Marta's training restrictions stayed in force.

Leaping out of bed and being fully recovered were two different things. A young, worked-up body can be late reporting its own pain, so joint angle and heat had to be checked before morning enthusiasm got a vote.

"What time is it?"

"Five in the morning! Knights rise before dawn!"

Five o'clock. The hour I hated most in this world.

Karin already had her uniform top on. The bottoms, not yet — her firm thighs were still bare. And on the inside of one thigh, last night's evidence had dried in place. Whether she genuinely hadn't registered it or was choosing not to, I couldn't tell.

"Karin. Your leg."

Karin looked down. Three seconds.

"AAAARGH — what IS that?!"

"Last night."

"I KNOW!! Ugh, forget I asked!!"

Karin scrambled for a wet cloth and started scrubbing. Swipe. Swipe. Red to the tips of her ears. Where had last night's boldness gone? Morning Karin was pure shy twenty-two-year-old.

The night's abandon, the morning's bashfulness. In the dark, the darkness covers a person's pride; under the morning sun, her pride clocks back in for duty. That gap was Karin's charm. Damn it, she turned me on.

I looked away and handed her a fresh cloth and clean underwear. A single teasing quip could have lightened the mood, but the price of making Karin remember her own body as something shameful would linger long after.

"I'll wait outside the door. Call me when you're ready."

"Don't write it in the records."

"You only need to tell Erica what's relevant to your physical condition. The scenes don't go in."

Karin pulled the blanket up and nodded. Hearing that privacy and medical checks could be kept apart, some of the red in her ears faded.

"Dohyeon."

"Yes."

"Last night. Did I make a lot of weird sounds?"

"Sounds."

"The. Moans. Screaming. Those."

Karin asked while staring at the wall, unable to look at me. Her cheeks were scarlet.

"Some."

"How much is some?!"

"They sounded like you were enjoying yourself."

Karin buried her face in both hands.

"I'm going to die."

A twenty-two-year-old, sandwiched between a knight's pride and a woman's shame. Fucking adorable. ...And what did that make me, the one thinking it? I laid a hand on a patient's shoulder and called digging around in her head medicine — then did something else entirely every night. When your conscience gets loud, you shut your mouth. That was how I'd always lived.

"And last night. It didn't hurt too much, did it?"

Karin's expression turned serious. The face that had been burning a second ago reverted to the knight's face.

"It hurt at first. After you stopped, it got better. You didn't use magic, right?"

"I never used [Mental Interference] once during the night. The record says so too."

"Good. Because I'd hate not knowing whether it stopped hurting because my body's actually healing, or because you switched something off."

Karin hadn't dressed the pain up as nothing. It hurt, I stopped, she chose to go on. That order mattered more than any magic.

"But."

Karin pressed a hand against her lower belly.

"It feels heavy in here. Like something touched me from way inside."

The lingering sensation of a cervix that had been reached. The weight twenty-four centimeters of depth leaves behind. For a first-timer, twenty-four centimeters is overload — an aftereffect to be expected.

Before I could offer an interpretation, Karin said she'd call Marta first. Whether the heaviness was simple muscle soreness or an injury with bleeding was the military physician's job to determine.

Marta checked for heat, bleeding, and pain when walking, and ordered rest through tonight. She attached one more directive: if symptoms worsened, a consultation came before any private engagement.

"If you overdid it, rest today."

"No. Let's go again tonight."

"Don't promise now. We'll look at how your body's doing this evening and decide then."

"Can't we decide in the morning?"

"You're buzzing right now, and we haven't confirmed what's causing the pain. We need to leave this evening's Karin room to cancel."

"Then not a reservation. A candidate."

"I'll write it down as a candidate."

Instead of a circle, Karin drew a question mark on tonight's schedule.

A fastball. A knight's fastball. Fuck, nobody should get to throw that at dawn.

"Karin. Your recovery speed honestly amazes me."

"Because I'm a knight!"

Karin declared it with a clenched fist, chest out. Her breasts pressed their shape against the uniform. Thump. Thump. She knocked on them. Her own chest.

Karin hadn't used yesterday's choice as an excuse to skip training. If anything, it looked like a declaration that she, not anyone else, would set her body's pace again.

She hadn't gone back to her usual training load, though. Marta capped it at six right-arm movements, ten minutes of footwork drills, and two exposures to the sound of metal.

At first Karin protested that the numbers were far too small — and then wrote, beneath the restriction sheet, in her own hand:

Setting her own pace had never meant ignoring her body's warnings.

Morning. Routine work.

I made the rounds of follow-up patient consultations with Erica.

Erica's counseling had grown by leaps. Instead of "That must have been so hard for you," she was reaching for open questions like "How did you feel at that moment?" Two weeks ago, her sentences themselves had been closed doors. Now they opened. Proof that her emotions were coming back.

Even "her emotions were coming back" was too easy a conclusion, though. Erica reviewed her records every day, rewrote the sentences patients had called out, and re-attempted her failed questions the next morning. Her growth was the product of repetition, not some romantic thawing.

With the first follow-up patient, she chose plain conversation, no [Mental Interference]. For ten minutes, Erica asked not a single question and simply waited for the patient to end the silence.

"When he wouldn't say one word, I thought that couldn't count as counseling," Erica said after the debrief.

"You did the same with Karin. When the waiting gets filled by the therapist's own anxiety, the other person loses the space they need to speak."

The second patient had seemed better the day before, then screamed again in the night. Erica didn't hide the setback — she rolled the original plan back a step, suspending the bowstring-sound exposure and rebuilding from sleep and meals first.

The person becoming our next counselor wasn't someone who stacked up only success stories, but someone who refused to erase the records that went backward.

Erica looked up from tidying the counseling records. Her silver bob swayed slightly.

"Dohyeon, Karin's condition has improved a lot."

"Hm?"

"This morning she was outside the tent doing sword drills with a tree branch. Singing, even."

Suspicion flickered through Erica's lavender eyes. Faint. Momentary.

"What treatment did you give her last night?"

"I handed the trauma counseling over to you, and afterward I began a private relationship with Karin."

"A private relationship."

Erica repeated it, her tone a shade colder.

I wanted to read that expression as jealousy. If I could, I'd jump straight to the conclusion that Erica wanted me for herself, too.

But what lived in those lavender eyes, first of all, was an inspector's wariness.

"When did you sign the handover?"

"Before the relationship started. Karin, you, and I all confirmed it."

"And [Mental Interference] during the night?"

"Not used. I reconfirmed it with Karin again this morning."

"Karin and I conducted the post-session interview alone. I won't be disclosing its contents to you."

"Please do it that way."

Even after logging my answer, Erica didn't put the pen down.

"And did my expression look like jealousy to you?"

That hit a nerve.

"That's what I assumed."

"Some of it may be right. But what I'm feeling right now is worry, a sense of being shut out, and personal disappointment, all blended together. Don't pin it down to one name."

"Understood."

"And don't go bookkeeping my emotions as if they were treatment outcomes."

Erica handled the naming of her own feelings more carefully than I ever handled mine. The little chart in my head — the one ready to mark relationship progress with the convenient word "jealousy" — got wiped clean again.

"Erica."

"Yes."

"Do you have time this evening?"

Erica's face eased slightly. The stiffness dropped out of her shoulders.

"Yes."

"Let's talk over soup. About what we didn't get to share yesterday."

"All right."

"But if this reservation exists only to soothe my feelings, cancel it."

"It's a work meeting to align the treatment handover and record access. Whether we also talk about anything personal — you can decide that when we're there."

"Then I'll attend."

I kept Karin's recovery records and Erica's follow-up counseling in separate boxes. The moment two relationships went into the same ledger, I'd start seeing people as line items on a schedule.

Three things were settled over the evening soup.

Karin's trauma records stay with Erica alone. I receive only the return-to-duty evaluation and the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠progress notes cleared for sharing. Even if the private relationship ends, the treatment does not.

Erica read the last condition once more.

"Even if Karin wavers because of the relationship after you leave, I won't write it up as a treatment failure."

"Agreed."

"And if the relationship goes well, none of it gets added to her recovery score either."

It was a line drawn so that love and treatment would never share the same graph.

With the work talk finished, Erica allowed herself one personal remark.

"I did feel shut out. But I'm not angry at Karin."

"And at me?"

"A little. For not telling me first."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't repay the apology with the next appointment. My next eight o'clock is mine to decide."

Erica finished every last spoonful of soup and stood first. Her expression softening didn't mean the relationship had ticked up a notch — only that she'd said what needed saying, on her own time.

Night. Karin sat on the bed in thin training clothes instead of her uniform, her red hair combed through and tied back.

The question mark on the morning's schedule stayed a question mark all the way to eight in the evening. Marta rechecked the pain and inflammation, and Erica asked her — with me out of the room — whether she still wanted the private meetings to continue.

Only after both checks were done did Karin turn the question mark into a circle.

She rewrote the conditions sheet as well:

"Why write out the same thing as yesterday all ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠over again?"

"Because today, which looks the same, is still a different day from yesterday."

"I know. I was just grumbling."

"I didn't call you here tonight to cry."

"Then what do you plan to do?"

"Yesterday you were the one waiting the whole time. Tonight I'm the one who moves."

"I won't record that choice as a treatment exercise."

"Even if it helps me trust my body again?"

"It might help. But a day you refuse the relationship must never be allowed to count as a failed recovery."

"Then write it only on the private sheet."

Karin produced a small paper kept apart from the trauma records: whether we would meet, her physical condition, the stop signals. No combat-readiness scores on it.

Karin kissed me first and peeled off my shirt. But when her hand slid down past my waist, it stopped for a moment.

"I thought it would be less frightening than yesterday. Turns out it's still a little scary."

"You can stop if it's scary."

"Hearing you say that is what lets me keep going."

After laying her down, I reconfirmed the same signals as the day before. Two taps on the shoulder for stop. A tug on my hand for closer. Karin remembered ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠her own rules.

Remembering them and having them actually work were two different things. Before we began, Karin gave two taps on the shoulder.

I pulled my hands away at once and retreated to the edge of the bed.

"Wait until I say you can start again."

"Understood."

Karin took a sip of water and rolled her right shoulder. Pain, two points. A ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠moment later she was the one to reach out first.

"Now."

Only after the test did tonight's rules truly come alive.

When I entered her slowly, her pussy gave way more easily than the day before. Instead of gritting her teeth, Karin let out a long, unhurried breath. After a few slow strokes she took hold of my hips and set the depth herself, exactly as she wanted it.

"All the way is still too much. Just to there."

"Understood."

"And outside again tonight. Keep moving until I say I'm ready."

Her commanding voice was solid — every inch the knight. I held that line and simply raised the pace. Karin peaked faster than the first time, legs trembling as she cried my name.

I slipped out and spent myself on her thigh, and Karin smiled a thoroughly satisfied smile.

"Second training session: a success."

"This counts as training too?"

"Training to trust my body again. You're the one who taught me that."

"That's how it can feel to you, Karin. I still won't be putting it in the treatment records."

"You're stubborn."

"Because I don't want you coming to believe that recovery is only possible if the relationship continues."

Karin considered for a moment, then revised a line on her private sheet:

Hearing that, the direction of the relationship came into focus. Karin wasn't learning how to submit to me — she was learning how to carry out her own choices.

Even that reading was my conclusion, not hers. I left room for Karin to pin a completely different name on it tomorrow.

Afterward, sprawled across my chest, Karin walked me through the day's sword drills. Six in the morning, ten in the afternoon. Tomorrow, she said, she'd switch to a wooden sword.

"If the Queen's carrier pigeon comes, will you leave right away?"

"If that's what the order says."

"Then I'll return to the order and come find you. As a knight — not a patient."

"I'll wait for you."

Karin knocked once on her own chest. On that spot, where until yesterday only two fingers had ever rested, her whole palm lay flat today.

Wingbeats sounded outside the window. A moment later, the sentry post by the main keep rang its bell twice.

After the forged medical request, not even a royal courier could be trusted on sight. Before letting the bird inside the keep, Marta had the serial number on its ankle band and the dye mark beneath its wing verified.

The first number matched this month's royal cipher. The dye: two lines of indigo. Even so, we agreed the sealed letter would not be opened alone — only with Marta, Erica, and me together.

"Think it's a recall order?"

Karin asked.

"Probably. It hasn't been verified yet."

"Listen to you — 'probably.' The old you would've been gauging my reaction already."

"Because someone taught me not to state unverified things as fact."

Karin looked out at the lamplight of the main keep. A bell that might mean farewell, or a new assignment — there was no telling which.

She folded the private sheet away and tucked it into a pocket kept separate from her sword-training log. Whatever order came, today's two records would never be merged into a single page.

It was the signal that a royal letter had arrived.