Chapter Text
“These are all paperworks you need to do.”
Hansol stares at the piles and piles of paper Mingyu dropped at his desk. He tries to count it and guess what they’re for.
Those three ivory white folders with embossed patterns Hansol recognizes as the same patterns he sees at the ceiling of a museum are for the applications to the research grant he’s partnered with; they looked too classic and too formal to belong to anyone in the academy. The ochre envelope that shines with sun dust is a Seokmin trademark so he’s sure that inside that is all the topics his students proposed. Below that is a dirty white rough textured envelope, a blue translucent ribbon peeking from where it was stacked. Hansol assumes that the paper is such in color and in texture because it was handmade and recycled from the thousand of papers the academy faculties wastes in a week, and with that, Hansol further assumes that the envelope is from no one other than Hong Jisoo.
Below all of those are papers and envelopes and just thinking about all the files he had to read and approve or have someone higher in position than him approve it made Hansol groan.
Don’t get him wrong. Hansol loves his profession — absolutely loves his profession.
He loves being a scholar, a researcher, a polymath. He’s free to study whatever he wants, free to dab on a specialization when he wishes to. Hansol loves drawing from all kinds of discipline and knowledge, as long as he is able to pursue them.
He thinks of his job as something simple like this: He gets paid to do the thing he loves the most, and that is studying. As long as the academy permits him, he’s free to research everything a human mind can think of. That’s absolute academic freedom to Hansol! He had published numerous papers under his name ranging from exploring the effects of magic to the evolution of sea dwellers to weaving historical records to unveil how the magic bylaws were formed.
His favorite yet is his discovery of a mineral deemed only as a legend — something that exists only in folktales because a mineral of such beauty cannot exist, proved to not exist — yet Hansol found it, studied it, and uncovered everything about it. That paper landed him his fifth yet most prestigious award that sits on a shelf with his other awards.
He sees being an assistant lecturer a gratuity when the opportunity was offered to him years ago. He can share his interests by teaching it to his students and in that way, he gets to revisit a part of his life that he dedicated to that area of study and relive the memories. Reading his students’ different takes on one topic is also entertaining, and what his primary school teacher once told him is true, that as much as the students learn from the teacher, the teacher learns from them, too.
Hansol loves his job. He really does. He cannot see himself in a profession other than this.
But heavens forbid that Hansol enjoys his passion to the fullest. He used to think he would grow to love doing paperworks, like how he grew to love studying statistics despite being overwhelmed by doing equations by hand. Recording the papers he drafted, the essays he submitted, the experiments he conducted are a good excuse to freshen his memory about the topic, but time tested him and after six years, the thought of doing his paperworks brings an unpleasant feeling that negatively impacts his productivity.
And now that he recently got back from a conference with a country in the Far East to act as a translator and medium of communication, piles of papers to be sorted for recording and reporting doesn’t give Hansol a warm welcome. And on a Monday morning, too.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” Mingyu crouches down, reaches into his Shadow and Hansol watches as Mingyu’s arm disappears into it.
Kim Mingyu. A Middle-Earth, or that’s what they call those who walk the thin line between the underworld and the mortal world. It’s not to say that Mingyu is a demon. Sure, he can perform magic that demons in the folktales do. He can communicate directly to the dwellers of the underworld. His fingertips burned from when he accidentally touched a student sorcerer blessed with the Angels above, so he wore specially made gloves whenever he teaches the class that student is in. But, he’s not a demon, or devil, or whatever underworld dwellers call themselves. He makes a mental note to look it up later.
Mingyu’s not malevolent. He uses his Shadow to store his things, even though the Shadow is his direct medium to the underworld. Hansol once heard from Seungcheol that Mingyu once used his Shadow to engulf his entire quarter and store his belongings there when he was moving places. Mingyu used his Shadow instead of a carriage like a normal person! Seungcheol thought it’s an inappropriate use of Shadow, but Hansol thinks it’s genius. Even now, Mingyu is using his Shadow to search for whatever he was searching for.
Hansol even once asked if he can study what’s going on with Mingyu’s Shadow. He’s been curious, having a shadow like that must be fascinating but there are no public records about what happens inside a Middle-Earth’s Shadow. Mingyu laughed at Hansol’s suggestion, and while he admires Hansol’s curiosity, he declines. A Shadow is a serious business, Sol-ah . You might not even get out once you step in.
(“Then how do you retrieve your things once they’ve been in there?”
“You see, this,” Mingyu brings up a book that he pulled out from his Shadow. “This is not a living thing. You, however, breathe life. Inside my Shadow, time is a weird concept for every thing that lives. It stops for you yet everything speeds up. I don’t really know how to explain it but…” Mingyu breathes in for a moment. “If ever you were placed there, even for a split second, you won’t get your life back.”
Hansol hums. Of course, that makes sense. Even when Hansol’s position as a scholar finally allowed him to read into the forbidden records, nothing in there says anything concrete about the Shadows. There are testimonies, yes, but they all differ from one another.
One paper said entering a Shadow feels like being surrounded by a liquid so hot and so thick, every muscle of your body will tense up for a split moment before giving up fighting it, letting the liquid engulf the body in a crushing force. There was also a paper that said it felt nothing and everything all at once, that it felt seeing a light so bright you can see every blood vessel in your eyelids. Both of them never lived their normal life after it happened. In fact, all of the people that claim they’ve been in a Shadow said they never went back to their life after emerging out of it. They say they’ve been seeing monsters wherever they go that they become afraid of sleeping, believing bright red menacing eyes follow them in their dreams.
But— “How about Bobpeul?”
“Bobpeul’s from the Underworld.”
And as if on cue, Bobpeul emerges from the shadow, the white fur a huge contrast to the pitch black shadow. It’s like seeing snow against coal.
Such a shame Hansol can’t study a Shadow.)
“Aha!” Mingyu pulls out a scroll and holds it in the air. “Got it!”
“What’s that?” Hansol asked as Mingyu gently placed it on Hansol's desk.
Something about the deep red wooden rod is familiar. A script is etched onto it, and Hansol can’t quite place who uses it. But it smells like the summer Hansol spent back in his father’s hometown — smells like jumping into the sea, salt water getting into his nose; smells like the sea drying in his skin as he walks back to the cottage when his mother called him; smells like sand stubbornly sticking to his skin even when he dusts himself off; and Hansol knows there’s only one person that reminds Hansol of the sea.
Yoon Jeonghan.
Hansol doesn’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing to receive a letter directly from the Wise himself.
Mingyu chuckles. “Don’t worry. It’s nothing serious. Everything in there is all the things you missed for the two months you’re gone.”
Hansol picks up the scroll. “Jeonghan did this?”
“Yes.”
“As in Jeonghan Jeonghan?” Hansol asks in surprise.
Wow. Hansol can’t help but to feel he was important. He certainly is important , with his papers and discoveries published with the academy’s name and all that, with books ranging from arts to history updating their contents to include his recent discoveries, and with his name being mentioned across different disciplines.
Hansol is a person of importance.
But Jeonghan going out of his way to personally record everything for Hansol? Even though Jeonghan could have easily asked Wonwoo since Wonwoo handles all the records and can be called for such exact reasons? And if Jeonghan personally wrote down everything, then that would have meant Jeonghan personally attended the meetings Hansol couldn’t? Wow. If Hansol felt he was important earlier, now he’s feeling giddy, like a “the person I have been looking up to for ages noticed me” kind of giddy. Which is absurd because hey! This is a professional place!
Woah.
Mingyu rolls his eyes. “Don’t be too flattered, Hansol-ah! All of us were too busy for the start of the classes and you were gone for a conference so Wonwoo had to cover you!”
Hansol chuckles before sticking out a tongue to Mingyu. “You wish you were me.”
“Oh, please.” Mingyu crosses his arms. “He is a friend to me while you still need to address him as a Wise when you see him. You wish you were me .”
Hansol scoffs. Six years in the academy and he only saw Jeonghan fifteen times (it’s not like Hansol was keeping count). The first time was when the academy offered to take Hansol as a polymath with a promise of endless opportunities and Jeonghan personally greeted Hansol. Back then, Hansol didn’t really understand the weight of how Jeonghan meeting him was such a big deal. Jeonghan is the head of the academy, Wise of the Teachings, the person responsible for overseeing the education of all the sorcerers, so of course it should be common sense that he would see Hansol personally, right?
No. As it appears, Jeonghan is a very occupied person. For all the times Hansol saw Jeonghan again, it wasn’t Jeonghan but instead, a clone of him made out of concentrated sea water and Hansol finally had an answer to the questions “why doesn’t the Wise accept any of the files I hand him and instead asks me to leave it to Seungkwan?” and “is there something wrong with my papers that the Wise won’t sign them unless I submit it to Jihoon first?” he was too shy to ask anyone. The last time Hansol saw Jeonghan personally was during their yearly assembly.
It’s just that Hansol idolizes Jeonghan, see. Growing up, he would read all about the groundbreaking discoveries with the name “Yoon Jeonghan” attached to it, and maybe saying that seeing Jeonghan visit the common school he was in inspired young Hansol to be a scholar was an understatement. Yoon Jeonghan ultimately became the foundation of Hansol’s dreams. He wanted to be like that , knowing and worldly, eloquent and gentle.
Hansol thinks— no, no, no —he believes he is living what his young self dreamt, and not to trample Mingyu or anything but Jeonghan personally handed Hansol an award and his audience consists of the higher higher-ups.
So, no, Kim Mingyu. I do not wish I was you.
He didn’t say that, though. What he said instead is this: “Don’t you have places to be?”
Mingyu quickly scrambles to check his pocket watch. “Shoot. I’ll be late for my class.”
Hansol laughs as he shoos Mingyu away. “Go now and don’t bother me!”
“I’ll be going now!” Mingyu turns his back to Hansol, his cloak the color of a crow swaying as he does, the ragged hem stretching and connecting to his Shadow. Oh, that means Mingyu is going to shadow travel! “Before I forgot,” Mingyu turns to Hansol again and continues, “there’s a new teacher! You’ll meet him soon. See you around, Sol-ah!”
Before Hansol could even ask who this new teacher is, Mingyu waves goodbye before stepping down into his Shadow.
New teacher, huh. He vaguely remembers the other teachers talking about it months ago, he didn’t really stick around or ask about it, he had a conference to attend to. Guess Hansol could check the scroll Jeonghan left him.
Jeonghan left a note “ Ask Jeon Wonwoo ”, and Wonwoo gladly informed Hansol about the minimal changes in the classes he’d teach.
It usually goes like this:
Hansol would teach the subjects he was assigned to. For this year, he would hold lectures about History of the Ancient War, Linguistics, and Ethics in Performing the Art of Magic for the new sorcerers; guide some of the students from Seokmin’s and Seungkwan’s in conducting research; and continue offering short-term classes about any disciplines to any students. Last year his short-term classes included teaching the culture of the elves, introduction to decoding the forgotten scripts, learning the basics of the spoken language of the Middle South, and introduction to the minor and lesser lineages.
He’ll keep his door open for any students who wish to seek his guidance on their studies or simply ask him questions. Hansol has all the time to accommodate and answer them.
Hansol would hold his lectures in the communal classrooms. There wasn’t any special equipments in there, unlike the classroom Minghao uses where there are tons of special inks and brushes stored in a cabinet for glyph making and unlike Jisoo’s workshop where all kinds of tools for carving and different types of minerals and stones from all around the world can be found.
Chairs and desks made out of the Old Narra trees that grow in the forest the Academy looks after and a chalkboard on the wall was all there is. Minghao told him there was a magic circle painted on the back of the board before it was attached to the wall, and it serves as a glyph that stores everything that was written on the board to an information system that Wonwoo handles.
Hansol knew the purpose of that when his first year teaching in the Academy ended and Wonwoo came knocking on his door with two binded books in hand, handing him the records of all lectures Hansol held throughout the year.
It went like that for years that Hansol was teaching. Start the year with a mix of subjects he’ll teach. Represent the academy in conferences. Assess his students’ performance. Keep his door open so students can freely ask him any question. Work on his independent studies. End the year by receiving and writing reports. Spend his break by going to more conferences overseas. Continue working on his research. Repeat.
So now, the problem is this:
Since there was an ongoing renovation in the building where the communal classrooms are, thanks to the incident that took place a year before, Hansol had no choice but to share a room with someone.
It’s not like the academy is short of classrooms. In fact, they have a lot of different rooms to cater to each student’s needs. There were even window ways that connects to the heart of the forest, a closed ruin deep in the sea, and the highest point in the mountain because as the Wise said, learning magic does not stop in learning what spells to cast, what symbols to draw. Sorcerers need experience outside books ! And it would be a shame if the most prestigious academy that houses the promising yet unpolished skills under the supervision of reputable sorcerers would be lacking in facilities.
Jisoo’s Geoides is out of the question. His work station is specifically designed to make charms and rune stones out of different earth materials. Large craft tables with different types of tools for carving store in its cabinets, a variety of raw rocks and minerals lined up on the shelves, and furnaces and anvils sitting at the corner. Even if the place has no walls and is very much open, Hansol figures that that won’t be a suitable environment for learning history.
While the Welkin Observatory is a good choice for a temporary classrooms—large area, the equipments needed for the study is in the uppermost floor together with the astronomical telescope, and one of Hansol’s most favorite rooms in the whole Academy—the observatory is usually filled with dim lights and thick black curtains, blocking out any light from outside. The layout of the area wasn’t made for lectures, the seats and desks are positioned in the shape of a circle, and at the center of the room is hollowed inward. Such a bummer, though. Hansol loved his visits to the observatory and he can still see Jihoon opening his book, his finger coming up to draw a magic circle in the air and after a flick, the room was filled with models of planets and stars, the students scrying constellations they could find.
Hansol can share a room in the Grand Atelier with Minghao. The room is designed like the communal rooms, except for the large wooden cabinets in the back of the room where the tools needed for the magic circles and the special made inks that can imbue magic in any surfaces. However, their schedules are conflicting. When Minghao has a class, Hansol has, too, and obviously, they can’t hold two classes in one classroom.
And the solution is this:
The minimal change Wonwoo was talking about is how Hansol is currently standing outside the sunroom, pacing around the doorway, his materials on one hand.
When Mingyu said he’ll meet the new teacher soon, Hansol didn’t expect it to be this soon .
The west wing of the Solarium, the smaller one of the two is what Wonwoo told him, and Hansol asked Seungkwan where exactly the west Solarium—the smaller sunroom of the two—is and Hansol made sure to ask twice. Then, when he felt like he made a wrong turn, he opened his notebook and flipped through pages to reach the map he attached there and followed it. And when he arrived at the door, he checked the sign once more. West Solarium , it says. He also checked the East one—and wow that was a lot bigger , the West doesn’t even compare. Like, what? The West is a fourth of the East one.
Hansol seldom visits this place, mainly because he doesn’t really have any business to do here. He even forgot how majestic the place looks. Since the walls are made of glass panes held by golden alloy, the sunlight scatters and diffuses, painting the inside of the room in a soft, warm light. It reminds Hansol of a dometop bird cage and a glass candle lantern.
He knocks on the door. Once. Twice. Then, he waits.
Hansol practices his lines again. Hi. Good morning. I’m Chwe Hansol. Nice to meet you. When the other replies, hopefully with their name, he’ll say: I’m the teacher that would share a room with you. Is it okay to take a look at the room before my class starts?
Does that sound too stiff? Or was that okay? Should he add more? And he’s been waiting for too long, should he knock again?
He does. Once. Twice. Then, on his third knock, the door slightly opened.
Hansol peeks through the door and all he could see was plants. Lots of plants . Of course, what could he have expected? He was in the Solarium, of course there would be lots of plants here.
In the back of his mind, he feels like he’s forgetting something . And more importantly, was the door opening a sign for him to go in? He doesn’t really know, he doesn’t know the new teacher. What if that was a part of his magic? Would it be rude to let himself in? Would it be rude if he already walked a few steps inside? It’s not as if this is an office so it’s okay, right?
Is he thinking over this too much? He feels like he’s thinking over this too much.
Hansol looks around and he catches his reflection on the glass. He looks like he’s mad, his eyebrows are slightly furrowed and his lips are tightened to a line. On top of that, he feels… fuzzy, like he has to remind himself of his responsibility since his head is just a distracting thought away from being in the clouds. Yup, he definitely is thinking over this too much.
He recognizes some of the plants now that he’s not looking at them through the glass. Like the purple flowering vines crawling to the wall and hanging from the ceiling. Ah , lavender trumpets . The flower that Junhui extracted with periwinkles once Hansol became a victim of food poisoning. The more he looks at the different plants and flowers in this, the more he recognizes them as the one Junhui uses in his infirmary. Oh, this must be full of medicinals, then . Medicine has never been Hansol’s strongest suit, but Hansol did spark an interest towards plants years before, hence, Hansol is familiar with them—at least, most of them.
The one that caught Hansol’s attention the most is the cluster of dainty yellow flowers on the center table. The sunlight hits it right, cascading rainbow flares and sun dust on it, making the flower more vibrant. It looks like it came straight out of the fairy tale books Hansol used to read when he was young, a flower that grants magical flowers to whoever eats it or a flower that can heal even the most incurable diseases.
Huh , come to think of it, he used to love a picture book when he was a kid. He doesn’t remember much of the story but he recalls his mother telling him the story when he didn’t know how to read, and about how he used to bring that book everywhere once he learnt how to read, and even after owning a lot of books after that, Hansol never got tired of that one.
He walked towards the pot of flowers, trying to etch it into his mind so that he could look up what flower it was later. Maybe this is the same flower as the one in his story book.
Cluster of rays of golden petals surrounding a sunny puff of the same color standing tall with small leaves growing from the base to its stalk. He was so focused on painting the image into his mind, and making mental notes after mental notes so he won’t forget it that he almost missed the clang of the door chime.
Almost.
Hansol nearly jumped by the sudden noise, accidentally hitting his hand on the edge of the table. He suppressed a yelp, shaking his hand as an attempt to make the pain go away.
Then, the door opens.
Ruffled hair the color of purple and blue beneath a muted blue pointed hat is what Hansol first sees. Then, he sees a man with flushed cheeks, wearing sleeves with deep cuffs beneath a robe the same shade of his hat. He looks up at Hansol with sparkling eyes.
Hansol felt his throat hitch.
“Oh, hello!” The man greets him. “How may I help you?”
Hansol breathes in deep and he clears his throat. Why does the air feel stuffy? Hansol gulps, the lines . “Hi. Good morning. I’m Chwe Hansol. Nice to meet you.” Hold on . This is a totally different scenario than what he had practiced in his head. He should definitely explain why he was inside the Solarium or else he would look like he just barged in without any reason. Words! I need words! “Uh, I am sorry for suddenly coming in here. I’m, uh, the teacher that would share the room— the Solarium with you.”
The man closes the door behind him, the bell chime rings a different tune. He walks closer to Hansol before taking off his pointed hat and placing it on his chest. “I’m Lee Chan.“ Oh . Hansol forgot about the sorcerer etiquette. It’s been a while since he’s been introduced to one. Hansol sets his left foot backward, places his palm on his chest, and slightly bows. Archons, how could he miss this? He should’ve introduced himself first before stating his business. Now he looks really rude.
Hansol looks up, and hopes that the teacher didn’t take any offense. That would make a really bad first impression. Social cues. Social cues. Look for social cues and hope he doesn’t find anything bad. Hands playing with each other— That's an okay sign, right? It’s not like he was picking with his nails so that’s okay, right? There’s still a twinkle in the other’s eyes. Alright . Seems like he was really overthinking this too much. What’s with him today and his head being this messy? His head is usually already messy, but not this messy messy.
“I apologize for not meeting you here! I was informed of the recent room arrangements yet I completely missed your arrival.” The man — Lee Chan. Remember, Chwe Hansol. He’s Lee Chan. — bows once more.
“No! It’s fine!” Hansol says, his hand coming up to the air. “If anything, I’m the one who should be apologizing. I went inside here without asking you!”
Lee Chan — Remember, Hansol! Brownish purple, purplish brown, whichever shade his hair is, is Lee Chan—Wait, purple and brown? Wasn’t it blue and purple…? — shakes his head. “Please don’t worry about it! It’s completely fine. I wasn’t present to greet you!”
They aren’t going to stop apologizing to each other, are they? Hansol clears his throat and breathes deeply.
“I—” Hansol blinks his eyes. Why are his eyes so bleary? Was he that tired? He swears he’s not that tired when he arrived this morning. He blinks again, rapidly. Wait. Lee Chan. He’s still talking with Lee Chan. He tries to open his eyes, and the other is looking at him with worried eyes. “Sorry for that, haha.” That was awkward. He laughed at it awkward. Where was he again? He forgot. He’s not that close to the new teacher to ask him where he trailed off.
“It’s okay!” Lee Chan says.
“Uh.” Hansol clears his throat. Wow, Seungkwan was right. Awkward situations will make it really hard to breathe. And Seungcheol was wrong when he said Seungkwan meant it figuratively. “Can I take a look—” a cough, and another “—in the room? My class starts in,” He takes a look at his pocket watch, “eight minutes. Eight minutes.” He repeats, the realization dawning on him.
“Oh! Shall we hurry, then?” Lee Chan suggests, his hand motioning to the room. “I can give you a quick overview!”
Hansol clears his throat once more, suppressing another cough coming up from his throat. “Please. It would be my pleasure.”
Lee Chan walks forward. “Wait. I’ll pick the daisies up first. It would be bad if I forgot them here.” He passes by Hansol and Hansol can smell flowers. Not like how actual flowers smell like, but how floral smells like. Soft, powdery, blissful, a little sweet. It’s making Hansol’s chest a little powdery, too. Lee Chan picks up the pot of daffodils and he leaves a trail of golden dust that Hansol thinks can only be noticed under the bright light of the sun. Magical .
He picks up the pot with one hand and walks towards the center of the room. Hansol follows him.
“There are sixteen desks in the room. Four each in the left row, middle row, and right row. The other four are at the back!” He says, his hand motioning to them as they walk and Hansol tries his best to stay focused. Sixteen desks. Hansol can’t say they’re long, they’re not small, either. If anything, they're just right; two books sprawled on it and Hansol would still have a space for more. “It has a compartment under the desk, and if you run your palm under it, you can feel a handle! If you pull it,” Lee Chan grunts as he pulls something from under the desk, “the compartment extends out!”
Hansol peeks, and there it is, a drawer with parchment papers, cheesecloth, an unlit burner, and a mortar and pestle among other tools Hansol can’t put a name on; he knows what they’re for but he can’t recall what they’re called!
“About this,” Lee Chan gestures to the extended compartment, “I told my students to keep their work tables clean and proper. I also told them to keep their tools at the far left so the other students can store their things on the right. Is that alright with you?”
Hansol opens his mouth to thank him, that it’s okay, and that he’ll tell his students to do the same, when suddenly—
He coughs, so violent that he doubles over, one hand holding onto the table for stability. Every time he coughs, he feels the scratch on his throat, like the scratch of a fork on a plate, and Hansol always covers his ears whenever that happens, and he can’t do that because his hands are covering his mouth and his ears rang for a second. And he sneezed, too. Fortunately his hazy brain didn’t forget courtesy and he managed to sneeze onto his arm.
“Are you alright?” Lee Chan asks, holding Hansol’s arm, offering some kind of support.
He definitely isn’t alright. His nose is stuffy and he can’t breathe in, his eyelids are heavy like he’ll fall asleep all of a sudden, and the back of his hand is very itchy. His head feels like it weighs a ton, so heavy that his head will follow gravity downward and he’ll hit his head on the table.
He willed himself to look up. Lee Chan is looking at him with worried eyes, and under the glaring light of the sun, it makes Lee Chan’s dark blue— Dark blue?— hair look like a halo.
Think, Hansol. Think.
Did he catch an illness when he was overseas? The Far East. He came from the Far East. Silver Virus? No. That wasn’t a possibility at all. That starts as a loss of hearing. Eastern Flu? Hm. Doesn’t seem like it. One of the common symptoms of Eastern Flu is the common cold. Maybe this is a common cold then? Hansol thinks about it for a split second, and no, his common cold builds up gradually, not coming into him like a sudden crash.
So this is something sudden. Something that happened between the time he arrived and the time he entered the Solarium.
Had he eaten something bad again? Not likely. The last meal he had was a chicken porridge before he boarded the carriage. Was it something in his environment?
And it clicks.
Hansol looks at Lee Chan directly in the eyes, his starting-to-droop ones looking straight into Lee Chan’s widened ones.
“I’m allergic to pollen,” Hansol says, flat, like a matter-of-fact, like it’s something to be known, not forgotten.
The sun is a star. Bats aren’t blind. The stickers on the fruit are made of food-grade material, they are safe to eat. Octopi has three hearts, two for the gills and one for the body.
Magic circles are for casting more powerful spells. Glyphs and runes are for assisting sorcerers and humans. Boo Seungkwan is a homunculus, is the Lesser Archon of Being. Lee Jihoon is a fragment of a fallen star.
Hansol is allergic to pollen, by contact and by inhalation.
Lee Chan looks at him, alarmed. If Hansol wasn’t stricken by this ailment, he would have laughed at his own situation. He forgot that he’s allergic to pollen, entered the Solarium which is full of various plants—which, for sure, some of them contain pollen—and now, he’s having an allergic reaction.
“Archons.” Hansol hears Lee Chan exclaim. “I’m sorry— I— I didn’t— What should I do? ” Lee Chan looks panicked, sounds like he’s in a panic, and Hansol’s throat feels like sandpaper and he can’t tell the other to bring him to Junhui.
Hansol tries his best, though. He opened his mouth and what came out was a groggy “unhi”.
“Unnie…?”
Hansol shakes his head, then he tries again. “Weh— Weh Wunhi.”
Lee Chan mouths the words repeatedly, and for the fifth—Hansol thinks it’s fifth—time he mouthed the words, he snapped his fingers. “ Wen Junhui! Of course.” He says once he understood what Hansol breathed. “Of course.” He repeats, in a smaller voice.
Hansol nods and gives the other a weak thumbs up.
“I’m going to help you stand up, okay?” Lee Chan holds his arm and places it on his own shoulder. Hansol lets himself be guided, lets Lee Chan carry half his weight as he tries to time his breathing. His nose felt so stuffy that he had to breathe through his mouth, which was becoming a sport since he's been coughing.
Inhale. Hold. Exhale— A cough . Inhale. There’s a high-pitched sound when he did. Hold— and he coughs again. Gee , sure it’s been awhile since he triggered his allergy but was it always this suffocating?
“Excuse me,” Lee Chan whispers, then Hansol feels a hand on his side, supporting him. But Hansol’s vision is blurry and his limbs feel like jelly that when he stood up, he accidentally knocked a table with his foot.
The table where Lee Chan placed the pot of yellow flowers on.
The pot of yellow flowers that Hansol suspects triggered his allergy.
And he never thought he’d experience things in slow motion. What happens after goes like this:
Hansol watches as the table tips over, the potted plant falling with it, its loose soil spilling a little; and Hansol doesn’t know if it’s because he’s surrounded by greeneries and floras that he immediately thought of the quote he thought held a scientific value a decade ago: Nature always sides with the hidden flaw . Huh. Weird that he remembered that now.
The clay pot hits the floor, ceramic shattering into big shards upon impact, the plant lying unrooted from its place. The fluffy yellow cores explode into the air, the pollen floating like golden dust.
Golden dust . So that was what it was!
Maybe he shouldn’t focus on the fact that the golden dust was pollen but instead put the remaining stability of his brain into making his legs work. Damn, is he already at the point of his midlife where he feels ailment tenfold?
“I am so sorry!”
Through his burning eyes, he can hazily see Lee Chan’s horrified expression; and if it weren’t for Hansol’s current situation, he would’ve kneeled down and scoop up as much as he can to the pot to salvage it, telling Lee Chan not to apologize because he was the one who knocked it over. In the face of this predicament, he still manages to feel bad about the plant lying on the floor and about Lee Chan’s apology.
A hack and a wheeze, his eyes burning this bad. Drat, he thinks he’s starting to lose consciousness, his head is going numb, his jelly limbs are also going numb . He can see stars . No one should be able to see stars while their eyes are halfway open. Should he be worried that a simple allergy is making him collapse? He should alert Lee Chan that he’s losing consciousness.
With the arm slung over Lee Chan’s shoulder, he lifts a finger up and taps him. One. Two. Three.
Lee Chan abruptly turns his head to him and before his last string of awareness snaps, he sends a prayer to anyone who can hear him. Please, Junhui, Please be in the clinic.
“Chwe Hansol-ssi!”