이무기의 복 (Mourning Bride)

16. The Mask Falls

A sliver of smut in the second half of the chapter

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San didn't know the details of Hongjoong's relationship with Seonghwa, but he would get to their bottom soon. Before he hadn't considered this predicament from every corner, he wouldn't make assumptions. However, he watched Seonghwa from narrowed eyes all morning as they sat in class together. Whenever Seonghwa's lashes fluttered under his thick brows to look at his paper, San scrutinised him with eyes akin to golden daggers. If Seonghwa noticed them boring into his skin, he veiled his awareness tastefully.

San had finished his speech in the long hours of the night after he had said goodbye to Wooyoung but couldn't find any sleep. While Seonghwa looked over it, San was supposed to pick a calligraphy style he wanted to write it in. Despite their full schedule, San tried to find something about Seonghwa's noble aura that was off. The man held himself to high standards and was unapproachable. Nothing hinted at that being any different for the king.

When Seonghwa's eyes flicked up to look at San, San hurriedly lowered his head. Invested, he stared at his work without seeing it while his senses strained to pick up on Seonghwa's movements.

The shaman's feet shuffled, then he rose from his chair. The norigae swung on his waist as he came over with his bamboo stick patting his own shoulder.

"Have you decided yet?"

San glanced at the slender hands picking up a sheet of practice San had put aside. His stomach lurched at the reminder those fingers had ingrained into his body. Did they do the same to Hongjoong? Was that how Seonghwa was so at ease with the topic?

"I'm thinking of this one." San lifted his hands to show what he was working on. The calligraphy he liked was wild and flowed like nature without too much care for proper linings and endings. There was little of the art Seonghwa hailed so much behind it, no elegance or grace. In turn, San found it far more appealing because of its unexpected style and uniqueness. None of his attempts looked like the other.

"It wouldn't show off your skill very well," Seonghwa said. When he sat down next to San, his brightly clad body carried the scent of persimmons again. San breathed it in subtly, wanting to bury his face in the man's shoulder, but none of that would happen while San was wary and heartbroken.

"I can take the risk of dragons after me thinking I never learned calligraphy. We all learn the same content, so they won't care much."

The dragon before San wrote with similar artistic freedom. His letters flowed into each other, never-ending in a coil of lines that reminisced about a dragon's body. Though he used the proper endings since each of his sentences had only two.

Seonghwa dipped his brush into San's ink. His fingers came to hold back his sleeve as he gently pressed the tip to the paper. Elegantly, he redrew what San had drawn as accurately as possible. As he set the brush down on its stand so it wouldn't dirty the table, he regarded the work with a hum.

"Since it's your wish, we can make it work. Let's write your speech in this lettering next time."

With a nod, San rolled up his documents and tied them together. Wordlessly, they washed out their utensils. If Seonghwa minded the unusual lack of conversation, he didn't point it out.

He was good at wearing that shiny mask of his. San's suspicions that what Wooyoung and he had found was true increased.

Once they were done with their cleaning and Seonghwa had brought the documents they had used for copying to the archive, they found back into the classroom. While Seonghwa closed the windows, San shouldered his bag.