🏆 THE AMBY AWARDS 2023 TOP PICK - DIVERSE LIT 🏆
It's Rin and Hye-jin against the world. Or so it should have been.
Nagara Rin and Joon Hye-jin, college sweethearts and passionate gamers, have lived a fairytale marriage. Not even a decade after did...
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My teeth ground against my nails as I paced in front of the infirmary. Seated on the benches were Revery, Heather, Arzo, and Trink—all with grim expressions on their faces. After Kora collapsed, I flashed a distress signal that only Heather would know. A crimson streak against the blue sky. A scout's message.
It took all of my strength to swallow my tears as we hurried through the town, on our way to the nearest hospital. Heather had flown overhead, rushing through the streets with Kora in tow. Then, the need to start explaining came, much to my chagrin. I told them how I wandered for hours in the forest and how I found him wandering around.
"What about the perpetrator?" Heather asked, gripping my shoulders. Her claws could have torn my sleeves and my skin. "Did you catch them? Did they leave a trace?"
"I didn't have the luxury to look around," I remember saying, having collapsed against one of the benches of the infirmary's waiting room. Around us, people with a similar background of waiting on patients inside the locked door loitered inside with blank, passive looks. It could have been the one on my face as well, but checking myself in a mirror was the last thing on my mind.
Then, the door opened and a man in a pristine white coat stepped out. I vaguely remember him to have been the one who took Kora from Heather upon our entry. My soles thudded against the waiting room's musty floorboards, stalking towards the physician. "What's his status?" I asked. "Is he alright? What happened to him?"
The doctor, standing almost the same height as me, gave me a flat look. "Are you family?"
My heart hitched. "Sorry?"
"I can only give details to family," he told me. "That is according to the Healer Guild's pledge. Do you know anyone? When can they get here?"
I opened my mouth, to tell him I was right here. Nothing came out but a breath of air. Why...why couldn't I say it?
A hand clamped on my shoulder and I could feel myself getting pulled to the side. I let them, my eyes just glued to the tips of my boots. My fists clenched at my sides as another wave of tears threatened to blur my world and envelop me in their haze. The same hand on my shoulder moved to run up and down my back in comforting waves.
Heather's shadow, accopmanied by the folded wings and the barbed tail, fell over me. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but..." she settled on my other side. "I don't know anything about him beyond him being an adventurer. Do you know if he has a family? How can we contact them?"
I was here. But I stopped. And now...I couldn't even know what's going to happen to him. "Who else can we call?" I asked, my voice cracking and thick.
Heather hummed, thinking. "They said the immediate superior," she said. "He's an adventurer, after all."
Despite my chest tightening and shivers running down my spine, I raised my head to meet Heather's eyes. "Call Dragnasand," I said. "Call Cavya."
The dragonkin's lips pressed into a thin, thin line. She nodded, her uneven locks moving along with the motion. "I'll get him," she said, stalking off to the rotary phone booth at the end of the hall. Soon, the sound of gears and dials rotating to and fro replaced every clunking heartbeat in my chest.
