STABLE BOY ; Trash of the Count's Family

75. HIMSELF

Today, South babysat Raon and Mary as they explored the Dark Forest. They've found a lot of cool rocks and leaves so far.

"You swim in that?"

"Yes," South said. "It's gotten quite a bit murkier than the last time I was here," he gazed into the lake, which was definitely more resembling swamp now, and chuckled, "I guess the dragon bones are still too strong even though we cleaned the place up. It will contaminate everything again unless we clean periodically."

"That can't be healthy," Mary said.

South shrugged.

Mary gave him a behind-the-hood stare of exasperation.

South ignored her and pulled off his top, brushing his hair back and tying it away. His hair had gotten longer over the past months and was due for another cut soon, so maybe he'll ask Hans again when they go back.

"You guys want to find interesting things, right?" South prompted, "I know just the place. You two can follow with a Mana Shield then you won't get dirty. You will both be okay exploring this swamp because you're both very strong."

-

And that is how Cale found them washing and polishing very colourful and fascinating rocks in a row outside their house at Harris Village.

He's pretty sure some of those were magic stones, and the other half he did not want to get an archaelogist to figure things out so he'll probably just put them on some shelf and be done with it.

Raon was covered in dirt again. It was almost impressive how much fun he was clearly having.

At least he's enjoying himself, but Cale's never sure who's the responsible one in this group. By age, it's Mary. But South was the most experienced outdoors in these dangers. And Raon seemed to think he's in charge. They're all able to cause some kind of national incident if left to their own devices outside of the forest anyways, so none of them are trusted anywhere unsupervised.

What a headache.

Why is Cale so surrounded by dangerous people? Is this some kind of karma?

There was also a very unique assortment of seafood for dinner and Cale was trying his best to ignore all of Ron's very unhelpful explanations about exactly what they looked like before Vicross prepared the meal. It was delicious, but Cale would like to never know what he was eating, ever again.

-

Things have been quiet recently. So of course, South decided to mess around.

Mary and Raon were busy working on the— bones? They found, and while South supervised them just to make sure they're not on their own, he considered himself again.

It's been a bit of time since he formed a bond with Mary. It's definitely grown stronger, but he didn't feel much difference until he jumped into the swamp the other day and it was much easier to move in the deeper end than it was before.

"Is it not human to fear death and hate pain? You understand this more than anyone else, so why do you keep dancing around the line like that?"

To his surprise, it's actually Choi Han that asked him that. It was just one day he saw South emerge from the swamp by coincidence, his shoulder sporting a deep gash from the fangs of some sea creature deep under the water surface.

South cradled his shoulder, and his bleeding arm that wouldn't move, and didn't have an answer for him.

Choi Han looked tired at this point. He didn't even want to scold South anymore today— he just looked at the blood on the ground and felt defeated.