Hwarang : A Different Narrative

Episode 9

"Who are you?"

As Seonu heard Raina's question, all the blood drained out of his face as he desperately tried to think of something. Raina, seeing him lost for words, brushed past him, knocking the bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums out of his hands. She walked and walked until she was in the woods behind Hwarangdo where she finally let the tears, that had welled up in her eyes, fall.

Raina closed her eyes and leant against the bark of a tree as tears ran down her face, mourning the loss of the real Kim Seonu when she heard the cracking of a twig. Hurriedly wiping away her tears, she turned around to see Suho.

"I got wounded while sword fighting" he said, brandishing a bloodied arm sustaining a shallow cut, with a sheepish expression that turned into one of concern on seeing her face.

"Have you been crying?" Suho asked, concerned.

"No" replied Raina, swallowing her emotions as she rippped a strip of cloth from her robes. She was about to bandage his arm when Suho took ahold of her wrist.

"I don't like seeing you hurt. Tell me who the man who made you cry is. I will kill him." Suho said fiercely as Raina shrugged off his hold on her.

"Don't be silly," she admonished while tying the cloth around Suho's arm as a pressure bandage. Without looking at him, she said, "I just felt lonely."

Removing her hands from his arm, she said,"You're good to go."

She was about to turn away from him when she felt a warm hand on her shoulder along with warm fingers tilting her chin up until she was looking at him.

"I'm here for you if you need me, alright?" Said Suho, gazing into her chocolate eyes, trying to convey the sincerity in his words. He watched as Raina nodded. "Thanks," she said before leaving, heading back to Hwarangdo. She had to do something to distract herself from thoughts about Seonu. Entering her quarters, Raina set about writing the second book of the 'Hwarang : The Beginning' series.

As night fell, Raina stood up from where she had been sitting the whole day and stretched, her legs numb and her hand aching from writing for so long. She hadn't left her room after she had entered it in the morning and it had been Pi Jooki's duty to bring her food when it was time to eat. Staring at the latest books of the Lustful Student, Raina sighed before locking the doors to her room which held the potentially incriminating evidence and headed out to the bridge near the pond, a bottle of alcohol in her hand.

Seating herself on the railing of the bridge, Raina blinked back the tears as she remembered what her father had unintentionally revealed on the day, Seonu had appeared.

He had cried in her arms, lamenting the fact that his childrem had died before him and Raina had correctly assumed that he had meant Seonu but once he had introduced her to him, she had cast aside all suspicion foolishly. Gulping down a copious amount of alcohol, she tried to drown her sorrows by drinking and that was how Yeol found her.