“Hello, Nikolai,” Nurse Su-Yung began, her singsong voice falling into the room ahead of her as she pushed in a trolley of Nikolai’s lunch. “How are you doing this afternoon?”
Nikolai turned to her, prying his dull eyes away from the fight ongoing on the TV screen hanging from the wall. She was wearing the sa bright smile she always had when she paid him a visit, along with a white gown that clung to her body tightly, and her black hair was packed up into a pigtail. Then his gaze shifted to the food she had on a platter for him. It was of a rather luxurious combination. Shrimps, crabs, vegetables, and berries. They fed him well in this place, but he was honestly tired of being cogged up in the center of white walls for months now.
“Can I speak to the headmaster?” Nikolai asked as he turned back to the fight on the screen. It featured a girl with the sa Hex as him, having the ability to shift into a cheetah, and a boy with an easygoing face dotted by freckles, wearing round glasses.
He had watched every single fight of the ongoing tournant, but for so reason this one felt a little bit too personal to him.
“He’ll be here soon,” Nurse Su-Yung replied. “Have a bit of patience, okay?”
Nikolai pressed his lips together at that statent, curling his fists beneath the blanket draped over his lower body.
“I’ve had enough patience,” he argued. “I want to speak to him. Now!”
For half a second his eyes glowed gold, changing into the slitted pupil of a predator, but he imdiately held himself back from losing his cool. When he glanced to his side, Nurse Su-Yung had stumbled backwards, shivering slightly.
He took a breath.
“I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “I-I didn’t an to.” She didn’t give him a reply. “It’s just that my head keeps itching. And whenever I try to sleep, the itching just gets even worse. This room is suffocating too. I need to leave. I want to leave. My mother. My brother. I need to see them. Why can’t I leave? Why can’t I see them?”
Nurse Su-Yung took a deep breath, calming herself as she stood straight with great effort.
“You’re undergoing rehabilitation, Nikolai,” she said. “It’ll be unwise for you to leave. And since this is a secured facility, we cannot let your family in at this point in ti. But they know you’re here, and they know you’re fine.”
“Fine?” Nikolai scoffed. “Do I look fine to you?”
Nurse Su-Yung took a breath. “If you keep up with your rehabilitation, you will be fine.”
“How long?” he asked after a few seconds of silent introspection. “How long is it supposed to take?”
Nurse Su-Yung paused. “As long as it takes to get you back to full strength.”
Nikolai glanced down at his legs and his fists tightened even further.
“I can’t feel anything from my waist down,” he said with a low voice. “What’s the point of rehabilitation if I’ll never be able to walk again?”
Nurse Su-Yung discarded the fear that had plagued her a second ago, crossed the length of the room, and cupped Nikolai’s hands.
“Hey. Listen. You can’t think like that. Your dical records state that there’s the possibility of you walking again. As long as you put your mind to it, it can happen. Do you understand ?”
Nikolai winced. “It sure doesn’t feel like it.”
“I understand how you feel.”
Nikolai dragged his hands away from hers. “No, you don’t!”
Nurse Su-Yung reached for them again. “I’ve been your personal nurse for the past three months, even though I’m not going through the pain with you, I’ve been here with you through every episode. I do understand how you feel, even if it’s in my own way.” She took a mont. “I’m not going to say I’m a hundred percent certain of anything—dicine is that fickle—but what I can say I’m certain of is that you, Nikolai, are a strong lad. If there’s anyone who can achieve the impossible, you can.”
Nikolai pressed his lips together. “This is annoying.”
“I know.”
“Why is it so hard to rember anything? Anything at all.”
“I understand.”
“I hate this so much.”
Nurse Su-Yung leaned in and pulled him into a hug.
“It’s okay to be angry. That makes you human—a strong person.”
Nikolai sniffled and rested his face into Nurse Su-Yung’s shoulder. Then his attention was drawn back to the TV screen, just in ti to see the boy with freckles rise up to his feet after being hit by an attack that had left him gasping for air.
“A friend of mine is just like you,” the boy said. “A Mutant Mage. I haven’t seen him for a while now; heck, I don’t even know if he’s alive or not. Apparently, that’s classified information—”
“What does that have to do with ?” the girl cut in. “Don’t worry about answering that. I’m not even interested.”
“What I’m saying is,” the boy replied after a sigh as he took a weird stance, “you’re doing a favor by taking away my eyesight. Now, I won’t see flashes of my friend while I fight you.”
A sharp pain coursed through Nikolai’s head at those words, forcing him to pull away from Nurse Su-Yung with a pained groan.
“Are you all right?” Nurse Su-Yung asked, worried.
“I-I don’t know,” said Nikolai as he rubbed his forehead. “My head. It hurts badly.”
With every second that passed, Nikolai’s face contorted in anguish even more, and then he went from simply caressing his forehead to gripping his head tightly. And Nurse Su-Yung realized that watching, waiting to diagnose him was not the best of options at the very mont.
She jumped up to her feet, reaching for a syringe and a bottle of propofol in the lower compartnt of the trolley bearing Nikolai’s al. Then she quickly administered the sedative to the boy, and guided him backwards until he was lying on the bed.
“Shhh… That’s it. Just rest.”
Nikolai’s groans subsided gently as his gaze went distant bit by bit until the point where he could no longer make out Nurse Su-Yung’s features. The sharp headache plaguing him took a nosedive in quality, shifting into a slight pounding, before it was nothing more than just the equivalent of taps against his skull.
In the next instant, Nikolai fell asleep.
###
Im Ilseong sipped on the black tea he was offered, savoring its rich malty taste layered with notes of honey as its light aroma comforted him. He then took a deep breath as he lowered the porcelain cup onto its saucer, appreciating the calm feeling draped over his body. It was a welco experience, considering how the past few days had been. The death of Dmitri Volkov, the whole ss with Nikolai and the Blackguards, Club Spiral, everything bundled together to weigh on his mind. To relieve himself of so worries, he had requested help from the Council of Mages, only to have himself further drowned in more ss by Greta Kaufmann, the mage who he had hoped would be of help to him.
It was all so tiring and infuriating, even for him. Which was why he had tossed the less important things on his list to Prestige Academy’s staff, and was seated in his good friend, Kim Hyeonki’s ho, refreshing himself with a cup of tea.
“Do you trust them?” Hyeonki asked as he took a seat on the couch opposite Im Ilseong, and crossed his legs, taking a sip from his own tea. Ilseong raised a brow. “The rest of your staff, I an.”
“I wasn’t expecting such an insensitive question from you,” said Ilseong. “How would you feel if I posed the sa thing to you?”
Hyeonki shrugged. “If a stranger did, it would make very angry. But you and I go way back, we can ask each other the questions we are afraid to ask ourselves.”
Ilseong sighed and leaned back in his seat, knotting his fingers together.
“I trusted Dmitri, just like I do with every other staff mber in my academy,” he began. “But, I’ll be honest with you here, Hyeonki, I don’t know any longer. I want to trust them. I really do. But I can’t just shake away this nagging feeling at the back of my head that if one could have been in cohorts with the villains, then there may be a few more under their thumbs.”
“That’s a valid thought.” Hyeonki sipped his tea. “Does this apply to Seoyeon as well?”
Ilseong pressed his lips together. “Truthfully, no. And her reporting the incident with rlin to only solidified that. Why did you keep that from again? Do-Won told you all about what happened that evening at Yeouido park, didn’t he?”
Hyeonki nodded. “He did. I took it into consideration, but I didn’t want to bother you when you already had your hands full with all the academy paperwork.” He raised a hand before Ilseong could voice his thoughts. “I know what you’re about to say. I do know he’s your student. I’m not blind. But the Blackguards are the Consortium’s responsibility. And besides, I wasn’t about to let you strip the boy of his freedom, like you’re thinking of doing now.”
Ilseong sighed. “You can’t bla . rlin is a special kid, and the Blackguards know it too. I can’t allow him to fall into their hands.”
“You cannot make that decision for the kid,” said Hyeonki. “Locking him up isn’t the right choice.”
Ilseong scoffed. “Rich coming from you. You have Nikolai locked.”
“His case is different.”
“I don’t think so.”
“He should be dead,” Hyeonki replied. “The drugs, donating his mana, the loss of his mories; the fact he’s still breathing is a miracle. I have to find out why.”
“So much that you’ve decided to keep him away from his mother and not even let tell him about his brother’s death?”
“His mother knows his fine,” Hyeonki replied. “As for his brother’s death; telling him that while he’s undergoing rehabilitation will do him no good. Just let him be for a while.”
“So will you do the sa to rlin if you’re given the chance to lock him up?”
Hyeonki looked up from his cup of tea and at his friend.
“Where’s this coming from? You know I’m not that sort of person.”
Ilseong exhaled deeply and lowered his head.
“I apologize. I’m just a little on edge. I shouldn’t have let him compete in the tournant. What if sothing goes terribly wrong?”
Hyeonki sighed. “It’ll all be fine. We’ve provided extra security to the academy. There’s no way the Blackguards will get in there without our notice. rlin will be all right.”
“I hope so.” Ilseong looked up. “About his mana evolving, what do you think is the issue?”
Hyeonki shrugged. “I have no idea. Unless I carry out tests on him personally, I have no clue why he is what he is. However, I do have a hypothesis.” Ilseong raised a brow as a sign for Hyeonki to continue. “His mana isn’t a constant like with every other mage. It’s a variable. It changes. Grows. Evolves. And I assu that might be a reason why he’s able to do what he does. Nullify magic.”
Ilseong ramrod himself straight.
“How do the two correlate?” he asked.
“Deficient Mages are mages whose mana have no identity,” said Hyeonki. “But what if that definition is only partially correct. Ever since the Cataclysm, we’ve seen Deficient Mages as, well, deficient, because their lack of identity—their lack of Hex—ans they can’t use magic. But what if that’s not what it ans, and what their lack of identity really ans is that they can take on any identity. They are not fixed to a point, nor are they forced to remain the way they were at birth. They can change.”
Ilseong raised his hand. “Hold on. You’re losing . This sounds like nonsense.”
“And yet you know I’m making sense.” Hyeonki smiled. “Just think of it like naming a child. Give one a na, and that’s what they’ll bear for all their lives. But what if a child isn’t given a na at birth? Well, they have a clean tag to write whatever they want on it. And unlike the forr who was given a na by a higher power, their parents, they choose their nas themselves, and can decide if they want to keep changing it consistently. A Deficient Mage is more like a faceless being. They can take on any identity they choose.”
Ilseong took a deep breath. “If that is so, then why has no other Deficient Mage unlocked this before rlin?”
Of course, Ilseong knew that rlin had sothing others most likely didn’t, the whole ga system the boy had shown him, but he was still left confused as to why that was a prerequisite to unlocking such a powerful characteristic of Deficient Mages.
Hyeonki pointed at his head. “I think it’s like a ntal block,” he said. “Even the na ‘deficient’ leads the mage to believe that they are useless. If a child believes they do not deserve a na, they can never picture themself having a na. It’s like that. But, of course, this is not certain. I’ll still have to carry out more tests to figure out what Deficient Mages are as a whole. After all, I am not completely sure that such is why rlin's able to nullify magic. On the other hand, I have a different assumption, which is why I'm working on a Grimoire for him.”
Ilseong blinked. “A Grimoire?”
Hyeonki nodded. “A special one. If my hypothesis is even a tiny bit correct, then Deficient Mages might even be greater than S-Class Mages, and rlin will be the pioneer of this new world.” He leaned back and crossed his arms. “Listen Ilseong, I think Deficient Mages have the ability to copy magic.”
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