Chapter 10: Chapter 10: There is always a reason.

Min Li couldn't move. She was moving, but she herself wasn't in control.

When she asked her body to go right, it went towards the left. When she asked her legs to walk towards the left, it rudely walked towards the right. Even when she was going into a straight line, and politely asked her body to carry on, it stopped moving the very moment of the command.

She had already tried the opposite game. But it turned out that her body was clever when it wanted to be. It knew exactly the intentions behind everything she said, absurd, and it did the opposite to what she really wanted.

A wave of coldness climbed up Min Li's spine, then nothing, then a wave of heat.

In a flash, Min Li's environment changed. Where before she could see nothing or maybe it was that now she couldn't quite remember what she had seen, now she could clearly see and it was really very memorable.

She was in a cave somewhere and not the pretty kind. Everything in the cave looked dead, not because there were things that had died in the cave, but that the cave was devoid of any living thing other than her.

The only thing in the cave was a table. A silver, metal table. This table did not seem like the piece of furniture that one could have their lunch on. This table did not look like a table that a family could congregate around.

Not because it was cold and unwelcoming, but because of it having cuffs in four places, two for arms and two for feet.

Min Li was calling for her body to run away, but as her body wasn't currently listening to her, she approached the place she didn't want to most.

She hadn't yet reached the table, when she found herself on the it strapped down in four different places.

And now she really couldn't move. Not a pinkie finger, not a pinkie toe nor an eyelid. She simply couldn't move.

Coincidentally her body seemed to come around, her and her body seemed to be one. It seemed to finally be able to recognise danger and the fight or flight response was kicking in. But it was too late.

Too late to run away, too late to shake and hope the cuffs fell off. Just too late.

Suddenly red lines, white lines and blue lines seemed to swarm her. It was to the point where she couldn't tell if the lines were trying to get inside of her or out from her. Whether the lines were a part of her or a foreign body.

Min Li saw a hue of passionate pink mixed in the red, white and blue lines. She instinctively knew where they had come from. The passionate colour was being reflected from the metal table. The table was reflecting the nape of her neck.

Min Li's mark was glowing and glowing brighter than it ever had before. In celebration or in fear, she knew not. She had never been a party to when or where her mark glowed.

But there was one consoling factor, she realised she had been here before.

Pain rose through Min Li's veins and through her whole body till it reached her mark. But it wasn't the usual mind-numbing pain. It wasn't the usual blistering pain. Well, it was for a second.

But then it subsided. Something cooled it down. Something gave it relief, something gave her relief.

Free from the clutches of pain, Min Li could finally think. This place she had been before had been in a dream or rather a nightmare. A reoccurring nightmare.

At that thought, she half woke. And so now she was half in reality, half in the nightmare. Even in this new state of hers she felt that there was something blocking pain that was meant to be there.

Min Li tried to wake herself up but even with the new knowledge of her situation it was harder than she thought it would be. She willed her body to wake but to no avail.

This reoccurring nightmare had started since she was fifteen at the power ceremony. It was what made her wake up in sweat instead of having a good night's rest.

Living in the new chamber had made the nightmares less frequent and the pain less sharp, even now it was better than it ever had been before. She was usually in a quite a bit of pain after a nightmare even if she ended up forgetting what happened in the nightmare itself.

It seemed as if thinking about powers from the day that she had spent in the library had caused a re-emergence in her painful nightmares.

Min Li felt a sudden burst of even more relief. But now she was half conscious she could feel that it wasn't a coincidence.

There was something in the physical on her neck that eased her pain.

Relief was flowing through her mark. But in the nightmare, the red, white and blue lines as well as the pinkish hue seemed to be slightly more pigmented in colour.

Maybe there's an inverse relationship, and my mark helps me. But usually the pain comes from my mark, not relief.

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Again, Min Li put a lot of effort into waking up. Her efforts finally bared fruits.

She could flex one of her little fingers, that was progress.

"I have got you, no need to worry," a voice whispered in the empty cold cave.

Not taking in what was said or the familiar voice, Min Li's first instinct was to jump and run away from the table, but she couldn't of course.

When she realised that the voice was probably from someone in reality rather than the dream, she felt to run all the more.

It could be someone evil. Who would sneak into someone's room late at night. It could be someone trying to help me. But it could also be a total creep.

The thought galvanised Min Li into making all efforts to wake up.

With a start she sat up, her eyes opened and she swung her arms up.

"Aah," a man groaned holding his neck twisting his body.

Min Li turned towards the man, her mind fully focused, her eyes not yet such.

The man got up quickly, a bowl fell from his lap and the majority of its contents spilled on the floor.

Holding his neck and swearing softly, the man, who had a stature that Min Li found quite charming, made moves to walk out the chamber quickly.

As the man left what looked to be a bit sheepishly, Min Li realised it was a stature that she recognised. Albeit she recognised it too late or she would never have deemed it as charming, but she recognised it nonetheless.

It was the figure of the crown prince. The crown prince had left sheepishly? Min Li almost chuckled. Although she had previously complained about the size of his ego, being sheepish did not quite suit him.

Sheepish or not, Fenhua had snuck in Min Li's room for a reason yet unbeknownst to her.

Now fully present and immersed in reality, Min Li looked down at the bowl Fenhua had dropped, picked it up cautiously and sniffed the contents.

It seemed to be a mix of herbs and spices, in what looked to be a type of aloe vera gel. Min Li swiped her neck with her index finger and again brought it to her nose. I am acting like a canine, she shuddered.

She wasn't surprised to find that the substances seemed to be one and the same.

Since the mark had given Min Li relief in the nightmare, Min Li was pretty sure that the source of her relief could be traced back to the crown prince and she didn't quite know why but she was very pleased.

She never knew that he had known about her mark. But this confirmed that he knew about at least some of the pain she had to go through the last seven years.

Before she could stop herself, Min Li let out a little giggle at the thought of the crown prince catering to her and caring for her. For a long time, she had gone without it, so she missed seeing his gentle side even if he was hiding it deep inside.

The thought annoyed her for a second. Too deep inside. Until she refocused her mind on what he had did for her just now and not just now either.

Recently, Min Li had been waking up and seeing some things a little bit out of place. A chair a little moved out of position, the sheep skin rug facing the same problem too. At first, she had thought it was the wind, but when one of her dresses that she had laid on her chair, had its bottom part beneath the leg of a chair, she had called it into doubt. Even the wind and nature itself has more respect for a beautiful dress.

Looking back now although she had cast all her worries as her being paranoid, her time of rest could have been better now she was in this chamber because Fenhua had taken care of her in the night.

The man waited on me hand and foot. Did I call him stubborn and hard-headed? I must have meant he was the type of strong man ready to stand by his morals. Did I call him annoying? That was probably just because I have known him for a long time. Can't everybody be a little annoying here and there? I shouldn't hold it against him.

Look at me forgiving. In a single second, it seemed as if Min Li had learnt what forgiveness was. That being said, Fenhua had to do something for her to forgive him, so maybe she had learnt something less like forgiveness but more like understanding that people's motives are complex.

Smiling Min Li spent the rest of night thinking about whether she should go to Fenhua's chamber and thank him. But she wondered whether he would be prideful after all he had looked rather silly running out in what looked to be pain, holding his neck about to cluck like some sort of chicken.  

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