The Target: A Sequel to Hwarang: The Saga of the Sooks Book #6

Chapter 6: Fast Friends

"Do you like to read?" Bo A asked her new friend.

Se Ri's eyes lit up. "I do! Eomma taught me how." She frowned. "Back home we had a wonderful library. Appa collected scrolls from all over. I used to spend a good portion of each day reading."

Bo A smiled. "I love to read too. Unnie Jung Sook taught me how a few months ago. I'm still learning. But I can read a lot of manuscripts already."

"Unnie?" Se Ri breathed in surprise as she glanced at the young teacher who was now bent over her baby sister. Also teaching her how to read.

Bo A grinned. "Yes! She's the best! She rescued me." Then her brow darkened as she furrowed it.

"What's wrong?" Se Ri asked, instantly cognizant of her friend's distress.

Bo A widened her eyes and made a point of wiping the scowl off of her face. "Nothing."

"What do you mean? She rescued you? Rescued you from what?"

"My appa," the other girl whispered.

"Your appa?" Se Ri queried in shock. "Why would you need rescuing from your appa?"

Her own appa had been a kind man. But he had also been an old man. At least, compared to most of her friends' fathers. Her father had been more than fifty years older than she.

Se Ri had never felt one moment of fear in his presence. He had been unfailingly gentle with her. He'd been that way with all of his children. To a fault. Her older brothers had never been disciplined. She shuddered. Maybe if they had been...

Bo A glanced around at the other students. "Can we talk about it some other time?" she asked quietly.

Se Ri read her hesitation in her countenance. "Sure. So...what are you working on here?"

"I'm sketching a rose. It's one of our assignments. I love roses. Do you want to try?" Bo A smiled gently at the new girl and handed her the quill she was holding. "Here. You can use this piece of parchment. I haven't written on it yet."

Se Ri smiled at her and dipped the pen in the ink well before she began to draw a flower. As she sketched four faint petals, she whispered, "I don't think there is any way that I could draw a rose. They are far too complicated. But we had dogwood trees growing behind our house, and I've always loved their blossoms. They're pretty easy to draw too."

Bo A watched as a white dogwood blossom seemed to materialize on the girl's sheet of parchment after she'd made several strokes with her quill. Her face lit up.

"That's beautiful, Jeong Se Ri!" she exclaimed.

The younger girl glanced shyly up at her. "If you want, you can call me Se Ri," she spoke in a near whisper.

Bo A bobbed her head. "And you can call me Bo A." She peered down at her friend's sketch. "I love your flower. Are you going to draw another?"

Bo A reached for the parchment. "Here. Let me show you my cherry blossom. I bet you could draw one of those."

She withdrew another sheet, and before long the two girls were sketching to their hearts' content while they chatted about this and that.

It was clear to both Sam Sook and Jung Sook that the girls had already become fast friends.

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"Thank you for allowing my girls to join your class today. And for giving Se Yeon her first reading lesson." Sam Sook smiled at the teacher a while later as her mother led her daughters outside.