Sweet Romance11 min read
I Was a Ginseng, He Was a Dying Man — Then Everything Changed
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"I fell out of a police station."
"You're kidding," the guard said, eyes wide.
"I'm not," I told him. "But could you maybe stop slamming the door? It's drafty."
He backed away like I'd bite. He had every right to be afraid; ten years as a root spirit had not taught me how to be small and human. My hair was wet from the rain. My name — the human one I remembered — was Magdalena Zhang.
A black car rolled past. I saw a pale face through the two-centimeter gap of the rolled window, someone scrawled with illness and elegance. I dosed myself in pity and schemed food.
"Crash into me," I told the pavement in my best dramatic voice. "Please."
The car waited. A hand, glove-less, reached out.
"Get off the road," the man said. "You could get hurt."
"Please," I wailed, and fell in front of the tire like a fool.
"Do you want me to call an ambulance?" his assistant asked. "There's always a scene, sir."
"Pick her up," the man said.
I wrapped my arms around his leg like a child. "It hurts. Hospital."
He was colder than the rain. He smelled faintly of leather and money and something like winter. He lifted me with a patience that quivered.
"You're light," he said, eyebrows creasing.
"I am," I sniffed. "I am very light. Very hungry."
He glanced down, the corners of his mouth pulling in a way that could have been a smile or a surrender. "Come on."
"Don't—" I tried to jump away, but his hands were steady. "Don't let the driver leave! You'll—"
"Stop," he said softly, and I felt the whisper of authority and the rustle of silk. "Sit."
We went to his house because there was nowhere else to go and because I wanted a bowl of rice that wasn't prison food. In his foyer, under a chandelier, he set me on a couch and crouched to look at me.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Magdalena," I lied before I remembered the older name inside me — a human girl who had been used and thrown away. "Magdalena Zhang."
"Avery Hawkins," he said into my hair. "Don't wander off. This is private property."
"You smell like sickness," I said, honest as a root. "Do you have medicine? Do you... need tea?"
He laughed, a sound that puffed cold air.
"You're a pest," he murmured, and the laugh folded into something softer. "Don't cry. I like it when you don't cry."
"I mostly cry to get food," I told him.
"Then stop crying and eat," he said, and set a bowl of warm broth in front of me.
I put my face to his chest that night to sleep, because instinct said lean and hide and absorb warmth. He tasted faintly of salt and old coffee. He opened his mouth and the name left in a sound that made my ears warm.
"I'll call you Warm," he said.
"I am not a nickname," I mumbled into silk.
"Warm," he repeated. "Come with me if you like. You won't find better broth on the street."
He had the look of a man both doomed and defiant. He was handsome, dangerously so. He looked like somebody that misfortune had not forgiven.
"You look like you'll die," I said one night, blunt and fascinated.
"Maybe," he said. "Maybe not."
"Then, stay. I can help." I patted my chest like a plant. "My root breath helps people."
He smiled as if he'd been promised a small miracle. "Fine. Stay."
"You won't eat me, right?" I added, because one has to ask.
"How long have you been a root?" he asked.
"A long time," I said. "Too long."
"You can call me Avery," he said, and then, because he was fragile and ridiculous, "Magdalena, steal half of my scarf. Your scent stays."
I did. First heart-thrill: when he, a man who never gave things, let me take the warmth of his scarf and wore the act like a small rebellion.
"Don't run off to classes," he said next morning, a curl of steam between his lips. "You look delicate."
"I will go," I declared. "Professor said exam."
"You study?"
"I used to," I said. "I am, um—" I hugged his waist. "Stubborn."
"You're sticky," he said, and then, softer, "Stay close."
Second heart-thrill: he once took a hand off a steering wheel to snatch a steaming bun from a delivery bag and press it into my palm as if we were conspiring.
At school, my life was messy. People hissed. Sofia Martinez sat like a sunbeam, beautiful and sharp. Fox Snyder — my ex — looked like he'd swallowed sugar and poison. Their smiles sank in the air like knives.
"Magdalena," Fox said when he saw me. "You shouldn't be here."
"I should be," I replied, because I had a human debt to repay: the old Magdalena had been framed and caged. She had one thing: stubbornness. I stood in the testing hall and the exam sheet flew like a cruel joke. Someone lobbed a cheat sheet at me.
"Pass that to Sofia," a voice behind me said. "She's mine."
"Take your own sheep's clothing," I thought, and with a slow, careful hand I fixed the answers. I wrote them all out properly, and when Sofia opened the cheat sheet, she found answers wrong because I had replaced them.
She failed. The auditorium buzzed.
"Did you do that?" Fox snapped at me after, red in the face.
"Yes," I said, because I could be small and righteous. "You hurt me. You hurt my life."
"You're petty," Fox snarled. "You can't stay."
"Watch me," I said.
Public humiliation came, but not yet; I had to grow roots into the human soil.
Avery never left me alone. "Come," he would say. "I'll wait for you outside class."
"You're a rich man's ghost," students would whisper. "You're bought."
"I am not," I would tell them fiercely. "I have my root. I have dignity."
Third heart-thrill: he once stood up in the company meeting and said, "She's with me," with all the casual ownership of someone handing over a coat, and my chest clenched like a child stealing a biscuit.
Trouble came sideways. Sofia and Fox plotted like crows. Fox fed rumors; Sofia smiled like a blade. A photograph of me in Avery's arms leaked. They said I was his mistress. I should have been ashamed, but I had no shame in a place where I'd eaten prison soup and stood under neon lights like a wet root.
"You want the truth?" I asked Avery one night. "Do you know how they set me up?"
"I do," he said. "You told me."
"I told you I was a root," I said awkwardly. "I didn't tell you everything."
"Tell me more," he ordered gently, and the warmth in his eyes was a shelter.
"I was blamed for fighting," I said. "It sent me to a lockup. Fox led it. Sofia smiled. They took my spot at the festival. They took my future. I was a nobody."
"We'll fix that," he said.
And he did something furious and public.
It happened at the university's alumni banquet, which doubled that year as a charity gala. Avery arrived as a sickly king, white as marble, supported by hands of men who respected his name. I sat in the second row, trying to be small and invisible.
"Tonight," Avery said into the microphone, voice thin but steady, "I'd like to honor someone."
I didn't know the speech. My pulse ran like spilled tea.
"She saved me in a rainstorm," Avery said. "She sat with me through needles and nights. She is Magdalena Zhang."
There was a ripple. Sofia glanced like a cat.
"I'd like to show you the truth of some old accusations," Avery went on. "The school holds the record of who could and who could not have been at certain places. We have CCTV. We have a ledger. We also have people who lied."
He clicked a remote. On the big screen behind him, an old video stuttered alive: Fox, young and smug, colluding with a campus official. Footage of a staged fight. Text messages where Fox boasted about sending me away. Then, the gaunt king turned and looked at Fox with a gaze colder than the winter in my blood.
"Fox Snyder," Avery said, and the room held its breath. "You will explain."
Fox stammered. "This is—this is slander."
"You set her up," an old professor cried from the crowd. "We remember payoffs."
Sofia's face went white. "This is not—"
"This is true," the video showed. "You signed. You smiled. You took the prize."
The crowd reacted. Chairs scraped. Phones pointed. Someone laughed. Someone sobbed. Students who once giggled now leaned forward.
"Explain," Avery said again, as gentle and as hard as a doctor. "On record. In public."
Fox's composure crumbled. He tried to snarl and found only sound. Sweat mapped his temples. He broke into denial, then shame, then pleading.
"You're lying!" he shouted, desperation spiking. "I didn't—"
"You did," Avery said. "You did because you wanted a title."
Sofia could no longer hold the stage. People whispered about her sudden promotion for the festival. Her cheeks burned. She tried to leave. Avery's next slide lit her face with messages — her own admissions of scheming.
"I was threatened," Sofia said, voice small, then louder. "I needed—"
"To be beautiful and to win," Avery cut in. "We gave you a platform and you used it to hurt one girl."
Ricardo Berger — Avery's half-brother, who had long watched his brother's fortune with the hunger of a wolf — rose from the back, face ashen with fury. He shoved through the crowd like a man seeking to crown himself.
"Stop," he hissed. "You cannot smear me in my house."
Avery looked at his brother as if he were a pest. The audience watched, the air electric.
"You stole from the company," Avery said aloud, and the microphone swallowed the sound into the hall and then clothing. "You attempted to take my shares while I was ill."
Ricardo railed, "You will pay. You and your lover—"
"Call her what you like," Avery said. "She is the one you wanted to break."
I stood, because my body knew to move when things swung. I faced the room and faced the man who had made my life ache.
"You framed me to steal my chance," I said. "You broke a girl's future for applause."
"Not true!" Fox cried. He tried to leave and the doors were blocked by security.
The punishment scene lasted a long time.
It was not blood or ropes. It was worse for them: exposure. For over five hundred words the crowd watched a carefully curated fall. Documents, texts, witness statements — all led to one ending. Fox was forced to stand as the dean read messages he'd typed and rescinded later, messages where he bragged of ruining a rival. He shifted colors in the light. The professor produced the original application form showing where Fox had used forged signatures to implicate me. He read the lines with the calm of an old man watching a storm. Fox blinked, then turned red, then shook, then wept. "No—no—I'm sorry—" he begged, but the cameras were already capturing his fall.
Sofia, who had wielded her beauty like a sword, was made to read aloud the admission she had tried to hide: a recorded voice mail where she admitted to conspiring for a role in the festival. When the recording played, her hands flew to her mouth. She staggered like breath had been taken from her. Faces in the crowd shifted from curiosity to disgust. A girl at a nearby table whispered, "How could she?" and another snapped a picture. Someone started recording, because the world always wants receipts. People murmured, "She stole her chance." Others said, "Look at her now." A few clapped, soft, the way people clap when a wrong has been righted.
Ricardo's punishment was different. The board chairman — a man Avery had quietly befriended — spoke calmly into the microphone. "We will conduct a full audit," he said. "Until then, Mr. Berger, you'll step down from all executive positions." The crowd gasped and the silence hung like fog. "If the audit shows criminal embezzlement, legal action will follow."
Ricardo snarled, "You can't tarnish my name!"
"You're already tarnished," someone called. "You tried to kill your brother's chance."
Ricardo's face shifted from anger to confusion to fury to fear. He lunged at Avery, and two security guards took him down. The guard's grip was steady; their hands were not cruel, but precise. The crowd pressed inwards, phones up like a thousand witnesses. I watched Ricardo's chest heave. He looked at Avery and then at me. Pride crumpled and left only naked exposure. He screamed, "You will not take everything from me!" and for the first time there was real terror in his voice. Yet there were too many witnesses. A woman at the back cried openly. Women snapped their fingers. A young man shoved a card into a journalist's hand with the words, "He tried to bribe the board."
The scene ended with the dean closing his folder and saying, "We will not tolerate this behavior here." People stood up, some to leave, some to stay. The recording of all the chats and payments swirled into the hands of campus press, and the hashtag went molten within an hour. Fox was banned from student committees. Sofia's scholarship was revoked pending review. Ricardo was suspended as a board member and later demanded by police to answer charges.
They reacted like people toppled from a high place: from haughtiness to gape-mouthed panic, then frantic denial, then shame that spread under their skin. A girl near me hissed, "They knew all along." Another student snapped a selfie with Fox's face in the background, her caption merciless. People took sides, but the room mostly emptied holding the taste of justice. The gallery filled with whispers, applause, and some who simply shook their heads in sad disbelief.
When it was over, Avery came to stand by me. He took my hand in front of a hundred pairs of eyes. "You did well," he said, as if it had been a small errand.
"I only did what I could," I said, and my voice did not shake.
He cupped my face. "You were brave."
That day the internet smelled of scandal and everything moved. Fox's family sent a lawyer. Sofia disappeared from campus for a week. Ricardo began to make phone calls that didn't reach anyone who would help him. The punishments were public and precise: humiliation, loss of position, legal inquiry. Each fell in a different way so no one could say they were treated the same.
After that, life rearranged itself.
Avery's health improved in small, stubborn ways. He stopped sleeping with the list of things he wanted done when he died. He ate more slowly. He started cooking. He made a terrible green soup once and laughed when I made faces so honest he kissed me until I stilled.
"Don't eat it," I advised once, fingers sticky with sauce.
"I made it for you," he said.
"By mistake," I insisted.
He took my hand, small and trembling, and laced our fingers. "I'm keeping you."
We lived in a world of tiny mercies. He would open his palm and let me put a hand into it. He would tighten his hold when he thought I'd run, and sometimes when he was asleep he'd breathe my name and I would laugh softly because he sounded less like a man and more like someone who had been given back color.
There were other near-mad scenes. My pregnancy scare — a frantic night of tests and strange rumors — ended with a doctor saying I'm healthy. Avery insisted on panicking anyway. "You make me reckless," he told me, the way you do when you confess a secret.
"I am a root-spirit," I told him once. "I shouldn't be here."
"You're not a root in my house," he said, and this time his eyes narrowed like someone marking territory in a world that used to be small. "You're mine."
We argued, we tripped through public affection, we avoided being clever like adults. He gave me a necklace with a tiny swan carved on its clasp — a silly piece which, when I tried to take off, would not come.
"Why a swan?" I asked.
"Because it doesn't bowl over easily," he said. "Because I can't either."
The necklace was our little private war. He wanted me to wear it. I wanted to be free. Each time he leaned down, I skirted my answer with a laugh and he kissed me into silence.
We fought again when Fox's pictures resurfaced with a sloppy magazine article about "kept women." I tore the prints and shoved them into the trash like leaves in a gust. He found me there, frantic and small but fierce.
"Do you love me?" I asked him in the bathroom that night, damp hair and all, because the question must be asked when the fear hits hard.
"Yes," he said, and kissed the side of my wet hair. "I love you, ridiculous root."
There, in a tiled little room, he proved he was not just a man with money. He was a man who would sit down with me and bake bread when the world seemed bitter, who would let me steal his scarf when the nights were mean, who would stand and say my name in a hall of witnesses and make them listen.
We had quiet moments. We had loud ones. I learned to cook something edible. He let me make mistakes. He let me be human.
In the end, the necklace — the swan — became the single thing that always announced us.
"Keep it," he said once, hands trembling like an old man's. "If anything happens to me, you'll know where to find me."
"I will keep it," I told him, and slid it over my neck. It pinched just enough to be proof.
We were a strange pair: a root who had dreamed of a sky and a man who had once dreamed only of staying alive. We grew like an impossible plant in a modern house, nourished by small kindnesses. And when the scandals died, when the punished crawled back for their own lesser versions of life, I stayed against his chest and knew at last what my thousand years had been saving me for.
"Forever?" he asked, eyes soft and dangerous.
"Not forever," I said, smiling, "Just until you stop being so annoying."
He laughed, the laugh that used to crack like thin ice, and for once it sounded like clear water.
The End
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