Chapter 18: Chapter 18 - Discomfort.

After the three men walked out, Rei slowly peeped into the room. After confirming that the room is cleared, Rei carefully walked into the room. The first thing that caught Rei's eye was the messy table with everything falling onto the ground. Then, she saw the King who leaned on the chair with his eyes closed. He looks a bit pale with his right hand holding his left chest and seems to have slight difficulty to breath, droplets of sweat can be seen from his forehead.

"Your Majesty! Are you alright?" said Rei as she rushed to his side and looks rather concerned.

Hearing Rei's voice, the King opened his eyes and forced a smile on his pale face.

"Don't worry… It's not a big deal." said the King, who sounds a bit weak.

"Should I get Dr Ben here?" she asked, in a worried tone.

"No, it's okay, he is quite busy right now… I will be alright in a short while…" said the King with a weak and gentle voice.

Hearing that response from the King, Rei was slightly lost and uncertain of what she should do, he certainly doesn't look alright to her.

"Get a chair and sit at my side… If you don't mind." said the King, all of a sudden.

Despite being a bit confused and reluctant, Rei did as he said. She moved a stone stool to his side and sat down…

***

While quietly sitting at his side, she glimpsed at his clean and slightly pale face, and her heart ached. He was still quite alright the day before, she wondered what happened to him.

"Is there anything to do with that commotion just now?" She wondered.

At this moment, she really hopes that she could understand his language, she thinks that if she understands the content of his scolding just now, she might be able to figure out what is wrong with his body that leads to his discomfort right now.

"You smell nice today. Especially that bergamot scent of your hair… I like it." said the King, out of the blue.

"Eh?"

A bit surprised by the sudden words from the King, Rei turned her face to the King and is greeted by his shiny black eyes along with his warm and gentle smile. Despite still looking a bit weak, he certainly looks better than a moment ago.

"Your Majesty, are you feeling better now? Do you need anything?" She asked, slightly nervous yet relieved.

"Maybe a cup of flower tea." said the King, with a smile.

"Flower… tea?" said Rei, a bit reluctant.

"Don't worry, the additional ingredients in that plum flower would not cause any harm to my body, but if you are still worrying about that, I have some other good quality flower tea in the rack over there. Those flower teas are quite easy to make." said the King while pointing at a rack in the pantry area.

Rei sheepishly nodded and walked towards the rack, she opened the rack and was amazed to see the variety of tea the King has in the rack and how well-arranged those teas are. On the lowest level of the rack, are twelve pretty glass jars with different types of colourful dried flowers in them. Out of the twelve types of flower teas, Rei can only recognise four of them, which are, chamomile, rose, chrysanthemum and plum blossom. Yes, the dried plum blossom from Rei, the King had included it in his 'tea collection'. Next to that tea collection rack is a transparent display rack with some elegant-looking teapots and cups. Hesitated for a short while, Rei chose to make the King a cup of honey camomile as she remembered that he likes sweet drinks.

After Rei carefully brewed a cup of honey camomile tea, she served it to the King. The King took a sip of the tea and smiled as he felt that extra sweetness of it, he never expected that she would remember that little joke he told her that day, although it's true that he likes sweet things.

Seeing that smile of him, Rei felt an unexplainable joy in her that she never felt before which makes her a bit awkward. To hide her awkwardness, Rei started tidying up his messy table and picking up all the fallen items while arranging them back in their original orders.

The King tried to stop her at first but after seeing how she perfectly arranged everything back to their respective position, he decided to let her continue with it while watching her throughout the whole process. And to his amazement, she didn't just arrange everything back neatly, she even helped him to sort out all the letters and documents in groups of seen and unseen, as well as the urgent and important level of the documents.

"Uhm… Rei, I thought you don't understand the official language of this kingdom." said the King who sound slightly confused and surprised.

"Yes, Your Majesty, I still don't quite understand it until now," said Rei as she put down a stack of unopened letters on his working desk.

"You don't understand? But how did you manage to sort out all these documents if you don't understand the words? Moreover, how did you know which documents had been seen or not?" He asked, rather curious.

"Well, Your Majesty, it's actually not that hard. For the urgent level, I judged it through the length of the letter. Usually, if someone has some urgent matters to report, they will try to be as brief as possible since they don't have much time to write a whole stack of essays for such an urgent matter while at the same time hoping the receiver would not take too much time to read it, thus, I eliminate the possibility of this stack of 'novel' to be some urgent document, although it is certainly something very important." said Rei as she pointed at a stack of wordy reports and letters.

"But at the same time, it shouldn't be too brief as they still need to effectively pass their message and information to the readers, thus, this stack of 'single sentenced' shouldn't be anything too important, unless it's some hidden undercover messages, but none of this stack looks like any of that, or rather, they look just like some daily perfunctory greeting messages," said Rei, trying to explain everything to the King.

The King nodded, he looks amazed...