Nowadays, the world has no borders. Television broadcasts news from all over the world and everything is accessible with a click. People believe they know everything. That there’s nothing more to learn about the world. They think they can list all countries and continents as they list fruits and vegetables.

But they’re wrong.

There are countries no one has ever heard of. Islands across the Pacific Ocean. Those countries don’t belong to a specific ethnicity or continent. Their language is unknown. They’re advanced in their own way, but they don’t know things as “television”, “internet” or concepts like “democracy” and “freedom”. Yet they were able to develop electricity and create technological goods as well, not to mention develop their own values, which aren’t very different from the others’.

Those countries know they’re not alone in the world, they’re just not interested on socialization. Still, there are men who travel far and bring news as well as new methods of fighting diseases, cooking, and ways of leisure. At the same time, children get new foreign names and teenagers from the middle or high-class show off their fashionable clothes brought from outside.

One of those countries is called Óthis.

As a beautiful island across the Pacific Ocean, their survival is based mostly on fish, and the meat is only eaten by rich people: usually the nobles and rich merchants. They work in the fields and commerce and give very importance to the arts as well.

They live under a monarchy system: there’s a king, called Lee Taejon, whose wife gave birth to seven beautiful princes on earth, but not princesses. That, itself, is a serious problem for the country, because 30% of their population is old, and most of the women are chozêh, which means they can’t get married and have children since they’re God’s ladies and seers.

The worries about demography made Óthis start promoting natality to increase the birth rate and seek for agreements in their neighbor countries. One of them was Lus’iami, a country rich with people, but poor on guns and supplies. That’s how an agreement was made: they’d provide those goods in exchange for women who’d travel to Óthis to find suitable spouses. If they didn’t find any suitable partner of their liking, they could go back, but that would not usually happen as Óthis men were, generally speaking, pretty charming and considerate.

At the same time, some princesses and girls from nobles’ families would be sent to marry in Óthis, but those didn’t have a chance to say no. Their marriages were carefully planned so that everything would work out well. And it usually did – if it didn’t, at least it wasn’t known.

 

And that’s how the day started in Óthis. The king summoned all the princes and counselors to a general audience, and they walked in and filled both sides of the seats, placed on the sides of the gold sculpted chair destined to the king.

The princes would sit on smaller individual chairs that would connect the king’s chair and his counselors’ seats in a circle, and they were placed according to age: the first would sit on the right side of the king, while the second born would sit on the left, and so on. As for the rest of the royal family, when summoned, they would sit on the first round of the right and left chairs.

The room was protected by security guards circulating in and out; and, to keep the secrecy, the only guards placed inside the room were members of the royal guard, a restricted group of soldiers in charge of the King’s protection.

The king greeted them when the seats were full.

“Salut, comrades. I’ve called you here to announce and discuss a decision I made, together with King Guō Jiao-long from the beautiful country of Lus’iami.”

“Salut, our highness!” They replied, with one voice. The king asked them to sit down, and they silently obeyed.

King TaeJon cleared his throat and was the last to sit down. With the loud and clear voice he used to teach the princes when they were younger, the king started by the usual themes: economy, weather, and social issues.

The fifth prince in line, Lee Chanyeol, subtly approached the seventh, by mumbling “I think father’s voice would be awesome as a lullaby to your mischievous twins. Have you thought of recording it?”

Sehun glanced at him, shaking his head. “Pay attention.”

Chanyeol elbowed him. “Ya, it’s totally possible. Sir Lucas went to Japan, and they had this weird object that would record everything we say and then play i-."

His younger brother faced him, with a cold glare.

“Ok, I get it. You’re not interested. You want to live in ignorance towards other people’s costumes, as the caveman you are… I won’t even insist. Not that I think that your silence is a sign of agreement, because I’m sure you don’t even know what a ‘cavem-Ok, I get it, I’ll stop it. I’ll be quiet.” He said, right when Sehun was about to step up and ask His Highness to force him out of the meeting.

What a rude younger brother he was at times. And as if someone would even pay attention to what His Highness was saying. They were probably just faking. Or that was what he thought, before noticing how all his brothers were commenting the goals and measures taken by the king during the meeting’s break. Oh great.

“I found you.” Baehyun approached him, holding two cups of coffee. He gave him one. “Probably the only person in this room who understood this meeting as much as myself.”

Chanyeol smiled. “I knew I could always count on you.”

“But now seriously, what will Imperial Father announce anyway? Please, God, not my marriage. I’m still very young, beautiful and carefree to marry.”

“I married when I was twenty years old, boy.”

“But you married for love, and she was pregnant anyway.” He corrected him. “Now the only candidates are me, Jongin, Suho, and that infamous Changwook. Please, let it be him. Please, be him. I’ve been praying like that for the whole meeting.” He replied, showing his hands together gesture.

“So that’s what you were doing.” Chanyeol frowned. “And I felt bad for being the only one inattentive. So I hope you’re the chosen one. Actually, I think we should find someone able to tame you.”

“It would certainly bring fewer worries to Imperial Father.” Chen interrupted, with his usual serious tone. “All the complaints about your womanizer behavior would extinguish, not to mention we wouldn’t have to worry about the possibility of you knocking up some random servants.”

“Hey!” He exclaimed, a bit offended. “All their pregnant claims were revealed to be fake, you know?”

“But there’s always this quote which says that there’s always a bit of truth in a lie, haven’t you heard?”

Baekhyun grumbled in a quiet tone. “You should have been a brilliant lawyer in your past life. You just have a reply to everything.”

Chen pretended not to listen and left them with a slight greeting nod. Chanyeol followed him, as they were supposed to return inside.

 

“After this little break, very needed to calm down our tummy and bladder needs, right…” He was interrupted by strong laughs by the counselors and other nobles, and short educated smiles from the princes, as the etiquette would subtly command. “Great to know you’re still awake.” The king observed, creating more laughs.

“He actually thinks he’s funny,” Baehyun mumbled to himself, but Jongin still replied him. “Yet he can still be funnier than you and your gags.”

“Insult me, but not my gags.”

“… that’s why we decided to marry Mou Tan Tian to an imperial prince, the third prince, Lee Suho.”

The room was full of silence, taking out prince Baekhyun, who jumped from his seat with a small grin. Luckily, that was unnoticed, and after a while, the meeting was dismissed, with Suho coming to discuss those matters deeply with the king.

 

Tyanne lifted the hem of her dress and walked into the wheels carriage. She had spent all her morning getting ready for the travel. She was supposed to wear her best dress, to put a natural feeling make-up, and to get a fancy hairstyle… it didn’t matter how it would probably be gone when they arrived.

She closed the eyes and tried to breathe the fresh air coming from the window. Her carriage started jerking and she knew it wouldn’t stop till they get there. Lus’iami wasn’t popular for technology - in fact, Óthis was the country with the goods and the technology, and that was why such a marriage agreement was done.

Tyanne looked back for a moment. Her mother was still waving at her, with her twelve years old sister waving next to her. She waved back, with tears flowing from her eyes.

“You’ll see her in a few weeks, Tian Tian.” Her father was probably the only person in the world who’d call her by her name, and also the only person she didn’t mind he did. “You don’t need to feel bad.”

“It’s scary.” She mumbled. “Is my life all reduced to this? All my efforts and preparations, all the strict educational measures, were it all just for this? So that I could be part of a marital agreement? And what if he’s a jerk? What about my dreams? Ok, scratch that, I never really had marital dreams, but still… I never wanted to live in an unfamiliar environment with someone who probably is twenty years old far from my age and will only treat me as his little doll.”

Her father sighed. “Tian, listen to me. I already told you multiple times the guy is not much older than you. You don’t even have a ten years old difference between you.”

“Oh, right. I remembered now. You said he was twenty-eight years old. I’m twenty. How’s that?” She rested her head on the seat and closed her eyes. “Daddy… I just don’t feel it’s fair. You were so hard on me while growing up and made me think of a promising future, but here I am, stuck with a man I don’t like and destined to be his wife and child’s mother, and nothing more.”

“But, Tian Tian… You will be able to travel. You’ll see. It won’t be as bad as you think.”

“I won’t have a job. I will live by my husband’s money, and won’t be able to put into practice what I learned while studying for my degree – the same degree I’m dropping out.” She took a long breath near the window, as she was feeling nauseous.

“Honey, having a job is overrated. You will get everything you want and won’t face difficulties with weird people, awful bosses or money issues. You will be treated like the princess you are, not as a servant like in that job offering in Australia you wanted to get.” He smiled when she didn’t reply. “Cheer up!”

Tyanne knew it was useless to go on unless she wanted to cry in front of her father. She didn’t plan to speak about it, as she thought she was already resigned to the idea. But she wasn’t, after all.

Now, her only chance and last resource were the princes she would be married to. If she could convince him or show him she wasn’t the right girl for him, maybe the marriage could be called off. She rested her head on the window and prepared herself to sleep. After the arrival, she’d have many things to think about.

 

“Tian, I think it’s starting to rain!” A little boy exclaimed after he felt some drops of water falling over him. “Let’s pack everything up and go.”

Tyanne and the boy went to their hiding cave and shoved everything they had into their bags, wore their couple coats and prepared to run. Right when the boy was going to leave, Tyanne stopped him, after seeing the rain was too heavy for them to run without getting too wet. “You know you can’t get sick.” She said. “Let’s wait until it calms down.”

He laughed and sat down the farthest from the cave entrance. “You’re younger yet you’re worse than my parents. Chill, dongsaeng. I’m fine. Which makes me think, when are you going to treat me as your older brother? Do I seem easy enough just because I don’t force you to call me ‘oppa’?”

She looked away while cringing. She grew up being taught how women should respect their parents, brothers, husbands and other male adults they knew and follow their instructions, but that always seemed bad to her.

Everyone else thought she was weird and mischievous, looking at her with censuring eyes, but he didn’t. Even when she started treating him by his own name, which seemed cute at first but later on moved to be an issue between their parents, he didn’t even reprimand her. Even though she knew he wasn’t happy with that and he felt others were right – because he was taught that way -, he never tried to force it on her, because he liked her. She was his precious little friend, and that was the only thing that truly mattered to him.

He sighed. “It’s okay”, he said. “Relax”. But she knew it wasn’t okay. He was starting to grow tired of it. And she couldn’t blame him.

Tyanne looked at the sky, after noticing the rain had stopped. “Let’s go now.”

She could only catch a glance of his smile before waking up.