I was just nine when I was taken to the palace, separated from my mother and my two sisters that had no support but me, I was dragged by force all the way to the huge metallic doors. I had entered from some small corner where the man that accompanied me had to bent. I didn't understand at that time why that gentleman had to bent while they had vast place from where we could enter... Now I understand why, and that gentleman could be everything but a man, a slave maybe or a servitor, anything but a gentleman.

 

I remember spending my first week in the palace in a room I had to share with three other kids that looked my age and where propably bought the same way I was. I kept sharing my room with them anyway; taeyong, doyoung and jaehyun were my roommates for 3 years and we slowly got to bound therefore in no time I had friends to rely on, trust and more importantly joke around with. 

At first I thought my mother was forced to give up on me but I eventually realized that she did in fact sell me to these people who kept treating me badly till I reached 11...

Trough the years, we were forced to do different shores, from the kitchen to the garden and even taking care of the animals... We were asked to do all of te dirty work that our superiors or the older guys had no desire to do. Obedient and respectful -as we were taught to be- we just bowed and executed all the orders we were given...

11 year olds were running around in the back of the palace making everything perfect for the royal family that's how it looked around me everyday.

They will wake us up at the mere sight of the sun rising in the horizon. We would rush to wash up and wear our over-used clothes that started loosing their colors and gaining small wholes everywhere. We were given small rice balls as a breakfast that I remember eating them together with my roommates as we watched the white trail of light fighting the darkness of the night giving birth to a new beautiful day, reviving our sorrows and hardships.

We never got to enjoy our poor meal calmly as superiors rushed us to work. Jaehyun will run to the downtown to buy the palace's needs for the day we all thought he was the luckiest to leave this hell even for an hour but we soon petied him when we saw him coming back with loads of groceries that he hardly manages to carry to the huge kitchen.

Doyoung was the only one of us who got to see the inside of the palace as he was charged of cleaning the baths or getting them ready for the royal family members he also got to clean their clothes, iron them and arrange them. 

Taeyong had as mission to guard the horses and feed them, simple isn't it? But it was such a hard task that needed so much strength that he started building muscles in around three months.

I have to admit that my shores were the simplest and easiest. I just had to bloom the ground around our rooms and clean the slaves' chambers. Nothing to bother me but my allergy to dust as I kept coughing while working, my eyes will get red and teary and my only concern was to never be seen in such a state.

Saying each of us had their jobs like this, putting it like this, will give us great importance but we were never alone, each shore will be done in a group of fifteen kids and a supervisor if needed. So I always had the feeling of being a nobody, a one in the crowd, replaceable and unavailable. But I had no choice, I was just a mere slave with no words to say.

 

I've eventually stopped doing the arrands with my friends, when one day, as my older was scolding me for falling and breaking a precious expensive cup of tea and the prince had passed by...

Since I didn't knew the royal family I got frightened when my superior bowed for a million times.

I looked up to a beautiful face, an angel. 

 

He was taller than me with beautiful hair covering his eyes and giving him a misterious feeling. I don't remember having any memory of the boy's features at that time. I only knew he was beautifully pale with brown bangs all over his face and pink knuckles, I bet I was a weird kid cause I had noticed the knuckles but not the Prince's face.

After that day, I was given a small room by myself, soared from the cleaning shores and people started treating me nicer... At that time I thought my energy and my hard work were finally paying off but I had started doubting it when I was brought to martial arts class everyday and I had a teacher on my own to learn poetry. 

No further explanations were given to me, but each time I asked for the reason to why are people taking care of my allure and why am I being taught the palace manners or why am I getting new clothes and gifts every now and then they all answered that it was a royal order and that must be accomplished.

 

At twelve, I was growing taller and my voice sounded bizarre. I've been kept away from the sun for a year and now I look paler than a geisha, the only time I was allowed to meet the sun is when I had martial art class. If there's something I'm ever proud of is how quick I am in learning, from martial art, sword fighting, poetry and even cooking I've learnt them all. So I will just sit and wait for the next field the royal family wants me to train for and apparently there's a lot of them coming.

At night, my head will drawn in questions that were always left unanswered: why do I keep doing what I'm doing? Am I the only one who gets to do this training or are there others like me? What's gonna be my feature? What's going to be done with my poor self?

I had no refuge but writing. So I spent my nights writing papers that will vanish the morning after which scared me and made me feel ... I had no privacy, I had no life, I am a marionette for the royalties.

Frustration and anger filled me everyday as my papers disappeared every morning and my soul was to someone who kept stealing my memories, thoughts and feeling from me. 

I finally had my first answer, when my poetry teacher whispered to me one afternoon between two verses

“Stop writing hateful comments on the royalties may you? Prince hansol had been reading them all! He can take your life if he wished" 

Eyes filled with tears I nodded gazing at the sun as it slowly drifted away, leaving its color on the sky... 'Beautiful' I thought to myself.

I remember that I, for the first time, didn't write my thoughts. I just brought the ink closer to me and wrote in big letters

«Like the sun that leaves its colors on the blue sky, my wish is it to leave my colors on this ground» 

 

The next morning, I've woke up like the usual; women giving me my morning massages and dressing me up, a small boy bringing me my plate of food and my teacher knocking on my door to start our lessons.

For my surprise, it wasn't the teacher I expected it to be but instead it was Mr soo, my poetry teacher.

“we will be having poetry the morning today" 

I nodded knowing that it must be a royal order from prince han who apparently had nothing to do but bother me and suffocated me.

“why are we going to the lake?" I asked

“today we are changing the environment" 

Long silence settled between the both of us as he dragged his feet slowly hand inside his dark kimono 

“What is it you want to be?" 

“excuse me?" 

“cant you make a phrase to express your feelings? After all that I taught you?

I stared at him blankly for a moment than bent down brushing my fingers around a small flower

“ flowers look pretty aren't they?" 

He nodded

“but do they want to be looked at that way? Do they want to carry those colors? Aren't they tired of depending on us to water them? Don't they want to try to survive on their own and try to see if they could be as important as they want to be?" 

“well it surely wasn't poetry" he smirked for what seemed to me the first time.

“But aren't flowers blessed to watered everyday? Appreciated for the colors they carry and valuated for existing?", i head a deep voice talkibg drom afar and i knew it was some royalty when teacher soo bowed quickly,"Aren't they lucky to be cherished from us? These flowers out of all the flowers on this land?" 

I bowed quickly as he showed up from behind a huge tree, a perfect degree. 

My hands shoke and my cheeks burned as he got closer. 

“raise your head!" He ordered and I did as I was asked.

My eyes met huge brown eyes, dark gaze enveloped my soul and I shoke myself awake on the inside to break eye contact with him.

“I am Prince hansol, perhaps might you be ten?" 

I nodded quickly eyes fixed on my feet.

“like the sun that leaves its colors on the sky, my wish is it to leave my colors on the ground" he whispered. 

Surprised, I looked up to his beautiful face as he stared at the lake and I quickly bought my gaze down scared that he might find me too impolite or too rude.

“i allow you to look at me" he mouthed 

“my apologies, your Highness" I whispered,too scared for my voice to leave my threat 

“i also allow you to call me by my personal name" 

I bought my gaze up in surprise, turning around trying to find assurance from my teacher but he was nowhere to be found.

“call my hansol" he whispered with a smile. He moved closer to me and I quickly bowed in fear. 

I heard him laugh delicately, his laughter was almost unnoticed.

I kept my position despite the fact that he asked me to raise my head a couple of time... Too scared.

I felt long fingers going through my hear down to my neck.

“just think of it that I'm giving you the colors so you could paint the world with them. I'm giving you the power to grow stronger" 

I raised my head quickly and my face was mere inches away from the prince's. 

“not all flowers survive when we water them, not all flowers grow bigger, not all of them grow prettier... Aren't we just watering our hopes? Us, that water flowers that might never be?" He whispered and I felt his warm breath against my cheek.

“i deem that beautiful flowers will grow anyway and even if we don't water them. But aren't flowers who grow in the vast desert the prettiest?" I whispered looking down

“Then can you be my daisy?" His voice was deep but delicate.

I raised my eyes in surprise. He was smiling but his eyes looked darker than before.

“i will let you chose your colors if you promise to show them to me"

“huh?"

“you can do what you want if you promise you will come to me" 

“i can't leave even if I want to, your highness" I laughed 

“heartedly, he got closer, come to me heartedly" he whispered against my lips 

Eyes wide in surprise, I nodded quickly and that seemed to amuse him a lot as he laughed and patted my head and shoulder. 

"Then! See you in the desert?" 

“excuse me?" I was confused to whatever he told me. I know that daisies grow in the desert but the palace is all green and beautiful. Is he intending to ing send me to the desert for real?!! 

He smiled warmly, tapped on my chest twice than left.

Confused and scared, I just stared at his tall frame as he got farther.

 

*** 

 

Years passed and I've never saw the prince again, despite my desperate attemptions to meet him. 

He told me that day that he will let me be if I promised to come back to him. It wasn't fully a lie because he did let me chose the courses I wanted to intend and he let me chose to practice more often and go under the sun longer but he never let me leave the palace and he never wanted me to make my own experiences. 

He kept on taking my papers from me and when I was the most depressed or angry I would find a paper under my pillow that reads 

 

« the warmth of the sun never melts its colors » 

And that was enough to cheer me up, I wanted to make my own color. I am the one who asked the freedom, despite its limit, I still am the one who needs to become stronger on my own.

Sometimes I think I should have let him guide me but when I feel the warm breeze and the sun light hitting my skin, I feel alive. When I hold a sword and train for hours, the sweat and blood makes me feel free, free of that family that let me go, free of the friends I let go and free from everything I never knew in life. 

Hours of training made me stronger and now the heaviest sword felt like a toy to me and I've been winning over the people I'm training with. 

 

Yet all of it was never enough.

I always wanted more, I wanted to be stronger, to fight more, to learn more, to see more.

I have to admit that I never expected myself to fall in love when I was just seventeen. 

But she was so beautiful and delicate, she made me want to hold her and protect her. 

Her name is heiki she was a dancer for the royalties that was charged of accompanying me everyday to take care of my allure. 

Her hands made me go crazy as she massaged my skin everyday in the morning and before sleep. 

Looking back, I still feel guilty for everything that happened to her. 

She had done nothing, it was all me, it's me that couldn't control my desires as she massaged my neck, her thigh brushing against mine. 

Her lips were puffy and red and I just pushed myself on her kissing her and doing things I never should have done.

That night she was expelled from the palace as the Prince hear of the story and he banned her from the capital. 

I remember crying a lot that night. The Prince broke my heart again and I could say nothing so I write nothing and just slept, mind too dizzy to write.

I still woke up to a paper under my pillow

 

« the sun shines alone » 

It was real! The prince didn't want me to have anyone around me and it hit me that I was never allowed to talk to my old roommates and that I only trained with highly placed solders, I had my own teachers and my own room so the prince would make sure I was trapped and lonely. 

Mind of a teenager, I've decided to never leave my room, I refused to eat nor to practice, and I stopped writing. 

I kept myself busy reading books, and I only accepted to drink water and I felt surprisingly alive.

I was living with every story I've read, I've become those heroes that lived in my papers, went with them to explore the seas and new lands, I now know about Europe and Africa, I know about how French people dress and talk, I know how Germans eat and I know how people from north Africa celebrated their weddings...

Eventually, stories of that genre bored me and I've started reading philosophy. At first, I was enlightened, mesmerized and dumbfounded by the greatness of those men. I wanted to be like them but I promised myself to never write again, to never let the Prince inside NY head and I was slowly dying. 

I played in bed as my muscles turned to bones and my eyes were the largest part of my body, I started coughing and trembling a lot but my kind was restless as I asked one of my surroundings to read the books for me, body too fragile to hold the book.

One day I've heard I knock on my door while no one was there.

The door opened and the prince was standing there in my sight 

“lord! You look dead!" He whispered 

“i am dead" I mouthed “you killed me" 

“i didn't" he got closer and sat next to me, his hand holding mine “if you had someone else how could you come to me?" 

“but I needed her" 

“you only need yourself" he answered quickly 

“you need to be stronger not weaker, she's your weakness and look what your desire have done to you" 

“i don't only desire her, I sincerely loved her" 

“then you shouldn't have" he answered as his gaze fell to his lap and he caressed my knuckled delicately.

“arent flower only allowed to love the person that water them?" 

“you promised me to let me raise in a desert" 

“but you are fading" 

“i am surviving" I smirked 

he looked up at me, eyes intense and gaze strong.

His hand reached to the back of my neck and he drifted closer to me, his lips almost touching mine and he whispered 

« I am going to water my hopes with you, I hope you can survive " 

He smelled nice, too weak to think or move I just stayed there wondering of which flower he smelled as he pressed his lips against mine and he moved slowly, his hand playing with my long hair that was covering my shoulders and his other hand carassed my cheek. 

He parted delicately, lips wet and his cheeks too.

I was wondering why would the prince cry as he kissed a mere slave, he had nothing to cry over. My life was in his hands, my body was all his and I had nothing but my mind that kept wandering outside the palace.

“ please be obedient " he whispered as he closed the door behind him.

 

 

 

I was forced to eat everyday and I eventually started gaining weight, people came to my room to take care of my health, feeding me things I never knew of, royal maids came to shower me everyday and I started to smell like the prince. 

After a year of recovery, I started going back to train and I noticed that I've missed the sword and the smell of blood. I've missed the sun and I missed teacher soon the most.

So I kept ganging out all the hours of the day not caring about getting tanner, I just trained and studied poetry in the yard.

Even though I've stopped writing, one day I've bought the ink out from the closet 

“The sound of the lake is beautiful and the sound of the birds are breathtaking, may my hands learn how to sound beautiful too" 

And the next morning I've found a koto in my room with a word on it that says: “ I would like to see this color of yours later " 

 

I kept practicing koto everyday, training was essential too along with poetry and I was slowly growing taller, wider and older. My voice got stable and my hair got darker, I've changed a lot but one thing that never changed it is that the prince and I never met again and I never got to write again. 

 

 

The year of my twenty, news of the king falling seriously sick was spreading around the palace, people had been betting on who was going to inherit the throne after him, some said it was going to be the prince and some said it will be his cousin because he was older and more mature.

Apparently the prince was just a year older than me but he was so tall and well built I almost thought we had five years of life to seperate us.

The news eventually vanished after after few months. And I only cared about getting my body stronger and my hold on the sword tighter. 

 

Until one night, I've heard the door knock and once I've opened it. It was the prince standing in front of me, the moon only lightened half of his face and I could tell that he was troubled. 

His hands trembled as he held on my shoulder, putting his forehead against mine. 

“its the desert! Come to me now will you?" 

Confused, I've dragged him inside making sure no one was following him to my chamber then closed the door and lightened a candle

“ I will come with you " I patted on his thigh

“ Are you ready to face everything with me? Are you ready? " 

“ I've been preparing myself all these years for the moment you will come get me " I answered “ I know I've fell many times on the road, but I'm stronger now and I was to be there for you " 

“ it's going to be tough to fight on my side " 

“ I will be your best soldier, the daisy in the desert, the one you will find next to you when no one is there" 

 

I still wonder why I've went with him that night when the king died nor why I've become his military commander after the war against the rebel ended. 

Is it gratitude? For all the years he spent taking care of me and helping me.

Was it pity? Because he looked so pained and broken that night that I had to help? 

Or was it my hopes of a better future, pure selfishness, that pushed me to take my sword and kill for his throne? 

I didn't know at that time what it was, but for those moments as they lasted, I never thought of anything but the prince, his throne and my sword against every person who wanted to take it away from him

 

***

 

To enjoy each moment as it lasted.

It had become my motivation.

Every I've ever wanted had become my life; I've got to leave the palace if I wished to, I could hang in the streets of the capital and stare at people making a living. The sound if the venders calling out the names of their merchandise was music to me.

The crowd unified in a common sound, people chatting, children laughters and even some pets around cane together to fill the emptiness in my head.

 

I wished I had someone to whom I could tell my thoughts and ask for their opinion but I had no one and it pained me, that loneliness and emptiness were my camarades.

 

The king and I became closer, each time we went to a war together, each time we celebrated our victories together and in every time I got to talk to him in the palace. And I eventually found myself walking together with his highness to the lake, exchanging verses of poems we made and laughing to each other's jokes.

The king was a humble man, he would take the sword to train with my military group. Sometimes he called me to battle him in different martial arts, sometimes using swords, sometimes only by using force and we even wrestled when he was bored. 

The king was also a very romantic person, he adored poems about flowers and love. I noticed that each time we were wandering around he will use a lot of methaphores and compare every feeling he got to nature and I thought that that side of him was the nicest.

The king also had a lot of humor and he sometimes called for me just to tell me about an anecdote or two then we will spend the night drinking and chatting. 

 

Life at the palace was easier to handle and it was almost heaven if not the the king's cousin who was spreading rumors about the king being incapable of having a woman, stories comes and goes and somehow the rumor turned that his highness was maintaining a relationship with myself.

At first, I acted like I didn't hear about the rumor and I just let it faint but as days go the rumor got stronger and people would stare at us every time we stayed together. 

Enjoy every moment as it lasted wasn't my concern anymore, but seeing the king so troubled and concerned about the situation had kept me awake for weeks trying to think about a solution to it. 

And I found none but to face him and discuss it with him...