In novels, when a protagonist falls in love with someone, the end goal had always been to marry that person. When the marriage takes place, the protagonist gets her happily ever after, and the novel comes to a joyous close.

But Yewon was now married to someone that she loved, however, she did not feel the same kind of closure that she felt at the end of novels.

Marriage is not the happily-ever-after, she realized. is not the happily-ever-after either. Life is so much more complicated than that one-dimensional narrative you often read in stories.

-

Realizing she loved him made things so much harder and more complicated than they needed to be. Her feelings had been a mess that entire night, and not only because she broke down and cried like a child in front of him.

She was embarrassed by how much she cried, especially given the reason he came to her room in the first place…

When she cried, he had tried to convince her that she was not guilty and that he didn’t feel betrayed no matter what she did, but that just reminded her that she was doomed to never experience a husband that was devoted to her, and made her feel terrible.

Perhaps it was too much to ask, she thought. He had warned her since the very beginning that their marriage was a political one, and that there was no passion there at all. She should count herself lucky that he at least respected and trusted her. Why did she suddenly crave something more from him than that?

Of course, what he came for had not happened the previous night; she must have cried herself to sleep instead, with Seungcheol lying beside her trying to calm her down.

When she woke in the morning, she was met with the peaceful sight of his sleeping face. He had a unique way of sleeping: on his right side with his arm under his head and his other hand in front him.

When you realize that you love someone, they suddenly become so much more enticing than before. For the first time since she had known him, she was tempted by him, and so she did not fight the urge to get closer and kiss his cheek.

He was a light sleeper and so she saw his eyes open as she pulled back from her spontaneous kiss.

“Good morning,” he said drowsily to her.

“Good morning,” she replied, blushing.

“So… what did I do to deserve that?” he hummed with a hint of a smile on his face. That gave her confidence; she loved it when he smiled.

“I just felt like it,” she mumbled with a shy shrug.

He reached out to take her hand, brought it to his lips and kissed it. It should have made Yewon happy, but instead she found herself overthinking; cheek kisses are displays of affection, but hand kisses are displays of respect.

Could she ever surpass the “mutual respect” threshold with him?

He sat up and stretched and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. As she watched him, she realized that they rarely ever woken up in the morning together like this. Even when he spent the night, he would wake up before her and leave to do his duties. She didn’t know why she had only realized this now, but he never waited for her to wake up when he spent the night with her.

It was a very intimate married couple experience to wake up together, Yewon thought. And Seungcheol clearly did not wish to have an experience like that with her. The only reason he was still here now, she guessed, was because he need her to do his current duty.

“Are you feeling okay?” Seungcheol asked her.

She nodded. “I promise I won’t cry this time.”

“We can do this tonight if you’re not…”

“No, no,” she insisted, sitting up. “You need me to be pregnant as soon as possible. Let’s just get it over with now.”

“Not immediately,” Seungcheol suggested. “It won’t be very pleasant the first thing after you wake up.”

Has it ever been pleasant for either of us? Yewon wanted to say. with him had been dreadfully awkward at first, and although they both got used to it, it was never pleasant. Whenever they slept together, their main concern had always been to make sure that Seungcheol finished as soon as possible so that the pain didn’t last. She blamed Jihoon for this; it’s his fault that her life with Seungcheol had been so bland.

She wondered how different things would be had Seungcheol not been hurt the way that he was. Surely, it would have been so much easier. Seungcheol would have been more comfortable, therefore more able to consider her pleasure. She wondered what he was normally like in bed, and somehow Jeonghan came to her mind

That reminded her: “You promised that you’d tell me your story with Jeonghan, remember?” she reminded him.

“I did,” he acknowledged with a thoughtful nod. “Okay then,” he said after a moment of silence, “I’ll tell you our story.” He made himself comfortable on the bed, leaning against the wall and turning at an angle to face her.

It looked like it was a very long story, and so Yewon also made herself comfortable as she sat against the wall beside him and waited for him to tell it.

“You didn’t really know Jeonghan very well, your highness,” Seungcheol began. “But he was a fascinating person that could make even the proudest man covet him. He was mischievous and manipulative, but at the same time, he made you feel like you were precious, and he made sure to make you feel like you’re the only one that he lived for. His mischief turned to sweetness and his manipulation turned to love. I am very fortunate that he was there to help me cope with the loss of my sun.

“Speaking of the sun, our story begins with Solbin. As my future wife’s brother, I got to know him on a very formal level. He never showed his true self to me in that time, so I didn’t know the kind of person that he was. He just looked eccentric with his long hair and a smile that was somehow sweeter a woman’s. And he resembled Solbin a lot. They were both beautiful, both smiling by default, and both had eyes that lit up. They family was truly a wonderful one, Yewon. Loved by everyone.

“And then she died. And her parents also died. The killers took Jeonghan, and I had to give them weapons for them to return him. Everyone told me that I should just let him die, that he’s not worth giving the enemy weapons that would lead to the death of thousands more, and they were probably right. But in my state, heartbroken and only Solbin on my mind, I couldn’t do that to him. I knew that she would want me to save him, and so I did. I gave up weapons and probably led to the death of so many people, just so that I could do something for Solbin. The royals thought I was delusional. They couldn’t say it out loud of course, but I could tell from the way they treated me since that incident. Ever since then, they lost trust in me. They all thought I was unfit to rule, that I made decisions with my heart and not with my brain, and that I shouldn’t be allowed to make important decisions like this. No one took me seriously.

“When I got him back, he was traumatized. He’d seen horrors that he couldn’t even talk about. And somehow, I felt like it was my responsibility to protect him. So I gave him a home in the palace and let him recover in a place where no one could hurt him. I doubled the guards around him, and promised him that he would not experience a horror like that again.

“You can imagine, Yewon, what he was to me in that period. I was in mourning for Solbin, and he was the only part of her that I had left. And he was also the only one in the palace who seemed to be mourning just as much as I was. Whenever I wanted to cry or talk about her, I went to him, because he was the only one who felt just as sad as me. And so we grew closer, and bonded over our mourning.

“But, slowly, he began to regain that light in his eyes, and he started smiling like he did before. He recovered a lot quicker than I did, and I hated it, because it felt like I was alone in my sorrow again.”

Seungcheol ed the buttons of his shirt and pointed to the scar on his chest. “I told you about this. I went to fight in a battle with hopes of killing myself. I waited this long because I didn’t feel like I was responsible for Jeonghan anymore now that he was okay. The guy had recovered, and I was alone. But I didn’t want to be; I wanted to join Solbin in death, and so I fought hoping to die. And, if you remember, Jeonghan didn’t let me die.

“I survived because of him. And he was so angry with me for wanting to kill myself. I remember how he cried telling me that he didn’t know what he would do if I had died, because he loved me. I didn’t really understand what he meant by that until later, but after hearing that, I decided that I was going to stay alive. Only for him, because he needed me and Solbin would have wanted me to be there for him.

“What happened after that is kind of a haze for me. We grew closer and closer, and every day, he reminded me more and more of Solbin. And I was enticed by him. Everything about him was like a light in the midst of the darkest days of my life. The way he smiled at me when I came to visit him, and the way he would come close to me, the way his touches drove me crazy. Somehow, I saw Solbin in him, and I was crazily attracted to him.

“One day, I wasn’t thinking straight and maybe a little inebriated. I kissed him, and he returned that kiss without question. Before long, kissing him became a daily incident, even when I wasn’t drunk, because it made me feel… liberated, I guess. Going to his room and kissing him was probably the only highlight of my entire day. None of us talked about it, because although it felt like heaven in the moment that it happened, as soon as our kisses would end, Solbin came to both our minds and the guilt would destroy us. It felt like we were betraying her.

“But that didn’t stop us. I hungered for him every day. In my political world where I had to make difficult decisions that put people’s lives at stake, this was like an escape from all of that, where I could put politics aside and indulge in the most deviant passions.

“One day, the royals had enough of me, because of my indecisiveness and my tendency to skip gatherings and political meetings to be with Jeonghan. They had complained to the King, and the King told me that I had to appoint an advisor from the royals, an advisor who could make the decisions for me in my place. And when I went to Jeonghan that night and told him about it, he asked if he could be that advisor. When I asked why he wanted such a position to begin with, he told me, while in tears, that he had to do something to avenge the murder of his family. He needed power in order to do that, and I could offer that power to him. I couldn’t find it in me to say no.

“You can imagine the outrage among the royals when I told them that Jeonghan would be my new advisor. They thought it was a horrible idea, and that it would lead to the destruction of our country, but as it turned out, Jeonghan was a very skilled politician. His policies and his decisions had drove us headlong into the war, and, as you know, Solen was winning. I recognized that his policies were destructive and violent, but for a long time, I remained a fool for him, a dupe to his every decision. He was avenging Solbin, I thought to myself. It was okay what he was doing.

“But eventually I had enough of it, and I told him that I wanted to end it. I wanted to end the war and make peace. ‘How?’ he asked me. I told him that I want to marry one of Galacia’s princesses. He vehemently disapproved, but as you know, my decision went forward. You know what happened after that,” Seungcheol said, lifting his head and holding eye contact with her.

It was quite a story, one that taught Yewon so much more about Seungcheol. Just when she had thought that she had figured him all out, this story shed light on aspects of Seungcheol’s character that she didn’t really know about. He was a very, very passionate person. She remembered when she thought he was cold and emotionless when she first met him; it turned out that he was the complete opposite of that. When he loved, he loved people deeply, so deeply that losing them would scar his soul forever. When he loved someone, he would sacrifice everything for them, and give up anything for them; he sacrificed his honor as a prince among the nobles in order to save Jeonghan, to stay with Jeonghan, and finally, to give Jeonghan the power to avenge his family.

Yewon found that she envied Solbin and Jeonghan. She envied how much Seungcheol loved them, and hated that she would always dwell in their shadows. She was the moon, and they were the sun. She could never light up his world like they did, no matter how much she wanted to. She gulped in her feelings though. Now was not the time to think about herself, when Seungcheol had just told her a story that was evidently very difficult for him to tell.

“It’s a nice story,” Yewon told him. “But you left out a few bits.”

“Like what?” Seungcheol asked.

“Like, when was the first time you told him that you loved him?”

“I…. I don’t think I ever told him,” Seungcheol admitted.

“Fool! If you love someone, you should tell them!” she said with a pout. She did actually find it very regrettable that Seungcheol never said those words to Jeonghan. In novels, those three words are one of the most momentous occasions, but Seungcheol completely lost the opportunity to make a lasting memory with his lover.

A little voice in her head was telling her to take her own advice, but she silenced it and went back to making her point to Seungcheol.

“Next time you visit his grave, tell him,” she demanded.

“He won’t hear m…”

“He’ll hear!” she insisted with a frown.

“Okay,” he said with a small smile. “I’ll tell him,” he promised. “Anything else?”

“Yes actually. You also forgot to tell me about your first time with him,” she added shamelessly, crossing her arms..

“Really? You want to hear about that?” he asked her with a slight wince.

“Of course. That’s like the most important part. And I want all of the ugly details please,” she told him blatantly.

He bit his lower lip and shook his head, a slight smile still shining through his eyes. “As you wish, princess,” Seungcheol said. “My first time with him was maybe a week or two after I drunkenly kissed him. Everyday day since then, our kisses had become hungrier and hungrier, and one just so happened to take us to his bed…” he trailed off and then turned to see her eagerly staring back at him, waiting to hear more. She sat like a child listening to a story, cross-legged, elbows on her legs and chin resting against her hands, very clearly intrigued.

“Keep going,” she encouraged with embarrassing enthusiasm.

Seungcheol inched closer to her, causing her to lift her head from her hand in confusion. Before she knew it, he took her chin and kissed her. In the rush of the excitement, she kissed him back, and followed along when he deepened the kiss by moving his lips harder against hers.

It was the kind of kiss that made you breathless, not only because it was so delightful, but also because they literally had to part for a chance to breathe.

“He was breathless by the time we were both on his bed,” Seungcheol said in between heavy breaths, “and so I pushed him back until he laid down.” And so Seungcheol kissed her again, this time pushing her back until she was flat on her back on the bed, Seungcheol hovering over.

And thus, he continued telling Yewon that story, the most exhilarating story that Yewon had ever heard.

A/N: ummMMm … I’m sorry if this weird ummm… idk????

Anyways guys I made a twitter account as an author so follow it if you want to hear my excuses about why updates are taking so long lmao. Basically it will be an account to update my progress with my fics and maybe even ask your advice on opinions on what should happen idk, just follow if you’re interested lol @NuNeenFic