Prince Seungcheol was found dead, suffocated with a pillow while he was asleep. Over Seungcheol’s body was note from his guard, Seungkwan.

I did it. I’m sorry.

Seungkwan had jumped from the balcony of Seungcheol’s room to his death.

-

The whole thing was a complete haze to Yewon.

She remembered being told the news. She remembered denial. She remembered seeing the corpse being carried away. She remembered blanking out. She remembered excruciating heartache that was unlike anything she had ever felt.

The details of Seungcheol’s death did not matter to Yewon at the start. In the beginning, just the fact that her husband was dead consumed her every thought that there was no space to ask any more questions. But as she began to process his demise, the questions came crashing down on her.

Why?

Why would Seungcheol’s “best friend” have murdered him?

Why? Why? Why?!

It didn’t make sense. It didn’t add up. It drove her crazy.

People don’t just die without an explanation. He can’t just disappear for no reason. The fact that there was no justification for his death took such a toll on her.

It felt like her confusion took a life of its own, and it taunted her. It was like a little devil in her ear saying: “ha! Your husband died. And you don’t know why! He died for no reason. He just left! He’s gone. There is nothing that will help you move on. For the rest of your life, you’re going to think about it, and you’re going to wonder why it happened. But you will never know! This will haunt you forever.”

Yewon wanted to stab that confusion, that devil. With everything inside of her, she wanted to eliminate the voice once and for all and finally get some peace. But she could not kill the devil. She could only silence him for a little while by drinking.

She had rarely ever tasted wine before, but when Seungcheol died, it was like wine was the only thing that could help her cope, the only thing that could dull the excruciation of losing him. When her mind turned to a haze, the world was a better place, and so she wished to always be in that state of intoxication.

She drank in the morning, the afternoon, and the evening. Life made more sense when she was drunk than when she wasn’t; being mindless was better than being confused, and Seungcheol’s death had launched her into a state of perpetual confusion that she could not even begin to deal with. Being inebriated shut that confusion up.

Initially, the King and Queen were sympathetic. They let her drink. They let her cry. They let her isolate herself. But at one point, they told her she was not allowed to drink anymore.

Yewon bawled and complained. She entreated them to not deny her that liquid support, but they told her to get herself together. They could not have Seungcheol’s widow become an alcoholic. She still had a role to play in the palace, and the time for mourning has passed.

But Yewon was still mourning.

In the King’s refusal to let her drink, Yewon locked herself in her room and just sobbed all day. She would refuse to eat or drink anything but alcohol, and when any one came to see her, she spurned them.

Wonwoo was one of those people.

“Yewon, get yourself together,” he yelled at her when he saw how she refused to eat and drink or even talk to him. “This is not the way you deal with it!”

“Then how do I deal with it, Wonwoo?” she snapped. “How!?”

“You have to keep living. Keep going, even if it hurts,” he told her sternly. “And I know how it hurts…”

“No you don’t,” she cut him off, crying more heavily than before. “You don’t know how this feels at all.”

“I lost Jinye…”

“But you knew why you lost her!” Yewon yelled.

That silenced Wonwoo.

“I’m being tormented,” Yewon mumbled through her tears, “by the uncertainty. I don’t know why he died, and that make his death so much harder to bear…” At this point, she was crying too much to be able to talk.

The frown on Wonwoo’s face disappeared completely. Calmly, he sat himself down on her bedside where she was crying and waited for her to calm down.

When the hyperventilation stopped, he told her something: “I know why he died, Yewon.”

She lifted her head to him: “what?”

“I didn’t want to tell you, because I didn’t think you had to know, but now I see that you need to know…”

“Why did he die?” she asked him gravely.

“He died because of politics.”

And so, Wonwoo explained: he explained that the royals of the palace hated Seungcheol, and that they didn’t want him to be King because they thought he was incompetent; Wonwoo explained that there was a clandestine agreement to purge him before he was able to ascend onto the throne. Seungkwan was the scapegoat, the one who was threatened and manipulated into doing the dirty work.

“How did you know this?” Yewon asked him.

“Everyone knows this, Yewon,” Wonwoo told her. “It wouldn’t be the first time the royals eliminated an heir.”

“Then why aren’t those men being executed?!” she yelled in frenzy.

“Because that’s how politics works,” Wonwoo responded calmly. “The people with wealth and power get away with doing bad things. The royal family can’t touch them. It can’t oppose them, because if it does, it loses the support that it needs to run the country. When the royals decide something, there’s nothing we can do to stop them.”

-

Letter #13

Dear Yewon,

I want you to know everything about me, because I’ve learnt that keeping things inside only harms me. There’s a part of my life that you don’t know very much about, and it’s a malady that’s been in my heart for a while now.

This is about how Solen runs as a country. We have the court, which consists of very, very wealthy royals who you’ve met and seen; their role is to fund and carry out the decisions made by the royal family. Having their support is always of utmost importance, because if they turn on you, it’s over for the family. We can get overthrown and replaced with another if the royals band together against us.

Sometimes it feels like I always have to pander to them, to impress them, to make them like me, even if it means making bad decisions for the country. And they don’t respect me at all, your highness. None of them. They think I mix passion with politics, that I’m impulsive and stupid. Perhaps they’re right about all of that, but it’s not good for me if they don’t support me when I’m King. This is why it’s so stressful trying to change their perception of me.

It’s part of the of the reason that I let go of Wonwoo; I needed to prove myself to them and Wonwoo was not letting me do that. As good of a politician he was, I needed to establish my own rule or else the royals will always think of me as some subservient fool, and it would be very hard to win their support when I am King.

Pleasing them is a constant source of stress for me. I always feel like I have to grovel at their feet to win their trust, and I hate it so much.

I don’t know why I never told you about this, even though it’s always on my mind and maybe the reason that I lash at you sometimes. I hope it will explain a little bit of my behavior toward you on certain days. Sometimes the stress is just too severe.

When I’m King, I want to change how this court system works, because it’s doing our country more harm than good. I don’t know how I’ll be able to do that, though. Maybe when we rule together as King and Queen, we can change things together.

Sincerely,

Seungcheol

A/N: ok look guys, I SWEAR that I have been planning this since chapter 1. This is not just a random occurrence that I added for shock value. There’s a point to everything that happens.

And I’m so, so sorry for the angst ;;