LAST SEASON ON THE PRICE OF PRIVILIGE

Can’t remember what happened in this story when you read it 16 months ago? You aren’t alone. I couldn't remember either. 

Anyway here’s the gist of it.

OBVIOUSLY...OBVIOUSLY SPOILERS for POP

You meet prince dickhead and hes a dickhead. At first what seems like a spoiled brat of a man child turns out to be kinda sweet deep down inside if only you can get past the drinking and the murder rumors and the brooding OH GOD THE BROODING. 

Prince Dickhead mocks your inexperience for your age, and he is not talking about life skills unless you count a as a life skill which, i mean, the jury is out. It could be a life skill if you use it right. but secretly likes it because men are creeps sometimes about that . Hes all ‘dId YoU SaVE YourSelF fOr Me???” and youre all like ‘ yeah i did baby” and yall do the hoodly doo, before you get married, as kinda like an appetizer idk.

You only have one friend. She is May and she is ing a Prince while you are also ing a prince. Only one of you has permission to a prince. Someone is in trouble. And its may.

Shes arrested for TREASON because she was caught poking around the palace by Kyungsoo and he feel super bad that he had his new girlfriend’s best friend arrested omg what if shes killed KYUNGSOO WHAT DID YOU DOOOO. Everybody cries about it. 

May tells you that kyungsoo is a murderer and the chapter just ends like that what an move on the authors part. 

Youre angry at ksoo and he feels real bad.says hes sorry and uses his big puppy eyes and you pretend to fall for it but REALLY youre secretly working with Baekhyun who is a troublemaker. And a bastard prince. So his Mom was not married to the king when they did the hoodly doo and then ooops aNOTHER prince, someone get this king a .

Baekhyun is weird but he is fun. He does drugs though, thats not cool, don't do drugs. He moonlights as a nurse? He moonlights as a cop?? He has LOTS of uniforms and lots of dresses and he does better makeup than you do. He can work these heels, don't even try to look better than Baekhyun because you will lose this contest. He has a crush on a doctor at the hospital where he sometimes practices medicine without a license when he is bored. He is the only source of happiness for you in the whole palace. Everyone else is big sad. 

Oh Queen Hong, she is Sehun and JOngin’s mom, but shes a bad one. She’s power hungry and has Kyungsoo under her foot...under her fist. Under her ? What is the expression? Anyway she controls everything in the palace WHERE EVEN IS THE KING? Has anyone even seen him in ten years? I think i heard a rumor that he was on a boat somewhere. Making more babies probably. Sons in line for the throne. Minseok, Junmyeon (who will abdicate when he gets married, don't ask me why i don't make rules) (yes i do), Kyungsoo is next in line, Jongin and Sehun even though they were illegitimate at the time the ty king got it on with Lady Hong, when Kyungsoo’s mom (who was the acting queen) was killed SLASH possibly murdered by her own son, how accurate can dreams be anyway? COMMA when kyungsoo’s mom was killed, Lady Hong married the king and SWUNG THINGS to make Jongin and Sehun accepted as candidates for the throne. 

I mean this lady wants power. She also hits kyungsoo sometimes and we hate it. Poor baby soo. 

Okay so Sehun actually loves May. May is pregnant with his baby. There are no condoms in this land.  Sehun goes against his mother, the queen and fakes May’s death with the help of Baekhyun and you actually, you know about the ruse but youre unable to tell anyone because all sorts of people would die. 

There’s something up with Ara. 

There’s something up with the old man security guard. 

There’s a WHOLE LOT up with Baekhyun.

The last chapter you might have read was the wedding dress fitting/dress rehearsal for the wedding that is happening in TWO DAYS. 

The papers have already been signed for the wedding. As soon as the ceremony takes place its official and there’s no backing out for anybody. Even if he hates you, which i think he might be getting there, even if he hates you because you STABBED him in the back and stole the tape, which you got by pretending to be drunk and weak to him, and yes you are little weak to him, you still shouldn’t have tricked him by using his against him, but you did it anyway FOR MAY, and then he found out about it because you’re a terrible spy, you got caught real bad. 

Kyungsoo got so mad omg, he punched the wall behind your head and his hand was bleeding and he was probably going to do something worse to you but yall were interrupted by JUN, the security kid, with bad bad news that the body had been identified as MAY and Kyungsoo is FREAKING OUT because he’s KILLED AGAIN omg and this time there’s a baby he’s so sad. :(

THERE! You’re all caught up.

How had it come to this?

There were a few seconds when you touched him. It wasn’t that he allowed it but Kyungsoo no longer remained present inside of his own mind and simply did not fight the burden of your hands on him.

In those few seconds, when your hands ran along his trembling shoulders and his body shook with the ragged sobbing that took what was left of your heart and splintered it to match his own — in those few seconds when the sticky warmth of his skin connected with your cold fingertips your words jumped up your throat and bounced along the back of your tongue — in those seconds, you wavered.

“K-Kyungsoo...no,” you aren’t a monster — they wanted to spill out. — May is alive. The truthful words, the reality behind the lies and the tricks and the whole honest-to-god of it all. You tasted it. It tasted nice, like fresh clean water in the hot desert sun. You wanted to swallow it down and quench the thirst that raged through your body, drying up your cells and making your brain go mad with the need for it. You felt like you were dying without it.

You could stop his pain. The tears that spilled from his closed eyes and ran down his face that he made no move to dry. You could tell him the truth; May was alive and the ruse had been a ploy by Sehun to save her life; to save his baby. Kyungsoo didn’t kill her. He didn’t kill that innocent life that grew in her belly. They had only needed to trick him and the queen up to this point and now that she was alive and you would swear upon your whole life to him that her safety was the only goal. You never wanted to deceive him.

Would he buy it for a second?

Would he really believe that this convenient moment of spare honesty was somehow superior to the countless piles of lies you were now buried under?

And what of the tape.

What of the evidence you had gathered against him; evidence that could destroy him, strip him of his title, probably even be used to execute him if the tape was spun against him in the right way. A prince in line for the throne, found to have dealt the killing blow to a powerful monarch — his own mother, what kind of monster indeed — then gone through great lengths to cover it up.

The public would demand his head.

You had known of the tape’s existence because of May. You’d known of Kyungsoo’s involvement in his mother’s death for the same reason. May knew of the tape because of Sehun and Sehun had the most to gain from exposing Kyungsoo as a murderer and a traitor to the crown. With Kyungsoo out, Sehun would be that much closer. Sehun’s own flesh and blood brother Jongin would be next in line and he would gain that much more influence and power. Power was something Kyungsoo believed every single one of his brothers craved like oxygen. His mistrust in them went deep and no amount of your insisting that they weren’t out to destroy him would make him believe you hadn’t committed the ultimate betrayal.

He would not let you live. If Kyungsoo knew the truth — that he was not the monster he called himself, that he was not responsible for another death, but a victim of your lies — surely he would not let you live.

Maybe your life was easy to give him. You had never had much of one to be honest.

But all the others?

He would exact his revenge with a strong swift hand that would reach out to your family, your country at home whose government; whose people stood to lose so much if this marriage did not take place. How many would starve when the economy failed? Families would suffer and children would die. Your father, who had promised so much to his people would shoulder the blame and shame would follow your family’s name for generations.

Your honesty would spare Kyungsoo of this pain but so many others would suffer. So many innocents would die.

You had always known that this marriage was not about you. It was not about Kyungsoo. It was bigger than even the both of you combined and it had the power to crush and the power to destroy. It had the power to save lives and feed children and the lives of so many people depending on you and him just owning up to the task and doing what was expected of you — doing what you had promised.

You wavered in those few seconds. You teetered along the edge your choice. One  choice to spare him and him alone of this monumental pain; a salve of honesty that would destroy everything you had been trained your whole life to protect.

His skin felt alive and raw under your comforting hands for those few seconds and your words pushed up to the tip of your tongue before you swallowed them back down and exhaled a soft cry from deep inside your body. You could feel the warm wetness of the tears that ran down your face and you let them fall as you swallowed down the honesty.

You deserved this pain for the crimes you were committing against the man you loved.

The polished marble floor felt like ice against your knees and you sank hard, ignoring the pain that shot through your limbs with the impact.  

How had it come to this?

How did you come so far from the way of the righteous? How had you forsaken your own morals and abetted in the destruction of this beautiful human being?

The suffocating sobs were quieting down and Kyungsoo gasped in deeply for breath; his nose too stopped up to be of any use he gasped through parted lips and his eyes that had been sealed tight to the world opened slowly with the plea for air his lungs made.

You still touched him, shamelessly and with these disgusting traitorous hands. You ran your palms over his shoulders, down his forearms, soaking in the warmth of his skin that seeped through the shirt he wore and when his eyes opened you felt the first bit of it, the first bit of him coming alive and coming out of the grief that had nearly drowned him.

The first gasp of precious air was for his lungs but the second was for strength against your hands. He inhaled into the recoil and his arms rose swiftly, pushing hard against your hands that you dared to touch him with. Just enough to break the contact. Just enough to give him that precious space he needed away from you and the multitude of your sins against him. Some he knew of; others he did not.

And as quickly as it began; the sadness, the grief, the all consuming anguish, and the pain, that rose from deep within his chest to swell over his entire being, it stopped. You watched his face as he blinked once and then twice, the second much slower than the first, and the muscles in his face relaxed down to near nothingness as he exhaled every last bit of air from inside of his lungs.

Kyungsoo inhaled a deep breath and he stared ahead of himself into the emptiness of the room, not seeing, nor feeling, nor living - and he turned off.

His hands hung lifelessly in his lap; knuckles red with clotting blood and the rapid and complete shift in his demeanor was alarming enough for you to gasp in a startled breath.

You had no words to give him that could fix it and the touch of your hands had been the last thing he wanted; yet you felt desperate for something, for anything —

“Kyungsoo.” You whispered his name into the silence that had enveloped his existence and he did not move or blink when you called his name.

“Kyungsoo,” you said again and this time you heard the raspy inhale of air he took to inflate his lungs and you saw the gentle part of his lips with the air he pulled.

Would he speak to you? Would he have anything to say about his part in, what he believed was the death of your best friend? Would he have any more to speak about your monumental betrayal of his trust?

“I suppose this makes us even now,” he whispered with a tired hoarseness in his throat and his eyes refused to meet yours despite the desperation with which your eyes crawled over the features of his profile.

Kyungsoo stood on trembling legs and his eyes did not glance in your direction once as he left you. You could not bring your eyes to follow his retreat. His gaze would have no reason to touch upon a woman he abhorred. You had no courage to watch the back of his head, the back of his shoulders, or the stumble of unease in his legs as he left you.

Instead, you watched the broken empty space he once occupied; the dents in the wall where his fist had collided, and the red stains of his blood that painted the scene and the sound of his exit afforded you but a moment of silence before the murmur of voices absconded and strangers began to fret and fuss around you, but not necessarily about you. No. Not one of them was there for you. You had no one here.

Hushed complaints about the damage to the room and to the groom’s suit. Judgements about the precious time wasted on aired dirty laundry that could have been spent on receiving deliveries or fixing decorations or preparing for this abomination of a wedding that would take place in two days time.

Whispers and rumors.

Gossip and scandal.

Strangers’ fingers touched you no more than was necessary to dress you in your own clothing and relinquished you to other strangers who steered you with light fingertips — what you wouldn’t give for just one warm palm against your back. In the backseat of a black sedan you sat alone and gripped your own hands tightly together in your lap and you daydreamed of the warmth and pressure of May’s hand.

The rest of the contact with every other human was superficial and shallow and your chest ached for what you had lost in such a short amount of time.

When you found yourself again; when the dust around the day had settled and the sunlight began to lessen and the nagging unease inside of you that begged for something to happen grew too noisy to ignore; the pull for action led to the item you had been avoiding since it came into your possession.

Your room was as you had left it. The boutique shopping bag delivered by Jun sat beside your bedside table and you could tell by the careful placement of the tags on the garments inside that it had remained undisturbed since he had given you the device that would play the tape.

The tape. Kyungsoo’s video tape.

You’d hidden it well; inside a gap in the third from the bottom shelf on the left hand side of your walk in closet. The gap at the back, between the shelf and the wall, was small enough that one would be unable to spot anything off about it and as you reached a hand into the shelf and felt around the tiny space you felt the flat plastic edges of the small rectangle that had been the source of so much pain in your life.

You might have thought that the unknown was the hardest part about this tape. And while, yes, not knowing what could be on it was a major cause of grief and anxiety for you up until this moment, now the significant agony was the memory of the look in his eyes when he had learned exactly what you had done to him to get your hands on this little thing. The worst had already been done. It was now time to find out why. The reason why you had to do this had to be on this tape.

Your limbs worked on autopilot and you pulled out the laptop May had left behind. Below the garments in the bag sat a rectangle shaped device and what looked to be a larger version of the tiny tape you had in your hand. A center section popped out and you ignored the tremble in your fingers as you clicked the lid closed and carefully connected wires into their respective inputs until you had a rudimentary set up with a player for playing the video, software on the laptop to view and record video and wires running between the two. When plugged into the wall outlet, everything hummed to life with friendly little lights as if the secrets contained within this tape did not have the power to destroy entire worlds.

The first time you pressed play, the video player merely clicked and turned itself back off. A light knock on the side of your temple for your slight in memory was all it took to straighten yourself back out and you remembered that these old tapes required rewinding in order to play from the beginning. It was a little button and the device whirled to life, spinning fast and noisily until it reached the end of tape and another click signaled that the action had been completed.

The button was silent and waiting.

You had come this far.

You pressed play and the screen came to life before you. The software playing the video allowed you to record it as well and you hit the little red circle button as soon as the video began to play, understanding the importance of what you might witness. You knew the video would be backed up on the cloud, as May had always reminded you the importance of keeping back-ups of the really important things.

The beginning of the video was grainy. A view obstructed by a haze of blue. You could only hear bits and pieces of a voice speaking softly to someone else.

It was a woman’s voice and her words were sweet in tone.

‘I got you this to protect you,’ she said, and there was no response at first. And you heard his name, spoken louder, over the sounds of perhaps a television, although the video was still covered by a blue haze that prevented you from seeing anything.

‘Kyungsoo,’ she called again and you heard the first bits of a child’s voice. There was a sound of loud crackling that made the small speakers of your laptop pop with the volume and the video was flooded with light and with the image of him.

His smiling face; he had to be no older than 10 but he was small, and his face full of innocence and joy as his eyes widened on your screen, his gaze fell directly into yours as he looked right into the face of the teddy bear his mother had just given him.

‘You have to remember to bring it back to me once a week, Okay?’ Her voice was calling out to him and grew quieter before disappearing completely as the video turned abruptly sideways and bounced and shook wildly, occasionally catching the view of his tiny feet hitting the cobblestone and then his shoes bouncing atop bright green grass. Then you landed with a thump on your side in what could only be described as a makeshif