The sun rose hot and bright on the morning of Prince Jungkook's 13th birthday. The Prince's birthday was to be celebrated on the same day as the month's market day, and the whole kingdom buzzed with life. Preparations for the day were already in full swing, merchants bustling to and fro with crates full of wares to sell and setting up their stalls. Banners flew from the castle ramparts. Wagon after wagon trundled through the gates of the city, bringing people from all over the kingdom to the capital, and the streets were overflowing with stalls and kiosks setting out their wares and preparing for the day's sales.

A young boy's 13th birthday was special - from his birth day on, the Prince would be an official citizen of the Kingdom, allowed to carry his own weapons and be treated as an equal in a conversation. Of course, he would have to wait until his 18th in order to become a fully grown man and come into his inheritance, but boys in their teens were called Halflings in Kien, while younger children had no social status at all. This didn't mean that children were abused or abandoned - on the contrary, the high mortality rate meant all and any children were treated with the utmost care. They just didn't have any social status, that was all.

Kien was a small realm - small, but powerful. It was famous for its beautiful colours and brightly dyed fabrics, for its breathtaking scenery and picturesque castle. Kien's dancers and performers were the best in the world, their skill widely acknowledged to be without equal. Every market day, held once a month, visitors from neighbouring countries would flock to Erithea, capital city of Kien. Performances and magic shows were held on every street corner and busy square, and the delicious aroma of all kinds of snacks wafted through the air. Wares from all over the realm were on full display - bright, colourful rolls of dyed cloth, lavishly decorated shawls and fans and delicate pottery.

Deborah Hwang loved her country. Kien was a lovely place to live, full of natural beauty and bright colours. Once, it had also been a happy place, both nobles and commoners sharing in the riches their trading brought. The streets were always full of laughter and the gates to the Castle were always thrown wide open - petitioners could ask to see the King and Queen at any time. Their problems were sure to be listened to and help always came. The King ruled with certainty and wisdom and the Queen watched over the Kingdom with compassion and love, and the young Crown prince was well on his way to becoming a great ruler, just like his father before him.

However, that had all changed on the eve of Crown Prince Seokjin's 18th birthday. The whole country had been excited for the coming of age ceremony, for Prince Seokjin was loved by all. He was beautiful and brave, kind and compassionate - a true royal in both bearing and character. He had inherited only the best from his parents - he had his father's manly good looks and broad shoulders, his mother's delicate, pretty features and gracefulness. He had his father's bravery and intelligence, his mother's loving heart and caring nature. All agreed that he was going to be a great king.

On the night before the ceremony, disaster struck. The old King and his Queen were brutally murdered by the Duke of the Northern Hills, the Queen's own brother, who had become blind with greed. Prince Seokjin had to flee the country, chased by assassins and fighting for his life. No one knew what had become of him - he'd managed to escape safely that night, but nothing had been heard of the young Prince since. His younger brother, Prince Jungkook, had only been allowed to live because the usurper had no heir of his own. He took the then 8 year old boy in under his wing and raised him to be obedient and unquestioning, a mere puppet sitting on the throne while his uncle manipulated the strings behind him.

That was how Duke Seo In-Guk, formerly Lord of the Northern Hills, came into power and became the Lord Regent of Kien. He took over the Kingdom and changed the laws, manipulating the people and demanding more and more taxes as his greed for gold grew. The young Prince was helpless in his hands and slowly but steadily, the realm grew miserable. You could see it in the way the people's clothes grew threadbare and the light in their eyes died, as they struggled to pay the steadily growing amount of taxes. People started starving and children came begging for scraps at the doors of the nobles.  

Outwardly, Kien remained the same - merchants still sold their wares and trade with the neighbouring countries thrived - but none of that gold found its way into the poor folk's pockets.

One year into the Lord Regent's reign, something incredible happened. Someone broke into the castle's underground vaults and stole no less than 300 golden ingots, leaving only a single large V, painted in dark purple on the walls of the empty safe, behind. This unknown thief then proceeded to spread this stolen gold all through the kingdom, leaving exactly 10 ingots in each of Kien's 30 districts. News of this event spread like wildfire and a new legend was born - that of the mysterious thief V, hero of the people and helper of the poor. After that, V continued to strike. His targets were the Lord Regent's stacks of gold, the fat noblemen's secret vaults, the tax collector's carriage. Whatever he stole, he returned to the people. The strange thing was, no one knew this mysterious helper's real identity. The only name they could give him was V, from the sign he always left behind. There were rumours of sightings - V was a boy, they said, a mere Halfling, too young to be a real man. He was said to wear dark, mottled green clothing, a cowl covering his head and a mask hiding his features. He lived in the forest, they said, in the depths of Esp Woods. Stories started cropping up, tales of a handsome, dashing young thief who could enter the deepest dungeons and most secret safes, who could climb walls and work magic. Pretty soon, V became a common household name - a national hero, the people's mascot and the infuriated Lord Regent's worst enemy.

Around a year and a half after his first enterprise, V was joined by a partner - Suga was the name left behind, in dark acid green paint this time, beside the trademark purple letter V.

The seneschals of the different districts, to whom the notorious thief handed the treasures he had stolen to give to those in need, recounted that Suga was yet another boy, shorter and slighter than V, but with eyes that gave you shivers and a death glare that could leave you quaking in your shoes. The Lord Regent Seo In-guk was furious - V and Suga were declared outcasts, wanted criminals preemptively sentenced to death. Their names were splattered all across the kingdom on large WANTED posters, with the astounding sum of 10 thousand golden Marks to be given as a reward to he who turned them in. It was a tempting amount, especially with the poverty ravaging the whole country, but there was no commoner in the land who had not been saved sometime or another by V's gifts, and to turn him in was simply unthinkable. Therefore, the posters remained stuck in the same place for years on end, the large black characters fading to a dirty gray and the corners peeling off the walls and curling back on themselves.

For the Lord Regent, it was infuriating, to say the least. Nowhere was safe from V's wandering hands, for the notorious thief seemed capable of penetrating the strongest security he could afford and accessing the deepest dungeons and safest strongholds with seemingly no effort at all.

There were many rumours and speculations about his true identity. Some claimed he was a magician, who could teleport in and out of the trickiest safe places. Some said he was a shapeshifter, who could change his appearance at will and therefore had a hundred different disguises he could morph into and use. Some believed he was just a clever little sneak-thief with Lady Luck on his side, while some said he was really a god in human form, who had come to fight for the people and answer their prayers.

Deborah's father thought that was all codswallop.

"Wishy-washy nonsense," he scoffed one day as he folded up his newspaper and leaned back in his armchair. "This V boy is a genius who put his mind to good use and that's all there is to it. God that came down from the heavens- pah! The things people come up with!"

Her sister's thoughts were slightly different. "There's got to be a magician helping him, if he isn't one himself," she told her as she bustled around the bakery filling up trays with newly baked goods. "There are some things normal humans aren't capable of– I should know, remember?" and Deborah had to agree she was right, for who would know better about things magicians could do and humans couldn't than the woman who had married a magician herself?

Deborah didn't know at first what to think of this nameless, faceless thief who was fast becoming a legendary hero. Her friends all worshipped him, swooning over fictitious stories featuring a handsome, dashing V and a beautiful, virtuous maiden that he fell for at first sight. The story-lines were laughable and overly romantic, she thought privately, but the girls lapped it all up like it was honey nectar.

Gradually, she realized that V was more than just a petty robber slash literal saint, as the villagers proclaimed him to be. To her, V was the personification of compassion and bravery, someone who wasn't afraid to break some rules if it was the right thing to do. She admired and respected him for that.

Her parents often scolded Deborah for being such a rebellious child - or rather, they called it rebelling, while she called it having my own opinion and sticking to it, never mind the rules. She had her own code of justice and back when she was younger, she would often come home with a bloodied nose or scraped fists, having rushed to the aid of some poor soul who was being bullied by the bigger and tougher kids.

She spent her childhood roaming the streets whenever she wasn't helping at the bakery, running errands and doing small jobs to earn some extra money while making new friends and exploring the winding alleys of the city. Of course, it could get quite dangerous sometimes, and her knowledge of the different backstreets and shortcuts came in handy on more than one occasion. She kept a dagger in her boot at all times, just in case she ever ran into serious trouble.

By the time she turned 15, her father was despairing of ever turning his daughter into a prim, proper young lady who didn't always have hair wild from running or mud on her boots, leggings under her skirt or a knife kept hidden in her shoe all the time.

On the dawn of the young Prince's 13th birthday, the bakery was in an uproar. Her family's bakery was the best loved bakery in Erithea, and the Lord Regent and the Prince themselves ate their products. For the young Prince's birthday ceremony, the Royal Councellor had placed a massive order of cupcakes and cookies, foreign delicacies and sweet confections.

They had already started baking the orders - her sister had spent the whole of the day before in the baking room at the back of the bakery, baking pies and tarts, cookies and cakes, setting them all aside carefully to be preserved for the Market Day. They were all up at the crack of dawn the next morning, icing the cupcakes and whipping up cream for the cakes, decorating the pre-baked goods and baking the delicacies that had to be made the day of.

Finally, the goods were all done and set out on pretty display stands, and the shop was ready for opening. Standing behind the counter next to her sister with a snow white apron on over her skirt, Deborah forced a smile on her face, ready to greet the customers.

Sometime before noon, the shop was finally empty. The whole morning had been a continuous stream of people flitting in and out of the bakery, shouting out orders over the din and waving their pre-order slips over their heads. The stream had slowed to a trickle and then finally petered to a stop, to Deborah's enormous relief. Her sister had disappeared back into the baking room to refill some of the empty trays, taking Baekhyun with her and leaving her alone in the empty bakery. Deborah could feel a headache coming on and she laid her hot forehead down on the cool counter, sighing tiredly. 

The bell tinkled, signalling a new customer, and she jerked upright, pasting a smile on her face. "Welcome to our bakery," she said brightly, the words leaving her mouth almost automatically. "What would you like tod-" she broke off when she noticed who it was that had strolled in.

"Hey, cuz," Kim Jongdae grinned his signature Cheshire cat grin at his cousin, hair as windswept as always a