The kingdom of Lumina is, just like its name, a bright and prosperous place. Ruled by a fair King and a benevolent Queen, every subjects under their protection were living a happy and fulfilling existence. Duty is a source of pride and chores do not feel like so when you know you’re doing it out of love and respect to the Realm.

Although, behind all the smiles and all the morning hums and afternoon songs, there is something that a select group of people tried to hide from their beloved royal family. A secret. Words hushed about underneath the breaths of those who were brave and reckless enough to chase after this forbidden fruit.

In this particular evening, one hooded figure was clearly a part of said minority. He walked down the cobbled road, rotten boots clopping against ancient stones as the ends of his tattered cloak brushed against the corners of streets so familiar, they were akin to the lines etched on his palms.

It wasn’t until he saw the almost hidden sign of a tavern that he stopped on his tracks. Looking up, the dying sunray peeked from underneath his hood and revealed the hopeful face of a young man.

“I hope this will finally be the one…”

He slid the hood off of his head and walked into the tavern with poorly hidden sense of excitement. It was well past six, but the tavern was still buzzing with the last of their dinner crowd. People were talking with each others’ company and nobody noticed this unremarkable, brown haired man (boy, really) slipping into the establishment and taking the table at the far corner of the room.

“What can I get for you sweetie?” What seemingly was the owner of the tavern, a homely looking woman who could pass as the stranger’s grandmother, waltzed up to his table and set down a wooden cup filled to the brim with Lumina’s standard issue pale ale.

The strange boy didn’t wait to ask for what he wanted. The reason for why he was even there in the first place.

Cheese.

And with just that one word, the smile on Mrs. Matronly was wiped. Her high brows were furrowed in concentration, and her lips were scrunched in the light of her curt noddings.

Her voice came out in a tone so serious you’d never expect it to come out of such a jolly looking woman.

“As you wish.”

The stranger didn’t have to wait long before a small dish was presented on his table. The nice lady then proceeded to explain what it was in a hush-hush manner,

“This was cured for a month. As you can see the skin has formed perfectly. Thin yet firm, and the body should be soft. Rich. Delicious.”

Happy with the pitch, the stranger gave a satisfied nod to the lady and watched her saunter off to the bar area before he paid more attention to the food item sitting in front of him.

‘It’s the soft kind,’ the stranger mused. He poked at the white rind and watched the inside of it oozing out like a pale yellow molten lava.

His informants hushed to him that this is the best they’ve found. The best one you can find in the inner city, that is. And the stranger do hope that this one will live up to the expectation others have put upon it.

The expectation was not even high in the first place, as he still could remember that time when he had to excuse himself and literally threw up his lunch and breakfast at the back alley from how disgusting the piece of moldy thing tasted on his tongue.

But this one did look different. It looked clean. It smelled clean. There was not even one patch of suspicious molding, whether it be green, blue, purple, or brown. None of the fuzzy growth or cracks running down the center like green veins of a decomposing corpse.

And so the stranger took one bite. Not hesitant, not overly enthusiastic, just one calm bite. He could feel the eyes of the owner of this tavern watching every single one of his chew, and the nagging gaze stayed there until he swallowed his bite and gave her a satisfied smile.

He could hear the faint congratulatory ‘yes’ coming out from behind the bar, and only responded by looking down at the plate on his table.

The smile did portray him to be satisfied with the taste of this food. This tiny, unsuspecting item so forbidden some daring idiots wouldn’t mind eating the kinds with mold growing on them.

But the stranger has tasted the real deal before. Once, in what he’d describe as the best few months of his life. He was once lucky enough to have the chance of witnessing servants breaking open a wheel of it in front of him, the enticing smell causing his saliva to run out his mouth like waterfall. Its golden colour not unlike the most beautiful gold medallion. Its taste. Oh god its taste. He still found himself being woken up in the middle of the night after dreaming about getting to eat it one more time.

The thing sitting in front of him wasn’t all that bad, truthfully speaking. It tasted clean, light, slightly nutty. It didn’t make him wish for his death, unlike the more awful ones. But it didn’t come anywhere near the salted goodness he had in that banquet. The smell didn’t make him drool, it only reminded him of the smell of a mushroom farm. The colour was sad, the rind tasted bland. Those who recommended this place has surely never had their eyes opened, and thus he once again was left disappointed.

The young stranger hid the last piece up his sleeve before he stood up from his chair (because his mother had drilled it to him that he should never leave anything on his plate, as it is rude). He slipped a gold coin onto the hand of the kind matron and praised her skills before he ducked out to the streets of Lumina once more (because his mother told him to always appreciate the handiwork of his subjects, as it will make them love him more).

As he brought his hand down from securing the hood around his face, he noticed dried specks of brown dye followed along like muddled snow, and with a heavy heart, Crown Prince Lee Jeno decided it was time to return to the castle and to yet again start his search for the thing he longed most.

Cheese.

_ _ _ _ _

The King is deathly allergic to cheese.

And thus Kings being Kings, he made ‘banning cheese from the Kingdom of Lumina’ the first thing in his reformatory mandate once he inherited the Kingdom from his dear father (to be truthfully speaking, it was the twenty third item in the list, but the King has the tendency to indulge in hyperboles so almost all of his mandates are usually regarded as the first).

Yes, the King is kind. Yes, the King is just. But banning a whole entire category of food from his Kingdom just because he was deathly (remember, he loves hyperboles) allergic to it?

It made little to no sense.

He even banished all the cheesemakers out of the inner cities. Commanding them (with much due respect, of course), to either get the first joint of all the fingers in their dominant hand chopped off, or find a new place to live.

Almost all of them chose the latter.

(Which probably explained why all the leftover backalley cheesemakers were so abysmal in their attempts at making cheese.)

Besides, they didn’t have to struggle to find a new place to reopen their shops and resume their trades, as the King’s brother accepted them to his land with open arms.

His brother’s land was soon known throughout the continent for its cheese. Hard cheese, soft cheese, smelly cheese, sweet cheese, anything. Even their parchment papers smelled like cheese. Which is why Jeno will always be the first person at the aviary to receive the letters from his dear uncle.

“You’re being too harsh on them, brother.” He’d always cap off his letters with those words, written from his ruling seat near the Grasslands, “they’re not as bad as you think they are.”

And Jeno agreed, sitting in his father’s study and holding the parchment paper which gleamed and smelled almost like the exterior of that dreamy hard cheese he tried during his last (and only) visit to the Grasslands, he couldn’t agree more.

But each time his father would only scrunch his nose in disagreement and absent-mindedly waved his hand to Jeno’s question that by now almost sounded mechanical from how often he’d say it. ‘Should I burn the letter outside father?’

The King burned all of his brother’s letters not out of spite, but out of the sheer disgust he felt from smelling the scent emanating from the parchment. That was the reason behind why he would always ask Jeno to recite the words from the farthest point of his study. Only daring to come close when he briefly checked the authenticity of the letter while holding a heavily perfumed silk over his nose.

(The King suspected his dear brother would rub a whole rind of cheese around every single one of his letter, just for the sake of annoying him. He wasn’t wrong.)

But for all of his power and knowledge and knowledge (of secrets that he gathered from his ring of spies), the King managed to miss out on one of the most glaring fact. Which was Jeno’s obsession for cheese.

Although, Jeno must be given some accolades on his ability to show restraints, however much it bordered on blatant display of thirst for knowledge. His mother taught him well in regards of putting up a stoic act, and he would never be caught gushing over a hidden cheese recipe found in the library (aside with the equally excited librarian), or when he would share stories with senior servants about how cheese tasted like (but only behind the closed doors of the kitchen), and he would only ask his father a maximum of twice a month for when would be their next trip to the Grasslands because ‘he missed his cousin so very much.’

“Is that so?” His father would ask him when the Queen managed to drag him back to their family’s private quarters for a rare, intimate supper time, “you miss your cousin? I have to say, that is one of the strangest things I’ve heard all day.”

And Jeno would answer with the same thing everytime, while spooning whatever soupy-starchy combination the royal cooks have sent their way, “I’ve been writing to him father. He also misses me dearly.”

In all actuality, the content of their correspondence basically boiled down to ‘send me some of those cheeses. Just a cube, Donghyuk, I beg of you’ and ‘don’t you think barring yourself from the thing you love most will only make the reunion that much sweeter? So no, I won’t smuggle to you any cheese. Besides, what if I got caught? I value my good graces to the King more than a cube of cheese.’

Like father like son, clearly.

But no matter how good the King’s mood was, he would always give the same response to Jeno’s inquiries, “soon, son. Soon.” Then he would wipe his mouth with a napkin and retire to his study, leaving Jeno sulking at the table with nothing much to do but help his mother and the servants clean up the table.

(“Why do you bother to tidy up after your meals? That’s a job for servants,” Donghyuk, his dear cousin, asked him when he saw Jeno staying behind to give his dirty plate to the cleaning lady after they had their dinner in his uncle’s grand halls.

“My mother taught me. Said it’s the least I can do to lessen their burden,” he said after he nabbed a cube of cheese from the constantly replenished long table filled to the brim with amusing food items.

“Shouldn’t acting nice to them be enough?”

Jeno only shrugged to that question and busied himself with filling the small plate he just picked with dried fruits and even more cheese. He just found out how delightful it is to mix and match different types of cheese with fruits, be it dried or fresh, and he was planning to experiment on them while lounging on his bed.

“Probably. It feels right to do it though.”)

Jeno felt his mother’s soft hand on his shoulder and he turned around to face her with a sigh escaping from his lips, “I’m sorry. I won’t bother him about it tomorrow.”

“I know how you feel about your uncle, my dear,” she said as she smoothed his unruly hair away from his creased forehead. She didn’t seem to notice the fact that his hair was damp, or at least if she did, she didn’t seem to suspect that it was anything odd. Jeno had to wash out the brown dye out of his hair as soon as he arrived to his chambers, and didn’t have the time to let it dry before he was summoned for supper.

“But you also have to understand how your father feels about your uncle too,” she held his face in between her palm, trying hard to seek his gaze and didn’t cease to do so until he hesitantly gave her a nod, “and his position as the King, but you know. Duty. That is boring chat.”

She let him go, finally, when he gave her a genuine smile as a response to her attempt at lightening up the mood. But just as Jeno was about to ask to be permitted out from the hall, she pointed at the side of his hair, now glowing silver under the warm glow of the hearth, and whispered to him, “you missed a spot dear.”

All he could do to that was giving her a curt and embarrassed bow before ducking out of the door, and out of her sight, taking the stairs down to the castle’s archives because the sound of his mother’s laughter only served to make his face heat up even more so than before.

_ _ _ _ _

“How’s supper?” Minhyung looked up from the letter he was scribing only when he finished the sentence. Only when the dot on the parchment paper was dried did he avert his gaze to see Jeno huffing down on the small couch at the other end of the archives. He laughed when he saw the usually prim and proper prince discard all his pretenses and unravelled into a blubbering mess who hid his face in his open hands and let out a frustrated squeal.

“Didn’t go well, I assume.”

“My mothe- the Queen knows I’ve been sneaking out. I should be more careful.” Jeno said while fiddling with the culprit, the small patch of his hair still retaining that dastardly hard to wash brown dye. To be fair, he made it himself, with the help of his two loyal friends, of course, from mud and some mysterious oil, so it surely wasn’t as good as the ones he could find in his mother’s beauty dresser.

Talking of the devil, it wasn’t long before the last person comprising his ‘secret cheese enthusiast’ team popped out from one of the archives’ dreary stone corridors with his small trolley on tow.

“Jisung! Do you have any new information for me?” He flagged the young librarian in training and patted the empty space beside him on the couch.

But the good graces of his prince only made Jisung whine out with frustration, “I just gave you one yesterday!”

“Oh, the one in Springy Hop is bad? I won’t go there for lunch tomorrow if that’s the case.” Minhyung absentmindedly said as he’d gone back to concentrate on doing his job, the tail end of his quill dancing against the flickering light of candles on his wooden desk, “which is a pity. I’ve been looking forward to try it.”

“Oh no, you should still go there and try. It wasn’t awful. It’s just…”

“Not the one you’re looking for?”

“Exactly.”

Jisung seemed to enter a realm of deep concentration for a little while after he heard Jeno’s daily report. But it didn’t take him long before he did this little jump on his feet, something he always do everytime an idea pop up in his mind. And that meant he did it a lot.

“There’s one more!” He then rushed to his desk, which, just like his trolley, was small and rickety. He fished a slip of paper from a tray of loose notes and handed it to Jeno, “I believe you haven’t tried this one.”

Jeno skimmed through the list of crossed out tavern names and zoned in on the last one, “Ports and Piglets…”

“I was not sure about recommending this to you because it’s located near the outskirts, but I heard they serve hard cheese.”

Jisung was still explaining some other things about how the place might’ve gotten a bit too popular for its own good, and how they might’ve attracted the attention of the Royal Guards, but Jeno’s ears were already enveloped by this high pitch buzz of excitement the moment he heard that this tavern specialised in ‘hard cheese.’

“No need for any further information,” he said, springing out from his seat with so much power it managed to make Minhyung look up from his unfinished sentence.

“But I haven’t told you about the price,-”

“I’ll go there tomorrow.”