Turns out, a tomorrow for Jeno didn’t come until two full moons have passed. Blame his mother for forcing him to take up the mantle of a good royalty and thus having the responsibility to entertain some foreign emissaries’ children from sun up till sundown. Jeno wondered, why would they bring their children if they were here just to talk about boring treaties and such? Imagine how much things they could’ve learned if they were left behind in their respective castles.

“They’ve come a long way from the South, you have to keep them company.”

“But mother they’re seven!” Not to mention that these kids were little twin boys with a certain love for wooden swords and tales of the Old Knights. Jeno has passed that phase so long ago and certainly was the last person willing to entertain these two wide eyes devils with their faux sparring sessions.

Oh, how much he wished that his baby brother would grow up a little quicker. Because then at least the Queen will no longer ask him to do silly, childish tasks. Maybe he’ll finally even be allowed to sit in the King’s inner council where he can finally sway people’s opinion on cheese.

But one emissary grew to two, then three, and before long Jeno found himself being the King of the Castle’s Nursery with paper as his crown. The fact that only two moons separated him from his sixteenth nameday served as further source of embarrassment. Jeno couldn’t believe it. He was an almost adult who could still be forced to play pretend in the nursery.

As if that wasn’t enough, Jeno had to constantly defend his title from a tiny Lady of the Coasts, who yelled at him that she is ‘the Queen of the Sea’ before rallying her ‘troops’, which were just a collection of quilted bunny dolls, to steal his flimsy crown.

It was then understandable how relieved he felt when he could finally be free once more. Weaving his way on the winding alleys and turns of Lumina’s inner cities with the orange ray of sun as his guide.

Technically, Jeno was still bound by his promise to his mother, because the last remaining children of the Coastal emissary still resided within the confines of the castle’s walls (it was the little Sea Lady and her younger brother, or more notably known in Jeno’s inner circle as the Seaweed Siblings), but he couldn’t care less. His mother promised them that they will have one last fitting session for their custom robes before their family head back to their castle on the sea. So it wasn’t as if anyone will miss him for not being there to play dress-ups with them.

He navigated the city with the help of a small slip of parchment on his hand with a really poorly drawn map (all courtesy to the hard work of Jisung) heading to the coveted tavern. ‘Ports and Piglets’, even if he’d memorised the name and could easily recite it in his sleep, Jeno couldn’t help but to obsessively read the tavern’s name once again. Jeno has to admit, for a tavern residing at the outer edge of the city, the name has a really glamorous ring to it.

Wasn’t long before he found the place, as it was clear that the tavern owners wanted everyone in the street (and even beyond) to know what establishment this short but skinny building housed. The sign stuck at the top of the building’s main entrance was made out of hollowed out metal sheet, shaped into the silhouette of a pig. And the golden glow of candles danced from within the carved out holes that spelled out its name, creating a hypnotisingly enticing effect.

‘This is revolutionary,’ Jeno found himself thinking, ‘I should tell father about this.’

“Good evening!” A chipper young waiter has somehow, unknowingly materialised under Jeno’s nose, and it took all of his restrained to stop himself from cringing and jumping away in shock. ‘It’s rude to cringe,’ he could hear it in his head, his mother’s teachings drilled to him from a young age.

Instead, Jeno gave the waiter a curt smile and requested a table for one, “preferably at the corners, if you’re kind enough to do so.”

“Are you here for the special of the night, sir?”

Jeno found it odd that a waiter would ask about his orders before they even set foot into the establishment, but he decided that to get what he sought for, he had no choice but to play along.

“Yes I am.” He topped it off by slipping a gold coin into the waiter’s front pocket. It might’ve been an over-reach stemmed from Jeno’s eagerness to show that he meant business. Lucky for him, said gesture seemed to be the correct thing to do, as the waiter shot him a knowing smile and nodded for him to come along.

“Won’t be a problem, good sir. Please follow me.”

And Jeno did follow him. With a small spring on his steps because this might be it.

‘This might be the one!’ He screamed, but only within the confines of his cranium, as he excitedly pull down the tattered coives (one borrowed from Minhyung because he was too tired to whip up a batch of his off-brand paint) to make sure it completely covered the entirety of his un-dyed hair from people’s prying eyes.

The further they ventured into the surprisingly maze-like establishment, Jeno could clearly see that there was a shift at the atmosphere. Going from a usual, dingy tavern that smelled of stale ale and illuminated only with cheap oil lamps, to suddenly morphing into what could’ve been considered as an upscale banquet hall with one sharp turn. Perfumed air that smelled of roses, tinted glass lantern, the whole package. From there, Jeno noticed more and more familiar faces. Socialites, courtesans, High Lords and Ladies. Never knew he wasn’t the only person of great influence that took a great interest for it.

Yes. It. Cheese.

Jeno quickly noticed, after taking one last turn before his waiter gesture for him to take the empty table at the corner of the room, that these people were eating cheese. As in real, Grasslands grade cheese. There was not even an ounce of attempt to hide it. It was all there, out in the open. Were they brave or were they stupid?

He took a quick mental note of who these people were and how they, sitting inside this tavern, who were carelessly ignoring the words of their King by eating cheese, might be of help for when he ever could grow to be brave enough to rebuke the King’s twenty third amendment.

“Give me everything you have,” he said to the waiter the moment his bum hit the plush velvety cushion of the well-decorated wooden chair.

The waiter must’ve lived through so much of these exuberant reactions that his demeanor didn’t change even after he heard Jeno’s order, still calmly setting down a cup of wine on the table before excusing himself to the kitchen with a small nod, “it won’t be long.”

And indeed, it wasn’t long.

Truly, if he’d learned anything through his stint of ‘seeking for the best cheese in Lumina’, it was that the longer a tavern took to serve him their cheese sample, the worse it’ll taste.

It only took ‘Ports and Piglets’ less than thirty seconds to serve up a platter, and it showed. Ooh bless the heavens it showed.

The waiter’s voice pierced through Jeno’s awe induced haze like a faraway lullaby. Melodious tune that calmly, confidently described each and every piece of heavenly salty nugget sitting on a humble wooden tray.

“First we have mild-tasting blue cheese. Always made fresh and delivered to us using the best preserving method. Next there’s an assortment of flavoured soft cheeses. Peppercorns, chilli flakes, chives, basil, anything your mind can dream of. And lastly a sharp, hard cheese that was aged for almost a year. Our best import from the Grasslands.”

Unlike how quick the cheeses were served up in front of him, it took Jeno quite a little while to process all the bombardment of revelations. It took him so long, in fact, that by the time he averted his gaze from his wildest dream made corporeal, the waiter had started to look at Jeno with a little bit of concern in his eyes.

“How can I never heard of this place before?” Out of the sheer shock and disbelieve that were coursing through his veins, Jeno’s voice came out as just a touch louder than a whisper.

But it was more than enough volume to be picked up by his waiter, who Jeno predicted have learned to anticipate hearing those words coming out of every single one of his patrons because indeed, how come it took me so long to find this place?! You didn’t understand! I almost died eating a botched attempt of some hack trying to make cheese next to the gutter!

“We keep our secrets very close to our heart, good sir. We appreciate it if you’ll also do the same.” (There was also the astronomical price of these barely-a-mouthful-morsels. We cater to the secretive. Those who grew up knowing how to keep their mouth shut.)

After saying those wise words of wisdom, the kind waiter did one last bow before leaving what he must’ve think was one starstruck little village boy (who somehow scored big money) first cheese experience. But Jeno couldn’t care less about how silly he must’ve looked, all misty eyed and shaking hands and all. ‘Finally. Finally we’re reunited oh my love, my cheese, my heart.’

Although, Jeno should’ve been more aware, that true love will always be riddled by hardships. True love, sometimes, shall not ever be.

If only he paid more attention to the works of old poets, Jeno wouldn’t be as surprised for where fate decided to take him next.

The cube of hard cheese was just a hair length away from his awaiting mouth when he heard the most dreaded words of all his cheese-seeking adventure echoing through the luscious curtains serving as a thin veil that separated the cruel, cheese-less world with the dreamlike cheese-filled heaven.

“LUMINA CHEESE POLICE! EVERYONE SPIT OUT WHAT YOU’RE EATING!”

There was a brief moment of bizarre, deeply calming hush settling into the room as all culprits finished discerning the extent to what this situation might imply to not only their safety as a human being, but also their status in court. And then just like a kid accidentally blowing too much air into their pig bladder handball toy, everything bursted in a fit of chaotic order with secret wooden panels being thrown open, swishy petticoats acting like upturned frilly umbrellas, and wine flying through the air like speckles of rubies.

Turns out, three seconds were all it took to completely vacate the vast hall filled to the brim with such illegal commodities (cheese). And three seconds were also all it took for the cheese police to rip apart the very nicely put together curtain and barge into the now empty hall.

Almost empty.

Jeno, poor clueless Jeno who have not even the littlest hint that patrons of ‘Ports and Piglets’ were expected to have a quick get-away scheme, was still sitting on his table, with his mouth still hanging open, and the cube of cheese paused in the middle of its doomed journey.

There was another moment of calm when Jeno caught the eyes of his also all-too-shocked waiter and somehow, at that moment, he could hear his thought and the waiter’s thought just as clear as if someone were to scream the word right to his own ears.

‘The kitchen.’

Maybe it was his sword training. Maybe it was his equestrian training. Maybe it was luck. But Jeno proved to be agile enough to dash out of the room and in through the kitchen door before the cheese police even managed to shout out the start of their detaining orders.

And at that moment, outrunning both the concept of chaos and the human thought process as Jeno dashed across of the poorly lit kitchen with the police in his tail, his mind calmly reminded him that, ‘in the case of bear attack, you don’t have to run faster than the bear. You just have to make sure you run faster than the person next to you.’

_ _ _ _ _

After spending fifteen minutes running up and down the hills and drops of the city, Jeno finally felt safe enough to give himself some much needed breathing moment. And he decided that in a pinch, a damp brick wall should suffice as a surface to rest his pounding head on. A damp brick wall, hidden within a deserted small alley so deep in the middle of the city even the sheen of the moon and the light from the main street looming above him felt like they were dulled.

Jeno managed to lose the cheese police, cleverly using the maze-like backdoor of Lumina’s inner cities to confuse the life out of what was essentially just overpaid and underdeveloped section of the Royal Guards.

He surprised himself with that sudden thought brought about by his exhaustion and annoyance for not even getting the chance to try his beloved hard cheese. The sliver of hate that showed up inside his heart, the same heart who’ve spend all its life beating through lessons of how he should always respect the people who’d swore their entire life to maintain peace and order in this Kingdom.

“They’re just doing what they were told to do,” he mumbled, over and over, like a mantra that served as both a reminder and a consolation for that feeling of disappointment that was threatening to spill over.

He did manage to quell in that tiny buds of tears from spilling over the corners of his eyes (because a Prince should not cry, father said, at least not in public), but he found that something else spilled over.

Something else was spilled, over him.

In his panic of trying to find a safe spot to hide, Jeno didn’t realise that the rotting plank of wood poorly fastened above him was not just a plain plank of wood that was poorly fastened on a similarly rotting brick wall.

It was a covering for a window.

And someone has just swung said covering open to thrown some murky liquid to what they must’ve thought as an empty back alley.

The little scream that the inconsiderate person let out when they noticed that someone was sitting right on the dumping path of their liquid waste was almost drowned by the Jeno’s deafening inner reminder that ‘they are just doing what they were told to do.’

Before Jeno was able to haul himself away from the crime scene, because he was so not in the mood of dealing with anything as hassling as having to reassure someone that he’s totally fine with being dumped with kitchen waste (he knew it was kitchen waste, as he suddenly smelled like sour milk and chicken bones), he was jumped on by the culprit. A young boy, no older than ten and four, Jeno guessed, who albeit was scrawny looking and bordering to being ghostly thin, was powerful enough to anchor the two of them on the spot with an endless, haphazard attempt at apologising.

“I’m so sorry!”

Jeno probably heard that phrase being sobbed thirty times in the span of ten seconds, spat out of the window dumper’s mouth in record speed as a kitchen rag was pattered all along the huge wet patch on Jeno’s cloak. A futile gesture, really. They both knew the only way the stain could’ve been cleaned was by washing it.

But as Jeno had somehow lost Minhyung’s horrifyingly ugly coives somewhere in the middle of his foot chase (not saying that he deliberately did that to get rid of the god forsaken thing), he could only clutch his fingers around the hood of his cloak, pulling it down to his forehead as he tried to reassure the boy that, “it is alright, honestly. Please. It’ll be alright.”

Though no matter how much Jeno tried to be nice and put this anxious wreck at ease, what put everything to a halt was when a booming voice blasted out of the open window like the sound of a canon going off.

“HUANG RENJUN WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!”

In the span of five seconds several things happened in quick successions.

One, Jeno realised from the panic that seeped into the wide eye of the boy standing in front of him, as if what he previously had was not enough panic to last for a lifetime, that the owner of this voice was not someone to be reasoned with. It was someone whose ‘No’ means ‘No’, and ‘give me your cloak so I can wash it’ means ‘give me your cloak so I can wash it or I’ll rip it off your shoulders with my bare hands.’

Second, the boy, being almost one head shorter than him, finally averted his attention from Jeno’s cloak which he’d been so fixated on, and finally saw the true extent of who the person hiding under that hood was. Because however hard Jeno tried to hide his silver hair, it was silver, for goodness sake. In the world where everything was colored in a humble earthen hue, the bright sparkle of the most defining trait of Lumina's Royal family members will surely take just a little less than one second to spot. The boy soon found out that he had to quickly add up shock and horror into the cocktail of emotion swirling around his facial expression, when his mind managed to connect the dots and realisation dawned on him as brightly as a sun in a Summer’s morning.

And finally, third, Jeno found himself juggling the damp kitchen towel in his hands after it was tossed to him by the scrawny looking boy, after he hissed to Jeno and ordered him to, “tie it around your head.”

The boy, Renjun, his name if Jeno’s ears didn’t failed him, went on to quickly peek his head in through the window and yelled back with as much force as the voice that came before, “I DIDN’T KNOW THERE WOULD BE SOMEONE SITTING UNDERNEATH THE WINDOW MOTHER!”

The boy’s mother went on to yell about how she already told him a million times to not throw the whey water out the window and how he should never assume because it makes an out of you and me and everyone else that’s involved in the scene, but all those things only came in through Jeno’s right ear and out through the left. Because he found himself trying so hard not to laugh when the boy quickly jumped on his feet with his hand clasped over his mouth, as if he just remembered something dire, and went down into a very awkward and disjointed bow.

“I forgot, I completely forgot… oh goodness, Your Grace, I mean, please tie it around your head, Your Grace. You wouldn’t want my mother to know, she’ll have a heart attack and I still need her to be around, Your Grace. Oh dear what am I talking about…”

“What is it that you wouldn’t want me to know, hm?”

Jeno didn’t know who this Mrs. Huang is, but all his laughters were dry just by seeing her standing with both her hands on her hips. Her imposing presence standing by the window, its rickety build paling in comparison. She even caused the old building to seemingly let out a groaning shudder. He then instantly knew he’d have to use all his past diplomatic lessons to make sure that everyone goes out of this encounter with all their souls intact in their respective bodies.

But as he was a child first, and Heir Apparent second, Jeno found himself unable to remember anything useful to diffuse the situation. Even worse, he couldn’t do anything more but stare ahead with childlike fear and guilt in his eyes. Because the situation he found himself trapped in perfectly mirrored that one time when the Queen found out he broke one of her mother’s heirloom vase during one of his wild make-believe sessions and became so mad it caused him to cry endlessly for three days straight.

In the end, there were two deers standing frozen in that deserted back alley, and however hard Mrs. Huang tried not to (because dear lord did she desperately need her Renjun to grow at least a smithereen of backbone to keep himself upright), she instantly took pity of them.

“All right… come in,” she finally sighed, both her arms dropped to her sides in defeat as she signalled her boy to bring the stranger, the victim of his carelessness, inside. “Come in you lot, come in.”