I walked beside Jun Hyung as the ‘Crown Prince’ and his followers were coming right behind us. I kept glancing behind, peeking at the face of the one that eunuch called ‘Crown Prince Seung Ho’. Could it be? Was I remembering well? Or was it just a trick played by my own mind?

“Jun Hyung, are we really taking him to our house?”I whispered as we crossed the little bridge towards the gates of our house. “He could be dangerous or so…”

“Dangerous?”my brother laughed. “Who? Cousin Seung Ho? Please!”

“Cousin?”

“Yes. Don’t you remember him, Ae Ri? You used to be quite good friends back then. Before you left for Tang Empire.”

I frowned as we stepped inside the yard. So it was him…the little kid I was remembering to cry so hard the day my ship left the port…

“Yah! Ae Ri! Look what I found!”his childish voice called me from the field of wild flowers. “A frog!”he revealed the green hopping animal that was looking at me with a confused look.

“A frog!”I exclaimed. “Oh…so pretty,”I tried to touch its skin but the frog hopped off from his palm, landing back in the small pond. “Oh froggie! Come back! Come back! Please…come back,”I cried, stretching my arms towards the glittering water.

“Ai Ri, leave it be! It swam away!”his arms pulled me back, preventing me from falling into the water.

“B-but…I wanted to touch it. I never touched a frog before…” I felt my tears blurring my vision. I was only five.

“Leave it be, Ae Ri! I, Seung Ho promise you that you’ll have something even more beautiful by tomorrow evening,”he smiled as he led the was towards the place where our parents were waiting us.

“Promise?”I stretched my pinky towards him, making him smile.

“Promise!”

What followed next? Oh…yeah…that…

“She’s going and that’s it!”my mother firmly stood up to my father complaining. “Come Ae Ri! We have some packings to do. We don’t want them to think that you’re poor, now do we?”she dragged me after her outside father’s office, to the room where all my things were already packed. I loved traveling. I loved seeing new places. But that baggage just gave me a strange feeling. A bad feeling.

“Where are we going, mother?”I whispered as she pulled out the new red dress my nanny sewn for me.

“Not ‘we’, but ‘you’, Ae Ri. You’re going to the Tang Empire. All over that big big river that you saw last week. Remember?”

“The one father said is bad for children?”

“Your father and his big mouth!”she frowned. “Ae Ri, you’re going to live in the most powerful empire that exists. The imperial family wants to raise a noble girl and they picked our family. We should be proud. You should be proud.”

“Live? But how about you? And father? And Jun Hyung?”

“You’re going there alone, Ae Ri.”

The strange echo of that word! I hate it. Just like I hated Jun Hyung for staying behind with the family while they sold me away to the Chinese imperial family. Proud! Proud she said!

“Ai Ri? AE RI! CHO AE RI! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”he yelled from the docks as the ship continued sailing further away from him, from the port and eventually from Hanyang. “I PROMISED I’D BRING YOU SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL TONIGHT! WHERE ARE YOU GOING, CHO AE RI?!”

“TO THE TANG EMPIRE!”I yelled back, running towards the ship’s closest point to the docks.

“COME BACK, AE RI! THE TANG EMPIRE IS DANGEROUS!”he started running along the beach, trying to keep up with the ship’s swift movement. “COME BACK! DO YOU HEAR ME?!”

“I’M SORRY, SEUNG HO! I’M SORRY…”

The wind was against us. The sea’s tide was against us. The night was against us. I was sorry…I really wanted to see his surprise. Maybe I was just a kid to him, but he was my only friend back then as my own brother was too engrossed in studying Confucius’s ways and laws. And leaving him behind may have been the hardest thing I ever did in my life…

“Mother…”

She smiled as she saw Seung Ho behind. “What brings the Crown P