Jonghyun was a prince, and I wasn’t the least bit proud of it. He didn’t deserve it. Nobody deserved to be treated how he was. No matter how good of a person he could have been, or who he was or where he came from could have changed it.

            Was I jealous? I guess you could say that. My mind wasn’t anyway, but my needs and my desires were. Every waking hour I told myself that I wasn’t jealous in the least bit and that it happened this way for a reason, and I wanted to believe that with every ounce of my being, but I knew it wasn’t true. I knew that every part of me hated him for what he had, and that there was nothing I could do about it. I acted like the world’s best cousin in front of him, but inside, I hated him down into my very core. I wanted to believe that he couldn’t see it, but I knew that he could. We held some sort of bond that kept us from destroying each other, and that bond wasn’t family. Family was the last thing holding me back from what I wanted. I just couldn’t pinpoint why exactly I hadn’t brought him down yet. He was kind, I’ll give him that, but the prince-like aura that surrounded him disgusted me. I would have been charmed just as everyone else if I hadn’t known the truth.

            The other side of me hated him. He had what I wanted. It made me sound cruel and unreasonable, but I’d wished he’d have strangled himself in the womb like each of his brothers had. He had no choice but to become the heir to the company, I don’t pin that on him in the slightest. But the jealousy was overruling. He still had what I wanted, and there was still nothing I could do about it.

            What was the difference between handing your son who didn’t even enjoy soju himself the keys to the family company, and handing them to the fair, interested and motivated cousin of his? Our families had feuded for years over this, and I was afraid to say that it was I that had carried on that legacy.

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            I had nothing against JR. As far as I was concerned, he hardly existed. My family drank his family’s wine every night at dinner, and my father was a strong supporter of their company, but I felt indifferent. I was indifferent mostly because I paid close attention to how their family worked and how everyone felt about what was happening. The only thing I had a problem with was my father wanting everso badly for my sister to marry him.

            Kaeun marrying JR would have been the best thing that had ever happened to me, if Aron had nothing to do with it. Aron was a rotten cousin, to say the least. So jealous over (from what I know) was JR’s heirdom to the family company, his desires lead him to do things not in his best interest, even when he was well aware of it. I hadn’t wanted my sister, my baby sister, to get involved. I would have laid my own self out for danger before agreeing with my father’s wishes. Normally, my family got along well. However, when it came to Kaeun, a bloody war would have been easier to fight than my father, or myself.

            There was something about Aron, though. Despite being rotten to his very core, he had a certain charm about him. He moved about with such grace and charisma that you would have thought him a near prince, like JR. JR was humble, though, whereas I couldn’t see the slightest bit of any modesty radiating from Aron. The way he moved was like an angel, but I knew what was inside him. I’d thought on it many times that maybe he was some sort of demon: an Incubus, but I came to the conclusion that he just wanted what it seemed that everyone else wanted: money and fame.

            Maybe he wasn’t as shallow as I had expected. Maybe he didn’t mean to give off the uneasy feeling that he did, but he wore it well. He had to have known how he looked to me. I knew how he stared with hungry eyes at both JR and Kaeun. I knew he wanted his cousin’s money and my sister on his arm. There wasn’t a way in the world that I’d let that happen, even if it was my father’s greatest wish. I resented him. I disliked everything he had said and disregarded everything he had asked for months now. I respected him no less, but not a single part of me would agree to marry my sister into such a broken, misguided family all for the sake of a few billion dollars. I used to wish he wasn’t like that. I used to wish he was different than Aron or Mister Kim, but as I grew older, it all became more obvious to me that it was true. Everyone seemed the same, and I felt like I was going to turn out the same way.

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            JR was my best friend. I wished there was more to say about him than that. I was lucky to be on this end of the rope and not have seen what happened inside his 2.6 billion dollar home. I knew his parents were sweet people, I knew that he was one to die for, and I knew that he had so much going for him. I also knew that the Chois and the Kims weren’t exactly the best of friends, until it came down to their heirs.

            JR and Ren were a couple you'd never expect to see. JR was from South Korea, the heir to his family’s fortune in the liquor industry, humble, and good looking. Ren was from North Korea, the second son of his family, incredibly arrogant, and reminded me way too much of JR’s cousin, Aron; but they fit together like a puzzle. What JR lacked in people skills, Ren made up for with his princess like aura and his belligerent attitude. They were two people that very well could have hated each other if they weren’t in the positions that they were.

            I wouldn’t speak for them myself, but I could tell every time that they looked at each other that they were truly, madly and deeply in love. It was almost as if they tore down each other’s walls. JR was on guard for his emotions, and Ren let them go most of the time; but when they were together, JR was uncontrollable in the most loving and romantic ways (he would have confessed his love on the highest rooftop if he could have), and Ren was quietly reserved, so reserved it was as if he was struck speechless by him.

            Looking at them, watching them, being the one to deliver their notes and messages across the border between the countries, I knew I envied a love like theirs. Everyone wanted a fairytale ending, to be all right and set for life and able to love without any care in the world, but I felt greedy for knowing that there was so much more to it than that. I wanted someone for myself, of course -- someone to stare at so long that I’d remember every single little curve and crease of their skin and their voice and how they carried them self when they’d walk, someone I could talk to for hours and never get bored of at all -- but I knew that I was asking a lot. I knew that a love like that couldn’t happen to just anyone, and so I settled for having a front row seat to something as beautiful as the love between the Prince of Kim Soju and the overly-outspoken younger brother of the heir to Choi Soju, their rival company.