Chapter 18: Living a lie for the truth

Cliche twists, I’m sorry /facepalms. But this was already planned even before I’ve decided to have included Sooyoung in the cast. Shortest one so far, because I want to make it brief. is anyway.

She sat there in the courtyard already in her traveling clothes, waiting in wonder. Father was coming in a few minutes, and she waited here, along with two nurses to her side, and she didn’t like to think. When Seohyun was young, she enjoyed thinking, and it earned her respect even from the old and wise, so she pleased them with her intellect as much as she could. She liked to read books, so people would praise her being smarter than her Yoona unnie, but she knew so well that that could never be the case. In between these comparisons, she refused to think that growing up with a sister would be like a competition. So she stopped thinking and let everything else fall into place.

Right now, she liked that to happen but her mind ran amok involuntarily, working and fixing, laying out every possible door. Kibum the traitor and Kyuhyun her brother--- what else was supposed to happen. She wanted to stop thinking, and just let everything else go so that it would be better now, it would be okay just like how her father praised her for her archery. It would be better now, he would say, and Seohyun always had done better, like the good daughter she was.

Kibum was in the dungeon and Kyuhyun was back in his foster home getting the just reality slap on his face. All seemed to fall apart, not in place, Seohyun thought clearly. Fall apart, why was it falling apart? Was she the selfish one for having her eyes back? She never chose this path in the first place! She could have almost yelled at her unnie for always choosing the dumb way out, the easy way out--- why the hell did Yoona insist so much in giving back her sight? Before  all of that, everything was going smoothly; Kyuhyun could have stayed as the blacksmith’s son and not... not her brother. In any case sometime in the future, Seohyun would have still been hurt after knowing that he was indeed, now and forever, the long lost prince, her loving (ohloving) brother.

If she could have one wish, just one perhaps... she could have asked never to have met Kyuhyun. Even if this was too sad, even if her eyes started to water now, Seohyun still begged for the impossible.

“Excuse me, are you the princess from Byungmi?” approached a man wearing a cloak over his head.

She looked up and nodded, smiling in greeting. “Did my father send for you to pick me up?”

-o0o-

“She’s crying again, you dumb man,” the shorter one (though her shoes increased her height a little) fussed as she approached him, punching the side of her brother’s arm before he rolled her eyes in pride, unsure anymore if what he did was right. Or if it was the biggest and most selfish mistake he made.

“The man deserved to be in the dungeon forever,” Changmin said, crossing his arms as he leaned against the stairwell grills, Krystal giving him those glares of a dagger.

She shrugged afterwards, changing the subject. “I’ll be going out with Sulli and Taemin for awhile, though.”

“You guys have been best friends as far as I can I remember. How did you meet that sewer rat of a boy anyway? Princess like you shouldn’t be haning out with him,” he said before the princess slipped and ran down the staircase. “When are you coming back?” the oppa asked almost in a shout and with mischievous smirk and a wave, he expected not another word for a response.

Changmin, interchanging his other leg to prop, sighed, clicking his tongue when he thought deeper about his actions. Yoona looked like she was the one hurt, as though she was the one who would get dumped in a stinky old cell, with little food until the her last breath of existence. The way her eyes just cried and passed Changmin when Kibum was taken away, was she keeping emotions from him? Was she really for some reason in love with Kibum too?

Changmin didn’t like the thought of losing, he knew that much to feel inferior and less. Being a prince, or perhaps because he was older than Krystal, he always liked to win in games, and practically just about anything (then again the younger princess always won in seeking attention). He was slowly losing all of it, a nonexistent game played between him and Yoona, only Kibum the outside force seemed to be taking all of the prizes with him.

And he didn’t understand why all of a sudden his feet were taking him to her door, and the sobbing inside still scared him in some sort of defective way, so he slowly knocked and it stopped, and Changmin felt the need to kill himself for this kind of rush, this kind of shift of emotions that he slouched back when Yoona opened the door, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

“What do you want?”

“Are you in love with Kibum?”

“What?” she retorted in disbelief, and in turn he gazed at back in the same manner.

“Are you... in love with Prince Kibum?” he asked softly, in defeat he realized but Changmin never cared, he was already a loser in the first place when he entered this stupid marraige thing. He didn’t care about pride right now; he wanted to lose so what--- but he just couldn’t lose Yoona to anyone.

Sh scoffed. “I lost a friend, not a lover.”

“Then why was he saying that he loved you and all? Did something happened in that island?” his voice climbed a higher octave, she noticed and Yoona shook her head indignantly, then closing the door before Changmin shoved his foot by the jamb.

“I won’t regret squashing your feet,” Yoona threatened.

“I don’t care if you do!” Changmin shouted back. “You haven’t answered my question yet. How dare you be disrespectful in my very own kingdom!”

“Well what sort of ing excuse do you want to hear? When I’ve been telling the truth all this time, you idiot! I’m tired of trying when all you do is subordinate me down to a position I do not deserve!”

Changmin pushed the door back and she took steps backward at the force, balancing. “It’s because I love you too much to see you get hurt! I love you too much that’s why I’m doing the most idiotic things any prince could do! Because I love you.”

Her tears started rolling down now. Both of them intentionally silent, unmoving, and they avoided each other’s gazes as much as possible. “I love Kibum as someone like a brother, a friend, and I thought betrayal was beyond us. Now I understandthat he already betrayed me from the beginning by falling in love.”

The prince sighed to show her how much he felt sorry (but to Yoona, it sounded like relief).

“But do you love me?”

She gave him a long stare without really answering, and then she gulped hard, probably guilty enough of his words.

“I... I... ” her tongue tied a rather tight knot, she didn’t know exactly what to say before screaming from down below was heard and in a quick moment, footsteps were coming right at her door.

“Your majesty! Your majesty!” shouted one of the nurses. “They’re here!”

-o0o-

“You knew all along I was the lost prince, didn’t you?”

The home, which used to be so solemn and so quiet except for the clashing of steel alongside the humming of the birds, did not appear like the home he had grown accustomed with. It was a different home, and he for a fact knew that it would never be the same again, even if he would leave them all entirely to rule over a kingdom he had only dreamed of.

His uncle and aunt sat on the seat, holding each other’s hands in worry, both startled when Kyuhyun’s voice grew higher. Hands around his waist, head craned back as he paced back and forth, he found it rather impossible now; everything seemed already at stake. His eyes burned, because his tears must have ran out already. It wasn’t, this couldn’t be--- all a dream, he assured himself, slapping his forehead every time the thought of Seohyun and him kissing one time, or holding her hands and feeling the strong spark from its warmth. Weren’t that signs of love? So playful, fate must be laughing his head off seeing the two suffer.

“Yoona and Seohyun are my sisters,” he said, without really directing it to his foster family. “If I had known this long before... if you’d told me earlier, I would haven’t fallen in love by mistake.”

The ahjumma wiped her tears now, sobbing sourly in horror. “I’m... I’m really sorry, Kyuhyun-ah.”

Nichkhun was by the door, but he wasn’t facing them though--- he felt like he need