Forget everything till now.

“Today, the heir to Sunhwan Empire, Prince Kim Sunggyu, and the President of Muhan’s son, Nam Woohyun, will be meeting for the first time. The two sons will be meeting at a disclosed location in Muhan, while their parents discuss the contract for this year’s new trading ports.”

Sunggyu rolled his eyes at the distant sound of the newscast and continued to eat his breakfast. His mother saw the slight grimace on her son’s face and motioned towards the butler to turn the TV off. Once the television turned off, the sudden screaming silence made the slight scraping of Sunggyu’s metal fork against his plate screech into his ear. He shook his leg impatiently until the slow pace of their breakfast and the horrid scraping sounds made him sigh, put his fork down, and push himself away from the table.

“I’m finished, mother,” he announced quietly.

“Ok, Sunggyu,” his mother replied with a firm smile, “Get ready for our trip to Muhan. I’ll have a butler bring your things down in a minute.”

The prince nodded and made his way up the stairs. He smiled at the butlers and maids who bowed to him as he passed and started to run quickly to his room. The minute he entered, he turned around and locked the door. Twisting to look around, he let out a deep breath and chuckled. Sunggyu immediately ran to his bed and lifted his pillow, pulling out a small mp3 and his white earphones. Before turning on the mp3 player, he listened to the silence for a moment to be absolutely sure that no one was near. After making sure he was putting the left earphone in his left ear and the other in his right ear, he pressed his finger onto a triangular button and the tension visibly left his shoulders as the forbidden sounds of music flowed into his ears. He relaxed and lay back on his bed, wrinkling the white covers that were nicely made and folded earlier that morning. Closing his eyes, Sunggyu mouthed the words to the only song on the small device.

Sunggyu had found the illegal music player when he was a little kid. He was with his grandfather on a business trip in the areas south of the Sunhwan capital, the last places to go under Kim Dynasty control. His grandfather went there to facilitate the sweepings of everything related to the time before the Devolution, and he allowed Sunggyu to roam around the area he would once oversee as an adult. While running up and down the streets, he had come across a shiny blue object and was fascinated by the simple technology. Sunggyu was always a curious boy, so he pressed the only button on the mp3 player, only to hear a slight musical noise coming from the white earphones that were connected to it. Placing the strange-shaped buds to his ears, he immediately fell in love with the song that played. When his grandfather called out his name, he had pressed the triangle button again, discovering that the music would stop and wrapped the earphones around the music player, hiding everything in his pockets. Sunggyu had thought of the player as his treasure, and he wasn’t about to let someone else take it away from him.

A year later, Sunggyu started to go to school, and he had learned that the device he had found was an mp3 player. Unfortunately, music was banned in Sunhwan. Everything music-related was forbidden on the eastern hemisphere. Before the Devolution, there used to be celebrities that became famous and blinded by fortune simply because they knew how to sing. These celebrities were idolized by people everywhere, and their lives became more important to the people than the decisions of their government, leading to the rampant corruption that caused the Devolution. Therefore, Sunggyu’s ancestors banned music from their empire and had every trace of it eradicated from the empire. Muhan did something similar, but Sunggyu didn’t really learn much about the other side of the earth—he just knew that the two empires rarely interacted, making today an important and rare day.

Sunggyu could tell that the song was about to end, and he let his eyes flutter open. He stared at the ceiling and dreaded his upcoming trip to Muhan. He wasn’t very excited to meet the son of Muhan’s president. Muhan was said to be a more easy-going empire, but that’s exactly what worried the prince of Sunhwan. He didn’t want to be killed by the barbarians over there. He didn’t know what to expect over there, and he was always taught to expect the worst from those in Muhan; they were different from those who lived in Sunhwan.

Nevertheless, as the song ended, he pulled out his earphones and turned the mp3 player off, wrapping the wires around it and hiding it into his pillow again. He got up off of his bed and went into his closet to change into the clothes the maid had gotten ready for him, quietly humming to the only song he had ever heard in his life.

Meanwhile, Nam Woohyun was running through the forest, pushing the branches out of his way and scratching himself on some of the thorns on the bushes that his legs scrambled through. He was supposed to be in locked up inside of his room, and he usually left his room everyday anyway, but today the rulers from Sunhwan were coming, and he just realized that he was expected to be home and ready in the next ten minutes.

As he got closer and closer to the secret entrance to his bedroom, he hoped that his mother was still busy welcoming his father back from his latest business trip and that they were both still busy getting ready—which is what he should also be doing. He let out a huge relieved sigh when he reached the end of the rose bushes. There was a small wooden door disguised into the large tree in front of him, and since his mother wasn’t screaming her head off, he knew that she hadn’t found out he had left yet. He quickly brushed off the dirt from his clothing and cursed at the scratches on his calves. Woohyun looked all around before opening the secret door and made his way back into his bedroom through his closet, making sure to change into something presentable before running to the bathroom to wash his face and clean his scratches.

Woohyun got out a few Band-Aids for his cuts that were still bleeding, and he laughed at the fact there was silence in his house. Glancing at the clock, he saw that he had five minutes left before the Kims were to arrive, but by the lack of noise in the house, it seemed that his parents were still getting ready. If they were done, he would’ve heard his mother yelling at the slaves to double check everything by now.

After he finished attending to his cuts, Woohyun pulled down the ends of his pants and covered his bandaged legs. He stood up and glanced at himself in the mirror, making sure that his hair looked like he didn’t just spend the last ten minutes running through leaves and branches. He splashed his face with water again and blindly reached for a towel. After pressing his face into the soft cloth, he stared at himself again and smiled.

Kim Sunggyu, get ready to meet Nam Woohyun.