When Sungyeol opened the door and found Hyora waiting for him, he blinked in surprise. “What are you doing here? What do you want from me?”

The words were not so much hostile as they were curious, and also a bit weary.

“To talk. I used to be the best at magic, and now you’re at the top. I figured I might as well get to know you.”

He seemed very taken aback by this response. Narrowing his eyes, he asked, “No revenge plots? No ‘you are a commoner, you have no business being here?’”

“No. I’m afraid that I am not quite that petty,” Hyora said, grinning wryly. “It doesn’t make any sense to think you don’t belong here when evidently you can match or even overtake the nobles in various things. Besides, if the king thought you had business being here, who am I to question?”

That seemed to satisfy him. He stepped back and opened the door further. “You are a very strange noble. Come on in.”

Her father had always said she had the knack for convincing people to go along with her, and she had never quite believed it until recently. First Myungsoo, now Sungyeol. Neither of them had reason to trust or believe her, but both of them had anyway.

She stepped inside. Everyone had their private quarters, and usually a glance at their rooms was enough to infer something about them.

Although Sungyeol’s room wasn’t impeccably neat, neither was it horribly messy. There was minimal clutter. In fact, there was minimal anything. He didn’t have paintings adorning his walls or vases set up on the available flat surfaces. Hyora supposed this was most likely because of his background. Though it was true that, had other people been in his place, given a large grant of money, they likely would have spent some part of it on a luxury item or two. The fact that Sungyeol had not done so was a sign of practicality and frugality. Or perhaps stinginess.

There were two chairs in the room, and Sungyeol pulled the spare one up for her to sit in, and she thanked him, as was expected of her.

“So, what do you want to talk about?” he asked, gazing at Hyora levelly as he sat down across from her.

She hadn’t really come prepared with a topic. It was poorly planned of her, but she wanted to make it as natural as possible, never mind if she did sort of march up to his room and demand a conversation.

“Your life back home,” she decided, after a moment’s consideration.

He gave her a look. “Why do you care? You’re a noble. The provincial life of a commoner should be of no interest to you.”

This annoyed Hyora. “Stop being so prejudiced. Just because I’m a noble doesn’t mean I don’t care about anyone besides myself and it doesn’t mean I think commoners are dirt beneath my feet.”

Judging by Sungyeol’s reaction, he wasn’t used to having people talk to him like this. “Whatever. But why should I tell you anything? You’re a stranger to me. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger,” Hyora countered. “Someone without prior knowledge of you or your life, who won’t judge you but will simply listen.”

She could tell that she had said the right thing since his defensiveness melted away into defeat. “You’re right about that,” Sungyeol sighed.

Hyora nodded her head, just the tiniest bit smug, but didn’t say anything and simply waited for him to begin his tale.

“I came from a village a few days’ travel from the capitol. We weren’t prosperous, but neither were we impoverished. We lived our lives pretty peacefully. You could say it was a bit boring because of this. I had the occasional dream of leaving home to live in the city, but that was more of a passing fancy than anything else. I was happy. I had friends.

“In fact, I had a best friend. Seulhee.”

“Oh, a girl?” Hyora raised a brow in surprise.

“Yes.” Sungyeol rolled his eyes at her look. “We were best friends, nothing more. Even so, I promised her I would marry her because I couldn’t imagine who else there might be. For either of us. But then the king got married, and I got chosen to come here to study. She never said so, but I knew she was completely jealous. Seulhee, for one, really, truly wanted to escape the village and live in the city. It had always been her dream. Instead, she got it snatched away from her by me. I don’t know that she ever forgave me for that, even though it wasn’t my fault. Anyway, now I’m here.”

“And where is Seulhee now?”

“Still in the village. Possibly married.” He shrugged. “I haven’t had communication with her at all in over a month.” His face darkened considerably when he said this.

“Why not? Can’t you write letters?”

“I did. I visited, too. But I realized that I’ve changed too much since I’ve come here. She wouldn’t like the current me. I can’t go back, so I figured it was best to simply break off our friendship.”

“I’m sorry,” Hyora said.

“Like I said, you wouldn’t understand.”

It was true. Her journey to Hwasung had been the closest she had come to such a thing. Although she had been away from her twin, her best friend, for months and months, they hadn’t parted on a bad note or anything, and here they were, back together again, almost as if they had never been apart in the first place.

Hyora decided to change the topic. “So do you like the capital?”

His gaze wandered to the window. The curtains were pulled aside, letting in the noonday light. “The city itself is nice enough. Flawed but beautiful. The people aren’t half bad. At least, outside of the Royal Academy, anyway.” She ignored the less-than-subtle insult to her kind. “Overall, the capital isn’t a horrible place. But I feel a bit out of my element here. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be anymore. Like a commoner, or like a noble? I am getting educated in things beyond what I could have ever imagined, but I don’t know what I will do with this knowledge. I can’t go back to my village—I wouldn’t fit in any longer—and I’m not actually a noble, and I don’t really seek to become a merchant. Instead of entering an apprenticeship to learn some sort of trade, I have been here, so I would be far behind others my age in any sort of artisanship. In short, I have no direction.”

Gut feeling told Hyora that this was an opportunity for her. “What if I find a direction for you?” she ventured. “I have a potential job for you.” She was getting good at surprising even herself.

“What? If it’s some sort of position in your house, I think I will decline.”

Hyora shook her head. “That’s not it at all.” Standing up, she went to touch her fingers to the wall, murmuring under her breath a spell to make the room impervious to sound leaving. “It’s something far less mundane and far more important.”