Episode five:

After a long walk through the Songnisan forest, the couple had taken refuge in an abandoned barn housing at the edge of the forest. Walking through the slope and forest was taking a tool on all of them. And as the night began to fall down, they needed somewhere to sleep.

Yunho could walk until the first village at the border of the Songnisan forest alone but his young wife was injured and needed medical care. And if he was thinking a bit about himself, he also needed a good rest. He wasn't feeling well but he could not let Jaeha worrying about him as she depended on him in the outside world from now.

Thinking of his young wife, the young man chuckled a bit as he took place on the grasses. He rose his eyes to the sky. Seeing the beautiful orange-pink color of the setting sun stretched before his eyes, Yunho sketched a smile as he shook his head lightly, amused by the way that foolish child had fooled him. He wondered when the other was going to tell him the truth about her being a boy.

Why would he be angry with the other boy for tricking him? He was the one who thought of him as a young girl. And who would not behave like Yunho did while facing a beauty like him. Nothing on the child boy's facial traits could let anybody think he was a boy. And knowing the child enough, his appearance helped him much in this world. Sometimes, being a girl when he was feeling reckless, wanting to ease his life for a moment as another time being a boy when he needed to be one.

"Jaeha or Jaejoong... which is the real you?" Yunho breathed out softly.

As he straightened up his posture, the young man heaved out a painful sigh as he pressed his palm on his abdomen. The pain was still bearable. However, Yunho should make sure that his young wife will never be aware of his physical condition. And for that, he knew what to do as he put his right hand on the form shaped by the book the Head Master Song had given him under his jeogori. He needed to follow the Head Master's lessons if he wanted to heal whatever interne wounds he had.

Suddenly, Yunho let out a scoff laugh. What he was thinking? The book was not going to help him much as he did not know how to read its contents. But, he had memorized a few things the older man had taught him since he had begun his apprenticeship to be a monk half a year ago. The young man will have to rely on himself from now.

Could he do it? He did not know. The only thing he knew was that he should try for his young wife's sake.

As his thought flew toward the young boy he had taken as his wife, Yunho stepped back to the abandoned barn and found Jaejoong consolidating a fireside with stones and hay strands.

Walking to stand next to the pretty boy, he put the stack of small woods on the ground. "Here for you."

"Thank you." Jaejoong said as he was putting something like a black powder on the hay before taking two stones and turned toward his Yunho. "Could you lit up the fire for me? Then I can cook something for us tonight." He added showing a recipient he had found in this abandoned barn.

Yunho nodded. He took the stones and chaffed them together above the powder. A few and the fire started to take. Then he fed the fire with more hay strands and small woods as he blew over it slowly.

"Thank you." Jaejoong said while he put the recipient filled with some water next to the fire. "Yunho? Look here!" The young boy added as he showed a few vegetable in his hand. "I found them in the field next to the barn. The buns and tteocks (rice cake) were not enough. That stupid monk! He should put a few more in the linen." He mumbled under his chin. "Anyway, tomorrow we're going to step into a village, I make sure we will eat until our stomach explode. I have enough of those vegetarian dishes. I want meat! A lot of meat." The pretty boy beamed.

"Alright. Alright. You will have whatever you want." Yunho said as he sat on the ground next to his wife who had become to cut roughly all the cleaned vegetable they had and threw all the pieces in the warm water.

"But we need money." The young boy sighed. "What the old monk had put into your linen is not going to last longer than three or four days if we manage our account well." Jaejoong counted on his hands as he stated their financial state to his husband. A room for the night as well as some food and buying a few things as clothes and accessories for their trip to Kimhae. And he should not forget a horse. Travelling with a horse would be faster than walking toward the border of the Silla Kingdom.

"Master Sunho isn't an old man."

"He is. All men who are over 30 years old are old men." Jaejoong stated.

Yunho laughed softly and said, "Whatever please you. And don't worry about our finance. I will find a few things to do and earn a bit of money for the two of us."

"I should do something too."

"No! You don't have to. I will earn enough money for you and I."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure." Jaejoong nodded as he didn't argue back while Yunho was looking at him with a frown. "I should clean your wound." He said finally as he saw the blood stain on the boy's sleeve.

"I'm fine." The pretty boy said quietly. "But you look a bit pale than before." He added as he looked at Yunho's pale face.

"Don't worry." The young man shook his head lightly.

Jaejoong took the phial from his jeogori and glided the same brown pill he had given to Yunho long ago. He reached out his palm to his husband. "Here!"

"What is it?" The older boy asked while narrowing his eyes at the sight of the pill on the palm of his young wife. He asked nothing when his young wife had made him take one when they were still in the temple.

"Medication. Don't worry it can heal every injury." Jaejoong answered with a smile. "My mother was a good healer. She was a self-educated."

"You should take it. I'm fine. You're the one who is wounded not me."

"Yunho." The pretty boy pursed his lips into an adorable moue. "You are also injured."

"I'm fine."

"Don't lie!" Jaejoong punched Yunho's stomach lightly. "See! You're not well." He said as his husband was growling painfully with his left hand pressing onto his stomach.

"I... I..."

"So tell me why were you bleeding?"

The young man looked at his young wife for a while, then nodded and took the pill. He swallowed it quietly while Jaejoong gave him a bucket of fresh water he had drawn from the pit next to the abandoned barn.

"You don't have to be brave in front of me." Jaejoong said with a smile as he was brushing the tip of his fingers on Yunho's eyebrow, trying to ease his frown a bit. "Otou-san always said that a man isn't a man if he can't admit his own defeat. Men can be strong. But, being stubborn can only lead them to their own doom." He added, pressing his lips on Yunho's forehead.

"He seemed to be a wise man." Yunho said quietly with a smile.

Jaejoong was looking at his husband with a small smile. He was hesitating to tell the truth to the older boy, fearing that Yunho will never forgive him for lying to him. The pretty boy lowered his head a bit and heaved a forlorn sigh which made Yunho a bit worried at his wife's change of mood.

"Do you want to tell me what made you sad suddenly?"

"I... Would you be angry with me... if I... I..."

"Jaeha?"

The young boy shook his head lightly. "No... nothing."

"Are you sure?"

"Oh! Our diner!" Jaejoong turned to supervise their meal which was being cooked on the fire, while Yunho could only take a deep breath as he was watching the boy, knowing in what kind of dilemma his young wife was.

The fear of deceiving him was more stronger than being clean with him had made the child boy draw back every time he was ready to tell him everything concerning his real identity.

"Hou yi yang na lu wa... Feng zhong de na lu wa..." Yunho sang quietly as Jaejoong turned to the young man with his eyes wide open.

"You..."

"Meng li de bai he hua... Hai hui bu hui zhang da... Mama de na lu wa..." He continued to sing the song his wife always sang every night after confessing to him that he was a boy and not a girl as there was a long and painful story behind his birth when Jaejoong thought he was asleep.

"You... you knew..." Jaejoong stuttered.

"I know." Yunho said quietly with a smile.

"You heard... everything..." Jaejoong was struggling with words. The child boy didn't know how to feel at this moment. He wanted to be angry against the older man for letting him be a fool with his lie. However, he knew well that he was at fault for tricking Yunho.

"Don't say anything." The young man added. "If you want me to believe that you're a young lady, I will treat you as such."

"Why?"

"Girl or boy, you're just you. I do not know the reason why I still accept you as you are. But, I know one thing. You treat me better than all the people I encountered until now. And I will be a fool to deny you. To deny the affection you have for me."

"You are a real fool." Jaejoong said softly with a smile painting on his plush lips.

"Surely." Yunho laughed softly as he still locked his eyes with the young boy. "And I do think that even if you tell me that you are a boy, you would still hide your real identity to me. I am not wrong?" Yunho said quietly, looking straight into the boy's eyes.

Jaejoong nodded and lowered his head locking his eyes onto the pot of vegetable stew. And Yunho could sense the fear in his young wife's whole being.

"Alright! If you don't want-"

"It's not I don't want to tell you who I am." The young boy said in a low voice. "I'm... I'm a child who should never exist. A child that people think of dead."

"Jaeha..."

"My birth name is Odagiri Jaejoon. However, my father's people call me Jaejoong." The child boy said, filling a bowl with the hot stew. "Or Hamingu tori..." He added with a smile painting on his plush lips. "Oh! You should never use this name. Because it a code between my father and his men for my safety." Jaejoong turned to Yunho as he was whispering his last sentence.

"Your safety?"

Jaejoong nodded and said in a low tone, "...My late mother was sent by the Silla Kingdom to the archipelago of Yamato. To be the royal hostage of the Emperor of Yamato. However, something happened and she became his prey. And my father who was the heir of the house of Odagiri, the warriors clan who owned and still own the Kyushu island as they were in the service of the Emperor of Yamato at that time, was ordered by his father to keep an eye on my mother until the Emperor decided of her fate." The pretty boy smile sadly and breathed out, "...Ironically, those two young people had fallen in love with each other. And when the Emperor had sent a message to kill her, my father couldn't kill the one he loved. So, he betrayed his rank... Fortunately his own father, my Ojii-san, Hal-Abeoji in your language," Jaejoong said as a frown marred Yunho's forehead which disappeared once he explained the meaning of the strange word in the Yamato language. "My Ojii-san, who couldn't lose his only son and heir, had decided to go against the Emperor's order. And all the Odagiri clan became the enemies of the Emperor of Yamato."

"Your mother... did she die because of the Emperor of Yamato?"

The pretty boy shook his head lightly with a sad smile painting on his rosy lips.

"Okaa-san, she died because of the men sent by the Silla Kingdom. Xiah said Silla Kingdom had learned that Okaa-san was expecting. And the night of my birth, a group of men from Silla had taken advantage of the excitation of me being the center of everyone in the clan to enter the Odagiri castle... She died by protecting me..." He paused as he bit his lower lip, looking down on his interlaced fingers. "She had fought against those men to protect me... However, with her being fragile by all her efforts to give birth to me, they had succeeded to wound her and take me away from the clan... until my father and his men had chased after them during days and nights to take me back before they left the Kyushu island... I don't know what happened at that time... But otou-san said that Xiah had landed in the Samguk Sagi after they succeeded to take me back to do his own excursion toward the Silla Palace. Killing their King as he declared to all the Silla's people that the death of their King was a payback for the death of their Princess and her child."

"Xiah... The white daemon..." Yunho murmured. "You know him?" He asked with his eyes wide open.

"It's one of a few names people in this Samguk Sagi call him. But Xiah was only a child who had lost so much with the death of my mother. His best friend. His sister. She was like a mother for him." Jaejoong added sadly. "You know... Xiah was an orphan that the royal family of Silla Kingdom had taken from the dirt to be the companion of fortune of my mother. So I won't blame him for killing so much people. He was hurt and angry at that time. And the only thing he could do was to kill the source of his suffering. The ruler of Silla Kingdom who had condemned his own daughter to her death for his own purpose." He breathed out forlornly as tears fell down from his doe-like eyes. He always felt guilty for what had become of Xiah.

Yunho rose his hand toward the young boy and wiped those sad tears away with the pad of his fingers softly, a sad smile ghosting on his lips. Why would he be angry with this boy for lying to him?

"I understand."

"You are not angry with me?" Jaejoong asked a bit uneasy, however with the hope that his husband was being comprehensive.

"Why should I be angry with you?"

"I lied to you." The pretty boy said quietly.

"If I recalled our first meeting, you were the one who said to me that I could turn to look at you. And I was the one who had insisted that you were a girl."

"You're right!" The pretty boy added with a nod.

"However, you took advantage of the situation to trick me." Yunho replied with a severe tone in his voice as he was trying not to smile.

"But... but... It's not my fault if you were so gullible." Jaejoong said with a pout.

"I'm not." The older man said a bit offended. "I was just playing along with you."

"Playing along?" The boy asked as he lifted an eyebrow with an amused smile painting on his pouty and rosy lips.

"Alright! I won't talk with you for a while." Yunho turned his back to his wife.

"What? You... you..." The young boy hissed and turned his back to the other man in turn as he crossed his arms over his chest. He could also play the same game. "You know, when you took me as your wife, I was really happy. Because since I landed in this peninsula, you were the only man who did not take advantage of me. Even if you didn't know who I was, you were willing to protect me. You were so nice to me while others were so evils. Once I was going to be sold to an old ert man by those scoundrel of beggars. I thought they were kind and honorable persons. But it was all fake. For a bit of money, they were ready to sell me to that... oww... If I did not run away, I would be that man play toy." Jaejoong said in a low and sad voice, acting a bit knowing that his Yunho wasn't going to be uptight for so long.

"Tell me who they are and I torture them for wanting to sell you as a mere object." Yunho gritted through his teeth. "Aish! I won't let anyone talk to you or even touch you. And those bastards will have to pay for what they planned to do to you."

"I know it! You can't be angry at me for so long." The young child boy said as he leaned his back against Yunho's back, with a satisfied smile painting on his lips.

Yunho heaved a sigh and curled the corners of his mouth into a smile. His wife was right. He could not be angry with him.

"I'm starving." He said with an angry tone while tending his hand to the other boy.

"Oh! Here!" Jaejoong nodded and put the bowl on his Yunho's hand with a smile.

The older boy brought the bowl to his lips as he glanced at his wife before sipping a few drops of the stew, turning his head away to the opposite direction as he avoided his wife's stare. Jaejoong laughed softly with his right hand before his mouth. Soon, he stood up and went to crouched down at Yunho's left side.

"Yunho?!" The latter continued to gulp the hot stew, ignoring Jaejoong who tried to attract his attention by tapping the pad of his finger on his shoulder. However, the young boy wasn't going to give up easily. "Now that you know I'm a boy, can we cuddle together when we sleep?" His question surprised Yunho as the young man choked with the meal. "Yunho? Are you alright?" Jaejoong rubbed his husband's back softly while the latter was coughing as he tried to compose himself