"My majesty, 'the one' is captured."

"Send him in."

A man was violently thrown onto the floor, in front of the emperor, in front of his enemy's judgement. The feline one had his black hair dampened, covering his dazed eyes almost completely, and he trembled every second as not being allowed to wear anything more than his own clothes. Enemy, even opposite weather. Surrounding him was people wrapped in coziness, big suit and layers of fur clothes. 

He was asked for his name. The answer was simple, "it does not matter".

He was asked for the plan. He was asked for the secrets. Hit. Threatened. Tortured. Blood coming out of the pale white skin underneath the thin layer of clothes.

Questions after questions, but he only answered, he was the king's lover.

/

"Aren't you scared?"

The prisoned man, who was hugging himself for more warmth in the breezing cell, finally lifted his head. 

"My majesty, why must you come here?"

"Oh, so you do know how to speak other words beside 'the king's lover'?" 

The young emperor just laughed, a victorious, yet not a despicable one. The man just watched with his normally calm, almost nonchalant, to the point of irritating people, eyes.

"You must insist that your king will rescue you, that's why you have been silent all this time."

He continued.

"Hope you don't die of being tortured before that."

The pale man just looked down with his unchanging eyes, but with a hint of something, that the emperor found out later, that it was acceptance.

/

"Why aren't you surprised?"

The emperor's brows knitted together.

"Why aren't you panicking, my dear?"

He finally got a gentle glance from the man.

"Why are you so patiently waiting for your lover, while all he's doing is leaving you here, for you to die slowly, with opened scars and nonstop spilled blood?"

The emperor looked at the man furiously, studying how his perfect smooth body had turned into a white canvas painted with red and black.

"Is your belief in love that strong?"

He waited, mimicking the man. He tried his endurance himself, yet nothing could be as unbreakable as the locked up man's.

The man in the cell just looked away, his head on his knees, with his arms hugging himself like always.

The atmosphere seemed to be filled with something new, like the first day it rained in the winter.

/

"Hey have you heard the story about that prisoner?"

"Yes, of course. That poor guy."

"Is this king insane? His lover has been captured for three months, and no letters were sent here, no alarm of army, no ambassador. Nothing! And people call him, what, the most genuine king of all time?"

/

"It's time we use the strongest method, dear."

The man looked the emperor's way, his hand still touching the bird flying there from outside.

"I think it's time we announced your execution to your country."

A shivering sigh, and he still held onto the little bird.

"He won't come."

"What do you say?"

"It doesn't matter."

"What? What do you mean?"

"No one will come."

"Why would you say that, dear? You're the love of your king's life."

"I don't matter. That's why.

No one will come.

No one will care.

No one will remember.

Because Taekwoon doesn't exist anymore.

Because Wonshik has Jaehwan now."

The man kept playing with the bird, with tears streaming down his hollow cheeks in silence.

He closed his eyes tightly for one second, for the blur to go away, then looked at the emperor.

"I never matter."

That, was the first time, the Han emperor knew, what a broken heart felt like.

The bird flew away, and Taekwoon tried his best to slowly lie down onto to cold hard ground without paining his body covered by wounds, and slept. 

Like nothing happened.

Like nothing mattered.

Like the way he always did.