Yewon took Yulhee into her room after the palace tour because Yulhee really wanted to see it.

“Wow! It’s really big!” Yulhee noted as she walked in. “It used to be a guest room for when important Kings and Queens visited. I’ve never been allowed to come in here before though. People never allow me to do a lot of things; it’s annoying. They think I’m not old enough, and I hate when people say that! You know, once my maid told me…” Yewon dozed off, no longer processing Yulhee’s ramblings.

Yewon sat down on one of the chairs as Yulhee told her stories and walked around the room. Yewon’s thoughts then wandered to the young man she met in the library. She wanted to see him again. Something about him was familiar; she felt like she had seen him before, but maybe she only felt that way because it was Jisoo all over again.

She hated to think she would have a hopeless crush on this guy while being married to the Prince of Solen. She felt that perhaps it would be better if she did not see him again.

“Oh my gosh! Princess Yewon!” Yulhee suddenly called out. “Come see this!”

Yulhee was at Yewon’s desk, inspecting something that was on it.

It was a note beside a little box. The note read: To my princess, from S, and there was a seal.

“Whose seal is this?” Yewon asked.

“The royal family’s! I didn’t think my brother would send you something like that. Maybe he doesn’t hate you after all…”

Yewon took the box and opened it curiously, and she was pleasantly stunned by what she found inside.

It was bread, Galacian sweet bread. It had been ages since she had last eaten it, and she had almost forgotten how it tasted.

“What is that? Bread?” Yulhee asked as Yewon took it out of the box and immediately bit into it. “Why would oppa send you bread?”

The taste brought back memories of home; of meals with Jihoon and her sisters. Of her parents, of Tati and of Don. Of the cold palace walls. Of the loose dresses. Of the all the hailing. Of the time her life was simple. She ate the entire piece, being filled with a pleasant nostalgia.

She would not deny, however, that this was not her Galacian bread. It tasted like someone completely different had baked it, but it still held the signature sweetness that triggered a wave of happy memories.

“You really like this bread, don’t you?” Yulhee asked as she watched Yewon eat it all.

“It’s Galacian bread,” Yewon told her when she swallowed the last of it.

“Oh. Maybe that’s why oppa sent it to you. He probably knows you miss it!”

It was confusing to think that Seungcheol had sent her Galacian bread. He wasn’t exactly very open to Galacian culture, and he didn’t exactly like her either. It didn’t make sense that he would send it to her.

Maybe it was his was of apologizing to her for his behavior during breakfast that morning? But it still made no sense to her that he would apologize: “I don’t think it’s Seungcheol,” she voiced.

“It has to be. It has the royal seal, and only the royal family has access to that,” Yulhee said with a shrug. “Plus, it says ‘my princess.’ No one here could call you that but him.”

Yewon decided to confront him about it next time she saw him. If it really was him who sent it to her, then he had more compassion that she had initially imagined. If he really did think to have Galacian bread made for her, she wanted to thank him for it.

-

Seungcheol did not visit her bed that night, although she had prepared for him. He also did not go to breakfast the following morning, and so she could not ask him why he did not come.

But she did come back to her room to see another box of Galacian bread with the same exact note: To my princess, from S, with the royal seal.

And it was not just the two days. Every day, that exact same box with the exact same note was sent to her.

-

Yewon absolutely hated Sungyeon. She was a witch. A terribly mean person.

Being dressed and undressed by that hag made gave Yewon so much distress and anxiety. She knew it would hurt, and that Sungyeon was deliberately making it hurt.

Baths were the worst. The scorching hot water and the sharp bristles that made her bleed whenever Sungyeon used them.

At one point, Yewon could not take it. She threatened her maid for the first time: “if you hurt me one more time, I’m not going to let you touch me again. I’ll tell the royal family if I have to…”

“With all due respect, your highness, I’ve been dressing queens and princesses for ten years, with no complaint from anyone. If they hear a complaint from you, they’ll think the problem is from you, not me.” Sungyeon sneered.

Two days later, Yewon had enough. The bristles of the brush scraped against the already bruised skin on her back and hurt her so much, she let out a cry of pain. She immediately snatched the brush from Sungyeon’s hands.

“That’s enough!” Yewon yelled out to the maid, trying to hold back the tears that came from the wave of excruciating pain through her body. “No more! I don’t want you to touch me anymore.”

“Your highness…”

“Don’t speak,” she yelled at her.

Sungyeon looked startled by the sudden outburst. Yewon winced from the pain of the bruises on her back, before she washed herself down alone.

“Your highness, let me…”

“I said don’t speak!” Yewon yelled at her. It was gratifying to finally feel in control, to finally startle Sungyeon, to finally scare her.

Yewon did not finish her bath. She washed herself down from the soap (and the blood that started coming down her back) and stepped out of the bath herself.

She stood in front of a mirror and looked at her back. The scratches on her back were all too apparent and were bleeding lightly. It hurt a lot.

“I will dress you now…” Sungyeon began to speak, only to be silenced by Yewon again.

“You stay away from me,” Yewon demanded. She walked up to her closet and took out one of her Galacian dresses, a dress that did not need another pair of hands to help tighten it, and a dress that would not be so tight over her bruised back.

“Your highness, you cannot wear that in Solen!” Sungyeon yelled.

“I said don’t speak!” Yewon snarled, and she slipped the loose dress over her head and walked out of her room.

“Where are you going?” Sungyeon asked.

“To tell the royal family that I will not let you touch me again,” Yewon told her as she dashed out of her room towards the courts where she knew the King or Queen or Seungcheol would be. She could no longer stand that hag of a maid, and she was determined to kick her out of service.

Sungyeon scurried behind her, telling her to calm down and starting to apologize. Sungyeon, for the first time ever, seemed scared of Yewon.

Yewon ignored her and continued forward. She noted that people were looking at her as she darted through the halls, probably because of her foreign dress.

She found Seungcheol in the court with Jeonghan and Soonyoung. She entered, Sungyeon standing behind her and bowing respectfully.

“What are you wearing?” was the first thing that Seungcheol said to her. He had a look of disgust on his face as he scanned her in her traditional dress.

“I don’t want that maid anymore,” Yewon told him, pointing at Sungyeon, whose head was down respectfully. “Please dismiss her from my service immediately.”

“Listen princess, in Solen, we have maids who dress princesses. You will not be exempt from this…”

“Then find a replacement. I don’t want that witch around me anymore.”

Seungcheol frowned at her, “why? What did she do?” Seungcheol asked.

“She hurts me…”

“Your highness,” Sungyeon interrupted, “if I may speak, I never intended to hurt her. I accidentally used too much force when bathing her today, but I promise I never meant to hurt her. Please have mercy on me,” Sungyeon began to cry.

“Liar!” Yewon turned to Sungyeon. “Stop it with your fake tears! Stop it!” Sungyeon continued to cry though.

“Princess Yewon,” Seungcheol yelled.

“She’s a liar!” Yewon told Seungcheol, holding back her own tears so that she did not appear weak and pathetic. “She made me bleed…”

“It was an accident…”

“I was not an accident!” Yewon yelled. “Since the very beginning, this hag has hated me,” Yewon told Seungcheol. “She’s been bathing me in scorching water, making me bleed,  pulling my hair out of my scalp, tightening my dresses to the point I can’t breathe, and being all round cold to me…”

“But your highness I…”

“It’s okay Lady Sungyeon, I understand the problem here. You don’t need to worry,” Seungcheol said sympathetically to the maid. He had never spoken to Yewon with the sympathy she saw in him towards Sungyeon, and it was maddening.

“What?!” Yewon yelled.

“Princess Yewon,” he told her sternly with a frown on his face. “It is our custom to bathe with hot water, as is our custom for women to tighten their dresses. Lady Sungyeon has done to you what is custom in Solen, but you are not used to it…”

“That’s not true!” Yewon snapped angrily at Seungcheol. She knew that the amount of pain Sungyeon inflicted on her was not “custom.” She knew that Sungyeon was deliberately hurting her. She had no way to prove it, but it was so evident. “She is a nasty, cold witch and I don’t want her around me!”

“Enough!” Seungcheol yelled, “in Solen, we also treat our servants with respect!”

Yewon could not believe that this was happening. Sungyeon was appearing like the innocent and oppressed maid, whereas Yewon was appearing like the selfish, bratty, cruel princess who abuses and insults her servants.

“I don’t care what you believe about me,” Yewon managed to say as the anger welled up inside her, “but I do not want Sungyeon to serve me again. That is final.”

“And you have no choice in that, princess,” Seungcheol spat angrily. “Lady Sungyeon has been serving us for ten years now, and she has been praised by everyone. She is a wonderful maid who has been a part of this palace longer than you have. I will not make her lose her job because of a spoiled princess who refuses to adapt!”

“You’re so cruel, you know,” Yewon managed to say to Seungcheol, gulping in her tears.

“Look what you’ve done to your maid,” Seungcheol pointed at Sungyeon, who was crying quite a lot. “I’m not the cruel one.”

“I hate you,” Yewon hissed at him as she turned her back to him and walked out of the court. She would not have walked out had she not felt like she was going to cry, and she did not want to cry in front of him. She did not want to appear weak and pathetic, and she would not give him the satisfaction of watching her cry.

But she did cry as she walked aimlessly through the halls, just wanting to avoid people’s eyes. She wished she were back in her room, but that was too far away, and she need to be alone immediately.

She found the place to do that in the library, which was nearby and relatively empty. She went inside and found an empty area between the shelves, and she let herself cry.

She took a seat against the wall and cringed in pain as she remembered the bruises on her back from Sungyeon’s bathing. The pain served to remind her of just how messed up her situation was. She was being physically hurt and no one was going to stop it. She bore the pain and let her back burn as she rested it against the wall.

Her hopes of being alone as she cried were not fulfilled though, for he was there: the young man with the soft eyes. He had seen her come in, and watched her settle in between the shelves. He heard her cry, and he walked up to her and offered her a handkerchief.