He kissed her, and she let him. She could not bring herself to turn her face away and ask him to stop. She was enjoying the intimacy. She was enjoying the sparks that travelled through her body as he moved his lips against hers.

He stopped a minute later, pulling away just enough to look at her.

“I feel like I’ve lost all self-control,” Wonwoo said to her. “I’m a composed person, Yewon, but not when it comes to you.”

She felt like she herself had lost her self-control as well. If she could control herself, she would have pushed him away and yelled at him, telling him to never try anything like that again. But she couldn’t do that, because she enjoyed it, and also because she didn’t want to disappoint him.

How she wished he were the heir. He would make a better King and a better husband than Seungcheol. He was kinder, less irrational, more considerate.

He leaned in again and kissed her cheek before pulling back again.

“Yewon, please speak,” he told her when he saw how silent she became. “I want to know what you’re thinking. Do you hate me?”

“I could never hate you, Wonwoo,” she said, shaking her head.

“What are you thinking then?”

“I’m thinking about how I wish I didn’t have to feel guilty about this,” Yewon replied. “Because I like you so much, Wonwoo. I wish you were the heir, because I want to be married to you.”

She saw Wonwoo smile.

“Why are you smiling?”

“Finally,” he said. “Finally, I know you feel the same way about me.”

“You didn’t know?”

“You never told me.”

“I thought you knew.”

“I’m a man, Yewon. I only know what I hear. I can’t draw conclusions from the things you’ve indirectly told me. But now, you’ve said it, and that’s all that matters to me,” Wonwoo said, still smiling.

“How does you knowing this change things?”

“Well, now, I won’t be afraid of doing everything I can to have you,” he reached out for her hand.

“Let’s just stop,” she said quickly, pulling her hand away, “let’s just forget about everything and stop. Please.”

Wonwoo pulled back his hand, “one day, I’ll make you happy, Yewon. But I guess today is not the day.”

-

The rest of the day dragged by slowly. Yewon felt so guilty for what had happened with Wonwoo that she resolved not to speak to him again for fear it would encourage him. But that was easier said than done. Without having Wonwoo to talk to, it was so boring, and Yewon felt like she was going crazy because of it. The entire day she spent tearing splinters from the crates, playing with pieces of rice that had fallen from the sack, and banging her head against the wall. She even deliberately hurt herself with the splinters on the crates, because she would have much rather felt pain than feel nothing at all.

Truly, one does not know the power of boredom until they fully experience it like Yewon did: trapped in a small space for weeks with absolutely nothing to do but wait. It was like each second was an extra pound on her shoulders, drowning her quicker and quicker into a deep sea of despair and madness.

She truly did feel like going mad. She felt like she wanted to scream. She wanted to get out of that basement and back into the light. She wanted to see something other than the export crates and sacks, she wanted to do something other than sit around and play with her clothes, she wanted to talk to someone.

At one point, she couldn’t take it. She couldn’t avoid him anymore, and she didn’t want to. She started a conversation with him again, a random one about his favorite animal. At least she had something to distract her mind from all the mad thoughts running through it.

-

Yewon did not realize how much of a psychological affect being trapped for so long in a small, dark space would have. It seemed that both of them, at one point, had gone completely mad.

Ten days passed, and they both had nothing else to say to each other. They eventually started spewing nonsense, which they both subconsciously knew was nonsense but their minds simply could not exert the effort to prevent them from doing so. They were mentally exhausted, and so all the words inside their heads would just trickle out of their mouths, words that had no semblance of sense the other could make out. And even if there was a discernable meaning, both of them were much too tired to even begin to put the pieces together.

By the twelfth day, it was like they had truly lost their minds. They could not even talk anymore. Mentally exhausted, bored almost literally to death, malnourished and physically incapable of moving their muscles, they laid frozen on the cold floor silently awaiting someone else to relieve them.

The last few days were a blur to Yewon. She didn’t remember much besides being passed out and sleeping for hours without end. It was like her senses were completely turned off, and when she did turn them on, it was too painful and so she turned them off again. She was hungry and thirsty and in pain (her fingers were infected from all the splinters she had not treated properly), and so it didn’t make sense to let herself feel. She just slept and awaited whatever was to come first, someone finding her or death.

-

The next time she opened her eyes, she squinted and closed her eyes shut again. After spending so long in darkness, seeing light again was blinding.

Someone forced her tired body to sit up and put a cup of water to her lips, water which she gulped down ravenously for how thirsty she was. Her eyes were still closed though. When she was done, she still wanted more.

“I’ll bring some more,” said an unfamiliar, gruff voice of an older man.

“You’ll get used to the light,” she heard Wonwoo’s tired voice say from farther away when that man’s footsteps faded away. “It took me a while too.”

She took a moment to process where she was. Still unable to open her eyes, she instead resorted to using her other senses; hearing the ocean waves and feeling the swaying of the ship.

“They found us,” Wonwoo explained weakly. “The crew. Thank God they recognized you or else we’d both be killed by now.”

It took a couple of minutes for Yewon to get used to the light, and when she did, she still had to squint. But she saw that her fingers were bandaged and she was lying down on a mat on the deck of the ship, and Wonwoo was laying down in another mat a meter away from her. He was in an even worse condition than she was. Just one glance at him and she could see that the wound on his shoulder was infected. It looked so painful, she had to turn her head.

“What happened to you?”

“I forgot to clean it,” Wonwoo explained softly. His voice was scratchy and weak. He sounded sick, and another look at him told her that he was very sick. He had pale skin and faded lips; his mouth slightly open and his chest was heaving.

A man came with another cup of water, which Yewon swallowed down again. She was then handed a piece of bread, which she also ravenously consumed.

“Lucky for you, your highness, we found you. A couple more hours, your lover would have been dead for sure.”

… would have been dead. She winced. Those words hurt her so much. The thought of Wonwoo being dead hurt her so much.

After satisfying her thirst and hunger, she finally managed enough energy to get up. There were men around, eying the two of them curiously. Most of them looked cold and spiteful. One of them even spat at her from afar.

She could see from their eyes what they were thinking. She didn’t have the best reputation in Galacia with all the rumors about her going around, and she could tell that they thought she was trying to escape her duties and elope with Wonwoo.

She couldn’t stand the judgement in their eyes, and so she turned attention to the floor. She felt humiliated and degraded because of what she knew they were thinking. She tried to distract herself from their menacing, judgmental gazes by turning to him.

“Are you okay?” she asked him, gulping in all of the mortification she was feeling.

“I’m in a lot of pain,” Wonwoo admitted weakly.

“I can tell,” Yewon said sadly.

“We’re almost at Solen though,” Wonwoo said. “The captain said we’ll be there in two hours if the tides allow.”

“Finally,” she said, laying back down again, feeling a headache come along from all the light that was suddenly in her eyes.

“Everyone seems to think that I’m your lover,” Wonwoo noted, looking at her sympathetically. He seemed to know exactly what she was feeling.

“Yes. I have a bad reputation in Galacia,” Yewon explained with downcast eyes.

“It’s better that they believe that I’m your lover,” he told her with an encouraging smile. “Better than believing I’m the Solenese King’s bastard who was a hostage in Galacia that you helped to escape.”

 “That’s true, I guess,” she realized.

“So thank God for your reputation,” Wonwoo said with a weak smile. “It saved us the trouble of having to come up with a believable lie!”

She also smiled, suddenly not feeling so ashamed and regretful of what the men on the ship were thinking. She appreciated how Wonwoo, even when he was ill and in so much pain, would find a way to make her feel better.

-

When they arrived at the Solenese port, Wonwoo and a couple of other sick sailors were the first to get off, as their ailments required immediate attention.

However, it seemed like the captain had not been planning to let her off at Solen at all. When they arrived at port, he warned her against trying to leave.

“Your highness you have a duty to your country. You will stay in this ship, and you will come back to Galacia with us, as his majesty would have wanted. You will not set foot in this cursed country.”

Yewon found it amusing that the captain thought he could stop her. There was no way she would listen to a random captain after everything she went through on this journey, after those dreadful two weeks of tedium in that basement.

She made some of failed attempts at getting off despite the captain’s prohibitions, but failed. The sailors would not let her no matter how much she fought. And so, she went to the back of the ship, threw a barrel off and jumped after it.

She was surprisingly fearless as she did so. Having endured so much in the past weeks, jumping off a ship and swimming for a few meters seemed like a small feat compared to it all.

She held onto the barrel, using her legs to propel her to land. No one the ship seemed to notice, and so she was able to arrive at the coast without interruption. As she climbed up to get to the land, her legs, feet and hands were cut by some of the sharp edges on the jagged, rocky coast. She endured it until she finally made it onto land.

She collapsed on the ground, Solenese ground, out of breath and more tired than ever. But she smiled and laughed hysterically. She actually did it; she jumped off a ship and climbed up a coast after having gone insane spending two weeks in the basement of a ship. It was crazy but satisfying to know that she had been brave enough to do all of that.

Her hands and legs were filled with blood from the cuts at this point, and she was out of breath and she felt like she was about to faint. She still stood up and walked though, afraid that the people on the ship would realize she was gone and try to find her. She knew she was much too weak to fight them.

She trudged into the city, earning many curious glances from Solenese passer-bys. A wet, injured, dirty woman in tatters is bound to earn some curiosity.

She couldn’t go to the palace; they wouldn’t believe that she was princess of Galacia. She was so dirty, that she was practically unrecognizable even to the most familiar of guards. She did have one destination in mind through, the only place she could think to go to at such a time. She just wished she wouldn’t faint before she got there.

Her head felt dizzy. It was over; she could feel herself start lose consciousness. She wished someone would help her, but everyone just scowled at her, thinking she was a lowly beggar or e.

But as she stoppe in her tracks to catch her breath and pray she stays concious, someone did recognize her.

“Your highness, is that you?” asked a shocked voice.

A/N: I’m sorry if this chapter is boring lol. Next chapter will come on Thursday or maybe even before to make up for this boring chapter BYE :P

ANYWAYS YEWON'S IN SOLEN NOW, THAT MEANS SHE’S CLOSE TO CHEOL