Part 4 : Yoo Seolhwa

It’s halfway through the night and I still can’t sleep.

In the dark, with the moonlight peeking in through the curtained windows, I can make out the colors of the dress that I’d worn earlier in the evening. The gold and red stand out especially in the faint light.

I’ll send people to your family tomorrow, Chanyeol had promised when he walked me back to my room. And then I’ll show you where they are tomorrow. Or Go Eun can walk you there, if you want.

No thanks to Go Eun. I’ve had enough of Go Eun to last me for the week, or maybe even a month. The image of her arching her eyebrows and waving her fingers as a goodbye has probably been permanently etched into my mind, and it’s not a pretty picture either.

The light catches off the gold thread, and I turn in my blankets again, still trying to process what he had told me at dinner. If I were staying — if even my family was going to be there — what were we? Friends? The color flashes again, this time the red. The king wouldn’t give a simple friend a dress that had his royal colors, would he? He wouldn’t kiss a friend. But then what did that make us? Lovers? It didn’t seem right, either.

I try to think back at dinner. Now that I know for sure that he’s not going to kill me (it’s a relief to have him actually affirm it, and I can put my heart at rest and completely expel Park Jinhwan’s words from my head completely)... what do I even do after that? What do I do if I stay at the palace? He knows that I have no idea how to cure him, if it’s even curable. What am I really doing here?

Do you like the dress? I can hear his words, too clear and too loud, echoing inside my head.

I pinch myself hard.

Do you like the colors? I roll to the right. By now, I’m pretty sure that I’m tangled in my blankets and I have no idea how I’m even supposed to get out of it.

“I don’t,” I say at the ceiling. “I don’t, I don’t, I don’t.”

It suits you.

There’s a painful thud as I fall off the bed. My arm lands with a jolt, sending a wave of shock up to my shoulder, though I’m too wrapped up in the blankets to support myself properly. How I’ve managed to fall off such a huge bed is a question in itself.

For a long, long time I lie on the floor and stare up at the ceiling until the exhaustion begins to catch up to me fully.

I fall asleep on the floor.

***

I wake up on the floor too, and it’s actually the sound of someone knocking on my door that jolts me up.

My neck aches from the position I ended up falling asleep in — the floor definitely wouldn’t be my first choice of a resting place in the future — and my head is still pounding. The first thing (or person) that comes to my mind is Chanyeol but I try to shake the thought away as quickly as possible. I’m not sure what time it is, but there’s sunlight that’s already flooding through the windows and I suppose it’s normally when Go Eun comes in.

It’s a struggle in itself to untangle myself from the blankets. “Just come in,” I yell at her.

The door opens an inch. “Are you sure?”

It’s definitely not Go Eun, and I shriek and wrap the blankets around me again.

Chanyeol pokes a head in, though he has his eyes are closed. “I suppose that’s a no?”

“No!”

He cracks one eye open, looking somewhat surprised that I’m on the floor, then shuts it again. “Okay.” The door closes behind him.

I let out a huge sigh of relief and then roll out of blankets, face red. It’s definitely not a way I’d like to start the morning — dying out of embarrassment isn’t my first choice either — and I stand in front of the mirror for a good thirty seconds trying to compose myself and make sure my face isn’t red. Then, flipping through the wardrobe, I look for the simplest dress I can find.

It’s five minutes later when I open the door, and part of me wonders if Chanyeol already left.

He’s still there.

“Good morning?” It comes out as a question.

He scans me. “What were you doing on the floor?”

“I fell off.”

Chanyeol raised a dubious eyebrow at that, but thankfully, didn’t question anymore. He made his way down the hallway at a brisk pace and I trailed after him. “I think your family should be getting here sometime soon. I figured it would be better if you went to greet them because it’s probably a huge shock.”

I glanced up at him. It was something I’d gotten used to by now — having to look up to actually meet his eyes. The height difference was probably ridiculously huge, but it was somehow nice standing next to someone so tall. There wasn’t the feeling of insignificance that would normally accompany it, but more… comfort. “You’ve already sent people to bring them?”

“The earlier the better, right?”

His eyes are genuine, and it’s hard to believe that exactly thirty days ago I’d been dragged into the throne room and been accused of stealing. It’s hard to believe that the person next to me is the same one behind the mask that I was utterly terrified of.

“You know,” I say, though the words catch in my throat.

He looks at me. “Yes?”

I shuffle my toes on the carpet. “Thank you.”

“What for?”

“You know.” I keep on gaze directed at the floor in front of us, the wall, anything but his eyes. “You’ve already helped my family so much even though I initially was here to steal from you and I didn’t really treat you properly either, yet… and now…”

He his head, almost as if telling me to go on. I remember what Chanyeol constantly reminded me of meeting his eyes and hesitantly, I look up again. “I used to believe what the villagers said about you though I never really bothered to care about it and I can’t believe they were so wrong about it and I actually—”

Chanyeol laughs this time and I break off. “You know, rumours don’t just stem from nothing.”

“But it’s nothing like…” The sudden memory of him fighting the five men comes to mind and I trail off. He’d been ruthless then. Terrifying. But that wasn’t him, and besides, it had been out of self protection. The villagers didn’t know he was scared of blood. They didn’t see the way he stared out at the sunlight when he thought no one was looking. They didn't really know him. “That’s not the same as actually believing the rumors.”

“You’re not the only one who has someone to thank.” He actually stops walking then, and turns around so he’s directly facing me. I mirror his movements so we’re standing face to face, though every part of me is telling me to turn away. I can feel my face heating up. “I really was thinking about what you said about past lives," he continues easily, and I blink in surprise and try to compose myself.

“I’ve always found it such an upsetting thought. To think that what happens in this life has nothing to do with you but what happened in a time you had no control of — it’s a helpless feeling, too. To know that no matter how hard you want to change and take the reigns of your own life but be unable to make it better is just… unfair, isn’t it? I figured that I’d spend the rest of my life terrified of blood, unable to go out into the sunlight and stuck ruling a kingdom where my subjects are scared of me and think that I’m some sort of monster—”

I have no idea what to say, but I manage at that point to muster something along the lines of “you’re not,” though Chanyeol continues on.

“—but thinking back now, that sounds even more pathetic than it felt back then.”

For a long, long time, neither of us move nor speak and I stare up at him, tracing the outline of his face from his forehead to his jaw. He doesn’t comment on anything, and then he leans forward.

Part of me is tempted to lean forward, and the other half screams at me to lean backwards. Chanyeol smiles slightly. “Don’t call me Your Majesty this time,” he says, face less than inches from mine.

The word what is barely out of my mouth when he stops me and the couple of inches that I thought too close become nonexistent.

Chanyeol’s not completely still like the last time, and surprisingly, neither am I. It’s hard to think that the last time he kissed me was a day ago, because somehow, a lot of things feel very different since then.

I’m on my tiptoes, he’s leaning downwards, but somehow, the position isn’t uncomfortable. There’s the gentle grip of one of his hands on my back, supporting me, the other feather-light on my chin and tilting my head upwards.

It’s only when he pulls away when I realize that I’m absolutely breathless.

His pupils are dilated when he meets my gaze again, both of us standing in the middle of the empty corridor. It felt as if the only audible sound was my own heavy breathing and the too-loud beating of my heart.

I’m at a loss for words for way too long, and finally, when he straightens, I manage to joke weakly, “Your Majesty.”

He laughs.

***

Yeonhwa yells my name the moment she sees me, and I cringe, about to tell her to pipe down in the palace. She tackles me in a hug, surprising strong for someone her size and I can’t even reprimand her for anything because I do miss her.

“Where’s mom?” I ask when I finally manage to peel her arms from my waist. “You took good care of her when I was gone, right?”

She nods enthusiastically, then her expression morphs into confusion when she looks down at me. “Your clothing is really fancy,” she says. “Where did you get a dress like that?”

“Seolhwa,” someone else says, and I look past Yeonhwa’s head to see my mother.

Her steps are slow, but it’s no surprise. In fact, it’s odd to see her standing and actually walking. She’s rarely left the bed the past couple of months — before, she used to do the chores she had the energy to do — but her state had seemed to rapidly deteriorate. Now, she looks a lot healthier (still tired, still obviously sick), and it’s thanks to the palace physicians. And maybe even Chanyeol.

She stops before me, eyes scanning her surroundings — the palace guards, the palace walls, the dress I’m wearing. “What’s happening? What happened?”

Yeonhwa tugs on my dress and I brush her hand away. “Wait,” I tell her, but she tugs it more insistently.

“Isn’t that the person you brought home?”

I whirl around. I’d completely forgotten about Chanyeol being in the room also — granted, he’d hung back at the edges when I saw my mother and sister — but Yeonhwa is  perceptive and she definitely remembers his face from the last time she’d seen him.

My mother’s gaze travels to the direction she’s pointing at, and for a moment, she narrows her eyes at him as if trying to figure out who he is. I watch as the recognition passes through her face, eyes widening, and behind me, I hear Chanyeol’s boots clicking on the floor as he makes his way towards us.

“Your Majesty,” she starts, beginning to bend down into a bow (in the corner of my eyes, I see Yeonhwa watching in confusion — she obviously hasn’t connected the dots yet). Chanyeol reaches us then.

“It’s fine,” he reassures quickly, wrapping both hands around my mother’s arms and pulling her upwards gently. “There’s no need. I’m Seolhwa’s—”

“I saw him when she came to visit!” Yeonhwa interrupts, though she gets hushed quickly.

Chanyeol glances at me awkwardly, and for a moment, he looks like he’s internally panicking. And then he puts on another smile and looks at my mother. “I did accompany your daughter home once.” He eyes me again, and this time, I can tell that he’s actually unsure of what to do. “If you’d like, I can take you to the room and I suppose you’d like a catching up with Seolhwa?”

***

“Your sister is cute,” Go Eun tells me.

I’m lying on my bed, facing the ceiling and trying to swallow everything that’s happened today. Before, it was hard to even picture my mother ever getting out of bed again. I was so used to seeing her lying there, with the blankets tucked to her chin, sweat beading her forehead and face scrunched in obvious pain. Yeonhwa would pull on my skirts in the beginning, asking me when she’d get up. It was hard to explain to her about it — I really couldn’t. Take care of her and she’ll get up and play with you when she’s less tired, okay? That sentence had worked for a couple of days, though I was pretty sure by some point in time, even a seven-year-old stopped believing my words.

“She’s really loud sometimes,” I reply.

I really don’t know what she’s doing in my room — initially she said she was there to clean, but apart from folding a couple pieces of clothing (and adjusting the blankets on my bed — it wasn’t that messy, but according to Go Eun, it wasn’t good enough), she hasn’t done much. Now she’s sitting on one of the chairs near the washstand and mirror. “She kept on asking me about the king.”

Blinking, I sit up. “What about him?”

“Nothing important.”

I am about to lie back down when she continues.
 

“She wants to know if you’re going to marry him.”

Go Eun waits patiently for me to stop coughing. I can hear her getting off from her chair and making her way towards me, and I shriek