Prince Lee

Taekwoon prides himself as someone who was great with history. A top scorer in the History department of Korea University with a specialisation in Korean history, Taekwoon likes to believe that he knows almost every nook and cranny Korea’s history had to offer.

Which was why it came as such a huge surprise when Prince Lee Hongbin from Joseon Dynasty showed up in his kitchen and he did not have the slightest clue about the royalty currently prodding at the various machines around his humble kitchen.

-

It was Monday morning yet again and Taekwoon couldn’t have been more thankful for that fact that his classes only started past noon – something that Hakyeon had whined indignantly about once he realised his Mondays started at eight in the morning. Nevertheless, Taekwoon was up and about by nine, getting ready to start on yet another heavy research project into the hidden depths of Korean history for fun. Well, it wasn’t completely for fun, but the deadline for the paper was a good two months away and any sane student would have put that off and procrastinated on the paper until at least a month before submission. Taekwoon had just come out of the shower and was about to head to the kitchen for his morning coffee when a loud crash sped up his pace from a zombie stagger to a bunny rabbit sprint.

Right there, in the middle of his kitchen table was a handsome, pale-skinned, scrawny teen dressed in Joseon garb sprawled on his kitchen table. The boy couldn’t have been a day past seventeen and he was currently nursing a nasty-looking bruise forming on his arm.

“Yah! Who are you?” Taekwoon demanded, all want for coffee gone at the sight of the boy.

“Excuse me, you peasant. You are speaking to Prince Lee Hongbin of the royal family. How DARE you speak this informally?” The boy, Prince Lee Hongbin apparently demanded in such olden Korean that it took Taekwoon a good minute or two to decipher.

“Prince Hongbin?” Taekwoon repeated. “There’s no such prince. I’ll know for sure.” He continued haughtily.

“Who are you to tell me that I do not exist, huh?” The prince fought back, oblivious to the fact that he was no longer in his own time.  

“Jung Taekwoon. Top scorer in the history department of Korea University with a specialisation in Korean history. I’ve read nearly every book on every dynasty and have watched every documentary ever filmed about the different dynasties of Korea,” Taekwoon retorted, proudly listing his achievements.

“Wait. University? What is a university?” Hongbin asked slowly sitting up and looking around, realising that he was no longer running from an attacker in the palace that he has grown used to living in. “Good heavens. Where am I?” He sprung off the table, hands groping the kitchen wallpaper Taekwoon had put up with Hakyeon a few months prior.

“You… You aren’t kidding. Are you?” Taekwoon mumbled after a good ten minutes of watching Hongbin poke and prod and every appliance in his kitchen. Suddenly the scenario he was faced with seemed a lot less like a prank – it had become like some drama; some crazy drama with time-travelling princes and unfortunate college students that had to explain all the advances in technology humanity has been blessed with over the past few centuries.

When Hongbin shrieked at the beeping the microwave he had accidentally started before promptly adopting a taekwondo pose, eyes squinted as if waited for any sudden movements from the machine, Taekwoon just knew it was going to be an exciting Monday indeed. Ah great. What are the odds? A Korean history student having to deal with a member of the royal family that wasn’t recorded in any of the history books he had pored through. After a brief moment of debating whether to miss his Monday lecture, Taekwoon sat Hongbin down on his couch to find out more about the prince.

“Firstly. How on earth did you get here? What happened?” Taekwoon demanded. Hongbin was still looking at everything around him with wide-eyed wonder. From the faux-leather couch to the pale blue wall paper to the ceiling fan.

“I… I was running from… From my attacker. He chased me to this corner of the palace and I found a small trap door. But when I entered, I lost my footing and the next thing I know, I am at your… your… dining table,” Hongbin explained, getting up to fiddle with some of the switches, flinching when the switch clicked to turn some lights on. “Where… Where am I? What is all this? Why is there that… that thing on top that spins? Why does your abode look so different from mine? You even speak differently. Am I still in Korea?”

“What year is it for you?” Taekwoon asked, taking a good look at Hongbin’s hanbok. Its thread work and embroidery clearly showed Hongbin’s status – common folk would not be able to afford the silk, nor the skill required for such intricate embroidery that was used in his hanbok.

“It is year 1888, the fifth month and twenty-fourth day,”

“It’s 2017,” Taekwoon deadpanned.

“Twenty- what?!” Hongbin shrieked for the second time that day. “How did I end up so far ahead in time? All I wanted was not be killed…” Hongbin murmured sadly, finally halting his explorations around Taekwoon’s home.

“Why was someone trying to kill you?” This would be something interesting for the history books. How had none of them ever mentioned such an escapade?

“Correct,” Hongbin abruptly avoided the main point of the question.

“Why?” Taekwoon prompted, moving to turn on his laptop for a quick Google search. This however, only served to distract Hongbin as he scooted closer to Taekwoon to examine the device in his lap. “I can’t seem to find any search results for Prince Lee Hongbin,” Taekwoon commented, swatting Hongbin’s hands away from his screen and keyboard. “All I get is this small section in this obscure website about Lee Hongbin and Lee Jeongtaek.”

“Father! That is the name my father goes by!” Hongbin perked up, happy to finally hear something familiar.

“It says here that Lee Jeongtaek was sentenced to death for seducing and sleeping with Queen Min. The couple bore a son, Lee Hongbin, who was ordered to be killed. Nothing is recorded of him after his birth,” Taekwoon dictated. So this is why Taekwoon knew nothing about a Prince Lee Hongbin – he was supposed to be dead. When he looked up to meet Hongbin’s eyes, the prince harboured an unreadable expression as he fiddled with the end of his hanbok sleeves, absentmindedly picking apart the embroidery at the edges.

“Hongbin?” Taekwoon enquired. “You alright there?” Hongbin continued sitting eerily still, eyes still carrying that unreadable expression. There were so many things going through his mind; so much he wanted to say and express, yet nothing was coming to the surface.

Maybe I hit a soft spot, Taekwoon thought, moving to just a little to give Hongbin more space to mull over what had just happened. Meanwhile, Taekwoon decided to dig a little deeper into this hidden corner of Korea’s history that no historian has ever deemed significant enough to want to study in depth. There was nothing much to study about the ruling emperor, Emperor Gojung, at that time since he wasn’t related to Hongbin in anyway apart from essentially being Hongbin’s step-father. Since the records of Lee Jeongtaek ceased after that very brief mention of his affair with the Empress, Taekwoon decided that the only person he could dig deeper into was the Empress herself.

After about an hour of research, Taekwoon found out that Hongbin’s mother, Queen Min, was an orphan whose name was never recorded nor remembered. She had been chosen by the king presumably because she had no family that could ever threaten the monarchy. Unlike most of the people in her time, Queen Min was an intelligent lady who read widely on various topics that made her many times more knowledgeable than the people of her time. She was also a strong-willed and independent lady and these aspects had caused her father-in-law to see her as a kind of threat especially since her husband mostly yielded to her. Queen Min was really something, Taekwoon mused, keeping a small file of notes on her – it was likely something he would be able to use for his paper. When he glanced over at Hongbin again, the prince had not moved from his spot. Instead, the embroidery he had been picking on had unravelled completely and he was now fiddling with the golden thread in his hands.

“Hey, hey, Hongbin, hey,” Taekwoon called, gently prying the thread from Hongbin’s hands. “You alright there dude?”

“What is a du- Pardon, I am alright,” Hongbin seemed to have snapped out of some sort of trance when he answered.

“What happened?”

“It is nothing. Do not concern yourself…” Hongbin trailed off, “well, I shall not call you Peasant since you are offering me your kind assistance. How may I address you?”

“Taekwoon’s fine. I’m just Jung Taekwoon.”

“Taekwoon. I am fine Taekwoon,” Hongbin forced a thin smile. He definitely wasn’t fine.

“Look, I know you’re uncomfortable here. Do you… Perhaps want to go to Gyeongbok Palace? Would that make you feel better?” Taekwoon asked, already moving to search for his hanbok that he only wore during traditional ceremonies. He knew getting Hongbin to change out into modern day clothes would be much more challenging and time consuming than just him changing into his hanbok. Even though it would be weird, he hoped that the people on the subway would just assume that he and Hongbin were two friends visiting the Palace and that they didn’t want to pay the entrance fee into the deeper quarters of the place.

“Gyeongbok Palace?” Hongbin piped up. “It still exists in your time?”

“Of course it does,” Taekwoon smiled, glad that Hongbin was started to act more human and less like a stone statue. “It’s a national treasure now. You have no idea how much goes into maintaining the Palace.”

“Then what are we waiting for? Take me home, Taekwoon!” Hongbin exclaimed happily, rushing to follow Taekwoon to his room. “What are you looking so intently for?”

“My hanbok.”

“Ah, right. You ought to dress your best when visiting the home of the royal family,” Hongbin mused thoughtfully. “That hanbok you have is really something though. Just plain purple silk? Where is the embroidery? If you can afford all those strange contraptions I am sure you would be able to afford a much better hanbok than this,” Hongbin grimaced.

Oh boy was Hongbin in for the time of his life when he realises that the Palace isn’t as sacred as it is in the past.

-

“Good heavens!” Hongbin cried as he saw people of all ages and nationalities happily walking over the pathway at the front of the Palace. “How dare these people step on the King’s walkway?” Just as Hongbin was about to lash out at the people walking on the King’s walkway, Taekwoon pulled him back by the collar of his hanbok.

“This is 2017, Hongbin. The Joseon dynasty has long ended and no one cares about the King’s walkway or Queen’s walkway. Anyone walks wherever they want,” Taekwoon whispered harshly. “Now, please behave. I know this is your home but this is my time so just follow my lead.” Taekwoon continued as he led them both to the entrance of the Palace.

Along the way, the pair was stopped by a warm elderly couple. The wife, who was dressed in a sweet pink hanbok had wanted a picture with Taekwoon. “My prince,” she had joked. Taekwoon chuckled internally at the irony – there he was being called a prince when an actual prince stood right next to him.

However, that distraction had caused him to lose sight of Hongbin. After the couple had thanked him multiple times and offered a few bows that had Taekwoon flustered and bowing back even lower, he straightened up only to realise that Hongbin was no longer just standing a little to the side of the small group.

“Hongbin? Yah! Lee Hongbin!” Taekwoon called exasperatedly. This cannot be happening. Looking around, Taekwoon mentally slapped himself when he couldn’t spot the royalty. How hard would it be to find a male teen in a hanbok? It’s mostly girls that indulge in such dress-up to visit the palaces nowadays anyway. So where on earth was the boy?

Oh no.

Yup, Taekwoon found the prince alright. But somehow, he wished he hadn’t. Hongbin was currently seizing the arm of a terrified teen about his age who was dressed in a blue royal guard costume that the staff had rented out for visitors to don.

“Are you perhaps like me too? Did you somehow find yourself in 2017 and not 1888? Who is your charge? It would not be the King himself, would it?” Taekwoon could hear Hongbin’s incessant questions as he neared the pair.

“Sorry,” Taekwoon apologised, prying Hongbin away from the boy. “He’s a little too into this prince-y roleplay thing. We made a bet to see who can keep in character the best and well, let’s just say that he really wants to win this,” Taekwoon offered, his glare shutting any refute Hongbin had on the tip of his tongue. The poor teen could only nod awkwardly as he shuffled away to find his other friends dressed in similar garbs of varying colours.

Dragging Hongbin through the Geumjeong Gate, he let Hongbin lead him through the palace grounds.

“Find this familiar?” Taekwoon asked, noting Hongbin’s wide-eyed gaze around the area. It showed recognition but also a hint of confusion and was that a bittersweet smile playing on Hongbin’s lips?

“It is all so familiar, but also so strange,” Hongbin replied, eyes still scanning about the area. “Everything looks so worn out, and everything is boarded up. I cannot even enter Mother’s quarters!” Hongbin cried, earning a few weird looks from the visitors that Taekwoon had to wave away with an awkward smile.

“Hey, I really can’t help you if you don’t tell me anything about your past and how you got here,” Taekwoon whispered, a lot more confused that he wanted to be. Hongbin seemed to consider his proposition for a little while before a new emotion flashed in his eyes and he proceeded to lead Taekwoon through the palace with obvious familiarity.

The place Taekwoon ended up at was definitely somewhere not often visited. It was far off hidden in some corner that took lots of turns to get to and the only time anyone showed up was when a visitor had strayed a little too far off the visitor’s path and was now lost. Hongbin, of course, happily offered his assistance to guide them back to where they intended to go.

“So…” Taekwoon broke the comfortable silence, kicking at the sand beneath his feet. “This is really far off from the main path, huh.”

“Yeah, this place used to be a small garden. It was my favourite hideout. And you are sitting in my favourite chair,” Hongbin replied, bittersweet smile still playing on his lips.

“So…” Taekwoon tried again when another silence ensued. Man, he was not meant to break silences. His personality just didn’t agree. “Mind telling me more about yourself? I mean, I really do want to help you get back to your time… If… If that’s what you want.”

It took a while, but Hongbin finally opened up to everything that he had been keeping to himself up till then. Turns out, Hongbin was indeed royalty by blood, but he would never be considered in line for the throne. You see, Hongbin was the illegitimate child of Queen Min and Lee Jeongtaek. His father was killed long before he was born and Hongbin was meant to be killed at birth as well. However, Queen Min, being the intelligent lady she was, made a pact with the servants who helped her deliver Hongbin – they were to keep his existence hidden and present instead the mangled remains of any animal they could find that looked remotely similar to a new-born. Knowing her weak-willed husband, he wouldn’t dare to say anything even if he had suspected anything since Queen Min knew how to worm her way out of any situation. As Hongbin grew up, he was always hidden from the royal family and those closest to them; the palace was big enough to have some spots that was left untouched by the guards and the family. His mother raised him telling him that he was a prince. She told him stories of his father, a brave man that had captured the Queen’s heart. However, just like star-crossed lovers, the Queen was already wed and there was nothing that could break her bond with the King. They had to settle for clandestine meetings where Jeongtaek would slip into the Queen’s quarters to spend the nights. Soon, they got caught up in their lie when the Queen’s belly started swelling despite not spending any nights at the King’s quarters since he was too busy attending to the kingdom’s matters and to his other concubines. The father was quickly apprehended and executed, and the child ordered to be killed once born.

“Mother managed to hide me away until recently. She used to tell anyone who saw me that I was a visiting relative or the child of one of the King’s concubines that she was playing with since she had yet to bear a child for the King. But when one of the other princes saw me and realised the resemblance I had to Mother, my existence as the surviving child from Queen Min and Lee Jeongtaek’s affair was made known. But King Gojung did not want to upset his wife so instead of having me publicly executed, he sent for his soldiers who would stalk and try to attack me every time I was away from Mother. I was usually able to get back to Mother fast enough but that day… That day that led me to end up here, I did not know where Mother was and I had to run for my life. Which led me to you,” Hongbin finished, looking up at Taekwoon with glassy eyes.

“Is this why there’re no records of your existence? Because you’re not meant to be alive in the first place?” Taekwoon asked, moving to pull Hongbin into a hug.

“That is correct,” Hongbin nodded into Taekwoon’s shoulder. “Nothing was to be known about me. I am still royalty though, I am the firstborn son of Queen Min and I should have had my rightful chance on the throne if not for the fact that my father is no one but a common peasant.”

“What happens when you go back? Will you be killed?”

“Most likely. They already found me once. I do not know how long I will be able to keep up the cat and mouse game before they eventually catch me and slaughter me in cold blood.”

“And you still want to go back?” Taekwoon unintentionally raised his voice at the morbid thoughts that invaded his mind after Hongbin’s explanation of his current plight if he went back to the past.

“I never said such thing,” Hongbin replied, catching Taekwoon off-guard. Hongbin wanted to stay? “I mean, I do want to go back, but I do not think I would be able to achieve much before I am killed off again. I will just be that one sentence you read about a few hours prior. If I stayed here with you, I will be able to live. I will just have to get used to your bizarre way of living,” Hongbin continued with a smile upon seeing the incredulous look Taekwoon sported. “That is, if you would let me stay.”

“I never said you couldn’t.”

-

Years have passed since that fateful day and Jung Taekwoon was now known as Professor Jung, the world-renowned Korean historian who was awarded a medal for discovering the hidden past of Queen Min. Despite countless interviews that prompted Professor Jung on how he was led to dig up the past of Queen Min or the explore greater into the lesser-known parts of Gyeongbok Palace that historians had missed out on through the decades, Professor Jung has always been tight-lipped, giving only cryptic answers.

His only ever solid answer was that inspiration had literally fallen in front of him one morning back when he was in college that sparked his boundless interest in the life of Queen Min and the layout of the Palace. His husband, who he has managed to keep in the dark from the media, was always speculated to be the cause of the professor’s extensive research into his field. But nothing concrete could ever been said about the man since nothing was known apart from the man’s surname being Lee.

Not even Hakyeon knew anything about it. The furthest he knew was that Hongbin was the man that had pestered his husband, Sanghyuk, about being an actual palace guard many years back when the then-high schooler had taken a trip down to the palace with his classmates.

“Yeah, what a coincidence,” Taekwoon and Hongbin had chuckled stiffly when Sanghyuk shared that story over dinner the first night that he was introduced as Hakyeon’s boyfriend to the couple.

It was the couple’s little secret and they planned to keep it that way – no one needed to know about a runaway prince that had somehow warped the time-space continuum to end up over a hundred years into the future; they’ve already dealt with so much drama in their life.

A letter to Aleksa:

Hello Aleksa!

This is Hope, your secret santa! Well, I guess it’s not so secret anymore now that I’m telling you who I am hahahha ^^;; but anyway, I really wanted to add in this little note at the end! Whether it’s just a greeting or an apology, I don’t really know HAHAHHA

First off, I’d like to start with a very Merry Christmas!!! I really hope that you like this present of mine! I haven’t written in a long long  looooong while so as you can see, I’m really rusty. Not gonna lie, had a little trouble coming up with this story. At first, I had meant to go along with the prompt that you had given me through the secret santa but then as I continued, the story kindda just wrote itself and well… I ended up where I was! I really hope you still like it though! I’m not really good with all this time-travel and historical stories ): I also don’t really know exactly what kind of story you like and whether their interactions were believable to you or not… >< I know the ending might seem a little rushed and abrupt but I’m honestly quite a naggy author whose story can continue on for a million years. I didn’t really see any specific direction that the story could take anymore after explaining Hongbin’s fabricated backstory so I decided to end it there. Besides, how often is it that all these historical stories don’t end with the one from the past going back? (Ohkay, I’m in no position to say anything since I’ve barely read any. There’s only one that I read but didn’t finish, called 21^st Century Kim by one_over_3 sooooo… yeah hahahha ><)

I really hope that you aren’t disappointed with your present! Omg all the anxiety and worries are kicking in as I read through it… :\ I feel that I tend to be really draggy with no actual plot so I hope this didn’t turn out boring and a chore to read ))): I just went back to glance through it and I realised that holy crap this is a really boring piece of work I’M SORRY ;A;

Anyway, a little bit about me and some explanations of the things I used in the story:

I’m not sure if you’ve been to Gyeongbok Palace, but I had the privilege to visit it last year in March. If you were to ever go there, visitors would have to pay a small entrance fee to enter the deeper areas of the Palace but visitors dressed in hanbok are able to enter for free. There is a small booth with various guard costumes for visitors to try on and take pictures around the Palace and it’s really cool! There’s also this walkway leading from the main building (I think) that is flanked by two small paths. If I’m not wrong, the middle path is meant ONLY for the King and anyone who steps foot on it (yes, even the Queen and even if someone were to accidentally fall on it) would be subject to severe punishment. The smaller paths flanking the middle one is meant for probably the Queen and the royal family. That’s the King/Queen walkway I was talking about in the story. But of course I’ve forgotten everything HAHA

I’m not a history major. In fact, I’ve not taken history for the past five years. But history is something interesting to me so I did a little digging into the history of Korea (really, just some surface searching) and the story of King Gojung and Queen Min are real. Lee Jeongtaek is definintely fake though HAHA I just needed something to make the story flow. (I totally didn’t realise that Jeongtaek is the first two syllables of Taekwoon’s name until I typed it out HAHA the name just came to me and I thought it fit).

When I visited Gyeongbok Palace last year, I was really amazed by everything that I saw. To think that that entire place was once a home to the royal family, that people once lived in such a place, it was really crazy. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I come from Singapore and we don’t have much of a history so it was magical to see that really, if I had been born 200 years earlier, that palace would have been habited by the royal family and there would be a living and breathing emperor there. The place wouldn’t just be some old tourist attraction but a home that was lived in and maintained. I also had a bit of a fight with my parents that day which led me to explore deeper parts of the Palace that not many people visited and I was really taken aback by the serenity I felt there. So yeah, I tried to write as much of the place from memory as possible and I wanted to try to make it believable. But of course, I’m really bad at such things and I wasn’t able to do enough research so this is what came out in the end ^^;;

Wow, I’m really writing another novel just writing this not so little message to you. HAHAH Anyway, I’ve really talked a lot about myself and I don’t really know where I’m going now (it’s almost three in the morning here). So, I’ll just end off with my hopes that you enjoyed this mundane story that despite my efforts, went no where TT.TT

You can find me on AFF by the u/n of -hopefullee! I’m not really active there anymore but I’ll do my best to reply you! Really hope to be able to know you better (and maybe if I can offer a better apology/write something else for you to make up for whatever I just wrote ^^;;)

Merry Christmas and God bless! <3

Hope (: