With their breaths bated, the men at court eyed the entrance of the palace, where they were expecting the new emperor to make his anticipated appearance. Hushed whispers could be heard as the men exchanged looks with each other when they spotted one of the eunuchs emerge. He sounded the drum and all murmurings ceased. Everyone peered up expectantly.

"His Majesty, Park Jimin, the emperor of Saim!"

The new emperor materialised from the shadows, revealing his face for the first time. Reluctantly, his subjects kneeled before him but not until they had fully digested his features in a blink of an eye.

The first thing the clansmen noticed was that their new emperor was undoubtedly a young one. Even from the back of the palace grounds, one could discern his age from the size of his frame and the way he walked. He was not a very tall man and his gait was somewhat unrefined, indicating to the men present that His Majesty had not yet acquired the gallant stride, of which all royals possessed.

But like an unpolished jade, the clansmen could see that the new emperor had the potential to rule. He may not have received the education that all emperors before him had received but, only time will tell if this will prove a disadvantage to his reign. After all, he was now the Mandate of Heaven: the just ruler—the Heavenly Son of Celestial Saim—and only he could cease the turbulence which rippled across the kingdom.

One by one, the clansmen approached the new emperor and swore their allegiance to him, reciting a sacred oath that vocalised their undying loyalty and love for their kingdom and ruler. It was a revered ceremony, one that the people of Saim took seriously to demonstrate their patriotism.

"...I am your humble servant" one of His Majesty's loyal subjects would say, before rising to make way for the next person.

~*~

"Gyuri!"

With a sudden jolt, Gyuri broke away from her daydream. "Huh? What? What's up?"

Kalyani scorned at her from the other side. "Are you still not done?" She gestured at the partially polished deck of floorboards outside one of the Kim brothers' personal living quarters. "The Kims will be arriving from the palace soon—why are you not finished yet?"

"I'm going as fast as I can, alright?" she retorted while scrubbing more vigorously, "There's just so much to clean."

"Quit your whining" Kalyani sneered. She rolled her eyes as she tutted, "Of all the people I had to work with, it had to be you."

Two hours before, Madam Zhou had distributed the tasks amongst the maids. Gyuri had hoped that she would be given something easy but, to her dismay, she had been allocated to clean quarters. And to make matters worse, she had to work with Kalyani, who hated her to the core. Gyuri was immediately apprehensive: she detested paired work.

For Gyuri, 'working in pairs' often meant 'doing work for two'. As Subin, she never had any luck when it came to paired work in school. Often because she was always paired off to an idiot or a lazy arse, who couldn't care less about the task at hand. And more often than not, Subin ended up doing all the work by herself while her partner just signed off their name in the end.

Gyuri bit the insides of her cheeks to stop herself from lashing back at Kalyani. While she detested working with lazy bums, nothing could compare to her loathing towards stuck up teenage girls who looked down on others. If anything, whenever Gyuri met those type of girls, she was always reminded of the plastics from the film, 'Mean Girls'.

"Honestly," Kalyani grumbled as she scowled at Gyuri, "why couldn't I have been put on flower-making duty instead?"

"And why couldn't I have a more hardworking partner?" Gyuri muttered under her breath.

"What?" Kalyani snapped. "Did you say something just now?"

Gyuri gave her a sarcastic smile. "Nope. Nothing."

Kalyani narrowed her eyes at her before continuing with her task. With a half-hearted effort, she completed her end of the deck before pushing herself up from the floor. "Oh, look at that," she said while dangling her empty bucket, "I'm all out of water."

Gyuri ignored her and continued cleaning.

"I guess I'll have to go and refill it at the well" she stated, indirectly telling Gyuri of her plan to depart. Kalyani peered at Gyuri when she did not receive any sound of acknowledgement. She hmphed when she saw Gyuri fixated on cleaning the floorboards, blatantly ignoring her presence. Fine then, Kalyani thought to herself, I'll ignore you too, you arrogant wench.

With subdued annoyance, she got up hastily to leave but halted when she suddenly remembered that the house next door was out of bounds. A crooked thought immediately entered her mind accompanied by a roguish smile. This wench needs to be taught a lesson, she thought as she eyeballed Gyuri inconspicuously. I'd like to see how she gets out of this one.

"You should head over to the next house without me" Kalyani uttered, trying to mask her grin, "I'll come and join you once I'm done re-filling my bucket."

Gyuri gave Kalyani a sideward glance. She knew from her flippant tone that Kalyani was not in any hurry to return from the well. "Okay" she replied while rolling up her sleeve. "I'll see you in the next one."

When Kalyani was finally out of view, Gyuri let out an audible sigh. "I guess even es exist here too" she muttered bitterly. She huffed as she lifted her bucket and hoisted it to the next house, which was across the courtyard. "And here I thought I would be able to see the coronation today."

Gyuri pouted as she mused about the coronation. Before Kalyani had snapped her out of her reverie, she had been fantasizing a grand scene, one that she had seen many times in her historical K-dramas. There would be beautiful decorations, prim and proper ladies and often, a majestic ruler with a tragic past.

Oh, how she wished her life in Saim was a lot more interesting.

"Why couldn't I have switched bodies with a princess?" she asked herself aloud while making her way inside the house. "It that I'm a maid."

As Gyuri contemplated this, her thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a melancholy tune. Gyuri halted in her steps as she listened to the music drifting from inside. Strings were delicately plucked to produce a sorrowful melody, one that conveyed a sense of hesitance and grief as if the musician was lamenting the passing of a loved one. She listened attentively, her heart aching at the richness of the sound produced. So much emotion was conveyed through one instrument. In her mind's eye, she was suddenly seeing the image of Yoongi and her dad, who she hadn't seen for almost a month. Their faces were burned at the back of her mind as the music continued to envelop her in its bittersweet melody; her eyes growing moist the longer she listened to the music and thought of them. 

How did a piece move her so much?

Curious to find out who was playing such a poignant melody, Gyuri peered through the crack in the sliding door. There, at the far end of the room, was a pale-faced boy hunched over a stringed instrument. She gaped at him in wonder, taking in his ghostly appearance. Like the shade of moonlight, his skin was as translucent as paper while his eyes, which were framed by very long lashes, were half-closed as if he was in a trance.

Gyuri was mesmerised by the elegance of his hands as they glided across the guzheng with ease. With each string that was plucked, a chord in her heart was struck and a new image of her family flashed before her eyes. It was like she had been enchanted by his music. In fact, when was the last time her ears were greeted by a sound other than the cockerel's crow in the morning? To Gyuri, hearing music again was a novel experience. But what she found most peculiar about the whole ordeal was the instrumentalist himself. Who was he? And why was he playing such s