Who we are

Pink Rose (장미 분홍색 )

My first memory is a rose tree in a greenhouse, a tree full of roses, roses from a pink that you could believe was white. I was standing there staring at this tree only lighted up by the moon light. My mind was empty, my heart was empty and yet I couldn’t take away my eyes from those roses. My body was heavy, my legs were tired, yet I couldn’t, I wouldn’t move from staring at it. It was as if that tree was trying to tell me something. I was trying to understand but I couldn’t, its words weren’t making any senses. I couldn’t read them, I couldn’t understand anything. Yet I was there trying, and my heart was getting heavier as I was staring at it, so heavy that it overflowed. Yes my first memory is me crying in front of this tree. The flowers were beautiful, the tree was so graceful in the middle of this traditional Korean garden, but for a reason bigger than my heart could afford, tears fell on my cheeks. My heart was aching from a pain I couldn’t understand, from something I had forgotten, for a reason I had lost. My first memory is the hole in my heart that couldn’t be repaired anymore…

From this day my name is Mi Yeong, meaning beautiful flower.

 

 

“Mi Yeong ah!! Wait, wait! Where are you going with those flowers?”

“Eun Hui! I’m going change the old bouquet in the King’s room.” Mi Yeong answered with a small smile.

“He will never let you do it! You know that no one, not even the maids can touch this vase.”

“I’ll try anyway.”

Mi Yeong placed the freshly picked flowers in a basket and left the greenhouse heading for the King’s bedroom. She had an idea on how to make him change the dead flowers the King cherished a lot. She surely but slowly reached the room and stopped in front of the door.

“Hi Jong Suk! How are you? Can you announce me to the King?” She asked to the King’s bodyguard.

“Hi Mi Yeong, I am fine, thank you. The Dowager Queen is inside already. You’ll need to wait until she goes out. I am sorry.” He answered her looking at his toes.

As far as she remembered, Jong Suk never looked at her straight in her eyes. She found this cute and thought he was just a shy, very strong and tall man.

“I’ll wait, it’s okay.” She answered him slightly smiling.

“I’m not going to remarry!” The King screamed to his mother.

“It is a need for our nation! You cannot stay without a queen! You’re too young to stay a single King!” The dowager queen screamed back.

“I will not! The nation can live without a Queen because you are already doing everything she should be doing!”

“And what if something happens to the crown prince? What will you do? Minho, you need to have more than one heir!”

“Okay, don’t come on this field! Don’t curse the crown prince some bad luck will you! We’re living in an era where the infant mortality is near zero. And what? You want me to marry to have more children? Do you think the “new queen” will accept my children? She will do everything she can to make her own children sit on the thrown! Never! You hear me! I will never let anyone walk on Ga Eun’s children!”

“Oh please! It is been a year since Ga Eun died! You should turn the page now! She didn’t deserve her place anyway.”

“Go away! Get out of here now! Don’t ever talk about Ga Eun once again. I don’t want to see her name in your ugly mouth again! OUT! Jong Suk, the Dowager Queen is going out!”

The bodyguard opened the door and the Dowager Queen went out. Mi Yeong slid to the left border and bowed to the exiting Queen.

“Majesty, the gardener Mi Yeong wishes to enter.” The man announced once the Queen was in the next corridor.

“She may enter.”

Mi Yeong entered closing the door behind her seeing the Queen Mother eyeing her for a reason she ignored.

She bowed to the King and slowly walked to reach him near the big window facing the greenhouse big alley. The King looked preoccupied and lost in his mind. Mi Yeong waited there next to him until he said the first word.

“What is it? What are you doing here Mi Yeong?”

His voiced seemed like a faraway whisper.

“I wanted to change the bouquet from your chest of drawers. The flowers are dead since a while now.”

“Don’t touch it. I said it more times than I count now! Don’t touch this vase.”

“I knew you would say that.” The little gardener walked around the place, caught an empty vase and placed it right in front of the one full of dead flowers. “If you love that bouquet you could have at least try to keep the flowers.” She continued now placing the fresh flowers in it. “What’s the point of keeping only branches?” She arranged the bouquet and made few steps back. “Yes, it looks good. Would you take a look your Majesty?”

The King sighed but left his window to face what Mi Yeong had done. There his eyes widened and his heart skipped a beat.

“You like it? Your bouquet comes from one specific tree in the greenhouse. I examined your old branches and waited until similar ones grow up. Then I cut them down. You know I made this thinking of you.” She smiled beautifully.

The King eyes moved from the vase to the woman. “What did you said?”

“I said I made it thinking of you, your Majesty. Ah, but don’t get me wrong… What I mean is that this arrangement is really like you. The branches are really straight and right, while the flowers are soft and beautiful. This bouquet resembles you. I don’t know who made it for you but it was someone that cared a lot for you, your Majesty.”

“Out”

Mi Yeong stopped her explanation there and looked at the King confused.

“Mi Yeong, go out.”

He gave her back the basket and crossed his hands in his back. “Go out, please.”

Shocked by this reaction, Mi Yeong grabbed her basket and walked slowly out. She was prepared of him rejecting her idea, but not to be thrown out that way.

“This arrangement is really like you” Minho repeated softly. That sentence, that way of putting words… It was exactly the same as his past away queen and wife. Word hit and hurt more than anything. He walked to his furniture to face the both vases standing on it. How dared the second vase be beautiful and proud while the one he cherished be all dead and sad? He moved his arm to let his hand reach the delicate petals of one flower. The smiling face of Ga Eun, her perfume, that weather from that specific day, his mood, everything, everything came back in his mind. Ga Eun was so beautiful in a white dress and a messy bun. A tear fell slowly upon his cheek. Why did she had to leave him alone that early?

 

“So? How did it go? Did he accept your idea?” questioned Eun Hui.

“I don’t know, he sent me away very harshly…” Mi Yeong answered her friend.

Eun Hui looked at her friend with a “I knew it” look and grabbed her by one arm and walked her back into the greenhouse.

“Oh, girls! Why don’t you come with us to drink after work?”

Mi Yeong looked at that colleague she didn’t really know. Actually, except Eun Hui, she didn’t know people around her. She never had the heart to open to others. Eun hui was there the day she lost her memory and so a special link bonded them together but the others were just “the others”.

“Kyu Chul!” screamed Eun Hui “Mi Yeong, let’s go out with the boys tonight!” she smilled at the amnesiac.

“No, thank you. I’m not really found of this idea.”

“Oh come on! You never go out! In fact you never leave the palace! Just one night, hum? Pleaasee Mi Yeong ah….? You’ll be able to meet new people! Oh and maybe fond a boyfriend!” Eun hui begged to her friend.

Mi Yeong looked at the big window upstairs from the King’s room watching his silhouette in the dark. She knew it was a no way. She knew that she couldn’t think of him as precious, but who can stop a heart from beating. She wanted to be by his side, to be a bit of sunshine in his days so dark since the Queen’s death. Even though the King never looked at her nicely, never really talked with her, for a reason only her heart knew, she wanted to be with him.

“Mi Yeong, what are you looking at?” Eun Hui stopped her mind “Are you coming or not?”

“I’m sorry to both of you. I won’t come. I don’t feel like. I don’t like to be outside, it makes me uneasy and you know it.”

“Right… well I’m going!”

Back into her small staff room, she took her journal and started to write her thoughts of the day. She took this habit in case a new memory loss would arrive. She wrote the date and something made a sense in her brain. She looked at the first date of her diary and it was the same with one year less.

“One year already… “

She went back to her page and start writing.

2018년9월5일

Who we are.

Who I was before my memory loss is it the same as who I am today?

Does memory build a person or is it only destiny building it?

I wish I could be the me with memory to ask her questions about her, about me. Was she happy? Why did I cry on front of the roses if she was happy? By the way, were these my tears or hers? Was it a goodbye of my old self to myself?

The question is what build a person? Who am I? Where am I from? What was I doing? What was my life like?

Today I’m curious. I’m very curious. I wonder if I would be happy today if last year incident didn’t happen…

I want to be happy…

To my old self, if one day you read this, please forgive me for taking years out of you. I took care of us. I will continue until you come back. I wish you would do it quickly though because I feel less and less happy in your skin. I feel so lonely and goalless. What do you want me to do? The only light in my heart doesn’t even look at me the way I look him. Maybe he would look at you, because you and I are different right?

 

 

“Aaaah my head hurts so much” Eun hui was complaining because of her hangover.

This made hide a smile from Mi Yeong. Her friend really couldn’t control her drinking.

“Are you making fun of me young woman?”

“Yes I am!” she answered with proud before running far into the garden.

Eun Hui ran after her and tried to catch her. They were like two kids having fun in a beautiful garden as if there weren’t any palace rules. Their laughs were now filling the whole greenhouse.

“Minho? Are you listening to me?”

The bodyguard and also best friend of the King was having a serious talk when suddenly Minho stopped listening. Minho was looking down in the greenhouse through the window. He was staring at the girls laughing and running everywhere. He was looking at Mi Yeong, remembering how his queen loved to play in the garden also. Mi Yeong had exactly the same smile as Ga Eun. The kind of smile that warm up a whole heart even if it is made of ice, the kind of smile he missed the most.

“Minho?”

“Call Mi Yeong to my office.”

“Yes, sire.”

After the greenhouse, the girls ran into some corridors until Mi Yeong hit someone.

“Ouch..” the little girl said when her bottom hit the floor.

“Princess Min Ah! I’m sorry, are you alright?” asked the gardener right away.

She helped the young girl to stand up and looked at her.

“You seem alright” she told her.

The princess wasn’t saying a word. Actually, as far as she remembered, Mi Yeong never heard her voice. But her eyes were always sad when they were near each other. The small girl never smiled next to her. Did she hate her?

After that, the princess ran quickly back to her babysitter not giving any look at her bad encounter.

Mi Yeong stood up at her turn only to meet with Jong Suk body.

“Ah! Sorry! Are you alright?” He suddenly said before she could say a word. “The King wants to meet you.”

She followed the bodyguard until they reached the King’s office. Not a word or a stare had been exchanged during that walk. Many people were not talkative with her today. She asked her way in and entered the office.

That room was different from his private room. It was big with in front of the opposite wall from the doors a big desk. You could feel all the responsibilities by the mass and the wood that was this desk. On it, were several files in need of approval, and the royal stamp. On the wall behind a very big painting of the King’s father that passed away years ago, sitting just under the actual King Choi Minho. The other walls were having some Korean nature painting. On the left were a table and chairs to meet people and on the other side a comfortable brown leather sofa.

In the middle of all this one detail only caught her attention. The bouquet she made yesterday was on the desk at the King’s side.

“You asked for me, your majesty?”

“Yes. Please take your bouquet away. I don’t want it.”

That comment broke Mi Yeong’s heart. “I don’t want it.” It sounded really like “I can accept your effort. I can’t accept you.” For a second she didn’t move or say a word.

“You… May I ask why, your highness?”

“No, you can’t. I’m busy, take it away.”

Minho wasn’t even looking at her. He was just staring at his papers. It really was rude. It really was not kind.

“Just throw it away yourself! Why should I take care of something you don’t want?” she suddenly let out without thinking.

“Sorry?” he asked now looking at her.

“Why would you ask me here to throw away something you don’t want? Don’t you have two hands like others? Don’t you have two legs to walk you to a bin? You are like all of us! You are human like all of us. Just throw your trash yourself!”

She turned tail and walked out of the office. Her heart was racing and her hands were trembling. What did she just do? It wasn’t respectful for her King. She put herself in danger. Jong Suk was looking at her with surprised eyes and she ran away.

“Your highness, it’s me.”

“Enter, Jong Suk.”

The bodyguard entered and met his friend at his desk, only to see his King crying in front of the bouquet he wanted the gardener to throw.

“Too long, it’s been too long Jong Suk… Maybe we should tell something?”

At the same time, in the dowager queen's apartment.

"There is no evolution, your majesty."

"Good and what about my son?"

"From what I hear nothing too."

"Good you may go."

The woman bow and left the room.

 

This story will be the most graphic compared to all my others. I love the theme and love the different pictures I use for the chapter head of the cover. 

For once, I will use Minho as a male lead. Also, the characters will be a bit more aged than the real one because of the context of the story. It won't change their way of being though. 

I have wrote the whole story already, so the chapters will be out really quick. I think I will publish a new chapter each month.

This is from a dream I made one night which woke me up with a heavy heart. That's why I want to share it with you. I hope you'll enjoy my story. 

Give it a lot of love ~

Comment, upvote subcribe! 

See you soon, 

Lexie 

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Comments

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pirili
#1
Chapter 7: oh you are back!!! I'm very confused now....>.< I need to know more about Mi Yeoung past!
lily_bunny
#2
Chapter 5: NO!! I hope minho will be able to stop her from leaving and all those secrets will be reveal so everything is back to normal...
pirili
#3
Chapter 5: WHY IS SHE LEAVING NO.....when the secret was almost out...>.<
pirili
#4
Chapter 4: Oh that moment between Minho and Mi Yeong was so intense....for a second i thought they would kiss Y__Y
pirili
#5
Chapter 3: Oh My! I havent read this one yet...aaaah I'm really curious about how things are like this....Hum...painter...KIBUM! XDDD sorry just cos I made him one in my fics. Maybe it was Minho....he panted his wife beautifully...of course..u.u
pirili
#6
Chapter 2: Poor kids really....
pirili
#7
Chapter 1: Chapter 1: The first chapter leaves us with a need for more. There are many questions and we need answers. Who was the main character and why did she lose her memory, what happened to Minho's wife and what is the queen planning. Waiting for more. ^^
pirili
#8
I'm here! ^^ Ready to read more chapters!