There was only one coherent thought on Seungwan’s mind during the trip back to the palace. She’d been in the story for less than a day and she’d already ruined the timeline. This was the day the princess took a walk on the plains surrounding the city, sped ahead of her retinue of guards and was taken off by bandits. Then, captain Kang Seulgi and her team would chase the bandits down, racing across the landscape, before finally managing to cut them off and retrieve the princess.

The end result was the same, which was always nice to remember, but the fact that she hadn’t been kidnapped at all could have untold consequences further on. The princess’s emotional state and perceived safety were important parts of the story and who knew what could happen now that she’d had a completely different experience?

She had to be very careful in her future actions and make sure to interfere as little as possible. By some miraculous event, she’d been allowed to enter this fairy tale land and witness the story first-hand. To watch as everything fell into place until the inevitable happy ending. Everything would go perfectly, with the perfect princess and the perfect prince and the perfect wedding. But Seungwan wasn’t perfect, far from it, and she worried that her presence would affect the plot in terrible ways, like a crack on the otherwise smooth surface of a mirror that eventually had it shattering into a million pieces. She could ruin everything if she wasn’t careful.

The only other thought that reached her mind, which didn’t manage to make its appearance until after they’d arrived at the palace, was that riding a horse for the first time in her life had been surprisingly easy and pain-free.

And then she was in front of the king, captain Kang by her side, the princess sitting beside her father, and she couldn’t think about anything at all. Her eyes were fixed squarely on the imposing man that faced her from his throne, mostly because she couldn’t possibly look at the princess and risk making eye contact. She might die.

“Child, you have saved my most treasured daughter, and for that you have my sincere gratitude”, the stately man said in a booming yet tender voice. Despite his age beginning to show in his greying hair and beard and in the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth, he was still a powerfully built man, and it wasn’t just the crown on his head that commanded respect. “Tell me, what is your name?”

“S-Son Seungwan, Your Majesty”, she stuttered out. He smiled at her words and, infinitely more importantly, the princess smiled as well, seeming to commit the words to memory. Seungwan could do nothing to prevent the silly grin that sprung to her face, which had the princess covering her face to hide a giggle. Back in the plains, she’d seemed older than Seungwan, but there was a youthful energy to everything she did, like the simplest things brought her overflowing pleasure.

“Ah, yes, Lord Son’s daughter. We had news of your coming, but we did not expect you here so soon” Seungwan was pleasantly surprised by the king’s words. Not only had something or someone fulfilled her wish of entering the story, but they’d gone to the trouble of giving her an identity in it, and she was even a noblewoman like she’d wanted.

Her pleasure faded as she realized she should probably explain why she was early. She wasn’t very good at improvising. Now that she considered it, she began to feel like improvising would be an essential skill in the coming times. “Did you travel along the river?”, the king suggested after a moment’s silence, and she eagerly agreed, taking a mental note of the existence of a river somewhere between her home and the capital. It would probably be important to remember things like that.

“Yes, that was exactly it, Your Majesty. Since, well, boats are faster than horses. And more comfortable. Pillows instead of saddles and all that” She forced herself to stop talking, even if her rambling words nearly had the princess giggling again. She shouldn’t be trying to make the princess giggle in the first place. She shouldn’t be doing anything with the princess in mind. The sooner she ran off to the sidelines and let the story resume its course without her interfering with its main characters, the better.

The king looked at her dubiously, his massive hand coming up to brush his beard. “Indeed. I see that you are still shaken from your trials. It is only natural. After all, even the hardy daughter of the riverside Lord is still a delicate Lady. You will need your rest to recover”, he said magnanimously as she hurriedly tried to commit his words to memory. Daughter of the riverside Lord, check. Probably should know things about rivers. Maybe she’d see if she could find some more information on Lord Son and his land. Main exports and things like that.

Realizing that she still hadn’t reacted, too busy trying to figure out her fake identity, she hurried to agree with a nod. Any excuse for strange behaviour was a good excuse, and she suspected she wouldn’t stop looking strange any time soon. Even people in the real world thought she was weird, so she didn’t expect to be much better here.

The princess leaned forward to whisper in her father’s ear. He listened intently, then smiled in agreement with her words. “I understand that you have made arrangements to stay with your distant relatives”, he told Seungwan, continuing to helpfully provide her with essential information. Staying with her distant relatives sounded like exactly what she’d wanted. Court gossip would let her know when something big happened and she’d get invited to any events through family connections. For the rest of the time, she could relax, maybe explore the city, go on another surprisingly pleasant horse ride.

“But we would be delighted if you would grace us with your presence here at the palace for a few days. I wish to have a feast to celebrate my daughter’s safe escape from today’s perilous events, and you must surely be present as the guest of honour”, the king concluded with a pleased smile, immediately shattering her lovely daydreams.

“How can I refuse my king’s generous offer, Your Majesty?” she replied miserably. She was only getting more and more involved when all she wanted was to watch safely from a distance and not mess anything up. Maybe have some cake at the wedding. Did fairy-tale medievalesque kingdoms have cake? She might have to settle for elaborate meat pies.

“I know just where Lady Son can stay”, the princess suddenly exclaimed with animation, clapping at her own idea. The king turned to her with a good-natured smile. “There is a room right by mine that has been unoccupied for years. She absolutely must stay there. You will, won’t you, Lady Son?”

She looked right at Seungwan, her beautiful brown eyes wide with expectation. Their gazes met for a second and Seungwan felt like a little hatch was opening in the back of her head and letting out all her thoughts. “Of course, Your Highness. It would be my pleasure”, she finally breathed out, letting her head drop in a sign of respect as much as an excuse to break the eye contact.

“Wonderful! I want to know all about my saviour!”, the princess declared happily.

As she dragged her feet out of the audience room and through endless corridors and staircases, following a servant to what would be her room for the next few days, she thought over just how terribly she’d messed things up.

The princess wanted to know all about her, which was bad for many reasons. First, because Seungwan would have to lie through her teeth, given that she couldn’t exactly reveal that she was a high school senior from the 21^st century who’d been into a book. Second, because the more they interacted, the easier it would be for Seungwan to do the wrong thing or simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time and cause a catastrophic derailing from the established plot.

Third, because the princess was happy and smiling and excited. This was the worst news of all, no matter how radiantly her glee spread through every corner of the room and ricocheted right into Seungwan’s ribcage, setting her heart beating at a chaotic rhythm. No, princess Joohyun was absolutely not supposed to be happy. She was supposed to be worn out and afraid. She was supposed to stay inside the palace for days, only going out again when the sun broke through the clouds with such blinding brightness that it infused even her darkened spirit with light. That was what it said in the book.

But her spirit wasn’t the least bit darkened. Not even dimmed a little. She was bubbling with excitement, likely to skip off to pick flowers the very next day. There was even going to be a feast to celebrate how wonderfully things had gone. And Seungwan was the guest of honour.

She leaned against the bedroom wall while a couple of maids did some quick dusting and made the bed. She pinched the bridge of her nose and groaned silently. “Fudge”, she muttered under her breath.

(…)

Something very strange happened in this fairy-tale world. The very first morning, Seungwan woke up in her canopy bed, happily stretched diagonally across its fluffy length, and found that her breath was minty fresh. Not only that, but she realized that everybody always smelled like flowers, and baths were merely for relaxing and completely optional. She was never hungry or thirsty, although she was capable of eating and drinking as much as she wanted, and she never had to go to the bathroom.

It really was a fairy tale. None of it was real, which she’d accepted at some level, but all these incongruities finally drove the truth home. It simply wasn’t real. It was strange, like a dream that kept going for far longer than it should. Still, she wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. She was certainly grateful that she didn’t have to go through this entire story with everybody smelling like they were rotting, as she imagined people in medieval times did. It would be infinitely less romantic.

So all that was the bright side. The less bright side was that princess Joohyun wouldn’t leave her side. She wouldn’t lie and say that she didn’t enjoy the attention. After all, she really was beautiful and nice and attentive and well, Seungwan had already been halfway to a crush just from reading about her. Now, in front of her, having to talk to her and watch her smile, all joyful and carefree and impossibly pretty, Seungwan was like putty.

But she couldn’t befriend the princess without feeling guilty for lying to her so thoroughly, even though she hardly had a choice. And she also couldn’t avoid the princess because she had to make sure she didn’t go out until that nice, bright day came around. And then she had to make sure they went to the forest, as they were supposed to go. It was all a lot of delicate balancing and Seungwan had never been very good at that. She was more of a bull in a china shop.

Her stay of a few days stretched far beyond those few days until it became generally understood that she would be lodged at the palace for as long as she was in town. Suspiciously, it was only when she stopped making subtle comments about leaving the palace to go stay with her relatives that the long-delayed feast that kept her around began to be prepared. She really should stop underestimating the princess.

She sat in the princess’s room, gazing idly out of the window as her companion had her hair slowly brushed in a process that took agonizingly long, especially considering that Seungwan knew it was completely unnecessary. Seungwan herself hadn’t brushed her hair once since she’d arrived yet it looked better than ever. She sighed at the darkness that fell over the grassy plains, the sky covered in grey clouds that travelled in a tight formation.

“Are you very bored?”, the princess asked in her soft voice, breaking the silence that she would sometimes let stretch for hours at a time. Surprised by the sudden question, Seungwan turned to face her, trying to avoid the eye of her lady in waiting. There were a few of those, but from the way this one stared darkly at Seungwan whenever she did anything strange, it was a fair assumption that she was the one singled out in the story.

She’d also save the princess from an attempted kidnapping, further on. In an unexpected plot twist, she’d turn out to be a trained assassin, secretly acting as the princess’s bodyguard. Seungwan certainly hadn’t expected her to be a small girl, barely into her teenage years, who scowled through her chores and disappeared off to nowhere every once in a while. She also hadn’t expected that this small girl would instinctively dislike her, but that part was a little easier to understand, since she’d appeared out of nowhere under somewhat unusual circumstances.

“Of course not, Your Highness”, she said quickly. She wanted to add something reassuring but she couldn’t think of anything besides ‘How can I be bored when I have this great window to look out of?’ and that might not be very convincing.

“Shall we go for a ride?”, the princess offered with an uncertain smile. It vanished as her lady in waiting brushed past a knot rather violently, almost tugging her head back. Seungwan winced in sympathy. “The conditions aren’t ideal, but I would easily brave a bit of harsh weather for my esteemed guest”

“Oh, we can’t possibly go outside, Your Highness”, she immediately replied. It was absolutely imperative that the princess stay inside until the day the sun broke through the clouds. “What if it rains?”

“Then it’ll rain”, the princess said easily, an amused smile tugging at her lips. Her head was again jerked to the side and she sighed in impatience. “I think that is enough brushing, Lady Kim”, she informed her lady in waiting in soft tones.

“As you wish, Your Highness”, the girl replied, turning to put away the brush. In a flash, the princess was out of her high stool and seated comfortably by Seungwan’s side, clinging to her arm. Once everything was in its place, Lady Kim moved to the door, where she stood motionless.

“You may go, Lady Kim”, the princess commanded, still holding on to Seungwan tightly. The girl furrowed her brow but didn’t immediately move from her place. “If there are any attacks, Lady Son will protect me. She has done so before”, the princess added with a giggle. Unfortunately, this drew the girl’s attention to Seungwan, but she only narrowed her eyes for a moment before leaving.

“Now tell me, truly”, princess Joohyun requested, turning to Seungwan. “What would you like to do? I would hate to think that I am keeping you captive here entirely against your will, while you waste away for courtesy’s sake” Her brow furrowed as she tried to catch Seungwan’s eye and search it for the truth.

“I’m really not bored, Your Highness”, Seungwan insisted, determinedly avoiding eye contact by looking out the window. Their faces were far too close together and Joohyun’s bright eyes seemed capable of penetrating all the way to her soul and finding all her hidden secrets. She wasn’t sure what would be worse, Joohyun finding out that she was lying about her identity or that she had the most hopeless crush on her. “I just like looking at the sky”, she mumbled.

She felt the princess’s body lean even more into her, pressing against the full length of her arm as her face moved closer to the window. From the corner of her eye, Seungwan could see the way she was smiling happily. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”, she said with a sigh. Seungwan’s stomach twisted under the impact of those simple dreamy words.

“I’ve spent countless hours in this very seat, watching lazy little clouds drift across the sky or studying the patterns of the stars in the night. I’ve invented dozens of constellations, I’ll have to show them to you one day” Joohyun sighed again, this time sounding a bit less dreamy. “It’s… Princesses don’t get to do much that isn’t… Watching the sky is something just for me”, she said very quietly.

Seungwan didn’t speak, too afraid to break the spell. This felt like a moment of intimacy that she shouldn’t be allowed, or at least one that she should avoid. It was dangerous to let this crush on the princess grow into anything more.

“It’s even nice like this. The clouds are dark and ominous, but can you see the way lighter and darker grey mix together and grow into each other?”, the princess asked, pointing out the variations with a delicate finger. “It’s not constant, uniform blackness. It reminds me that even when things are dark, this darkness grows and changes and eventually turns into something else entirely. Like heavy clouds turning to rain”

Her head fell on Seungwan’s shoulder and Seungwan felt her shrug against her body. “We will have our feast tomorrow. Father has spared no expense in preparing it”, she said in a suddenly light tone, apparently done with the previous topic.

“I hope His Majesty hasn’t gone to too much trouble for my sake”, Seungwan replied instinctively. She noticed how Joohyun stiffened at her words, like the reminder of the formalities required between them was unpleasant. “Will you keep me company tomorrow, Your Highness? I don’t know the nobility here, I’m afraid I’d just be hiding in a corner without you”

They weren’t wise words, but the way the princess’s grip loosened slightly and one of her hands slid down to rest on hers let her know that she had been right to say them. The truth was that she couldn’t help it. She began to feel like princess Joohyun was far lonelier than the book had ever shown her to be. If Seungwan could be her friend, at least until her prince came and brought her real happiness, then that couldn’t be too bad, right?

She just hoped her heart could handle it.