“Oh, you’re back!” Chanyeol and Baekhyun are sitting in the clinic’s courtyard as Jongin walks up, favoring his right side just a touch.

“Is it him?” Kyungsoo’s voice filters out from inside the clinic, anxious edge to his words.

“Are you alright?” Chanyeol asks, looking at the cut on Jongin’s cheek.

“IS IT HIM.” Kyungsoo’s voice repeats the words with impatient authority.

“Yes, it’s him,” Baek supplies. “Stay put, he’s coming in--”

Kyungsoo bursts through the front door, ignoring Baekhyun’s words completely, and has Jongin enveloped in an embrace in the blink of an eye.

Jongin sags against Kyungsoo’s shoulder and sighs with relief that the prince is still here, unharmed, and not too angry with him for how he left.

“Don’t think this means I’ve forgiven you,” Kyungsoo mumbles.

Well, so much for that.

“Hate to break up the reunion, but we should probably continue keeping -His Highness- out of the public eye,” Baekhyun drops his voice to a whisper when saying Kyungsoo’s title.

Lifting his head off Kyungsoo’s shoulder, Jongin acknowledges the warning and recognizes how the two men had been keeping watch outside the clinic. “Thank you,” he says sincerely.

Before releasing Jongin from his arms, Kyungsoo gives him a tight squeeze, which makes him wince in pain. “What’s wrong?” he asks in alarm, immediately looking at Jongin’s face with concern. The furrow in Kyungsoo’s brow grows more severe as he notices the cut on his cheek. “What happened?”

“I’m okay,” Jongin tries to insist as they all usher him into the clinic.

Kyungsoo immediately goes to move a writing table by his silk pallet out of the way and points, ordering Jongin, “Sit down.”

Jongin does as he’s told and Yixing enters the space.

“Examine him and treat his injuries,” Kyungsoo demands. His princely demeanor is back in full force, either because he has remembered himself or finally feels comfortable wielding his usual authority now that these trusted friends know the truth about his identity.

“I’m okay,” Jongin repeats. “It was just a punch, honestly.”

Kyungsoo simply gives him a look that has his guard bowing his head and falling silent. He allows Yixing to lightly palpate his right and then left side, wincing noticeably when the physician presses on one particular rib.

“There? Let’s remove your jeogori,” Yixing gestures for Jongin to remove his top. Kyungsoo remains standing in the room, moving to get a better view and leaning back against the wall, eyes glued to Jongin as he does as requested.

“Oh,” Yixing says, clucking his tongue. Jongin’s right side has a deep black and blue bruise along the side. The physician feels up and down the ribcage as gently as he can. “The good news is that I don’t think the rib is broken. We can prepare a cold dressing for the bruise, and once the swelling goes down tonight, I’ll be better able to assess it. Wait here.”

Yixing leaves the room, and Kyungsoo pushes off the wall and moves closer, eyes roaming over Jongin’s torso several times before settling on the injured area.

“Who did this to you? I’ll kill them.”

“Too late,” Jongin grunts with a half smile.

Kyungsoo eyes immediately flick up to meet his own, no trace of amusement in them. “What happened?”

“An assassin looking to kill the Crown Prince confronted me in the woods near Chungju. I dispatched of him.”

Kyungsoo gently down Jongin’s cheek, beneath the small cut, petting over the area several times. “I don’t like people getting hurt on my behalf,” he murmurs, drawing closer with his soft lips and leaving a delicate kiss on the cut. “Especially not you.”

Yixing shuffles in and turns immediately around when he sees how close the two men are, trying to leave the space as suddenly as he entered it.

“Come bandage him,” Kyungsoo calls authoritatively, eyes never leaving Jongin’s as he gives his cheek one last gentle before standing and moving aside so Yixing can wrap Jongin’s torso with the cool soaked cloth. “I’ll have the others prepare you a meal. You must be hungry,” he says before walking away to the entry door and calling instructions through the cracks.

Chanyeol heats up the leftovers from breakfast while Yixing fastens the wrap securely around Jongin's ribcage. They finish at the same time, and Kyungsoo brings the food to him as the physician bows and leaves them, sliding the door to the patients’ room closed for privacy.

As he begins to eat, Kyungsoo sits across from him and tells him:

“Jongin, I remember now. I remember everything.”

Kyungsoo forces him to eat, insisting he will only speak after Jongin feeds himself. “The journal was a good idea. It took me a bit, but I forced myself to keep writing and had a breakthrough yesterday.”

Jongin eats as quickly as he can, blowing steam off the rice and swallowing in large gulps. “What’d you write about?”

“Just whatever came to mind.” Kyungsoo tries to keep a straight face, but his ears flush as he grabs the small journal off the table and flips past the first few pages. At a glance, Jongin catches the same phrase written over and over again.

“I remembered that I was journaling in my room the night you left and reached the last page. I needed a new book, but it was quite late, so I didn’t want to wake anyone to fetch it. I went to the library myself to collect one. But I wasn’t the only one there. I stumbled across something I wasn’t supposed to see: Vice Premier Kim burning a royal inventory book.”

Jongin’s blood runs cold. The Vice Premier was one of the most powerful men in the palace, and he didn’t get to such a position without stepping on more than a few individuals who tried to get in his way. “What did you do?”

“What could I do? He saw me before I recognized the situation, so I pretended to be disinterested as usual and went about my business in getting a new blank journal. He asked me to bring him one as well, explaining that he was simply updating erroneous records on the kingdom’s resources with more accurate ones. I shrugged and said it was of no interest of mine, handing him a new blank book. He stared at me a long time with his black eyes as he took it from me, saying ‘You’ve always been a smart Crown Prince, leaving politics to those who understand it.’”

“I told him politics bored me, and feigned apathy, but I don’t think he believed the act. We both knew this was different from the typical ploys where people jockeyed for power: He was stealing from the kingdom. After studying me for a few long seconds, he finally nodded with a respectful bow and bid me a goodnight. I went straight back to my room in case he was planning on following me and went to sleep. I figured I could talk to someone in the bureau of investigation the next day.”

“So you didn’t tell anyone?” Jongin asks. “What about the king?”

Kyungsoo shakes his head no. “I had suspected the premier was stealing from the people’s treasury and using his position for economic manipulation once before, but when I had voiced these concerns to my father, I was reprimanded for bringing suspicion against a beloved figurehead in the palace without any hard proof. And I still didn’t have any, so I wasn’t sure how to proceed.”

Jongin chews on his lower lip, understanding the predicament. “Did you manage to speak to anyone in the bureau the next morning?”

“I didn’t get a chance to, because I woke to a blade to my throat, telling me to get dressed for pheasant hunting.”

Jongin in a deep breath of air. A traitor in his prince’s bed chambers. “How did they-- Why didn’t you call for aid? One of the igwisa would’ve--”

“It was a royal guard who held the dagger to my neck, and then my back as we walked out of the palace together. In that moment, I couldn’t be sure if anyone was on my side or if the whole palace was in the premier’s pocket and against me. There was no one I could trust… because you weren’t there.”

Kyungsoo’s words were soft and meant to be reassuring, but the guilt comes washing back over Jongin like a strong tidal wave. It’s his fault, all his fault, for leaving the palace. Jongin drops to a full formal bow, forehead down to the floor. “Wangseja, forgive me.”

He reaches to his