Chapter 6: My Emperor, My First Love

How do I describe him, my Emperor? How do I begin? Where do I start?

My Emperor.

My King.

My first love.

The only man that I have ever loved.

Where do I begin? 

I suppose it began 12 years ago.

In the year 2007, I was 16, and Lee Hyuk was 26.

His face stared at me from the covers of magazines, his eyes smiled at me from the news reports on television, his posters beckoned to me from malls and convenience stores, from street corners and bus shelters. He was there in the dusty school hall, where I stood, staring at his handsome, smiling face, lost in my dreams, my ears deaf to the voices of authority droning on about some utterly unimportant issue  when all that mattered to me then, was the image of this beautiful, unattainable man, taking over my thoughts, his magnetic image stealing its way into my besotted heart.

His was a face that belonged to an ancient, long-ago world, where men wore long, majestic robes, and dressed in tall, magnificent hats, rising like spires, aspiring to the skies, a magical world, a world that I had only glimpsed at in books and movies; a dreamy, fantastical world, where beautiful men and women floated about whimsically, where voices drifted dreamily, a different world, a world that existed only in the realm of my imagination.

His face was beautiful, aristocratic, and sensitive; in some strange, undefinable way, it was a face that belonged to an other world than to the world of today, a face that would be at home in the rows of ancient, blurry faces from a museum gallery, a face that belonged more to the past than to the present, where tall men in swirling robes and tall hats glided silently, smoothly, among the narrow, cobbled streets, cloaked by night, the occasional lit doorway catching the glinting sharp edges of their blades, tucked securely beneath their poised hands, ever ready to spring to life at the merest shadow and the threat of danger lurking in the stillness and the dark. He beckoned to me everywhere I went, and whispered to me at night, where I tossed and turned in bed, seducing me with his eyes, his smile, beguiling me with that silent, exquisite sheen of courtesy, of breeding, that sat upon him as naturally, as impeccably as a second skin.

In 2007, I was 16, and he was 26.

That was the year I became infatuated with him. 

That was also the year that he married Empress So Hyun.

She was 24 to his 26, and theirs was a marriage made in heaven, or so they said, a marriage destined to last this lifetime, and beyond.

As it turned out, it did not last beyond five years.

In 2012, So Hyun died in a lake at the Imperial Gardens. Her body was found floating face downward in the dark, still waters on a cold, wintry night, an autopsy was performed, and it was confirmed that she had died of a cardiac arrest at the tender age of 29, and Emperor Lee Hyuk became a widower overnight.

He was 31, and I was 21, and, as fate would have it - if you believe in this sort of thing - it marked the beginning of three firsts for me:

it was the first time that I came face to face with him, seven months after his wife's untimely demise.

It was the first time that I had seen him, up close and personal, a living, breathing, real person of flesh and blood, as opposed to that shadowy, phantom figure that came to me in the dark, fleeting and ephemeral, dissolving into ashy fragments of a dream at the first rays of dawn.

And It was the first time that I fell in love.

It was his first foray into the glare of public life since his wife's death. He had been away for months in Europe, and the public had mourned with him, and pined for him in his absence.

The fan meet had been arranged months earlier, but it was only seven months after the demise of the Empress that it took place.

I came, armed with a bunch of flowers and cookies that I had stayed up half the night baking. On each cookie, I had piped a pink heart. I wrote a card:

To my Beloved Emperor,

Stay Strong, Your Majesty

               From Your Number 1 Fan,

                                Oh Sunny

I inserted the card and the cookies in a pretty, heart-filled paper bag. Armed with the flowers and the paper bag, I dashed to the fan meet, braving the hordes of screaming fans that had turned up. My flowers and my tiny paper bag looked miserable compared to the enormous gifts that the fans had prepared, both in size and quantity. But I stood my ground, and when he came up on stage, the sight of his tall, lean figure made me almost swoon; the mass of humanity surged forward in a screaming, frenzied torrent of manic love, the world swayed before my eyes, stars started to twinkle, the screams receded far, far away, and I went out like a light.

When I came to, I was in a room backstage, lying on a sofa.

I opened my eyes, and Lee Hyuk was sitting there on a stool, next to me.

I thought that I was dreaming.

"Are you all right?" he asked, in that deep, musical voice that I had heard countless times in my dreams.

He smiled, and I blinked.

I sat up at once, blushing.

The sound of paper startled me. I looked down, and I realized that the paper bag was still clutched tightly in my hand.

"You wouldn't let that go," he said, and he looked like he was on the verge of laughter. "Every time they tried to take that from you, you moaned."

"Oh, um, okay," I mumbled.

"I had my doctor look at you, and he says that you're fine," he smiled again, that smile that curved his lips and softened his face. "The crowd was overwhelming, and you fainted."

I looked up slowly.

A whole bunch of men with blank faces, and dressed in black suits, stared at me impassively.

One of them stepped forward.

"Your Majesty," he said, "we have to make a move now, if you are to reach your next venue in time."

The emperor nodded, then turned to me, and patted my shoulder kindly.

"Take a good rest," he said. "My men will send you home."

He straightened, and glanced at the paper bag in my hand.

"Is that for me?" he asked, and there was a flicker of amusement in his eyes. "Perhaps I could relieve you of your burden? Your fingers must be feeling cramped."

"Oh, yes, yes," I croaked, and awkwardly passed the paper bag to him.

In my dreams, I spoke long and eloquent sentences, to which he listened, enthralled, and regaled him with my effortless and infinite store of wit and wisdom.

The truth, alas, was vastly different.

I found myself stricken with a very limited range of vocabulary, confronted with the object of my affections in the present. I racked my brains desperately for something clever and witty to say, but all that came to mind was "oh", "yes", "okay" and "um": more guttural grunts, to be brutally honest, than human speech.

I sank rapidly into despair.

Flowers.

My mind suddenly seized upon the image.

Thank you, God.

"The f-f-flowers," I mouthed, because it was hard to talk with my dry lips glued to my teeth (I fainted with my mouth open, you see, and it stayed open throughout my faint),"there-there, um, were f-f-flowers, too, but I guess - I guess I d-dropped them b-back there..."

"Thank you," he said, and he looked as though he meant it. "I'm sure that they are lovely, even though I never, unfortunately, got to see them, and these cookies look stunning...how did you guess that I am especially fond of cookies with pink hearts?"

He looked like he wanted to laugh again.

He took out the card.

"Oh Sunny...is that your name?" he smiled at me, standing there, so tall and dignified, his dark head almost touching the low ceiling.

"Y-yes, Your Majesty," I stuttered.

"Oh Sunny," he repeated my name again, softly, lingering on each syllable of my name, sending a thrill of joy through my pounding heart. "It's a lovely name."

"It reminds me of sunshine," he said, slowly, thoughtfully, "of spring, and summer, and flowers, and..."

He smiles faintly, "and, of course, of cookies with pink hearts." 

I remember that moment now, as if it were today.

Because I think that it was the moment that I fell in love with him.

I remember the jolt of happiness that shot through my heart, that filled it near to bursting at his words, that he liked my name, and equated it with warmth, with sunshine, with light, with life.

No one had ever said such a thing to me before.

No one has ever said such a thing to me since.

I swallowed.

He reached down, and pressed my hand lightly.

"And remember to flex those fingers," he said, and this time, there was no mistakening it; I could hear the laughter bubbling beneath, rippling through the deadpan seriousness of his words, "They've been through so much."

The bodyguard stepped between us.

"Your Majesty, we really have to go," he said, placing a hand on the Emperor's arm, and ushering him out the door.

My father burst in through the door an instant later.

"They called, and said that you had fainted," he said worriedly. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," I said.

"You look flushed," he said, and touched my forehead. "Are you running a fever?"

I touched my cheeks.

They were burning.

"I'm fine," I said again, and laughed, a little gurgle of happiness. "I've never felt better."

I was wonderfully, gloriously alive.

I was in love.

With no ordinary man.

I had fallen in love with the Emperor.