“What are you really here for? Are you even really a doctor?”  

The man who looks like an exact copy of Min Yoongi had spun Seol around holding her wrist and Seol was shaking slightly but at the same time she was trying to figure out what exactly was the difference between this man and the Yoongi she saw earlier in the streets.  

He abruptly let go of his hold on her and laughs. “Seems like you must have met him before you met me, I can feel you tremble tremble~ If you are that scared, why did you sneak into this place? Don’t you know where this is?”  

Was he expecting her to actually answer him? Why would she? Seol stood with her back pressed up against the door. She was afraid of him, and afraid of this place, but if Myeongjo is really here, she must be equally afraid.  

Seeing how she was frozen at his words, he sighs softly and gives her a lop-sided smile, “Alright, if you don’t wish to let me help you then so be it. Should I just let you leave from here or do you want me to take you out of here?” His smile was the purest thing she saw that day. Seol still stood there in much confusion and with a tinge of inexplicable fear.  

“Doctor-nim? You may go now…”, he raises his eyebrow in curiosity as to why she continues to be rooted to that spot. “If I can give you one piece of advice though before you leave. Don’t ever… sneak into another mansion like this like what you did today. A place that looks like this is never kind and if you are ever caught trespassing, you will most likely suffer. Do you understand?”  

This time Seol was sure. He wasn’t the same person she saw earlier who had been dragged a woman around in the streets.  

“You are not him. Who are you?”  

“I am not who?”  

“Min Yoongi, you are not him. Who are you… why do you look just like him…”

“So indeed you have met him before you met me. Hmmm… I can tell you the truth …”, he took a step towards her, “… but knowing the truth has never once helped anyone. It has only hurt most of them. Do you still want the truth?”, he wasn’t threatening her, not at all.  

Suddenly the door flung open, the force of it transferring to Seol’s body and throwing her onto the floor. In a flash she was held up by two men and being hauled out to somewhere.  

“Hey hey! Where are you taking her?!”, she could hear his voice following behind her closely.  

—

Seol was thrown onto the rocky pavement in the middle of a small yard, forced to kneel down in front of the Prime Minister. The doctor whom she had followed into the house was standing behind him. The Prime Minister’s stern voice floated above her head, “Where do you think this place is? How dare you trespass in my house?”  

The two men who had dragged her here restrained her arms behind her back. Yoongi’s voice followed not long after, “Appa, stop it!”  

Prime Minister Min’s eyes widened at Yoongi’s demeanour and he sharply snaps his attention back to Seol. “You snuck into his room? What did you see? TELL ME NOW!”, his bellowing voice echoed around the small yard.  

“She didn’t see anything, Appa! She doesn’t know anything, just let her go!”, he sounded like a whining child and Seol wondered why he was helping her.  

“You shouldn’t be out here, get back into your room, NOW! Take him inside!”, Prime Minister Min ordered his men to his reluctant son back to his room. 

Prime Minister Min raises Seol’s face so that he could look at her, “Answer me, this is the last time I am asking.”  

“Someone told me that they saw my missing mother here. I just wanted to find her”, she struggled to contain the trembling of her voice.  

“So every time you want to look for someone you think you can just trespass into a stranger’s house? What kind of manners were you taught to have?”  

“I thought there was no other way, it was not as if I could walk up to anyone in this place and ask if you were keeping her here.”

He laughed at her audacity. “What is the name of your mother? Consider your answer carefully… If she isn’t here, you’ll pay the price of sneaking in here like a rat…”  

“Myeongjo, In Myeongjo.”  

“In Myeong… she is your mother?”, the old man frowned and stuttered, recovering quickly. “What is your name?”  

“She’s here?”

“Don’t test my patience young lady, what is your name?”

“Dang Seol”, Seol replied, her voice starting to shake again.  

He drops her face from his hands. “Lock her up in the warehouse, I will come back for her.”  

—

Prime Minister Min bursts into the room and Myeongjo calmly looks up from the table where three opened books lay before her.  

“Dang Seol, do you know a Dang Seol?”  

Myeongjo opened her eyes in shock, her hands trembled and she gripped on tighter to the book in her hands so that it doesn’t show.  

But Prime Minister Min is a shrewd man, “Judging from your reaction, what she said must be true. She’s here. In my backyard, locked up in the warehouse. Your daughter…”  

Myeongjo darts up from her seat.  

“Don’t touch her! If you so much as scratch her, I’ll… I’ll kill myself.”  

“Is that your best bargaining chip?”  

“I know taking our lives is like nothing to you… you didn’t even bat an eyelid when you killed all my friends…”  

“I didn’t kill them!”, he yelled.  

Without so much as a pause from his yelling, Myeongjo continues, “… but I am the closest thing you have to finding a cure to this curse. If I die…”  

“Fine, I’ll let her go…”  

“No! Now that you know about her, I can’t let her go out there by herself again.”  

“Then what is it that you want?”  

“Let her stay with me, here. If you want the cure, you keep her alive, do you hear me?”, Myeongjo’s aura was stronger than ever.  

“Hahaha, remember that you are the one who asked me to keep her here. If you want her alive, you better find the cure”, he was the Prime Minister of this nation, he wasn’t one to be threatened easily. He puts his hands behind his back and saunters out of the room.  

—

The rugged warehouse door swung open, a guard walks in and tells Seol to get up from where she was sitting on a stack of rice bags.  

Seol followed the guard, wondering if the road led to finding Myeongjo or to her own end. But she was merely brought to a room next to the maids’ quarters. “You’ll be staying here.”  

“Where is Myeongjo?”, Seol calls towards the guard who was leaving but he didn’t say another word.  

—

The yard was silent and still. The maids were at work during the day. Seol explored her room and then quietly walked into the garden hidden behind the quarters. For how long will she be held here?  

“Hey doctor”, a voice startles her. She turns around and takes a step back, the face that looked so strikingly similar to Min Yoongi’s was staring down at her, appearing exceptionally soft in the evening sunlight.  

“Are you really a doctor? The medicine you gave me earlier isn’t working…”  

“Umm… I am not really a doctor but…”  

“You are not?! So did you just give me something randomly? But I took it! Am I going to die now?”  

Seol snickered, “I am not a real doctor but I’ve watched my mother treat patients for a long time. The medicine I gave you just now is only for calming you down. You won’t die from taking it.”  

He stared at her silently.  

“You took the medicine I left you even after I was dragged out by your father like that?”, Seol was genuinely curious.  

“Is the question you asked me earlier still valid now? Can I still answer it now?”, he asked out of the blue.  

“Which question?”  

“Who I am.”  

“Who are you?”, she tilts her head.  

“Gangjeong, that is my name.”  

“Gangjeong? Are you Min Yoongi’s brother?”  

“Something like that. But if one day I am no longer around, can you promise to remember my name?”, the question was queer but his mannerism was just innocent.  

He had the same features Yoongi had, the same pale skin but he felt so kind and trusting, Seol thought being “friends” with one of the sons of Prime Minister Min wouldn’t be a bad idea.  

“Gangjeong-sshi. I’ll remember your name.”  

—

Seol wakes up the next morning when someone continuously raps on her room door.  

“Yes?”, her voice came out much more hoarse than she expected.  

A woman hurried in, looking left and right behind her before hastily closing the door. She turned around and Seol jumps to her feet, running to embrace her.  

“What are you doing here? How did you find me here? Did he hurt you?”, Myeongjo demanded, frustrated that Seol was so reckless but worried to death about whether she was hurt, she gently patted Seol’s head.  

“Why are they keeping you here? Have you been alright? Did they hurt you?”, Seol asked through sobbing tears.  

“Seol-ah, listen to me. I don’t have much time, I only managed to sneak in here with a little help from the guard I bribed. I heard that they found you when you snuck in pretending to be Yoongi’s doctor? So you have met him?”  

“Min Yoongi? I have met him… but it wasn’t here… the person I met when I snuck in says he’s Gangjeong. But they look really like each other.”  

“You met Gangjeong? It doesn’t matter, did you see a mark on his wrist? It looks like an azalea flower, did you see it?”, Myeongjo asked eagerly.  

Seol thought back to when she took Gangjeong’s pulse reading, she had taken his right hand. There was no azalea mark on it.  

“I didn’t see it”, Seol replied.  

Myeongjo looks at Seol thoughtfully. “I would rather you never meet him. But since you are now going to be staying here too, it is going to be difficult to avoid him. So I am going to ask you for a favour. If you ever meet him again, look out for the azalea mark on his wrist and remember how many petals there are.”  

—

“Jin hyung hurry! She’s over here!”  

Seol heard Gangjeong’s voice as she stood outside the room in the tiny yard.  

“Good morning doctor-nim, we are going to make some food, let’s go together! You don’t seem to have much to do anyway.”  

“I told you I’m not really a doctor”, Seol clarified, “and I’m not sure if I am allowed to leave the vacinity of this room.”  

Gangjeong cleared his throat in a dramatic way before saying, “My hyung here, he is the crown prince of Joseon, if he says you can come with us then you can come with us”, he turns to nudge Jin.  

“Err yes, I guess… what he said. Hi I’m Jin, by the way.”  

Seol was shocked to come face to face with the crown prince of this nation, she was sure there must be some formality which she should be following that she has absolutely no idea of now. She half bent down into an awkward bow-curtsy-kneeling position, hesitating as to which action to complete.  

“Oh it’s ok it’s ok, you don’t have to…”, Jin quickly tried resolved the situation.  

“It is my honour… your… your majesty?”  

Gangjeong broke into an uncontrollable laughing fit, “Your majesty is for referring to the King… the crown prince should just be referred to as your highness. Do you not even know that?”

“Gangjeong, don’t be rude”, Jin shushes him, “please just call me Jin. What is your name?”

“My name is Dang Seol, your highness”, Seol avoided looking directly into Jin’s eyes even though it was difficult given how pretty they seemed.  

“Social status is scary indeed…”, Gangjeong lamented while his chin, “she never seemed so polite to me, but since you are the crown prince…” Gangjeong’s comment causes Seol to look up at him awkwardly, but he just flashes her the same sweet smile reassuring her that he was just joking around. 

—

The three of them made a heck of a mess in the kitchen, and the maid in charge candidly cringed every time she witnesses Seol’s lack of domestic capabilities. Jin, on the other hand, was exceptionally good at cooking and Seol wondered how a prince like him became so skilled in the kitchen. 

For some reason, Seol feels familiar to Jin but he ended up just being too amused by how bad she is at cooking. After many attempts of trying to get her to stop avoiding his eyes, Jin finally managed to make her look at him when she was struggling to chop up a humongous kimchi and Jin smoothly reached over to take the knife out of her hands.   

“You don’t seem to be very good at this”, Jin tried to suppress the smile growing on his face while directing the question at Seol.  

“Compared to cooking I’m probably better at things like reading or writing. But it’s not easy for someone like me, you should see the extents I go to just to sneak off to the Seodang”, Seol replied bashfully while watching Jin cut up the kimchi effortlessly.  

Jin took a moment to contemplate whether he should offer to let Seol join his lessons in the palace, but just as he opens his mouth, Gangjeong butts in, “You like to read? There’s a whole room full of books next to my room, I’ll show you next time! I just can’t remember where I kept the keys…”, he puts both his hands on his waist, thinking hard.  

“Aren’t you supposed to be making the rice puffs, Gangjeong?”, Jin nagged at him. 

“Seol, do you know what these sweet rice puffs are called?”, Gangjeong asked playfully. She had no idea, it was the first time she’s seeing such sweets since she came to Hanyang.

“Gangjeong… they are called gangjeong”, he pointedly excitedly to himself as he broke into a weird dainty dance. “I was named after them because I am sweet like them”, he was smiling widely again, so much so that part of his gums were showing. 

“And you eat them all the time, you cannibal”, Jin jokes.  

“That’s not even funny, hyung. See, she isn’t even laughing.”

Gangjeong then turns to resume to his task, taking the rice puffs over to the oil that was heating in a huge pan.  

Once Jin sees that Gangjeong’s attention has been diverted, he hands Seol a piece of neatly-cut kimchi for her to taste and mimes at her to not let Gangjeong notice them snacking away behind his back. As Seol quietly munched away, Jin striked up a conversation again.  

“Why is the Prime Minister letting you stay here? He almost never allows any stranger in his house.”

“I am not sure if this is considered letting me stay here. I don’t even really know what’s going on either, but he’s holding my mother here, so I’m staying for now too.”  

A seed of concern was planted within Jin, something must be going on if the Prime Minister is holding Seol and her mother here. But he only laughs softly, “No wonder Gangjeong was so excited, he must feel happy to finally have someone else around to play with.”  

That was the moment when Gangjeong’s voice shrilly pierced across the kitchen. He had forgotten that the oil had been heating for a bit too long and it came splattering onto his hands when he threw the rice puffs into the frying pan. 

Jin and Seol both ran over to him and Seol acted quickly by dragging him outside to where there was a bucket of clear water. She tested the water with her own hands and thank goodness it was cold enough from the chilly weather. She quickly dips Gangjeong’s hand into the bucket, making sure to roll up his sleeves so as not to get it wet.  

This was when she saw it. The tattoo-like azalea mark etched into Gangjeong’s wrist, she realises she it was on his left arm all along. It was almost as big as her palms, taking up the entire width of Gangjeong’s wrist, in pitch-black. And, one, two… three, there were only three petals.  

How does Myeongjo know that there is a mark like this on his wrist? Why does she want to know how many petals there are? Seol pondered without realising she was staring too keenly at it.  

“Does it scare you?”, Gangjeong looks at Seol in concern.  

“What is it?”, Seol asked cautiously.  

He paused for a moment, wondering whether it is right for him to tell her. He probably shouldn’t, but he wants to.  

“A curse…”, he mutters, “… a shaman’s curse.”  

When he uttered the word “shaman”, Seol couldn’t help but see a flash of Yoongi in him.  

“What kind of curse is it?”  

“You don’t know what a black azalea means?”, his demeanour was no longer chirpy. Seol frowned in befuddlement.  

“Death…”, he eventually croaked, “… it means death.”