A sigh escaped her lips as she looked at the entirety of her kingdom from her place in her balcony, sometimes Minji wished she wasn’t doomed to this prison and that she could be anyone else but the heir to the crown.

Crossing her arms over the stone she was leaning against, the princess dared to dream about a life outside the castle walls, maybe one in the most peaceful village at the edge of the kingdom, living in a small house right at the edge of the sea.

Her wistful thoughts were interrupted by someone clearing ; Minji turned her head and met the eyes of her handmaiden, Handong, who was staring at her with amusement.

“Daydreaming again, your highness?”

“How many times have I told you to call me Minji when it’s just the two of us?”, Minji pushed herself away from the balcony and walked into her room.

Handong let out a small laugh, “If I had a golden coin for every time you said that, I could finance my own kingdom”.

Even if their status called for the contrary, Minji saw Handong as her one true friend, the only person that she trusted more than anyone else in the entire world. 

They had met when they were no more than kids, Handong’s mother had been Minji’s handmaiden at a time, and took Handong to assist her so her daughter could learn how to take care of the princess and replace her in the near future, since she was getting too old to keep up with the princess’ pace.

At first, Handong had hated Minji, since her mother was always focused on the princess instead of her; sure, she knew it was her job and that it put a roof over their heads and food on their table, but still it hurt to see her mother treat the other with so much tenderness. 

As time passed though, Handong learned that the princess was in the same boat as her: longing for the love of a mother that was always taking care of someone else, and trying to fight the loneliness that came with her royal status.

While Handong couldn’t relate to the struggles of a royal, she could relate to feeling lonely, she was an only child and the children from the village thought of her as rude and weird since she was more on the quiet side, so Handong had no one’s company but her own.

The night that changed their dynamics was one Handong could never forget.

It had been slightly raining the whole week, the skies had been covered in gray clouds and the sun had barely shined; something a little bit out of the ordinary for the usually warm kingdom.

A twelve year old Minji had been practicing archery on the yard, taking advantage of the lull of the rain  with Handong keeping an eye on her while her mother talked with the Queen, when all hell broke loose.

A sudden boom was heard, and the sound of steel meeting steel made them jump in their places.

Minji put her bow down and ran to Handong, scared, “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, but stay with me”.

They saw the guards that had been stationed around the garden running to the front of the castle, where a commotion was apparently taking place. 

Handong took Minji’s hand and led her to the stables, where they could surely hide until everything passed. However, before they could get to safety, the skies opened and a heavy rain started pouring down; they tried to walk as fast as they could but were suddenly intercepted by a mean looking guy.

“Hand me the princess!”, the guy shouted as he approached them.

Handong pushed Minji behind her, and for a ten year old, Handong for sure was brave. She stared up at the guy with her best menacing glare, making him chuckle in amusement.

“Cute”, he spat out before trying to make a grab at the princess.

While Handong had never been trained in personal defense, she knew a thing or two about facing bullies twice her size; she steeled herself and as the man was close, she pulled her leg back and kicked him as hard as she could in the groin.

The guy immediately fell down, clutching himself in pain. 

Just for good measure, Handong also kicked him hard on the head, knocking him out cold.

Minji could only stare in shock, frozen in her spot. 

“Let’s go!”, Handong shouted at her and took the princess's hand, pulling her past the stables, to the little shed the guards’ dogs used as shelter. It was the perfect place to hide, since they were both still on the smaller side for their ages.

Soaked to the bone, they both sighed in relief as they got inside the shed. Seeing the princess’s trembling frame, Handong looked around and took a blanket that was lying around -probably from one of the dogs- from the ground and wrapped it around the princess.

“This will do”, she whispered as she hugged herself.

Seeing Handong shivering snapped Minji out of her daze. As cautiously as she could, she approached the other girl and wrapped one half of the blanket around her.

“It-it c-can co-cover us bo-both”, the princess said through chattering teeth.

Knowing better than to go against the princess’s word, Handong wrapped her arms around the princess, who snuggled further into her, and wrapped the blanket tightly against themselves, trying to keep each other warm.

After a few minutes, the princess broke the silence.

“You could have left me there”, there was something about the princess tone that made Handong’s heart clench.

The youngest shook her head, “I couldn’t leave you to that scary man”.

She had wanted to leave it at that, but the whole ordeal had changed something in Handong; she always used to look at the princess as someone snobbish and annoying, but seeing her looking so small and afraid made Handong want to protect her.

The words that spilled out of surprised them both, Handong had confessed to Minji how she was jealous of the attention her mother gave her, of the life she led, that maybe being cold towards her was out of envy; Minji had in turn told her how much she wished her own mother would treat her as her handmaiden did, that no matter what she did she could never get her parents’ attention. Minji had also been envious of Handong, since her handmaiden would always gush about whatever her daughter did.

That rainy afternoon, as they clutched to each other, both found out how similar they were; they shared their fears, their hopes and dreams, they got to know one another as they never had before. Even though they were young, the only thing that they had known was loneliness, but after that day, they found a true friend in each other.

After they had been found by the royal guard and ushered inside the castle, Minji had refused to let go of Handong’s hand. Both girls were taken care of by the staff, and put under the same warm covers at the princess’ request. 

The girls had been inseparable since then, whenever Minji went, Handong followed. And once the younger had turned sixteen and deemed old enough to take care of the princess on her own, her mother had retired and left her the title of the princess’s handmaiden. 

It had been six years since becoming Minji’s handmaiden, and as Handong looked at her, taking in the princess in all her beauty, she couldn’t help but think at how much they had changed; not only on the outside, since Minji had gotten the crazy idea of dying her hair purple and talked her into dyeing hers blue, but on the inside too.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”, Minji’s voice brought Handong back to the present.

“I was just thinking about our friendship”, she gave the princess a warm smile as she sat beside her on the bed, “And how far we have become”.

Minji stared softly at her friend and took her hand in hers, “And we’ll go even farther”.

A comfortable silence enveloped them both, only being broken by a knock on the door. With a groan, Handong stood up from her place and went to answer it. Once she opened the door, she was greeted by the castle’s courier, who was bringing a letter to the princess.

After taking the letter from his hand and thanking him, Handong closed the door and cautiously approached the bed, knowing that the princess would not like the contents of the letter.

“It appears to be a letter from Prince Yoongi”, Handong said as she gave the envelope to Minji, the princess’s mood dropping as soon as those words came out of her handmaid’s mouth.

Prince Min Yoongi was the heir of TangBan’s kingdom, one of her father’s trusted allies. They had met when they were kids and Minji just thought the boy was kind of dull, and as they grew older and the fight for Minji’s hand in marriage started, Yoongi became an annoying presence that Minji could never seem to shake. 

The boy seemed to be everywhere she went to, almost as if every encounter they had was planned. Her father had been overjoyed when Yoongi started courting her, favoring him over all the other prospects; by the time Yoongi’s father had proposed for them to be married in order to strengthen their alliance and secure their legacies, her father had been over the moon and immediately accepted the proposal without consulting her first.

Minji read the letter and frowned, “He wants to meet with me in a fortnight. To discuss our wedding”.

Fed up with everything, Minji balled the letter in her hands and threw it away across the room, not caring where it landed. It was not that Yoongi wasn’t a decent man, he was just not her type, and she knew that no matter how much she tried, she’d never be happy by his side.

Sensing her friend’s distress, Handong sat right next to her and hugged her tightly, “I’m sorry honey, I know how much you’re dreading this”.

The handmaiden had seen first hand how much this whole wedding ordeal had been eating at Minji, adding to the fact that she had always been confined to the castle’s premises, the princess had never known a day of true freedom in her life.

“It’s just, I wish I could live my own life”, tears started pooling in her eyes, “I hate not being able to marry for love or to at least have a life outside this castle”.

Maybe if Minji had more freedom, she would not protest as much as she was now; there was just something that rubbed her wrong about not being able to do what she really wanted, ever since she was little all she dreamed of was exploring the outside world, of making a change in her kingdom.

She had tried to talk to her mother about it, but she was only met the indifference gaze of the queen; and there was no way she could try and talk to her father about it, the man just saw her as a puppet he could make and break to his will, doing what he thought was best for him and the kingdom.

“You know, since they told me I was to marry Yoongi, it’s the only thing my mother has been able to talk about. I think she hasn’t paid this much attention to me since I was born. And I can’t believe I’m saying this but I hate it”.

“Minji…”

“It’s like, I’ve always gone above and beyond to impress her and nothing ever worked, But me getting married was all it took to get her to see me,” she buried her face on Handong’s neck, letting her tears finally fall, “and even then, she only sees what she wants to see.”

The princess cried in her best friend’s arms, mourning for the life she would never get to have; sometimes she thought it was selfish of her to cry about anything when she had almost everything, but even she was not strong enough to pretend that all these riches made her happy.

“Well,” Handong ran a hand over her friend’s back, trying to soothe her, “it’s not like you could run away and live elsewhere”, she mumbled jokingly.

Which seemed to be her first mistake. 

Minji took a deep breath and dried her tears, Handong’s words had made the cogs start turning in her head. Run away, uh? , while at first it seemed like a ridiculous idea, the more and more she thought about it, the more appealing that option sounded.

“Minji, don’t”, Handong could almost see smoke coming out of the princess’s ears from thinking too far, and if she knew her best friend as well as she did, the next words coming out from would surely be-

“ What if…”, the princess stood up from the bed, “I run away and live elsewhere?”

“I was afraid you’d say that”, the handmaiden pinched the bridge of her nose.

Minji started pacing around the room, “I know it sounds crazy but, this life , I never asked for it!”, she gestured wildly, “I know if I marry Prince Yoongi I’ll be miserable my whole life. But If I run away, I get to choose my destiny”.

There was a dangerous glint in Minji’s eyes, it was the one she got whenever she got something into her head, there was no way Handong could change her mind now; it was the same glint she got when she convinced Handong to steal some guards’s swords to try and learn to fight by themselves, or when Minji had tried to prove she was no longer a lightweight and downed a bottle of wine in one go.

Once Minji was set on something, she was going to see it through, no matter the costs or consequences. And obviously, Handong was going to be right there next to her.

(Like it has always been since that rainy afternoon; Handong and Minji against the world. No matter if they almost lost their hands while learning to fight -the handmaiden had a scar on her right hand to prove it- or if they almost got caught by the king drunkenly gong around the castle -it had been a miracle that some guard had gotten the king’s attention first, instead of Minji’s drunken that thought it would be a great idea to convince her father to let her travel the world).

Handong sighed and said, “Let’s say we run away together”

“ We ?”, Minji sounded surprised.

“You know I’d never leave you”, as to prove her point, Handong grabbed Minji’s wrist and pulled her to sit back right next to her.

Sometimes Minji couldn’t believe how much her friend loved her, and for that she was grateful, but still, there was something important that she had to ask first.

“Even if that means leaving Yoohyeon?”

The handmaiden seemed surprised at her question, how does she know about Yoohyeon?

Seeing Handong’s confused face and knowing what her friend was surely thinking about, she said, “Remember when we stole those bottles from the winery last month? You got so drunk you started spilling your guts about the pretty silver haired woman that visited your cousin’s bakery and literally fell right to your feet because you stunned her with your beauty ”

“I’m sorry for not telling you before”, Handong mumbled, her cheeks turning red, what else could she have told Minji while being drunk? She wasn’t sure if she wanted to find out.

“It’s okay”, she shoulder checked Handong. “I was waiting til you were ready. And you know, we could always take her with us. If she is as taken with you as you are with her, I believe she’d follow us with her eyes closed.”

Not that Handong wanted to keep feeding the fire, but if she was going to get on board of this, they better start thinking about a great plan that didn’t end up with either of them in jail or dead.

“Okay, let’s say we all run away together. There’s no way we can hide anyway in the kingdom from your parent’s men”

“That’s why we won’t be hiding anywhere inside the kingdom or in any of the neighboring ones for that matter.”

“Uh?”

“We’ll hide the only place where they won’t get to us”

Once again, there was that dangerous glint on Minji’s eyes, and her devious smirk wasn’t helping calm Handong down. If they weren’t going to hide somewhere inside their own kingdom or the neighboring ones, it could only mean one thing. 

“Please don’t say it”, Handong closed her eyes in frustration, if Minji said the place she thought the princess was going to say, they were either being brave or incredibly stupid. 

Minji took both of Handong’s hands in hers, with a smile on her face and looking directly in her friend’s eyes, she confidently said the words Handong was dreading.

“We’ll hide in The Cutthroat Lee’s ship ” 

me?? starting another multi-chaptered fic?? it's more likely than you think

hope you like it!!

disclaimer: all mistakes are mine, english is not my first language.

you can also find me on tw: @anothershipper
cc:/anothershipper