The child is dreadfully young, it realises, to comprehend its words. That is not its concern. It is here to weave a delicious tale for the boy, for he is entangled in this story and in the future to come.

The boy extends his plump hand out to grasp its five- hand. It lets him. It wiggles its eyebrows and the boy laughs. Children are so easily entertained. This particular child is the gold star example.

“Listen, Paul,” it says, taking the toddler from his bassinet, “or should I call you Han?”

Silence. Doe-like eyes remains spellbound by the yoyo hanging from its hip. “You like this?” It unhooks the yoyo from its waist, giving him the toy.

“So, what it is going to be? Paul or Han?” it questions, lifting its ebon brow.

The child is dreadfully young, it realises, to comprehend its words. That is not its concern. It is here to weave a delicious tale for the boy, for he is entangled in this story and in the future to come.

“Let’s begin, shall we?”

Once upon a time, as most fairytales begin in the mouths of storytellers, there was a boy whose royal family fell to familial greed and then they bleed. In the blood that was shed, the boy died, an iniquitous man risen.

- - -

There was once, as the flaxen-haired bards used to start for sleepy children, a boy who laughs like rainbows and smiles radiant as the springtime’s sun. The child of an admiral, he wanders around the palace and meets his destiny. The son kneels under the plastic sword, and his laughter dies as a payment.  

- - -

Long time ago, as some stories open with this line written in books, there was a girl from a fractured household, whose father drank and ran, whose mother worked herself to the bone. The slums has a way of forcing a budding flower to bloom before its time, and so she learns clever tricks to survive.

- - -

Once there was, minstrels sing with their fiddles on their shoulders, a girl born with a silver spoon and an artistic mind in the land of western teachings. But she grows up with a wooden spoon, runs to the land of the morning calm and earns a prestigious post.

- - -

The boy king finds his greatest supporter in the admiral’s son. Their bond is unbreakable as the sword the admiral’s son believes he is. It is devotion. It is understanding. It is love. It’s all above, but for now, the boy king and the admiral’s son are a liege and his vassal.

- - -

The fishmonger’s daughter and the boy king aren’t supposed to cross paths. Two different class. Two wildly separated bearings. One out to preserve the empire he inherited as it was. The other strive to dismantle the monarchy, in favour of democracy and equality.

Between them, the king’s keeper is vigilant. He swings his scythe at the treacherous buds before the creeping vines swallow the emperor, constricting him into an accident-marked grave. The admiral’s son now, a captain of the highest order, is one man against many.

- - -

The silverspoon-borned girl is a voracious reader. She reads, and writes, and reads, and writes, and feverishly writes. Her stories, however fantastical they may be, secures an adoring fanbase and among them is a court lady cossetting her guilty pleasure. Yet the fiction she plaits for the palace are darkly and dangerous lies. And she has no say, but to obey.

- - -

Encounters made in chances and carefully coordinated occurrences, the once boy-king turns emperor and the assemblywoman, former fishmonger’s daughter, embark on dance of mutually assured ruins.

- - -

Attraction is fickle, when an affair is constructed in the dais of adversarial contempt. It does not stops neither the prime minister nor the emperor from being bedfellows.

Their couplings are clandestine, sacred perhaps. In the shadows, a perpetual guardian lurks and the distinction between a loyal custodian and a covetous admirer is a blurry one.

- - -

They make a strange . The liberal prime minister. The discreet captain. The golden emperor. There is no discernible telling of who is the husband, the wife or the mistress, only speculations to fuel one’s curiosity.

Sometimes, the captain discovers, even warring rivals have the habit of being the worthiest acquaintances.

- - -

Nonetheless, when courting a lover made of blazing passion and contentious temperament, the prime minister learns a terrible lesson. Such trysts can only end with sickening ever-afters.

- - -

The writer has an immense capacity to turn a blind eye on the mounting skeletons and bloodied secrets. She sleeps easily. Steady prescriptions to Xanax ensures she does.

Money and power—and it always have been money, really—that moves the world. Power in the hands of a damaged ruler plays by Russian roulette rules. To defy is to invite death itself, she continues to chisel rot from the emperor’s reputation.

She draws the line at old lady dying at the discovery of an aftermath of a brutal .

- - -

There are many deaths. Yes. Caskets are selected. Coffins are bought. Grounds are dug. For the ones, who linger around the emperor, drop like flies caught in a Venus fly trap. Better yet, they’re hapless swimmers drawn into the titanic turbulent whirlpool of a king.

Still, the commonfolk cheer, and they clamour for their valour-decorated king. It is impossible not to, when the tyrant is a handsome young man and a heart-rending past crafted by romantic writers with an eye for tragedies.

- - -

The prime minister’s homecoming nearly rivals the emperor’s coronation. It is a state’s affair, despite her request for privacy. Onlookers note the air rivetingly taut as the emperor lends his hand and there is surely a beat—a hesitation never seen—before she takes his.

Their combative spirited meetings teether on the edge of malicious scorn, barren of its customary teasing. Trifling rumourmongers still whisper a phantom lovesome in the dusks, but such scandalous affairs are hearsays now.

There is an unspoken understanding, brittle and profound, agreed between the prime minister and the captain; they are not friends still.

- - -

Tyrants are mad men, mind you.  Even if, he is a sharply-dressed man, with Adonis looks and charismatic eloquence. In time, he unravels under the weight of his perfidious thoughts and his ever stalwart companion is reduced to a powerless onlooker.

His ruthlessness sees no compromise, in his enemies, in his allies, in his people. The reins he hold over his kingdom is tighter, ever so straining. It is not coincidental this coincides with the prime minister now shares the stage once more.

But for now, the kingdom has the emperor’s undivided attention once more. His Unbreakable Sword, his priestly keeper, does all within his powers to keep his beloved from unscrambling once more.

The child, with his blanket in one scrunched first and the yoyo strings in between the other closed palm, is regrettably distracted by the spinning hanging bell above his bassinet.

It slaps its forehead, sighing. “Were you even listening to a word I said?”

The boy sneezes. Considering his lack of speech, that probably amounts to a solid no.

“I said, long story short, the status quo has to go. All good things must come to an end,” it pauses, calculating the digits with its fingers—all ten of them—and nods satisfactorily at its estimation. “Don’t you think so?”

The infant coos his protest, peeved little lashes blinking.

“I’ll be back before you know it,” it pacifies. It picks the staggeringly pretty babe up, supporting him with its stronger arm. Gently, it untangles the yoyo’s strings from his forearm. Restringing the threads over the yoyo’s top takes it seconds.

“Do not fret, my little friend, I won’t miss it for the world,” it says. “That coup d’état will be epic.”

Unbending its arm, it rolls the yoyo off the tips of its fingers, snapping its wrist and the yoyo spins sparrow-quick. “Until then, I’m visiting the other timelines.”

“How do I know?” it adds, tugging the yoyo back to its hand. “You are your father’s son, and your mother’s masterpiece. You will survive. Your parents are survivors, remember that.”

Paul Lee Han tries to clutch its hand, succeeds and promptly on its thumb. It would have snatch its hand back, but the child is astonishingly adorable. The baby carries on ling its thumb and fingers for a few minutes.

“Nam-jin, where are you?” Seung-ah hisses, her voice floats into the nursery, startling the child. “That idiot.”

“Oh wait, that’s me.” It shrugs, then returns the child back into its bassinet.

“In case you miss me,” it pauses, searching its pockets, pats over the fabric until it finds a trinket keychain shaped like a flute. “This is a replica of the Manpasikjeok.”

“Who knows, I might meet another version of you.” It smiles, tying the keychain to the hanging bell and make tutting noises. “Another you that is not a child out wedlock.”

“I swear I saw him in the library. He’s not there, is he,” Seo-ryeong replies, her words muffled through the crack between the door and its hinges.

“I have to go now.” Satisfied, it walks to the door, glancing at the boy one last time. “Eh, maybe or maybe not on that other you,” it says, leaning against the doorframe, and grins. “Your parents here have a penchant of ill-fated love in any universe.”

“The tale hasn’t ended yet. It is just the beginning.”

Manpasikjeok winks.

“See you in twenty years, kid.”

No rest for the wickedly tyrant.

Mutiny is stirring.

Fin.