Sehun woke up, his eyes scrunching, searching for the least bit of familiarity in his dim surroundings. He felt a layer of soft and rough under him, very unlike the silk sheets of his warm, comfortable bed, and they rustled when he moved even the slightest.

Wheat?

He sighed. It was impossible; this was nowhere he had been to before therefore nowhere to be found in his memory. It wouldn’t be easy to get out, not in this lighting.

 If it was any other person, he or she would have panicked by now upon grasping that realization, but clamor and disarray were exhibitions of bad breeding, and a prince was not one to hit the roof and go berserk.  In his eighteen years living under the watchful eye of high-ranked intellectuals and nobles, Prince Sehun had acquired the manners and attitudes of the upper classes.

Sehun smiled weakly. How long had it been? It seems as though it was just a while ago that Yi Xing, one of his many tutors, was giving him a lecture about how he should act during the crowning ceremony while walking down the corridor to his bedroom (which were immaculately clean thanks to all the hardworking servants Sehun was never permitted to talk to). He thought he was safe once he was inside his sanctum of solitude and tranquility, free from the Chinese man’s shrill voice, hidden from the cold discerning phantom that fills every nook and cranny of his Oh-so sweet home, but not long after he closed the door and released the breath that he had been waiting to let out all day, the unknown wrapped itself around him like a python strangulating its prey.

Sehun gasped just as a piece of cloth was slapped onto his face, causing him to inhale the powdery substance he assumed was a drug. The room swirled, and lights joined in the dance until his vision exemplified the view through a kaleidoscope.

Sehun knew he had to do something, but he also knew there was nothing he can do. The constrictor had injected its venom, and it will not be long until it was done with him.

His hand flew to his face. How could he be so dumb to fall for such an old trick in the oldest book in the oldest section of the oldest library? And before his coronation, too…

Wait… was that it? Was that why he was kidnapped? But something was missing…

He sat up and stiffened when a sharp pain shot up his lower back. He had been sleeping on his waist the whole time. Curse that Sunggyu for being such an influential , that old grandpa…

While his well-bred highness was too busy cussing under his breath, a door on the far wall in front of Sehun that his eyes have adjusted to see had clicked open, light streaming out from the crack, perfectly outlining the shape of the muddy boot of his captor.