Growing up in Highgarden was so carefree. Even when his father was away for work or other important matters, and he could not see both his parents at the same time for months on end, Jinwoo was still happy, and he felt safe.

He cannot remember a time when that was different. All he can remember is the sun and the sound of the springs and the smell of the roses. He can remember playing knights with the boys and sneaking off into one of the armories when he wasn't supposed to. He can remember cutting his finger on a blade, and then lying later that he had pricked himself on a rose. ''Just as well,'' his mother had told him, ''Roses are Tyrells, my boy. You're either kissed by a lovely scent or pricked by a nasty thorn.'' He didn't understand it then. Now he's wearing it like a second skin.

So carefree, and so beautiful. By the time he was nine years of age, he had already learned to navigate the briar labyrinth of Highgarden, twisting and turning and coming to dead ends and then trying again. By the time he was ten, he had found the quickest path to the center, with minimal cheating through the brambles. It's much like the world of today, that maze. Yet he had come out unprepared. Nothing could have really prepared him for it.

From the moment they deemed him lad grown, he had felt inadequate, yet wanting the whole world all the same. It was a painful existence, a constant inner struggle; there were times when he was wondering if he was truly a Tyrell - a lad so quiet and keeping to the shadows, his own House might have forgot about him. He was certainly no Garlan the Gallant, or his ever undefeated cousin Loras. Jinwoo wasn't bad with a sword, far from it! And he had a pretty face on him too. Yet he always found himself in the far end of the room, at the farthest place at the table, in the darkest corner of the yard. No one had put him there, he fully realized that at eighteen. He had put himself there.

''Roses don't grow in the dark, my boy,'' his father had told him as they rode to Brightwater Keep not a year past, to help Garlan keep his claim, ''You would do well to remember that.'' The words oddly stuck with him ever since, and never left him again.

The safety and carelessness of his childhood was an illusion, he knows that now. His years as a squire were an illusion. He was never safe, and he was never really inadequate. The only reality is this, here, at this moment. The danger of now. The necessity to be the hunter, instead of the hunted. He was a Tyrell all along, he must have been - a beautiful rose with nasty thorns. It had just taken him longer to learn that. And use it.

And as he's riding into King's Landing with a hundred men to add to the City Watch, he knows he has to be as sly and prickly as he can be, and ever, ever watchful. The Tyrells are many here, but never safe. King's Landing is not their home. He needs to be strong.

''Growing strong.'' The words of his house rang true with him. He may not have always been strong, but the seven hells take him if he isn't ever growing.