No matter how hard I tried, memorising Chinese characters wasn’t an easy task. I stared at them every day, going over them again and again, yet when asked to recall the parts I had just learned, they blurred in my mind.
I couldn’t help but wonder if I had always been this slow-witted.
Still, the king personally taught me Chinese characters, and as we made bingsu together, a few of the walls I had unconsciously built up against him were gradually torn down. Although this wasn’t a good sign, his gaze was so gentle that my guard naturally let down whenever I looked at him.
“What does this mean?”
“Oh! I know this one… If the stroke goes downwards, then…”
“...”
“…So, if the stroke goes downwards…”
This was driving me crazy. Seriously.
Did my brain get damaged from falling into this era? No matter how hard I tried, I kept forgetting things the moment I turned away, and once again, an awkward expression spread across my face.
“Still can’t remember?”
“…Hanja characters are too difficult.”
“I had already mastered the Thousand Character Classic by the time I was four.”
“What? At four?”
“I’m not bragging. I’m just saying that even young children can learn it.”
“I suppose it would have been easier if I had learned it when I was younger.”
“...”
“…I’ll memorise it again.”
“Let’s go get some fresh air. Just staring at them won’t make you remember.”
The king got up from his seat with a look of almost complete resignation. Although I rose hesitantly, I was actually quite happy when he suggested going out for some fresh air, since I had been studying Chinese characters quite diligently.
As soon as we stepped outside, Narae, who had settled herself in a spot on one side, wagged her tail and even barked at the king for the first time.
Narae, who had grown noticeably plumper and cuter since we first brought her here, was still so happy even though the king didn’t give her a single affectionate pat.
“Narae has put on a little weight and has become even cuter.”
“You’re not giving all your food to Narae, are you?”
“Huh? No… I eat properly, too.”
“My patience is starting to run out.”
Those words were enough to make me choke back a cough, so I pretended not to hear and feigned distraction. At that, the king halted and turned around.
“Did you hear me?”
What was I supposed to say when he asked me that so directly?
Reluctantly, I nodded, and the king suddenly reached out his hand.
I had heard that, even if you couldn’t see them, many eyes were watching in the palace. After experiencing matters related to serving the king at night, I found myself unconsciously glancing around — when, suddenly, he grabbed my hand first.
Flustered, I let out a small “Ah—” sound, but he soon walked toward the flower garden I had asked to be prepared. The eunuch following behind us lowered his head, not daring to lift his face at the sight.
“Why did you ask for a flower garden to be made?”
Truthfully, I had hoped that even just picking a few flowers might somehow help me return home. Come to think of it, I hadn’t entirely neglected trying to find a way to return either.
However, I couldn’t tell the king the truth, so I simply said that I liked flowers. Then he, who had been leading me toward the flower garden, paused to look at the fully bloomed flowers before suddenly asking me another question.
“That flower you mentioned before: the sangsahwa. Does it have a meaning too?”
“Yes?”
“Here, people sometimes give flowers meanings and name them accordingly. For example, there’s the dogtail grass, and also the pasque flowers.”
“I know those names as well. Where I live, people still attach meanings to flowers through the language of flowers.”
“Does that flower called sangsahwa have a meaning as well? I was told that since it’s a pretty flower, it carries no sad meaning.”
“Ah…”
He remembered everything I said so clearly.
I thought to myself that I should watch my words and wondered how I could talk my way out of this. But since it was a flower that didn't bloom here anyway, it probably wouldn’t matter if I lied.
“It’s a flower you give to someone you like.”
“To someone you like?”
At my words, the king seemed to recall the sangsahwa drawn in the book.
“It’s a pity it doesn’t bloom here.”
He murmured.
“How different do you think the world you lived in is from the one I live in?”
“I’m not exactly sure… but… at the very least, a few hundred years difference… and at most, a thousand.”
“That’s a very long time.”
After that, the king remained silent, holding my hand as we slowly walked through the flower garden.
Even though he knew there were many people in the palace watching, he walked on without letting go of my hand and told me to speak up if I ever wanted anything again.
He let me have what I wanted and eat whatever I wished, but now that I knew of the elderly woman’s existence, his ever-changing attitude felt overwhelming — and yet, somehow, I also felt a pang of guilt.
・・・・・
“My lady, please, compose yourself.”
Buyeon Yuhwa’s nails had been bitten so short that they were bleeding. The maids nearby turned pale as they tried to stop her, but she glared at them with such a fierce intensity, as if she were a nine-tailed fox, that no one dared intervene.
Even after General Hunmu had choked her, she had thrown similar tantrums, but she had never become so emotional as to draw blood. This had started only recently, ever since the lessons to be queen were suddenly halted the day before yesterday.
A palace eunuch suddenly came and announced that the lessons to be queen would be suspended, and what she had thought would be only a day's pause dragged on into two.
At first, Yuhwa was glad to be free, even briefly, from the tedious palace etiquette lessons. But when the break stretched into a day and then two, she was the first to sense that something was wrong. The lessons, which had started being postponed day by day, might perhaps end forever.
Having nervously bitten her nails down until there was nothing left to bite, Yuhwa began to twirl her own hair around her fingers.
When she was young, her mother had called it utterly vulgar, and she had never indulged in the habit. Yet even so, Yuhwa could already feel in her body just how precarious her position had become.
“It’s because of her. Because of that wench Yewon, who came from a strange world.”
“My lady, it is not that. They are just taking a short break because of the heat…”
Swoosh!
“Ahh!”
“You foolish girl. A break just because of the heat? There have been countless days hotter than today. Do you think I keep you by my side to hear such pathetic excuses? Shall I have you killed too, just like that palace maid?”
“I was wrong, Your Majesty! I have been foolish. Please forgive me.”
“Hah… I can’t let it end like this. After all, I’ve come this far."
Each time she defeated countless rivals, her father’s expression visibly brightened. Her father, who had always bowed his head before powerful families, for the first time, looked at her with more tender eyes than at her elder brother, only after all her competitors had vanished.
When he realised she could truly become queen, even he, who hadn’t had high expectations at first, brought her medicinal tonics and tried to act like a father in ways she had never experienced growing up. Even aside from that, she had no intention of giving the queen’s position to anyone else.
Of course, with her sharp mind, she could devise a scheme to send Yewon out of the palace, but since General Hunmu knew her true intentions, it wouldn’t be so easy.
If she were to fall out of favour once more with someone who did not fear death, her own neck would be at stake.
“Wait, you there. Your name’s Yunju, right?”
“Yes?”
“I hear your mother’s a shaman?”
“N-not my mother, but my grandmother…”
“Silence! Are you trying to pick a fight of words with me?”
“No, my lady!”
“If your grandmother were a shaman, how many shamans do you think she would have known?”
“She has passed away now…”
“Find me a powerful shaman.”
“Pardon…?”
“With General Hunmu around, it has become difficult to approach her directly. In that case, I must use another method.”
・・・・・
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Yes?”
“It seems your studies are slow because you lack earnestness.”
It had already been over a week since I started memorising the Chinese characters, but seeing little progress, the king suddenly spoke in a serious tone.
I tried to put on a faintly aggrieved expression, as if to say I really was doing my best, but I had to admit that I had little to show for it.
But why had he suddenly been so intent on making me study Chinese characters recently?
Even though not knowing Chinese characters wasn’t much of a problem, the king, who had been pushing my studies as if there were some purpose, fell into a thoughtful silence and then suddenly stared straight at me.
“The total number of characters you have to memorise by today is 160.”
“Yes…”
“Of those, you haven’t even memorised fifty characters, so isn’t that serious?”
“It’s just unfamiliar for now, but once I study for a while, I think I’ll start picking up speed.”
“No. From today onward, I will set a condition.”
“Pardon? A condition?”
“I’ll have you start from the beginning again, but if you fail to memorise the twenty characters you’re supposed to learn each day…”
“If… I fail to memorise them…”
“You must be embraced by me as many times as the number you fail to memorise.”
“!”
“That will give you more motivation, won’t it?”
“…That’s far too unreasonable.”
“You’re not in a position to refuse. If you fail to memorise all twenty, it’s me who’ll have the problem of having to embrace you twenty times.”
“Not only is that physically impossible, but…”
“How would you know without even trying — whether it's possible or not?"
I was at a loss for words, stammering helplessly, when the king, as if fully resolved, took the sheet of Chinese characters I had been memorising. Then he handed me the first page again — the one with ‘heaven’ [天] written on it — so I could start over from the beginning.
“Start memorising again.”
“It’s impossible. Truly!”
“What exactly is impossible?”
“For the amount I cannot memorise… something like that…”
“I told you, it would be a problem for me, not you.”
"So… even for the king… it would be a problem, so wouldn’t it be better to set a different condition?"
“If I am to accept your inability to memorise the characters without complaint, this is the only condition I can set. Otherwise, I would have to teach you all night.”
“…Why are you so intent on teaching me Hanja characters?”
“Who knows.”
The king didn’t answer properly and just gestured with his eyes, as if urging me to memorise quickly. Now that I realised I would really have to embrace him for every character I couldn’t memorise, the characters seemed to enter my mind vividly and clearly.
Watching the change in my expression, the king said:
“I should have done this from the beginning.”
He seemed pleased with the condition he had set.
But from my perspective, those words were like a bolt from the blue, and since there was a total of a thousand characters I had to memorise, I couldn’t simply accept that condition.
“But no matter how I think about it… you mean you’d do that for every character I fail to memorise…?”
“Shall I double it then?”
“What?”
“...”
“No… I will memorise them.”
Since it seemed no other suggestion would work on the king, who was focused on the total, I sulkily stared at the characters over and over again.
Then I heard the king let out a short, quiet chuckle.
“A woman who dislikes being held by me this much… my pride is wounded.”
“It’s not that I dislike it…”
“You don’t dislike it?”
“I don’t…”
Swish.
Flinch.
“If you don’t dislike it, then why do you avoid it so much?”
At some point, the king suddenly came up to me and asked. As I set down the sheet of characters I had been looking at and tried to shuffle back slightly, he grabbed my wrist and leaned his face closer.
“I held you with quite a bit of care. Hmm?”
“…Th… that… I…”
“Answer me.”
“Oh my gosh!”
As the king kept pressing his face and body closer, I flinched and fell backward. Wearing a hanbok I wasn’t used to, I tried to get up immediately, but I was the kind of person who couldn’t do a single sit-up even in everyday clothes.
Flailing helplessly, unable to rise, I saw the corners of the king’s lips curl into a mischievous smile as he leaned teasingly over me.
“You said you didn’t dislike it, and here you are tempting me in broad daylight.”
“No! I just fell backward because my body is heavy!”
I was so flustered I could hardly catch my breath, and the king, looking down at me, smiled once more.
But looking up at him like this, his smiling face seemed so at ease. Was he showing such an unguarded smile because I wasn’t someone from the palace?
Lying beneath the king made me tense, yet I couldn’t help looking at him as he smiled, and soon his lips lightly brushed mine before pulling away.
“When I first saw you, you were simply a woman from a strange place.”
Gulp.
“But the more I look at you, the more my heart is drawn to you.”
“!”
“Show me your smile often. I don’t particularly like sweets, but I like your smile.”
As soon as he finished speaking, his lips met mine again, softly pressing in and moving with his tongue. Fortunately, he didn’t touch my clothes, but his tongue wrapped around mine deeply. After a short while, he pressed firmly with his hand and lifted his body.
Confused by the king’s restraint in stopping at just a kiss, I sat up in a daze, only for him to point at the characters and tell me to memorise them quickly.
After coming back from the temple, he didn’t hold me, supposedly because I had lost weight, and I could only interpret his behaviour as an act of consideration.
I was curious about his intentions in restraining himself so much while teaching me the characters, but I quickly nodded and picked up the sheet I had set down.
Still, he no longer felt like a raging storm, but more like a gentle breeze, which made me feel much more at ease. If even a little more of my fear of him faded, staying in the palace wouldn’t feel so unpleasant.
I didn’t know the reason why, but I would probably understand as I continued studying.
⋆｡˚ ☁︎ ˚｡ ⋆｡˚☽˚｡⋆
If you notice any errors or broken links, please let me know and I will get that fixed~ Additionally, if you would like to support me, I have a Ko-fi ~ Thank you! 💖