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Year after year, Mobei Jun still holds onto hope. Decades go by as he clings to Shang Qinghua’s promise, even as his hope starts dwindling the more time passes, but refusing to believe that his husband is gone for good. But time stops for no one, not even a king. Though the grief weighs on him he still has a kingdom to run and a child to raise. But raising a child alone is hard and half the time he feels he doesn’t know what he is doing or if he is even making the right decisions. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. They were supposed to stumble through this together. Their son was supposed to have a great childhood that neither of them had the fortune of having. They were going to give their son the world and most likely spoil him rotten. But he does his best to give their son a loving childhood and does everything possible in preparing him to be the future king. Even if he has to do it alone. A part of him wanted to go and try to search for Shang Qinghua. Find some way to get to the world that his husband was from, but he had a son to take care of and he would not abandon his son out of selfishness. His husband would never forgive him if he did and he would never forgive himself if he betrayed his son in that way. So the Demon King of the North continues to wait for the day his love will return.
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His father is often sad. There is always an air of melancholy that hangs around him. He tries not to show it, but it is hard to miss. His father isn’t the most open and talkative person and he’s not soft and cuddly in the same way Papa was but he cares about him and shows it in his own way. He knows this and can tell that his father really loves him. They grow close as they only really have each other, his father taking him on hunts and telling him stories at night even if he always says he’s not very good at it. Many stories feature the adventures his father and Papa went through together throughout the years. Those were always his favorite.
It is around the time that he is in the latter half of his teen years that he realizes that his Papa wasn’t coming back. As this dawning realization crept up on him, doubt starts to form if his Papa even wants to return. What if Papa went back to his old world and forgot all about them. What if he found a new and better family and decided that he didn’t need them anymore. Maybe his Papa remembered how much he missed his old world and decided not to return even if he found a way back. Maybe he and his father were abandoned. Replaced. It’s as these doubts start festering that during an argument between the two, which had started off as a small disagreement that he can’t even remember what had started it in the first place, somehow snowballed into a giant shouting match that ends with him yelling at his father out of anger saying, “Maybe this is why Papa left! Maybe he just got sick and tired of your lousy attitude! Maybe he went back and realized that whatever was in his old world was better than anything here! Maybe we weren’t enough for him! He left you once before right?! Why wouldn’t he do so again!”
Mobei Jun looked as if his son had just struck him across the face.
“GO TO YOUR ROOM! LEAVE! GET OUT!!”
A deep rage and pain takes over his father’s features as he shouts and the temperature drops and ice climbs the walls at an alarming rate. It’s the angriest he’s ever seen his father.
He’d run away and now sits stewing in his room. As the anger simmers down and the fight leaves him, he just feels empty. He thinks about how cruel his words to his father were and regrets it. He’d crossed a line he shouldn’t have. It’s late, but he makes his way into the palace kitchens to make two bowls of hand pulled noodles. His father had taught him how to make them, it was a way of bonding and a way of remembering Papa whose favorite food was noodles. His father said that if you were going to apologize for something that the best way to apologize was with a bowl of hand pulled noodles. Making his way to his father’s room he finds it empty, jagged bits of ice littering the floor and walls. He’s about to leave when he notices the door that leads from his father’s room to his Papa’s study is ajar. He sets down the bowls on one of the tables still intact in the room before making his way slowly to his Papa’s study. As he peeks through the door he makes out the figure of his father on the floor, wracking sobs echoing throughout the room as his father’s hand clutches a fur lined cloak that would be too small for someone of his father’s stature but the perfect size for a certain human consort. Between the gasping sobs he can make out mumbled words that are begging for his husband to come back. He’d never seen his father look so broken.
He slowly makes his way over gently setting a hand on his father’s back in comfort. At his touch his father flinches, catching a glimpse of brown eyes, still disoriented.
“Qinghua?”
“No father, it’s just me.”
“Son. What are you doing here?” He says once he has his bearings. He sounds tired, as if all the years have finally weighed him down.
“I came to apologize. I didn’t mean what I said. It wasn’t true. It’s just been so long and I’m even starting to forget what Papa even looks like. I just miss him so much! I’m sorry! I’m so, so sorry!”
He ended up crying into his father’s shoulder like he was five again. They both end up crying quite a lot that night. The king of the northern realm and his heir looked quite a pitiful sight as they sat on the floor making amends and crying for what they had lost. They did end up eating their bowls of noodles together eventually, even if the noodles had gone cold by the time they got to them, but neither of them minded.
Neither of them liked their food when it was too hot anyway.
He didn’t think his Papa was ever returning, but he’d come to terms with the fact that his Papa didn’t plan to leave them nor planned to abandon them. After their morose night of crying, his father led him to a shelf in his Papa’s study pulling out a book and showing it to him. Inside was excited scribbling and notes written in his Papa’s hand detailing plans on how to raise him that spanned for many years even into adulthood where lessons on court intrigue, espionage, and other lessons were noted in the margins marked ‘for later’ next to activities of melon seed roasting and soap making. There were also the sketch blueprints of designs and materials for different animal shaped plush toys, including the one of a hamster that currently sat on his bed, a permanent fixture that remained there throughout the years. His parents had given it to him as a birthday gift, his father had hunted the beast whose fur was used to make it and his Papa had done the work of sewing and putting the raw materials together to make the stuffed animal. He remembers one year his father had tried to make a similar toy for him, this time one shaped like a cat. The raw materials used were of the highest quality and his father had hunted a beast that had exquisitely soft fur for it. It was just that without his Papa there, the job of putting together the raw materials fell to his father. The cat, if it could really be called that by the end result, looked more like some monstrous beast found in the endless abyss. The stitches were crooked, the alignment of the eyes was off, and one of the legs was definitely longer than the others. It was hideous. He absolutely adored it. The hamster and ‘cat’ plushies remained on his bed even years later when he got older.
It was freeing to know that his Papa did want him, planned to be there in his life if fate had been kinder. That he never had plans to abandon them. He didn’t think his Papa could return, but he kept that opinion to himself. His father still believed that his Papa would come back. He was barely holding on. If it wasn’t for him he feared that his father would already have passed on long ago. He would not take away the small amount of hope that kept his father going even if he himself had lost faith long ago that he would ever see his Papa again.
Sometimes he uses his brushes to pin his hair back in a messy bun when studying with his tutors, too lazy to find his hairpins that he always ends up misplacing. There are some court members who comment that it was undignified for the heir of the Mobei Clan to look so sloppy with ink often staining his cheeks or that one time he accidentally used a brush that was still wet. He ended up dripping ink onto the back of his robes and making an ink trail across the entire palace staining quite a few expensive rugs in the process before he noticed, definitely not his proudest moment. But his father never reprimanded him for it. When his father saw him, he let out a snort of laughter before giving him an affectionate pat on the head on his way out to his next meeting with Lord Luo. A soft look gracing his father’s usually stoic face as he took in the ink stains and brush still dripping wet.
Decades passed, he was all grown up now. Though his father still ruled, always an outward pillar of strength protecting him, he did start taking on many more responsibilities that would be required of him as king. One day his father looked stricken with grief and collapsed, he recovered but had a faraway look when he awoke. It was soon after that incident that his father made unknown preparations for what was to come and called his son to him to tell him that he was proud of him and loved him. That his Papa would have been proud as well. That should have been the first sign that something was wrong. After speaking to his son, he said that he was retiring to his chambers early tonight, that he was tired and was ready to finally rest. His father went to sleep that night and never awoke. Some say he died of a broken heart.
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Shang Qinghua slowly wasted away as the years pass and he realizes no matter what he does he cannot return. The crushing loneliness and growing apathy toward life grows as he returns to a time when he had no one and nothing to really live for. The great loss of losing not only his husband but also his son chisels away at his spirit, the pain and grief slowly turning to numbness until he eventually passes away. Alone and forgotten.
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He lived for many years as ruler of the northern realm. He was known to be a fearsome king in battle and a clever mind in court politics. In addition to the powers of ice and ability to travel through shadows he had initially inherited from his father, he had also obtained all the power from his ancestors during the inheritance ceremony as was tradition after his father’s passing. His power was unrivaled and his rule would make even the staunchest of his ancestors proud.
He chronicles the story of his parents that now resides in the royal archives. Songs are made about them, sung both in inns, brothels, and during festivals. Versions of their story are sometimes heard by those on the road performed by traveling musicians. The story of his parents was famous far and wide.
He’d always loved stories. They hold dear memories for him. It was something that both of his parents imparted to him since he was young. He’d recorded their story and many other histories of their world in the archives when he had time away from his duties as king, but he also wrote original stories of his own as well when time permitted. However there is one story that he wrote only for himself. Tucked away in a lacquered box and locked away lies a book that only he has laid eyes on. A tale where his parents didn’t meet a tragic end and their lives were not ruined by the fickle whims of other gods. He created a world that was kinder, where his parents could be together with each other and with him. A place where nothing could separate them. That book contained all his wishes for things that would never come to pass.
Eventually he too passed away. And as he woke up in the body of his younger self in a once familiar bed, he heard his Papa’s voice as he pretended to still be asleep.
“I’m happier here than I ever was back there. I’m sorry it took so long to return, my king.”
The next morning when he woke and his eyes looked up at the faces of both his parents, he cries holding them both tightly in his small arms refusing to let go, needing the assurance that this was real. That it was not some wishful dream and he would soon wake up to cruel reality. He clung to them for weeks sticking to them and refusing to let go even when they had duties to carry out that piled up in his Papa’s absence.
Maybe this time they could be happy. Maybe this time they would be able to stay together.
He had inherited most of his looks and powers from his father. He was the son of a king through and through. He got many things from his father, but maybe he got more from his Papa than he realized. For his Papa was a god even if he was one who was bound in human form. If his Papa could create a world in which they now resided, who was to say he himself couldn’t create a world where they all got to live together happily? He was the son of a king and the son of a god, maybe that made him something in between.
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