Chapter Text
The book slips from his hands, falling awkwardly to the floor, half-closed, some pages half-crushed. His story as Queen, after all, is over, so what does it matter? Those pages don’t hold his Cheoljong, they only hold a record of his story—a record of a man he loved, but who died two hundred years ago.
“Stop there!”
Bong-hwan is numb, twitching the fingers of his left hand, the hand that had reached out to Cheoljong’s at the very last moment before being taken back. The tip of Cheoljong’s finger had had some lingering warmth, but not enough for Bong-hwan to know that he was okay in that moment. History tells him he was fine, but still—
It is one thing to read about history, and another to live it. Bong-hwan had been there, had helped to plot against the Grand Queen Dowager, had carried the future heir, had run away from Daejojeon Hall in winter to track down the rumour of a living king while chased by enemies who wanted neither of them alive. He’d done all of that, just to be taken out at the moment of glory!
The two officers have finally caught up with him. A barrel of a gun, aimed straight as the King, the enemy finally encroached upon them—
“What do you want?” he yells, halting the other two promptly. Around them, people perusing books in silence quickly scurry away with faint cries of distress and panic. Bong-hwan doesn’t give a damn, advancing on the policemen. “You barged into my home, dropped me from the balcony, and now you’re dragging me back!” Grabbing hold of the lapels of the shorter, who gulps at this, he gives him a shake for every accusation. “You dragged me back—why did you do that? Why?!”
Take me back!
“Mr. Jang Bong-hwan, please calm down!”
Two pairs of hands dislodge his grip, and Bong-hwan lets them.
“They’re all staring…”
“Shut up! How could I know he’d respond like that? Uh—please disperse! We have it under control, just go about your business…”
I can’t go back.
“Just take me with you,” Bong-hwan says, defeated. Finally seeing him go meek, the two step in and take him by the shoulder, hurrying out of the bookstore.
It’s not the police station they bring him to. Bong-hwan blinks, but it’s to the bright hospital lights he’d woken to before, recognising, eventually, that they’re leading him back to the room he’d lain in. The faint, mechanic beep in the background, one he’d dreaded to hear again in his dreams, is gone.
Not in his dreams—in a nightmare. One of waking up again in the body of Jang Bong-hwan, as if nothing had happened. As if he hadn’t spent the last months as the Queen of Joseon, as a woman—a pregnant woman!—and as a wife to Cheoljong.
Dammit.
He has woken up, but he is still in a nightmare.
He’s pushed to sit on the bed he’d bolted away from not an hour ago. “Huh?”
One of the officers sighs theatrically, hands pushed into his sides. “I really, really don’t understand you—why did you run away?”
While a nurse dutifully checks him up, shining even more unwelcomely bright light into his eyes, Bong-hwan can only say angrily, “Why wouldn’t I run away? Weren’t you waiting for me to wake up to arrest me?”
Something about corruption, wasn’t it? He’s sure Secretary Han pushed this one on him, leaning heavily on that little turd of a sous chef Bu Seung-min.
One scoffs, but the other just laughs mockingly. “Tsk, you must have hit your head harder than we thought! Did you forget about it already? That case was closed weeks ago. Can you believe this guy?” The short one joins in on the laughter.
Bong-hwan is dumbfounded. “I hit my head?”
The police officers, with no small amount of glee, finally fill in the details. “Just the other night, you and your friends went to this big, big party opening of a brand new restaurant run by one of your old friends and drank just a bit too much, so that after you tried to walk your way home, you didn’t pay attention at all and crossed the street just like that!” Mimicking the sound of a great crash, one nods, while the other narrates, “The car that crashed into you couldn’t even swerve one bit! At least, that’s what your friend told us—hey, where did he go, actually?”
“He left.” When the nurse finishes her checks, she tells him he’s lucky to have avoided a concussion, and miraculously didn’t suffer any other injuries, clearing him from hospital with the advice to sleep the headache off.
His head hurts. Bong-hwan doesn’t clearly remember waking up earlier, but had felt the world around him to be loud against his eardrums, louder than his heart could beat against his chest. It was loud when he had shrugged his hand out of some unknown person’s hold, loud when he’d tried to snag the cop’s mobile phone, loud when half the hospital had yelled for him to stop, loud when his adrenaline-filled legs and back had crashed against the concrete and he’d found himself in a busy, noisy street in the middle of the city. Cars, trams, motorcyclists, pedestrians—
He’d run. Only the bookstore had managed to ground him in his reality.
“So,” Bong-hwan tries to figure out, “you are here to…”
“Hear your account, so we can track down the driver!” Their faces are too serious, nodding solemnly and with a heartfelt expression, and Bong-hwan expects them to tell him it’s a joke that very second. It doesn’t happen.
“I remember nothing,” he says flatly. “And I’m not pressing charges.”
And so, his belongings—clothes reeking with alcohol, a torn wallet, and a set of keys—are returned to him, and he finds himself in front of his old apartment door as if nothing had happened.
As if he hadn’t been gone for months.
As if Kim So-yong hadn’t lived in his life, and he in hers, for months.
His apartment is—
Bong-hwan blinks. In his daze, he’d thought that coming back to his apartment would feel like being in a strange place, a home that’s no longer a home, something familiar and yet not, a place where he could have a good cry and wail about how he no longer fits into the twenty-first century. But his apartment is completely different!
“What the…”
Minimalistic, clean, and high-tech—that’s what his apartment had been. But entering the grandly empty hall, he steps onto a rug. Mortified, Bong-hwan lifts his head.
Plants in the corner. A tray of candles and another weird artefact on top of a new, but old, dresser. The stylistic pictures placed in strong, square shapes of black metal are replaced by scrolls and paintings, ranging from utterly fake to surprisingly real-looking. The leather dining-table chairs are replaced by hideous velvet seats, and they look completely unused. Vases, flowers, cushions—
Bong-hwan screams.
Damn you So-yong, what did you do to my apartment?!
Not until the nearest replica of a flower pot is smashed into smithereens and his elderly neighbour shuffles in to see if he’s alright does he calm down. He even accepts the old lady’s offer of tea, sitting dazed in the mess that used to be his home.
While he’d been worried Kim So-yong was joyriding within her own body as Bong-hwan was behind the wheel, she’d been making herself comfortable in his life, using all his money to waste it on old crap! Clearly, when both of their lives had been in danger, his body had taken a dangerous dip from being comatose to dying—but afterwards, had his body woken up?
What has she been doing? And what else had she taken advantage of?
Shocked, Bong-hwan shoves the teacup away to cup his manhood. Had she…?
“You damn, shameless woman!”