Chapter Text
The day His Late Majesty passed, it had been unusually warm for the season all week—even though it was still the month of the Ox, the frost had already begun to thaw and the now damp, soft ground squelched unpleasantly under my boots as I made my way to the palace in the morning to protect the Crown Prince.
Just having reached his twelfth year, young Prince Byeongi had only become heir apparent the previous month, in a small, private ceremony (despite the protest of the ministers) where he grinned inappropriately from ear to ear for the whole duration and could not sit still long enough for his father, the then King of all Joseon, to finish reading the declaration.
“Who does he take after,” His Majesty had shaken his head and muttered quietly to himself when his son scampered excitedly out of the throne room just moments after being handed the letters of appointment and admonishment as well as the princely seal, “I wonder?”
“Isn’t it you?” I had replied with dry amusement before I left to find my charge, leaving without allowing the King time to correct me.
I located Prince Byeongi on the far side of the palace grounds, up a hulking camphor laurel with half his precious, royal raiment discarded at the base. On his way up the tree, he had plucked a handful of immature flower buds, just tentatively sprouted at the early advent of Spring, and elected to hurl them down at me one by one when I crouched down to retrieve the now soiled pieces of his regalia.
“Prince Byeongi,” I said evenly without looking up, “Do you think we can take more care with our garments, at least when they are of symbolic import?”
“I told you,” the little prince laughed and flung the remainder of the buds in his palm haphazardly in my direction before scaling up even higher, “Don’t call me that.”
“You were so thrilled to receive your designation,” I held back on a sigh, “just fifteen minutes ago.”
“Yes,” the brat who would one day inherit our country responded agreeably as he snapped a thin branch off the tree, “I’m finally, finally, finally the Crown Prince, as I should have been years ago! But it’s weird when you call me by a title. I don’t like it.”
“Yung Jun,” I gave in immediately, even as I rolled my eyes before sliding them shut for a moment, “This tree came all the way from Jeju—and it is about twenty times as old as you are. Show some respect.”
“Uncle,” Yung Jun tossed the twig at me when I peered up at him admonishingly, “Have you ever even been to Jeju? How do you know what the trees there look like?”
“Once,” I offered after a brief pause, “There they believe camphors protect the property from evil spirits.”
“Are the people of Jeju really that superstitious?” Yung Jun asked as he started to climb his way down, “Don’t they know that spirits aren’t real?”
Instead of answering, I watched silently as the brand new heir to Joseon eased himself onto the branch nearest to the ground before stilling.
He tilted his head to the side as he gauged the distance between himself and the awaiting cold, hard dirt before looking at me expectantly. “Uncle,” my rambunctious royal nephew said airily.
“Yes,” I smiled and crossed my arms, “What is it?”
“Come closer,” Yung Jun pouted and held out his hand for me.
“I don’t think I will,” I stepped back further, “In fact, I think I will take the opportunity to have a quiet lesson alone with Her Ladyship today, while you are indisposed.”
At the mention of his sister, Yung Jun scrunched up his face and stuck his tongue out at me, before dangling one leg out of the tree tentatively. “Uncle,” he whined quite impressively, “You’re not being fair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” I turned to walk away, “Not even for princes.”
——
By the time the Royal Princess and I started our first match, Yung Jun had figured out a way back down to earth without a scrape, stomping into the courtyard where we were still in the remnants of his ceremonial costume with a precocious expression of aggravation painted on his face.
“Orabeoni,” Princess Yeonghye said in delight only after I nodded in satisfaction at her form, “You came after all.”
In the beginning of the year, Her Royal Highness the Queen had suggested that the Princess receive the same training that the Prince did, even if it was against custom.
“Archery would be more appropriate,” I had presented my obligatory protests, knowing full well that I had never been able and would never be able to refuse a request from Her Royal Highness.
Even though she was but a girl, and even though Yung Jun was almost two years her elder, it appeared that Princess Yeonghye possessed a natural aptitude for the sword, and soon she overtook him in skill much to the Prince’s dismay. In a matter of months, the shy, quiet child that previously followed her older brother everywhere at every given opportunity blossomed into a confident, independent warrior who suddenly had no time for her orabeoni unless he was willing to end up on the sharp end of her blade.
At first, Yung Jun had sulked, as he had spent the last decade or so of his life shadowed by a sister who believed that he was peerless under heaven, who now instead wanted to compete with him at every turn. The first time Princess Yeonghye bested him, Yung Jun skipped an entire week of lessons after, pointedly making eye contact with me each day when it came time to change out of his finery into more spartan robes and picking up a book instead.
“Prince Byeongi,” his Court Lady had implored on the first day of his silly little strike, “would you not like to go to your lesson? Her Ladyship must be waiting for you.”
Yung Jun slowly flipped the page without looking up, mouth pressed into a thin line.
I turned away before smiling to myself, allowing my impetuous nephew to think that reading was rebellious. “We will be there until the hour of the Monkey,” I did my best to keep the amusement out of my voice, “if His Highness changes his mind.”
For six more days Yung Jun kept up his objections, and on the seventh when I simply turned and made to leave when he looked me in the eye with intent before he could even bury his nose in a novel, he finally relented.
“Uncle,” Yung Jun said quietly as I began to step into the hallway, “Why don’t you say anything?”
“What do you mean,” I replied calmly without looking back, “I say plenty.”
“About me not wanting to go to your lessons,” he mumbled, “It’s like you’re pretending it’s not even happening. Father asked me yesterday how they were going—you didn’t tell him?”
“If you don’t want to learn from me,” I said softly as I glanced over my shoulder, “then I don’t want to teach you. You can tell His Majesty that you require a new instructor yourself.”
“It’s not that,” Yung Jun looked down at his feet and huffed, “I just wish Eun Sol wasn’t there.”
I chuckled, turning around and crossing my arms. “Because she won the once?”
“Well,” Yung Jun pretended to clear his throat like he was a man and not twelve, “Not that that isn’t embarrassing. But no.”
Instead of asking for clarification, I fixed my gaze on my nephew’s face and waited for it to be offered of his own volition.
“That’s all she wants to do now,” Yung Jun sighed after a brief moment, “Swordfight. She used to be so cute.”
Clearly our little prince did not know how adorable both he and his sister were even when armed with stiff steel. I somehow managed to keep my voice steady, instead of bursting out into laughter. “Have you asked her?”
“Asked her what?” Yung Jun crossed his arms then, mirroring my stance.
“Why she wanted to learn in the first place.”
“So she could have an excuse to follow me around some more,” Yung Jun rolled his eyes, “probably.”
I did laugh then, shaking my head and earning a reproachful look from the proud prince. “You’re not entirely wrong, I suppose.”
Yung Jun groaned, leveling a glare in my direction that reminded me profoundly of his mother, “Just tell me.”
“She said that one day,” I smiled as I walked over to where he kept his sword and lifted it from its stand, “her orabeoni will be King.”
“That’s a given,” Yung Jun rolled his eyes again, “What does that have to do with anything?”
“And the King,” I continued, offering the hilt of the sword to Yung Jun, “as proficient in martial arts as he will be, will still need to be protected. Who else can she trust to do that, if not herself?”
The colour of maehwa had bloomed over his cheeks then and he spluttered, snatching the sword from my grip. “She’s ten,” Yung Jun had exhaled loudly through his mouth, “She didn’t say it like that.”
——
“Yeah,” Yung Jun huffed and glared at me, holding his hand out for his sister’s sword, “No thanks to Commander Kim.”
I watched as Princess Yeonghye offered her sword to her brother without a second thought, beaming with cheer now that her beloved brother had come to join us.
“Prince Byeongi,” I explained, taking the sword swiftly from Yung Jun and handing it back to Princess Yeonghye, “found himself stuck in a tree.”
“Orabeoni,” Princess Yeonghye said with remarkably serious disappointment for a ten year old, “Again?”
“I wasn’t stuck,” Yung Jun bared his teeth at me and made a grab again for the weapon.
“Prince Byeongi,” I shot my arm out in front of Princess Yeonghye and seized Yung Jun’s wrist in an iron grip, “will have to return to his chambers to retrieve his own weapon, as well as change into something more suitable.”
His Court Lady and Eunuch rounded the corner of the building we were behind then, and I subsequently understood how my nephew had made his way out of the camphor tree without getting mud on his knees or hands.
“Court Lady Yun,” I said without taking my eyes off of the rebel prince, “please escort His Highness back to his chambers to change. I do not allow my students to show up to my lessons without being dressed in the appropriate garments; it is a matter of safety, you see.”
Yung Jun scowled at me but turned on his heel, striding briskly out of the courtyard with his Court Lady and Eunuch scurrying after him.
“What’s up with orabeoni?” Princess Yeonghye asked curiously when her brother was out of earshot, “Why’s he so weird lately?”
“Puberty,” I laughed, and my lovely little niece scrunched up her face.
“If puberty makes you mad,” she tsked and shook her head, “then I won’t have it. No thank you.”
“I regret to inform Your Ladyship,” I gestured for her to draw her weapon, “that you will have very little choice in the matter.”
——
When I stepped into Yung Jun’s chambers that fateful morning, I found him already fully dressed, instead of going through his routine of evading his Court Lady and Eunuch as they did their best to get him washed and changed.
“What’s this?” I could not keep the affection from seeping into my voice, “Has His Highness finally managed to get himself clothed before my arrival?”
“Uncle,” Yung Jun’s voice trembled, and I noticed that he had his tiny fists clenched in his lap, “I had a dream.”
The year Yung Jun had turned ten, he begun to tell everyone of the fantastic adventures he had in his sleep—ostentatious, outrageous stories of far off lands and imaginary, incredible inventions.
“Uncle,” he said to me confidently one day, pointing up into the sky, “Did you know that in the future, we learn to fly?”
“Is that so?” I played along, “How do we figure that one out?”
Yung Jun then launched into a tall tale of taming giant fowl forged from ferrous metal, which I recounted later to his father in amusement. “Did you know that your son fancies himself a seer?” I had chuckled into my teacup.
“Perhaps he is—perhaps he isn’t,” His Majesty had smiled faintly as he refilled his own tea, “We should listen carefully, just in case.”
“Oh?” I settled down opposite my little nephew, waiting to be regaled with another one of his visions straight from fable, “What about?”
Instead of gaily gabbing on about lamps that did not require flame, or chamberpots that miraculously emptied themselves, Yung Jun kept his eyes on the desk between us, silent for a long stretch.
His voice was tense, thin, when he finally spoke, wetness welling up in his eyes. “In my dream,” he sniffled, “Father was gone. No matter where I looked, I could not find him.”
While it certainly unsettled me to see my usually vigourously vibrant prince so downcast, in that moment I simply dismissed his prophecy as a childish nightmare. “Yung Jun-ah,” I reached over the low desk to rest my palm tenderly against his cheek, “His Majesty disappearing—does that seem reasonable, now that you are awake?”
Even though it had been twelve years since I pledged my piety to him in penance, and I had eventually come to take some pleasure in his company, there were still times when I found His Majesty too present, somehow everywhere all at once, no matter where I went. The idea of his absence—from the palace, from our lives, from the wicked, wretched world he dreamed so desperately of changing—was utterly absurd.
One evening in the year Yung Jun had turned eight, on my way home from the palace, I saw a familiar figure sat by the small pond found at the beginning of the out of the way path I frequented as it allowed me to arrive at my residence a full ten minutes quicker. I debated simply having my horse trot past, but decided instead to stop and call out.
“What is the King of all Joseon doing all the way out here,” I affected a tone of false surprise, “in such a pitifully obvious disguise?”
His Majesty glanced over his shoulder as I dismounted, his lips curving up into a fleeting smile as I approached. “I needed some fresh air.”
“The air here,” I stood next to him and traced my eyes over the moonlight reflecting off the water, “isn’t any different than the air in the palace.”
“When I first returned to Hanyang,” His Majesty looked up at me, “this pond was but a muddy puddle. Now after years of nourishing rain, it is a delight to find that so much flourishes here.”
On the pond floated a single white lotus, barely the size of my palm, flanked by a sea of ragged, spotted leaves that seemed halfway to rotting.
I had deigned to peek down and meet the King’s eyes for a brief moment, before snorting and shaking my head. “You are always so needlessly poetic,” I had rolled my eyes and turned to leave, “Do you not tire of it?”
“No,” Yung Jun peered up at me through damp lashes, “But Mother says that all the things I see will eventually come true.”
I held back a sigh, as I could hardly refute the wisdom of Her Royal Highness, even if it was at times suspect. “It’s certainly true that eventually,” I agreed, “everyone will be no more. Your father—me, and even you. But eventually—is not today.”
That seemed to satisfy His Highness, as he smiled a lopsided smile and hopped to his feet, rushing out of the room and leaving me to hasten after him again.
It was not until the late evening, that I discovered I had inadvertently lied to my precious little prince.
As I made my way out of the palace for the night, I heard a commotion from the direction of the main hall, and when I rounded the corner of the building to investigate, I saw the Royal Physician and Prince Yeongpyeong exit with their eyes fixed on the ground.
“What happened?” I inquired, even though I had already known then without needing to be told—it felt in that instant as if an arrow of ice had struck me through the heart, a piercing cold dread crystalizing through me down to my very core.
“His Majesty,” Prince Yeongpyeong confirmed with his fists clenched tight at his sides, “has been poisoned.”