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Many people think this story starts like this: with the clippity-clop of horses’ hooves on the freshly-shoveled trails of snowy roads and the gusts of wind carrying on the glum singing of a small, little prince. Some even believe he’s trapped in the palace with the promise of eternal solitude. But it starts—because it always does—with a young boy that’s quite different from the rest.
Xiao Dejun had been poorly hidden among the winterberries, seated on the edge of a frozen river creek, far enough from the groundskeepers' cottage and on the perfect blind spot to avoid suspicion from his gardening supervisors. He was just taking a quick look—he wasn’t trying to look shady nor look like he was spying on someone—because he was only supervising the boxwood shrubs that kept getting smashed and the violets that kept getting plucked by the roots overnight. Worst of all, Dejun was always the one getting called over to clean up all the mess and fix it too! He’d just wanted to have a small talk and stop whatever little fop was ruining his hard work and maybe come to… an arrangement of sorts.
He’d looked behind his back when the silence was disrupted by the crunching of snow. And that, that is how it actually starts:
“So it’s you who’s ruining all my shrubs!” Dejun yelled. (They were not his shrubs, the head gardener would say with a hiss and a deadly frown on his dirt-stained face. They were the King and the Queen’s shrubs, but the head gardener wasn’t around right now so he could call them his plants all he wanted. He helped tend them and plant them all year long, after all! It was only fair, he supposed…) So he stomped his way to the other boy who’d been apparently messing with his plants at a speed deemed impossible by human standards.
Dejun dug around his front pocket and stared at the slightly -taller boy who had half his face covered in a delicate blue silk face veil— which (in Dejun’s eyes), only made him look like a proper hoodlum who hid his face to kick bushes and pick flowers to protect his identity. What a terrible disguise, he thought, because the boy, however dangerous, was not intimidating as much as he was bewitching with his other-worldly looks. Dejun finally plopped the few withered violet petals he’d gathered earlier on his hand and showed them off to him with a glare so sour he actually felt a little bad. “Look what you’ve done to my flowers!”
Now to be very fair to Dejun, because you can’t expect him to know everything at the sheer age of eleven, he frankly hadn’t known at the time that this boy whom he’d just called out very insolently as if he were a little criminal from the lowest of the slums, was the very prince of the palace he served for. The son of the Winterlands King!
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry about your shrubs and your flowers! I just… ruin everything I touch!” The boy babbled in between a look of real shame and deep grief. Dejun pulled his hand back like he’d been seared, covering for his surprise in a way he thought was the least obvious.
The blue veil covering the bottom half of the prince’s face swayed with the gusty wind, and a delicately carved diamond around his neck flashed a deep color of blue when Dejun stared at him for too long. There was a quiet whimper of the wind that warned them of the very beginning of a snow blizzard. His skin looked like it was shining white from within, his veins a deep visible blue on his wrists, and Dejun stood straight in front of him and stared at the thick gloves on his hands.
“Are you… cold ?” Dejun asked because he thought it was weird to wear gloves and boots so big. Everyone at the Winterlands had grown resistant to the otherwise dangerous temperature of the palace; it was like second nature for Dejun and every other living organism there to adapt and live under unreasonable snow blizzards (that ruined the gardens, of course) occurring on a weekly basis. The boy buzzed with a strange sort of doubt, and the wind howled louder as if it were one with him. It was thanks to that abrupt little detail of the weather shifting and mirroring the boy’s emotions that Dejun understood it all.
“You’re a...” he began hesitantly, and he could only hope he could run fast enough if the boy was whom Dejun thought he was. He could only pray that no one would be able to tell which of the gardening boys needed to be thrown out of the palace’s service for being so bad-mannered with the young little possible… “ royal?”
The boy only scuffed his left boot on the snow and the color of his eyes changed from dark brown to bottomless blue with every rise and fall of his lashes. Dejun’s own shirt stuck uncomfortably on the skin of his shoulders and lower back, and he felt remarkably silly for sweating in a place as bone-numbing as the Winterlands.
“My name is Yangyang,” although the boy did not directly answer his question, his name was as much of a confirmation of all he’d needed to know, “and you are?” But yelling at the prince over his garden flowers and shrubs was one thing, however, sharing names with him was quite another thing. Yangyang was going to apologize and bow at him when his tongue stopped going limp every time he set it on the roof of his mouth.
“What’s wrong?” The prince asked him after the boy failed to respond to his question, and Dejun stood more straight to correct the hump that made him look like a shaggy baby fawn. “You don’t have a name?”
“Of course I have a name,” Dejun said with an indignant glare, and then he lowered his head and added quietly as if he’d just remembered who the boy was, “your royal highness. It’s Xiao Dejun, your… royal highness?” Was he supposed to say that every time he said anything to him? Dejun was very confused about how to address a royal and the rules of… etiquette because quite frankly, he’d never expected to see a royal and let alone meet or speak to one. The prince looked at him like he’d grown three dragon heads and so Dejun assumed it might have been because his name was just a little peculiar.
“You don’t need to call me that,” he said, and then he was sitting on the snow with a slump and a visible hump similar to Dejun’s when he worked at the gardens, “Because I just hate being a prince.”
“You hate being a prince?” Dejun asked, outraged, “But being a prince—”
“—is a disaster!” Yangyang choked out when he found his voice again. The wind screamed at both of them, biting the skin of Dejun’s cheeks and threatening to begin a snow storm anytime soon now. “It is– this isn’t— fun. Being a prince isn’t at all like what they say in bedtime stories where the beautiful princess kills the dragon and rescues the prince from a seventy-foot-long tower! It’s so much worse!”
“Worse?” Dejun asked and blinked, “Like an evil stepfather and cruel stepbrothers? Kissing… eugh, a frog princess? Using a fork as a hairbrush?” Well. Maybe the merman story just wouldn’t work in this scenario, he thought. He was running out of handsome princes to reference and he was becoming concerned by the conversation the longer the prince in front of him stared at him in insulting disbelief.
“Oh, much, much worse!”
But even though Prince Yangyang had been born and raised at the Winterlands of all possible palaces (where the snow was not soft and the cold was everything but kind and the wind embraced you with a bitter bite) with all those coldhearted and mean-looking royals and nobles and tutors walking around the palace with faultlessly styled hair and uncluttered clothes, Prince Yangyang looked at Dejun like he was exactly none of that. He looked sensitive. Perhaps lonely, sharing all of this with a boy he'd just met at the river creek.
“I guess… you’ll just have to wait until a princess comes to the rescue and… and until you fall in love with each other.”
And remember when I mentioned the story started all thanks to a little boy that was quite different from the rest? Well, there, out in the snowfield, with the shrubs sitting behind Dejun’s curious little stare, Yangyang looked at him with a thoughtful face, half-covered still, but eyes that could have warmed up any winter.
“I suppose… I’d just rather wait for a prince.”
Well, there it was! For once in the history of princes and princesses, a princess wasn’t desired for the rescue of the prince!
“Oh,” Dejun then said, suddenly reasonable, and his cheeks and neck filled with a red hue just the same shade as the winterberries covered in snow, “Sure. I guess a prince would work just fine.”
— ❄
I should tell you one more thing before we continue with this tale, though you may not wish to hear it. Let’s get something out of the way before it’s too late and you come crashing down to the unfortunate realization that the protagonist of this story, Xiao Dejun, although a character from a fantastical tale, is not much more than a member of the severely underpaid staff at the Winterlands and will not be encountering a fairy godfather on the frozen gardens to bibbidi-bobbidi-boo him and drape him with a blue gown or sneak him into a royal ball by noon.
Dejun will not be dancing (because the sight of it might make you look away and wince by the second-hand embarrassment) nor losing a diamond slipper before midnight. But hey, the story today will not deal with the behind the scenes nor the step-by-step guide of how-to-overthrow-your-corrupt-kingdom-and-its-economic-system either, so pipe down and allow me to continue.
As you may know—and if you don’t, listen carefully—a famous saying at the Winterlands goes, “a royal shall never fall in love with an attendant of the palace unless they want a lifetime of criticism and disapproval from the crown” but then again that’s what I heard from the previous winter kings a long time ago. Dejun knew this. Even the prince knew this! But yet again, it seemed that Liu Yangyang wanted to make it to the history books and rewrite all the catchphrases, defy the monarchy’s ancient views, and be the exception.
Both of them slipped through the old pages of a thick book of flowers one quiet afternoon a couple of years after they’d first met. Dejun’s voice was no longer the high-pitched little thing it was when he’d met Yangyang for the first time, and Yangyang’s hair had started growing a white-silver instead of black at the roots. Dejun had discovered how to sneak around the royal guards, although some of them even recognized him as the little gardener the prince had befriended. No one said a thing about it. It was fine; the King and the Queen didn’t know about their close relationship but that could have also been because they didn’t pay much attention to their son in the first place. Yangyang would sometimes sneak a few pastries from the cook to the gardener when they met outdoors near the horse stables, and he would also sneak a book or two from the library to show Dejun when they sat in his room together.
“That’s a snowdrop,” Dejun had said, sitting on the exterior still of Yangyang’s window and pointing at the picture of a white flower covering the whole page. He expertly avoided the big letters and used his flower knowledge and the pictures of the stories alone; Yangyang had not noticed yet that Dejun was never actually reading but reciting from his heart, and even when he offered Dejun to take a book to his cottage, he would not think about it twice when he politely refused the suggestion. He traced a finger on the flower’s drawn stem and tapped it twice to catch Yangyang’s attention. “A snowdrop symbolizes hope ‘cause it’s the first flower to bloom at the end of winter and the beginning of spring.”
“It looks kind of… dead.” Yangyang said smartly.
And well… it kind of did look a little dead, pointing its white petals to the ground like that and looking so droopy and sad. Dejun thought it might as well symbolize suffering rather than hope. “It’s not dead. I think it’s pretty. We can grow it here, you know. Despite the weather. I’ve seen some before.”
Yangyang looked over at Dejun and raised both eyebrows like he’d said something ridiculous, “Then how come I’ve never seen one at the river creek.”
“That’s because we need to plant it and grow it out at the flower nursery first. It wouldn’t just sprout in the cold out there! That’s impossible!”
Yangyang laughed, holding the book up on his knees and putting it down to keep himself from folding the pages at the corners. He wore the thick gloves again despite being inside his room, but Dejun had long ago learned that the gloves were basically a part of him now, always around to make sure he didn’t frost something with his touch by accident. Or well, that’s what Yangyang had said when Dejun had asked. His face veil was gone though. At least his smile was visible and his laugh wasn’t muffled for a change. “Maybe one day you’ll grow some and show me, right?” Dejun looked away from the quiet hope in his eyes and focused on the snowdrops instead.
“Sure.” He said.
Once he was back at the gardeners’ cottage, he looked around once and twice to make sure no one noticed he was up to no good. No one noticed he was being a little more antsy than usual while he shared dinner with his fellow gardening and groomsmen companions. When all the lights were out and the quilt of his bunk was finally warm, he heard the head gardener’s first snore of the night.
Dejun blinked, wide awake, and stared at his reflection in the small window next to his bed to keep himself awake. He waited until everyone was profoundly asleep, and only got up from his position when he heard the head gardener’s snores turn less humane and more like a farm tractor. You know the type I mean, surely?
He tippy-toed his way to the plant nursery, left unlocked because the head gardener was a silly old man and always forgot to latch it properly, and voilà!
Of course the head gardener might have never presumed a fourteen-year-old would end up wandering around in the plant nursery way past midnight to steal a few snowdrops (that had taken years to bloom, mind you) to show to the prince. He stood there, barefoot, considering whether he was willing to push his gardener morals aside and pluck these flowers just for the other boy. In the end, he wiped the few sweat droplets from his brow and whispered to the plants: “I am not killing you. Just taking you out on a small little trip.” With a hand shovel, he began forming rings around each plant, and without looking back, he pulled deep, roots hanging from the soil.
It didn’t take the other gardeners long to notice the missing flowers. “There’s a thief,” Sicheng said as everyone gathered up for lunch, “a snowdrop thief.”
“Now what in the world are you talking about,” The head gardener said around a mouthful of whiskey, “I locked the door last night. It’s probably another small animal coming to mess with us.”
“It’s as clear as day. Someone’s stolen from us. They were removed carefully. Too carefully! Probably to keep them alive.”
“Snowdrops you said?” There was a pause. Everyone blinked. “Well, at least they took the most hideous flowers of the bunch instead of the pansies.”
No one talked about the missing snowdrops much longer, and Dejun was just grateful no one decided to look under the bunk beds to find the crook. That was where he’d put the flowers, after all, hidden under a small basket he’d snatched from Sicheng’s drawer. Oh dear, he was becoming a criminal, wasn’t he? All to see the smile of the cold prince!
For the next few days though, he’d not been able to see Yangyang at all. With the weather so sporadic, he’d had a bunch of jobs and orders coming from one end to the other. ‘Clean the stables, boy!’, ‘Feed the horses!’, ‘Cut the shrubs!’, ‘Shovel the snow, c’mon little boy!’ , and so Dejun obliged. It had hurt a little too, when he was ordered to trim the shrubs almost to nonexistence as they were dying, and he needed someone to talk to about it. Not many at the cottage paid him attention for the fact that he was still a child in their eyes, but he knew who’d listen and share his wound. Plus he needed to show Yangyang what he’d been hiding inside the basket under his bunk for the last couple of days! That was if they were still… alive.
After his gardening and stable duties were over with, Dejun visited the familiar windowsill and noticed belatedly that Yangyang had his windows shut and the curtains drawn. Still, he hid the basket behind his coat and hesitantly walked the stone path that led to the back window and knocked on the glass when he realized that waiting would be useless.
“Yangyang, I’ve got something for you,” Dejun said with his mouth against the cold crystal. It was enough for him to trigger a rackety shuffle on the other side of the wall and Dejun took a small step back.
“I really can’t talk right now, Dejun,” he heard the quiet voice through the window’s polarized glass, and a quiet sound of the curtains being hesitantly moved to the side, “but… what is it?”
He carefully unwrapped the basket, pausing before he revealed it. Even if he couldn’t see Yangyang, he knew he could see him from the other side of the room. “I’m sorry they’re not in the condition I would've liked them to be,” he said with a tone of shame.
“You got me snowdrops?” He gasped a bit too loud and Dejun looked at the glass, hoping he was looking at Yangyang’s eyes to convey his sincerity. He tugged on the cheap fabric to set it aside and exposed a few wilted, but beautiful bouquets of flowers. Some had actually died.
So Dejun really found himself standing next to the prince’s bedroom window with a heavy basket of very, well, horrendous-looking flowers, waiting, or listening attentively for any movement or word. Dejun stammered weakly, “Sorry. They… are kind of dead.”
“They look amazing! Better than the ones in the book! Can you leave them by the windowsill before you leave? I can’t… I can’t come out right now.”
“Yeah, sure. And uh, Yangyang? I can get… in trouble if someone finds out what I’ve done. Or you could, if they find the flowers from the nursery here.”
“I won’t tell anyone.” Maybe he’d also been looking at Dejun in the eyes. He hoped so. “Thank you, Dejun.”
“Will you keep all of them?” Dejun asked. “Will you keep them safe?”
His voice was a quiet whimper under the sickening whimpering of the wind, but nevertheless, clear, “Nothing here is kept safe for long, but I promise to try.” Yangyang opened the window just very slightly, a sliver of light from his side of the room, “Dejun, I heard from my physician that my abilities are becoming a little dangerous. You know what this means?”
Dejun hadn’t known. “Not exactly. What does it mean?”
“I can’t be exposed. I won’t be able to go to the gardens that much anymore. At least not until I learn to control myself.”
“And when will you learn?” Dejun had clutched into the fabric of his pants until his knuckles turned white like the snow beneath his boots. The crops in the fields were mostly dead, reluctant to survive such a harsh winter. The shrubs had been trimmed too short. The animals had started migrating south. This was all Yangyang’s doing, wasn’t it?
“I don’t know.” He was too frank to be lying. “Maybe a few months, maybe a little longer.”
“Are you joking?” Please tell him you’re joking. “So you can’t come out anymore? I can’t see you again? Ever ?”
“Don't be ridiculous! You can always come visit me although I can't promise I'll always be here. I'm also getting a little busy with school but well, we could always… write to each other.”
Dejun gaped and blinked and thought of the proposal one hundred times in his small head. Letters? The prince wanted to exchange letters with him? With the little gardening boy who didn’t know how to— “Um. I can visit.” He was a weakling and could not admit it out loud, “Yeah, I’ll come by. But I have to go now. I don't want you getting into more trouble than you already are.”
“What? Hey, wait! Dejun!”
“I'll come by again soon!” He clutched the fabric of his pants again and waved to the closed window, unsure and a little embarrassed. After all, how could he admit to the very prince of the land that he didn't know how to write? How could he ever tell him about the stupid nicknames some of the gardeners had given him before? About the quiet sneers and various ways of calling him a ‘stupid illiterate gardening boy’… No, he refused to let Yangyang know. Maybe he'd stop wanting to be friends.
That afternoon Dejun ran. He ran all the way to his cottage, and it wasn't until he reached his quilt and stared at his reflection that he took a deep, deep breath. A royal shall never fall in love with an attendant of the palace unless they want a lifetime of criticism and disapproval from the crown.
Sure, that was a written saying everyone knew about. A sacred rule, even.
But for Xiao Dejun’s misery, the Winterlands had never established a rule about gardeners. There was no saying that prohibited palace attendants from falling in love with the prince.
Well. Shit.
❄ —
In the decade and a half that Dejun had been working and living on the castle grounds, he’d learned a lot about tending sick plants, treating ill horses, preparing royal-favorite– sponge cake with the cook that absolutely doted on him, and falling for the antics of the lonesome prince.
As Xiao Dejun grew into his bones (oh, fresh age of twenty), so did the scattered job opportunities around the castle walls and his salary. He was far busier these days, with barely any time for him to do much that wasn’t for the castle’s benefit. Now too, years later, he wasn’t just a “stupid illiterate gardening boy” anymore, because with befriending the Winter Prince also came the perk that he had offered to teach Dejun how to read and write many, many winter nights ago after he’d found out his secret.
It’d been around the time the prince suggested they write letters to each other instead of meeting at the frozen river creek because he was growing up (getting ‘dangerous’ abilities, as he had said it himself) and getting more unavailable with history, speech, calligraphy, and weather-shifting classes. And of course, although he didn’t say it to Dejun, he overheard from a cook anyway, Yangyang was also getting punished constantly for misbehaving and causing great havoc to the kingdom. Due to his explosive temperament, he sometimes brought destruction and snow blizzards to the kingdom, so Yangyang was required to stay inside the castle walls when he was unstable.
But back to the letters—you know, Dejun hadn’t known how to admit that he didn’t know how to write at the time.
"You'll write?" Yangyang had pressed all those years ago after Dejun had run off and Yangyang had fled his room days later to find him sulking at the gardens, “Hey, you can’t just pretend I don’t exist!”
"I mean, I—I can try to but I’m mostly—busy! Oh, especially these days, you know, with all the shoveling and the snow—" Dejun wouldn’t dare look at him and instead looked at the dry skin of his hands.
“If you don’t want to do it just say so! It’s not like I’d get mad about a stupid letter!” He exclaimed—visibly mad over some letters—stomping his foot on the frozen creek and barely batting an eyelash when the ice started cracking on the surface.
“It isn’t that!” He replied, despairing. Any negative emotional outburst or reaction from Yangyang made the kingdom fall into different kinds of stress. His volatility could bring days of flurries of snow, weeks of blowing snow, blizzards, or worse— ice storms. But all the same, he could paint beautiful sceneries and color mountain peaks with white, or spark delicate sets of snowflakes when Dejun wanted it the most. “ I want to, it’s just that…” There was fear on his face, and suddenly Yangyang understood perfectly. Ah. You don't know how to write.
As if to spare him from the embarrassment, Yangyang didn’t press much longer and instead made it his secret mission to teach Dejun all about words and letters. (Although he would never reveal this to anyone because he wasn’t fond of making the people around him feel sympathetic toward him, I trust you will feel a little endeared when you find out how hard he’d practice writing his name over and over again in the snow as he worked with the plants and as he shoveled the pebbled road. He’d write X-I-A-O D-E-J-U-N’-S next to each flower and shrub.)
And a few nights ago, a few trees and one of the storage chambers had been ruined beyond restoration because of the latest ice storm that had wrecked the kingdom. Dejun hurriedly made his way around the snow, silently hearing the maintenance staff gossip about the latest news. Apparently many had been thinking about migrating to the Springfields— a land with the promise of eternal spring, where the king was vibrant, stunning, and surprisingly, unmarried. A weird sensation fluttered in his stomach at the thought of so many people wanting to leave their home and their Winter King and Queen.
When Dejun got back to his cottage after a long day of heavy work and inconsistent snow storms that soaked his clothes, he eyed the white sheet of paper he’d hidden under the thin pillow of his bunk. Under his bed, he kept a tiny wooden single-drawer that’d been given to him when he turned fifteen. There he hid all the letters Yangyang had sent over the years. Some had been illegible once, with Dejun frustratedly ripping some in half, feeling absolutely terrible about it five seconds later, and stealing some glue from Sicheng again to try to restore them. It was futile once, to read. Now, he was… quite alright at it. Really!
A noble friend of Yangyang had found out the two of them were friends a long time ago, and he made sure the letters arrived safe and unopened when he did hourly rounds around the perimeter. Dejun wasn’t done with his letter yet even though a response was long overdue. He hadn’t seen Yangyang for months now, and the weather had been just as much of an indication that the prince was not yet stable enough to visit.
He pulled the paper out quietly and slowly skimmed through his own messy handwriting. He pulled the nib he used to write from under his quilt and pressed the tip to the paper firmly.
Yangyang,
I am busy latley working on the feelds. The snowfields are frozen and I was wondering if you are doing OK because this has not happend before. A few trees died. One HUNDRED years old, they say. It was a little stresfull for the gardeners. I maybe have to share my cottage with gardeners that lost their sleepeng chambers. I want to help them plant the flowers again because most are gone also. But it is OK, a flower just blooms. It takes a little longer because of the cold weahter but it will be OK, do not worry because I will always tend the YOUR flowers. They will bloom again.
I hope you are doing OK can come visit me soon. I will plant the flowers so you can see them up close and touch them soon. Take your TIME. I can I WILL WAIT.
YOUR FRIEND,
XIAO DEJUN
Even though Yangyang didn’t actually say it in any of his letters anymore, Dejun knew that Yangyang’s abilities were getting out of control and much more dangerous than before. He said he wanted to write letters instead because his abilities were dangerous, but what he had meant was that he thought he was dangerous himself and was scared about hurting him the way he hurt the shrubs and the violets that took so many months to grow. But Dejun was not a stupid illiterate gardener anymore— and as much as his higgledy-piggledy spelling might suggest your suspicion to this statement, he was literate now, thank you very much— so he wondered if Yangyang was punishing himself over his powers and no one was actually holding him hostage in his room as much as he said so in his letters. Maybe it was the perfect timing for his prince in shining armor to show up now. Ah, but what was he even thinking? Dejun shook his head, deep down knowing very well that if a prince were to come for Yangyang, he wouldn’t be able to bear it at all.
God, Dejun was quite theatrical sometimes. And don’t get me started on Yangyang. Yangyang could also be dramatic in his letters too.
But his neat handwriting and profoundly-selected words brought with him a sort of tension that would build up in Dejun’s chest and his stomach, heavy, pressing until he felt like he couldn't breathe anymore. ‘ Dear Dejun, I miss you! Dear Dejun, I wish I could see you right now. Dejun, do you miss me? Are you eating well? Love, the prince. Love, Yangyang.’ Love… He didn’t know why such things happened. Why did it affect his mind and body so much? His heart… it… it kept doing a bizarre throb inside his chest and his stomach kept hurting. Dejun shook his head firmly, patted his tummy, and figured the abnormal feeling in his body was a building acid reflux due to last night’s spicy supper.
(Funny how Xiao Dejun—who was allegedly not a stupid little boy anymore, thank you… very much?—had just mistaken love with a digestive disruption.)
— ❄
Prince Yangyang stood straight in front of him and passed him a white envelope. Wordless. Stunning —
Aggravating.
His hair was fully silver now, and Dejun had a few very personal thoughts running in his head about how much it suited him. He’d last seen the prince in the flesh several months ago; he'd stopped counting and drawing tally marks on the wood under his bed, and although Dejun hated being a starry-eyed romantic at heart—as it came to bite him right in the ass—he hated how Yangyang had barely done anything that resembled any kind of implication that he’d maybe, perhaps, to a little degree— missed him too. Sure, he wrote it in his letters. But in person— he just looked so cold. Like a proper royal of the Winterlands.
He couldn't think of something any less infuriating that the prince could be doing, looking so unmoved and so steady as if the kingdom had not faced crop shortages and sunlight decay because of him and his blizzards. His blood boiled and he quietly collected the envelope and hid it in the secret pocket of his shirt without looking at him twice.
“I’m sorry for not coming to visit earlier. That’s the letter you must take with you. You have to be careful when you leave. No one can see you.” His voice was soft, mingling along with the quiet fall of divine snowflakes on the silver of his hair. The veil on his face made it impossible for Dejun to read him, but he didn’t need to do much reading when his voice was so far away.
“Understood. And… you don't need to apologize.” His tongue burned— it itched and fogged his brain— with the sheer urge to add the ‘your highness,’ at the end of his sentence just to put that prominent distance between them. Well. Didn’t I mention he could get a little melodramatic?
Right after he’d sent the letter about the gone trees and his hope for blooming flowers, Yangyang had sent his own response with a… job offer. He’d written, neatly: ‘ I’ve told everyone you can be trusted. It’s only if you want, and just as long as you promise me you will be careful as the roads can be very unsafe outside of the palace. You only need to travel to the Springfields every once in a while to deliver TOP SECRET letters from our kingdom. It will pay so much better than all the work you do at the gardens. I can’t let you work under the awful conditions our Kingdom is in. But just be careful if you accept. PLEASE, DEJUN.’
Yangyang kicked his boots off and scurried past Dejun’s motionless body after a moment of silence. “You look upset,” Yangyang said when his bare feet touched the frozen river and the ice fissured under his weight. Dejun watched him in stunned silence. “Yeah, you look very upset. You did not write back to inform me you’d accepted the courtier job.”
“I will be leaving tomorrow,” Dejun said and Yangyang frowned behind him. Dejun didn’t catch it. “I’m not upset, I’m fine. A little change of air might help with my back problems.”
Dejun didn’t know if Yangyang thought he was just joking, but that was simply because the prince was so hard to read sometimes. Yangyang didn’t look happy when he wore a veil like that. Then again, Yangyang rarely ever looked happy when he was outside and all covered up like a well-disguised ticking bomb. Dejun felt like pulling the material down his face to see whether under the delicate fabric there was any trace of a scowl or not. “I didn’t know you were injured. Have you been checked? Have you told anyone about this? Do you need—”
“I’m fine. Just too much strain. It’s all the years of bad posture.” Of gardening, he didn't say.
“You should have told me sooner, Dejun.” And there he was. The warm Winter Prince. “To be honest, you’re the only person I can trust to send this letter but at the same time, I’m worried. You have to be careful out there. The trip isn’t so easy. I'll try to keep the weather calm but—”
“I’ll be careful.”
Prince Liu Yangyang was so kind to him. So attractive and lovely when he allowed his shell to crack a little open, just enough to let Dejun in and take a glimpse of who he really was. He was sharp—his teeth and his jawline and his urging fingers when he tried ripping the fabric of his gloves—but he was also incredibly relaxed and gentle that day. Sometimes Dejun wasn’t sure if he was made to carry the weight of such a ruthless title as the “Winter Prince”. The rumors surrounding the Winterlands’ royals were always bad, but Yangyang wasn’t as cold-hearted as people believed.
Yangyang pulled his right glove off and placed a palm flat on the ground and Dejun just watched in his place. Years ago—perhaps even months ago—he might have provoked a year-long snow storm if only he did such a careless thing outside, but that day, he was everything except chaos. He was gentle and the weather did as little as whir around them like a lost song that had been picked up by the wind.
Oh…
So he’d been practicing how to control himself, hadn’t he?
He felt so very stupid then. Dejun felt so stupid when Prince Yangyang’s neck almost snapped from how quickly he turned around to look at him again. He felt stupid for thinking the Crown Prince of the Winterlands was not happy to see him again after so long. Stupid for almost blaming Yangyang for the Kingdom’s doom when he’d probably worked every minute of every hour to control his mind and body at once.
“You’ve… made it. Yangyang, you’re—”
When the Winterlands prince finally learned how to control his emotions and sensitivities, then he would be apt to become a king. It was another famous motto of the Winterlands.
“I wanted to let you know first.”
“When is your coronation?”
“It's not set yet. But soon, I suppose.”
“How do you feel?” He asked.
Yangyang didn’t say a word. He clawed his fingers on the snow and let his skin feel the icy texture of it like he’d never done before. He hesitantly got up and reached Dejun’s eyes as it was only natural for them; he blinked, brown and blue, with every fall of his eyelashes, brown and blue, and then he was raising his hands toward him.
He took Dejun’s calloused, hard-skinned and dry from all the heavy-work hands, and brushed his thumbs over his knuckles. It was barely there, a feather touch that made them both shiver despite the mild weather and the warmth of his gaze. He brought one of Dejun’s hands to his face, removed his veil delicately, and brought his lips, pale and chapped from the wind, to kiss the tips of Dejun’s fingers. For a moment, Dejun felt like he might cry, like he might melt the acres of snow and finally find out what those lips would feel like against his.
But instead, he allowed his hand to be returned to him, with brown, blue, brown… eyes with a longing that was unmatchable. He pulled away and tugged on the belt around his pants. He clutched on another letter, straight out of his back pocket. “I wrote you a letter.” Yangyang declared, quiet.
“Me too,” Dejun admitted.
“You should read it when you’re leaving for the Springfields. When you’re far enough that you can’t order the horses to come back.”
Dejun hesitated, “You should read mine when you’re back in your room. Tomorrow, when I’m gone too.”
The way he held onto the envelope that Dejun passed to him, was living and breathing proof that Yangyang was madly in love. Deeply and devotedly in love with Dejun. It was mutual, although Dejun might have taken a long while to figure it out. (After all, I did use a lot of adjectives to describe Dejun in this story, but notice I’ve never used the term ‘astute’ or ‘quick-witted’.) He held onto his letter like it was a lifeline.
The lack of his veil revealed a little of Yangyang’s smile to Dejun, and the snowflakes defied gravity, swinging like dancers as blades of the winter winds sliced through his unstylish coat. He smiled back, and Dejun wished there was a way to ensure that his returning smile was not something more resembling a pained grimace.
Yangyang eventually looked up, unsubtle, just like he did every time he was outside, and secured the veil back in place as his eyes turned dark blue again when he met Dejun’s gaze. His voice was soft and so tender, “Have a safe trip, Dejun.”
Dejun kicked up the snow that gathered around his ankles long after Yangyang was gone, the snow falling not so generous anymore, but the promising horizon with warmer, real rivers, flowers in full blossom, and the Prince of the Springfields lay ahead.
❄ —
The wind whipped through the pine trees, causing some of the longer branches surrounding the cottage to form weird shapes around Dejun’s window. He hadn’t been able to sleep that night—how could he after all—when all he was doing was clutching the two envelopes the prince had given to him in his fists? One was from Yangyang himself, and the other from a name so complicated Dejun could not manage to read. Worst of all, the contents of both letters probably constituted and equaled royal family treason.
When the horses were ready, Dejun was off on a voyage that would bring permanent change to his life. He drew one of the horses down to the pebbled stone, now slightly covered in sleet, and carefully pulled it to assure the wagon at the back followed smoothly. When they were far enough, he swung off the horse, barely a smooth maneuver execution after not riding for months. His boot barely touched the stirrup, but he managed to fall to the ground safely. The weather had been controlled the whole time, almost like Yangyang was trying a little too hard to keep his emotions at bay to make sure Dejun’s voyage out of the kingdom went as easily as possible.
Dejun wondered if Yangyang had opened his letter by now. He hoped not, as he had not read Yangyang’s yet and wasn’t planning on doing so until after his job was done. So before he was out of the Winterlands for good, he sent another message. The first one had been written, but the second one had been sung. Maybe the wind would carry it until it reached Yangyang's window.
He also knew he was risking his life as he traveled to a kingdom that was not on good terms with the Winterlands. He wasn’t sure how warmly the Springfields would react to a man who belonged to the frozen ridges of the land. The rocky cliffs were so far from home that it barely mattered how hard Yangyang tried to keep himself at bay; the surface was frosted beyond any restoration now. He just pushed further though, steady on his mission, and realized he was getting closer when the sweat on his face was no longer because of body exertion but because of the shifting weather.
Suddenly there was grass. Suddenly, it was spring. There were small flowers that Dejun stopped to stare at. It was quite magical on this side; the sun was up and it cast funny shadows of the horses and of his fingers when he put them up to the sky. There was a river creek too! Unfrozen and with water as clear as the skyline. He knew he was near his destination.
When he reached the Springfields with the letter hidden inside his left boot, he saw a figure standing right where he’d been instructed it would be. It looked funny under the sun, a little displaced. The horses were tired, and so was he, and his cloak was starting to sit too heavy on his shoulders and his hair was sticking to his neck.
But as he reached closer and closer, he yanked on the horses’ reins as the realization hit his bones and beyond. This wasn’t just a random person waiting to meet with him. Right ahead, stood the one and only, Spring King Jaehyun, and as he was seeing him for the first time (why was it that Dejun had a habit of meeting royals?), Xiao Dejun understood what the fuss was all about. The prince was absolutely charming.
He had a lovely crown of sunflowers on his head as he welcomed him, and a dazzling smile that rivaled the Summer King, Qian Kun’s, who was known for having the loveliest smile of them all. The King was so beautiful that Dejun thought he was dreaming in the wagon still. He would have fallen in love with him—if only he didn’t already love someone else—, and not on purpose, mind you! It’s not like he had a thing for secret love affairs with all the available royals that happened to cross his path and be fine rulers of their lands. It just seemed like he couldn’t catch a single break with handsome royalty members.
“You must be Xiao Dejun,” the king smiled.
“Your Majesty,” Dejun kicked and plopped right next to the horse. He bowed like he’d been taught and tried picking up his heart from the bottom of his stomach, “I had no idea I was sent to meet you. I would have… picked a better… a proper cloak.”
“Please, you look alright! Are you adjusting to the weather? I assume anyone coming from the Winterlands would have a hard time with the Springfields.”
“Oh, well it's. It's great here. Yeah. The flowers, the grasslands, the shining sun. Everything is, your Majesty.”
There was stark beauty in a face that was not hidden under a veil like Yangyang’s. There was vivid magic in the inviting eyes and curling lips. Perhaps Liu Yangyang instigated snow blizzards and destruction when he was upset, but Jaehyun had cherry-red cheeks and a peal of laughter that made flowers blossom under his gaze. “I’m glad.”
“This is for you,” Dejun said, reaching dumbly around his shoe. He didn't suppose the king genuinely wanted to coddle in small talk with him. He must have better, bigger duties to attend to, “it’s got a spell so that only you can open it.”
Jaehyun took the envelope in between his hands and smiled kindly. “You’ve come a long way from home. Come in with me. I’ll get you and your horses something to drink.”
“Had you ever seen a flower before?” Jaehyun asked Dejun after he re-read his letter one hundred times and after Dejun politely refused a fourth cup of freshly squeezed juice. Dejun had sat on the grass field, looking at the king and blinking away as if he’d been caught staring at the forbidden fruit. He had just been looking over at a pile of sunflowers taller than him, all pointing towards the sun with dignity.
“We have some flowers at home,” Dejun said. “Have you ever seen a snowflake before, your Majesty?”
“A noble from the Winterlands used to draw snowflakes for me all the time.” He smiled, but he didn’t look happy. He looked thoughtful. “You know, before his letters stopped arriving and before our kingdoms declared war on each other. Back in the day, we used to have huge banquets and invite royals and nobles from Summer, Winter, and Autumn too. That’s where I met Youngho. So I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad he finally found someone he can trust to send to me.”
Dejun narrowed his eyes and shook his head lightly. “I’m just doing my job,” he paused, trying to sound as natural as possible, “Is this letter from… him, your Majesty?” Youngho was the same noble that made sure his letters got to Yangyang and that Yangyang’s reached Dejun. Could he be the same Youngho? He hadn’t been able to read the name after all, but that sounded likely. Maybe Youngho helped them communicate through letters over the years because he understood what it was like… to befriend ( love ?) someone who wasn’t made for you.
“Oh please, if you were just doing your job, you could have left the correspondence with the guards at the border where winter meets spring. No need to refer to me as ‘Your Majesty’ either, really. You’re very brave, so I mean it when I say thank you.” Jaehyun did an ambiguous little movement with both hands, maybe it meant thank you at the Springfields, and then he shifted the conversation, “And yeah. It’s a little silly, you know. But yeah. The letter is from him. He warmed up to me after a long time. Your prince too, Yangyang. I used to know him well. Back when the kingdoms got along well. He was always quite different from the rest.”
Ha, that’s what I said.
“You think so?”
“Oh yes. In my life, I’ve met all different kinds of royals. I've met the Summer King, Qian Kun, princes and princesses from Autumn… but the Winter royals were always so… difficult to understand and… cold.” He smiled at the word choice, “But Yangyang, he was such a small and sensitive kid. He wasn’t even sure of what he was supposed to do. He’d come to me and talk sometimes. Yangyang introduced me to Youngho too. Youngho was meant to guard and keep an eye out on him. He made my life what it is today.”
Dejun was silent. He knew it was true. Yangyang was always burning with tenderness and with sensitivity. He was always shining like that, and no title of Winter King would ever change that fact. Words bottlenecked in his mouth, as there were too many of them that had been kept hidden and buried, begging to come alive and burst about how Yangyang really made him feel. All the words to explain that— Yangyang had fixed a lot about his life too.
“I can see it all over your face. You’re different too even though you come from the Winterlands,” he smiled, like he knew it all, “There’s something warm in your eyes right now too.”
“I’m… you’ve got it all wrong. I’m just a gardener at the Winterlands. And a messenger now too, I suppose. Nothing too special or warm about that.”
“So what if you’re a gardener?” He was as soothing as before, which was not very unexpected. “I’m… in love with Youngho. And my situation might be just a little worse than the war going on right now. I’ve fallen in love with someone who belongs to a rival kingdom.”
“My situation might be just as bad,” Dejun said, and it was barely above a whisper, “Because I’m afraid I’ve fallen in love with the prince.”
Jaehyun stopped grinning then. Dejun was sharply reminded of where exactly he was and what he’d said. “With Yangyang?”
He covered half of his face with one palm and gave in. He spoke slowly and clearly. “Yeah. But unlike what you said… the prince has always been warm. To me. No one’s ever treated me the way he does. And he’s got no reason to be kind. The day we met— I even yelled at him. Nowadays we only write letters to each other, and you know what? I’ve kept all of them hidden in the drawer under my bed.”
“Oh, dear. You are in love.” A pause. “But does he know?” He asked at once.
“If he’s read the letter I left for him, yes, he must know now.”
“A letter!” He said with a sing-song voice, and then he was laughing in disbelief. Dejun was too embarrassed to ask the King just what, about that whole mess of a situation, he thought was funny. He was absolutely miserable! “You’ve confessed with a letter! And what exactly are you still doing here my, oh my? Your wagon looks seconds away from falling apart, which I assume only happens when you take the hard-blizzard trails, and I suppose you aren’t in proper conditions to travel back home safely after arriving just a couple of hours ago, but you must go home and confess properly! You’ve got someone waiting for you back home!”
He knew no one would notice he was gone. Not Sicheng nor the lousy alcoholic head gardener. The only person who’d probably wait for him was—
“I’ll tell my men to fix your wagon and you’ll be home in no time. Go rest a little. I’ll prepare a bed for you and you’ll be gone after dusk!”
Dejun bit his inner cheek and swallowed the lump in his throat. It had been too natural and almost easy to accept what he’d said. He wondered if everyone at the Springfields would give their King anything if he wanted or if he just asked. It would be so easy to ask.
He still hadn’t read the letter Yangyang had given him. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to read it exactly.
“Don’t give me that look! And now let me help you with that cloak!”
— ❄
Dear Dejun,
I have finally learned how to control my emotions. You know this means I must become King soon, and although I don’t feel adequate for that at all, I feel a little relieved that I can finally leave my room and see you again. Now I can go into the gardens and find the winterberries and the shrubs that remind me so much of the day we first met. Should it hurt so much? Now would be a great time for a prince to rescue me. Ha-ha. For a prince to come with me and run for the hills. I know it’s an old joke. I wonder if this jest is beginning to feel less amusing each time. Sometimes I wished your letters would stop coming or that Youngho would tell me that you have moved on and fallen in love with someone from the kitchen or the gardens so that I can try to move on as well. I wished you were the prince in shining armor I've been waiting for.
When you go to the Springfields, I wonder if you will fall in love with that place the same way so many people do. There you will see the unblinking sun. The bloom of beautiful flowers. The small animals that live in forests and in river creeks. I wished I could give all this to you too. I wished I could melt the unforgiving snow and let you plant all the beautiful flowers from the gardening books.
Now that you are headed to the Springfields, I wonder if your heart will wish to stay there. I wonder if you’ll wish that you’d been born on the opposite side of the land instead to see real flowers bloom and green trees. I wonder if you’ll fall in love with someone from the Springfields the same way Youngho has, and I wonder if you’ll just forget about me in the brink of an eye. I can’t promise you sunlight or grasslands or that the snowdrops you gave me all those years ago are still alive. But still, I'll show you.
At the back of the page, I’ve made a drawing of what I wished I could give to you. Even if I can’t do it in reality, just look at it. I prepared the scenery for you. Look. Look at the mountains and the river. And feel the warm sun. Maybe someday I can give that to you.
WITH SO MUCH LOVE,
LYY
Dear Yangyang,
I accepted the job. I am happy in the garden and I am happy with the horses. But maybe going away for some time is good. I do not want to leave but I will only do it cause I am afraid. I am afraid I have fallen in love with you and I heard rumers about you becoming a KING soon. That is why I accepted the offer.
You know, people here say the prince is cold and sharp and sometimes snappy. But they are wrong. You will be a good King. Winter here warmed up to me a long time ago: The snow is soft. The cold is kind. My shivers stopped. And the blizzards I grew scared of were gone.
You will be a GOOD King.
Yours,
XIAO DEJUN
❄ —
The weather was bad that night. Freezing rain poured in buckets, turning the pebbled path horrendously slippery. It could only be Yangyang. Although Jaehyun’s men had changed the horses’ hooves and put on a better fabric for the wagon’s makeshift roof, Dejun was getting soaked from the leak on the top left corner. But he was not stopping now. He was getting back home even if that was the last thing he did.
His cloak was barely doing the job when he reached the Winterlands border. It couldn’t be that he’d gotten used to the Springfields weather so quick. He had to adapt soon unless he wanted to pass out from the cold. So he came out of the wagon, pulling the horses to the makeshift roof near the gardens of his home.
The gardens would tend to be completely empty early in the mornings yet that day it was not.
Even with the everlasting winter chill, the pine trees and shrubs rustled as if they were euphoric and aware of that day’s significance. There was a brief moment spent in silence when he blinked; the wind seemed to ease down as Liu Yangyang sorted out from his thoughts and stared at Dejun’s lean figure against one of the horses.
Yangyang, pretty much imitating a Dejun from the past, had been poorly hidden among the winterberries, seated on the edge of the river creek, far enough from the palace’s master bedrooms and on the perfect blind spot to avoid suspicion from nobles and the King and the Queen themselves. He was just waiting—he wasn’t trying to look shady—he’d simply been waiting for him, for Dejun.
He looked like he’d last slept days ago, and Dejun hoped that was not the case. In his hand, the prince held the shabby piece of paper Dejun had used to write his letter, and in his other hand, he held a blue handkerchief. The snow piling around his boots was proof that he’d been sitting, waiting out there for a long time.
Dejun’s heart squeezed and shrunk and granulated to nothing but love.
Crisp and cold days would eternally remain, but at least the snowfields bathed in the afternoon rays of daylight and did not display dead leaves under thick piles of snow. The prince stood straight, locking eyes with the gardener-slash stable-groom-slash-messenger of the palace, and blinked. Maybe he smiled under that stupid veil. Dejun found that a little funny.
I trust you know all about famous expressions or love confessions that have shifted humanity’s fantasy and ideologies of love. You must know how certain words are enough to stop the thought process of a man who is in love and freeze him in his steel boots and root him to his spot in the snow immediately. Dejun was watching Yangyang closely, looking for anything like this. For a hefty love confession that could put all those princesses to shame.
But then the sound of Yangyang’s boots hitting the sleet at a dysrhythmic pace pounded in his ears like the little voice inside his head that yelled to him: oh just kiss him, god damn it! (Or maybe that was just me thinking too loud from the sidelines.)
Truly, he was going to kiss him. He was going to kiss him! Never mind how long precisely he’d been waiting for, when the moment came, Dejun just watched the clouds disperse in the sky, and wondered how lips mostly hidden by a veil would feel against his. Given the circumstances, he couldn’t afford to think about a thing so silly for too long.
When Yangyang was in front of him, he looked at one of Dejun's eyes, then the other. Dejun reached to pull the lace face veil out of the way and leaned over, and then he was kissing him.
Dejun found that Yangyang’s canine teeth were sharp. His nose kept bumping into Dejun’s and the angle was somewhat inelegant, unlike the etiquette of a Winter Prince, but then his hands held Dejun's face, cold and pale, thumbs cupping his jaw and allowing him the right of tilting his jaw to delve deeper into his mouth. Suddenly warm. Hot.
“Why did you take so long?” (Whether he meant Dejun’s long-awaited return to the palace or his kiss, I will let you choose for yourself.)
Yangyang was kissing and biting, letting the sharp ends of his teeth graze his lower lip. He stopped to breathe, to let the little noise that resembled a laugh out.
“Yangyang,” Dejun sighed. “I’ve read your letter.”
“I’ve read yours too.” Yangyang hesitated for a second too long. “What’d you think?”
“You know what I think.”
Yangyang smiled a little, “Maybe I’d just like it for you to tell me with words.”
“I did tell you with words,” Dejun pointed out, reminding him.
“With your mouth and voice.” Yangyang rolled his brown, blue, brown eyes, “Go on.”
“Maybe I can show you other, better things.”
Dejun lowered his head until it was against Yangyang’s shoulder. His hands slipped under Yangyang's shirt, the rough skin of his palms going up until he'd felt Yangyang’s bare skin under his delicate touch. Yangyang's heart was pounding in his chest, tangled in his ribs and pumping, alive.
But I will not, in the interest of keeping the innocence of you, the reader, detail what exactly it was that Dejun wanted to show.
As for what happened after very intimate kisses hidden under the perfect hiding spot behind the winterberries and shrubs, with only the moon and sun to peek over at them and no one else… Well…
You'll get it when you're older.
— ❄
Dejun was different from him; all sharp eyebrows and not as pale skin, eyes wide enough to take in the entirety of the whole, white sky. A completely different kind of beauty from Yangyang, but very beautiful all the same.
“You love me.” Yangyang stated, seeking confirmation, just in case. In front of him was Dejun, in his work attire and a hay hat that helped with nothing exactly. It only made him look lively and a little silly. Silly because it was almost nighttime and there was barely any sun at this time of the day.
“I do love you,” Dejun said. A little unsure he continued, seeking confirmation himself, “and you love me back.”
Unsure because — A royal shall never fall in love with an attendant of the palace unless — unless they’re a certain prince, quite different from the rest, and called Liu Yangyang.
And many people think it ends like this: with a garden of snowdrops at the royal wedding of the first Winter King to wed a former gardener-slash-messenger-slash-???. But you must remember that I mentioned that Xiao Dejun was not much more than a member of the staff at the Winterlands and not a character who becomes The Queen after midnight and a crowded ball.
So actually, it ends with Dejun, doing what he loves – tending some plants – next to the man he loves, Yangyang, who talks and talks about all the garments he’s tried on for his coronation. It perhaps ends with a single snowdrop—from years ago, from Dejun’s (Sicheng’s) basket—still in Yangyang’s bedroom and hidden where no one can see it.
Dejun shoveled the excess snow piling on the entrance of the flower nursery, the silver light of the moon entering from a small leak on the barn’s roof draped across the room, on Yangyang’s mop of hair. “Dejun, will you remind me again? That you love me? Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?” He looked over at him. Tenderly. “Sure. I'll remind you tomorrow.”
And for the rest of their lives, Xiao Dejun does.