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“You think I’m ridiculous!”
That’s one way to put it. It is early noon, the tail end of their morning adventure swinging into a heat that screams summer in the middle of spring. Though the sky is clear, the sun is nowhere to be found, blinding in that mysterious way you remember from childhood. The metal railing glistens when Soowon wraps his hand around it, and he’s barely climbed the first step leading to the palace when Lili stops abruptly, the gasp hissing out of her in a rush.
“Don’t you?” she turns around wildly. The wind has glued some of her hair to her face and her indignation is dug so deep in her brow she almost looks comical.
But only almost.
Soowon is no idiot, but he also stopped negotiating the trade routes of an entire kingdom a little over five years ago. The acuity that you build over a lifetime of strategy runs for the hills when you grow complacent, which he could almost be accused of were it not for the countless travels he’s taken since he stepped down from the throne.
He hasn’t been idle, per se, just...distracted. He’s still as alert as ever around strangers and potential political liabilities—that habit has proven impossible to kick. What used to be a sign of cunning has since turned into an expression of undue paranoia that has sharpened his erstwhile softness into a blunt edge. Every possible traitor is now just a person; every beloved citizen a civilian in need of protection just like him. The issue with his previous mantle, he supposes, is that the inhabitants of Kouka become a blurred mass whose needs must be met rather than distinct individuals with conflicting desires. Soowon is part of that mass now. If any random passersby wanted to bring harm to him, the injury would reflect on him and him alone.
But it’s all fairly absurd; he might as well be Kouka’s last political liability left, what with his share of crown secrets he hasn’t been asked to take an oath of silence on. His cousin is good, a sharp but gentle eye, but he’s not sure anyone should be passing on the chance to have his head on a highly visible spike. The only way a treasonous relative could be factored into Kouka’s resplendent future is either in the queen’s court or in an unmarked grave somewhere. He’s sure the queen’s bodyguard has advised as much. It would not be unsatisfying to imagine them all separated so neatly, slotted at last in the roles they were meant to fill. It would make for a good national myth and it would probably boost morale. He’s just waiting for his turn.
But perhaps not. Perhaps his cousin has prescribed him a life she thinks he deserves by leaving him well alone. In any case, he’s not stupid. He might be uncharacteristically lax around Lili, but he knows he did something—or rather, failed to do something—that pissed her right off in the steps of her soon-to-be castle. He’d be more worried if she didn’t like messing with him so much.
She narrows her eyes.
Paging through the mental scroll he has filled halfway with Lili’s itinerary for the day, he retraces the last minute of their conversation. And comes up empty.
“I’m—no?”
The half step she has over him allows her to look down on his blank face; he lets a second pass before he remembers to look apologetic, and she nudges his shoulder harshly. Soowon winces. That he does not have to fake—Lili has a hammer for a hand. His last unsuccessful snoop on her correspondence earned him a bruise on the thigh for a week.
“What makes you think I can’t duel you?” she demands.
So that’s what it was.
The mellow sunrise had found them busying around the main plaza, swaddled in their robes for protection and warmth alike. The thick wool of their garments provided a disguise that few eyes could look past, and still Lili fidgeted in hers with discomfort. She enjoyed mingling with the crowd and disliked the itchy fabrics that Ayura wrapped around her chin, fussing over her like she did with her bedroom decor. But four threats on her life too many had killed the illusion that the princess could leave the palace in the dead of morning and interact with whomever crossed her path. The water tribe is cherished for its slow pace and affable people, but the resentment ignited by Lord Joongi’s negligence has not been quick to die down. Not nearly enough time has passed since the Nadai crisis ravaged the tribe.
The services to accommodate those affected by the drug have expanded at Lili’s request, conceded only after she twisted a whole committee’s worth of arms to secure funding. On top of their medical centers, Suiko now offers stable housing to those who lost their homes during the crisis. After the tribe severed relations with the Kai Empire, the service sector grew considerably too. The economy has begun to thrive on tourism, along with the construction of boats and small ships to sell to Awa’s port, now the trading post responsible for dealing with the neighboring empire. There is enough work to go around. Lord Joongi signed off on Lili’s proposals and handled the rearrangement of the tribe post-Kai—he approved of her, one could tell, if not of her unorthodox methods.
Lili, a free fledgeling, has taken great pains to be a princess worth her place with every bit of that freedom. Every week, she runs errands around town. She’s up much earlier than the sun and refuses her bodyguards’ company before setting off into the market, where she consults with the vendors about the quality and distribution of their product. Once she’s collected enough information and the morning hubbub has started, she falls into step with the other customers and does her own shopping. They don’t typically recognize her. She has a favorable reputation in Suiko, much more positive than the one preceding her father, but it’s better for her this way. Threats on her life aside, she wants to be able to buy fish and plums at the same price as the elderly man brushing shoulders with her. If she wants a new jade comb for Tetora, she’ll bargain for it like the little girl at the front of the line. She wants nothing more than for the woman spreading out her mackerel catch to complain to her about her sore back rather than straighten her spine at the sight of her adorned hair.
“You don’t even adorn your hair anymore,” Soowon pointed out.
“Way to miss the point, mister obvious.”
But a free princess is an oxymoron, and three years away from ascending to her father’s throne, she is now well and truly feeling, as she crassly puts it, the fire lit under her ass. She’s been given an ultimatum of sorts and her weekly expeditions to the town market have become congeniality practice. She doesn’t have a queen’s disposition. Her father says she’s too much like a rowdy kid, and rowdy kids are unfit to sit a throne.
Enter Soowon.
It’s not really like that. Soowon is visiting Suiko in what is to everyone a short vacation but is to him another week, and Lili has asked—recruited—his help for her errands. He should be hunting down lizards in Xing for his compendium, but Lili’s letters have a surprisingly aggressive tilt when you know how to read them. So far, he’s made both the mistake of learning and the mistake of listening. So they’re here, Lili gathering information and Soowon pretending that he could ever temper her recklessness because Lord Joongi had taken a long look at him the night before and Soowon capitulated to the part of him that’s a liar. That morning, Lili had chased after the chickens that escaped lady Ami’s cage and Soowon had laughed nervously behind her. Then they had been on their way with a Lili marginally less graceful than before.
“What’s the point of sharpening my regal sensibilities if no one can even see my face?” Lili asks, unwinding her garb roughly.
“Mhm…Some would argue that makes it easier. You get to try different things with different people and they’d be none the wiser,” Soowon says.
“That is so much work. It’s so unnecessary, I mean, what kind of fake would that make me?”
Soowon almost flinches, nearly smiles. He’s been wondering when it’d come to this. He’s been giving her indirect advice but only when she belabors a topic so much it becomes evident that it worries her. He’s not her mentor and he has no intention to be; the letters she’s exchanged with Yona should be counsel enough when it comes to ruling. Anything she’s gotten from him is an unfortunate consequence of their proximity over the years, but he had hoped he’d never have to actually discuss the specifics of…it.
Lili glances at him briefly, a little meek, then blows her bangs away from her forehead. The silence stretches for a second too long and he wishes she wasn’t ashamed of asking, though he really has nothing to say. That life served him well when it was the only one he had, and maybe he’d have come to regret it had he passed prematurely like he was supposed to. Now all he has is a past made of plastic and a future that’s more like an unborn child.
Lili clears her throat. “You don’t have to look so amused.”
She’s right, but he can’t help it. It’s a little funny.
“I apologize. You do have a point. You should be able to appear to your people as you are,” he replies, which isn’t much of a compromise, but she isn’t looking for one.
“Why are you apologizing,” she sighs and shoves him, though with less force than usual. “I know what you mean. And I know what my father means when he says I’m like a child. I guess I’m not prepared for what people will see when they look at me and I’m no longer just Lili.”
Soowon takes a peek at her from under his fringe. Sometimes, very rarely, Lili will have this look on her face. Her eyes glisten grey and a trembling thing behind them skitters across; her blue gaze lingers on a fixed spot, a river so long you can’t follow to the ocean, can’t even tell it has an end. It happens quickly every time he catches it, but it does happen. She blinks and then it’s gone.
“But how could I be anyone else?” she shrugs, picking a feather off her sleeve.
Soowon stares at her for a beat longer than he should, risking her dropping the conversation entirely. “You don’t necessarily have to.”
“Please abstain from lying to me,” she huffs in response. He’s tempted to smooth down the hairs that are sticking out from her forehead, just to bother her.
“What I mean is, you don’t have to rehearse personalities with people. You don’t even have to hide your face anymore if you don’t want to. You can ask your father to sign you off for combat training.”
“You mean the combat training I’ve been having for the past five years at Ayura’s request? That combat training?” she scoffs. “Do you even pay attention? What could possibly be occupying so much of your brain space you forget such basic things? You better not tell my father what happened today at the market in case you also forgot what you promised him. I mean, come on.”
And well, he had that one coming.
“Anyway, aren’t you the rusty one between us? When was the last time you held a sword? Even better, how long has it been since you dueled someone?” Lili ducks her head to get into his field of vision and raises her eyebrows mockingly.
“You know how long.” Five years, generally. Ten against someone he knew more than superficially. Hak, to be specific. Lili probably doesn’t know that, but she knows enough to guess.
She hums. “Would you duel me?”
Fuuga’s primary source of water is a fissure that runs the length of the tribe, a near-interminable wound that’s brought its skin abundant life. You can fish, you can wash, you can drink, and, according to the grinning warrior prodigy, you can spar.
Or at least that’s what he used to say.
Soowon liked trouble more than he liked Yona’s father, but that still wasn’t very much. He avoided it when he could and surrendered to it when he could not. The rest of the time, Hak took care of it for them. Against their better judgement, if Hak said jump, he and Yona only asked how high. Even when he jumped first. Even when he snuck them out of the palace at night. Even when he pulled them both into his river, gave them a stick each, and splashed them until they poked him. Even when he made stupid promises.
Even then.
It seemed he had been afforded a freedom they’d never understand, unburdened by dragons and fathers, and molded around the better fortune of a different kind of family. When Yuhon died, it had occurred to Soowon that maybe he and Yona got shortchanged with their lives. His destiny was a foregone conclusion but Yona seemed to him an incandescent, ever-changing question. She’d go on to live what he wouldn’t, which was most of everything beyond the palace doors. She was lucky like that, too.
That was alright by Soowon. Yona and Hak were of the same yarn, and his thread had been cut.
He still hasn’t given Lili a response.
“It would be unbecoming of me to duel a future queen,” he blinks up at her, the picture of innocence.
“You just want me to hit you again.”
Evening encroaches on the afternoon light that still lingers in the library. When Lili showed him the way four years ago, he hadn’t thought it possible that it could be the coziest corner of the palace. After all, cozy is a rather difficult standard for Suiko to surpass.
The library is in remarkable condition, not too dusty and not too pristine. Though the shelves brush the ceiling, the upper compartments are mostly empty, their corresponding books in various states of disarray around the tables. Soowon knows that Lord Joongi spends a lot of his free time reading, but with his serene disposition, he never struck him as disorderly. To his credit, the candlesticks along the mantle are separated by exactly the same fifteen centimeters. The feeble lights puppet specters across the walls when night sets in—it makes for an unsettling scene, but Soowon spends most of his time in the adjacent room, surrounded by small walls of books piled precariously on top of each other.
He suspects Lili gave him the keys to get rid of him once and figured he’d make do with what he found. The rest of the library is open to him too, anyway, and while he has perused most of the books outside, he hadn’t expected to enjoy Lili’s particular wing as much as he does. She probably didn’t either.
The wooden floors are immaculate, a break from tradition that has seen Lili’s bedroom in indiscernible chaos time and time again. He supposes that must be in deference to the labyrinth of tomes boxing off the center of the room. Each book is placed haphazardly on top of the other, some of the sleeves overlapping with pages seemingly marked for later. Small items that look like trinkets crown every pile, presumably gifts she’s collected from Ayura and Tetora. A porcelain teacup that looks like it once contained some sort of herbal brew sits on a pile by the corner. From Yona’s friend, then.
The chabudai is cushioned underneath by a handwoven rug, which he could immediately tell was made especially for Lili. It doesn’t bear the pompous seal of a present given to a princess but it’s not passed down either. It’s the blue of her eyes, interspersed with flecks of seafoam green and a small wave cresting at the bottom, like a signature. Soowon has never met Lili’s mother and he gathers this is the closest he’ll get. For lighting, there is only a single candle that burns for what feels like a really long time but is probably only the length of a reading session. The only flammable items kept in the room are incense and the one candle, duly replaced when it burns out. If Soowon thinks of Hiryuu Castle when he retrieves a new one, well, that’s his prerogative.
Most surprising of all, however, are the books. The bulk of the piles are compilations of the period before last, art and songs produced under Emperor Il’s reign. They paint a picture of unrest that, in retrospective, seems compelling in its anguish. But underneath them, there are poetry volumes of varying sizes, recording myth and history from nearly all twelve periods, branded carefully at the beginning with A.L.—the first and last tender markings in those pages. It’s a collection Soowon could have never guessed sleeps in the water tribe’s palace, years of literature bound not only lovingly but manually. If Lili knows he knows, she hasn’t let on, but it took Soowon a good year to identify the stitching along the covers and the wrapping of the scrolls as non-commercial.
This is a collection Lili has grown herself, quite literally. Most of the volumes are parchments cut from elsewhere, but some pages are even penned by her own hand, copied from scrolls she couldn’t be bothered to bind or perhaps didn’t want to. In spite of this, she has scribbled on them at liberty, casting aside the delicate handling you’d expect from this craft. The poems are not any he can recognize from Lord Joongi’s shelves. He can only guess where and how Lili started procuring them.
Lili has never brought this up and Soowon will be deep in his eternal slumber before he makes any indication that he’s seen the books, but she isn’t stupid. She leaves them laying around all the time. She’s far from the most secretive person he knows, but when she means to hide something, torture couldn’t get it out of her.
It’s a very nice room. Soowon almost feels right at home.
She finds him flipping the page on an artbook he borrowed from the shelves outside. The candle swooshes dramatically as she plops down beside him, laying her cheek flat against the table. Soowon runs a finger along the paper and waits.
“When do you leave.” Lili’s not one to inflect.
“I’m not sure yet.” He arrived last week, and though he shouldn’t linger in Suiko for too long, he’s weaning himself off the habit of running. It’s his fifth year not getting caught; he figures the game has lost steam.
“Wanna spar?” she inflects then, but only because she smiles when she says it. She had listed every reason she could beat him in a proper duel with real swords all the way up the stairs, and he had to hover a hand over her back, lest she tipped backwards in a furious misstep or decided to kill them both on a whim. He hadn’t said anything but she was probably right.
He unglues his eyes from the book to eye her for a second, just in case she’s serious. She looks tired. “Do I get to keep your library if I defeat you?”
“What, if you kill me? You can just say that, you know.”
“I wouldn’t kill you.”
She slaps her hand over the table weakly. “The swords are real.”
“You—do know how duels work, right?”
“Oh my god, you’re gonna lecture me. Can you go back to playing stupid.” She closes her eyes.
“That was a long time ago.”
“You’re five years short of a long time ago.”
Soowon lays his head on the table next to her, cheek flushed against the page. He’d ask what a long time ago would do for him now but it doesn’t really matter. In the uncertainty of Lili’s only candle, it’s a joke. Just something that happened. And you could always trust An Lili to speak plainly. Bluntly, even; she would not mince her words, would in fact give you a hardly digestible serving of her most urgent thoughts. When she says it hasn’t been a decade, she’s not saying that he should drift between borders like a repentant ghost until then, but that he should laugh and go to sleep. Maybe send a letter or two.
Instead, he asks,
“Are you scared?”
“Of course I am.”
“You’ll be great. They already adore you.”
“Who even wants that. If I wanted to be a saint I’d go drown in the ocean.”
He smiles at that. “What could possibly be your claim to sainthood?”
“Every second I bother to spend with you.”
“They’d have to make saints of us both.”
“You’ve already burned your ticket.”
“You mean because I killed someone?”
“I’m really proud of you for saying that.”
“It’s not the first time I say it.”
“Take the compliment, Lord Won.”
“You’re making it really hard.”
“Okay, sorry. Soowon, would you please take the compliment.”
“It’s still not a very good one.”
“You know, I’ve already asked Ayura to kill me if I ever become as hardheaded as you.”
“You’re already hardheaded.”
“And yet I’m not as bad as you.”
It’s at least a little ridiculous. He can’t help it. She’s ridiculous like the long river in Fuuga and Yona’s pout when she was scared. Lili doesn’t have a pout, just a really scary wrinkle on her forehead, and there’s more water in Suiko than people in Saika—but he remembers it all the same. How angry Mundok was when he dragged them out of the water. How Yona squeezed her hair dry, her hands clumsy with joy. How Hak grinned with all his teeth. Even this, this present moment, Lili’s room of secret poems and the careless marginalia around the pages. The arc of her furrowed eyebrows and her rare softened face when she smiles.
He laughs, closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see Lili’s surprise. Maybe he can stay another week. The lizards in Xing will still be there next month. There’s a starfish in the coast he was hoping to see anyway, and a chess rematch he had promised a kid in town a while ago. By the time he realizes he’s saying all of this out loud, Lili’s snort has snuffed out the candle. He can still see her laughing when the room goes dark.