PART 1/8 (Jeong Wooyoung)
(WHEN THE PLUM BLOSSOMS DIED).
The wind purposely slowed the day the plum blossoms died. A love had just begun to bloom, and the unforgiving hierarchy of power ended it before it could bear fruits.
The courtyard held it's breath as prince Wooyoung knelt on the snow-covered stones,long after she had been apprehended. The hem of his ceremonial hanbok had long been forgotten in the melted snow, he was cold, but he did not move. He kept his head lowered as he was expected to do since boyhood.
A prince does not look unless permitted, he does not look at his father until the deed was done.
But the silence was... Suffocating.
The hush that followed the executioner hovered like a ghost, the painful silence that set in after the servants had been patiently dismissed and the silence of the woman kneeling across from him with her head equally bowed, hands folded, back straight quietly accepting an unfair fate.
He recognized her fear because she wore no ornaments today. No porcelain clip in her hair. No embroidered ribbon. Her sleeves were equally as damp, the color of rotten paper. Even from where he knelt, Wooyoung recognized the pitiful resignation etched on her beautiful face, the way she gave up fighting, as if she had already executed herself.
His breath hitched - once, painfully and then steadied
He did not cry. He did not move.
Above them, on the embellished stool, the king sat unmoving. WooYoung's father did not look at him, his gaze was fixed on the setting sun.
The command was calm. Cruel. The voice of leader that believed that mercy was weakness.
WooYoung's hand trembled as he clutched the stone.
He had first noticed Chaeni by accident.
She had been assigned garden duties in the garden by his chamber , carrying a watering can too heavy for her dainty arms.
She missed a step. WooYoung reached out instinctively catching her before she could fall.
It was nothing - Wooyoung thought. A simple gesture of kindness, a mistake.
Yet she lost herself in his embrace.
"Forgive me," he said quickly, as if he had crossed a line, humility showing forth.
Chaeni stared at his back long after he had disappeared and from that day onward, the attraction was impossible to overlook.
They walked around each other, awkwardly and clumsily. She kept her distance but he made sure she stayed near. When WooYoung studied late into the night, it was Chaeni who fetched books and replaced the cooling tea without being asked. When he took long breaks by the koi pond, she wordlessly sat by him and listened to his stories.
"isn't the setting sun beautiful?" He murmured once.
"yes, my prince," she replied, absentmindedly placing a book in his hand.
She smiled just once that day.
It startled him, even more than his impulsive habits.
The first act of disobedience came with a lot of unavoidable secrecy.
It happened during the rainy season when the wet earth smelt like grass and the other servants hurried along with bowed heads.
Chaeni had slipped on stone steps as she once did in the gardens. Wooyoung had caught her again.
They stood there, rain whispering a charming medley against tiled roofs, hands held tightly for too long. Her pulse drummed in her ears and his grip trembled.
"you are beautiful," he whispered - his eyes watching her, not in lust, but in awe.
She pulled herself from his grip at once.
But from then onward, it was impossible to hide.
They quickly learnt the palace's secret spots.
A narrow cellar behind the training grounds. The storage room near the gates. The moment after the sun had set when the guards stood down from shifts and the world went to sleep.
Their bodies always found each other in the darkness.
Once wooyoung pressed his forehead to hers,
Fingers intertwined abruptly. Desperately.
Once wooyoung pressed his forehead against hers, eyes closed as if he had imagined a future with her in it.
Another time he had kissed her as they hid behind silk screens.
It was chaste, but warm. His lips barely touched hers.
She gasped softly as she had not expected it.
They never kissed like lovers did.
They never professed love.
A love like theirs was too dangerous to confirm.
"Do you ever wish that you were of noble birth?" Wooyoung asked once, voice low and riddled with sadness.
Chaeni smiled with equal sadness "I would still be myself, even if I were royalty."
He applauded her certainty.
She had spoken the truth.
She would choose him, royalty or not.
The discovery was inevitable.
Whispers had begun to spread - nothing escaped the palace forever, not stolen glances, not chaste kisses, not spoken promises.
Chaeni was first summoned.
Wooyoung was summoned after.
He knelt before his father and understood in that moment that mercy was not an option.
It was an ordinary thing - an instrument that had tasted the blood of traitors. The executioner moved with unhurried indifference, awaiting the final order.
Wooyoung felt the moment before it happened. Everything around him slowed down. The silence was now drowning.
He lifted his head but Chaeni kept hers bowed. Her lips curved into a sad smile - the same smile she had given him in secret. The smile she wore when she swore her loyalty.
The blade moved and for the first time Chaeni lifted her head and her eyes found his.
It tore through the empty courtyard - sharp, gut-wrenching, nothing like the soft-spoken girl who smiled softly and carried his tea. The sound struck the stones, the cold winter air and his heart.
His breath broke once before he forced it back into place.
He did not cry. He did not move.
The scream ended as soon as it began and the silence rushed in again, this time carrying grief with it.
"remove her," he said "the deed is done."
Wooyoung bowed perfectly.
So perfectly that his forehead touched snow.
"your majesty." He said, his voice uncharacteristically calm, "let your will be done."
The king studied him, searching for something - a moment of weakness perhaps. He found none.
"you will soon understand," the king said "what I have done,is for the sake of the hierarchy."
That night, his world went dark.
Wooyoung returned to his chambers alone. He dismissed his servants so that they did not see the grief that had etched itself onto his soul. He lit no lamps and sat in the darkness by the low table where Chaeni had once placed his books.
Her porcelain pin lay there.
Simple ornament, holding a blue coloured plum blossom.
A beautiful thing that attracted him. It was the only reason he had looked her way by the gardens that day. Her beauty always took his breath away even when she herself could not see it.
Wooyoung closed his hand around it.
He thought of the throne.
Of his eventual succession - upholding hierarchy and eliminating threats to it, all in the name of order. He thought of the ruthless man he would have to become, one who would say proceed and mean it.
He ripped his hanbok to pieces.
When they found him at dawn, he was lying in the snow, his expression was calm and his blood tainted the snow, fingers resting over the pin.
The crown would never adorn his head.
Outside, somewhere beyond the palace walls, maehwa bloomed
izzy806
tangentwithtanner
prguitarman
ellievsbear
snowghoul