[OT5] Door
Jinki shifts on the seat of his throne. It swells in equal proportion to his head as the praises spear into him one at a time. Any more and the pressure will take his life.
It is summer time, the crop was sold at a good price, trade has been booming, and the courtiers are infected with sycophancy. He can almost hear their pockets jingling when their fat bodies move, bursting at the seams with overflowing gold.
They all look at him with gleaming eyes. They raise their glasses towards him in the air and a cheer goes up on the far end of the banquet hall. He shifts again because he doesn't know how to respond. He doesn't understand this game. This game of pretend.
He is completely fine in physical terms, and the royal physician will attest to that. But his neck refuses to turn his head away from the poverty outside his walls. His eyes will never blink when he looks upon the misery of his people. His subjects. The ones he is meant to protect from harm no matter what it takes.
It is summer time, the crop was sold at a good price, trade has been booming. But the villagers are parched, their houses are burning, their wells are dried out. They have nothing to eat, their stomachs are covered with tight bands of fabric, their gazes have lost their shine. They suffered before and they suffer now, nothing has changed for the common man. And the rich who hoard, who bully, who steal, are to blame.
The people who put him on this throne are dying. Jinki refuses to sit still on it anymore.
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Jonghyun knocks on the door of fortune hoping it'll answer quickly but the fact is fortune is busy on the phone with someone else.
He likes to joke with the other buskers when they all sit around a table to drink the night away. He likes to say he used up all his luck when he met her. And the other boys pat his back, they whistle and hoot. It's fun. It's a joke. It's young blood coursing through young veins. To him, it's love.
He likes to say he used up his luck and maybe it's true. The club owner who promised him five thousand won per hour, is in jail. The label representative who promised he'd call back, hasn't. The friend who borrowed money in desperate times, gambled it away. The landlady who baked him blueberry muffins last month, has threatened to evict him today. His guitar needs mending, his throat is sore from practice, his shoes have holes in them, his clothes stink of secondhand smoke.
He has truly used up every last scrap of his luck but he still waits under her balcony every night. He still whistles their secret code. And when she ducks her head out of the window, when the moonlight catches on her gradually balding scalp, he feels a twinge of misfortune before he grins the brightest grin.
There are nights when he doesn't get to see her. Nights after her chemo sessions at the big hospital. She says in her letters that it tires her. It sucks the life out of her body. She spells out her feelings in ink mixed with tears. He reads and cries with her.
Jonghyun is really the unluckiest man alive. But she makes it worth it when she grins back at him.
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Gwiboon likes to believe her tongue is sharper than her blade. She may be an average poison taster and her skills at fighting are nothing to boast about. But she is curt and truthful with her words, caring naught for grace or femininity.
She notices how the men throw nervous peeks at her. She also feels the lasciviousness laced around those eyes. But she finds no reason to prove her worth. If those pathetic cowards feel the need to cushion their failing manhood by talking down to her, then so be it. She can hold her own in an argument of words.
She snips her hair off before a mission, wears a chima that only reaches halfway up her thighs, and she runs with the rest. She kicks, she punches, she throws her daggers from beneath hidden sleeves and swings her sword in wide arcs that cut through air. She fulfills her mission as best as she can and reports back to the chamberlain with her successes or failures.
And with the money it earns her, she sustains a simple life in a simple home by the river. She drinks at the taverns, she brawls and gets kicked out of establishments, she swears like a pirate, she dances and cheers when a magician visits their town. To many women she is living a dream, for those many women are forced to sell their bodies for food. She tells them how it is nothing special, and that they are only scared of trying.
To be born female in this feudal age is neither a curse nor a gift. It is simply an existence. Women must fight to survive just as men do, not accept an easy defeat simply because someone stronger or meaner tells them to do so. She rejects a life of servitude. She rejects being treated like an object or like property.
It is 1729, and Gwiboon can do whatever she wants.
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Minjung is the image of a dutiful wife. Her eyes are soft, her lips are like cherries. Her hands are graceful, and her hair falls to her waist. She is demure, she is pretty, she smells like flowers in full bloom. She is the perfect woman.
And yet her desire to cheat is so strong, it overflows between her legs. It wrests all self-control from her limbs and she makes the mistake of letting go. She doesn’t even try to fight it when she is flooded with the feeling of lust. Of unbound thirst as its waves wash over the shores of her flesh. She hungers for contact. She aches with desire.
Her husband is a good man. He likes to take care of her, take her out on romantic dinner dates, bring her gifts from his business trips. He is very respectful, and very respectable. She made a good choice listening to her parents when they had her marry the son of their old friends. They had her best interests at heart, she could tell. And he is a good man. But he never touches her they way he should.
He saw her from across the street one day, as he came out to take his morning paper. There was something in his gaze that instantly set her ablaze. It was like dropping a vitamin C tablet in a tall glass of water, watching it fizz and dissolve as the seconds ticked. Its orange sting bubbled out of her, overflowed till it spilled down her sides for everyone to see and stare at. She licked her dry lips and sensed the addictive taste it left in her mouth. Her body quivered like a taut string.
She finds it easy to deceive. To lie. To hide. She is a skilled cheater. Her husband, the poor fool, doesn’t even smell it on her. And the rest of the neighborhood is as dimwitted as they look. It doesn’t matter. As long as he continues to look at her, hold her, kiss her, taste her, fuck her the way he does. As long as he is around, she doesn’t care about anything.
Minjung is like any other woman. She just wants to be loved.
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Taemin knows he’s dying. His ears aren’t working, and his mouth can’t produce a single sound. His body is paralyzed from the neck down. But he can see the rest of the men as they gather to shake their heads at him in pity.
The rebellion has failed. He and a handful of other men are the only survivors of an unsuccessful campaign that now seems stupidly ambitious. The king is still alive and the people are still starving. The rich are getting richer and fatter while the poor are disappearing like wisps of smoke. This kingdom is doomed to disappear like several others like it. The end is near, and unavoidable.
He was born in the house of a mere baker, but he thought he could do something. He thought he could be the change. He thought he was brave enough to wield a sword, to learn how to use it against his enemies. And when other young men like him followed, for a while it seemed like there was hope.
The king is vile. He is cruel and petty and ugly in his thoughts. He pilfers from those who have nothing. He takes several wives for his own pleasure, and then throws them aside like trash he picked up on the carriageway. His ministers steal land and hoard grain. His relatives kill and rape commoners for amusement. The king is the worst human alive on this side of the coast, and someone had to gather the courage to stop him.
And a man did. A simple baker’s boy. And he failed. But wherever he goes from here, at least he will find peace. Death has arrived on horseback and it stands waiting outside, in the rain. It is patient, it gives him time to say goodbye. And were there no knife sticking out of his throat, he would thank all his men for standing by his side.
But Taemin only has a few breaths left, so he closes his eyes and smiles.
