Wandering Through Vol. 3 Chapter 80 - Settlement

The Bond of Siblings.

 

Yiseo couldn’t get Leegwang’s meaningful words out of her head. 

 

Ever since the day she had chased after him and arrived here, his attitude had been different from before in some way.

Of course, it was still similar in that he kept her by his side, but one might say the expression he used when looking at her had grown a bit colder. 

 

It might have been her misconception, but it had a certain resemblance to the way he used to be before…

 

“What are you so lost in thought about?”

His lips slid down her neck, into the open gap of her jeogori. Her body flinched as she recalled yesterday’s painful lovemaking, but it seemed he had no intention of repeating that today, as his lips merely skimmed over her skin.

Yiseo quietly gripped the hem of his clothes.

Seeing that, he laughed. It was an expression he couldn’t possibly make if he remembered his past life. 

 

At least, Yiseo thought so.

If he could laugh like this even while remembering his past life, then she would have hesitated to even think about leaving him.

 

“I’ll take that as a sign for me to undress too. Were you very scared yesterday?”

When she gave a small nod, he swiftly took off his own clothes and then stripped hers off as well. He held her tightly against him, enough to feel every inch of her skin, and lay down on the bedding. 

 

Yiseo lay prone on his chest, looking up at him.

 

Leegwang stroked her head and whispered.

 

“That’s why you should have stayed quietly in the inner quarters. Why did you come out? The thought that you might not have come to me but run away instead… it scared me too.”

“If that were the case, the Court Lady would have caught me.”

“You’re not saying you wouldn’t have run away even if it meant your death.”

“…”

“The past is the past. From now on, you promised, so you won’t run away, will you?”

 

He added quietly, as if to himself, “We made a promise, so I will keep it.” 

 

Yiseo flinched again at his words. 

 

Was I being overly sensitive, misinterpreting them as meaningful? 

 

It kept seeming as if words that reminded her of their past lives were spilling from his lips.

 

Leegwang stroked her back, where she had flinched, with his hand and made a request.

“Tell me you’ll stay in this position forever. I want to hear it.”

“…Would you believe me if I said that?”

“Is there any reason I shouldn’t believe you?”

 

There might not be one in this lifetime, but there had been in a previous one. 

 

Yiseo closed her eyes, remembering the end of his past life. 

 

Led by the hand cupping the back of her neck, their lips met. Their tongues mingled slowly. She was almost grateful for the kiss, as it meant no further words were necessary.

 

The wooden tablet of the royal secretary, which she had entrusted to Ban to be burned, flashed through Yiseo’s mind.

The characters, which merely recorded the facts, contained no emotion or anguish. 

 

Thus, their deaths in the past life were described in just five lines.

On that wooden tablet, there was no affection, resentment, or hatred.

Only the first line of the final record states nothing but the facts.

The Crown Prince had decided. To sever the thread of ‘Life in Exchange’.

 

💫

 

Second Life—03

The 4th year of King Sejo’s reign in Joseon.

 

The Crown Prince asked Mongmae,

“What must I do for you not to die?”

It was a day when Mongmae’s countless repeated acts of self-harm had now become a habit.

 

“My desire for you to live is not because your life is connected to mine.”

Mongmae did not answer the Crown Prince’s question. She had given her body and her heart. Having given everything she had, what she received in return was beatings and humiliation.

His connection to Mongmae was merely a talisman, meant only to extend the Crown Prince’s own life.

 

So, no matter what the Crown Prince says, how could I believe him? 

 

Even now, he lives by Mongmae’s command.

“It was not to survive that I formed this bond with you. I will prove it.”

Until the Crown Prince killed all of his own wives and children and came to her, Mongmae had no intention of trusting his heart. 

 

Because if she were the Crown Prince, that is what she would have done.

“So, please do not try to die.”

No matter how sincere the Crown Prince seemed, crying as he tended to her wounds, Mongmae would not look back.

 

To sever the life-sharing bond, the Crown Prince completely left Mongmae. He entrusted her to his younger brother.

“If you do that, you will not survive.”

Hearing the Crown Prince’s resolve to cut the life force connecting him to Mongmae, the Grand Prince objected. 

 

The Crown Prince looked at his brother’s contorted face and spoke calmly.

“It seems my life was only meant to last that long. I do not wish to survive by parasitizing another’s life force, causing them more pain.”

The Crown Prince pleaded with his brother. 

 

To watch over Mongmae and prevent her from harming herself while he severed all ties with her so completely that he would not hear a single word of her news. 

 

And if the time came that he died without even a moment to return to her, he asked that Mongmae be allowed to live the rest of her life as she wished.

 

The Crown Prince trusted his brother. 

 

The younger brother who followed him like a parent.

However, before their bond was severed, the Crown Prince’s younger brother found a shaman to perform a ritual to transfer Mongmae’s life force back to the Crown Prince.

“Bury it in the ground for ten days. You must not die before the transfer is complete.”

 

When the transfer was split in two, if one half disappeared, only one side would remain on the surviving register. 

 

However, if Mongmae died, the register itself would vanish. 

 

So, to ensure only the Crown Prince remained on the intact register, Mongmae had to disappear from this world without dying.

 

“It takes ten days for a name to be inscribed on the register. Until then, we must hide the register’s original owner. If she dies, the underworld messengers will know. She absolutely must not die.”

 

Jagomi urgently cautioned the Grand Prince.

 

“On the eleventh day, she must be beheaded.”

 

After the Crown Prince left, Mongmae was buried alive in a large jar deep underground. 

 

Fearful she might take her own life, they gagged her mouth with a water-soaked bit and bound her arms and legs.

 

Jagomi sprinkled the blood of various animals over the earth where Mongmae was buried.

 

So that neither man nor non-human would know a person was buried below.

 

On the eleventh day, Huishan decided to behead Mongmae.

 

“Jagomi. You must stay by His Highness’s side and continue to confirm his orders. I will handle things here.”

 

Mongmae was dug up after being buried for ten days. 

 

On the earth that reeked disgustingly of animal blood, her unconscious body collapsed.

 

The day before Mongmae’s beheading, to perform the final rites, Huishan ordered those around her.

 

“Put the burial clothes on her.”

 

At Huishan’s command, servants rushed to strip Mongmae’s clothes and dress her living body in burial garments. 

 

Mongmae opened her eyes at the sound of Huishan’s voice. She looked more like a ghost than a person.

 

Eyes bloodshot and bursting with red veins, turned towards Huishan without any focus. 

 

Mongmae, who resembled a corpse, moved her dried, gagged lips.

 

No one could understand the ghostly, wailing words.

 

Only Huishan knew who Mongmae was calling for. She pushed aside the servants blocking her way and approached Mongmae.

 

Through the disheveled hair, Mongmae’s crimson eyes were terrifying.

 

“The one you’re waiting for won’t come. Do you truly not know who ordered this?”

 

Huishan gritted her teeth and mocked Mongmae. She had every right to do so. 

 

Every right…

 

“Why did you have to make such a scene about wanting to die? If you hadn’t, His Highness might have let you live. He might have even taken you as a concubine. If you had known your life depended on His Highness’s command, even if you couldn’t keep yourself composed, making such a fuss would have been unbearable for him. In the end, he just grew tired of you.”

 

Mongmae’s crimson eyes glowed with a chilling light. 

 

A terrified maid grabbed Huishan’s arm, but Huishan shook her off without a care.

 

“If you wanted to die so badly, I hope you’re happy now that you’ve gotten your wish. Aren’t you? Your death means His Highness will sleep well, and that’s good for me, for His Highness, and for our children…”

 

Huishan was the Crown Princess Consort. 

 

Even if the Crown Prince had given all his love to Mongmae, she still had the right to punish her.

 

That was the only right she had left.

 

Huishan grabbed Mongmae by the hair and forced her mouth open. 

 

It was the final ritual before relaying the order for Mongmae’s death: pouring the rice grains prepared by Jagomi into her mouth.

 

Then Mongmae, who had seemed no different from a corpse, bit down hard on Huishan’s hand.

 

“Ack!”

 

Servants rushed forward and pushed Mongmae away. She collapsed to the floor but soon staggered to her feet and began to flee into the mountains.

 

Huishan, who had fallen to the ground, screamed.

 

“Capture her!”

 

As if she could neither hear nor see anything, Mongmae stumbled and rolled but kept moving forward. Her crimson eyes glittered with a cruel light.

 

She kept muttering, her tongue unable to form proper words.

 

“…Die… together.”

 

💫

 

Before the connection was severed, Mongmae took her own life. 

 

Thus, the Crown Prince also died. 

 

The Crown Prince resented no one. The bluish light before dawn crept through the crack in the door.

 

The man, who had been moving his hips over a body lying unconscious on the quilt, paused. His thoroughly disheveled black hair took on a deep blue tint in the early morning shadows.

 

Leegwang flipped over the body that had been pinned beneath him.

 

As a result, the phallus that had been filling her abdomen slipped out. 

 

Once the mass of flesh blocking the entrance was removed, the semen inside flowed out and soaked her thigh. 

 

But Leegwang stared intently not at the mess he had made below, but at Yiseo’s closed eyes.

 

“Yiseo.”

 

He gently bit her lower lip, and her eyelids fluttered. She certainly had more energy than when he had to force her awake for their sexual encounters.

 

“You need to get up.”

 

Leegwang left his intimidatingly erect member as it was and cleaned Yiseo’s body. 

 

Even as he moved her around to clean her and dress her, Yiseo repeatedly opened her unfocused, bleary eyes only to close them again.

 

Unable to regain her senses, she swayed, leaning against him. 

 

Leegwang held her and whispered something faintly in her ear.

 

“…Your Highness.”

 

Yiseo’s eyes flew wide open.

 

Leegwang met her gaze as she looked at him.

 

In that instant, a large shadow fell darkly over them as they faced each other, as if someone was standing at the door.