Struggle Chapter 101

There was no time to observe proper courtesies. Taerok was on land, yet he was choking and gasping for air as if drowning in the sea. Unless he could confirm it with his own two eyes and hold him in these arms, he could believe nothing, and nothing else could enter his sight.

The king, seeing Taerok in a state of extreme agitation, found himself somewhat overwhelmed.

“Uncle, please calm yourself. I cannot so carelessly send a royal kinsman outside the capital. Especially in a situation where there is as yet no prince, and we do not even know what has become of my own brother….”

“Is that not precisely why I am saying I will confirm it!”

The desperate cry rose to the ceiling of the throne hall where the dragon clutched the wish-fulfilling jewel, then fell. At the end of the layered reverberations, the king—no, Yigak—stared at Taerok as if suddenly realizing something. His trembling lips, the rims of his eyes flushed bright red and on the verge of bursting, even his fists clenched so tight they seemed ready to bleed….

A thunderbolt of realization swept through the still interior of the throne hall, unstirred by any wind.

“Could it be, Uncle….”

Gak murmured in a trembling voice.

“Uncle, could it be….”

Watching his first nephew approach unsteadily, Taerok wore an expression both devastated and relieved. At the end of that shifting, quieted face, Gak seized Taerok—who was taller than him by about a finger—by the collar and clung to him.

“Say it is not true! Say it is not!”

Taerok could have resisted, but he accepted it wholly. Yigak is entitled to this. What Yigak is not entitled to is already acting as though some calamity has befallen Nanyoung and I am the only royal kinsman left. Taerok shut his eyes tightly.

“Say it’s not! Say it!”

Yigak screamed in an outburst.

“You, say it is your own one-sided heart. No, it’s not. Just say that everything is not true, not true….”

“Please kill me.”

Taerok replied in a flat voice. Beneath his reopened eyelids, it showed that Taerok was already not here, but wherever it was that Nanyoung might be.

“Please kill me.”

“How can you do this, how! A person… born a person, how can you…!”

“Whatever punishment you mete out, I shall accept it as is meet.”

The king’s trembling hands let go. The collar of the official coat, thoroughly disheveled, remained crumpled, and Yigak pressed his forehead hard against the relentless, pummeling tidings of calamity.

“I will only confirm whether Nanyoung is alive or dead.”

Taerok quietly murmured toward that back.

“After that, you may send poisoned wine. Even a death stripped of all honor by beheading, I will accept. No, if Nanyoung has come to harm, I will drink the poison myself.”

“…What if I do not grant permission.”

“I have already given my nephew everything.”

Taerok, having steeled himself for death, addressed the king not as king but as his nephew. He faced him as his lover’s elder brother.

“When I presented the heads of the rebels, when you took my private soldiers, I handed them over. When the royal decree came that kin of the royal house were not to interfere in the court… did I utter a single word of complaint?”

“…”

“Even if it was Nanyoung’s betrayal, because it was Nanyoung’s doing, I willingly endured it. Considering it the price for having briefly harbored rebellious thoughts, I gave His Majesty everything. But you cannot arbitrarily decide even whether I live or die.”

Yigak bit his lip tightly. The lower face, suppressing tears by pressing down on his lower lip, resembled Nanyoung very much. Taerok’s eyes contorted momentarily before quickly regaining composure. Because he could not collapse yet.

“…Go.”

Yigak, having become the king, murmured.

“Go and confirm it. And at least one of the two royal kinsmen must remain safe. This is my condition. At least until a prince is born and the foundation of the state is established, Uncle, you….”

Letting go of his collar and turning around, Yigak’s face had by then cleanly erased any resemblance to Nanyoung, and now bore the face of his elder brother—the one who had made Taerok start in fright, yet had saved him from the fire.

Wretched ties of blood…. A loathsome, tiresome bond worse than a curse. Taerok closed his eyes and bowed his head.

“Uncle, Grand Prince Baegan cannot die by the Grand Prince’s own will.”

Taerok finally comes to understand everything. The reason he had so desperately longed for that position was not to be Grand Prince Baegan, but to exist solely as the king. The reason he could so easily give up the position he had so desperately longed for was because he had become able to exist not as Grand Prince Baegan nor as the king, but as Lee Taerok. Because that was possible with your existence, Lee Nanyoung, and by your side.

∞ ∞ ∞

Someone came running urgently, calling out to Taerok as he was leaving the throne hall. It was Kim Saon, who had become a Director.

“Jaga, Jaga! Grand Prince Baegan Jaga!”

Having barely managed to stop Taerok, he looked at the man who was his friend before he was a Grand Prince, his eyes unsteady.

“Where are you going? Huh?”

“You know full well, so why ask. I hear the Sunwibu will soon change to the Uigeumbu. Congratulations on becoming Director.”

“As if that is what is important right now!”

“Yes. It is not important.”

To Taerok, every instant was now as critical as eons. He had to go quickly. With his heart so anxious, he had no leisure to converse with Kim Saon.

“Jaga!”

“Lower your voice. His Majesty is present.”

Kim Saon gritted his teeth and lowered his voice.

“Was your giving up the enterprise… could it be, was it because of Grand Prince Heonui.”

“…Yes.”

“Was it merely that your nephew pricked your conscience? Jaga, were you that kind of person?”

“Kim Saon. As I said, I enabled you to achieve your revenge, and you meted out just punishment to those sons of the family you so loathed. Simply letting you go down that path seems to have been ample recompense for your help to me.”

“What I! What I… feel hurt by, what I am disappointed in, is not that. Jaga, was your resolve truly this shallow? I am asking if you were the kind of man who would abandon a great cause because merely your nephew pricked your conscience, because benevolence and affection suddenly gripped you!”

Merely…. If only it had truly been a feeling of mere shallowness, how good would that have been.

Taerok coldly stared at Saon. His heart was boiling so much that his eyes, on the contrary, froze like a sheet of ice.

“Seeing as you have come all this way, you seem to already know everything.”

“…”

“It is true that it was because of that mere feeling. Because that feeling was greater than my insignificant great cause. Am I disgusting to you? Am I grotesque and dreadful?”

“Jaga….”

Saon felt like tearing his hair out. But the Taerok before him would not so much as blink even if Saon were to rage at him that he would die here, why he was trying to ruin his own smooth life himself. His heart was already far away, at the sea.

“Saon. I hold you exceptionally dear as a friend. But if you try to stop me, I will cut you down right here. That is the extent of my feelings. Even if I must throw away everything I possess, I need only have Grand Prince Heonui, Lee Nanyoung.”

Once, Saon had playfully asked him if he had ever harbored tender feelings for anyone. Taerok had not answered. He never imagined it was because he never once had.

So this was why he had kept no one in his heart all this time. It seems that in Lee Taerok’s heart there was only a place for one person, and he had treasured it so, knowing that the owner would take all of Lee Taerok.

While Saon stood stunned, neither holding onto Taerok nor sending him off, Taerok had already turned like the wind and was slipping out of the palace.

“Argh!”

Clenching his teeth tightly, Saon cried out. Suppressing his maddening heart, Saon turned his body and headed for his quarters. After walking a long while, he roughly wiped the corners of his eyes with his fist.

Even if he had committed a repulsive sin, it was a friendship that had gone as far as joining a treasonous plot. He himself had also staked his life on Taerok. It was not love, but respect. Even if he was disappointed, even if he was bewildered, it was already too late. Saon had also resolved to die as the friend of Grand Prince Baegan, Lee Taerok. If he goes to the sea, Saon’s loyalty will also go to the sea.

∞ ∞ ∞

As soon as Taerok received the king’s consent, he left Bongsu in charge of the princely household and immediately set out with a few trusted retainers. If they drove the horses to the point of frothing at the mouth, it was a distance reachable in half a day.

Taerok pushed himself to the point that even his retainers grew exhausted. He could not even feel the hardship. If only he could, he wanted to fold the very earth. In contrast to the time dwindling with each moment, the distance to Nanyoung seemed only to grow farther with each moment, making him feel faint.

They arrived before sunrise, in the darkest hour. At that dark time, the magistrate of Pyeonggak stood before the fortress gate that led to the watchtower. Fortunately, the wind had died down, and thanks to the falcon they could send, he had learned in advance that Grand Prince Baegan would be arriving.

“I behold the Grand Prince Jaga….”

“Enough. Where is Gwangdolmok? I will depart at once.”