Struggle Chapter 31

“Yes. I know. But I am now truly reaching my end. They say the ship will depart when the season changes. If I board that ship, I can finally pursue the studies I have waited for and live the life I desire. If I miss this opportunity, I do not know when I might obtain it again, so how could I possibly turn back…!”

What on earth is this I am hearing…?

Flustered, Nanyoung could not even move his feet to a place where the voices would not reach him, and ended up hearing the entirety of their conversation. The two of them—that is, his aunt and uncle.

He had clearly heard that she was in very poor health due to an endemic disease, but the voice he heard was exceedingly vigorous and full of energy. Nanyoung instinctively felt that this was something far greater than the secret his uncle had mentioned last night.

“Then what do you propose we do?”

It was his uncle’s rather irritated voice. It was the first time Nanyoung had heard this kind of voice and tone from Taerok. Even though he was clearly using honorifics, it was cold, as if he were speaking while pinning the other person flat on the ground and looking down from an immeasurable height. Even though Taerok had not yet acted according to his true nature, to Nanyoung, who had never sensed even a fragment of this side of Taerok, it was simply a shock.

“What do you intend to do? It was just before coming here that my father-in-law realized his wife had married me with the intention of running away. Thanks to that, your father and family were seized by a severe weakness by me, becoming little different from hostages, so what are you thinking of throwing away next, now that you are behaving like this within the household?”

Taerok asked while rubbing his brow. Unaware that beyond the wall, Lee Nanyoung was being repeatedly shocked by his own flat, uninflected voice, and by his true nature momentarily exposed in irritation.

Watching Taerok, Nanok raised her trembling lips. Slightly frightened yet not cowed, she lifted her chin and directed a sneer at the other person, resembling Lee Taerok greatly. They were ultimately a couple ill-suited for each other.

“Why do you pretend to worry about me, about my family? Sir, do you not lack such sentiments? Rather, are you not pleased to have a firm hold on my family using me as the reason?”

Taerok, who had been rubbing his brow, tilted his head slightly. After a brief silence, he chuckled. Nanok clenched her fists and continued speaking.

“My father was the same in using me. It was not my intention to deceive from the beginning. I repeatedly implored that I wished to leave on this path, that I had something I wanted to learn, but it was my father who did not listen. I have fulfilled my duty, and I have given my husband everything I had to give. Did my father not also fail to achieve what he desired, despite submitting a memorial asking to delay the royal selection for the consort of Grand Prince Heonui?”

“…”

“Therefore, I will be considered dead here….”

“Wait a moment.”

Taerok waved his hand, stopping Nanok’s words. And in an instant, he kicked open the door and rushed out of the room. That a man with a large, warrior’s physique could move so quickly. Nanok trembled only after the man, whose body was like a weapon itself, had left the spot.

And Taerok, who had stepped out into the yard without even putting on his shoes, narrowed his eyes and looked at the disturbed dirt ground.

Someone had been there.

Taerok moved with long strides. His manner, like that of a predator eyeing its prey, was silent and skilled.

Lee Taerok’s hunting skill was surely the best not only in his hometown but even here. He silently pounced on the little rat. The escape skills were pitifully poor. The moment he grabbed the collar and spun the person around, Taerok’s brow furrowed deeply.

“…Lee Nanyoung?”

“Un-Uncle.”

“What…. I thought it was a little rat, but it is my nephew.”

Taerok nodded his head and let out a long, held breath. The great chest swelled and then sank, and Nanyoung’s body, caught in Taerok’s arms, was crushed down and then released.

“It seems you heard everything.”

“…”

“Nephew. How will you manage when you can’t even tell a lie like this?”

“If one is good at lying, wouldn’t that make one a swindler, a gambler, a ruffian, rather than a scholar or a member of the royal family….”

“Don’t twist my words.”

“I did not intend to eavesdrop. Truly…!”

“But you did enter the inner quarters, did you not? What were you trying to do by crossing into someone else’s inner quarters?”

It was mortifying. Taerok was now treating him like a scoundrel who had crossed the wall with impure intentions. Having had such a tremendous conversation, and moreover having been caught, Taerok was instead pressing and interrogating him, so Nanyoung could not utter a single word and could not even ask back what that talk had meant.

“Do not treat me as if I were coveting my aunt…! Why would I do such a thing!”

Nanyoung struggled, wanting to escape from Taerok’s embrace, and appealed to him.

He pressed his lips together firmly at the end of each sentence to keep from crying. Taerok, as if truly having hunted something, his blood suddenly up, instead held the struggling Nanyoung tighter. Lee Nanyoung is the one who did wrong, so why should I let him go? In his mind, it was a reasonable enough action.

“Right. You mustn’t. Covet your aunt.”

Taerok replied with a gloomy laugh.

It was unfamiliar.

Nanyoung flinched and stiffened at that voice pouring into his ears.

It was a much more unfamiliar sight than Taerok on his wedding day. Nanyoung’s body gradually curled in on itself. At the sight of him burying even his head like a turtle, trying not to show his face, Taerok leaned his upper body down even more. Thanks to that, Nanyoung was pressed down further, and then Taerok, saying he wanted to see his face, wrapped his arms around him even more tightly. It was a situation like a snake eating its own tail.

“…Uncle, you are frightening right now.”

“Me?”

Taerok asked back as if truly not understanding. Nanyoung nodded. Taerok said, Lift your face and speak, yet did not loosen the strength in his arms at all. Nanyoung let out a groan and then, squeezing his eyes shut, confessed. There seemed to be no way to escape from here without confessing.

“Yes. I heard you. I was worried because I heard you were not even meeting your wife, so I came… I intended to ask for your permission first, Uncle, but they said you were here. I was going to wait. Truly…. But then you spoke of those things….”

“What things?”

At the voice cutting off his words abruptly, Nanyoung, dumbfounded, raised his head with his lips parted. Taerok’s face was at a distance barely the thickness of a fingernail. Nanyoung was startled out of his wits, but Taerok, as if it were nothing, merely pressed him again.

“I asked what things you heard.”

“…Why did you block my marriage?”

“Ah, was that such a shock?”

Taerok laughed in disbelief. Is the problem that the age gap is too large? In his eyes, Nanyoung was still young. Just looking at his own marital relationship, it was complicated, and the relationship with his in-laws was even more gruesome. He thought such things were too early for Nanyoung and did not want him to experience them if possible.

Until when?

He had often asked himself, but to the point where he himself could not answer—for as long as possible.

“Did you want it that much? Did you want to leave the palace and live with a wife? I truly did not know my nephew’s heart and acted arbitrarily.”

“…”

Of course, unlike himself, Nanyoung might meet his match and live harmoniously. Most of all, when he found Nanyoung’s match for him, it was not something to be done carelessly.

But, that was not now. Lee Nanyoung must marry the person Lee Taerok chooses, at the time Lee Taerok deems him necessary. Not now, but someday.

“Nephew. Tell me. Did you want to marry so badly? Dear me, was your uncle utterly ignorant of your heart?”

Still with only the gap where a single fingernail could barely fit, each time Taerok asked, the tip of his nose grazed the bridge of Nanyoung’s nose. At that ticklish sensation, Nanyoung repeatedly closed and opened his eyes.

“But what to do. As I see it, my nephew is too young to marry.”

In an instant, a chill ran down his arms. Nanyoung’s eyes blinked open. The reason for the chill was because Taerok’s arms, which had been pressing and enfolding him, had loosened.

Taerok took a step back and looked at Nanyoung dryly, as if he had never been pressing him like prey and interrogating him.

“It would be best to not even dream of meeting a spouse until I say it is acceptable.”

“…Why, Uncle?”

You are not even my father, Your Majesty…. A sulky voice was added. Even though by any other person’s standards, even if one were overly doting on a nephew, that was going too far—a ridiculous statement—Taerok remained completely unmoved.

“We are on the same side, are we not? Are we not merely blood relatives, but friends and also teacher and student?”