Struggle Chapter 33

“Let us go and meet at the palace.”

Instead, Taerok pushed the back of Nanyoung, who had to leave in haste. When he still hesitated, Taerok went so far as to place his foot into the stirrup and help him mount. Nanyoung, atop the horse, looked back several times as he grew distant from Taerok.

“I feel strange.”

Taerok, leaning against the main gate, muttered. This was exactly the feeling Nanyoung had when he had looked at Taerok’s back. At last, Taerok felt that feeling too.

“As I thought, my nephew is still too young to be married off.”

However, Taerok used his subtle feeling to reach this conclusion.

A short while later, he turned his back. As Taerok headed inside, the servants pushed the great gate closed. With a rumbling sound, the house was sealed as if confined, and some time later, word was heard that Taerok’s wife had ultimately passed away from illness. And beyond the attention of others, a ship said to have come from the west quietly departed.

∞ ∞ ∞

By the time Taerok returned to the palace, a whole season had already changed. Fortunately or unfortunately, Nanyoung had barely felt the passage of that time. Perhaps because not falling ill at Taerok’s house had been an unreasonable strain, after returning to the palace he had been sick almost to the point of being unable to wake. Nanyoung was barely conscious, and when he did wake, he did not know whether a day or three days had passed.

Around the time he had recovered his strength and was able to go about his days as usual again, he heard the news that Taerok had set foot on this land. Having long since left the palace, he would not be returning to it. Nanyoung was merely responding that he was glad just knowing his uncle had arrived safely, when he heard those words.

“The Grand Prince’s wife, due to the worsening of the endemic disease, has unfortunately….”

Nanyoung’s eyes grew wide and round. Yet he could not look at the person conveying this news. The secret he had shared with Taerok, which he had barely managed to forget during his illness, pressed down heavily upon him once again. Simultaneously, the unfamiliar glimpses of his uncle’s true nature that he had witnessed like dreams or waking visions during his time there—things he had been thoroughly unaware of until then—pressed down upon him again like shadows.

After sending Sim Eung out, Nanyoung paced the room. Taerok, having received news of his wife’s passing, would be wearing mourning clothes, and ultimately, he would not be able to attend the Crown Prince’s wedding ceremony. Yet on the other hand, Nanyoung also knew that the mourning clothes Taerok would wear were a lie, and that he would only be performing empty grief.

Is it all right to hide such a tremendous thing? It was not just a simple lie, but a falsehood deceiving even the king, the host of the marriage. Heat flared up on his face. Nanyoung rubbed his face.

‘I do not believe my nephew would report this matter and place this uncle in a predicament or stain his uncle’s name. Moreover, if you know to whom my honor is connected….’

That voice of Taerok rang in Nanyoung’s head.

…He could not sully his uncle’s honor. And he knew clearly to whom his honor was connected.

But then, what of the guilt of deceiving His Majesty, his father the king?

Nanyoung dropped his gaze. In his blurring vision, he saw his pure white socks dyeing black. Something damp and dark crept up slowly, as if he were standing on moist soil.

∞ ∞ ∞

In the end, Nanyoung did not betray Taerok. He attended the Crown Prince’s wedding ceremony without telling anyone. Indeed, as much as he had grown since Taerok’s own wedding, Nanyoung no longer looked like a child secretly wearing his father’s clothes.

Nanyoung tried not to direct his gaze to the empty place where Taerok should have been. Yet even without looking, he could not help but feel that void. Because Taerok should have been standing beside him.

Just then, a wind blew past the empty spot, past the memorial tablet, and a dried leaf touched it before being swept away. Nanyoung turned his head at the sight of the Crown Prince entering. He stubbornly looked forward. The Crown Prince passed before him. Save for his firm-set lips, no one would have recognized that the Crown Prince was nervous.

Nanyoung recognized it. Though the Crown Prince was not looking at him, Nanyoung smiled slightly to ease his tension.

And following that, he looked at the king seated upon the throne above.

He had to be both a son and, at the same time, the most loyal of subjects. Because he was a monarch before he was a father.

As such, harboring a great secret he could not tell tormented Nanyoung endlessly.

Thinking that he seemed to feel uneasy whenever a wedding ceremony took place, Nanyoung gave a self-deprecating laugh.

And when all the rites that could be called the wedding ceremony had ended, he sought permission and went to find Lee Taerok. As it happened, the king had also been deeply concerned about his younger brother. However, with the Crown Prince’s wedding concluded, as if he had at least fulfilled his own duty, his body had rapidly grown fatigued, leaving him no time to pay attention. The king sent Nanyoung off with generous bestowals.

Perhaps because the hands going were heavy… the steps going were heavy as well.

Standing before the main gate of Taerok’s house, Nanyoung could not readily say the words to announce his arrival. Sim Eung merely looked up carefully from beneath his hat at his silent master.

Nanyoung’s delicate face, deep in thought, seemed all the more mature—perhaps because it was on the verge of the approaching sunset, noticed only after the moment had nearly passed.

“Young master….”

The main gate opened faster than the words asking whether to announce him.

With a creaking sound, the gate opened, and inside, Taerok was looking at Nanyoung. As if he had been waiting.

“It is not a favorable sight for you to still be in the palace and come out this often.”

It was his uncle, met after several months. It was merely a few months. Yet, whatever had happened in the meantime, his uncle was far colder now than he had been several months ago, when they had met after several years.

Nanyoung guessed that the suddenly chilled atmosphere was related to the Grand Prince’s wife. It could not be otherwise.

Taerok said that while he would gratefully accept the items bestowed as condolences from the king, since it was not a joyous occasion, he would share and distribute them among those around him. And he said that with a celebration taking place, he did not wish to mar it with the private affairs of one who had left the palace.

Nanyoung realized this was a reproach for having come to visit.

He had been thoughtless.

Nanyoung could not even reach for the refreshments, which had been prepared solely with the snacks he liked. Watching Nanyoung, Taerok’s expression was inscrutably impassive.

“I heard you were ill.”

A clinking sound rang out as Taerok set down his teacup. Nanyoung was startled out of his wits, as if that clinking sound had been the sound of his own heart dropping.

With mere silence, Taerok, who could pressure and corner his opponent as much as he pleased, quietly steadied his breathing. And at the appropriate moment, he let out a sigh of suitable depth. Nanyoung also realized that Taerok found him bothersome.

Merely a few months. In that time, the uncle who had proposed they share a secret was treating him like a different person.

“When my nephew said he would go to that faraway land where I was, there must have been those who dissuaded you out of concern for your frail health.”

“…”

There had certainly been such people. Even if Nanyoung had two mouths—no, three—he would have had nothing to say. Anyone could see that Nanyoung was now being scolded by Taerok. Even though he had clearly been told he could sit comfortably, he simply could not straighten his knees. His kneeling legs began to go numb.

Stretch out your legs. Taerok said it only to himself. He did not voice it aloud. No matter how much he was a senior relative, Nanyoung was still a grand prince like himself. He could not let him grow up to be a fool of a grand prince who could not even judge such a thing on his own.

“You were dissuaded, yet you stubbornly came. And after returning from that long journey, you fell ill just before His Highness the Crown Prince’s wedding ceremony. Fortunately, I did hear that you performed your role at the ceremony. Rather, the one who caused trouble must be me, as your uncle.”

“Uncle, but my aunt—!”

“Nanyoung.”

In an exceedingly lowered voice, Taerok called Nanyoung.

Nanyoung closed his mouth tightly again.

It’s true, isn’t it. Just the way my uncle is acting now, my aunt is indeed alive, isn’t she. It was not a passing away; she departed. No, could that too be called a passing to another world? If she boarded a ship and left for some forever unknown place.

Nanyoung was in turmoil, but Taerok told him nothing. Even setting aside keeping it a secret, it was difficult to even understand why he had suddenly grown so cold. He wanted to know at least what on earth had happened in those unseen months.

“Why are you suddenly acting like this? Have I become a bother to you?”