Struggle Chapter 41

“Uncle! Uncle, I feel like I’m going to fall, I’m going to fall. Please wait…!”

Even when Nanyoung called out to him from behind in anguish, Taerok did not stop.

He had worn the rough white mourning clothes signifying that a death had occurred over a year ago. Three years prior, he had changed into his outer robe, declaring an end to mourning for a wife who, in truth, had not died. And Taerok had come out hunting for the first time in a very long while.

He had caught a deer. It was a great achievement. He does not catch does, only bucks. Sometimes he catches them without harming them, using a trap, only to cut off the antlers. He had seen the eyes of deer countless times. But today was the first time he had recalled Nanyoung in those eyes.

It was not that he had never thought of Nanyoung all this time. If that were the case, he would not have sent gifts to commemorate the day he was born.

But perhaps because he had seen blood today, he simply saw those clear brown eyes in a somewhat different sense.

He could not sleep.

It was because he had seen blood after a long time. Thinking thus, he set out for a night walk under a pale moon, not a red one. His night vision was very keen, and he almost never lost his way. He merely let his feet take him where they would, yet his body brought him here as if it had long known the place it had to go.

And he saw Lee Nanyoung.

Lee Nanyoung was kissing a man.

Taerok’s heart is calm.

But that was merely the surface being calm. Rather, like something just before bursting, beneath the surface it was churning so violently that if one merely dipped a foot in, they would be sucked in immediately and decomposed without a trace.

“Uncle!”

Nanyoung tried to shake off his wrist. But his own strength could never compare to the grip of Taerok’s hand. On the contrary, because of his wrist, which had been bent back futilely, only Nanyoung was in pain.

Still, thanks to that resistance, Taerok came to his senses as well. Taerok’s eyes and ears had been so tightly blocked that he could not even hear. Within his blocked eyes and shut ears, only the scene from just moments before was being ruminated on endlessly.

Taerok finally stopped walking. He turned his head toward Nanyoung, who was biting his lip tightly from the pain in his wrist. He slowly let go of the hand that had gone limp, drained of strength. Nanyoung could only clutch his own tingling, numb wrist.

“Lee Nanyoung.”

“…”

At the sound of Taerok calling him, a surge of sorrow welled up inside Nanyoung.

“Do you want to be punished here, or go inside and be punished.”

“…Inside? The Commander-General’s villa is over there.”

“There is no reason for me to go to that bastard’s house. Isn’t that right?”

“I am staying there. I want to go back there….”

“Why? Are you now curious about what comes after kissing?”

“…”

Taerok seized Nanyoung’s injured wrist. It was deliberate. Nanyoung let out a pained moan, “Ah, ah.” But Taerok only gripped it tighter, not letting go.

He did not fear even the pitch-black darkness. To him, the darkness was instead familiar, as if it were light. Taerok headed for the villa where he was staying. It was a villa used by the family of Nanok, who had once been his wife and was practically a business partner from whom each had only taken benefit. He had become able to command one of the meritorious subject families like his own servant, and he did not hesitate to install Nanyoung in the property of a family that had fallen into his grasp—even if it was the villa of the place that had once been his in-laws.

As they entered the inner quarters, a servant with keen ears came out, but Taerok waved his hand and told them to go in. While being dragged along in a daze, Nanyoung’s eyes met someone’s. The face with the dim lamplight behind it was Saon. When Saon’s eyes met Nanyoung’s, Saon quietly closed the door. He was fond of Nanyoung, the Grand Prince Heonui, but separately, his fear of Lee Taerok was greater.

“U-Uncle. I’m tired.”

Nanyoung threw out any words to make Taerok stop. He was actually tired, too.

But Taerok did not stop until he reached his intended destination. Only after finally entering the innermost private room of the inner quarters where he was staying did Taerok release Nanyoung’s wrist. No, it was more than releasing. He threw it to the floor. Nanyoung was pushed helplessly to the floor, and as he braced himself to keep from collapsing, he broke down from the pain that throbbed through his wrist.

“Huh… h-huh.”

Without even looking down at Nanyoung groaning in pain, Taerok untied the strings of his gat. Only after placing his gat in its proper place did he approach Nanyoung. Kneeling beside his head, he loomed as large as a great mountain in Nanyoung’s eyes.

“Dear nephew. What are you, nephew.”

“…”

“Are you just some man from the marketplace, or at least the immature youngest son of a fading yangban family just barely maintaining its lineage?”

If burning-hot ice existed—though it does not—then it would be on Nanyoung’s wrist. Clutching his wrist, Nanyoung held his breath and only let tears fall, one by one.

Though Taerok knew Nanyoung’s wrist was injured because of him, he did not spare it a single glance. Not today. Today, he had no intention of humoring his whining. At least not now.

Or perhaps, not in the future either.

“You are a Grand Prince, and you kiss a man? What would you have done if someone saw?”

“…It was night. It was dark. There was no one, no one there, and no one would have seen.”

“But I saw.”

Taerok slammed his palm down beside Nanyoung’s collapsed face, grinding his teeth. At the booming sound, Nanyoung curled up his body, flinching in fright.

Every side of his uncle that he had seen until now had been different. It had been special treatment. Even when he last visited his uncle, the sight of him wearing the rough white jungchimak and outer robe, scolding him, was still him treating Nanyoung with consideration. Nanyoung was realizing that with his entire body.

But it was still far from over. Taerok’s anger had only just begun to erupt.

“Lee Nanyoung. What were you curious about? Have you come to harbor affection for the Commander-General’s son? For a man, not even a daughter. Why a man, of all people?”

“No!”

Nanyoung retorted, tears streaming down.

“I don’t feel affection for him! Suhwan is… Suhwan just… ugh…!”

Nanyoung’s mouth was clamped shut. Taerok’s palm pressed firmly against his lips. Taerok had to be so tense that his entire body went stiff to avoid crushing Nanyoung’s face. A vein was bulging on his forehead.

Nanyoung thought that Taerok was angry as an uncle because he had kissed a man.

Taerok did not know whether he was this furious because Nanyoung had kissed a man, or because he kept calling that name—Suhwan, Suhwan.

Everything simply seemed to go red before his eyes. What kind of scholar cannot even control his own emotions? If so, there is no scholar here. There was only an uncle and nephew, or a man and a man.

“So you kiss a man you don’t even feel affection for, Lee Nanyoung.”

“…”

“I am truly shocked that my nephew was that kind of person.”

“No… that’s not…”

But Nanyoung, too, fell into self-contradiction. There was not a single incorrect word. If you stated the facts exactly as they had occurred, Taerok’s misunderstanding was not even a misunderstanding. He does not feel affection for Suhwan. He kissed Suhwan. Suhwan is a man. What was wrong with kissing a man he did not even feel affection for? What lie was there in this?

“If you were curious about men, why didn’t you tell me instead? I would have found you a much better bastard than that infinitely frivolous son of the Commander-General. One with no worries about him blabbering anywhere.”

Nanyoung was a Grand Prince who had been raised gently. There was no one who used vulgar language in front of him. But Taerok was different. If someone had ability, he kept them by his side regardless of their birth status. Among them, many spoke roughly, and many had entirely different ways of speaking. Taerok was, in fact, fully capable of speaking the language characterized by rootless, uneducated vulgarity.

It was just that he had not done so to Nanyoung.

But now, because it was Nanyoung, he does it.

Taerok slammed his hand down on the floor in front of Nanyoung’s face once more. His head was boiling over.

“If you were that curious, why didn’t you just ask me? Huh? Knowing that your uncle had taught you everything one by one, why did you go to some strange place…!”

The whirlwind churning near his solar plexus was on the verge of bursting and sweeping everything away. Nanyoung’s question stopped Taerok.

“Do you also commit the sin of sodomy, Uncle?”

Nanyoung, now trapped between Taerok’s arms, looked up at him with a tear-soaked face and asked. Like a paulownia leaf that turns translucent as soon as it gets wet, even the content of Nanyoung’s question seemed as if it were utterly naive.