Struggle Chapter 84

“There cannot be an empty queen’s seat in the palace. In such a proper and fitting matter, I, too, will make no selfish claim or justification. Come to think of it… yes. You becoming king, uncle—that was precisely the way for us to end.”

Above Taerok’s head, the darkness pressed down, heavier and heavier with each thud. Front and back were both cliffs, and Nanyoung felt as distant as if he were beyond an uncrossable river. Even though they were touching like this.

“I began this relationship hoping you wouldn’t become king, and only now do I realize that it will end only when you do become king. As you said, uncle, it must have been my own selfishness, seeking not true loyalty but only a justification.”

Nanyoung lifted his gaze and looked straight at Taerok. Now, Nanyoung didn’t even let his own reflection show in his eyes.

“So if you will only spare my elder brother, I will leave and live so that I never appear before you again.”

“…”

After a taut silence, Nanyoung rose onto his toes. He lightly pressed his lips to Taerok’s, then pulled away.

“Now I think I can understand you just a little. Being a Grand Prince… it’s truly such a cumbersome and powerless thing.”

If only they had been someone’s ordinary younger brother or nephew instead….

The words Nanyoung swallowed struck Taerok like a vivid voice.

Nanyoung pushed against the solidly planted Taerok’s chest and moved to the bedding. Ignoring the dampness, he pulled up the cotton blanket that had slipped down and covered himself with it. Curled up with the blanket pulled over his head, Nanyoung looked not like a young man but like a small boy. Taerok stared at that sight, then turned his head toward the window.

Heedless of having shut it, he opened the window again. An inexplicable suffocation squeezed his chest tight.

∞ ∞ ∞

When he awoke again, Taerok was gone. Nanyoung, who had naturally assumed he would have left, was not greatly surprised.

After Nanyoung got up, folded the bedding himself, pushed it aside, and waited, Sim Eung appeared. Sim Eung’s expression looked haggard with exhaustion.

“What happened overnight?”

Nanyoung smiled, jesting with Sim Eung.

But Sim Eung could not smile at all.

After seeing Taerok, he had postponed leaving the palace. Not daring to eavesdrop, he had spent the entire night pacing in his own room, sinking down in despair, then rising unsteadily to his feet again, repeating the cycle over and over. And when he had come to Nanyoung at the break of dawn, seeing that clear, smiling face made the imaginings he had relentlessly cultivated through the night swell into a desperate hope that they were merely anxieties, nothing more.

Yes, surely it was nothing but a thoroughly rotten imagination.

“I slept rather poorly.”

After a long pause, Sim Eung forced a smile and glanced toward the bedding in the corner.

Then Nanyoung hesitated and said, “The laundry… I’d like it taken care of,” and closed his mouth without giving any reason.

Anxiety tightened its grip on Sim Eung once more.

“Yes. I shall call a servant to take it out.”

“Ah, no!”

Nanyoung shifted restlessly and stopped him.

“Could you… take care of this at your own residence, Sim Eung.”

“Pardon…?”

Nanyoung didn’t know it, but this method of handling things was one Taerok had long since employed. How strange that the same solution had occurred to him.

“Don’t ask for details… it’s a favor I’m asking of you.”

There was so much he wanted to ask, yet all of it were words he could not bear to voice, so Sim Eung, too, had no choice but to silently accept the order.

It was as Sim Eung was struggling his way out of the palace, groaning under the load. Palace slaves, servants, and even his own attendants had all offered to help, but he had shouted that it was fine, telling them only to send his horse outside.

And just as he barely crossed the threshold, a familiar voice reached Sim Eung’s ears.

“Sim Eung. How is it that you haven’t changed a bit since you were a young eunuch just entering the palace.”

It was the voice of Yu Bongsu, the eunuch instructor who had taught Sim Eung and his peers when they were still young eunuchs, and who now served Grand Prince Baegan, Lee Taerok.

“Sir!”

Startled, Sim Eung cried out and spun around so abruptly that the bedding he was holding came tumbling down all at once.

Where it spread out over the ground as if unfurling, contrary to Nanyoung’s worry, there were almost no visible traces of their intercourse. This was thanks to Taerok having ejaculated so deep inside and having scooped it out while Nanyoung slept.

However, from Sim Eung’s ashen expression and the sight of him secretly carrying out his master’s personal belongings in the exact same manner he himself had once used, Yu Bongsu understood everything.

‘Go to Grand Prince Heonui and say that you are sorry for spilling liquor on his bedding last night by mistake, and tell him you will have new bedding made for him, so ask him to give you the old one and bring it here.’

The reason Taerok, who had returned around sunrise and was touching the charred red pine pillar that had caught fire but been extinguished, had given him such an order now fell perfectly into place.

Clicking his tongue, Yu Bongsu helped the flustered Sim Eung gather up the bedding.

“Take this and have it divided between this old man’s horse and my own, and deliver it.”

Yu Bongsu called over the servant attending behind him and gave the order. Sim Eung, at a loss, cried out to him in a desperate voice, “Sir…!”

“He is mute.”

Yu Bongsu answered calmly, his hands clasped behind his back.

“He won’t go blabbing unnecessary things anywhere. Now then, shall we share a brief chat, just like the times when you were a young eunuch and I’d scold you soundly before we shared some fried honey cakes?”

At the invitation from Yu Bongsu, whose eyebrows were now thick with white hairs as if frost had settled there, Sim Eung—now past fifty—looked as if he had reverted to the ten-year-old boy who had just become a young eunuch, his face crumpling as he nodded vigorously.

Yu Bongsu’s private residence was neatly enclosed by red pines he had meticulously cultivated himself. The walls were unadorned, without even roof tiles set atop them, and the house itself, while solidly built, revealed a simple, unembellished style with no taste for splendor.

Inwardly admiring Yu Bongsu’s tea, Sim Eung quietly sipped the brewed water.

“Sim Eung, do you remember when you took your aptitude test?”

At the mention of the aptitude test, Sim Eung trembled. It was one of the tests that eunuchs were expected to pass, a process to verify how loyal they could be to the master they served. They were forced to drink water until they vomited not only from their mouths but their noses, and hung upside down from trees. They also had sand rubbed roughly into their noses and sprinkled into their eyes. And Sim Eung, though he had not been exceptionally good at his studies, had passed that aptitude test without a single complaint and thus caught Yu Bongsu’s eye.

“It was then that I recognized you as a fellow with great patience and a deeply affectionate heart. Others said they endured by thinking of His Majesty the King, but you said you endured by thinking of Princess Sohye, who was the youngest in the palace at the time.”

“Aigo, how is it that you remember such things….”

In truth, it was an answer that should have earned him a severe scolding. After all, saying one endured by thinking of a princess was more than enough to invite misunderstanding.

But Yu Bongsu had recognized that Sim Eung was not overly ambitious, that he had great affection for children, and that he was prepared to devote his body and soul to protecting them. Having no lust for advancement and being full of affection was not a good quality within the palace, but it was a quality that could make one the perfect hands and feet for a member of the royal family who would leave the palace.

“Recall the water you drank then and the sand that scraped against your skin.”

“…”

“The loyalty you must hold for His Majesty the King is a matter of course. But your loyalty to the master you serve must go beyond mere duty and become your very self.”

“Sir…! You know something, don’t you, sir!”

Sim Eung grasped the meaning behind Yu Bongsu’s words and asked urgently. Yu Bongsu closed his eyes and quietly drank his tea.

“Sir, this cannot be. This must not be…!”

“Sim Eung.”

Yu Bongsu set down his teacup and leaned forward as far as he could. His lowered body was taut with tension. At the sight of Yu Bongsu, who was like a teacher to him, looking as he had never seen him before, Sim Eung held his breath as well.

“My master is someone who could even covet the dragon throne.”

“…!”

“In fact, if he simply set his mind to it, he could attain it.”

No matter his age, his eyebrows should not yet have turned as white as frost. Sim Eung now dared to understand the reason Yu Bongsu’s hair had gone so gray in that time. Yu Bongsu’s expression was exceedingly dark.

“I do not wish to serve a dragon. Some might say, as a eunuch, is that not the highest dream? But to me, it is a nightmare I cannot bear. I wish for my master to live as a hidden dragon and then fall asleep as an imugi serpent. Whatever anyone may say, this is my selfishness, and this is my loyalty.”

“What, what does that have to do with my master.”

Sim Eung asked again, his fists trembling.

“Why does a clever man pretend not to know. They say fight fire with fire, fight poison with poison. Could it not be fighting sin with sin? There is only one person in this world who can hold Grand Prince Baegan down to the earth.”