Struggle Chapter 88

Seeing that the color of illness was becoming more and more pronounced on the face of the Grand Prince, who was not very healthy to begin with, Kangmu hesitated slightly. However, at Nanyoung’s wave of the hand, he ultimately had no choice but to speak not a word and step away.

After Kangmu left his spot, Nanyoung unfolded the letter sent by Taerok.

The way he unfolded it by rubbing it with his fingertips closely resembled Taerok. Nanyoung prostrated himself without a thought for his face or decorum. Pressing his cheek firmly against the desk, he read the hastily scrawled contents.

[No matter how the seasons change, the world changes, and the countless human affairs of this society change, aren’t there things that do not change? There are things that cannot be severed even if you try to cut them. My nephew, has moss grown in your quiver yet?]

What remained unchanged must be their blood-tied relationship, and asking about the quiver meant going hunting together.

Nanyoung rubbed the handwriting resembling Taerok’s with his fingertips. After stroking it repeatedly, he closed his eyes with a groan of ah-uuu.

‘You must set your mind at ease. It is because of a buildup of internal fire. If the fire in the body is strong, it dries and parches the body, causing even the pathways that ought to circulate in due time to shrivel up.’

Even though he had been told that leaving it like this would only worsen the pain, Nanyoung was acting as though he had never heard that advice. How wonderful it would be if setting one’s mind at ease could truly be done just as the head commanded.

Right. If he moved just as his head knew he should, he would have reacted with anger upon seeing this letter or burned it with fire. Instead of fondling it like the hand of a lover.

Nanyoung now absentmindedly stroked his own lips, thinking of Taerok, as if it were a routine, a habit.

Passing his fingertips, a finger brushed against Nanyoung’s lips. It was so remarkably similar to the sensation of Taerok’s lips that Nanyoung startled and lifted his head.

Whether it was his imagination or not, at that moment the pain stabbing at his stomach vanished.

“…”

Dazed, Nanyoung turned his gaze back to Taerok’s letter. It was crumpled. It looked like a bedsheet crumpled after sexual intercourse.

Staring at it for a long time, Nanyoung pressed his lips tightly together.

∞ ∞ ∞

Pulling on the horse’s saddle and checking whether it was properly secured, Taerok turned his head at the sound of the main gate opening.

“…”

Kangmu was standing beyond the open door. It seemed he was also the one who had pushed the door open. Then Kangmu stepped aside to the right.

Strength entered the hand Taerok had been using to grip the saddle. His knuckles turned white. Where Kangmu had stepped aside, Nanyoung was standing.

Nanyoung, who had been looking down at his toes, raised his gaze. He made eye contact with Taerok. Tied to Nanyoung’s back was a quiver. It was the very one Taerok had asked about. A quiver without a single speck of dust, let alone moss.

Taerok walked toward him. Amidst their busyness, the other party members secretly poured their attention onto them.

“Might I accompany you?”

“…”

“Uncle.”

At Nanyoung’s question, Taerok gazed at him intently before turning his body sideways. He beckoned with his arm for him to come inside.

At that gesture, Nanyoung stepped across the main gate.

He had merely stepped across that single threshold, yet his skin stung as though he had come to another world. His insides ached. Taerok approached Nanyoung, who was hiding his pain.

“Is there any reason I would chase away my nephew who has sought me out like this? Especially when it was an invitation of my own making.”

Not a single trace of strangeness could be detected in Taerok’s voice. It sounded like an ordinary relationship between an uncle and his nephew.

Even though it was entirely not the case.

“I thought you would refuse, saying I am still too young.”

He acted as though they had never sent or received anything like a letter.

“Too young? Did the Grand Prince Himself not say that I would know best of all that Grand Prince Heonui has grown up fully?”

Taerok smiled crookedly. Was there any chance he could harbor such lust for a mere child? Even if they had committed incest, he wasn’t a bastard disgusting enough to go that far.

“Just as my nephew said, where under heaven could there be anyone who knows just how much my nephew has grown as well as I do?”

Without a doubt, there would be no one. Because it was he who had watched Lee Nanyoung’s growth from the closest distance, and it was he who had pinned up his hair.

Taerok extended his hand.

“Come, I shall personally bring out a horse for you. It will surely please you, my nephew.”

∞ ∞ ∞

They crossed the capital city gate and reached the plains along the river. Although it was a plain, it was barren for cultivation, a place where the soil lacked cohesiveness. Even though a river flowed through it, it was crumbling land that let the water slip away rather than retaining it. Surrounded by mountains where tigers supposedly lived and a river of unfathomable width flowing alongside, it was a place where one had no choice but to head back down beneath the earth or return to the capital. No matter how one looked at it, it did not seem suitable as a hunting ground.

“The hunting will take place at night.”

Furthermore, at night.

Frowning in perplexity at Taerok’s words, Nanyoung turned back to look at him. Managing his horse as if it were an extension of his own body with an upright posture, Taerok simply stared straight ahead and continued his unaccommodating explanation.

“A drive after the sun goes down is quite a delicacy, you see.”

“…What is it you intend to catch?”

Only then did Taerok turn to look at Nanyoung.

“Wild boar.”

It was something harmful and fierce.

“Fox.”

It was something clever and swift.

“Mole.”

It was something whose eyes were dim, yet roamed beneath the earth as though it were its own world, while being difficult to catch above ground.

Not a single one of them shared anything in common.

“Are there no deer?”

When Nanyoung asked in return, Taerok quietly folded his eyes in a smile.

Yet that was all.

The faces and attitudes of the party members untying their traveling baggage truly radiated a solemn resolve, just as Kangmu had said. It was a tension as if they had set out to hunt even a tiger.

Leaving them behind, Taerok and Nanyoung walked along the river. Maintaining a distance wide enough for an arm to fit between them, they walked in silence until Taerok suddenly stopped because he bent down at the waist.

“…”

Wondering what he was going to do, Taerok picked a flat, lightweight stone and swung his arm toward the river.

As if it were as light as a leaf, it drew a continuous succession of arcs, creating ripples upon the water. After skipping nearly eight times, it sank with a bubble into the water.

“Why did you call for me?”

Seeing that, Nanyoung asked.

“I hadn’t seen you for a while, so I missed you and called for you.”

“Uncle, you weren’t like that before.”

“Are you still holding onto the heart those few years ago when I tried to push you down?”

“…As you said, it happened years ago, so how could it be easily forgotten?”

“If you ask why I acted that way back then, I now know the answer.”

“Why… on earth did you do that?”

“For fear it would turn out like this. Yes, I pushed you away out of fear it would turn out like this.”

“Like this?”

Nanyoung asked back impatiently.

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘like this.’”

“If I say it in words, you won’t like it?”

At Taerok’s teasing tone, Nanyoung grasped the underlying meaning of his words.

After a brief hesitation, Nanyoung asked at the end of the silence.

“Then does that mean Uncle knew from the very beginning? That the two of us would end up doing… such things?”

He couldn’t bring himself to utter expressions that would only sound illicit no matter which words he used—whether daring to mix bodies, committing incest, engaging in illicit mutual consent, or committing incestuous relations. So Nanyoung asked somewhat cowardly.

Yet Taerok was remarkably calm. Of course, he was always like that. He was utterly unshaken. It was always himself who was out of breath and chasing, while Taerok simply watched him quietly from far away. As if the thirteen-year age gap could never be bridged, just like this river. Only he didn’t know, while Taerok knew all by himself.

“It wasn’t that I knew precisely it would turn out like this, but should I say it was unpleasant and unsettling? Whenever I looked at my nephew, I felt uncharacteristically unsettled, so it was uncomfortable having you by my side.”

The period Taerok called uncomfortable happened to be when Nanyoung longed to see his uncle and desperately wanted to rely on him, so those words became a wound.

“But now, having you with me must be uncomfortable and unsettling.”

“…Uncomfortable… it is not. As for being unsettled, that is only because we are outside now…”

“Even when we do it hidden away inside, you cry every time, asking when we will stop.”

That was both a physical relationship and a sexual one. Using a double entendre, Nanyoung had always cried for them to stop. Since he wasn’t someone who normally grabbed someone who said they disliked it in the first place, there was a reason he had kept grasping and tormenting Lee Nanyoung all this while. Taerok felt somewhat disgusted by his own childishness and scoffed.

“I am sorry for making you feel uncomfortable and unsettled all this while.”

The autumn wind blew desolately, striking Nanyoung and Taerok. Along with the sound of fallen leaves, Nanyoung shuddered at the wind’s unsettling tone. His hand was still held by Taerok.

“If so…”

Nanyoung looked at him, harboring expectation, hesitation, and anxiety.