Struggle Chapter 94

“If you rest a while, might your thoughts not change? Go and see, and return. But you must return. The mourning period is not yet finished anyway.”

Because of his guilt, it felt as if a great pearl were lodged in Nanyoung’s throat. With a choked voice, Nanyoung barely managed to answer.

How many people did he have to betray before he could exist as Grand Prince Heonui? It was so terribly hard to keep to his duty. And having kept it, this thing called Grand Prince Heonui felt so utterly empty, as if it were neither his own possession nor his own form. Feeling as if he would be crushed by that weight, Nanyoung, upon stepping out of the palace gates, wanted nothing more than to be swallowed up by the sunset before his eyes.

∞ ∞ ∞

It was Sim Eung who greeted Nanyoung upon his return to the palace.

Nanyoung handed the reins to the stablehand and gave his hat to Sim Eung. In a state of extreme exhaustion, he barely managed to enter the inner quarters before he could part his lips. In the meantime, his lips had stuck together as if they had become one, making it difficult to speak.

“His Majesty has said he will send me.”

“Young master…!”

Sim Eung let out an exclamation mixed with a sigh of relief.

But Nanyoung, with his back to Sim Eung, merely untied his coat strings.

He went behind the folding screen and draped his clothes over it one by one. Sim Eung handed him the comfortable garments he had prepared in advance. The weather had suddenly turned quite cold, so the fabric used was thick.

Though the marks Lee Taerok had left on Nanyoung’s body had all but faded by now, he still sometimes traced his own body with groping fingers. Today, too, as if suddenly remembering, he pressed firmly on his pelvis and his side, then let go.

Nanyoung did not realize it, but the time it took to change clothes was quite long. By the expression on Sim Eung’s face when he emerged, fastening his coat strings, Nanyoung could tell that he had been deeply lost in thought.

Sim Eung’s eyes were deeply bitter. At that gaze, which seemed to ask if he was all right, Nanyoung answered with a smile.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Young master… I said that if you wished to leave, I would devote my whole body and heart to help you. Even if you say you wish to remain, Young master, that it is better to stay as things are, this humble servant would follow your will. Even if my body were to be ground to dust and shattered, in order to protect your secret….”

“That is why I am leaving.”

Nanyoung lightly pressed his forehead and tapped his brow bone—tap, tap. Pressing his forehead was a habit the late king had evenly passed on to his older brother and Nanyoung, while tapping his brow bone when lost in thought was a habit of Lee Taerok’s.

“No one needs to sacrifice themselves for me, and I hate becoming an excuse for someone else. More than anything, I, too….”

Pausing for a moment, Nanyoung closed his eyes and then opened them.

Looking back, his life had been solely about Lee Taerok. From the very first birthday grab, when he had seized his uncle’s finger instead of a thread, it had been Lee Taerok.

“I want to try living as myself, too.”

He deliberately refrained from asking himself whether fleeing from his immoral feelings for his uncle was truly a way to live as Lee Nanyoung. Because he knew from the start that his words and excuses were absurd. In the first place, his heart itself had been wrong.

But even if he suspected it might be impossible, he could not simply refuse to try. Even when his uncle had pushed him away, he had—as his uncle said—lusted, yearned, and endlessly longed, so this time, too, it might prove useless.

But then again, perhaps he might be forgotten. Since he had crossed the line. Since he had, after all, possessed Lee Taerok. Even if it had been only in body.

“Thank you… for not considering me defiled, Sim Eung.”

“To me, the Young master, Grand Prince, has never once been defiled.”

Even when you had a fever and vomited onto my hands, I thought the same. Sim Eung attempted a joke with a faint smile.

“Thank you as well… for not despising me as a vile wretch, and for being on my side….”

At Nanyoung’s trembling voice, Sim Eung wished to embrace him, but due to the difference in their stations, could only smile sorrowfully.

Facing the setting sun, his forehead resting in his hand, his lips pressed tightly together, Nanyoung did not cry in the end. But his insides must have been burning black. Not from self-loathing, but because even in this situation, the years he would be unable to see Lee Taerok stretched out distantly, and the time he must endure was bleak.

Because even in that sunset before him, Lee Taerok came to mind.

Resentful, willful, affectionate, and my everything—my uncle. I hope you remain as the man you long to be. Forever.

∞ ∞ ∞

Word of the envoy spread. As it was a customary, no, a matter-of-course event, preparations were made with due gravity, but it was regarded as nothing out of the ordinary.

Taerok, even amidst his great busyness, came to see Nanyoung whenever he found a spare moment. Each time Nanyoung saw him, he said nothing beyond everyday conversation, and the two spent their time in brief intervals, merely sharing a meal as if nothing had ever happened. In the meantime, Nanyoung had been instructing Sim Eung to prepare for the envoy’s dispatch quietly, without fanfare.

“So it is you who is going with the envoy.”

However, there is no secret that can be kept forever.

“Yes.”

At Nanyoung’s composed reply, Taerok twitched an eyebrow and then laughed hollowly. As if he had come straight from leaving the palace, Taerok was wearing his official robes. Plopping down onto the wooden floor, Taerok murmured.

“I would have liked to hear it from your lips, at least.”

“It was a matter for me to attend to. Is it not customary?”

“Indeed. Customary… Yes, it is. For I, too, went on such a mission.”

Taerok looked somewhat fatigued. Though he was, as he had wished, intervening in the court more deeply than ever before, he did not look happy at all. Nanyoung, who had thought his uncle’s interest in him would wane as he became absorbed in his work, his eyes sparkling, losing track of time, was a little bewildered by this unexpected reaction.

Just then, Taerok rubbed his face. At that haggard sight, Nanyoung unconsciously reached out his hand.

“…”

At the touch of the rounded fingertips against his cheek, Taerok turned his head.

Their gazes intertwined. Nanyoung did not make an excuse, saying something was on his face.

“You look tired.”

“Ah… well….”

“Is the work not what you wished for?”

“Hm….”

“Would you only have been happy, Uncle, if it had been the throne after all?”

Taerok frowned at Nanyoung’s question. He stared intently, as if trying to discern Nanyoung’s ulterior motive, but nothing could be read. Nanyoung was merely as calm as stagnant water.

“In the past, I would have answered, ‘I suppose so,’ but now, I do not know.”

Perhaps because the sunset was just fading, and because he was facing Nanyoung in such quiet stillness, Taerok uttered a truth he himself had not known.

“These days, it seems I share at least one meal with you every day, and though I see you more often than ever before, you feel farther away than ever, so I wonder if it is because I am crossing over the walls of the Ninefold Palace….”

Finding his own sentimental words ridiculous, Taerok rested his arm on his thigh and leaned forward.

“Whether it is that my nature is composed of endless thirst, and my greed knows no bounds….”

“…”

“These days, all I feel is simply that I wish to stay by your side longer.”

Why… why of all times….

Nanyoung turned his head away. He bit his lip hard. This was not the answer he had wanted.

No, did I truly not want it?

The timing was poor. No, our relationship was bad. For there would never be a good time between us.

“…If you stay with me like that for long, you will grow greedy for something else.”

Nanyoung deliberately answered sullenly.

Taerok laughed lowly. After murmuring, “Is that so?”, he soon shook his head.

“No, it will not be that.”

“…”

“If there is something I have come to realize, having lived long enough to see the mountains and rivers change one more time than my nephew, it is that what one truly desires never quite comes into one’s hands.”

“…”

“All the more if it is a person, and a person’s heart—it seems the act of possessing something wholly never truly occurs.”

Taerok stroked the cheek of Nanyoung, who absolutely could not meet his eyes.

“Perhaps it is because this is the first time I have ever desired a person’s heart….”

At those tender words, Nanyoung’s face contorted. Having been so cruel all this while, now he suddenly acts gentle, like someone who has obtained everything he ever wanted.

“I know that after saying that, you will end up wanting something else. You cannot endure boredom, Uncle.”

“Nanyoung knows his uncle quite well…. But it seems there is one thing he did not know. For your uncle, when he is with you, nothing else holds any interest.”

“…”

“This uncle of yours finds his nephew the most fascinating thing of all….”