Struggle Chapter 99

The selfish Lee Taerok had, in the end, violated Nanyoung even in the deepest reaches within him. Between their tightly pressed stomachs, from Nanyoung’s sex, a burst of liquid suddenly gushed forth. It trickled out in spurts, running down his flank and soaking even the bedding.

Nanyoung, who had momentarily lost his senses and then come back, blinked his eyes before slowly contorting his face. And then, with a “Heu-eong,” he burst into tears.

“Oh dear. I’ve made him cry again.”

Taerok laughed as if it were nothing. Planting his arm to raise his upper body, Taerok wiped his own stomach clean. And Nanyoung’s as well. It was not urine but something utterly like plain water that had gushed out.

“Does it hurt?”

Taerok asked. Even in his dazed state, Nanyoung shook his head. But in a fading voice, he also confessed.

“I feel like I’ve died….”

“Well, that would be troublesome.”

Straightening his upper body completely, Taerok grasped Nanyoung’s pelvis and hoisted him up with a bump. Nanyoung let out a startled “Hic.”

“Because your uncle still has quite a lot more to do with Nanyoung.”

No, a great deal more, in fact.

Taerok drove his length into the deep innermost part of Nanyoung and moved slowly. Even just that made Nanyoung feel as if flashes of light burst before his eyes.

“Ah, aah, ah….”

The strength naturally drained from his lips. Saliva trickled from the corner of his mouth. Even as Taerok stroked that face of Nanyoung’s, in contrast to his upper body, he stirred the lower region quite roughly. Before he knew it, Nanyoung’s hands had slipped from Taerok’s nape. They slid down his arms until only his wrists were barely grasped, and he was rocked until at last his hands reached his own stomach.

“U-Uncle.”

Unable even to properly open his eyes, Nanyoung tearfully called out to Taerok.

“It feels like it’s going to p-pierce through my stomach and come out, h-hic….”

Taerok laughed at that innocently explicit expression. Yet his laughter was meant to suppress his excitement. He swept back Nanyoung’s forehead and pressed a deep kiss there.

“From now on, your uncle isn’t going to do a single bad thing to Nanyoung…. Surely it wouldn’t do that….”

The sounds from below changed from squelching wet noises to the violent sounds of thud, thud.

“I even gave up the throne to grow old with Nanyoung doing this….”

Nanyoung cried, “Heu-eong.” To Taerok, the sound of Nanyoung’s crying was achingly dear. Especially so if it was a sound caused by him.

With Nanyoung having broken his waters beforehand, and the fluid he had gushed out as if he had wet himself, the bedding beneath their lower bodies was soaking wet.

“Who would have known Nanyoung had such a knack for bedding?”

“…A knack?”

His mind gone soft and mushy, Nanyoung asked back like a simpleton. Neither of them was capable of rational judgment.

“Am I doing well…?”

Perhaps because there was a limit—the fact that he was leaving tomorrow—the two were more desperate than usual, and more devoid of morality and common sense than usual. From the start, once the two had become a pair who bedded each other, these were things no longer needed.

Stroking Nanyoung’s chest, Taerok pulled hard on his nipple and answered. His tone was amiable.

“You are doing well… but don’t go getting it confirmed by anyone else.”

“Heu-eung, eung… ah…!”

“Don’t go casting your gaze on some innocent fool over there.”

In a land where even women went about without wearing the long veil, paying no mind to others’ stares, Taerok demanded such a thing of Nanyoung. Lee Taerok’s twisted affection coiled around Nanyoung, strand by strand, like a tether. Even if it was the sort of talk that would make anyone gasp in horror, perhaps because Nanyoung had grown up from a very young age by Lee Taerok’s side, absorbing everything about him, he nodded without even realizing he was being bound.

“There is only you, Uncle… only you….”

Like someone burning with fever, Nanyoung murmured.

“To me, I can only see you, Uncle….”

It was not just empty words. To Nanyoung, Lee Taerok had always been the standard. The person he wanted to become, the person who was his ideal, the person he wanted to be worthy of, and the man who made his heart tremble and his body stir.

Taerok looked down at Nanyoung, who fit his body perfectly, as if he had been made for him. Even in the darkness, he was as vivid as if he were in the light. Nanyoung’s nipple had swollen just as Taerok had touched it. Because he had only specially toyed with one side, the two differed in shape and size, and even that was likely exceedingly obscene. Yet all of it would be perfect to Taerok.

“I told you I would give myself to you when you return.”

With excitement striking even his mind directly, Taerok repeated, breathing heavily.

“Then return, and I, too, will answer your words.”

So you must come back.

Taerok whispered as if Nanyoung were about to depart on a journey from which he might never return. Hoping that his words would lodge like a spell in Nanyoung’s mind, on Nanyoung’s skin, and even within Nanyoung.

∞ ∞ ∞

Rarely, Nanyoung woke first. Rising tousled, Nanyoung moved stealthily so as not to wake Taerok. His thighs, spread wide apart, were stinging, and his pelvis ached, so when he put on his trousers, it was rather distressing.

He had not even felt Taerok’s release the night before, and had only kept hearing the words telling him to return before he blacked out and fell asleep, so he did not know what his uncle had done in the meantime. It was embarrassing. Yet even so, his body had been wiped clean, for he was immaculate, with not a trace of anything foreign left on him.

Nanyoung let out a languid sigh and fastened his coat strings. Then, gazing out the window, which had just begun to turn pale, he knelt and sat down beside Taerok’s face.

“…”

He waved his hand this way and that over the face of the soundly sleeping Taerok. Still, there was no sign of him waking. Perhaps he had been losing sleep lately, for there was a slight shadow under his eyes, and even that seemed charged with sensuality. Nanyoung moved his waving hand to Taerok’s nose bridge. He touched it lightly, barely grazing it, then slowly stroked downward. Only when he reached the tip, which unlike his own roundly finished nose looked as if it had been firmly pinched and pressed, did he completely withdraw his hand.

“…He is handsome.”

After murmuring this small admiration, Nanyoung was startled back to his senses by the sound of his own voice. Looking abruptly sheepish, he rose. And shaking off his regret, he took a step away.

At every step, he glanced back, and even right up until the moment he closed the door, he gazed at Taerok through the gap.

“I will go and return.”

Whispering very softly, Nanyoung finally closed the door. The “click” of the latch sounded like a bamboo water pipe, filled with water, tipping over.

Taerok opened his eyes half a shichen after Nanyoung had left. The door had been closed for a long while, yet that sound was as clear as if he had just heard it now.

It was a more peaceful morning than any he had ever known in his life. The day had fully brightened, and outside, the sounds of birds chirping could be heard. Without touching or even looking beside him, Taerok knew that Nanyoung was gone.

You have gone.

The day of your return is far and distant.

I even waited for you to grow up, so why does this waiting, which should last only until the next season, feel so boundless?

After fumbling, Taerok found a single strand of Nanyoung’s hair that he had left behind. He covered his face with the hand that clutched it tightly. And then he felt it in earnest. That it was a good thing he had not become king. He realized that the way to possess you was to abandon himself.

∞ ∞ ∞

It was said that the envoy had been organized to be modest yet without lack. The scale was reduced, but instead, the ship was fully laden with goods—fans, along with ginseng and wild ginseng. Those who accompanied Nanyoung were Sim Eung, Kangmu, and a few attendants chosen by Kangmu. Among those selected from the officials, the one who unexpectedly stood out was Sim Suhwan. According to what people said, Sim Suhwan had become markedly haggard, and as he heard stories of the failed treason and how all those involved were put to death, he had been unable to pull himself together with each passing day. The Commander-in-Chief had likely put him on the ship to get some air, both to quell the ominous rumors about his third son and to help him regain his senses.

“Young master….”

Whenever he saw Nanyoung, Sim Suhwan would call to him as if on the verge of tears. But Nanyoung merely looked at Suhwan expressionlessly and said nothing.

“I do not understand how that fellow came to accompany us.”

Sim Eung, attending beside Nanyoung, added a word. Nanyoung was chewing bitter herbs to quell the nausea brought on by seasickness. Even tying his hair into a topknot induced headaches, so he had bound it into a single tail, pulled loosely over his shoulder in front.

“It’s rather fortunate that he came.”

Nanyoung murmured without energy.

He meant it. Better that he was here by his side, groaning like that, than left behind in the home country, babbling nonsense in a weakened mental state.

Having already steeled his heart, Nanyoung was no longer afraid, no matter how Suhwan might threaten him in the future. He had absolutely no intention of trumpeting his feelings so that all the world would know, but at the very least, if Suhwan let his tongue wag loosely upon their return, Nanyoung was prepared to threaten to ensure that the world would regard him as mentally incompetent for the rest of his life. Moreover, being a Grand Prince himself, he even had the power to do that much.