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Yoo Joonghyuk meets the man destined to ruin him at ten years old.
“I will make your life miserable, Yoo Joonghyuk.” His fiancé says, cream on his cheek. “And in turn, you will find your salvation.”
The boy he is engaged to is ridiculous and delusional. A country with him as queen will surely fall.
How interesting.
“I look forward to it.” Yoo Joonghyuk pours his bride another cup of tea.
Yoo Joonghyuk should have believed him. Trust people when they show you what they are from the start.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Yoo Joonghyuk yanks the pipe out of his fiancé’s mouth. “Are you looking for a scandal?”
Kim Dokja looks up at him impassively. Under the fan of his lashes, you wouldn’t suspect such open malice.
“All the better.” Kim Dokja smiles, irritatingly placid. “Maybe then, you’d finally annul our engagement.”
He should have. From the moment a boy with dumpling-like cheeks sat across from him and claimed to be his undoing.
Yoo Joonghyuk crushes the pipe underfoot.
It’s far too late now.
“My father gave me that.” Kim Dokja laments, quite possibly the closest to a genuine, human emotion Yoo Joonghyuk has wrenched from his fiancé since they were children.
“It had a fresh bundle of lavender, too.” Kim Dokja leans against the wall. “Being the crown prince doesn’t permit you to act so brashly with others’ belongings, Joonghyuk-ah. Remember that not everyone is as fortunate as you.”
“You are vexing.” Whatever entertainment he may have derived from Kim Dokja and his antics had quickly and severely lost its appeal. “Do you ever stop and consider the nonsense that falls out of your mouth?”
“With Your Grace being the epitome of excellence and perfection that he is,” Kim Dokja prattles on, proving his point. “It is only natural for others to wish upon your failure and demise every now and then.”
Kim Dokja pushes off the wall, bowing lowly, feet crossed, the tails of his white coat fluttering in the breeze.
“And it is only in my humble nature to cause you as much strife as one can, during our short, fleeting time together.”
Yoo Joonghyuk feels his pulse spike, a vein in his brow twitching. Another thing that irritates him, about his fickle, frivolous fiancé.
“Is that why you hadn’t attended the reception?”
Kim Dokja actually appears puzzled, bow unbroken but forehead furrowed. For someone brilliant enough to synthesize a cure to a mutated, novel pathogen, his bride can be fairly obtuse.
“The reception.” He snaps back up, straight as an arrow, looking bewilderedly at the clock tower. “Yoo Joonghyuk, you aren’t at your reception!”
Yoo Joonghyuk breathes in deeply. May all the stars in the skies help him.
“So I am not.”
“You must return.” Kim Dokja grabs at his wrist, dragging him along. “Apologize immediately and sincerely. You have the nerve to nag at me for causing a scandal, do you realize the political disgrace you could have caused for snubbing your potential allies and mentors on the first day—”
“You haven’t welcomed me.”
Kim Dokja stops walking.
“What?”
“You haven’t welcomed me.” Yoo Joonghyuk looks out into the gardens. “You weren’t there when I arrived on school grounds, you didn’t meet with me for breakfast, or lunch, and you hadn’t intended to see me at my own reception, did you, Kim Dokja?”
“I— That’s—” Kim Dokja stutters, flounders, guilt high on his cheeks like a pass of rouge and it is moments like these that make it very difficult to forgive him, Kim Dokja and all the ways he betrays Yoo Joonghyuk.
“Do you realize what that would look like?” Yoo Joonghyuk presses, merciless. “The crown prince, being ignored by his fiancé? That the future queen of Kaizenix couldn’t even spare him the time of day?”
It is improper, to encroach on one’s betrothed in such a manner, so publicly and with such force, but the students are in their dormitories and the professors are in their classes and it’s been a year, of his fiancé acting like a trapped rat, as if the duty of having him was such a terrible burden to escape from.
But if his bride is so keen on acting like a cornered animal, then who is Yoo Joonghyuk to deny him, cage the man in against an alcove, hidden away from the main path.
“I would have seen you after.” Kim Dokja has the gall to look away from him. The shadows of the cypress leaves gift him some modicum of dignity, the line of his mouth tight and displeased. Contrary to Kim Dokja’s claims, the universe conspires against Yoo Joonghyuk at every turn.
“It wouldn’t do for people to attach themselves to someone like myself anyway.” If he had the power to peel the shade off Kim Dokja’s face, he would have, scratched and shredded at it until it fell away at their feet. “Seeing as how, in a few years’ time, someone else will take the place by your side.”
There it is again. His strange fiancé’s assertion of fate. Useful for epidemics and gathering evidence of graft against corrupt government officials, but not much for anything else.
“Hyung,” Yoo Joonghyuk says, unimmune to underhanded tactics if it gains him an advantage, something he has learned from his soon-to-be crown princess. “Haven’t I worked hard to stand where you are now?”
Deceitful, dastardly, to put his forehead lightly on his fiancé’s shoulder, nuzzling carefully, like an unleashed dog. He feels the man breathe, sharp and quick. Like this, his bride smells like lavender.
“Won’t you greet your husband properly?”
Kim Dokja clutches at his hair.
“The novel never said anything about this.” Kim Dokja says, aggrieved, but his touch is gentle, a light scraping that Yoo Joonghyuk feels to his bones. They could stay, under the cypresses, stinking of lavender and sun. Yoo Joonghyuk could be happy here.
“You will meet her today.” Kim Dokja continues, because he can never allow Yoo Joonghyuk his happiness. “You meet her on your first day at Stella Amnis, at your reception.”
Kim Dokja plays with the hairs on his nape. If Kim Dokja loved him, he’d take off his gloves. If Kim Dokja had any regard for him, he’d stop.
“She will be beautiful.” Kim Dokja marvels dreamily. “She will choose to be a physician and you will love her. Your children will be strong and they will love you. Your kingdom will prosper and you will be lauded by your descendants as wise, kind, and great.”
His bride, his fickle, cruel prophet of a bride, fits his hands over Yoo Joonghyuk’s cheeks, the leather of his white gloves thick and impenetrable, lifting Yoo Joonghyuk’s face to look at him.
“Doesn’t that sound like a wonderful life, Yoo Joonghyuk?” All the stars in the skies are in his fiancé’s eyes, and they know no mercy. “Wouldn’t you want that?”
He shouldn’t have hidden them away. He should have done this in the gardens, where anyone could see, this is the true face of a demon.
“But until then,” Kim Dokja mercifully relinquishes him. “You will have to make do with just me.”
I will chain you to a dungeon wall, Yoo Joonghyuk thinks blearily.
“You seem confident you will be rid of me.” Yoo Joonghyuk says instead.
“The heroine will be your salvation.” Kim Dokja rummages through his pockets absentmindedly, carelessly. “I am merely warming her place in her stead.”
Kim Dokja rummages and fumbles and roots around, six years of continuous, treasonous threats to undermine the most politically strategic marriage alliance in Kaizenix’s recent history lost to him. The man should have had his head on a pike. Yoo Joonghyuk could put it by his windowsill.
He pulls out a pocket watch.
“I haven’t completely forgotten what today is.” Kim Dokja clips the watch delicately into Yoo Joonghyuk’s front pocket. The watch weighs heavily, a ticking that miraculously matches the thrum of his heart.
“But until she does come to rescue you,” If Yoo Joonghyuk didn’t know any better, he’d describe his fiancé’s expression as shy, the lapels of Yoo Joonghyuk’s uniform caught between his fingers. “Am I allowed to be a little selfish for a while longer?”
It is intricate. Hand-carved, silvery in a way that reminds Yoo Joonghyuk of stars. Yoo Joonghyuk unlocks the clasp and watches it chip away at the last few minutes of his reception.
“Selfishness is an inherent trait of villainy.” Yoo Joonghyuk agrees.