“Hyungnim!”
I’d been scouting the palace corridor, and the instant I spotted that black head from behind I went scrambling after it.
The attendant trailing me seemed thrown by the sight of his young prince charging off headlong like a puppy that had just spotted a dropped sweet potato.
“Your Highness, you mustn’t run like that!”
The pitiful voice begging me to stop rang out behind me, but I made a point of ignoring it. The person I’d called out to was a cold-blooded creature who didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘wait.’
Keeping up with legs far longer than mine, on a stride as short as mine, is no small feat. My lungs were feeble to begin with, and now they felt like they shrivelled with every breath.
Only after I’d barely overtaken him and thrown myself into his path did his steps finally halt.
The immaculately handsome boy looked down in silence at me, wheezing and gasping for air after a run of all of ten metres.
It was a numb, chilly expression, nothing a boy his age should be capable of. The look you’d give some lowly insect you’d happened to find.
An ordinary person might have taken one glance at that face, thought Guess today’s not the day..., and edged quietly away. I didn’t budge.
If I — the owner of the flimsiest life in this merciless palace — wanted to come through in one piece, I’d better be immune to a bit of contempt in someone’s eyes.
“So this is where you were! I was just this moment thinking I wanted to see you, hyungnim. What an amazing coincidence!”
I manufactured a radiant smile, with all the resolve of a man setting out to melt a glacier, and casually angled my body to block his route so he couldn’t slip away.
Then, praying he’d bite on something, anything, I let fly a whole barrage of questions.
“Where are you headed? A walk? Or sword practice?”
“...”
“If I wouldn’t be in the way, may I come along? I’ve got nothing to do today, so I’m terribly bored.”
“...”
“If you don’t mind, hyungnim, I’d love to keep you company. And of course, if you’d rather have quiet, I can sit right beside you and do nothing but breathe!”
I’d scraped together every scrap of soul I had, and a few I didn’t, just to put on that little song and dance.
And still the boy only went on studying me with that same unchanging face. How to describe it? Like I’d been reduced to a clown performing a monologue at a boulder.
“Y-Your Highness...”
The silence stretched out so long it started to look like being blanked outright, long enough that the attendant, finally catching up, called to me and threw anxious little glances between us.
...Look, after this much effort, shouldn’t you at least give me a yes or a no? Out of respect for the attempt?
The corners of my mouth, hoisted up with such care, were twitching from the strain.
Right about when I thought my patience was going to give out entirely, the boy’s lips, shut as tight as if they’d been glued, finally parted.
“I’m on my way to the archives. Even if you came, there’d be nothing there for you to do.”
What I’d finally begged out of him, though, was plainly a clipped answer tossed out by someone who wanted nothing to do with the conversation.
That frosty manner seemed to fluster the attendant beside me far more than it did me. Worried I’d be hurt, no doubt.
Right. Thaaanks ever so much for answering.
Far from being hurt, I beamed and thought bingo. A half-hearted one-liner still counts as a form of interest, after all.
Before the conversation could snap off, I got in first with a gasp of admiration.
“Wow, I heard the palace archives hold nothing but difficult books that scholars would kill for. And you read in there? Hyungnim, you really are incredible!”
Praise will make even a bear do tricks, isn’t that how it goes? I rattled off flattery as easily as breathing while my head kept working on the next move.
This time I pulled a slightly crestfallen face and tapped the floor with the toe of my shoe, as though I might dig a tunnel and crawl into it any second.
“I suppose there wouldn’t be a single book there easy enough for me to understand, would there? I wish I’d been born clever like you, hyungnim. It’s such a pity.”
Such a shame. My heart’s all ready to get close to you, but my brain isn’t.
My eyes passionately communicated how wonderful it would be if he’d let me tag along regardless, though in truth I wasn’t especially desperate about it.
What mattered right now wasn’t whether I got to follow him to the archives. It was planting the notion that the third in line for the throne was a dim-witted, harmless, perfectly nice little nobody.
Our flawless first-in-line regarded the younger brother gazing up at him with bright, shining eyes, his own face perfectly blank.
And then, would you believe it, he graciously bestowed this piece of advice upon his dull-witted inferior.
“Knowledge isn’t something you accumulate by being born. If you don’t want to be a useless piece of rubbish in the future, draining nothing but taxes, study diligently.”
Hands down, the worst advice I’d received all year.
Is that any way to talk to a child who’s still sprouting up like a green shoot? It was so outrageous my expression nearly slipped, but I grabbed hold of my reason just in time.
“...The future?”
As they say, when a remark is too hard to counter, playing dumb will do nicely. Rather than refuting his venom head-on, I tipped my head to one side, innocent as a child who’d just heard a word too big for him.
At which the First Prince kindly furnished an explanation.
“It refers to the time still to come. If you don’t want to be driven out of the palace one day and left to starve, you’d be wise to prepare ahead.”
“But even when I’m grown up, I want to live in the palace with Mother and my hyungnims for a long, long time...”
I fidgeted with my fingers and picked out the most guileless answer a small child might give. He was quiet for a moment, then said flatly,
“Who knows. Whether you’ll even be alive and intact by the time you come of age is debatable.”
Hey. You rotten piece of work. What exactly is wrong with you that this is the only kind of thing that comes out of your mouth?
For a second I was struck dumb, unable to produce a word, and in that second I watched the person in front of me knit his brows as though his mood had just taken a turn for the worse.
...What? What is it. It’s perfectly legal for you to ignore everything I say, but I can’t take ten seconds off? Your mood dips and now what, you’re going to strangle me?
Forget building rapport, I was seriously considering putting my guard up right this second.
But in that very moment, someone snatched me around the waist out of nowhere, and the thought snapped clean off.
“Ah...!”
“Michel! So this is where you were.”
I went spinning through the air like a tossed shot put, a good two full rotations.
My body locked up stiff as stone under a hug that contained not one ounce of caution. The attendant who’d been holding his post like part of the scenery let out a strangled gasp, and I heard it in full surround sound.
But the red-haired second prince, Ignis, wasn’t the sort to care what anyone else thought.
He crushed me against him and rubbed his cheek on mine like a child who’d just been given the teddy bear he’d always wanted. The gesture itself was unmistakably affectionate. The problem was that he had zero control over his strength, so it only ever felt violent.
In a dying wheeze of a voice, I barely managed to call out to him.
“H-hyungnim...”
“You weren’t anywhere in sight, so I’ve been searching for ages. I thought I’d lost you. I was worried.”
Golden eyes with pupils slit vertically, exactly like the First Prince’s, curved at me in a mischievous arc.
The second prince giggled as though thoroughly delighted, then leaned in close to my ear and whispered in a soft, languid voice.
“Hunting you down every single time is such a bother. Maybe I should just put you in the toy box? Michel’s so very small, I’m sure you’d fit just fine. Hmm?”
Experience had taught me this was not simply a joke. He was the kind of creature who’d build a bigger box or fold my joints up to fit, whatever it took to get what he wanted.
Everything in me wanted to shake my head hard enough to send my hair flying, but I had a carefully constructed dim-witted persona to maintain, so I gave nothing away and just laughed, heh heh.
And then a low voice came from behind us.
“Ignis. What is this disgraceful display?”
The temperature in the corridor seemed to drop a good two degrees on the spot.
Anyone with ears could hear the frost in it, the warning underneath. Ignis simply batted the interrogation aside without blinking and sneered.
“Oh? Kailan was here too? Your presence is worth less than a shadow stuck to a wall. I nearly didn’t notice you at all.”
Still holding me and smiling with his eyes, showing me off like a medal he’d won, Ignis glanced at the thick volume in Kailan’s hand and let out an openly derisive snort.
“Still living such a joyless life. You landed a good bloodline on the way out, so you could skip all that studying and just loaf around, you know.”
Does he genuinely imagine that counts as advice?
Watching the two of them square off, I fretted that at this rate that thick volume would end up needing a mosaic blur over it.
Thankfully, the violence I’d braced for didn’t break out. What flew instead was a blessing with acid in it.
“You’re suggesting I sink to your level? I’ll pass. An earthworm crawling through the soil surely has more of a plan than you do, so allow me to recommend you take a trowel and go find yourself a teacher.”
...If a staring contest could be rendered visually, I’m fairly sure there’d be violent sparks snapping through the air right about now.
A moment ago I couldn’t breathe because of the second prince’s hug. Now I couldn’t breathe for an entirely different reason.
Please, let’s not fight, let’s keep this nice and pleasant. How is every single day of my life thin ice?
If you two fight, I die. Getting my back split open in a clash between whales is one death I’d really rather decline.
Knowing the catastrophe that lay ahead, I had nowhere to pour out my grievances, so I swallowed the resentment and let it churn inside me.
1. Riff on the Korean saying “praise makes even a whale dance” — the equivalent of “flattery gets you everywhere.”
2. In Korean media, graphic or gory footage is covered with a pixelated mosaic; Michel means the book is about to become a murder weapon.
3. A Korean proverb: when whales fight, it’s the shrimp’s back that bursts, meaning the weak suffer when the powerful clash.
