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Prince Jihoon was a crown carved from crystal. Beautiful to look at, fragile beneath the weight it carried. The kingdom adored him. He was their golden prince, the eldest son of a respected king, the image of a perfect elegant child. Wherever he walked, petals were thrown, and eyes were lowered in admiration.
But Jihoon never smiled.
He was a boy raised in hallways that echoed with commands instead of laughter. He learned etiquette before he learned friendship. By seventeen, he could recite political scripts from memory, but he didn’t know what it felt like to be chosen by someone who didn’t bow first.
————————————
“Your Highness, we have found a new bodyguard for you.”
The knight spoke clearly, his voice echoing off the walls of the quiet throne room. All the knights stood straight, their heads bowed in front of the young prince.
Jihoon sat on his throne, leaning his cheek against his hand. He looked tired and bored, like this was just another small thing in his day. His eyes were half-closed as he gave a short reply.
“Bring him in.”
The doors opened slowly with a creak, and footsteps echoed as the knights led someone inside. Jihoon glanced up lazily. The man walking between the knights was tall and strong. His arms looked like they had been trained for years, and his chest was broad. Scars covered part of his face, and he walked like someone who had seen many fights.
Jihoon stared for a moment longer than he meant to. The man looked perfect for the job. But would he really stay by Jihoon’s side forever? Jihoon blinked and shook his head, trying to push the thought away.
The man stopped in front of him and gave a small bow. Just enough to show respect, but not much more.
Jihoon narrowed his eyes.
“You don’t bow deep enough,” he said coldly.
His voice was quiet but sharp, like a knife hidden under silk. There was no anger in it, no heat. Just plain, dry coldness.
The bodyguard looked up with the hint of a smile. It wasn’t friendly. It was the kind of smile someone makes when they know something you don’t.
“You don’t look like someone who likes being obeyed,” he said, calm as stone.
Jihoon’s jaw tightened. He let out a quiet, annoyed sound “tch” and looked away. His fingers drummed against the arm of the throne. No one had spoken to him like that before. Ever.
“What’s your name?” he asked after a pause, still not looking at him.
“Taesung.”
A short answer. No title. No ‘your highness.’ Just his name.
Jihoon didn’t like him.
But he also didn’t tell the guards to take him away.
————————————
That night, Jihoon sat on his balcony, staring at the stars. The moonlight touched the tips of the trees far below the castle. The wind was gentle, brushing through his hair. He could hear the footsteps of his new bodyguard pacing just outside his room. Always watching. Always nearby.
He hated it.
He hated being watched. He hated being guarded. And yet… for some reason, he didn’t tell him to leave.
“What do you want from me?” Jihoon whispered to himself.
————————————
The palace was quieter than usual.
Maybe Jihoon was just noticing it more. Or maybe the presence of his new bodyguard made the air feel heavier—like the quiet itself was watching him.
He woke up just past dawn, the gray light of morning slanting through the sheer curtains. His room was spacious and beautiful—painted with soft colors, trimmed in gold—but it always felt too large, too empty. Even now, as he lay under the velvet sheets, it felt more like a stage than a place to rest.
Jihoon didn’t move for a while. He just stared up at the canopy overhead, listening to the quiet chirps of the birds. The breeze of the trees.
There it was again.
That soft, near-silent shifting. The feeling of eyes on him.
He sat up suddenly, pushing the covers off.
Taesung was there—standing just inside the door, in the shadows.
Jihoon’s voice was flat. “Have you been standing there all night?”
Taesung didn’t blink. “It’s my job.”
Jihoon frowned. “That’s not an answer.”
“I don’t need sleep like you do.”
Jihoon rolled his eyes. “How dramatic. Are you a knight or a ghost?”
Taesung said nothing.
Jihoon threw his legs over the side of the bed, letting his bare feet touch the cold marble floor. “If I find you at the foot of my bed again,” he muttered, “I’m telling the captain you’re a creep.”
Taesung didn’t flinch, didn’t defend himself. He just stepped aside as Jihoon crossed the room, like a silent shadow moving away from the light.
Jihoon paused at the door.
“…I was joking,” he said, quieter now.
A heartbeat of silence.
“Understood,” Taesung said.
Jihoon left the room, but something about that single-word reply followed him.
⸻—————————
Breakfast was served in the smaller dining hall, a quiet place filled with warm sunlight and the scent of sweet tea and toasted bread. Jihoon sat at the head of the table, alone except for two silent servers standing near the walls.
Taesung stood near the far door, arms crossed behind his back. His eyes were always watching, but never directly. Jihoon found that strange—how he could be so aware of everything around him while barely moving.
It made him uncomfortable.
“You can eat, you know,” Jihoon said, spreading jam across a piece of bread. “There’s no rule saying you have to starve in front of me.”
Taesung said nothing.
Jihoon didn’t look up. “Or maybe you’re afraid I’ll poison the food.”
“I trust your taste more than the court chef’s.”
Jihoon’s eyes flicked up. A smirk twitched on his lips before he could stop it. “You’ve got a smart mouth.”
“I’ve been told.”
Another silence.
Jihoon sipped his tea. “You’re different from the others.”
“How so?”
“You talk like… I don’t scare you.”
“You don’t.”
That answer came too quickly. Too easily.
Jihoon sat back in his chair, setting his cup down. “Everyone in this palace bows too deep. They stutter. They try to please me. And then there’s you. You act like I’m no one.”
Taesung’s eyes finally met his. Calm. Steady.
“You’re someone,” he said. “But you’re not a god.”
Jihoon stared at him.
For a moment, he didn’t know whether to feel insulted or intrigued.
Maybe both.
He tore a piece of bread in half and popped it into his mouth without replying.
⸻—————————
That afternoon, Jihoon visited the royal library—not to read, but to be alone. He often went there to escape the buzzing voices of nobles and advisors who all spoke in circles, always trying to win his favor without ever saying what they truly meant.
The moment he entered the grand, high-ceilinged room, he heard Taesung’s boots behind him.
He turned. “I don’t need a guard to read books.”
“You don’t read.”
Jihoon blinked. “Excuse me?”
Taesung said nothing.
“You’ve been following me for two days and already think you know me?”
“I’ve been following your public record for five years.”
Jihoon narrowed his eyes. “You looked me up?”
Taesung gave the smallest shrug. “Before I protect someone, I make it my business to know them.”
That sat weirdly in Jihoon’s chest—something between pride and invasion.
He turned away and moved down one of the aisles, trailing his fingers along the old book spines. “And what exactly do you know about me, then? Go ahead. Say it.”
Taesung’s voice came from behind him. “You’re smart, but you act stupid so people underestimate you. You trust no one. You hate being touched. You sleep lightly. You bite your nails when you think too hard. You pretend to be cold but you’re always watching people—studying them, like you’re waiting for something to go wrong.”
Jihoon froze.
His hand paused on a book.
He didn’t turn around.
Instead, he said, softly, “You don’t talk much. But when you do, you’re sharp.”
Taesung didn’t answer.
Jihoon pulled a book off the shelf, not even checking the title. His hands were a little too tight on the cover.
“You forgot one thing,” he said, almost to himself.
“What?”
“I’m dangerous too.”
Taesung’s answer came without hesitation.
“I know.”
⸻
Evening came quickly in the palace. The sky turned a soft blue-gray, clouds drifting over the mountaintops in the distance. Jihoon stood on his private balcony, looking out over the city. Lights twinkled below like fireflies. He could hear the hum of life: carriages, laughter, a lute being played somewhere far away.
Taesung stood just inside the open balcony doors, hands behind his back.
“Why don’t you ever smile?” Jihoon asked suddenly.
Taesung blinked. “What?”
“You heard me. I’ve never seen you smile. Not really.”
Taesung looked down at the floor for a moment. “I smile when I have something worth smiling about.”
Jihoon leaned on the balcony rail. “And this job isn’t it?”
“No.”
The answer should’ve stung.
But instead, Jihoon smiled.
“I guess we’re both stuck, then.”
Taesung said nothing.
The silence stretched between them.
Finally, Jihoon turned around. “Why did you take this job?”
“Because someone I trusted told me to.”
“And you trust easily?”
“No. Only once.”
Jihoon’s eyes searched his face. “What happened?”
A long pause.
“They died.”
Jihoon’s chest tightened, though he didn’t understand why. “I’m sorry.”
Taesung gave a small nod.
Jihoon looked away. The breeze tugged at his robe, whispering across his skin.
“I don’t sleep well,” he admitted.
Taesung’s voice was softer now. “I know.”
“You stand at the door all night,” Jihoon said. “You probably hear everything.”
“I hear what you try to hide.”
That made Jihoon go still.
He looked at him, really looked this time.
Taesung was unreadable—calm, quiet, unflinching. But there was something behind the eyes. Not just scars. Not just darkness.
Something like pain.
Jihoon looked away again. “I don’t want to be protected.”
“I know,” Taesung said.
“I want to be understood.”
The words were barely a whisper.
Taesung didn’t speak for a long time.
Then:
“Understanding is more dangerous than protection.”
Jihoon didn’t answer.
He just stood there, staring at the sky, heart beating too loud in his chest.
And behind him, the man in the shadows stood watch—silent, steady, and far too close for comfort.
————————————
The snow returned on the seventy-third day of winter.
Jihoon stood at the arched window of his chambers, watching white flakes drift through the gray morning. The garden below had vanished under a thick sheet of white, softening the sharp edges of the palace walls, of duty, of memory.
Taesung was silent behind him, as he always was. The man didn’t speak unless spoken to, didn’t move unless commanded. Jihoon had stopped trying to break the quiet with idle words. There was something sacred about it now. Something that felt… safe.
“How long do you think it will last?” Jihoon murmured, his breath fogging the glass.
Taesung didn’t answer right away.
“Another week, maybe two,” he said finally.
Jihoon nodded. He didn’t turn around. His voice was softer when he spoke again. “My father never let me play in the snow. Said I’d get sick.”
Taesung’s reflection shifted faintly in the glass, a tilt of the head. “Were you often sick?”
“No.” Jihoon’s lips curled, but there was no warmth in it. “But he needed an excuse to keep me inside. Easier to manage me that way.”
A long pause.
“You didn’t get along.” Taesung muttered quietly.
“I don’t think we ever really met,” Jihoon said. “Not in a real way. I saw him every day, but… it was like talking to a portrait. Always painted just right. Always distant.”
He didn’t know why he was saying it. Maybe it was the snow. Maybe it was the silence that had stopped feeling so empty.
“I used to sit outside his office for hours,” Jihoon continued. “Waiting for him to call me in. He never did. My tutor would find me asleep against the door.”
He turned from the window.
Taesung was watching him. Not pitying. Just… listening. Seeing him.
The fire crackled behind them. Jihoon walked to the hearth, sat down on the thick cushions near the flames. He didn’t gesture Taesung over, but the bodyguard followed after a moment, settling a respectful distance away.
“I’m not telling you this because I want sympathy,” Jihoon said.
“I know.”
“I don’t trust people.”
“I know that too.”
Jihoon looked over at him, eyes narrowed. “Then why do you stay?”
Taesung’s answer came slowly.
“Because you don’t ask me to.”
That made Jihoon pause.
“You’ve had kings, nobles, guards all your life,” Taesung said. “But none of them ever asked you how you felt. Or if you wanted any of this.”
“You’re no different,” Jihoon snapped. “You’re here because it’s your job.”
“I was,” Taesung said. “Now I’m here because I don’t want you to be alone.”
Jihoon’s breath caught in his throat.
The fire popped loudly. Jihoon turned his eyes to it. His voice, when it came, was low.
“My mother died when I was six.”
Taesung didn’t move.
“She loved me, I think. I have memories of her singing, brushing my hair. Hiding sweets in her sleeves. But after she was gone, everything was… still.”
Jihoon didn’t realize he was shaking until Taesung shifted beside him, close enough that the warmth of his body began to blur with the fire.
“They told me to stop crying after a week,” Jihoon said bitterly. “That I was a prince. That my grief was unbecoming. That I needed to act like my father.”
Taesung was silent, but Jihoon could feel the tension in him. The way his fists were clenched against his knees.
“I did,” Jihoon said. “Eventually. I stopped crying. Stopped asking to be held. Stopped talking.”
He stared at the fire, remembering nights spent curled in a giant bed with no warmth but the one he’d made himself. The weight of embroidered blankets couldn’t replace arms around him. Silence couldn’t replace a lullaby.
“I thought I’d forgotten it all,” he whispered.
“Until now?” Taesung asked.
Jihoon nodded.
There was a pause. Then he asked, without looking at him, “Do you think I’m broken?”
“No.”
“Then what do you see when you look at me?”
Taesung’s answer was immediate.
“I see someone who survived being unloved and still manages to be kind.”
That undid something inside Jihoon. He pressed his hand over his mouth, trying to hold the feeling down. His eyes burned.
Taesung didn’t move closer, didn’t touch him. He just stayed, solid and quiet and near.
And for Jihoon, that was more intimate than a thousand words.
⸻
They didn’t speak of it the next day.
But the closeness remained. Jihoon felt it in every moment Taesung held the door open for him, in every meal they shared in silence, in every small glance that lingered too long.
It became part of the rhythm of their days. Taesung no longer followed precisely behind—he walked beside him now, shoulder just a fraction behind, always within reach. Jihoon stopped correcting him.
He liked it.
⸻
The first time Jihoon reached for him, it wasn’t planned.
He was sitting in the empty garden cloister, wrapped in his cloak, eyes scanning a letter from the Minister of Defense that made no sense to him. The words bled together, unimportant.
Taesung approached silently and crouched to his level.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, voice softer than usual.
Jihoon didn’t answer. He handed the letter over without looking. Taesung read it in silence.
Then he said, “It doesn’t matter. They’ll always send you things like this. Trying to make you feel smaller.”
Jihoon exhaled slowly. “Then why do I always feel like I deserve it?”
He didn’t mean to reach out. But his fingers brushed Taesung’s wrist, brief and hesitant.
Taesung didn’t move.
Jihoon didn’t pull away.
The touch lasted only a heartbeat, but it grounded him. And for once, he didn’t feel like a boy in a crown pretending to be made of stone. He felt seen. Not by the ministers. Not by his father’s name. But by Taesung.
⸻
They began spending hours together.
Not talking. Not touching.
Just existing.
Taesung would clean his weapons or polish his boots while Jihoon sat nearby with an open book he barely read. They’d drink tea in shared silence. The air between them thickened, heavier every night.
Jihoon didn’t know when the tension became hunger. Or when the hunger became ache.
But it did.
⸻
The wind picked up near the end of the week, rattling the palace windows like ghosts scratching to get in.
Jihoon couldn’t sleep. He wandered to the study, expecting to find it empty, only to see Taesung already seated by the fire, sharpening a blade with steady hands.
“You don’t sleep either,” Jihoon said.
Taesung looked up. “Not well.”
Jihoon crossed the room and dropped beside him on the rug, the fire warming his bare feet.
“Do you think it’s because of the sword?” he asked.
Taesung raised a brow.
“You’re always sharpening it,” Jihoon added. “Maybe if it was dull for once, you’d rest.”
Taesung huffed a rare breath of amusement. “That’s not how it works.”
Jihoon looked at the blade, then back at him.
“I envy you,” he said.
Taesung frowned. “Why?”
“You always seem to know what to do. You don’t hesitate.”
“I hesitate every time I look at you.”
Jihoon’s stomach flipped.
“You’re the only part of this job I don’t know how to handle,” Taesung said, voice low, like it was meant only for the fire.
Jihoon’s throat tightened. “Why?”
“Because I wasn’t supposed to care.”
The words were raw.
Jihoon stared at him. His mouth parted, but nothing came out. Instead, he reached out again—this time deliberately—and placed his hand on Taesung’s.
The calluses were rough beneath his fingers. But the touch made his chest ache in a way nothing else had.
Taesung looked at their hands, then up at Jihoon.
“I’m still learning how to care,” Jihoon whispered.
Taesung’s voice broke just slightly. “You’re doing fine.”
They sat there for hours, hand in hand, the fire dying low between them.
⸻
That was the night they stopped being just prince and guard.
They still didn’t kiss.
But Jihoon didn’t flinch when Taesung reached out the next evening to adjust his cloak. Didn’t look away when their eyes met too long. Didn’t correct him when he stepped a little too close.
And Taesung no longer looked like he was holding back every breath.
They were falling.
Not all at once.
But slowly. Inevitably.
And Jihoon didn’t feel afraid of the fall anymore.
————————————
Jihoon couldn’t remember falling asleep. But when he opened his eyes, it was still night, and the fire was little more than glowing coals in the grate.
His head had tilted against something warm.
Taesung.
They were both still on the rug in the study, shoulders touching. Jihoon must have drifted off beside him, lulled by the flicker of firelight and the steady rhythm of silence between them.
He didn’t move. Just listened to Taesung’s breathing, slow and even. Awake, but still. Watching the fire.
Jihoon turned his face slightly. His cheek was nearly against Taesung’s shoulder.
“You didn’t wake me,” Jihoon murmured.
“You looked peaceful.”
“I haven’t felt peaceful in years.”
Taesung didn’t respond at first. Then he said, just as softly, “You do when you sleep beside me.”
Jihoon’s chest tightened. He sat up slowly, pushing the hair from his eyes. The room was dim now, cast in deep shadow, but he could still see Taesung’s face in the faint light.
There was something different in his eyes tonight. Something open. Unafraid.
“Why are you here?” Jihoon asked. “Really.”
“I told you,” Taesung said. “Because I don’t want you to be alone.”
“That’s not an answer. That’s a kindness.”
Taesung looked down. “I don’t know how to give more than that.”
Jihoon’s voice was soft. “Try.”
Taesung’s jaw flexed. His hands were clenched in his lap. But slowly, painfully, he met Jihoon’s gaze.
“You make me want things I thought I’d buried.”
The silence stretched between them.
Jihoon’s breath was shallow.
“I don’t know how to love people,” he whispered. “I only know how to keep them out.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know what this is.”
“I don’t either.”
“But I think about you when I’m alone,” Jihoon said, voice shaking. “Not just your face. The way you sit. The way you look when you’re listening. The way you never rush me when I need time.”
Taesung said nothing. He just looked at him like he’d always been waiting for this moment.
Jihoon’s next words cracked in his throat.
“I think I’m scared of how much I want you to stay.”
Taesung didn’t move.
And then he did.
Not fast. Not bold.
Just a shift—closer.
Jihoon didn’t pull away.
The kiss wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t desperate or breathless. It was soft. Almost hesitant. The kind of kiss that said, I’m not sure if I’m allowed, but I need this.
Their lips touched for a moment, just a moment, and Jihoon felt everything in him splinter. Years of silence. Years of pretending he didn’t need anyone.
Taesung’s hand rose—paused—and then rested against the side of Jihoon’s neck, steady and warm.
Jihoon kissed him back.
He didn’t mean to. But his body moved before his mind could catch up, and he leaned in, deeper, until their breaths mixed and Jihoon tasted something he’d never known before: being wanted, quietly and entirely.
When they pulled apart, Jihoon didn’t open his eyes for a second.
“I think I’m falling in love with you,” he said into the space between them.
Taesung’s breath hitched.
“I think I already have.”
Jihoon opened his eyes.
They weren’t pretending anymore.
⸻
The days after that changed everything.
Not in grand ways. No one in the palace noticed. No one saw how Taesung’s gaze lingered a little longer when Jihoon passed. No one saw how Jihoon stopped hiding his smiles when they were alone.
But in private—
The walls softened. The distance shrank.
They didn’t speak about love again, not directly. Not yet. But it was there in the touches. The way Jihoon would let his fingers brush Taesung’s arm when handing him something. The way Taesung’s hand would hover at the small of his back, never too long, never too little.
They’d built something fragile and quiet. A thread tying them together. One Jihoon never wanted to cut.
But he couldn’t shake the fear either.
One morning, while dressing for court, Jihoon caught himself standing still for too long, fingers frozen on the buttons of his collar. The mirror reflected someone he almost didn’t recognize—his face softer, eyes tired in a new way.
Taesung entered without knocking. He never knocked anymore.
Jihoon turned to him.
“Do you ever think about how easily this could end?” he asked, voice barely a whisper.
Taesung stepped closer. “Yes.”
“And yet we still do this.”
“I don’t know how not to.”
Jihoon looked away. “I think about it every time I look at you. What if this ends? What if I ruin it?”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
Taesung’s gaze never wavered. “But I know you.”
Jihoon flinched at those words. A flash of something buried deep behind his eyes surfaced—pain, like something ancient and untouched.
“No, you don’t,” he said, quieter now. “You don’t know what I came from.”
Taesung waited.
Jihoon looked down at his hands. They were trembling.
“I was six when my mother stopped calling me by my name,” he said. “She started calling me ‘Your Highness’ like the others. Even in the nursery. Even when I cried.”
Taesung’s eyes darkened, but he didn’t interrupt.
“My father didn’t speak to me unless it was about state matters. When I turned twelve, he started using me in court—making me sit beside him, teaching me how to hide behind a mask. Every word I said had to be perfect. Every look rehearsed.”
He inhaled slowly. “I’ve never been touched without expectation. Never been held without someone wanting something in return.”
Taesung stepped forward, so quietly it was almost imperceptible. Jihoon kept talking.
“So don’t tell me you know me. I barely know myself. All I’ve ever done is survive this place.”
Taesung reached out.
Jihoon flinched instinctively when his fingers brushed his cheek—but didn’t pull away.
“I’m not asking you to be anything for me,” Taesung said. “I’m just asking you to let me see you. As you are.”
Jihoon’s eyes shimmered. The weight in his chest pushed upward, threatening to choke him.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because when I look at you,” Taesung whispered, thumb brushing gently beneath Jihoon’s eye, “I don’t see a prince. I see someone who’s never been loved the way he deserves to be.”
Jihoon leaned forward before he could think.
This kiss was different.
Still slow. Still soft.
But longer.
It was needful. Quiet but raw. Jihoon kissed him like he was holding onto something fragile, like he didn’t want to let go. Taesung met him with steady warmth, arms wrapping around Jihoon’s waist, pulling him just close enough that the space between them disappeared.
And for once, Jihoon let himself be held.
Not out of duty. Not out of obligation.
But because he wanted it.
Because some part of him, long buried and starving, believed it.
⸻
That night, Jihoon didn’t sleep alone.
They didn’t do more than lie there—bodies close, breath steady, hands entwined beneath the covers.
Jihoon rested his forehead against Taesung’s shoulder and listened to the sound of his heart.
And Taesung, without a word, held him like he was something worth protecting—not because of his crown, or his name, or his kingdom.
Just because he was Jihoon.
⸻—————————
The cold dawn seeped quietly through the narrow windows of Jihoon’s bedroom, casting pale slivers of light across the heavy wooden floor. The room was still and silent, save for a faint rustling sound near the windowpane. Jihoon’s eyes fluttered open, alerted by the noise. His breath caught in his throat as he swung his legs off the bed and moved cautiously toward the source.
With a careful hand, he drew back the heavy curtains. There, taped to the glass, was a small folded note, its edges fluttering slightly at the windy breeze. Jihoon’s fingers trembled as he peeled it free and unfolded the paper.
“Give me the Black Star Jewel at the East Gate by midnight, or I will reveal your secret — your relationship with your bodyguard.”
A cold wave crashed over Jihoon’s chest. His face drained of color; the words burned in his mind. How had someone found out? Why that jewel, of all things? The Black Star Jewel was priceless, a symbol of the crown’s wealth and trust. And now, it was his bargaining chip, his potential ruin.
The questions swirled relentlessly. Was it a trap? A blackmailer? His heart hammered harder, a desperate rhythm drowning out reason.
That night, Jihoon lay awake, staring at the dark ceiling. The flickering candlelight seemed a cruel mockery to the turmoil inside him. Sleep was impossible — each thought a jagged shard pressing into his mind. Should he give in and commit theft? Could he bear the shame if the secret were exposed? The weight of his double life, the fear of discovery, clawed at him relentlessly.
Hours passed, then moments before midnight, Jihoon slipped silently from his chambers. He wrapped himself in a thick black coat, hood drawn low to mask his face. Every step toward the East Gate was heavy with dread. As he glanced back one last time, he saw Taesung sleeping peacefully in the next room, unaware of the storm gathering around them both.
A flicker of guilt stabbed Jihoon’s heart — was he protecting Taesung, or condemning him? The question was a ghost that followed him in the night.
At the shadowed meeting place, Jihoon handed over the jewel to the man who had demanded it — a stranger cloaked in darkness, his face hidden beneath a hood. But fate was cruel. Before the exchange was complete, palace guards surrounded them, torches igniting the night.
Jihoon’s world shattered as heavy hands seized him, iron shackles clamping cold around his wrists. The man who had threatened him smirked darkly, disappearing into the shadows.
Days later, Jihoon sat alone in his cell, the dim light casting long shadows across the cracked stone walls. The cold iron around his wrists bit into his skin, a constant reminder of his fall from grace. Treason — the word echoed in his mind like a death knell. How had the crown prince, the heir to the throne, ended up imprisoned as a traitor?
His thoughts drifted to Taesung, to the man who had stood by him, unaware of the secrets now threatening to destroy them both.
The heavy footsteps of the guards pulled Jihoon from his reverie. He rose slowly, muscles stiff from the hard bench beneath him. Today, he would face the court.
The corridors seemed endless, each step ringing hollow in the vast palace halls. Servants and nobles stared as he passed, disbelief and scorn etched into their faces. The prince who had once walked these halls with confidence now a prisoner, bound and broken.
Inside the grand hall transformed into a courtroom, dozens of eyes bore into him. The judges sat high on their dais, faces impassive beneath the weight of law and duty. The king himself watched silently, his expression unreadable but heavy with disappointment.
Taesung stood at the side, his armor dull beneath the torchlight. His heart pounded in his chest — the man he loved was no longer his charge, but a condemned criminal. Worse still, Taesung had been named executioner should the sentence be death.
The chief judge’s voice echoed through the chamber:
“Jihoon, Crown Prince of this kingdom, you stand accused of conspiracy and treason. Evidence has been presented — secret meetings, betrayal of the crown, theft of royal property.”
Jihoon’s voice was barely a whisper when he replied, “I am innocent.”
The courtroom murmured, the weight of evidence undeniable. Witnesses recounted shadowed meetings, letters in Jihoon’s hand, the stolen jewel — proof that sealed his fate.
The king’s words struck like a blade:
“My son, if you have betrayed me, you have betrayed this kingdom.”
Jihoon’s heart broke at his father’s condemnation, but no defense could undo the verdict. Hours dragged on, dissecting every detail with brutal precision.
Taesung’s grip tightened on the hilt of his sword beneath his cloak, fighting the storm within. His eyes searched Jihoon’s face — a mixture of pride and despair. Despite everything, the prince had not bowed.
When the judges finally pronounced the sentence, the chamber fell silent:
“Jihoon is guilty of treason. The sentence is execution by the sword.”
A tear traced down Jihoon’s cheek as the weight of finality settled. Taesung’s breath caught.
The king’s gaze met Taesung’s:
“You will carry out the sentence. It is your duty.”
Time slowed. The crowd moved to the courtyard, but for Taesung, only Jihoon remained. Their eyes locked, an unspoken goodbye passing between them.
“Taesung…” Jihoon’s voice was soft, filled with sorrow. “I’m sorry… for everything.”
Taesung’s tears blurred his vision. “I never wanted this.”
Jihoon’s faint smile was heartbreak itself. “Neither did I.”
The sword felt impossibly heavy in Taesung’s hands as he stepped forward. The world narrowed to just the two of them — prince and protector, love and loss entwined in a single moment.
Jihoon closed his eyes, trying to steady his breath as the cold blade pierced his stomach.
A sharp, agonized scream tore from his lips, raw and desperate — the pain searing through him, but death had not yet come. He struggled to reach for the wound, to stem the bleeding, but his hands were bound tightly by iron chains, helpless against the flood of blood.
Taesung’s vision blurred with tears, his heart breaking anew with every thrust. Reluctantly, painfully, he drove the blade deeper again and again, until finally, Jihoon’s body went limp and crumpled to the ground.
The silence that followed was thick and suffocating, as if the very air mourned the loss.
Taesung’s legs gave way beneath him, and he collapsed, tears pouring freely down his face — the life of the prince slipping away took a piece of Taesung’s own soul with it, leaving an unbearable emptiness behind.