Chapter 7

“Your… Your Majesty.”

Yeon-oh stammered, the unfamiliar title clinging to his tongue. He didn’t need to look to know what his expression was like. He would be awkward and at a loss for what to do.

“Since you know my identity, you must call me that.”

The Emperor uttered the obvious, wearing a face that suggested he had expected this.

If this were back when he considered the Emperor a casual guest, Yeon-oh might have made some flippant remark like, ‘I wish to live a long life,’ but Yeon-oh was not a person to be that reckless. Others might think differently, but he had lived quietly and peacefully, exercising restraint until now.

“Have you met with my second brother?”

Yeon-oh appropriately deflected the Emperor’s overly familiar acknowledgment with a mundane question.

The Emperor slightly narrowed his eyes, examining the face that was maintaining proper etiquette, then cleared his throat. A faint smile touched his cold, seemingly indifferent, yet imposing face.

“In truth, I came here to meet the head of your household.”

The man confessed his new lie, looking slightly embarrassed.

Was there any truth in his words?

Yeon-oh looked at the man’s troubled face and spoke with a comfortable expression.

“Is that so.”

Seeing his own manner of meekly answering the powerful man without objection, Yeon-oh wondered if he might not be quite good at flattery if he were ever to take an official post.

“We became quite close, didn’t we?”

Seonjae directly expressed his displeasure with the superficial conversation.

“I suppose we did.”

Yeon-oh retreated slightly in his reply to the challenging question.

“It’s been a long time since I felt this disappointed.”

The Emperor whispered the frightening words, which would have sent shivers down one’s spine had they been heard in the Imperial Palace, with a friendly smile.

“Whose name is Seonjae?”

Yeon-oh, off guard, spoke to the man who had uttered terrifying words in a friendly manner.

“It is mine.”

Seonjae replied, scrunching his dark eyebrows that drew a cool, sharp line. Emperors and Imperial relatives had names, but they were never called directly, as if they did not exist in the world. It was a long-standing tradition that even they themselves did not casually utter their own names.

“…”

Yeon-oh stared intently at the presence whose mere ordinary words could make his heart drop, a silent complaint in his eyes.

“Well, I am not Young Master Seon. But I had no choice, as revealing my family would have given it away.”

The Emperor spoke the shameless lie with a calm demeanor.

‘Woo Seonjae.’

Yeon-oh combined the Imperial surname and the man’s name in his head and secretly shook his head.

“I will forget it.”

Yeon-oh said, as if making a solemn vow. The man, who had been suppressing a subtle irritation at the utterly naive statement, frowned.

“Gyo Yeon-oh.”

A chilling baritone echoed in the quiet autumn night.

“Yes, Your Majesty…”

Yeon-oh wanted to pretend he was fine, but he couldn’t. His voice wavered uncontrollably. His counterpart was the Emperor, and Yeon-oh had somehow gathered too many facts about the time the Emperor had lived through.

The Emperor was too grand a presence to be viewed solely through the lens of what Yeon-oh had personally seen.

“I do not ask you to treat me as Young Master Seon. But it hurts my feelings if you keep too much distance. I have a bad habit, poorly learned in childhood, of getting angry when my feelings are hurt.”

The Emperor grumbled the terrifying threat.

“Your Majesty, you do know that you are the Emperor, don’t you?”

Yeon-oh spoke without thinking. Only after the words were out did he realize that he had obliquely criticized the Emperor by implying that it was wrong for the Emperor to get angry. Since the words had already been spoken, he could not take them back.

Seonjae stared silently at the person who had just delivered a soft yet perfectly aimed criticism. The man’s expressionless face was arrogant and overwhelming.

Yeon-oh realized that that was the face the man wore when he was the Emperor.

“I see now why I feel a distance when Young Master Gyo calls me Your Majesty. It seems you managed to convey what the officials of the Censorate say two or three times a year, with hardly any words at all.”

The officials of the Censorate were the ones who submitted uncomfortable remonstrations.

“You’re not angry, are you…?”

Yeon-oh spoke with the kindest-looking face he could muster. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] The man looked down at Yeon-oh with a sulking expression.

“It wouldn’t be proper for me to be petty.”

The Emperor’s words sounded as though he desperately wanted to be petty, but his position prevented him, so he was forced to endure his frustration.

“But I did find many of your valuable things for you.”

“I am grateful.”

Yeon-oh smiled lightly at the Emperor’s petulant attitude. Even setting aside his ruthlessness, the man seemed to have a difficult personality to serve. The kind that would persistently harass someone if they spoke something he disliked.

“I cannot call Your Majesty Young Master Seon, or Young Master Woo.”

Yeon-oh mumbled softly. He complained lightly, throwing his gaze toward the distant archery target.

“I suppose not.”

“Did you meet with my eldest brother?”

“I did.”

Yeon-oh already knew the Emperor had met with his eldest brother, the head of the Gyo General’s Household. At the question, which was tossed out like a casual inquiry, the man’s expression subtly darkened.

“Is something the matter?”

At Yeon-oh’s query, the Emperor slowly met his gaze.

“I came here to discuss the Empress Dowager’s wishes regarding the concubine the Gyo Clan will provide to the Imperial Household.”

After learning the Emperor’s identity at the tavern, Yeon-oh had been so shocked that he had lost his sense of reality. The Emperor’s mention that he would be taking a concubine brought forth a bewilderment similar to that initial shock.

It was strange.

The Emperor already had an Empress and several concubines. Yet, the statement that Woo Seonjae would be taking a concubine from the Gyo Clan startled him anew.

A peculiar, unfamiliar feeling surged through Yeon-oh.

It was not the disappointment that one of his female cousins living in the capital, or a distant niece of age, might have to go to the Imperial Palace, where visits were difficult.

It was not a friendly sentiment like regret or worry, but a more negative and base emotion.

Yeon-oh realized that his heart, which he had been too dazed and mentally distracted to notice, was beating uncomfortably hard and fast.

It truly was strange.

Pretending to be unaware of the alien and unsettling emotion, Yeon-oh maintained his composure.

“The Imperial Family wishes for a concubine from the Gyo Clan’s main lineage. But in this house…”

The Emperor spoke, glancing around the Gyo General’s Household.

Due to the accident nine years ago, when his parents and sister passed away, there were no young women in the Gyo General’s Household.

“There aren’t any.”

Currently, only the head of the household and his wife, along with his full brothers, resided there. The rest of the Gyo Clan mainly stayed in the capital, living according to their official posts.

The Gyo Clan members in the capital gathered and lived around his third uncle.

Yeon-oh surmised that the Emperor would soon head to that residence.

In a moment, the surroundings turned dark.

Yeon-oh intended to pay his respects to the Emperor and withdraw. As he prepared to bow, the man’s large hand gently moved toward Yeon-oh’s. Yeon-oh did not pull away from the approaching hand.

The next moment, the firm hand grasped Yeon-oh’s.

“I want you.”

The man turned the hand he held so that Yeon-oh’s palm was exposed. Upon the upturned palm, the horn phoenix-patterned ornament was placed. The man carefully folded Yeon-oh’s hand to prevent the ornament from falling and smiled softly.

“What…?”

Yeon-oh blinked, bewildered by the situation. Was what he was seeing reality, not a dream?

“I wish for you to become my person, Yeon-oh.”

“Your Majesty.”

“Do not refuse.”

The situation was so preposterous and bewildering that Yeon-oh could not understand what was happening. Seeing Yeon-oh’s confusion, the man tilted his eyebrows as if to grumble, then smiled radiantly.

Despite his confusion, Yeon-oh could not tear his eyes away from that face.

******

Yeon-oh returned to his own building in a dazed state. The Emperor had escorted him to the front of the building, but Yeon-oh barely remembered how he had walked from the archery range to his building.

He wasn’t even sure if he had properly bid farewell to the man who watched him head inside.

Thud.

Stepping into the room, Yeon-oh placed the horn phoenix-patterned ornament, which he had held tightly like a lifeline, onto the table. Only then could he finally accept the reality.

‘It wasn’t a dream.’

Yeon-oh hesitated in front of the table for a moment.

“What should I do…”

His distressed face moved his lips slowly.

There was no way he could refuse the Emperor’s request.

Because the Emperor’s request was not a simple request.

Yet, it was also wrong to simply comply with the man’s command, crushed by the Emperor’s authority. The man did not seem like the type to be pleased when someone obeyed merely out of fear.

Yeon-oh unconsciously reached out his hand toward the phoenix ornament. The tip of his finger slightly touched the phoenix’s wing. At the firm, smooth texture of the horn against his fingertip, his eyebrows, which had been drooped with worry, involuntarily relaxed. But he immediately composed his expression again.

He sighed and sat on the chair in front of the table.

“He surely isn’t suddenly in love with me.”

Yeon-oh stared at the endlessly elegant phoenix pattern, which was oblivious to his own confusion. He looked at the precise, luxurious, and refined phoenix pattern with distress, then touched the beautiful phoenix again.

This time, he neither flinched nor pulled his hand away at the firm touch of the horn. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] However, an unknown regret and dizziness were added to the gaze with which he regarded the elegant horn phoenix ornament.