The minute I woke up Yeon dragged me towards the bathtub she had filled up for me and almost pushed me in the water herself. She gave me a set amount of time to get ready since she wanted to take me somewhere whilst she tended to my horse. She was in her usual restless mood so I just went along with it, not really used to not being in control. We only had a short amount of time left together before I had to bring her home tomorrow to her brother and had a plan of what we were going to do but it looks like she beat me to it when I came to my room and I saw that she had already laid out my dress robes scented with something she gifted to me in a decorated glass bottle that I saw her pick out herself. It was a perfume that she had made just for me, and she was able to make something that carried the scents of the places that we went to the most to as a remembrance of our time together here. I absolutely loved it when she did these small things for me as I got ready with the biggest smile on my face. But she definitely too my breathe away when I saw the outfit she had chosen to wear with different shades of blue that I loved.
She wouldn't answer any of my questions when I propped her onto my horse as she made me take us to the riverside where we had a boat waiting for us. She took me by the hand in front of everyone as we made our way, but I instantly noticed the worried look on her face, as if she had something to tell me. I suddenly felt a little nervous but I didn't say anything at all as we made our way to the other side in silence with her head against my shoulder and my hand in hers on our last day together as free people who didn't have any constrictions or obligations elsewhere for now. The war I was going to be drafted in was estimated to take no more than two months long based on the amount of provisions that soldiers had from the palace treasury and that would be more than enough time to leave Yeon with her brother. And when I came back, I most certainly planned to marry her before she entered the palace so no-one could mess her around now that she would have a powerful husband. I also planned on us starting our family sooner than I would like to pull her out of her palace duties and for her to focus on us and whatever else she wanted to do as long as she could mostly do it from home. And with a stable family behind me, I had the chance to climb up the ranks and achieve what I wanted in the time that I had it, bringing glory and titles to my own imperfect mixed-blood family to show the world that not only noble people can have success.
I didn't even realise that we were in another town until the boat stopped and she pulled me off of it, hand in hand. I though she was taking me out on a date before I realised that she had actually taken me to what looked like a shrine for dead relatives. She picked up a box that looked familiar and made her way to the back…where she made a beautiful shrine of her own which was decorated with flowers and shiny pebbles she had found god knows where. She lit up incense sticks and picked up a shrine and put it in the middle before she started praying to it…and I almost bowled over in shock when I released who it was she was praying to. "Apart from being generally unpredictable, and rather domineering; your son finally lived up to the promise that he made to you. He has a far more successful career than his own father could have ever imagined for him, he's looked upon with respect and love by the new people who mete him everyday, and he's more talented than even you could have hoped for when you had no choice but to let him go. You're sacrifice had not been in vain, in fact it had made him the perfect man that he is today. He is currently pestering me into becoming your daughter-in-law and he wants an army of children. I'm willing to oblige to it all…but I have a condition of my own." I was completely in shock before I was on my knees and completely bawling my eyes out in grief and heart break. I missed my mother so much, even when I was brainwashed to hate her by my father and I missed her every single day that she was dead and left me behind in this cruel world, completely alone and a prey to my fathers goals. "I want to give your son everything he deserves…if he marries me and lets me take on your family name instead on his father's."
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I felt his eyes on me from the moment that he stopped breaking down with a dark look on his face that told me that he needed to vent out whatever he was feeling right now. After I made the appropriate prayers to his mother I took off my robe to show off my new outfit that a new tailor friend of mine had made for me, something that my brother wouldn't be too crazy about. But it finally worked as I made my way to my room which was still empty whilst everyone else in the village was preoccupied with my new work station and was keeping Hwa-Wol busy. "That's not fucking fair" he breathed, quite menacingly to be honest as I tried to walk away from him, and now he had his arm around mine and kept pulling me back. "Why are you following me? I thought you didn't like me anymore." Whenever I tried to push him off of me he really didn't like that at all and wold start getting a little…aggressive. "You cannot pull something like this, wearing something like that and just think you can walk away without giving me anything at all." "I'm sorry, I currently have no relationship with you right now ever since you began to ignore me, so you do not get a piece of anything at all. If you were my husband though, what would be a completely different scenario, since I would be obliged to give myself to you whenever you wanted." I was seducing him, but I didn't care at all; I had started to get my own…needs that only he could fulfil, and as domineering as he had become over me, he was very good at what he did and I missed him too much to let him walk away from me or for me to hide anymore.
I had him trapped and he knew it when it was evident of how flustered he was becoming, and was enjoying it. "Where are you going now?" "I'm going to sleep early so I can meet with the ex-servant who was courting me. I think I finally have an answer for him now that I clearly have no commitments to anyone else." That angered him a lot more than I had even expected, when he finally lost him temper and just threw me over his shoulders and took me somewhere very remote where he gave me no choice but to take part in some very scandalous activity…but it was different this time. It was…exasperation, frustration, anger and even desperation to hold onto each other a much as we cold before we finally parted. But he still hand't said anything to me at all, so I just started getting ready and making my way back to my room while I left him with a blank look on his face, still lying onto the floor. He looked like something was eating away at his mind. I was completely heartbroken that he still wouldn't talk to me but there was nothing that I could do but to walk away until he figured out what he wanted to do now that he finally got what he wanted. "Yeon…" "Don't worry, I won't burden you anymore. You're free to do what you want and we're too young for marriage anyways, despite how you gave me the courage to overcome my insecurities and made me feel accepted by someone for the first time. And by the way, if you're being like this because you think that I don't know everything about you and all the secrets you keep then that's fine, all you had to do was talk about it." He had a more violent reaction than I had anticipated when he basically stormed up to me and cornered me a little too aggressively "you have absolutely no idea what my secret is, what I'm going through right now or what I have done in my past! You know nothing!" He grabbed my hair at this point but all I could see was the misery and conflict in his eyes. "Is that so? Fine, I'll just pretend not to know that you are also attracted to men and you have been since you were a child, starting with my brother, who I'm pretty sure felt the same way about you until he met his woman. But you both still treat each other as if you are each other's first loves, and it had never bothered me before, because I never thought that someone like you could love someone like me. And even now it doesn't bother me, because you two will always have a bond that I am not a part of, just like how it always was and how it will always be whether I'm with you or not."
He looked like he had the biggest shock of his life; his breathe became ragged, his face became white as a ghost and he looked like the ground wanted to swallow him up right there and then. It did hurt me on some level that he liked other people but I juts loved him too much to walk away from him because of it…but I couldn't guarantee if he was only going to love me or end up leaving me and falling for someone else. I conveyed this message to him and I told him that I would have accepted any arrangements that he made if only he had discussed it with me, before walking away with tears streaming down my face and my heart torn in pieces. No matter what struggle he was going through, he chose to stay silent to reflect over how own insecurities after he came into my life like a bad tempered bull and forced me to face all of my fears, just to pull out the minute he got what he wanted. I was disappointed, heartbroken…and unfortunately I had an idea of what I could do to distract myself until he either figured out what to do or he regretted loving me in the first place.
I couldn't stop thinking about our days together; as soon as we got closer to our village, he stopped me again and wanted to surprise me with something. No sooner had we stepped outside was I welcomed to the sight of a brand new furnished embroidery workshop that had his name on it! I was so completely speechless when he showed me around that I still couldn't speak until the tour was over, but when I did try to find my voice to secure him for spending so much money on me he beat me to it and took me in his arms again to tell me that the workers would arrive in a week. He even had all of the materials and equipment ready for everyone. All I could do was to embrace him with every fibre of my being…but he wasn't willing to let go, in fact he started taking my clothes off again right there in the empty workhouse! "No…stop it, we can't do it here…" but the look on his face told me that he would do something stupid if I didn't comply…and that was only a while ago…My face started growing hot and my heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest, but I know that he wouldn't let me go anywhere or do anything until I had obeyed him. Despite this, I still had no idea why my fingers were shaking until he made me undress him completely. I could only stare at him until he pulled me to his chest and started undressing me in a not-so-gentle manner as I had did with him. In fact he almost tore my clothes off of me and into shreds before he threw me onto the bed. I was overwhelmed momentarily with his new aggressive persona and I ran to the door but he threatened to cut off our ties for good as well as exposed what I did to him when I tried to help him sober up on the first day he came to my accommodation. He threatened to tell my brother everything, including what was happening right now, including the world to sully my reputation so no other man would look at me and bring shame onto my brother. I could only freeze in shock at the lengths this man would go to just to get what he wanted. To the world he was a just man who fought tooth and nail for equality amongst the people of our land, but I was slowly finding out that when it came to me, he was completely corrupt…but not in a bad way, not really. I felt the intentions of his words and it touched me deep into my soul as we both knew that I wasn't going to so much as look at anybody else. He gave me that impatient look that I was so used to as I made my way to him…and I surrendered to him. Not doing so was not an option for me now, for I had lost myself in him the minute I regained my memories and found out what he had done to kept me safe, which surely no other person would go through for another in this corrupt world…