Chapter 10

Chapter 10

“Just push through with your head held high. That would settle it, wouldn’t it? What’s so hard about it? A man may enjoy a little female company now and then.”

“Try married life yourself, Brother. See if it works.”

Ryu Jin slowly dragged a palm down his face and went on.

“But I walk on eggshells because my wife is beautiful. Sister-in-law doesn’t have some staggeringly beautiful face, does she? If it were me, I don’t think I’d bother watching my step.”

“You decide whether to tread carefully based on your wife’s face?”

“At first, I did.”

“Honesty isn’t everything, little brother. To slight your brother’s wife is no different from slighting your brother.”

Ryu Hyeok’s lips curled up as he whispered.

“Am I to take it that way?”

At those words, Ryu Jin snapped to his senses, and his face stiffened.

Ryu Hyeok doted on Ryu Jin. That was why he showed his soft side to him alone.

Even so, crossing the line Ryu Hyeok had drawn meant disaster. He was an uncompromising man, obsessed with the rules he himself had set.

And Ryu Jin’s remark just now seemed to have trampled right over that line.

Ryu Jin was oblivious until the words left his mouth, but quick to realize his mistakes once they had. It would have been better to sort out his words before speaking, yet it was a habit that never seemed to change.

“B-Brother… that’s not what I meant…”

One wrong squeak and he was dead. This was no joke; he could truly die. Ryu Hyeok was the kind of man who would cut down even someone he loved if he judged that they had slighted his authority.

“I’m sorry.”

A respectful, formal apology slipped out of Ryu Jin’s mouth. Only then did Ryu Hyeok react properly.

“Mind yourself.”

Ryu Hyeok patted the head of Ryu Jin, whose drunkenness had vanished in an instant, with a gentle hand.

It seemed they had gotten past it safely. Ryu Jin let out the breath he had been holding without even realizing it. Ryu Hyeok’s killing intent had the power to stop a man’s very breath.

“T-Then I’ll be going now…”

“Very well. It wouldn’t do for you to stay and blunder again.”

Ryu Jin gathered his things and fled.

Ryu Hyeok lazily waved a hand at his younger brother’s retreating back. It was a farewell the other couldn’t even see, yet he kept waving until Ryu Jin was out of sight.

“Haah…”

Every guest had gone home now. That meant the time for the bridegroom and the bride, the two of them alone, had come.

Ryu Hyeok rose slowly from his seat. He had to go to the bridal chamber, where his bride would be waiting.

Standing before the door, it occurred to him that the bride might have grown weary and fallen asleep first.

‘Is she still resentful that she married me?’

Ryu Hyeok recalled the woman who had fervently begged before the Buddha statue for her marriage to him to be broken. Even thinking of it again, it was an utterly offensive memory.

After pacing for a long while in front of the bridal chamber, he finally steeled his nerves and opened the door.

He had thought she would be asleep, but it was not so. The bride sat demurely on the bed, waiting for him.

Seeing her without the slightest disarray, Ryu Hyeok felt an inward surprise.

First, he closed the door of the bridal chamber. He had never known the sound of a door closing to seem so loud.

Now that the woman who had become his wife was right before his eyes, even he could not help feeling a little nervous.

‘Could she have fallen asleep sitting up?’

The thought came because the bride sat so rigidly and said nothing. But then.

“You’ve come.”

A clear, deep voice slipped through the dry air.

As he had noticed when he had secretly watched her before, his bride had a truly lovely voice.

* * *

‘That damned fool finally showed up.’

I’d nearly stretched my neck out waiting. Honestly, if he had come even an hour later, I would have pulled up the blanket and gone to sleep.

When he hadn’t come no matter how long I waited, I’d wondered if I was being spurned and had nearly danced for joy, yet here he was, a man with neither tact nor shame.

I hadn’t even properly seen his face yet, but my first impression was the absolute worst.

The man approaches me. He must be about to lift the red cloth covering my face.

The red cloth over a bride’s face can’t be lifted unless the groom lifts it. Neither the bride herself nor anyone else may touch it; it is the groom’s privilege alone.

‘Seriously, I can’t even lift the cloth on my own head as I please? Does that make any sense?’

I was grumbling away at the thought when the groom’s rough fingertips caught the edge of the cloth and slowly drew it down.

Only then did I come face to face with a world that wasn’t drowned in red, a world that held its true colors.

And in that world, only one person filled my sight.

The groom was kneeling on one knee, as if to meet me at eye level. The posture was, how to put it, like a servant looking up at his master, and it left me feeling strangely odd.

What made my feelings strangest at that moment was the beauty of the man thrusting his face toward me.

‘…This can’t be real.’

I was dumbfounded.

All right, calm down first. I’d heard until my ears were sore, from all sorts of people, that Prince Hye was handsome, so I knew that much well enough.

But this was of a different kind. This face was bewildering. The simple word “handsome” could never convey all of it.

Why hadn’t anyone told me that Prince Hye was this beautiful?

If someone had made a fuss and told me to brace myself, to prepare properly, I wouldn’t have been this flustered.

This was too much, absolutely too much. My husband, the man I’d been married off to, was too pretty.

Far too pretty. Born a man, and yet why were his lashes so long and fine? Each time he blinked, those thick dark lashes trembled slightly, like the beating of a butterfly’s wings.

I liked butterflies. I liked butterflies more than flowers.

Flowers lose their color when they wilt, but a butterfly keeps its beautiful wings even in death, preserved as a specimen. I thought that unchanging beauty put butterflies a cut above flowers.

Had I ever in my life seen someone this handsome?

The most beautiful people I had seen so far were my stepmother and her daughter Hwaryeong. But even their beauty must be less than dust before Prince Hye.

‘There’s no need to be this needlessly pretty. It’s strange.’

Though I knew in my head that there was nothing strange about a person being beautiful, my heart simply couldn’t accept it. It was just strange.

Beauty that had reached this level could make anything seem strange. It was like standing before vast, majestic nature and feeling the strength drain from your whole body, leaving you helpless. That was exactly how I felt now.

My mouth wouldn’t open. My eyes went wide of their own accord, and for some reason I couldn’t fathom, my lower lip trembled.

Would you understand if I said he was so beautiful he frightened me? Would you understand if I said he was so beautiful I wanted to run away?

“Hwacheon.”

What came out of that man’s mouth was none other than my name.

‘…Hwacheon?’

It belatedly startled me. Calling me by name. That was something only a loving couple, shamelessly doing sickeningly sweet things in front of everyone, would do.

Between a dry, politically arranged couple like us, a groom never calls his bride by name. He would normally just say “wife.”

Or, failing that, he could call me “Princess Consort Hye” for now. I was, after all, the Princess Consort Hye in full standing.

There would have been nothing strange in my husband calling me by any of those. But my name was truly strange.

What on earth was this man, that he kept taking such unusual steps?

Still, he had called me, and I couldn’t very well not answer, so I reluctantly opened my mouth.

“Yes, Your Highness.”

The person before me was so unreal that it felt like a dream. I also wasn’t in my right mind, my body worn out from the long wait.

“I’m sorry. I kept you waiting too long. Let me take out your hair ornaments.”

“Pardon?”

Before I could say anything, Prince Hye began to remove the many ornaments pinned in my hair, one by one, with his own hands. He couldn’t possibly have ever served as anyone’s servant, yet the touch with which he drew them out was so natural and gentle.

‘Ah, he must have done this for countless other women.’

For a woman to fail to keep her chastity before marriage was a crime punishable by death, but for a man it was dismissed as nothing more than a youthful wandering.

So it wouldn’t be surprising if Prince Hye had women he had been intimate with. But that it wasn’t surprising didn’t mean it felt good.

A man this skilled at removing a woman’s hair ornaments. What a proof of how many women he had spent nights with.

‘I knew he was a bastard. How many concubines does he plan to take? That damned bastard.’

My stomach turned and churned, and my lower lip jutted out. I wasn’t even aware of my own expression when the unreally beautiful man spoke again.

“Is my touch clumsy? Is something uncomfortable?”

Flustered, I lifted my head. Prince Hye’s fingertip suddenly reached out and brushed the lower lip that had been sticking out.

Startled by the touch, I quickly tucked my lip back in. How long had it been sticking out?

“You looked displeased.”

“What? No, it’s nothing. I have no complaints at all.”

“Is that so? Then I’m glad.”

Soon the hair ornaments were all removed. Freed from the heavy ornaments, my throbbing head felt much lighter.

My loosened hair tickled my shoulders. The silence settling over the room was awkwardly embarrassing, and I curled my toes.

“I smell strongly of liquor, don’t I?”

“A-A little…”

I stammered like an idiot. To be unable to answer even something this simple, there must be something wrong with my head.

Having stammered seemed proof that I was nervous, and shame washed over me.

Prince Hye came and sat beside me. Not knowing what to do now, I only rolled my eyes about.

It would look strange for me to throw myself at him first, and since my husband had come safely, there was a duty to be done, yet the moment I faced the actual consummation, I was nervous to death.

Prince Hye’s arm wrapped around my waist. Along with the strong smell of liquor, a soft, pleasant fragrance came from him. Not only was his face handsome, but even his scent was good; what an unfair world.

It was my first time sitting pressed this close to a man, and my first time having someone touch my body so freely.

For me, whose only experience of a man’s hands had been my father’s blows, this gentle contact was bewildering.

“Now I am going to kiss you.”

The man’s voice resonated low in my ear. My heart ached.

“If the smell of liquor is too strong, tell me. I will withdraw at any time.”

Prince Hye announced each step kindly, as if teaching a child who knew nothing. He said he would kiss me, and sure enough, a moment later his lips touched mine.

It certainly smelled of liquor, but not to the point of revulsion. The lips of a man, touching mine for the first time in my life, were astonishingly soft and supple.

That soft sensation pulled away for a moment, then pressed against me again, deeper.

The man’s large hand cradled my cheek. When I unconsciously parted my lips a little, he slipped the moist tip of his tongue into my mouth, as if he would not let that gap escape him.

Startled, I pushed against his chest, and the man tilted his head.

“Is it because of the smell of liquor?”

“Wh-Why, t-tongue…”

I stammered stupidly again. I’m not usually such a timid woman, so I don’t know why I’m like this.

My behavior was so unsightly that I wanted to erase it from my memory forever.

I’m certain this is the most foolish moment of my entire life.