“You’re using the hanbingcho more than usual. In case…”
Seolyong withdrew his hand from the pulse as he spoke. But his words didn’t continue smoothly. Hae-gang, sensing an odd hesitation, belatedly lifted his gaze to Seolyong’s face as he clenched and unclenched the hand he’d rested on the table.
“What were you going to say?” Hae-gang pressed, and Seolyong held his gaze in silence before bowing his head and looking away. It wasn’t that he was deliberately avoiding him. Seolyong picked up the fine brush resting on the inkstone’s edge and began writing on the folio he’d laid out earlier—recording what he’d observed from Hae-gang’s pulse.
“In case a cold should settle in, you must tell me.”
“Ah…”
At Seolyong’s reply, Hae-gang drew out a long, delicate sound of understanding and nodded slowly. Then he broke into a grin.
The assumption—*a cold could settle in*—was utterly foreign to Seolyong. A thing he would never have said before. That using a cooling herb a bit more than usual might invite a chill. He only adjusted the dosage to guard against the herb’s toxicity; never once had he worried the body might grow too cold.
But Seolyong could not deny that something had been changing since Hae-gang joined with Mok-young. Who else examined Hae-gang’s body and read his pulse every day but his physician? The visible signs might still be faint—no, they had already shown themselves two nights ago. That Mok-young’s embrace had quelled the fire in his body, the one that had felt like burning, was a change right before his eyes.
He had half-expected this change. Seolyong too had wondered whether Mok-young’s strong yin energy might help temper Hae-gang’s yang energy. It was just that he’d been cautious, in case it went too far and did Hae-gang harm instead.
Seolyong paused his brush and looked up at Hae-gang again. He said nothing, and Hae-gang didn’t bother asking what he wanted to say. Hae-gang only rolled down the sleeve he’d drawn up for the pulse reading and tidied it. Seolyong’s gaze was familiar to Hae-gang, and his silence did not feel uncomfortable.
For Seolyong too, this moment was deeply routine. Only, a fresh feeling suddenly struck him.
Thirteen years old. Though he’d developed well for his age, he was still a small, young boy compared to now when Seolyong first saw Go Hae-gang. He couldn’t tell you how flabbergasted he’d been.
By any proper measure, one could only seek Jujak’s essence after reaching a point where there was no higher level to climb in the Juyang Divine Art—after achieving what one could call “completion” on one’s own. Meaning it absolutely could not be a thirteen-year-old child. It had to be a stout martial man like Danmok, long devoted to training, who became the “heir.” Yet this dying child was the “heir.” Seolyong couldn’t help but be dumbfounded.
But his understanding came second. Whatever the circumstances, his task was to save the child chosen by the divine beast. Since Cheongryong was by nature a being that governed the qi of “life,” it was no hardship to disguise himself as a physician and care for the boy. Perhaps that too was a flabbergasting fate given to the child. But human life hung or ended on heaven’s mandate alone, so all Seolyong could do was devote himself wholeheartedly so the child’s will might reach heaven’s mandate.
And the child, admirably, endured. With his still-unripened body holding the divine beast’s essence, he survived a fortnight of struggle and finally opened his eyes, and in that moment Seolyong felt something he had briefly forgotten during his eons of watching the mortal world. A hot pulse? Joy? Or all the joys and sorrows he’d forgotten in the distant past?
“Your Highness.”
More time passed. After a long silence, Seolyong called Hae-gang. He still looked down at his folio, moving the brush, but that too soon came to a stop.
“How is it, Your Highness, that you have never once asked me?”
Seolyong set the brush back on the inkstone and looked up at Hae-gang. Hae-gang had already neatly straightened his clothes.
“What do you mean I never asked?”
“Why you don’t age.”
“Ah.”
Once again Hae-gang drew out a light sound and, instead of nodding, quirked the corners of his mouth in a smile. Mischief flickered across his face, just as it had when he was thirteen, and Seolyong couldn’t help breaking into a grin himself.
“A few days ago Minister Hong asked just that—why am I the only one who doesn’t age. After all my nagging about taking care of himself.”
Seolyong tried to deflect. It was not yet the time—not even now, fourteen years on—to reveal his identity. But one might expect Hae-gang to have felt something odd and asked at least once; he had never once asked about Seolyong’s identity. Enough to make Seolyong curious instead. Go Hae-gang was an unfathomable man not only to his wife but even to those who had long stood beside him.
“Minister Hong just doesn’t understand.”
Hae-gang said it with an air of profound confidence. When Seolyong flinched despite himself and stared, Hae-gang’s lips curved into a wider, cooler arc.
“I told him Physician Cheong must be secretly taking some rejuvenating elixir. Honestly, he hardly listens to me.”
It was utter nonsense out of Hae-gang’s mouth. Seolyong gave him a flat look—no, a look gone cold and frigid with exasperation—but Hae-gang remained confident.
“I don’t know what fine elixir you’re taking, but I’m fine—share some with Minister Hong.” Hae-gang added it as though he truly believed it, then rose from his seat. He’d been on the receiving end of *that look* from Seolyong since childhood; it hardly stung anymore. His hands moved leisurely as he patted his front panels, checking his attire one last time.
At Hae-gang’s composure, Seolyong was even more dumbfounded and lost for words. It was just like the first time he’d met the thirteen-year-old Go Hae-gang—flabbergasting and exasperating. Just as a hollow laugh of *ha* escaped him, Hae-gang turned and began walking toward the door.
“Whether you age or what you eat—what does it matter? You’re the one who just can’t let a day pass without nagging, as if thorns would grow on your tongue, the one who went and saved me. Just don’t eat anything that makes you more cantankerous.”
“Can—cantankerous?! I ask how much I ever said to be accused of nagging and taking credit for saving Your Highness!”
At Hae-gang’s words as he reached the door and turned back, Seolyong finally snapped, leaping to his feet to protest. But Hae-gang promptly opened the door and fled outside.
“Don’t run! You’ve already strained yourself today—your heat could flare up!”
Seolyong shouted at Hae-gang’s retreating back down the corridor. The nagging was the same after fourteen years, and the joys and sorrows Seolyong felt were the same.
And Seolyong had thought Go Hae-gang would stay the same too—but the time was approaching when even he, that water brimming full and boiling, would flow on with fate. He only prayed it wouldn’t become too great a river’s flood.
“*Haa…*”
On a stretch of corridor not far from the banquet hall, Hae-gang stood bent over with one hand braced against the wall. With every breath he exhaled, a heat so fierce it deserved the name “fire” poured from his mouth.
A few quick steps couldn’t do this to him. Something was wrong—he felt strongly that something was going awry.
“*Hngh—!*”
This time Hae-gang let out a pained moan amid his hot breaths. His belly tightened, and he felt a fireball churning inside him, boiling fiercely. That heat rose from his lower abdomen to his solar plexus and struck his chest like a blow. This time he could scarcely exhale properly even with his mouth working.
It was as if his breath had been choked off. His eyes flew wide open, unable even to close his gaping mouth; his mouth went parched, and a stiff ache tugged at the back of his neck. He felt as though he might suffocate on his own heat.
“Y-Your… Highness?”
It was when Hae-gang had raised his free hand and clutched at his chest as if to wring it. His heart hammered on while the fireball churned through his insides, as if it might explode and burst his chest open—he had no mind to notice someone approaching.
Someone’s hand touched Hae-gang’s arm. And the very next moment, the stranger gave a *heek!* of surprise, snatched his hand away, and scurried back. As if he’d burned his hand on fire.
The still-youthful young man, without a moment to steady his startled heart, met Hae-gang’s turning gaze and felt an eerie chill crawl up his spine, beginning to tremble. Instinctively he thought he had to flee, but fear gripped him so hard he could barely take a step.
“A-are you… all right? Shall I… fetch someone?”
The youth forced out the words with what courage he could muster. His voice was thin and hoarse enough to inspire pity.
He himself was in a great fluster. He had no idea what was going on. There, somewhere at the end of the corridor, he’d chanced to catch a bewitching fragrance. Drawn by its intensity—so strong that a single breath sent shivers through his whole body and weakened his knees—he had come this far.
Yet who would have thought the beautiful prince would be at the end of it. *What a beautiful person, and what a scent—strong enough to snatch a man’s soul clean away,* he had thought, right up until he laid his hand on the prince’s arm. And even that could hardly be called his own willful thought. It was as natural as instinct; his consciousness drifted of its own accord, as though spellbound, and the moment his hand touched that luscious thing, the pull turned its face into fear.
Hae-gang was not the prince he had seen at the banquet earlier. It was as if the man who’d made everyone gasp—as though he might become a beauty to topple nations—wearing that radiant, flowerlike, captivating smile, had been a phantom from a dream.
His face was still beautiful. Yes, beautiful. And all the more fearful for it. As if this were the form the god of death would take to bewitch men.
The youth was an eumin. That was why he’d been entranced by the yangin scent Hae-gang was uncontrollably leaking and come this far—and why, upon facing its true substance, he’d been overwhelmed by such powerful yang energy. Even now his knees weakened and he felt that thrill. But it was no longer pleasant; it was sliding into pain and excessive tension.
This was exactly what they meant when they said ordinary eumin could barely even give off a scent before Hae-gang’s yang energy. No—right now was far worse.
“No need.”
Slowly, very slowly, Hae-gang straightened his upper body and spat a single word. To the youth, white and terror-stricken, it was as good as a sentence of release.
The youth hesitated, then in an instant turned and fled. And Hae-gang, paying him no mind, began to walk as well.
He knew where he had to go. Just as he knew very well what the one thing he needed was.
In one corner of the still-bustling banquet hall, Seolyong entered at a hurried pace. He quickly scanned the room, but of course the person he sought was nowhere to be seen.
Of course he wasn’t. A man unable to master his yang energy, leaking yangin scent in streams, would hardly walk into a place this crowded. Go Hae-gang was no such fool. Still, he’d come here on the chance—yet confirming his absence, he felt relieved.
Seolyong had finished Hae-gang’s examination and left the inner quarters for his own room. He’d never cared for banquets, and Hae-gang’s condition had shown no unusual signs, so he’d thought to wind down the day. But after he’d gone a ways—just as he reached his room—he felt a strange tremor in the air, and his head slowly turned somewhere. Toward the banquet hall in the distance, brightly lit as day and still noisy.
His Highness’s signs are not good.
Seolyong sensed at once that something was off. It was strange for someone who’d been fine moments ago to change so suddenly, but in truth such volatility was not so unfamiliar to Seolyong. It might have been a long time.
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