↳ in which the promise of everything isn’t always enough
↳ prince!jinyoung au bc i’m original
↳ angst
↳ “is it so bad to want a simple life?”
I had my eyes set outside the palace walls for years. Mother never let a day pass without reminding me of what a peculiar case I was. The entire world was trying to find a way in, and I was perched on the railing of a balcony, patiently waiting for my way out. My twenty-first birthday was on the horizon. Only then could I slip away in the nighttime shadows—a perfect plan. A painless plan. For the most part.
Most of the laymen vying for a chance to slip through the gates were after one of two things: Jinyoung’s crown, or his heart. Both were priceless artifacts made of gold, and both had been promised to me some years ago.
“You’ll be my queen someday,” he whispered for the first time in between crowded moments of open-mouthed kissing on his bed, his fingertips hidden in my hair. He tried to hide our affair at first, expected to marry nobility or better yet, a royal from another kingdom, but his roaming eyes gave him away before too long. Any time I entered a room, regardless of his company, he lost his train of thought and chose subconsciously to focus solely on me. His parents were no fools. They discovered their son’s intent to marry a common maid, and unfortunately for me, they didn’t mind. I had spent countless hours as the queen’s aide and sewn a number of her gowns. She adored me as she adored her own two daughters, both of whom had been married into neighboring kingdoms.
Even more unfortunate: I loved Jinyoung, too, but I refused to ascend the throne.
I never told him. It’s a wonder he never found out on his own, given the number of occasions he found me hanging halfway off the balcony in my room, chuckling as he warned me not to fall over the edge. I didn’t mention how I had been imagining myself with wings to carry me over the city and drop me in the middle of town square with nothing but a pocket holding a few dollars and eyes holding the stars. Only there would I be happy. Only there would I feel full, even if that meant emptying Jinyoung’s heart of all its contents.
He would love again. Or he wouldn’t. Regardless, I wouldn’t be around to witness his heartache.
“You’re a coward for not telling him,” Mark scowled at me three days before my birthday. I had no siblings, but Mark did an excellent job filling in as the concerned older brother. If only he was as skilled at minding his own business.
“What difference does it make? Our hearts break either way. You think a sentimental goodbye makes the least bit of difference? You should know better,” I challenged. “I will spend my birthday with him as if it’s any other day, and after the required festivities, I will slip out the back doors. I’ve already told Jackson to expect me, and the decision is final.”
“If you loved him like you say, you’d confront him face-to-face,” Mark muttered.
“I know you’re upset I’m leaving,” I said. He cast his gaze away from me, staring at the walls covered in artwork hundreds—some thousands—of years old. I didn’t belong among the faces painted there. “But please don’t hate me now. You’re my best friend, and I’ll have enough people drawing targets on my back after all is said and done.”
He didn’t answer, so I retreated and found myself in the gardens with a sweater pulled over my shoulders, the sun lazing behind a swath of clouds. I asked for a week free of my typical responsibilities leading up to my birthday, and the king and queen agreed graciously. Anything for their future daughter-in-law. They would be angry with my choice, but it was not unlawful to break the prince’s heart. (I had checked.) Thus, they could not track me down in my new life.
I spent the next few hours smelling the flowers, sitting on benches, and accepting that I probably wouldn’t return to the gardens in my lifetime. The following days would be too busy for me to return, so I savored the aching redolence of the times I had spent there. When we were kids, Jinyoung and I would play hide and seek in the flower bushes, but as we grew older he liked to explain why the garden was filled with such flowers.
Dahlias were for elegance and dignity, a staple in any royal garden as well as our nation’s flower. The royal family wore them to every celebration our kingdom held. Carnations for pride and beauty. They reminded me most of Jinyoung, the most proud and beautiful man there ever was. He claimed I reminded him most of the purple tulips symbolic of forever love. Still his favorites were the snapdragons: desire. Sometimes he would send a dozen to my room after not seeing one another the entire day, and I would meet him in his soon after.
The castle was filled with beauty I’d never find elsewhere, which made it the perfect place for a prince like Jinyoung but also a place I would never belong.
I was not elegant, nor dignified. I was grit—mud between my toes after a thunderous downpour, and broken bones after believing I could ride a horse bareback despite the stable boy pleading me not to, and finishing my tasks in the latest hours of the night even though I had been told to have them finished the previous afternoon.
I would fit in like a puzzle piece among shouting street vendors and unshaven street buskers giving their heart and soul for a few extra dollars. I would fit in with the latest town gossip over whose divorce was being finalized and who had gotten kicked out of the bakery after flirting too brazenly with the owner’s daughter. They’d become my people, and they would welcome me with arms stretched wide, asking where I hailed from. I hadn’t yet decided if I’d tell the truth or live my days shrouded by mystery. Both options made my skin buzz in anticipation.
But his lips on mine after dinner during our stroll through the spacious halls served as a constant and painful reminder of what I first had to walk out on. No more being pushed behind the nearest marble statue or Jinyoung tugging my arm to pull me into a secluded corner. After spending all his days with his shoulders back and his chin up, the idea of not having to be so poised exhilarated him. He waited impatiently for the moment he could pull me aside, hidden in plain sight, and leave with his tie loose around his neck while he refastened the top buttons of his shirt. The maids in charge of his makeup and clothing for the day would swat me on the arm for sucking purple bruises into the unblemished skin of his neck, but it wasn’t my fault his skin glistened like honey and tasted twice as sweet. Besides, in two days, there would never be a trace of me to find on his skin again.
I had two more days to spend in the castle,
On the morning of my birthday, he woke me up earlier than I preferred, but he made up for it with chaste pecks to my lips and a breakfast tray including all of my favorite foods, from strawberries to toast covered in powdered sugar. On the side, in a slender vase, there was a single purple tulip. Forever love. Turns out forever isn’t as long as he thought. I thanked him and proceeded to eat with my heart in my throat. He sat next to me, detailing all of the plans for our day together while I nodded, grateful that I wasn’t expected to reply through mouthfuls of food.
First, he took me to the theater for a private showing of my favorite play. I may not have been the most refined woman in the castle, but my love of Lysistrata preceded me. Even Jinyoung struggled with the language of some parts, his eyebrows creased while I laughed along. Except this time. I forced breathy, god-awful laughs from my lungs in hopes he would be too dreamy-eyed to notice.
Not to say I didn’t revel in my last day. I did. Afterwards, we ate lunch in the company of my dearest friends. Jinyoung was on my left, my mother to my right, and Mark and Jackson across from me, as well as a few other maids and the stable boy, Youngjae. Mark glowered at me every few moments, but Jackson took the liberty of stamping on his foot and mouthing at him to stop sulking.
At sunset, Jinyoung brought me to the stables. We saddled our two horses, mine dark and his light, another sign of our differences that was so plain to me and overlooked by him, and he led us to the top of the hill just by the eastern wing of the castle. The sky put on its best display for my final night, exploding in hues of orange and red and pink until the sun dipped behind a far off mountain. The colors in the sky diminished to a dull gray which darkened in shade with each passing minute. When it faded to black, it would be my time to depart.
He asked me to stay the night with him, pressing his mouth to my collarbone, but I feigned exhaustion. “Maybe tomorrow,” I suggested into the shell of his ear. The lie spun in sharp coils in the air for several moments, striking me only when I walked away from him.
I packed a brown leather bag full of everything I needed for the journey into town. It was only twenty-or-so miles away. Nothing I was intimidated by, but I stocked a few bottles of water and cans of perishables, as well as all the money I had saved and a couple changes of clothes. The only photograph I grabbed was one of me and my mother, who showed up for a teary-eyed goodbye but didn’t stay long. For better or worse, she accepted the person I chose to be.
I flipped my hood so that it covered my forehead and pulled a mask over my chin and mouth, leaving nothing but my eyes exposed. My bedroom door closed with a faint click, and I tiptoed down the stairs and around the first level of the castle until I reached the back doors from which I would make my exit. Jackson would be waiting for my arrival.
The two doors, arched and at least ten feet tall, were unguarded. My hairs stood on my neck. “Jackson?” I hissed. “If this is one of your childish games, I’m still leaving.”
“I told him to take the night off,” came a voice, deep and familiar, but not Jackson’s. No one knew the castle’s crevices quite like Jinyoung, and out he stepped from the blackened corner. His silk shirt caught the light, graceful as ever.
I placed one hand on the door handle. All I had to do was push it open and run and he’d never see me again, but he had always been faster than me as teenagers. Did I take the risk? Would he chase me and demand an explanation, or would he let me go?
In my time spent weighing my options, I didn’t realize how close he was until he laid his hand over mine, his eyes boring into my own. We had been born in the same castle, paced the same grounds every day, broken the same bread and slept in the same bed, but bystander’s would’ve believed he was staring into the soul of a complete stranger.
“What’re you doing here?” he asked. His hesitant fingers reached for my face, pulling the mask down under my chin and removing my hood. I expected to hear the rapid pounding of his heart, or maybe it had stopped altogether.
“What’re you doing here?” I repeated.
“After you declined my offer to spend the night, Mark found me. He said you were leaving tonight out the back exit, and Jackson was meeting you,” he said. I had half a mind to break into Mark’s room and strangle him. “He told me if I met you, you’d shed some more light on the situation, so I told Jackson to have some rest. I’ve been waiting here ever since.”
How does one explain to their lover of three years that they’ve been planning a covert escape for half of their life? How did I look into a face crafted by artisans and reach into his chest until his heart shattered at my fingertips?
“I have to go,” I answered. My decision wasn’t one stemmed from mere want, but necessity.
“Go where? Why? If someone threatened you, there are places I can take you for your safety. You can’t go wandering out in the middle of the night and—”
“Jinyoung,” I interrupted, pleading. “No one is threatening me, but I have to leave.”
“I don’t understand,” he said. How he could be so smart and so oblivious wrapped in one was well beyond me. “When are you coming back?”
The words swirled on my tongue, and with them came the urge to vomit. “I’m not.”
Breathing the words into existence all but knocked him onto his side. He couldn’t even look at me while his thoughts reeled and his jaw grew slack. Worst of all were his eyes, clouded by droplets.
“I’ve…I’ve known for years,” I admitted. “I don’t have a place here. That isn’t your fault.”
“You do have a place here,” he babbled, grasping both of my hands and pressing them to his chest. “Next to me, remember? I’m going to make you my queen someday. Are you afraid you can’t be queen because you weren’t born noble? Because you’ll learn.”
“I’m not afraid of the throne, but I do know it wasn’t meant for me,” I said before he could embarrass himself with his weepy questions.
“But—but I can…” he trailed off, searching the empty foyer for nothing that could change my mind. “This is the most beautiful place and the kingdom, and I can offer anything and everything you want. Why choose to live in town when you’re surrounded by all of this?” He gestured around him, indicating the entire palace, but all I saw was empty air.
“Is it so bad to want a simple life?” I asked. “I don’t need all of this, and I’d love all the things you could offer, but the one thing you can’t offer me is a life in town.”
“We’ll build a house there,” he suggested. “We’ll build and spend our summers there. Picture it. And whenever we have kids, we can take them, and have day trips to the beach, and we’ll be happy. Isn’t that simple enough?”
“For three months out of the year, maybe, but then I have to spend the other three-quarters of my life training for a position I’m ill-equipped for. Your parents hardly have a moment in the day to exhale, so imagine me in their shoes,” I scoffed at the mere consideration. “And children? I’m everything but your typical, nurturing type.”
“I’ll abdicate the throne, then,” he proposed. “I’ll talk with my mother and father in the morning, and I’ll tell them I want to pursue a new life. With you, as a common man. I…I’m a pretty good baker. We could open a shop, and you can be whoever you want to be.”
“Do you hear yourself?” I asked. I wasn’t sure he could amidst his shallow breaths and intervals of choking down tears. “Abdicate? Your sisters are married. You’re the only heir left.”
“That doesn’t matter. One of my cousins will—”
“You love being prince,” I reminded him. He had been born with the innate desire to lead. From the time he was ten years old, even the harshest newspaper columnists were already lauding him for his manners and diplomatic tendencies. “You love your people and learning and growing, and in return they praise you. That’s more than so many other princes can say.”
“I love you,” he said. “Others can take my position. The crown is only a crown, but you—”
“I am only a girl,” I interrupted, placing my hands on either of his cheeks. They were wet, and fresh tears tickled my fingers and trickled down the back of my hand. “The crown is yours, and you are irreplaceable. No one else can be the king that you will be.”
“Please—don’t you love me?” he asked, and then, more desperate: “Have you ever loved me?”
“I have loved you for as long as I have known your name,” I said. “I’ll never love a man like you again, but in due time, we’ll fall again, and whoever does become your queen—”
“Don’t talk like that.” He reverted into a mind of disbelief. “If you love me, stay for another day, and we’ll arrange something. Please. Don’t make me live without you.”
“If you love me, close your eyes,” I said. He shook his head. My eyes fell on his exposed neck, where two-day old purple bites faded to sallow yellow. Reminders of me would follow him everywhere, but they would fade as well. His skin would change back to honey, and his smile would return, all in the numbered days.
“Then close your eyes,” I repeated gently. This time, he listened. He tried to grasp my hands as I removed them from his face, but my fingertips slipped through his with ease. I touched the cool metal of the door handle again.
“Wait, I still have questions.”
“Mark will answer them. Or my mother. She’s known far longer than anyone.” I pulled the door open, greeted by the breeze and blackness of the hour. Jinyoung kept his eyes closed.
“Stay with me a few more minutes.”
“A few minutes only delays the inevitable. I’m sorry. I hope you don’t hate me.” I glanced down to check that my bag was still slung over my shoulder.
“What do you want from me? There has to be something I can give.”
“Tell me you love me.” In one step, I slipped out the door, holding it open for another moment. Jinyoung stood just outside my line of sight. I tried not to think of him as I last saw him, but instead as the elegant and beautiful prince of dahlias and carnations.
The door fell shut behind me.
a/n: i actually posted something i wrote!! please enjoy! -ren
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