The group crossing from the forest drew ever closer, and not far away, a small presence was also felt. Hwi focused on those footsteps and then in an instant emerged and looked around at the bandits who had surrounded him.

The bandits checked Hwi's attire and chattered excitedly. But their voices faded in the approach of the coming presence. The sound of stealthy movement clearly traced the space behind that tree. The child was there. To keep him from being caught up in this commotion at the very least……

"They say you reap what you sow — it seems you lot have no fear."

Why are you not going?

He had gone to the trouble of drawing attention, and yet instead of moving, that presence had stopped. Whether frozen in fright or having missed the right moment to flee he could not tell, but Hwi spoke once more.

"Making an example of you here will ensure no more victims are made."

It was not idle talk. Encountering these vermin here was a stroke of luck. Had he not come across them, he would not have known they were running rampant. He was thinking that he should deal with them directly and find out why they had not been suppressed until now, when —

"Stop!"

A clear voice came urgently from beyond that tree. The bandits' gazes snapped toward where the sound had come from. Hwi's brow twitched.

"My manservant has gone to the local government office to report your crimes! The soldiers will arrive shortly — do not add to your offenses!"

Does he think such a bluff will work? What a truly troublesome nuisance.

A young lord who does not know how the world works. But having a sense of chivalry, his adjustment to Yeonwiwon might not be difficult. Hwi assessed dispassionately and then drew a dagger from his breast and flung it toward the bandit approaching the child.

"Urk!"

He had tried to avoid bloodshed, but there was no helping it. Judging it was better not to show the young lord a more unsightly scene than this, he subdued the bandits without drawing his sword.

"Ah……"

He was returning his sword to his hip, looking around at the pathetically easily felled bandits, when a small exclamation was heard. He turned his head, and beyond a tree trunk, the child and his eyes met.

A face like moonlight reflected gracefully on a lake. Eyes as clear as the voice, sparkling with a transparent wetness as though holding moisture. The child — no longer small enough to be called a child, yet still bearing traces of youth. Scanning the pale soft cheeks with baby fat still on them and the parted lips, Hwi threw out a word as though to wake himself up.

"Your courage is admirable."

So Yunseo.

Hwi recalled the child's name. Perhaps he had seen it in passing in the register? Or perhaps it had been mixed in among the court eunuch's words? The source was unknown, but seeing that face, a name buried in memories long past came back clearly.

Yunseo told lies with remarkable ease. Only, he could not hide the crude signs — a single held breath or a wetting of lips with his tongue before speaking a falsehood. Still, most people would be easily fooled, bewitched by that clear, bright, and guileless face.

"But…… what do you trust in me that you would travel with me?"

Having been on guard even to the point of prying into his name when first meeting him, yet the moment he thought his doubts were resolved, he exposed his soft underbelly without caution.

The innocence of one who had not even the thought that someone might deliberately deceive him. Unexpectedly…… a cold heat like fury enclosed his heart and seethed.

Would this child become his match, as his subordinates had once hoped?

There was no longer any expectation. With Yunseo's blooming being unexpectedly long delayed, Hwi had completely erased even the tiny remnant of expectation. He would occasionally ask about whether the child had bloomed, but even that — once adulthood had passed — he paid no further attention to.

But if someone up there was playing tricks and this child truly was his match.

"Close your eyes and rest. We have a long way to go — it would be better to conserve your strength."

At the post station when they arrived, Yunseo, who had been visibly anxious while trying not to show it, regained his composure once he had accepted Hwi's lie. He could even throw a sharp remark at Hwi with spirit. And now he was sleeping comfortably with just one word.

Hwi stared at Yunseo's clear sleeping face as though about to see through it.

If this child were his match.

Checking right now would be simple enough. He only had to reach out immediately and draw forth this child's guardian star to determine if it was compatible with his. But Hwi merely stayed still, continuing to gaze.

His fingertips tingled. His arm suddenly throbbed, but he could not tell if it was hallucination or real pain.

To think that this endless, terrible, terrible pain could be ended under a single person's hand.

The blazing contradiction — hoping that he was his Yeongchunhwa, and yet hoping he was not — sparked fiercely and urged his pulse. At its end, Hwi was seized by a savage impulse wanting to snap that child's neck on the spot.

Would he too, for a single drop more of his — of the Yeongchunhwa's — guardian star, thirst and beg with ugly desperation? And thereby cast off this long-persisting, vicious pain — which had been ignited close to twenty years ago — by making it into something without form?

If this child who is running from me is my match.

The hand with tendons fiercely raised spread wide and then contracted repeatedly. He could not tell if he wanted to kill him outright, wanting to hold no miracle in his hand, or if he wanted to seize his guardian star by force.

Hwi recognized with cold reason that the emotion arising now was merely the abnormal and violent impulse of a Yongrin that originated from the poison. In any case, this collision too would surely end in a meaningless kick. There was no way his match would appear at this point.

At a signal tapping on the carriage wall, Hwi barely pulled his gaze from Yunseo.

"We are going to Seonju Fortress."

He would take the Yongrin along to do a tour of inspection, and for this child…… one night's outing would be enough.

Thud, thud, thud.

The sound of a head bumping against the carriage wall again drew Hwi's attention. Thud, thud, thud. The sound of Yunseo's heart beating tickled his ear with an off-rhythm. Hwi listened to that sound and then took off the robe he was wearing and tucked it under Yunseo's head as a pillow.

After walking for only a short while and then having the following presence cut off — it was no different from taking a young child along — Hwi turned his head and discovered Yunseo standing blankly staring at something.

Following his gaze, there was a vendor selling confections. Wondering if he had truly been captivated by a mere confection, while observing him, Yunseo suddenly bowed his head and buried his nose in his forearm. As though…… sniffing.

Hwi watched Yunseo's behavior and then approached. He bought a great armful of confections and handed them to him, and though Yunseo pretended otherwise, color came to his face. Hwi's gaze drew to the moving lips that made sticky sounds as they chewed.

He is acting as though he is eating confections for the first time. Deputy Minister So is not a stingy man who would scrimp on food. No, rather than eating for the first time, that is……

Setting aside the suspicion and walking on, Hwi did not take his attention off Yunseo's reactions. He was looking around with an excited face sparkling as though he were seeing all of this for the first time. His mouth says otherwise but he is lying again.

'Even if your young mistress had died, you could have entrusted yourself to that household.'

'There is nothing more that I cherish in that household.'

What was the reason for setting out on the road, even killing himself, even abandoning his family? This child was no mere pampered young lord. He had set out fully knowing what lay at the end of this road.

When tears ran down the cheek of the eyes that had been sparkling with life, Hwi felt his fingertips tingling again. He had water in his clear eyes but Yunseo was not someone who suited tears.

"It seems you are a man of feeling after all, and a beauty's performance moved your heart."

Having said something uncharacteristically inane, he felt needlessly uncomfortable. Hwi got up and headed toward the inn.

It was an inn acquired with internal treasury funds to gather the countless information coming and going. In the beginning there had been a heavy outlay, but the profits earned here had filled that gap back in, making it a useful purse in many ways.

Spending a night here was a first for Hwi as well. Hwi gave Yunseo an appropriate excuse and stepped outside.

"Find out the circumstances of why the So court noble made his escape. And, bring yungiго.*"

It took not even a full hour for a Yongrin to find out Yunseo's circumstances at the So household.

"According to the household servants, the court noble was not allowed to step even one foot outside the house, outside the inner quarters, after he sprouted. It is said that under the Deputy Minister's extremely strict management, he received only education aimed at ascending to the Empress's seat. They said there was even a time he went out on his own and was struck for it — so it seems the Deputy Minister treated the court noble rather harshly."

Hwi quietly absorbed what the Yongrin had relayed, then rose holding the medicine Jeongjoo had brought.

*Author's note: 윤기고 (潤肌膏) = a type of ointment applied to the skin.