Having gone without treatment for more than two weeks, the burning pain should rightly have occurred. And yet… now that he had noticed it, the pain that should have blazed up only flickered, as though about to rise and yet not quite doing so. But it could not take hold of his body.

'Your Highness. This is not a pain that truly exists — it is, in a manner of speaking, a kind of hallucination. The only path to escaping the suffering is to master the mind's core.'

A scoff tried to rise within him. His head clearly throbbed, his body was heavy, the sleeplessness was still there, and his hands and feet were numb — yet the pain that had come stabbing through his entire body the moment treatment was delayed even slightly was faint.

"Sir?"

At the questioning voice, he raised his eyes — and Yunseo's clear face, looking at him with concern, filled his vision. In that instant, an intense yearning ignited a fire in his heart.

He wanted to take him.

He was the Son of Heaven — there ought to be nothing under the sky he could not have. What reason was there that he could not take him? Even if he were nothing but an ordinary man and not an Eternal Spring Flower, if he wanted him, he should be his. If that were impossible, then rather…

"Are you all right?"

Watching Yunseo take a step closer with a worried look, Hwi hid his hand behind his back. The clear, sparkling eyes filled with light flowed gently down over him. A vivid mark was left in their path, and his heart throbbed with hot beats in response.

"Where are you headed?"

"Pardon?"

"I am asking where you intend to go when you leave this country."

"…I am planning to go to Araksa."

Yunseo answered honestly with a look of puzzlement. Araksa. Hwi kept clenching and unclenching his fist as he asked.

"Why Araksa?"

"Well… I've heard it's a very free country. They say that ability matters more than the station one is born to, and that if you develop yourself steadily and work hard, you can do anything."

Was that truly so? Innocence untouched by reality was naivety. He had also heard things about Araksa. It was no paradise, and if someone set out with such a naive hope, there would surely come a day they stumbled.

The selfish desire to tell him the blunt truth and crush those hopes before they could grow squirmed along with his sacred energy. Just as Hwi drove his numbing fingertips into his palm, Yunseo scattered his smile and lowered his eyes shyly.

"Of course, I would need to work a hundred times harder than anyone — so it won't be easy."

A quiet breath slipped from between his lips. Hwi's hand fell limply to his side.

That light exists because it is there. To want it meant he had to let it go. But rather… Hwi slowly lowered his eyelids, as though killing the desire that surged within him.

* * *

The insides of his eyeballs were dry and aching. The headaches were worsening from the lack of treatment. The pain was far too familiar to make a fuss over, so it was nothing. But still…

Smashing that fool's hand in front of Yunseo had been an excessive thing to do. He could not deny that one of the reasons he had failed to contain that momentarily violent impulse was the poison building inside him and seeping out its malignant energy.

"You seem to have a great deal of work? It seems to me that you hardly rest at all."

Hwi set down his teacup and looked into Yunseo's eyes as though digging into them. The fear that had fleetingly colored Yunseo's eyes was gone without a trace. He had been lost in thought on the way here — but now those eyes held nothing but concern for Hwi.

It seemed the harsh words he had thrown at Yunseo earlier had been shaken off already. Whenever he sensed Yunseo's pure and blind trust and his seeming indestructibility, a faint wonder would come over him.

In any case, the fact that Yunseo had noticed his state was something he needed to keep in mind. The burning pain having vanished was enough that he could endure trivial discomfort like this and the sleeplessness as much as he pleased — but the time had come to take in hand what he had been putting off.

Since he was moving with Yunseo while also conducting inspections, none of the Yongrin questioned why the covert journey was growing long — but a few of them, even if they said nothing, seemed curious about what would be done with Yunseo.

If they all found out about the conflict raging violently inside him, there would be resistance. And if, in the end, Yunseo left this country and the fact that he had tacitly permitted it somehow leaked out, the reverberations of that would not be something he could ignore either.

Controlling them so they would not raise objections and silencing them was not difficult — but the internal unrest among the Yongrin who had watched the current proceedings unfolding was something he absolutely could not control. The relationship between Yongrin and Eternal Spring Flowers, the system and the framework that bound them, all of it — everything could be shaken to its very roots — and so, as the Son of Heaven of a nation, he had to make the right choice.

All of this had to end as nothing more than a whim of his, a passing diversion. Regardless of his own feelings or Yunseo's protective star, it was right to take him back to the imperial palace.

And yet…

"Why not? Even if His Majesty the Emperor does not wish to be in that position — he has the right to cast off his shackles, too."

At the unexpected words, his breath nearly stopped. Hwi collected himself and responded calmly, but paid close attention to his own heart beating heavily and surging. He knew perfectly well that Yunseo could neither feel nor hear it — yet like a foolish, artless creature, he studied Yunseo's expression.

A sudden tingling in his chest — and at the same time, some indeterminate place itched. What a naive thing to say, he thought, almost scoffing — and yet he could not take his eyes off those clear, earnest eyes that believed and pleaded what they said with wholehearted sincerity.

"A child of twelve had to go toward the Hell's Gate. The future of this nation depended on that child. Even if he wanted to run away — even if he still feels that way to this day — who could blame him? We all owe our lives to His Majesty. How could one ask their savior, who pulled them from the water, to hand over their bundle?"

No one would say this. Not even he himself, the very person it concerned. Of course not. How could one permit the supreme sovereign of this nation, the dragon-descendant chosen by the Dragon God, to take a step back?

'You must keep your wits about you. From now on, every choice the Crown Prince makes will become the path of this nation.'

After confirming his father's death, his mother — who had barely managed to compose herself — had grabbed him by the shoulders and pressed those words into him, chewing them as though gnashing her teeth. He still remembered it with vivid clarity — the trembling of the fingers that had dug into his flesh, and the very grip of them.

Twelve — after bidding farewell to his father and ascending the throne, Hwi had to face countless eyes. Eyes that probed with anxiety and concern, eyes of greedy men watching for a gap to exploit, eyes of those who could lay down everything at the mere existence of a dragon-descendant and worshipped him.

The great cage of gazes was this very nation, and within it Hwi existed only as Emperor — choosing and forging every path he would walk. Even in this very moment, Hwi could not simply remain as Hwi alone, and so he could never agree with Yunseo's words.

"You seem as though you pity the current Emperor."

In Yunseo's clouding expression, Hwi confirmed the sympathy and sense of kinship Yunseo felt toward the Emperor.

"How could the likes of me pity the Son of Heaven? But many others will feel the same way. That the road was too cruel for a child of twelve."

A child who had lived a life not so different from his own was pitying him. Suddenly the tip of his tongue turned sweet. So intensely sweet it was frightening — that he might become addicted to it.

A thought — utterly pathetic and yet fragile — rose like a heat shimmer.

If only — just once — he could take a step as a single human being, not as the Emperor of Daeryeong…

He wanted to set free the man before him. He wanted to preserve that light intact.

He had lived his entire life as an emperor, and had to go on living as one. But a child who had been forced to live bent and buried because of him, and who still pitied him despite it all — the first and only person who understood him — surely he deserved at least the right to let go of one thing?

As he was about to tie the knot on that fevered resolve, the sacred energy that had been quietly holding its breath began to simmer and sizzle.

Even the mere thought of Yunseo building a life of his own in a place without him made his heart rage with scorching intensity. No matter what life the man before him went on to live, he himself would never be able to see it.

Those willful, upright eyes that refused to believe he was wrong. That clear and gentle yet resolute voice. And the tentative, approaching fingertips that had given him warmth that seemed as though it would never end.

"So, Yuna. Do not pity me."

"…"

"When you pity the wrong person given your circumstances, it has a way of catching you by the ankle."

Even as he fixed Yunseo in his gaze as though about to snatch him up in an instant, Hwi released the tension in his hand where the tendons had swelled. The contradictory emotions and strange desires racing at opposite extremes crashed and struck sparks.

And so the words he had given to Yunseo were no different from a rein holding himself in check. He did not want to be held by a feeling whose shape he could not yet be certain of — that was true of him too.

'Is it not the case that sometimes one curses the sun simply because it is blinding? It is like that.'

But the gentle and yet fierce answer Yunseo gave in return softly laid to rest all that had been boiling — and Hwi simply… smiled, helplessly.

"Not just the appearance, but every single dish is truly delicious. You must be a gourmet, sir. Everywhere we stop, the food is this good — I don't know how."

He had been sunk into gloom from the conversation just before, yet the moment food entered his mouth, color returned to his face. Yunseo knew how to shake off bad things and smile, and never collapsed where he fell — it was as though light always flowed along his edges.

Hwi watched that flow quietly, then pushed the bowl of sweet braised food in front of him toward Yunseo. Yunseo shot a glance at Hwi, then curled the corner of his mouth in a grin and brought his chopsticks to it.