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The sheets had not simply lost their dignity— they had been thoroughly undone.
What once lay smooth and untouched, arranged with the quiet precision expected of palace chambers, now bore the unmistakable aftermath of something far less refined. Creases ran wild across the fabric, the huge blanket twisted in quiet protest, caught between two stubborn wills that had refused to yield over something so trivial and yet, somehow, so fiercely contested.
“I concede,” Seong Huiju declared at last, her voice rich with theatrical yet sarcastic exhaustion as she collapsed onto her side, one hand thrown over her brow as though she had survived something far more tragic than a tug-of-war over bedding. “You win, Jaga. You have triumphed. A historic victory, I’m sure. I trust the palace archives will preserve this moment for generations.”
She let the words linger, indulgent, expectant— waiting, perhaps, for a reaction (correction: rebuttal) worthy of her performance.
Prince I-An did not rush to give her one.
He exhaled instead, a quiet, measured breath that barely disturbed the air, as though he were steadying himself against something far more serious than her dramatics. His hand moved to the blanket she had surrendered, smoothing its edge with a kind of absent precision, pressing it flat as though restoring order to even this small corner of chaos.
“You were the one who started it.”
His voice was even, unmoved by her exaggeration, feigning to be untouched by the absurdity of the situation. It slipped easily into the silence, calm in a way that felt almost deliberate.
Huiju cracked one eye open, unimpressed. “And you were the one who refused to lose gracefully.”
“I did not refuse,” he responded, and though his tone remained controlled, there was the rise beneath it— a lift, a challenged scoff threading through his words as if betraying him just enough to be noticed. “I simply," an abrupt pause in his words, as though he just internally grasped his brief loss of composure, "... did not lose.”
And with that, he leaned back into the pillows slowly, closing his eyes as though the matter had already been settled beyond dispute. As though he had not, mere seconds ago, been engaged in a battle over a blanket with a woman who refused to be outmatched. His composure returned to him seamlessly, nevertheless, settling into place like it had never once slipped.
Huiju stared at him longer than she should have. Her lips parted, then pressed together again, her gaze narrowing in the dim light.
“Unbelievable,” she muttered with a scoff of her own, turning her head away with a flick of her hair as though denying him even the satisfaction of her attention.
And with that, silence fell upon them at last. Not empty, yet not entirely comfortable either. It was quite something; it lingered between them, stretched thin across the small distance their earlier chaos had failed to restore.
Huiju finds that the palace at night had a way of amplifying such silences. Without movement, without voices echoing through its corridors, even the smallest shift in presence felt deliberate. Observed. As if the walls themselves had learned to listen and watch, holding every sound, every breath with quiet patience.
There was nothing left to distract her now. No argument to sustain, no movement to disguise the stillness settling around them. Only the faint rhythm of breathing—hers, his—and the undeniable awareness of where she was.
Her fingers curled slightly into the cover, pulling it closer again, more out of self-consciousness than necessity.
Absurd. The word settled in her mind without ceremony. This entire ordeal was just absurd.
Her life had never been this… unstructured. Even in its chaos, there had always been intention. Every glance she provoked, every rumor she allowed to spread, and every bold move she made have always served a purpose. There had always been a direction, something to gain. Something to prove.
She had never acted blindly. That was what she firmly believed set her apart from everyone who thought her reckless and looked down on her.
And yet— Her gaze drifted, unfocused in the dim lighting.
Yet here she was in the bed of the oh-so-beloved Grand Prince of 21st Century South Korea. Hair undone, patience worn thin, dignity balanced precariously on the edge with something else she refused to name. Huiju let out a quiet breath, her lips pressing together to prevent herself from barking out an incredulous laugh.
You've truly outdone yourself this time Seong Huiju. It was impressive even for her. Efficient, even.
But this is good, she reminded herself, the thought firm, deliberate. This is exactly what you wanted, and so far everything's gone according to plan, hasn't it? Well, save for your in-laws and palace political affairs. But that's a problem for the next day.
A contract. A status. A future that forced the world to look at her differently, whether they liked it or not. Of course, it was purely strategic on her part. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Nothing—
Her thoughts shifted. Not abruptly, not violently, but with a slow, creeping awareness that made itself known before she could dismiss it again.
She shifted her arm without thinking, a careless adjustment born from habit rather than intention, and in doing so, her sleeve brushed against something warm—solid, unmistakably there—and the contact, fleeting as it was, did not pass through her unnoticed. It lingered like a phantom against her skin. Not just physically, but in the way her consciousness seemed to sharpen all at once, as though her senses had been quietly rearranged to accommodate the fact that this equally eccentric man was not distant, not separate, but right beside her.
Her breath faltered at a staccato rhythm, if only slightly, before she forced it back into something that felt almost deliberate. It should have been nothing. It was just a meaningless point of contact, but it refused to settle as such. Because now, for whatever reason, it had expanded, drawing her attention to everything else she had been avoiding.
The warmth did not vanish when she pulled her arm back. It remained subtle but insistent, like his scent. Like everything else about him that she had suddenly become hyper aware of this moment, threading through the narrow space between them now that the uneven barricade of pillows they had earlier was gone, haphazardly scattered around the bed. Even the mattress seemed to carry him and his big frame; the faint shift of weight compared to hers, the quiet proof that he was there in a way that could not be truly ignored or dismissed.
No, seriously, this was nothing. She was being weird over nothing.
He was just close is all. Really. Too— Huiju swallowed, her fingers tightening imperceptibly. —close.
She slapped a palm over her cheek. Thankfully, the impulsive action did not warrant a sound. Calm down! The thought came sharper this time, edged with a flicker of annoyance— at herself, at him, at this situation she was suddenly regretting a little. Come on, this is nothing. You’re Seong Huiju of Castle Beauty. She nods, pursing her lips, all while keeping her eyes closed. Her pride then surfaced instinctively, a familiar anchor. This isn’t the first time you’ve been in bed with a man; quit acting like some virgin.
That should have settled it. Should have stripped the moment of any significance, reduced it to something forgettable.
To her utter dismay, it didn't still. Because this wasn’t just any man.
This was still Prince I-An. Even in her thoughts, there was a weight to him she had no interest in acknowledging.
Gods, she had always disliked him. Or so she insisted, at least. His arrogance, his obnoxious restraint, the way he carried himself as though the world could not reach him— it had irritated her back then, during their school days. It still did.
There was something about him that just felt so annoying in a way she could not explain. And that alone had been enough to bother her then. She exhaled slowly, as if pushing all her racing thoughts away. Ridiculous Huiju. And with a quiet shift, she turned onto her other side abruptly, presenting him with nothing but her back as though respectable distance could be reclaimed through sheer will.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Her breathing eventually steadied, each inhale measured, each exhale deliberate, hoping to press her thoughts into static silence if she tried hard enough.
To stop her nostrils from intaking his scent that surrounded her. Made her dizzy.
Creed Aventus, she pouted without meaning to. Even his scent was obnoxious, much like him.
Time softened in the quiet. Minutes stretched, folding into something slower, less defined.
The thing about sleep was that it did not come easily to I-An. His mind was not one that surrendered without resistance, after all. It lingered, turned, returned to thoughts that refused to settle. Duty, expectation, the careful precarious balance of a life shaped by shakling constraints he had learned to accept.
Tonight, however, something else threaded through it. A presence, rather. He lay still, eyes opening in the dimness, listening without intending to.
Her breathing seemed steady. Untroubled.
Unaware.
He told himself to close his eyes again. To let the night pass as all others did. Without indulgence, without distraction.
Instead, he turned his head again and saw her.
His soon-to-be wife—who had spent the past week dismantling every boundary he had maintained for years—now lay fast asleep comfortably as though she had always belonged in this space beside him.
Her hair had overtaken his pillows, silken dark strands scattered without restraint, claiming territory with the same audacity she showed in everything else. One hand still weakly clutched the blanket with that stubborn insistence he had already come to recognize, her delicate fingers curled as if the earlier battle had not ended, only paused.
There was something faintly absurd about it. And yet he felt like a creep because he couldn't look away.
This was the same woman who had stood before him, eyes unflinching, and proposed marriage as though it were the most natural solution in the world. The same woman who had drawn the gaze of the entire nation without hesitation, who had spoken to him without deference, without fear, without pause.
He watched her shift slightly in her sleep. Head tossing, lips parted slightly open, brows drawing together as though even her rest carried traces of the same stubbornness she showed when awake.
A huff of breath slipped from him, softer than it should have been.
“You persistent woman.”
The words were barely more than breath, smile more than bite. His hand moved before he fully thought to stop it, reaching for the blanket she still held quite defiantly. He adjusted it around her, drawing it higher, careful not to disturb her more than necessary.
“Look at you,” he murmured, his voice fainter than it already was, “sleeping so profoundly.” The sight of her was amusing as every other antic she never failed to surprise him with every day thus far. I-An presumes it’s starting to pain him a little. Seeing her like this beside him makes flowers want to root and bloom in his throat. The feeling is not lost on him, yet never fully acknowledged.
He exhaled slowly, his gaze lingering for a moment longer before his eyes finally closed. He clenches his fists around the blanket, too, so he does not reach out to comb her hair away from her face.
Or so he doesn’t take her into his arms like he almost did when he leaned down on her in his study room earlier and caught the flustered look on her eyes.
That would be quite the sight for his aide, wouldn’t it?
And when sleep came and took him under deeply, for the first time in a while, it did so without resistance, as it carried with it the echo of something familiar.
A girl beneath the moon, hair pulled high, a ribbon barely holding it in place. Gaze all blazing and unwavering.
A bow, too deep and hurried to be sincere.
And the sound of her footsteps as she turned away, quick. Unyielding and fiery. As though she had something to prove.
As though she always had. Even then.
Even now.
Always.