1
Although the Hongmungwan maintained that the King of Joseon ought to begin his mornings with meditation, scripture, or at the very least a bowl of millet porridge, Yi Jin began this particular morning with a groan so heartfelt that a young eunuch stationed outside his chamber lurched in fright, bumping his forehead against the lacquered doorframe with a dull, accusatory thud.
It was, he reflected grimly, the sound of a monarch who had made a grave miscalculation.
The night before, Do-guen had delivered the latest letter from Min Woo-won. It had been written with the historian's usual clarity, cold precision, and utter lack of hospitality.
To His Majesty,
This humble subject is well, and requires no further inquiry. The mountain air is crisp, my work is steady, and I assure Your Majesty once more there is no need to dispatch additional officials.
With deep reverence,
Min Woo-won.
Yi Jin had stared at the unimpeachable square of parchment until his vision blurred. Then, like any self-respecting king with in a foolish heart, he had made a decision that Do-guen would later describe using the words 'catastrophic', 'reckless' and occasionally 'inexperienced'.
It was clear; painfully, humiliatingly clear, that polite letters would be insufficient. The house of Min were after all known for their stubbornness, and Min Woo-won himself an especially obstinate creature. He would not return unless compelled by a higher force. And since the heavens had failed to intervene…
Yi Jin would simply have to intervene himself.
Thus in the fevered hours of the night, Yi Jin had made an excellent plan: he'd ride to the outskirts of the Dobong foothills disguised as a local official, coincidentally encounter Woo-won, and with all the dignity befitting a king, persuade him to return to court.
It had seemed like such a good idea at the time: a proper Joseon monarch disguises himself as a middle-rank clerk, in order to stalk a man through mountain paths. Clean. Easy.
It was only when his groan echoed off the walls that Yi Jin finally conceded that his scheme had been the invention of a lovesick fool. Do-guen, of course, had lent his full-hearted agreement, with far more zeal than Yi Jin remunerated him for.
Still, love rendered kings reckless, and a reckless king had resources.
By noon he had arranged a secret departure, donned the teal blue of a scholar's robes, and mounted a gelding of such unremarkable bearing that even the palace stablemaster could not recall when it had first appeared among his records.
"Your Majesty," Do-guen whispered nervously as he adjusted Yi Jin's worn-looking gat, "if anything goes amiss, the fault will fall entirely upon this lowly servant. Might His Majesty not reconsider—"
"No," Yi Jin snapped, too quickly, and then forced himself to soften his tone. "No. I am merely conducting a discreet inspection of provincial conditions."
Do-guen stared at him with the expression of a man watching a vegetable cart roll down a hill straight toward his house.
"Of course, Your Majesty," he murmured faintly. "An inspection. Conducted alone, in disguise, with no guards and no scribes. In the exact region where First Historian Min resides coincidentally."
Yi Jin briefly considered having his Chief Eunuch flogged. He was forced to reconsider, mostly because Do-guen wasn't saying anything that wasn't technically true.
"Remember that the heavens reward loyalty, Do-guen. And silence," he said instead.
"Indeed," his eunuch replied, bowing with tragic resignation. "May the heavens forgive mine."
*
The outskirts of Hanyang lay washed in late-summer haze, golden reeds trembling under a mild afternoon wind. Yi Jin guided his horse along the path, attempting to appear like an ordinary magistrate on an ordinary errand, although his posture, too proud and too straight, betrayed him at every turn. It was after all, deeply contrary to his nature to look unimpressive.
Yi Jin reined in the gelding at the edge of the clearing, sliding down from the saddle with a stiffness born not of the journey but of anticipation so taut it seemed to lodge beneath his ribs. He handed the reins to the young attendant who had trailed him at a distance, murmuring an instruction to tie the creature beneath the pines where its dull hide would draw no notice. Only when the horse had been led away did Yi Jin gather his borrowed robes about him, steadying his breath before he stepped onto the narrow dirt path that wound toward the shrine.
Each pace felt singularly absurd. A king, creeping like a minor clerk through fallen needles and late summer dust...
But then the trees parted, and he found Min Woo-won exactly where his spies – that was to say, his trusted agents, had reported: standing before a quiet village shrine, brush in hand, copying the inscription of a temple wall onto parchment.
Yi Jin's breath caught at the sight.
Min Woo-won stood before the modest wooden shrine, brush poised in the air as though the entire world existed solely to accommodate the precision of his calligraphy. The afternoon sun slipped through the leaves above, catching faintly on the curve of his cheek and the stern line of his jaw. His robes, spun from simple hemp and completely unadorned, moved gently with the breeze, accentuating his slim form.
Exile had not diminished Min Woo-won. If anything, the solitude had carved an even deeper stillness into him, lending his posture a gravity that seemed at odds with the simple robes he wore. Even from afar, Yi Jin recognised the familiar precision of his movements—every stroke exact, deliberate, restrained.
Three years had passed since Yi Jin had last looked upon him; three years since Woo-won had crossed the palace's threshold with that calm gaze lowered in final farewell. Yet the sight struck Yi Jin now with the force of something both remembered and unbearably new, as though the man before him had stepped out of memory, only to wound him anew with the reality of his presence.
Watching him rapidly became unbearable: it was ridiculous, how swiftly the old ache returned.
Why will he not simply return? Yi Jin thought miserably. Why must he be righteous at every turn of his wretchedly righteous life?
Drawing himself into the posture of a diligent minor official, Yi Jin approached with the utmost solemnity that his attire and his wildly disordered heart could muster. When he reached a respectful distance, he cleared his throat.
"Historian Min."
Woo-won did not startle; he never startled, but the brush halted mid-stroke. He lifted his gaze slowly, and that calm, unblinking composure met Yi Jin's gaze like a blow. A faint furrow of surprise softened the historian's brow as his eyes travelled over Yi Jin's plain robe and modest gat. His voice carried the depth of slow-moving rivers.
"This humble subject greets—" Woo-won trailed off, studying him more closely, a slight expression of puzzlement crossing his fine brows. "Forgive me. Whom does this gentleman serve?"
Yi Jin felt his kingly pride curl up and die. To think, three years of absence, three years of yearning that had gnawed at him like a persistent fever; and the first words Woo-won offered him were a polite inquiry addressed to a stranger.
He had not recognised Yi Jin at all.
"Ah," Yi Jin managed, summoning what little dignity could be crammed into the tatters of his false identity. "I am merely a provincial officer tasked with—"
"Yes?"
"…tasked with—"
The lie crumbled on his tongue. It was impossible to shape any plausible story while Min Woo-won's gaze rested upon him with that grave, unadorned attentiveness that had once made junior clerks forget their own names during a dressing down in court.
Woo-won's brows knited politely. "Are you ill?"
"Yes. No, rather—" Yi Jin's mind flailed. "I come with a message."
"From His Majesty?"
Yi Jin froze.
Woo-won waited for a moment, then his brows drew together, not in suspicion, but in that maddeningly gentle concern he reserved for errant apprentices and ailing elders.
"Forgive my impertinence. You speak with an uncommonly polished accent for a provincial clerk. And your posture—" His eyes flicked, almost imperceptibly, to the straight line of Yi Jin's spine. "—is remarkably well-schooled."
Yi Jin cursed his own body for betraying him. He tried to slump. He attempted to tilt his shoulders. He even attempted a rustic stoop he had seen from villagers along the Han River ferry crossing. None of it helped. He looked, at best, like a King pretending to have injured his back.
"Ah," Woo-won murmured again, taking in the spectacle. "And your hands, sir. A clerk who handles land records daily acquires a certain stiffness in the joints. Yours are…" His gaze lingered—too long, too knowing. "…altogether unmarked by such toil."
Yi Jin tucked his hands into his sleeves at once, as though he could hide the evidence of privilege.
"And," Woo-won continued mildly, though a tiny amount of humour had begun to bleed through his lips, "you smell faintly of dragon incense. Only the palace stores that."
Yi Jin's eyes widened. "Does it?"
"It does. This humble one," Woo-won continued with restrained politeness, "merely wishes to ascertain whether I should bow, or whether further caution is required."
At that, Yi Jin's charade collapsed entirely.
With a sigh that seemed to leave him smaller than the borrowed robes, he removed the gat from his head, the royal pin glinting faintly in the light. The breeze caught a loose strand of hair at his temple, and for a moment he felt inexplicably, humiliatingly young.
Min Woo-won's expression did not shift dramatically; he was not prone to dramatic displays. But Yi Jin saw the subtle widening of his eyes, the soft intake of breath. A shock contained with a scholar's discipline.
"…Your Majesty."
"Yes."
"In hemp robes."
"Yes."
"At a mountain shrine. Alone."
"Yes."
Woo-won closed his eyes briefly, as though gathering patience from the earth itself. When he opened them, there was something almost pained in the gentleness of his tone.
"Your Majesty," he said, bowing just enough to acknowledge rank, but not enough to welcome intrusion, "has some calamity befallen the palace?"
"No," Yi Jin said quickly.
"Has a rebellion broken in the provinces?"
"No."
"Has illness struck your next of kin?"
"I have no next of kin," Yi Jin snapped before he could restrain himself.
Woo-won's mouth tightened in faint apology. "Forgive me. It has been three years. I do not presume to know how the court has changed."
Yi Jin exhaled through his teeth, chastened by how easily this man could still unbalance him.
"I came," he said slowly, "for you."
At these words Woo-won froze. Not visibly, not crudely, but with a stillness sharper than any gesture. His brush, forgotten, hung poised above the half-written inscription.
Yi Jin pressed on, though every instinct warned him he was stepping onto treacherously thin ice.
"You have been away long enough. The court suffers for this emptiness. The records are stilted and the lectures have grown dull. The scholars bicker without restraint. I—" He swallowed, then straightened. "I require your counsel."
Woo-won held his gaze with quiet, unforgiving clarity.
"Your Majesty's counsel is abundant," he replied softly. "The realm thrives. And my presence, as I have written repeatedly, is unnecessary."
"Unnecessary?" Yi Jin echoed, incredulous. "For whom?"
"For everyone. Your Majesty should understand," Woo-won said, not unkindly, the words threaded with reluctance, "my father's disgrace still casts a shadow. Though you absolved me publicly, the court has not forgotten. The ministers whisper. The censors record. My return would only embroil Your Majesty in needless contention."
"I do not care a whit for these whispers."
"But the realm does," Woo-won answered. "And a king must."
It was an argument Yi Jin could not easily refute. Duty, that ancient and insatiable tyrant, stood between them as surely as the shrine's wooden threshold.
Still, Yi Jin took a step forward, unable to help doing anything else.
"You have always served me faithfully."
"That is precisely why I left."
The words struck him harder than expected.
"Your Majesty," Woo-won continued, tone softening, "when a man's loyalty becomes a matter of rumour and faction, sometimes the kindest act he can offer his sovereign is absence."
Yi Jin hated how reasonable he sounded. He hated it with a depth that made his chest tighten.
"And yet," he said, very quietly, "I crossed half the province to call you back."
"That is precisely why you should not have come," Woo-won murmured. He followed this with another bow, this time more deeply. Yi Jin could feel the farewell in it.
"Your Majesty, this unworthy subject begs that you return to the palace. Rumour spreads swiftly in the countryside. If harm should come to you in this place—"
Yi Jin lifted a hand. "I am not so fragile."
Woo-won's gaze drifted over his borrowed robes, the dirt smudges from where Yi Jin had stumbled earlier on the trail, the faint flush of exertion on his cheeks.
"With respect," Woo-won said, lips barely twitching, "you are precisely that fragile."
Yi Jin stared at him, outrage and longing warring violently inside him.
"Go back," Woo-won said softly. "Please."
And with that single, devastating word, he turned away, modestly, gracefully; closing himself off with the same measured care he applied to sealing a scroll.
Yi Jin stood rooted on the spot, watching him disappear, the ache of three years carving itself anew into the shape of the man's retreating back.
Before he had even truly managed to start on his long list of carefully curated persuasions, Yi Jin had already been foiled. And that damnanble Min Woo-won had not even raised his voice once.
The journey back toward Hanyang carried no triumph. Yi Jin mounted his gelding without looking at it and rode with the grim determination of a man who intended to drown himself in paperwork the moment he reached the palace.
Do-guen met him at the forest's edge, half in resignation, half breathless with worry.
"Were you received warmly? Did Scholar Min greet you with joy?"
Yi Jin stared at him.
Do-guen at least had the modesty to wince. "Ah. So then, it was a more measured reception?"
Yi Jin made a noise whose exact nature defied classification; part growl, part complaint, part royal despair.
"We return," he said curtly.
Do-guen bowed. "At once, Your Majesty. Shall I prepare a report for the Secretariat?"
"Tell them," Yi Jin muttered, "that the shrine's fields were barren."
Park blinked. "Barren, sire?"
"Utterly barren."
His Chief Eunuch blinked, as though attempting to decipher the metaphor. He wisely gave up.
As they rode on, Yi Jin kept his gaze fixed on the mountains behind them, trusting Do-guen to lead their horses. Somewhere within them Min Woo-won laboured, maddeningly principled, unbearably composed, and entirely too far from reach, writing beneath the dwindling afternoon light like Yi Jin's visit hadn't mattered at all.
Yi Jin felt something warm and exasperated bloom in his chest. He was going to lose his mind over this man.
They returned to the palace after nightfall, dusty, humiliated, and with Yi Jin very nearly thrown from his horse when a squirrel had startled it.
He stalked toward his quarters, robes wrinkled, pride bruised, heart aching, already contemplating a second plan—bolder, more elaborate, and this time, certainly bound to succeed.
He will not escape me so easily, Yi Jin thought grimly. One foolish plan might have failed, but Yi Jin was King.
If Min Woo-won believed distance between them meant safety, then Yi Jin would simply have to close that distance.