An Idyllic Dystopia

The Sacrilegious Serf Of The Lucent

The two followed Joon inside, only to be greeted by a hysterical cry of misery. The cottage looked nothing like what a cottage should've looked like inside, and along the bar, head down on the counter, hand clutching a glass, was a poorly dressed man, bawling his eyes out as though he had lost all of his fortune. 

The prince hurried over to his side and occupied the vacant barstool beside the despairing man. He awkwardly patted the shaking man's shoulders, attempting to calm him down. The princess was annoyed.

"Who even is that?"

Joon snatched the man's glass away and sent it to the basin. "Jin," he addressed the man, sounding more vexed than sympathetic, "we have guests, you need to stop."

The man called Jin halted his incessant sobbing to confirm Joon's words. He gave them dry, yet inquisitive stares before he turned back to Joon.

"Who are these people?"

"That sweet boy beside you's called V, and this w-" Joon stopped himself, tilting to his head to her side. "This one hasn't introduced herself yet-"

"What's your name?"

"I forgot to mention, she's got a knack of interrupting people a lot."

"I'm," he paused, trying to remember, his scrunched face relaxing and lighting up when he did, "Jin."

"Where are you from?"

"I'm not," he drawled, raising his finger, "from anywhere you would know."

"We live on an island with three kingdoms. I believe I would recognise the kingdom you belong to."

"I," he let his hand fall onto his lap as his head drooped, "don't identify as a citizen of any of these so - called 'kingdoms'."

"Why's that?"

Jin reached for a bottle from Joon's little bar and pulled out its cork. "Because I'm no ninnyhammer."

V's ears perked up at the insult. "What's a ninnyhammer?"

Jin laughed and suppressed a sudden and surprisingly overwhelming urge to pat the kid's head. "You...you're a rich moppet, aren't you?" He poured some of his drink into a fresh glass and ushered it towards the squirming, shy boy. 

"Oh, no," he said, looking alarmed, "pardon me, but I don't drink."

"That's great, ya didn't look like ya did," he said, pulling the glass back to himself and gulping its contents down.

The princess repeated herself, but Jin no longer seemed like he was in a mood, or in a state, really, to answer. He looked as though he was mumbling an answer, but fell asleep before she could get a comprehensible response, his head hitting the wooden counter with a loud bang.

"What's with him?"

Joon poured himself a drink and motioned the princess to make herself comfortable. He pulled out a glass of apple juice with a metal straw in it from thin air and handed it to the prince. 

"We've been friends for over 11 years, Jin and I. He was an orphan when our family found him, lonely and desolate in one harsh winter storm. He has been living with us ever since, and although he is a little older than I am, we stuck together like twins.

Since we were a family of farmers, and our ranking was at the bottom of the social ladder, we were easy subjects to not just oppression, but also to discrimination. They lived at our expense; the royals and the clerics, the knights and the nobles, the merchants and the well-to-do businessmen — all of them. He had to endure all of it with us.