Red String (Series #1) \\ Ateez ✔

mystery

JANGMI

Don't you think it's odd?

Multiple stories may scatter throughout the town, that he is a fearsome man who kills without batting an eye and without a single hair out of place. That the gods of the underworld themselves have made a contract with him which resulted why him having a dragon by his side, that he murders innocent women and children with his own hands and supposedly he even killed his sister.

For they believed his existence was the harbinger of evil, the cause of natural disasters and distraught.

People feared him to the core of their bones, that making eye contact with him alone would doom you to a worse fate. The cold-blooded prince who holds no ounce of sympathy towards anyone even elite people above him.

But rumours are always going to remain as tales. And will remain that way unless a fragment of fact is presented.

But how come it was not presented to me?

After all the stories told about him I never once saw him kill an innocent person, needless to say, Wooyoung who harshly grabbed his collar and foul-mouthed him. If those rumours were real the lilac-haired's head would be flying across the room and buried at the palace garden by now.

He looks carefree every time he is with those other men in the palace; Hongjoong, Yunho, Wooyoung, and Mingi. It was clear to me that he still had trust to give especially to people that mattered to him despite how hard he may try to keep up with his perpetual mask.

I have gradually come to comprehend that he is just a boy, a painter who decides to live up to the rumours of people and decides to be the evil person they fantasize him to be.

He is not the overall essence of what everyone said about him.

"How long have you been sneaking?" In a fleeting matter, I heard the sound of the chair creaking and deliberate steps towards the sofa I hid myself in.

Though my figure was obscured from his sight, he was aware that it was me.

Realizing hiding further would only make me appear unsophisticated. My legs instantly took their stance, and the sight of the Prince standing meters away from me came into my view.

"I did not mean to peek at you, Your Majesty." I lowered my head, an apologetic tone lacing my words. "It felt wrong to disturb you especially when you are concentrating on your... painting"

It was dead silent before he shot me an arched brow.

"You did not answer me,"

My head slowly shot up in realization. Oh right. "Since you started talking to yourself" I reluctantly admitted.

I heard him take a sharp breath before exhaling, his emotionless gaze flickered to me and towards the painting at the open balcony before he made a move by going back, harshly grabbing a white cloth in the process.

Realizing what he was about to do, I unconsciously took a step forward. "This is why I hid when I saw your painting" If he covers the wet portrait he'll ruin a masterpiece he spent hours creating.

There was something in me that didn't want the painting to ruin. "Please don't stop painting now that I am here, Your Highness."

"And why should I?"