"Wifey, are you excited because you're feeling impatient?" he teased.
"Wait, I'll satisfy you." his voice shivered her bones.
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A kind gentleman, who always remains...
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Outside the Park Manor, the nightwatchman struck bamboo sticks together.
Taehyung awoke by the sounds of the struck bamboo sticks. He heard the nightwatchman signal it was the time from 1 am to 3 am. He watched Seorin who was sleeping peacefully next to him for a while. Then he parted the beaded curtains, got out of bed, and stepped toward the table.
On the table, incense sticks were burning, giving off a faint scent. Taehyung's eyes darkened. The last time he met Seorin in the palace, he had smelt the same faint scent on her body. At that time he thought the scent was familiar and didn't think too much about it. It wasn't until he laid in bed next to Seorin did it occurred to him that the scent was eerily familiar. He didn't want to make Seorin anxious so he kept quiet about the scent. It was the same scent his adoptive mother, Consort Lee used that year.
His birth mother was died after giving birth to him. When his mother died, Consort Lee didn't have children. Consort Lee asked his father to let her adopt him and his father consented.
Consort Lee was a gentle and kind person. She had a healthy body and was pregnant near the age of twenty-two. But during her pregnancy, her health slowly declined. The imperial physicians who examined her reported the same outcome, she had a mysterious illness.
Consort Lee was isolated in the farthest chamber of the palace and a rumor was spread that someone cursed her, whoever was his mother wouldn't survive a pregnancy. Consort Lee died when she was four months pregnant. Before she died she gripped the incense sticks in her hand, cried, and told him that someone poisoned her.
Taehyung became ill after Consort Lee died. But a young physician entered the palace and examined him. The physician told him that the incense sticks were poisoned. After he recovered, the physician resigned and left the palace. He hid the incense sticks and studied medicine under the guidance of the imperial physicians to secretly find out what was the poison added to the incense sticks. The incense sticks he hid didn't have wings, but still, they flew away. He searched for them but he didn't find out who had taken them.
Taehyung regretted that Consort Lee's death was still unresolved. Unexpectedly fourteen years later the incense sticks reappeared in the Park Manor, inside Seorin's chamber. His eyes narrowed while thinking about who wanted to harm her. His intuition conjured an image in his mind of the haughty and cold face of Seorin's stepmother, Princess Ji Hoon.
