HIS PRINCESS | K.TH

Jin

AERI

I can't speak.

The lifelessness of his eyes are visible from two hundred feet away. His heart lips have frozen into a line, and I can't believe he is the same V who had smiled and kissed me.

He looks so, so much worse than I thought.

Tears flood my eyes.

And I can feel the shadow watching me as I cry, falling to my knees on the cold, cracked cement. My heart feels as if it might just explode in my chest and burn me alive.

I openly cry. My sobs echo into the darkness, but the screams of the crowd below me swallow it all up. They watch my lover kill himself, over and over again and revel in it.

His pain is their ecstasy.

Fucking bastards. Fucking bastards.

I scream into the unresponsive cement, and hear the sound scatter into a million pieces.

________________________________

"Eat."

The shadow places down a bowl in front of me. It's full of hot broth, and I stare at the rippling, golden surface with swollen, scarlet eyes. There's a metallic sound as he sets down a spoon next to the bowl.

"You need to."

Wordlessly, I start eating. The heat of the broth soothes the rawness of my throat. It tastes warm, and I finish two bowls.

I'd felt cold for so long.

He takes away the bowl when I'm done with it. And I stare at his back as he washes it in the sink, wondering why he was acting this way when Kim Haein had put him on me to make sure I wasn't do anything out of place.

He had walked for over three hours with me on his back yesterday. And for another three hours back, with me collapsed asleep on him, too exhausted from crying.

Now he was keeping me alive, when all of this could get him killed.

Could pity get someone that far?

He places down a plastic bag. There's medicine there— bottles of dietary supplements and antidepressants. I can't help but laugh when I see it.

"...why?"

"Just take it." He murmurs, not answering my question. "I'll leave you alone, so get some sleep."

"Once you're well enough, I'll take you to him again."

I breathe out laughter, mixed with disbelief.

"For the past seven months you never even showed yourself to me."

"Why now?"

It doesn't make sense.

He turns. And I can tell he's wondering if he should give an answer. He hesitates for a while, before his brows furrow and he turns back.

"There's a line, for even assassins."

...a line?

So he had taken pity. He'd watched the girl, who he'd been given assignment to report on her every movement, slowly waste away in a dark, cramped room.

He'd seen the man who she called for every night deep in his own blood and the blood of others, and had decided that this was too much to take, for even himself.