The Royals (YiZhan AU)

Chapter 1

"Achhooo!"

"I told you that I can manage it myself. You don't really have to do this along with me."

"No. If we do it together we can finish it faster and then we can decide what we'll do this weekend."

She sighed and continued to broom the shelves.

It was a fine day and my university was also off, so I decided to go to my bestie's place. But after arriving I found out that she was cleaning the storage room of her house and I decided to help her out.

The storage room wasn't touched for several years which had caused a thick layer of dust settled down on every single thing in the room. Moreover the room was messy with different kind of things scattering around.

It took us the whole morning to clean up the mess. Putting off our masks we looked around.

Yeah! now it seems satisfactory.

Then an open drawer caught my attention.

"See, you forgot to close the drawer" I headed towards it.

"Oops I forgot hehe"

I was going to close it but suddenly noticed something shiny inside. It was a book with faded dark blue cover & seemed very old. There were some golden words written on it "Album". It was an old album. My friend also came by my side.

"Oh this is my great great grandfather's album from his early days."

I don't know why but it attracted me, so I took it out "Can I see it?"

"Yeah go ahead"

I flipped through the pages. Those were all black and white pictures.

My friend pointed out "This is my great great grandfather."

There were some of his portraits and some were family photos.

My friend sighed "I was very young when I watched this album the last time, my grandfather was still alive then, so he introduced me to everyone in these photos but now I really can't remember them anymore."

I was flipping through pages and suddenly found a picture of my friend's great great grandfather in uniform. He had a crewcut and had a stoic expression on his face but compared to other photos he looked very young in this photo.

My friend clarified "In his young days he was a guard in a Royal Castle but later he resigned and came here to marry my great great grandmother and then they settled here."

There were also some group photos of uniformed guards. I was flipping through pages...and then there came the last photo...

It was a photo of two men in a garden and the castle was visible behind them.

Those two men were breathtakingly handsome, one was wearing white suit and the other was wearing black suit. The b/w low quality photo couldn't even lessen their charm.

"Woah!" Automatically came out from my mouth.

My friend started "It's the picture of the Royal Prince and his Personal Guard from 1860s. This man in white is the Royal Prince and what was his name...umm...Yeah it's Sean... Prince Sean. He was a prince from the royal family of England who had settled down here and the dominant looking man beside him was the Commander-in-Chief and what was his name again...uhhh...oh right...he was called General Yibo."

Perhaps I didn't need an explanation. I could already feel the royalty from this old picture. The graceful Prince and the cold General were looking so good together that seemed like a match made up in heaven.

My friend exclaimed "Eii!! Why r u smiling over an old picture!"

It seemed that I was smiling.

"Are they lovers?" I asked curiously

My friend shrugged "I don't know. I just heard that this Prince was not only just good looking but also was very intelligent and smart. Moreover he was aesthetic and had good knowledge about arts. And this General Yibo was his personal Guard who always used to follow him everywhere to give him protection. Moreover General Yibo was the Commander-in-Chief who was very brave in battles and had a cold aura, so everyone feared him a lot. I wonder what happened to them later."

I didn't know why but I became really interested in them, so I persisted

"It's plausible that you don't know more about them but Google knows everything. Let's google about them."

But there were very little information about them in Google. It just said there was once an aesthetic Prince who came from England but there was no information about his birth date or death date. It was assumed that he lived here around 1850s.Moreover there wasn't any original photo of him, just a lone drawn portrait was there which didn't quite match with the photo in the album. And there was a mention of a gallant young General who had fought many battles for the Prince but his name was nowhere to be found. Being disappointed I left Google.

I poked her "It seems you know more than Google."

She was still fiddling with her phone "But it seems the castle still exists. Look here."

There were only two photos of the Remains of the Castle. The castle which had been glorious once, was now standing alone on the desolate mountain pitifully. The castle was never maintained & now had sprouts growing on it.
We took a look at those two photos, those were shot from outside. Apparently entering the castle was forbidden and there was a big lock hanging on the grilled large entrance gate.

"Why's there only two pictures?"

She pointed out "Someone commented here [The residents from the mountain foot says that the castle is shrouded in mystery & shouldn't be visited. They scared us telling If we dear our lives then we shouldn't go there as some people didn't listen to them and went there at night and they never returned. So we too didn't go there] what? They're now spreading rumours? R they dumb! Who believes this kind of crappy thing nowadays!?!"

Curiosity kills the cat.

"Then should we visit the Castle? Let's go and give it a visit." I proposed.

She searched it in the map "It shouldn't be a problem. By car it'll take only 4hrs. If we start in the morning we can return to our homes by evening."

"Okay! Then our this weekend's plan is settled! Let's go to visit Prince Sean's Castle!"

"Let's gooooooo!!!"

[Author's Note: I'm not writing mine or my friend's name so that you guys can imagine yourselves in it (⁠◔⁠‿⁠◔⁠)
Enjoy (⁠ ⁠◜⁠‿⁠◝⁠ ⁠)⁠♡]