kingdom falling | gyuricky

fifty two.

"This...this isn't true," Ricky said slowly, everything the report had said slowly sinking in. "Sunbae, you know this isn't true, right? He would never do anything like that."

"So the Coalition was lying about everything they said?" Yookyung returned. "Ricky, you don't always know someone as well as you think you do. It's time you learned that. Kim Gyuvin isn't like anyone you grew up with in the Palace."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ricky answered, the scroll crumpling unconsciously in his closed fist. "I know you never liked him, and I never asked you why because I respected that you would have your own reasons, but can't you see how unfair this is?"

Yookyung gave him a look. "I never said I didn't like him. Don't make your own assumptions."

"Okay, so you don't dislike him," Ricky said. "But you watched him all this time we were at the training camp. He isn't the kind of person who would do this, and you know that! Everyone knows that! I-"

Yookyung stood up, slamming his hands into the tabletop so loudly Ricky jumped a little. "Listen! It doesn't matter what we think of people. It matters what they do. You could think the world of someone, and at the end of the day they could still turn around and do the worst imaginable thing. That's the kind of person some people are, and whether you like it or not, that's the kind of person he is. What you or I think about him is irrelevant."

Ricky looked down at the report in his hand again, almost like he couldn't believe it was real. "Sunbae, if he goes to trial with this report, he's going to die."

"If he does, then he'll have brought it upon himself." Yookyung sat back down and rubbed his temples, sighing. "You need to forget about Kim Gyuvin. I knew he was going to be trouble for you the second I first met him. The apple never falls far from the tree."

Realization dawned upon him then. "You know about his father." It was a statement, not a question.

"Ricky, everyone in Moonrise Palace knows about his father," Yookyung said, sounding tired. "His father defected from Moonrise Palace years ago. Why else do you think Hyunjae and Jiseok and all the others hated him from the start?"

"Kim Jaeyoung was from Moonrise Palace?"

Yookyung nodded. "He was born and raised there."

"When did he leave?"

"Almost twenty years ago," he answered. "Just a couple years before you were born."

"Why? Was he exiled from the Palace, too?"

"No, I told you he defected. He had his own reasons. He severed his ties with the sect and left of his own accord."

"Is that why you hate Gyuvin so much?"

Yookyung looked back up with his brows furrowed. "Ricky, I already told you I don't hate him. I wouldn't have spoken up for him all those times in front of the senior panel if I did."

"So why don't you?" Ricky persisted. "If Hyunjae-sunbae and Jiseok-sunbae and the others all hate him because of what his father did, why don't you?"

"You ask so many questions," Yookyung interjected, running his hand over his face. "No one else in the sect would put up with this, you know?"

"I know," Ricky mused. "Please answer the question still, sunbae."

"Hyunjae thinks loyalty to the sect is of pinnacle importance," Yookyung answered, giving up. "As do most of them, I presume. In their eyes, a defector is no better than a traitor. If someone were to walk out of this sect, they might as well have trampled all over our values and spit on our front door, too. What Jaeyoung-sunbae did was something they could never forgive. So of course, when they found out his son was coming to the training camp, naturally there was a target put on his back. I suppose one of them must have talked, because soon enough the rest of the senior panel was singing to the same tune."

"And you don't agree."

"No. People are more than their choices. We're not always in a position to understand why others do the things they do."

"Then why can't you say the same for Gyuvin?"

"Because his choices hurt people, Ricky," Yookyung said, as if he were repeating something for the hundredth time. "Eleven cultivators died that day because of the siege, and so many more were injured, or did you forget that? Six commoners died, potentially by his machinations. His own sectmate is dead, very likely by his own hand. Jaeyoung's choices never hurt anyone except himself, but Gyuvin's choices caused damage to everyone around him. Don't let yourself be blinded by who you think he is."

Yookyung said nothing more, and Ricky took it as a sign to leave.

He didn't realize he was still holding the Coalition scroll in his hand until he'd gotten back to his room, and he left it on his table, still crumpled where he'd crushed it without intending to. He remembered, suddenly, what he'd seen the night before the murders at Raintree Town were discovered, the shadowy figure leaving Gyuvin's quarters. He'd backed down without much of a fight when Gyuvin had denied it being him, partly because he really wasn't sure, and partly because even if he had been right, no logical person would voluntarily incriminate themselves by admitting to it. Either way, he hadn't expected anything would come out of belaboring the point, but he wished he'd pushed a little more now. Of course it was entirely possible Gyuvin had just left his room to talk to Hanbin or someone else, but if it'd been something as innocuous as that, why would he have lied and said he hadn't left?

Don't let yourself be blinded by who you think he is.

He thought about Kim Gyuvin, imprisoned alongside the cultivation world's most infamous criminals. The Lost Fortress was no place for someone like him. If the Coalition presented the contents of the report at Gyuvin's trial without any additional information, he would be executed for sure. The only way for his fate to be any different was if there was some shred of evidence that the report was false.

He continued thinking about it for a long time, until it was the early hours of the morning. He didn't sleep much because he was too fixated on thinking his way out of the problem at hand, but he didn't need it anyway, since his sect's cultivation methods allowed him to get enough rest with just a few hours of rest a night. He paced his room until he got bored of the scenery, then opened the door and paced the balcony too.

By morning he had an idea. It was a far-fetched one, and in hindsight probably the exact sort of thing Yookyung had been trying to prevent by keeping the contents of the report a secret from him, but he didn't care. If there was something that could be done, some way out of this storm, he would take it, no matter how difficult it seemed.

The only question was, he pondered, how to get Zhanghao on board.