↱SEMPITERNAL↲ ⇾seongjoong⇽

twenty four

105th year of Joseon, Hanyang.

The fire crackles by his side, the flickering yellow against the deep blue of his shawl.

Night crawls by.

Seonghwa looks at the letter in his hands carefully.

This is the sixth one.

He unfolds the paper, cheaper, thinner than the ones that came before.

His hands are being clumsy, fingertips aching to trace those strokes of black ink, as if brushing through strands of soft black hair, as if touching the tips of long black lashes.

Hongjoong.

Your highness,

I hope this letter finds you well as always.

I have traveled long and far with the Sarim masters.

Past the rivers of Chuncheon and the peaks of Inje.

Tonight, as I write, I am in a small hamlet near Yangyang.

It is so terribly cold, I could swear the ink freezes upon the brush even as I write.

Still it is serene and beautiful, the people kind and warm.

It seems they are content, their harvest full and blessed this past year.

The south, I hear, was not so lucky.

I hear so much of that familiar southern lilt, and when I speak with them, they tell me there is no work and no food in the south...

Seonghwa reads every word, slow, as if learning a sacred text.

It is nothing, not poetry, not a love song, it is nothing but an account of Hongjoong's travels, his learnings, his understanding of Joseon.

It is nothing but the report of a wandering Seonbi, a Sarim scholar teaching a royal about his kingdom.

I have sent you a small gift, your highness, something humble from my travels, something foolish from a lowly scholar.

I hope it reaches you safe.

Seonghwa puts the letter down, three pages of neat, small hanja, and begins to unwrap the parcel that came with it.

It has already been checked by the guards for anything that could be a danger to him, the cloth and hay clumsily replaced before being handed to him this evening.

It has been almost a year since he last saw Hongjoong.

Last winter, when Soohyun's hand was placed in his, and they promised to be wedded until death before her family shrine, he thought Hongjoong would not come, but he was there.

Last winter, when King Seoyin passed in the dead of night, in a fitful sleep, quilts soaked in urine, his wives and his sons kneeling solemnly around him.