The Next Life (다음 생에 만날래)

The Prince

The evening air smelled of grime and despair, accompanied by the murmured pleas of those lined in a row before us. Five people dressed in frayed rags kneeled with their wrists tied in front of them, equally ragged sacks over their sunken heads. The flickers of the flaming torches in the square only just licked the features of the townsfolk, gathered to watch the atrocity that was about to occur.

A pair of royal guards approached from either side of the death row, so to speak, and singled out the one in the middle. With unrestrained aggression, they shoved the convict forward onto their restrained hands. Looking at the fallen convict, a sense of guilt and regret washed over me. Desperation for... something that had happened over the past few weeks. Though I had absolutely no clue where the feeling was from. As though I was a mere observer in a body other than my own, I rushed forward to attend to the apparent criminal.

As I crouched to face them, one of the guards yanked the sack off of their head to reveal what, or who, I already knew. The woman, face riddled with smudges and fresh wounds, looked back at me with the eyes of a stray cat, desperate for survival. Hateful and ready to pounce on its target—in this case me—while also vulnerable and fearful for her own life.

My lips parted and a voice that was not my own came out. "Jisoo..."

One of the guards, the one without a sack in hand, placed a firm, stoic hand on my shoulder. "My Prince, please forgive me, but you should stay back."

"Hyensuk."

The low voice, belonging to who I knew to be my father, beckoned from behind. Fists clenched and breath hitched, I got up from the ground. Those brown eyes that I'd become smitten for continued to glare at me with not a single positive emotion as I backed away, back to where I had stood earlier.

"Father, this is too much," I began in that same voice. "They are innocent. Nay, she is innocent."

Another hand landed on my shoulder, this one sending shivers down my spine. The owner of the hand, my mother, offered a simple smile. I could not discern what kind of smile it was; the Queen's features were blurred, like ink smudged before having the chance to dry.

"Be silent, my child," the King replied. "It is all for the greater good."

"The greater good of what?!" The monarch did not react, simply staring back at me with his faded grey eyes that had the same glint of vicious red I'd grown accustomed to. Like blood diffusing into a goblet after one with mouth sores takes a sip.

"Kim Jisoo," the bellowing voice of one of the guards brought me back to the scene in front of us. "You have been accused of high treason against His Majesty, King Yangsuk's glorious rule. And for that, you will be sentenced to death by hanging. His Majesty has specifically requested for you to be hung alone, separate from your fellow scum."

All the while, Jisoo's intense gaze never left me. "You absolute scite! I believed you to be true and you..." Her words, which sent a knife through my centre, were cut off by her own inability to form a proper sentence. Whether it was due to her emotional state or whatever had been done to her physically prior to tonight was unclear. "I will come for every last one of your worthless fami–"

"Silence, wench!" The guard kicked her in her side, sending her keeling even closer to the gravel.

The other guard rolled out a contraption which I had witnessed the function of far too many times. As he inspected the noose fixed onto the top-piece, the other guard grabbed Jisoo by the back of her collar and dragged her over to the gallows. Despite her spew of curses directed at me, seeing the woman struggling against the rough grip of the guard sent me over the edge once more.

My dash forward was stopped, this time physically, by my father's frail yet assertive grip.

"Father, this is madness!" I turned to look at my mother, who remained silent. As she always had.