Desire ◆ | Yungi

Episode 4: Wilting Rose ◆ Part 1

Lost in a dark dream, Mingi stumbled backward with steep breaths. His brothers stood before him like zombies. Gashes of unrelenting blood tainted their bodies. They should be dead. Nobody could survive with severe wounds like those. However, Minsu and Minseok trudged closer on unsteady feet.

Mingi shook his head desperately. "No... Please don't."

"What a fucking idiot," Minsu coughed.

"How could you ever expect to protect me when you're so dumb, older brother?" Minseok berated the middle child.

"I-I... I'm sorry, Minseokie. I tried, but—"

Minseok cut him off, his tone distorted along with his ghastly figure. "You didn't do anything but make things worse. I took more punishments because of you. Now look at me."

Shutting his eyes, stressed tears slid down Mingi's face. He sniffed hard and exhaled. It was true. He failed to protect Minseok like he wanted to, and they both suffered more as a result. Ruined heroics aside, he could only watch as the bloody fire between his brothers ignited over the years.

He wasn't a good mediator. He wasn't a good brother. He wasn't a good prince. He wasn't a good anything.

He was useless.

Out of the three of them, he should've been the one to die.

The zombies closed in on him, Minseok gripping the sword that caused both of their lethal wounds. Mingi tripped to the ground, scraping his palm on a sharp rock. The courtyard thundered with caliginous red mist.

"Please, I don't know what to do!" Mingi screamed. He huffed rapidly, entering the beginning stage of a panic attack.

However...

Yunho sat up from the ground the moment he heard whimpers. At first, he thought someone was approaching. Meant to be keeping watch, his exhaustion caught up to him around three in the morning. He had drifted off without realizing it.

That only lasted for thirty minutes because of the strained sounds spooking him. He scanned the nearby trees, but he quickly realized that the runaway prince was the source. He got up and moved around the dwindling campfire. Crouching next to the sleeping prince, his brows knitted together.

It was obvious he was experiencing some sort of distress. Yunho shook his shoulders a few times. "Hey. Hey! Wake up!"

Mingi huffed more, his forehead coated in perspiration. His visage contorted oddly, and Yunho wasn't sure what to do. Is he in pain, or is it a nightmare?

"Hey!"

Mingi's eyes shot open with a short shout. His pupils were dilated with unadulterated terror. Noticing Yunho's hands lightly grazing him, Mingi angled his head to meet the other's puzzled expression. The redhead was completely vulnerable, and he didn't care about Yunho's cold exterior at the moment.

The prince latched onto Yunho tensely. "Yunho..."

Yunho was suffering as well. He was filled with concern that he didn't understand and plagued by confusion that he didn't want. The redhead's tears struck a hidden chord within him. No, maybe they constructed a brand-new one.

Mingi suddenly sat up and tackled the bandit. Forcing Yunho's butt to the ground, Mingi climbed on his lap and wrapped his arms around his neck. He straddled the ravenette and sobbed. Yunho was thunderstruck.

Lips parted, Yunho tried to shove Mingi away from him. "Wh-What the hell are you doing?" he groaned in shock.

The hysterical crying directly in his ear made him cringe. Somehow, it also made him hesitant. Mingi was going through something he had tiny clues about, and it was eating the redhead alive. All the signs pointed to a dark secret in Seoul Palace. Mingi had said he ran away, after all.