Vergil's OneShots (DMC Fanfiction)

My King At Night (Part One)

A/N: I have finally more or less settled down in Japan! The weather is really cold here, so I'm wrapping myself up like a sushi as much as possible. 

My King At Night will be a 4-part story with a historical korean setting. Unfortunately, I am not Korean and not old, so I hope I did my best creating a good-enough setting for our main characters. Please excuse the absence of Dante and Vergil in this chapter, because I need to get background of our lovely main character down.  Our favourite men should be back in the week after (or earlier, depending on my schedule).

[My King At Night (Part One)]

Lee Daehyun decided that somewhere in her family tree, her ancestor must have insulted a god, because she was currently suffering from the consequences of whatever insult that had been made. Not only was she the only woman in the whole capital with a boy's name because her parents had prayed their hardest for their first child to be a son and she had come out as a daughter instead, but Daehyun was apparently also the unluckiest woman in town.

Why? Her father was a physician, and while they still worked hard to make ends meet daily, her house was always full of herbs that could remedy almost any pain and disease. And Daehyun had the best luck in the world to be blessed with an incurable disease. A disease in the lungs that she remembered hearing her father saying that he had only met very few such cases, and all those people diagnosed with the same disease had died within half a year.

Walking home with small tiny steps and a bag full of herbs from the edge of town that she had collected for her father's sake, Daehyun quietly wondered how long it would be before her father decided that her symptoms were getting suspicious. She would be hiding her blood-speckled handkerchief, for sure, but she wasn't sure if she would start bleeding from her nose all of a sudden for no reason often. She could blame it on the heat for only so long, but Daehyun made up her mind to carry the lie for as long as she could. There was no reason to get her family members all worried and unhappy over her anyway.

She had at most another half a year to live; Daehyun decided that she would make the most out of that last half year and leave things in her family better than they had ever been. Besides, hadn't her little brother Daeshim always said he wanted to go for some martial arts lessons to learn how to protect himself and the family? She was going to grant his wish one way or another before she moved on from this world. She also wanted them to live in a bigger house, get her mother a few more pretty dresses and if possible at all, give her father a piece of land where he could grow some common herbs that he liked.

Daehyun was so busy fantasizing about the things that she wanted for her family that she completely missed the sounds of shouting and the heavy footfalls of a furious chase happening until someone ran into her as she turned around the corner of the small alleyway. Her small exclamation of shock was forced down her throat as she fell when she felt a hand cover over her mouth while the both of them fell to the floor.

And because Daehyun had been emerging from the small darkened alleyway that she always took as a shortcut to her house, she was now back in the shadows with a man dressed in black robes and a scholar's hat. She tried to get up, but was startled when a strong force kept her down on the floor. Her eyes widened when she met shocking blue ones, but the man who had fallen on her -with a mask covering the half of his face and leaving only a pair of hard eyes staring at her -shook his head cautiously and quietly. Daehyun knew a warning when she saw one, and fearfully nodded quickly to show that she understood.

They waited a moment longer, until the guards had completely run past the entrance to their alleyway without giving the shadows a second look. Thankfully, the man in black didn't seem to have any other intentions about her, because he jumped up the moment it was clear. For someone being chased by so many people, he looked rather well put-together with his clothes which did not look as if he had been on the run for a long time at all.