The Perfect Prince and the Infamous Thief

Chapter 3

No matter how many times he tried doing what the instructor told him, he failed those many times and never even made a single improvement. Irritated, he dropped the silver bow on the ground and trashed all the golden arrows everywhere. Everything just wasn’t going the way he wanted.

Despite getting all those comments about the perfect Prince who was smart, had a great personality, and captivated the ladies, he wasn’t half of that at all. He was indeed smart as he picked up on things quite easily and often got comments that he was smarter than his older sister. During the 5th anniversary of the King and Queen’s ruling of the kingdom, he stopped his carriage after seeing an orphan being picked on and he came to her rescue; he was scolded by his parents after that. When his parents held annual balls just so they could find him a suitable princess, all the girls were already crowding in front of him, asking him if they could get married and have children right away. That was all a facade.

When he spent his time learning how to be a future King in the castle, he whined about everything and destroyed half of what was his mother’s precious belongings. Because he was the future King, the present King held back his urge to punish his raging acts. Today wasn’t his day either since all the arrows he tried to shot towards the target were always missed and sometimes went out of range.

“Jun!”

He stopped in his tracks at the sound of his sister’s voice which only added to his anger.

“You’re not a kid anymore! Go and pick up those arrows!”

“The servants will do it,” Jun grumbled, pushing past his glaring sister. “I’ll be in my room.”

For the past few years, he’s hasn’t stopped searching for his childhood friend who never showed up after that day. His friend’s teacher told him that Nino was indeed taken away and they couldn’t do anything about it so he asked his parents to send out their best knights in training. He patiently waited for them to come back, sometimes he would stay up late at night and ended up staying home the next morning. When they came back with some news, it was only about this thief that came from the darkness by the time he turned 15. And when he turned 18, the first crime was committed within their castle walls.

That night, Jun was unable to sleep so he went out to the garden. Despite it being so dark, Jun could see the yellow roses shining brightly as if they glowed every time he looked at them. He couldn’t keep his eyes any longer on them, reminding of the past he missed. Just as he was about to retire back to his room, he heard faint rustling behind him but he ignored it, thinking it was an animal.

When he took a step forward, the rustling sound became louder and this time he went to check it out. He reached his hands forward, expecting a vicious animal to attack him but instead it was something big and dark.

“Huh?” Jun knitted his eyebrows together when he saw human eyes staring at him. For a moment, he thought it looked familiar but something dark came to his face and the next thing he knew, he was being shaken by sister the next morning.

“Jun! Jun! Wake up! Did he get you too?”

“Who?” Jun grunted, scrunching his face together in pain.

“The thief! He’s the one the knights are talking about! I can’t believe he would go to our castle...” She growled, “He has some guts.”

“Did he get caught?”

She shook her head. “He left a trademark at one of our walls and one of our servants saw it this morning.”

Jun stood up. He ignored the pain washing on his face as he rushed inside of the castle and saw a couple of guards trying to wash something out with dirty water. Pushing them aside, he stared at the refined painting of a purple snake with yellow petals around it on the wall. He couldn’t understand the symbolism behind it, or what its supposed to mean.