Almost Killing the Prince | Minsung ✓

-XLIV-

How long had it been since Jisung killed for the sake of protecting someone?

Jisung never killed without a purpose. Even when he protected the late crown prince of Silla, he always awaited his orders before going for the kill. It was some guard's code he stood by. He took up the sword proudly, even if his job kept him from the battlefield, but the crown prince's side- a much more dangerous war.

Though once his sister died by his blade, all his honor, all his training, faltered. Diminished into nothing more but grain seeping through his fingers. He couldn't take up the sword, much more look at it for long. Violence committed by him made him remember that night, even with the desperate attempts to forget such a horrific memory.

And it stuck to him. Whenever he wanted to kick the bucket, his sisters' last words always flashed in his mind:

"Live for me."

Then he would wake up to start a new day.

It went on for about seven years. Jisung would wake up, steal, move to another town, drink, eat, and then find a place to sleep.

Then he ran into Hwang Hyunjin and spent the following three months trying to search for a missing crown prince. A crown prince that, for a time, he believed wasn't real- that he'd died and they were only sent to their deaths. However, he didn't think he'd meet the guy and build a relationship with him despite the constant quarrels they had.

The more time Jisung spent with him, the more he thought about his past. No, they weren't in a palace. No, Minho rejected the title of crown prince. However, merely glancing at the man made Jisung think. He thought if protecting Minho was the driving force that urged him to continue to fight. That crave he pursued. The life he sought in his otherwise bleak world.

It wasn't the adrenaline that made him continue to fight; it was the need to protect someone. To return for that sword he once dropped. And nothing lived up to it. Not even liquor.

And it had all started where he left his life behind: Silla's palace.

When he escaped the palace a second time, though with Minho, he didn't know that he had signed a life of protecting a prince again.

After long days of worrying about the bandit, it felt like second nature to him. Which it was, it seemed, as he was born and trained to protect royalty. It was screwed into his mind. Albeit it wasn't Kim Woojin or his sister who he was destined to protect.

It had been Lee Minho.

Those were things that helped him stay instead of straying into other towns to get drunk. They made him forget liquor, forget the unfairness of life.

And what did his sister say to him all those years ago? What were the words that helped Jisung escape from Silla?To live, to find that true purpose he believed disappeared years ago. As Jisung truly believed his life ended that night, only to figure that it only started.

Blinking his eyes open, the sun peeked past the leafy roofs and blotted Jisung's face. Rough bark dug into his back, and his sword was still in his grasp, a stain running from the tip of the blade where blood from the assassin had been.

It was early morning, though the summer sun was already warming him as his head laid on a comfortable shoulder. 

Beside his dark blue guard uniform was a silkier, brighter blue hanbok. He sat up, noticing the crown prince sitting beside him, meeting his eyes. His hanbok was ruined, dusty, and it reminded Jisung of their days in the Cheonin village.

Jisung never really stared at Minho that long. He never could. The older had always intimidated him, so he would get jittery whenever he met his eyes. However, instead of a slight tension, he felt more of a soft buzzing, spreading from his stomach to his chest.