𝐫𝐨𝐲𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐲•𝐣𝐢𝐡𝐚𝐧

twenty five

epilogue will be posted next! thanks for supporting this book!

HIS HEART had been broken a thousand times. jeonghan was pretty much numb and stolid, and yet, he stopped the plan for war because jisoo made him feel a new kind of emotion—in which you want to protect someone of someone so badly.

jeonghan may be the definition of insanity. he makes such rushed and unreasonable decisions. one day, he's pronounced dead, the next day, he's king. then all of a sudden, he wishes for a war and he suddenly halts—before he realizes that he should've pushed through it because of the whole wonwoo thing.

and now wonwoo was missing. wow. what a mess this is.

jeonghan got separated from his best friend. he lived in misery. his biological father died, he gets a new father and three new brothers. his step father and mother dies, and he's suddenly undergoing preparations to become king. his fiancée, who was a close friend of his, then gets assassinated.

what's next? jeonghan would prefer dying than living with so much pain.

"wonwoo's most probably on his way to hainya to keep king jisung's mouth shut. we sh—"

"i deeply apologize for intervening, prince jihoon, but he's not going to hainya. the other lowly rogues of grazia have already taken care of hainya, and my best guess is that he's speaking with jihae now." minghao slightly bows, surprising both jeonghan and jihoon.

they didn't know that minghao knew so much. but, anyway, they weren't going to comment on it. minghao seems pretty trustworthy enough.

"why did jihae even interrupt with jeonghan and suhae's wedding? that was supposed to be the end of the two kingdoms' subtle attacks toward each other." jihoon sighed, crossing his arms. he remembers chan: the boy who was deeply affected with suhae's death.

it was like chan was more important than the budding war that was right in front of jihoon. this just shows how much jihoon cares for his brother, and, isn't that amazing?

"jihae was not really a part of the rogue movement in grazia, but because of her hatred towards suhae—who was the acclaimed 'favorite' among the three royal children of grazia—she teamed up with the rogues and killed suhae. she was going to go after king yoon jeonghan, too, but the restraint order was filed before she could even touch him. breaking restraint orders from officials have heavy consequences, so jihae didn't risk it."

jeonghan nods at minghao's explanation, giving him a pat on the shoulder. "thank you for the information."

"what are we going to do now?" jihoon asks.

"we're going to get our guns," jeonghan paused, getting reminded of the new emotion he felt with jisoo. jeonghan wanted to say sorry in advance to him, and to the innocent people who will be affected. "and hope for the best."

"the rogues. they're outside!" jisung exclaims, rather enthusiastic for a king whose palace is being attacked. the said happy king placed his hand on his cheek, as if in deep thought, and says: "i never wanted to go through plan g-2, but i need to."

"g-2?" seungcheol asks, baffled just as the others were.

"g-2 means he's going to fight back. as you know, hainya's stu—hainya's king is fond of fighting, since that is the only time he can test out his weapons." minho explained, eyeing each and every one of the men who came from bellezia. "king han jisung likes science."

"you didn't need to say that, i think it was quite obvious! come on, follow me! i'll give you some of my creations to test!"

and so, jisoo was dragged to jisung's paradise of advanced technology and war jerkers along with his friends from the royal palace. actually, he was kind of excited because he always wanted to try war photography but there was no war to begin with—and now that there is a possible war, he doesn't have a camera. lucky, huh?

"okay, first," jisung tosses a normal gun to everyone in the room, then he proceeds to dig around for more weird stuff. "i want cheesecake."

"your highness—"

"no, no i won't stop a war just for cheesecake, i can wait now." jisung says, sighing as he shoves a weapon onto seungcheol's hands. "okay, seungcheol-ssi? you wear that weapon on your fist. it's a motion-activated weapon and you just haveto punch—the next thing you will know is that everyone in front of you at least have second degree burns."

"alright, landscape artist," jisung delicately places a knife on seungkwan's hands. "you're good with sharp things, i assume. don't touch the blade! it's poisoned." he winks.

jisoo hoped that jisung would run out of things to give to them. jisoo did not even know how to properly operate a gun.

"next, young prince!" jisung exclaims, giving chan a weird model of a crossbow. "princes usually get taught archery. but, this one is like a gun. it doesn't take time, because it automatically reloads. you get it!"

"prince seokmin, i figured you'd like these weird daggers i make that comes back to you when you throw it. like a boomerang? like thor's hammer but they're daggers? yeah."

minho decides to speak up, leaving jisoo with only a gun. thankfully, he was left with a gun and not some weird ass weapon from jisung. "the rogues got past security three, i believe they're in the palace now."

"alright! let's go fight them off!" jisung exclaims. "but you four go first. i have to speak with jisoo-ssi."

oh, so that's why jisoo didn't get a weapon? was he destined to stay in the hidden, or maybe! maybe he's going to drive the getaway car or plane? that sounds better than fighting.

"hong jisoo-ssi, bellezia has sent a signal of distress in the radar. that means, that they are undergoing a serious situation. i speculate that jihae and wonwoo-ssi are already there." jisung pauses, sliding a gun of the color white across the table. "you're going to bellezia."

"so....? that's it?"

"8th. you know who 8th is? he's a rogue. he goes by the name, xu minghao."

jisoo gasps. all his time in the palace, he didn't know how corrupted the system was—he was there for the longest time any outsider had ever been! he was the wrong person. if it had been a more observant guy who was sent to stop the war, like hansol, it would've been easy to spot the wrong things going on.

but, if he'd been able to spot the wrong things, what good will that do him? if he pinpoints everyone who're a part of the bad guys, he would just start a war sooner than planned.

it couldn't have been avoided.

"minghao-ssi is also a personal target of the rogues, since he steered away from them and decided to be righteous. so, he won't be able to protect the king because he's too busy fighting for his own life first." jisung continued, proving jisoo's assumptions about him wrong. "jeonghan-ah is bad at fighting."

"so i'm..." jisoo trailed off. "going to fight the bad guys off for him?"

"no, jeonghan won't even be there to fight. he's going to back out and hide somewhere until he gets the message that the violence has already ended. and your job, is to find him and bring him here. we have to talk about the things we need to sort out."

incessantly, jisoo rambled on. "but, i was there to literally stop the war but you guys—ah, okay, it might be necessary now and i got my money anyways—but where am i going to find the king? the palace? the estate? that place is so big! i could never find him alone!"

"you're the one who jeonghan-ah trusted the most, after me. i'm sure he showed you a couple of things about him. though you're not familiar with him like i am, like the back of your hand, but," jisung says, sighing. "i believe you have an idea."

"where? his room? the gardens, since that's his favorite getaw—" jisoo's scrunched face relaxes, as he realizes something. gardens. greens, trees. "the tree house."