The Hated Male Concubine - Chapter 79

Thinking about that, Hwawoon couldn’t help but think of one person again. The emperor, who opened up this new world to him, was the root of all this.

Then suddenly, the emperor who he faced before Ahjin coming in with medicine came to mind.

“Don’t throw your body like that again.”

That voice of the emperor contained emotions that were so complex that it could not be explained in a word. Nevertheless, he couldn’t feel any of the negative emotions he saw in the past, so his heart quickly heated up.

The emperor’s hand on his cheek. The emperor’s gaze that reached him. The unfamiliar and scary emotions, yet he didn’t hate, which penetrated into his heart at that very moment, seemed to bloom from a certain point in his heart and slowly spread throughout his body.

Hwawoon closed his eyes quietly, feeling Ahjin’s touch carefully covering him with the blanket so that it would not touch the wound. He thought all this heat he felt now was probably because of his injury. Otherwise, there was no way to explain this unfamiliar heat that he felt while recalling His Majesty.

“If the pain gets worse, please tell me, Your Highness.”

The doctor said that the pain would get worse during the night. At the thought, Ahjin was so restless that she almost stamped her feet. However, Hwawoon, who couldn’t shake off the thought of the emperor who filled his head at all that he didn’t even bother about the pain, just nodded blankly.

***

Sitting in the bed, Yihan was thinking about what he wanted to do at that moment. When he wrapped his hand around Yeon Hwawoon’s cheek. When he looked at him silently and tilted his head without realizing it. Just before Hwawoon’s court lady came in and broke the emotions filling him at the moment. At that time.

If it was left as it was. If Ahjin didn’t come in and disturb him. Yihan thought again and again about what might have happened if it continued.

It was too obvious a moment to deny. He thought Yeon Hwawoon’s eyelashes, which were shaking with embarrassment and nervousness, were beautiful. He also thought his touch holding his clothes weakly to be lovely. He wanted Yeon Hwawoon to close his eyes just like that. Put strength in his hands and raise his chin so that his lips touch his. All these actions were so clear that he couldn’t pretend to not know no matter how much he tried.

He wanted to kiss him. He wanted to transfer his warmth to those pale lips. He wanted to open the closed lips and invade inside, feeling his soft flesh with the tip of his tongue. He really did.

It couldn’t be a strange thing. It was rather natural for the emperor to take the lips of his concubine, and it wasn’t even the first time, so it was not something to consider as special. Nevertheless, Yihan had been constantly looking back on the moment despite the late time.

As he said, Yeon Hwawoon had changed, and Yihan’s feelings toward Yeon Hwawoon had changed, and Yihan had already decided to treat Hwawoon as a different person than before, so it was nothing to enjoy him, the concubine. That was a given. So why did he continuously feel regret that he was interrupted right in front of his eyes, and also felt relieved?

“Oh Jinsung.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Yihan’s voice, which called for Eunuch Oh, was as heavy as the hem of a rain-soaked garment. When Eunuch Oh, who wanted to turn a blind eye to what the emperor was thinking, replied, Yihan was speechless for a while and stared at the innocent floor.

Why was the emperor’s step, which had always been on his way without hesitation in front of the difficult national matter, so heavy and hesitant for one person that he was reluctant to take a step forward?

Eunuch Oh, whose heart was equally heavy and afraid, was trying to hold his breath, and Yihan opened his mouth again after a long time.

“Maybe…”

“…”

“Maybe I…”

Will it really happen if I say it out loud?

If I don’t say it out loud, maybe it’ll all end up like nothing happened.

Yihan’s silence continued as he had no idea what he truly wanted, and Eunuch Oh did not guess the emperor’s words that could not be continued to the end. Eunuch Oh did not dare to guess it.

***

Yihan saw that day in his dream. It was not long after he got angry with Yeonbin, telling him not to beat the courtiers for no reason. That day when he visited Jeongan Palace at Yeonbin’s request, Yeonbin was whipping the back of a young court lady in front of him as if telling him to look at it.

The small back was covered with red blood. The thin clothes were all torn and could not serve its function anymore, and the exposed skin was filled with lines of cracks due to the whip that he couldn’t even look at it.

Yihan had not forgotten Yeonbin’s evil-spirit-like face, looking straight at the emperor with a blood-soaked whip in his hand as if threatening the emperor, ‘the more you take care of these mere court ladies, the more vicious I will be.’ It was another incident that made Yihan completely disgusted with the existence of Yeon Hwawoon.

Yihan, who had his eyes closed for a while when it was almost morning, suddenly woke up with that dream and lay staring blankly at the ceiling for a while. Why at this time? Why did I have such a dream at this time? It was quite a coincidence. He wondered why he suddenly dreamed of the day, which now had become the past, after experiencing such a subtle moment with Yeon Hwawoon at dawn.

He felt as if he was given a warning. It was as if someone in his unconsciousness was yelling at Yihan, ‘do you forget what kind of person Yeon Hwawoon is?’; ‘is it right for you, who have been wary of having special feelings for the concubine all your life, to keep looking at Yeon Hwawoon of all other people?’

“Do you want to go straight to Cheonggeon Hall?”

Eunuch Oh carefully asked Yihan, who was silent with his eyes looking down while preparing. Yihan turned his head and looked out of the window without answering.

“It is a matter of course for a master to rule the rude subordinates. Is that wrong, Your Majesty?”

He remembered the voice of Yeon Hwawoon, who was looking straight into his eyes and talking in his dream. No, it was not a dream; it was a memory. In fact, Yeon Hwawoon said that and the emperor himself heard it. Yeonbin looked at Yihan in the eyes, screaming that since she dared to look down on and betray her master, she deserved to die and should never die comfortably even if she died.

Yihan looked toward the door this time, reflecting on the clear voice that lingered in his ears. If he walked out of this door, in a close distance, there was Yeon Hwawoon. A person who looked completely different from Yihan’s memory. Infinitely kind to his subordinates and infinitely courteous to his superiors. Yeon Hwawoon of the present time was a figure that couldn’t be thought of as the same person as him in the past.

Then, Yihan’s heart, which had been disturbed by the memory of his dream until the morning, calmed down. On the top of the face looking at him ferociously, Hwawoon’s pale face while he was in pain and only looking at his safety came to mind. Hwawoon, who constantly looked at his safety even in dizzy moments and did not mind getting hurt for Sukbi, who was called his nemesis, quickly erased all the memories of the past and filled Yihan’s heart.

Thus, Yihan, who sighed loudly as if he was vomiting poison, soon said to Eunuch Oh, who was waiting for an answer.

“Let’s stop by Yeonbin first.”

Even after dreaming of evoking memories of the past, Yihan missed Hwawoon. He wanted to see him. He was worried if the wound was okay. It was Yihan’s heart that had already walked too far to return for one dream.

***

“I knew this would happen.”

Hwawoon, who sat on the bed with a pale face and was closing his eyes at Ahjin’s touch brushing his hair, was surprised by the emperor’s voice that suddenly rang. He didn’t even hear the voice of Eunuch Oh announcing the emperor’s arrival, but he saw the emperor with a grim expression coming inside in front of him.

“I knew that this patient would be busy at this time to be respectful and such.”

“Greetings, Your Majes—!”

“Oho, stay still! Stay still!”

When Hwawoon, who was looking at the emperor approaching him while talking in a grumbling tone rather than angry, raised himself to greet him, the emperor with a more surprised face approached him in a hurry. Yihan, who wrapped Hwawoon’s body gently, carefully put him back on the bed.

As Hwawoon blinked his eyes because he was at a loss what to do, Yihan continued to talk like a sigh.

“No one asked you to give a greeting. If you were a patient, you should have just lay down like a patient and recuperated. Why are you getting up so early?”

Yihan’s expression looking at Hwawoon was full of disapproval. While he was heading to the bedroom, Yihan indeed expected that with his uptight personality, Hwawoon would be preparing, thinking that he had to thank the emperor for allowing him to stay in his bedroom. However, when he saw him already wearing all his clothes despite his complexion for real, he felt like he was boiling inside.