𝕾𝖔𝖒𝖊𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖊//𝖂𝖊𝖓 𝕵𝖚𝖓𝖍𝖚𝖎

Chap. 7

Several weeks later, your cloak gets stuck on a splinter of a wooden cart broken in half and dumped in the alley in your haste for concealment when palace guards swarmed into the street. It wouldn't have been as perilous had you both been strutting the usual grounds.

The black market. The middle ground between what you'd grown up knowing and what you'd grown up not knowing existed. The guards doesn't confiscate anything nor do they arrest anyone.

"They do that sometimes," Junhui guides you out of the alleyway by your hand; you've been doing that a lot too; holding hands, despite it being done unconsciously in the utmost urgency of the moment, neither of you mind keeping the contact after that like it's the most natural thing to do and as you walk with your head lowered, you do not miss the faraway look in Junhui's eye in the direction the guards disappeared to, "to remind who's in charge."

The tear slices through the eerie silence left by the sharp marching heels of the guards though no one seems to have heard it besides you and Junhui. A horrendous hole has etched itself a few inches above your ankles and rendered the cloak a used good. Your emerald colored gown and its golden lines on the bottom has been more than eye catching on your way out, risking your identity the longer you are here.

A noble at the black market has not been uncommon yet it is most astounding to see the familiar faces of people you've seen at balls and dinners to be striking up deals with the sellers. One of them, is the young business man in his 30′s that your father had introduced you to at your sister's wedding banquet.

Gone is the smile he brandished you with and in its place, a set of firm lips that looks almost as sharp as his tongue as the seller displays their crooked teeth and pats him on his shoulder as though trying to lift the tense atmosphere.

"Do you have another one?" Junhui shields you with his frame when the family's coach passes behind him, undoubtedly your parents, sister and her husband has gotten back from the evening tea with the Choi's.

That means the moment is trickling like sand in glass and it will only be a matter of time before your mother checks up on you who should be well tucked in bed and asleep.

"No," you tilt your head up from your hunched posture, an immediate reaction when the familiar face of the footman falls in your line of sight, and don't even bother to put a distance after that, "this is the only one I own without having to ask my maid to fetch it for me in one of the spare closets and explain myself."

"Don't go out anymore," a hand wraps itself around your fist that's glued to his chest and dark eyes bear into yours as though if you did, you wouldn't be able to see him again, "until I come get you."

"Please, ____," your name rolls of his tongue like thorn on a rose, the syllables fitting perfectly between Junhui's lips without bearing formalities as you've been him by his name whilst he's never stopped and called you without the accompaniment of 'lady'.

"Okay," the palpitation of your heart is bordering cardiac arrest, your cheeks and ears are warm with heat and your stomach twists. Your whole body feels like it's going to combust with the emotions coursing through your veins.

The aforementioned man grins and dips down, placing a tender kiss on your lips and for a moment, time ceases. And then it proceeds again when you pull apart, reluctant. The gate is dense in your grasp as you push it open and so is your heart as you close it, standing across from Junhui but with a wall of bricks separating you and a shallow opening of a metal bar being the only instrument of your unity.