Desert • Flower | TaeJin || BOOK 3#

XXXII. One weight less

He moves faster to embrace Jin, swinging him from one side to the other and smiling broadly. Celebrating. It gets to be a little macabre. Jin doesn't know how to react, really. He remains still, paralyzed by the evidence that finally and truly, they don't have to worry about anything anymore. That long-awaited good stage has just arrived. In a rather bizarre way.

~ * * * ~

"I don't think it's a good idea for me to accompany you, my lord What if there's any trouble?"

"What trouble could there be Jin? We're just going to go visit some friends of my parents and trade with them. Maybe they would be pleased to see a kisaeng. As far as I know, they don't have any." Jin frowns, wearing a blue jeonmo.

"That's not the point, my lord, I don't think traveling so soon would be good. There was a change of emperor."

"That's precisely why I want to travel."

Jin gives an exasperated sigh. Taehyung took the news as the beginning of a spring after a seven-year winter? Give or take. Of course he's happy, but he can't fall into that same vortex of tranquility of his master. Seok jumps all over the place, excited to travel, to visit new lands, to feel them.

He climbs into the car with no choice. Taehyung left a couple of nurses in Yune's care. Their duty is to supervise her all day every day until they return.

Jin was not entirely pleased with the trip because of the people they visited. They were quite disrespectful to Taehyung despite the difference in status. Taehyung is clearly superior. He has greater purchasing power than they do, land, title; they looked down on him from above with a contemptuous look as if he were trash on the ground.

"Has there been trouble in your territory?"

"Some."

"I imagine, there must have been in the wagon too if it's so full of dirt." opines the lord of the house.

Jin reaches over and pats Taehyung on the cheek and is left with dirt in his hand. He gives a blow, making little gold buds bloom in the remains. The lord, his wife, son and daughter applaud in wonder at this.

"I'm sorry, it was my fault," Jin says with a rueful smile. "Along the way I wanted to make a lot of flowers and soiled my lord in the process.

"How strange, I've always seen him dirty."

"Uh, not at all, my lord just has a lot of taste for flowers and unfortunately, sometimes they attack him." Jin jokes eloquently and makes the family laugh. Taehyung sees him out of the corner of his eye. Huh.

. . .

"You didn't have to defend me."

"I'm not going to let them talk bad about you for no reason. You're superior, they should respect you." mumbles Jin in disgust, carefully undoing his hairdo. Taehyung laughs through his nose, hugs him from behind and kisses on the head.

"I'm adopted, they'll never let go of that aspect of my status. Little do I care."

"It matters to me. It can't happen like this."

Taehyung forgets that Jin is quite strict in terms of etiquette. Therefore, he finds it overly impolite and disrespectful, also important. However, Taehyung does not take pains to fix it.

Neither on that visit nor on many others.

Without the emperor, for Taehyung the world opened up again. No war, no real problems out there other than those before the war. He has been able to score deals with some important politicians in the same area and who are not so far from home. He usually takes Jin with him, at other times he doesn't, but he likes the way the situation has been disrupted.

Because Jin is not scared all the time, his heart rate stops going through the roof and he takes time to relax, allow himself some peace. The issue with Yune is still the same, but at least, he is confident that when she wakes up she will see a much happier and beautiful Jin than the one she left when she fell into this miserable state.

They also continue to sleep together. They rarely make love or even touch each other intimately. It has become a nice quiet normalcy where Jin gives his affection from time to time, is more open with his touch and what he thinks, what he feels and what bothers him.

It's genuinely perfect, the paradise he's been waiting for a few years this way.

"Sir, you have a letter." announces one of the housing workers. Taehyung takes it and is struck by the fact that it is from the emperor himself. The green and gold ribbon with a jade pearl gives it away. Jin is writing something, so he doesn't even bother with it.

"Jin."

"Tell me? My lord."

"The emperor wants to see me," Taehyung comments, reading the letter. "You want to come with me?"

Jin opens and closes his mouth. He shakes his head. No, he doesn't want to go back there. Taehyung takes a deep breath.

"You mentioned... a boy named Namjoon right?"

"Right."

"He's the one who wrote this letter" Jin drops his jaw slightly He's alive? Even without Honjoon? "I doubt he knows you're here. I doubt they know you're here" opines Taehyung closing the paper. "And I'm not interested in discussing anything with the emperor even though I like the way his decisions are going" he admits and Jin gives him a bad look Who refuses to see the emperor? Everyone who sees him ends up dead, he corrects himself. Eunji nudges Jin gently. "If you want to go, we'll go."

"My lord, you should go indifferent to what I want."

"I have nothing to do with the emperor. I don't commit any illegalities, I have nothing to be afraid of, and I clearly don't want to be his patron in any way."

"It might help you to stop them from screwing it in trying to take ground from you. Pretending it doesn't exist doesn't take away from the fact that they want to take it away everything from you" Jin reminds him. It's been a problem lately that other lords argue the issue. Saying that Taehyung has no right to those pieces of land because he is not the biological son of the previous lords and therefore, he also has no right to whatever he buys with his family name or his money. "If they know that the emperor has you as an ally and person of relevance within his council, you could avoid all these problems. You must go."

"I will not go alone" He rests his elbows on the table and his chin on his interlaced fingers. "Not to say that Don't you consider it a curious situation?"

"In what way?"

"Just to me they send this letter. Not to Lord Choi, not to my paternal or maternal uncles. No one else has been sent this kind of invitation despite the political and territorial power they have" Jin bites his lower lip. "They sent it for me, telling me to go there, to the capital to talk to the emperor: boy you knew and played with, in a letter written by another boy who helped you in your so heavy moments in the palace where you lived, loved, suffered, missed, cried and so many more things."

"To what my lord wants to get at?" he repeats covering his eyes with one hand, hunched over.

"To that fate must want you to go back there, that there is something waiting for you there" Jin shakes his head, covering himself with both hands. "Maybe there's more than you expect and running away from it won't do you any good. If you want to help me, come with me and I'll be with you so nothing will hurt you."

Jin uncovers his face and takes the hand that Taehyung holds out to him, shy and fearful. He doesn't know what's going to be there, but he doesn't want Taehyung to miss the opportunity. It could be important.

He wishes he had a less foolish lord and at the same time, not be so afraid to return to the place he fled from.

"Can... Can you wait for me a little while?"

"Of course." Taehyung gives her a kiss on the knuckles. He assumes Jin needs to prepare a bit to go there and well, there's no hurry.