Jongho POV
I wake up and the first thing that I see is San's face. Why is he in my bed? I remove the arm around my waist and try to push him off.
"Ahh, wat ar yu duin, liddl uon?", he mumbles dozily in a unusual deep voice.
"What are you doing in MY bed?"
"Kudlin."
San puts his arm around my waist again and lays his head on my chest.
"I'm standing up now."
"No."
San grabs onto me even tighter. I sigh.
"Okay but only a few more minutes."
I must have fallen asleep again because Hongjoong wakes me up.
"Are you two going to sleep the whole day? We're eating lunch soon."
I yawn and try to get up, still not quite awake yet, but I can't and remember that San is still holding on to me.
"Is it morning already?", he asks.
He finally lets go of me and sits up.
"It's almost noon.", our older friend explains.
"Why didn't you wake us up earlier?"
Wait, what? He's the reason why we're getting up so late and now he's complaining about it?!
"I wanted to stand up earlier but you clung to me and didn't let me get up!", I argue.
"Ah, really? I don't remember. Sorry."
He kisses my cheek and stands up.
"Ergh!"
I rub my cheek and also stand up. Why is he so annoying this morning?
Since Seonghwa and Yunho still aren't well enough to stand up, we're eating in the bedroom again.
"Good morning!", Wooyoung exclaims, sits down on my bed and kisses my cheek.
"Argh!"
Not another one! Why is everyone so affectionate today?
After we ate, the owner of this house comes to change our bandages. My arm still hurts quite a bit. Turns out that I have a big bruise where the wound is. Damn that fence!
"What are you planning to do today, Mr. Kuebe?", Yeosang asks.
"Apart from taking care of your friends, I will do my work and at the evening we have a group meeting. I will leave in an hour. If you need anything in the meantime, you can ask my wife."
"Where do you work?", I ask.
"I am the administrator of the harbor."
So that's how he has such a big nice house. He probably has quite a lot of privileges compared to other people in the Nekra Kingdom. I wonder what made him want to rebel against the king. I guess he probably doesn't like to see the normal civilians suffer but not everyone would risk loosing his position for this.
"Do you know what happened to our ship then? We arrived with it yesterday.", Hongjoong asks.
"The one that got caught by our soldiers?"
"Yes that one."
"It is supposed to searched through and emptied this afternoon. If you want, I could make it seem like you fled with it. Once you get better, I could then pay to smuggle you out of the harbor and bring you to it."
"Sounds like a good plan."
Mr. Kuebe leaves after taking care of all our wounds. I go up into the living room and look through some of the books. I wish that I could explore the city a little bit. Even though it is quite dark and there is a lot of violence, it seemed quite beautiful.
I look towards Yeosang who has been looking out of the window for a while now. I walk towards him and give him a back hug.
"Anything interesting out there?"
"Not really. Mostly just snobs that are walking by. I really want to see the rest of the city. It's kind of embarrassing as the prince of this country but I haven't actually seen the majority of it yet."
"I would also like to see it."
"Should we go then?", Wooyoung chimes in and puts his arms around our shoulders.
"Are you crazy! We are searched criminals! We can't just go and take a walk outside."
"When we put on a disguise, we can."
"And what are we going to use as disguise?"
"I saw that Mr. Kuebe has a bunch of black robes in the meeting room."
"It's still risky. A robe won't disguise us completely and if we get caught and they follow us here then Mr. Kuebe and his group will also be in danger."
"I think we should go.", Yeosang comments.
"Okay, let's go."
I sigh but follow them. I should at least make sure that they don't cause too much trouble.
Wooyoung takes three pitch black robes from the meeting room and gives us each one.
"Shouldn't we tell Hongjoong that we are going out?", I ask.
"No. He is only going to nag us.", Wooyoung replies.
Just as we are opening the front door, we hear someone speak behind us.
"Where are you going?", Mingi asks curiously.
"We just want to look at the city.", Yeosang says.
"Oh, okay. Ehm... Isn't that dangerous?"
"Maybe. Look, you didn't see us here, okay? If anyone asks, you don't know where we are.", Wooyoung states.
"What? Who is talking to me? I don't see anyone."
Mingi looks around as if we're not there, shrugs and walks away.
We sneak out the door and Wooyoung takes both mine and Yeosang's hand.
We walk through some brightly lit streets. The tall villas very soon turn into much simpler houses. We cross the main street. Since it's shortly after noon, the streets are quite busy, which makes it easy to blend in.
"Where are we going?", I ask.
"We should stay away from the main street since there are the most soldiers. Besides that, we already know this part of the city."
As soon as we get away from the main street, the houses get much smaller and look like they're due for renovation. It is much quieter here, people are just silently doing their work. We see an elderly woman walking by. She is carrying a heavy basket and struggling to get up the slightly uphill street.
"Hello, do you need help, my lady?", Yeosang asks.
The lady looks at him confused.
"Niezítase ajúduis, abbue?", Wooyoung repeats.
"Ah, ze. Grézes."
Yeosang takes the heavy basket from the woman and we accompany the old lady up the hill. Wooyoung keeps talking to her in a language that I don't understand. We arrive at the front door of her. She takes back her basket and I assume thanks us again.
We wave her goodbye and walk back downhill.
"Do some people still not speak the common language?", Yeosang asks.
"Some older people don't speak it that well. Most people still use Oskrua in their day to day life."
"That's good to know. I will need to study it more then."
We keep walking until we reach a school. Yeosang curiously peaks through one of the windows. Inside the classroom are around 25 children that I would guess are around eight years old. The teacher seems to ask a question. Several children raise their hand. He chooses a girl in the second row to answer the question. We see the teacher shake his head and take a wooden wand. He beats the girl with it before he chooses another child to answer the question.
"Children get beaten up by the teachers at school?!"
"Yeah, I mean you did get beaten up by your teachers too."
"Yes, but I didn't know that they also do that in the schools. When I become king, I will ban it immediately."
In the Neutral Zone fortunately teachers are banned from beating children since 200 years. But of course it is still allowed here. It's scary that the girl didn't even flinch or scream when she got beaten, as if she got beaten hundreds of times already. It's sad that people here have to endure so much pain from such a young age.
The teacher suddenly looks in our direction, so we quickly get away from the window. A few streets futher we seem to get into an especially poor area of the city. A lot of people seem to be sick and drained from work. A blind middle aged man walks into us.
"Sorry, I didn't see you there.", the man says and laughs. He has a lot of scars on his body and is very skinny but otherwise very muscular.
"No problem. Do you need help? Where do you need to go?", I ask.
"Oh, I am just going for a walk."
"Then we'll accompany you.", Yeosang states.
"The man who spoke first, your accent is different. Are you from one of the newly conquered islands?"
"Ah, yes.", I lie since we don't know if we can trust him or who is listening.
"That is how I ended up this way. I was a soldier a few years ago, of course not voluntarily, and we trying to conquer an island. My commander wanted me to kill a little girl but I refused. He said I would receive punishment for that and killed her herself. Then I was supposed to kill a mother and her very young son but I refused again. My commander said I was a traitor and would receive a harsh punishment, so they took my eyesight, punched me and broke my bones. Fortunately my wife took great care of me. She's the best, even though her cooking sucks."
The man smiles fondly as he speaks of his wife.
"Isn't not wanting to murder children normal? It doesn't also make sense. Children are the future of the country.", I ask shocked.
"Not in this country. I almost got killed as a child myself.", Wooyoung tells.
"But at least they don't get tortured as much, at least not in the castle, because my father hates the sound of screaming and crying children. He says thar it gives him a headache."
"Your father? You are the prince?"
Wooyoung and I give Yeosang a disappointed look for revealing our identities. He nervously scratches his nape and smiles innocently.
"I shouldn't have said that, I guess."
"Don't worry. I won't tell anyone. Why are you here though? I mean I heard that you are rebelling against your father but isn't it dangerous to walk around here then?"
"I just wanted to see what the life of residents of this country is like, so when I take over the throne, I can make things better."
"I understand. Oh, I know this smell. We are almost back at my home."
The man turns into a small street at our right. A black haired girl leaves a house. Her very pale skin glistens in the light of the street lantern. Her bright green eyes are looking at us. Her knee length black skirt sways back and forth as she runs down the stairs.
"Dad, did you run off on your own again?!", she scolds the blind man,
"And who are these people?"
"I just needed to move my legs a little. I can't just sit at home the whole day."
"You could have asked me to come with you."
"I didn't want to disturb you. This is the prince and his friends."
We bow politely. Even with his hood on I can see that Yeosang's face is as red as a tomato.
"The prince?", she asks and tries to look under our hoods.
"Ahhh, ehm.. Hello...", Yeosang says shyly and awkwardly waves at her.
"I am Wooyoung and this is Jongho. Nobody should know that we're here, so please don't tell anyone."
"Okay. I'm just confused what you're doing here."
"I.. ehh...we wanted to look around... eh... in the... ehm... city."
"The prince wants to get to know his people.", Wooyoung translates Yeosang's stuttering. I can't help but giggle at Yeosang's cute and shy behavior.
"Do you want to come in for some tea?", the old man asks.
"I think it's better if we don't. If anyone sees us in your house, you will be in big trouble."
"It's also getting kind of late.", Wooyoung states while looking at the sky. I am not sure what he is looking at. The sky is looking as dark as ever to me. Although over there seems to be an extremely faint red point but maybe that is just my imagination.
We say goodbye to the old man and his daughter and slowly go back.
"His daughter was pretty, wasn't she?", Wooyoung teases Yeosang who's cheeks immediately turn pink again.
"I... I made a fool of myself, didn't I?"
"Haha, no you were cute.", I utter.
Back at the villa Hongjoong is waiting for us with an angry look on his face.
"Did you have fun outside?", he asks sarcastically.
"Don't worry nobody saw us.", Wooyoung says.
"Yeah, BUT WHAT IF SOMEONE DID? The consequences would have been fatal."
"S-sorry.", I stutter.
"Once we are back on the ship, you three will clean it from top to bottom."
Mingi comes upstairs and tells us that the dinner is ready. We eat with the others in the bedroom again and tell them what we experienced in the city.
"You shouldn't be so reckless. Hongjoong almost got a heart attack when he realized that you were gone.", Seonghwa scolds us.
Mr. Kuebe comes in.
"We are doing our meeting in soon, are you going to join us?", he asks.
"I definitely will.", Yeosang states.
"Me too!", Wooyoung exclaims.
Hongjoong and I decide to join too.
We go to the meeting room. A few people are already there. There is another rich man, two guards, two merchants and two craftsman. They greet us and immediately start to question Yeosang about his father and the castle. A few more people enter, the last one, judging from the uniform a castle guard, immediately smiles and walks towards Yeosang when he sees him. For some reason he seems kind of familiar.
"I am glad to see that you made it out in one peace."
"It's good to see you here.", Yeosang says with a bright smile but that smile immediately fades and gets replaced by a nervous and guilty expression as if he just remembered something important that he was supposed to do. He turns around towards Wooyoung then looks back at the guard, obviously contemplating what he should say. Then I suddenly realize why the man seems familiar.
"Ehm, d-do you want to maybe sit next to your brother?"
The two brothers look at each other with big eyes. Wooyoung starts crying and hugs his brother. The two talk in Oskrua to each other, meanwhile Yeosang sits down next to me.
"Why didn't you say that you met in the castle?!", Wooyoung asks. He sounds slightly upset.
"With everything that has happened, I just kind of forgot. I am sorry."
After the two finally sit down, the meeting starts. Yeosang and Wooyoung tell everything that they know about the castle, the army and the kings plans, then the rebels tell us about the struggles that the people of the Nekra Kingdom face in their daily life. Wooyoung and Yeosang weren't exaggerating when they said that you can get into prison for pretty much everything. They then continue to tell us about all the little ways that they try to help people.
They then discuss everything that they did to help the people in the last days and plans for the following days.
Wooyoung and his brother cling to each other throughout the whole meeting. Even when it's over they won't let go of each other.
We give them some space to catch up on each other's lives.
I go to the living room and take an interesting book from the shelf that I found this morning. I read for a while until I feel someone put their arms around me and kiss on the back of my head. Why does everyone keep kissing me?!
"I am bored, play with me.", Mingi mumbles.
"You could also take a book and read."
"I don't feel like reading."
I sigh and put the book aside.
"What do you want to play?"
"Oh, I saw a card game this morning. You have different coloured cards and you win when you don't have any cards left.", Mingi explains and runs off to get the cards. He brings back a small box with red fabric on the outside that has the word "UNO" embroidered on it.
He sits down on the opposite side of the table and begins to explain the rules to me but then Yeosang comes and joins us so he has to start over again.
After two rounds, of which I won both, Mr. Kuebe and his wife join us.
An hour later the two Iperdienza brothers enter the living room.
"I'm going to work now. Have a nice evening. See you soon!", Wooyoung's older brother says and they both go to the front door. Wooyoung comes back two minutes later and slaps Yeosang's arm.
"How could you forget to tell me."
"I'm sorry."
He sits down at the table and curiously observes us.
"Can I join?"