Till The Ryu Tree Blossoms

*** (Wake Up)

Hunter's Residence, Sansuri

THE DOOR CREAKED OPEN as the hunting party walked in, kicking off their shoes at the steps. The house was the same as it had always been, unchanged since Ryu had first laid eyes on it two years ago. The fireplace was silent now in the summer; the dishes from last night unwashed in the sink as it always was when it was Taehyung's turn at the chore, and the floor clean and neatly swept because this week it had been Faye's turn to do it. It was incredible the discipline the swordswoman had, especially when it came to the little details.

The mood was somber as they laid down their things and hung up their weapons in the cupboard. No one said a word. Yoon-ki had been unresponsive since the palace, saying nothing except for a single "Let's go" after the second prince had left. Even the dogs had stopped their barking and sat curled up, tails tucked between their legs as the wagon bumped over cobblestones on the way home.

Now the party hovered around the long dining table, pockmarked from the various meals and conferences and games it had seen over the years, exchanging expressions of wariness. Ryu looked timidly at Yoon-ki. He was still settling his gear in the cupboard, and taking an unusually long time doing it.

"Faye." Yoon-ki's voice was casual and quiet. "Check the garden. It's harvest season soon, and I don't want a single weed or slug around. Get rid of it all."

Ryu's heart sank.

"Taehyung. Take the dogs, go to the forest. I want a basketful of perilla leaves. Don't come back until you get it. No-mu. The crossbow. I want it done. Now."

Yoon-ki closed the cupboard shut. Ryu opened her mouth to protest, but a look from No-mu silenced her immediately. It was a rule in the hunting party - you were either responsible for all, or responsible for none. If there was sadness, it was shared. If there were rewards, it was shared. And if there were punishments - it was shared. By letting Ryu wander off, each of the party had made himself an accomplice in her mistake.

Picking out weeds and slugs was a back-breaking job. Perilla leaves were tedious to find. And the crossbow . . . No-mu had initially been given next week as the deadline to complete it. Now all these tasks had to be completed, even after a morning of rigorous hunting.

As Taehyung walked past, Ryu felt something being pressed into her palm. She looked down. It was a mint-flavored lollipop. He winked at her, and she mouthed, "I'm sorry." He mouthed back, "don't worry about it," and she felt a little better.

Still, when it was finally just the two of them and Yoon-ki turned around to look at her, she couldn't suppressed the jolt of dread that threatened to leap out of her stomach. For a moment, all Ryu could hear was the sound of a light breeze rustling the leaves outside through the open window.

Yoon-ki placed two hands on the back of the chair and squeezed. His face was dangerously blank.

"Thirty push-ups. Now."

Ryu complied. When she was done -

"Thirty crunches."

Her abdominal muscles burned, but she gritted her teeth and pulled through.

"Plank. Don't relax till I say so."

Now her body was screaming. Sweat trailed from her forehead down to the chin until it dripped on the hardwood floor. Each plank seemed infinitely longer than the last, and her limbs trembled with greater and greater effort. When she had done ten planks Yoon-ki stopped her and made her repeat the whole cycle, again and again, not letting up for even a second. She was somewhere in the midst of her hundredth push-up when her body gave in and she collapsed on the floor, chest heaving and gasping as she tried to catch back her breath. There was an ache in her chest and she knew she had hit her limit.

"Get up."

She gasped and coughed and gasped some more.

"I said, get up."

"I can't." She had to force the words out through the pain.

Yoon-ki pulled himself straight. "Well maybe you should have thought of that before you disobeyed my orders. Double training from tomorrow."

She heard him walk away and yelled out, "How long?"

"Until I say so." The door slammed.

Ryu closed her eyes and let out a silent curse.

☯

Dinner was a cheerless affair. They had mutton with thyme and tomatoes, and a bowl of cold lentils soup because Ryu had been so distracted she forgot to keep the fire on. Any attempts at conversation was instantly shot down by a dose of brash acidity from Yoon-ki, and in the end it was a grumpy group that turned in for the night.

Ryu couldn't sleep. In her mind's eye, all she could see was the image of the prince, again and again. The line of his jaw, the angle of his cheekbones. His hair was black like midnight, black like his obsidian eyes and clothing - imperial clothing. A cross-shaped earring had dangled from his right ear, and the hand that had caught her by the shoulder had two rings on it, one on the index finger and one on the pinky. There was nothing but coldness and hostility in his face, yet the gaze he had given Ryu had been full of anything but that.

Ahn Jimin. That was the name she had been told in her childhood dreams.

But this was Kang Jimin. "Kang" as in Emperor Kang, his father. So . . . not the same person? And yet . . .

He knew her from before, she was sure of it.

But how? And why?

The moonlight was silver and shone like a focused beam on her face. She rolled over. Double training meant she needed to wake up at dawn tomorrow, which meant she really needed to sleep now. With a determined sigh, Ryu squeezed her eyes shut. But sleep it seemed, was insistent on staying elusive. Instead, only the memories of her childhood came to her like bubbles popping at the water surface.

☯

Ten-year-old Han Ren had first discovered the lake on a school field trip, when the teacher brought them up into the hills for a picnic. The meadow was large and overran with wild grass, a picture-perfect landscape of thin stems swaying in the wind. It quickly became a young boy's favorite paradise, and the second he had had the opportunity to do it he had pulled his younger sister up there along with him, and that became their newest playground.

Sitting astride the banks of the lake was a leafy tree, young but strong. Its branches grew and extended outward like it wanted to grip the sky. There, in the meadow with the single tree, the two siblings laughed and bonded over chase and hide and seek. And they stayed far away from the lake, despite never being told to do so, because they intuitively understood that something so vast and dark was probably something that was best left at a distance, to be seen but not touched.

When Ryu turned eight her brother taught her how to climb trees. And suddenly, the game of chase took on a whole new excitement.

"Tag! You're it!" Ryu yelled, her pigtails flying in the wind.

She tore through the fields, laughing, Han Ren hard on her heels. As she neared the lake she took a wide right turn, thinking of doubling back, but Han Ren lunged forward and very barely touched a fingertip on her shoulder. He let out a triumphant yell. Ryu pouted, hiked up the hem of her cotton skirt and took off. Within minutes she had tagged Han Ren again, but now she was trapped up against the bank of the lake, and had nowhere to go.

Han Ren spread both arms wide. "Ha! You'll never get past me now!"

He leapt forward. Ryu shrieked and ran. Dead ahead the tree stood, patient and sturdy, and without hesitation, Ryu began to climb.

"You think you can escape me up there?" her brother yelled. "I'm gonna get you!"

She looked down and grinned. Small and deft, she made her way easily through the thick branches and leaves. A light wind blew and she gripped the wood in alarm, even as her eyes widened in exhilaration.

Somewhere below, she could hear his brother hesitate.

"Ryu. Ryu! I don't think we should climb anymore. It's pretty high up."

"No! If I climb down, I know you'll catch me!"

The leaves below parted and Han Ren's face emerged. He looked uncomfortable, but before he could say anything Ryu had stuck out a belligerent tongue and clambered further up.

She climbed, and found herself on a branch that spread outward, away from the tree's center mass. She followed its direction and her mouth fell ajar.

"Wow," she whispered.

Up here, the view was breathtaking for miles and miles around. There were the mountains, more of them in the distance, their tips shrouded in cotton clouds. A lonely eagle soared, wings silhouetted in the glare of the sun. Cautiously, Ryu inched along the length of the branch and took in the scenery, gorgeous from such a high viewpoint. If she squinted her eyes very carefully, she could just make out wisps of smoke from the chimneys of her village houses.

Below, the dark green water of the lake glittered.

"Ryu!"

She scrambled further out. Her brother's face was pale as it came into view, and paler still when he saw her sitting on the edge of the branch. The wind picked up for a short moment, and Ryu teetered.

"Ryu. Come back here." Han Ren's voice had gone a little shaky, and he was clearly not liking this turn in the game. "That - that's really dangerous."

"I know," Ryu said cheerfully. "So you can't catch me here! I win!"

She kicked her legs and the branch dipped up and down. Motes of sunlight hitting the surface of the lake more than twenty feet below made it sparkle like a freshly-cut diamond. Han Ren swallowed.

"Yeah. Yeah, you win. Now can we please get down from the tree? Papa will be angry if he knew."

"We're not telling Papa."

"Just get back here, Ryu!"

The edge of Ryu's lips turned down. She didn't like it when her brother raised his voice. For a moment she contemplating staying out here just to spite him, but then the wind came again, even stronger, and the branch rocked like a pendulum set wild. Eight-year-old Ryu's heart skipped a beat.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," she said, even as she tried to pretend her voice hadn't just trembled from the beginnings of fear.

Slowly, Ryu began to crawl away from the tip of the branch. The wind whistled and she couldn't help the cry that floated out of her mouth as the branch flexed downward. Her grip on the wood tightened till her knuckles turned white.

Han Ren reached out a hand. "Just a little bit more. A little bit more, Ryu, and I'll be able to pull you in."

Ryu inched closer.

"You can do it, Ryu!"

The branch went up down, up down, and Ryu heard it groan. She looked up at Han Ren helplessly. He was straining forward as much as he could, palm opened wide, fingers all stretching as he reached out for her.

"Come on, Ryu!"

Ryu moved. There was a slight cracking sound. Both of them froze.

"Did you hear that?" Ryu whispered.

Han Ren waited a little too long before answering. "No."

Almost terrified, Ryu risked a glance down below and wished she hadn't. Fixing her eyes back on her brother's hand, she slid herself in minuscule increments along the length of the bark. As she got closer she reached out with her right hand toward her brother, who stood there in position like a lifeline.

"Not close enough yet! A little more, Ryu! Come on!"

"I'm trying!"

Just when their fingertips were about to touch, the branch gave out an unmistakable sound, and this time even Han Ren couldn't deny it. Desperate, he flung himself off the branch he was holding on to grab his sister, but suddenly - she wasn't there anymore.

"Ryu!" he screamed, as he stabilized himself and watched the tiny figure receding in the distance below.

The freefall lasted shorter than Ryu had expected, and when she hit the water it was as if she had landed splat on concrete. The force knocked every last bit of air out of her lungs, and she gasped.

Which immediately she knew was the wrong thing to do.

The waters of the lake rushed in and filled her lungs immediately, a sickly sweet taste that was not pleasant at all. The inside of her chest burned in cold flames, there was ringing in her ears, and it was only as the slimy tendril of a root brushed her skin did she realize she was going down, down. Her senses already succumbing to terror, she only caught a hazy glimpse of a mass of roots floating in water, before some part of her brain that somehow still maintained composure realized that they were the roots of the tree, the same tree whose broken branch was now sinking just like her.

The last thing Ryu remembered before blacking out was grabbing the tree's roots.

They never returned to the meadow after that. Both she and Han Ren were grounded for a month, and her father's white, tight-lipped face was the strongest image left behind from that incident. Little Han Ren could never spoke of it without crying, and his adult twin refused to speak of it at all. So Ryu had just left it be, and thanked all the gods she knew that she was still here, alive and living to this date.

She healed, got better, and just when it seemed as if the incident would fade into little more than a childhood memory, she had her first dream of the boy with the silver hair.

It was all incoherent glimpses at first - a lock of silver hair here, a pair of eyes there, and the touch, of warm skin against skin. As she grew older however the images became clearer, and when she hit fourteen that was when the dreams began to look more like comprehensible scenes from a story. Funnily enough, as she grew so did the boy, until when Ryu turned into an adult the boy had become a full-grown man, jawline defined and voice masculine. Waking up was the only reminder Ryu had that he wasn't real.

Until today.

When she had met second royal prince Kang Jimin . . . and realized that he looked exactly like the man in her dreams.

☯

It was a very tired-looking Ryu that walked into the house the next morning. Groaning, she rubbed the back of her neck and yawned, wide. Today she was wearing rough brown trousers, black tunic and a necktie. Not the most ladylike of clothing perhaps, but definitely suitable for mucking out dirty horses' stables, which was what she had been doing the entire morning. Yoon-ki was relentless.

Ryu watched Taehyung enviously as he walked bleary-eyed out into the dining area, having now only waken up. She made to slump down in the seat next to him but No-mu held up a finger, tutting. His back was to her as he faced the kitchen stove, and there was the delicious smell of a skillet frying.

"Wash up first," he commanded.

Ryu pulled a face. "Must I? I'm really hungry."

"I'm sure we all are. But I want my dining table clean. Or I ain't serving."

Ryu muttered a sound of dissent and didn't budge.

"It's bacon and eggs this morning, by the way," No-mu added slyly.

With a loud groan, Ryu stomped out of the house. The stream was located five minutes into the woods, and as she walked there her feet stamped out every single inch of her frustration into the grass. Even as she washed the dirt off of herself she did it vigorously, scrubbing until her forearms turned bright pink.

A light breeze blew, and there was the soft sound of tinkling. Ryu looked up. Opposite the stream a worn out rope, red and faded, had been strung between trees. It extended to both directions as far as the human eye could see, and had a motley of ornaments dangling from it. Cloves of garlic alternated between cream-colored seashells, which in turn were hung between iron rods and hollowed out wooden tubes. When these ornaments hit each other there was a sound almost like a wind chime, except duller and deeper.

Ryu watched the rope for a second as it swayed in the wind. It was a boundary line, and the first rule she had learned to obey in the hunting party. It was used to mark a particularly dangerous part of the woods, which they were never to cross. Once in awhile their investigations had made crossing necessary, and then Yoon-ki would tell them to bring their best game on, and be prepared for what lay ahead. The beast they had fought just recently was one out of the three times the hunting party had been required to cross to the other side.

She shook her head to clear her thoughts. Discarding her dirty clothes on the ground she pulled on fresh clean ones. As she did back up her hair she muttered,

"When Taehyung's dogs ran off and made a mess in the palace he punished him with a month's work of doing our laundry. When No-mu flirted with a court lady he punished him with two weeks of market duty. But I get an infinite sentence of double training? That is so bloody unfair - "

The sound of something heavy crashing through the bushes made her look up, and half a second later No-mu appeared. His face was flushed from exertion, spatula waving madly in his hand even as he struggled to catch his breath, his white apron still tied around his waist.

Ryu blinked. "What?"

"Yah," No-mu panted. "Yah - "

He gasped and wheezed.

"What?" Ryu repeated.

"Go - go back into the house immediately. Go - now - "

"What are you talking about?"

No-mu coughed and wheezed and coughed some more, and just when Ryu wondered if he was having a panic attack, he managed to get his breath together and say,

"The second prince is here."