“Wh-why are you doing this?”
He protested while pressed against the folding screen, but two court ladies approached and dragged Sansan back.
“You must be inspected to ensure you’re not carrying anything that could harm His Majesty’s person. Please relax.”
It was an all too natural procedure in the imperial household, which had to prepare for all manner of assassinations. But Sansan, who was far too ignorant to understand this, shed tears of shame while forcibly enduring the court ladies’ hands.
To him, the palace was far too strange, complicated, and frightening. People kept trying to see others’ naked bodies and touched them however they pleased. For some reason, he felt uncomfortable and distressed. If they parted this time, it might be the last time he’d see Sanwol, but still, he just wanted to hurry back home.
As he put on the sheer robe that revealed everything including his private areas, Sansan kept praying to the heavens and earth. That he could quickly get through this thing called “sharing a bed” and leave the palace as soon as possible.
***
Even after Sansan left for his purification bath, the Emperor remained in the tea room, taking a puff from his long pipe as he traced with his gaze obscured by acrid smoke the path where Sansan had disappeared.
That face that had turned bright red upon seeing the pert breasts kept flickering before his eyes. His mood was unpleasant.
“I shall take pity on you and find you a good match when you leave the palace. So until then, you must devote all your heat and sincerity to serving me. Do you understand?”
The Emperor took another puff from his long pipe. Soon he exhaled with a long *hoo-*, raising the corners of his mouth cynically.
“He’s pretty enough, but will that thing of his even rise?”
Even if he arranged a marriage, it would only make some innocent woman keep an empty bedroom. When he’d seated Sansan in Yeongnyeong Palace during the day, he’d certainly intended to arrange a match for him, but now he didn’t feel much like it.
When he thought of that fair face being buried in a woman’s breasts, from deep below, a thick, indescribable displeasure bubbled up.
“…There’s no rush.”
Gradually, he could just do as his heart desired, couldn’t he? The Emperor once again drew deeply from his long pipe, then overcome by rising anger, *clang*—hurled it to the floor. All the eunuchs and court ladies standing in attendance knelt.
“Is he not ready yet?”
“This servant shall go and bring him quickly, Your Majesty.”
A eunuch was hastily rising to his feet when—
“Your Majesty. Yoon Sansan of the Yoon family has finished preparing for bedding and has entered.”
The senior court lady outside the curtain finally announced that the one the Emperor had been waiting for had arrived. When the Emperor gestured, a eunuch hurried over and drew back the curtain.
There stood Sansan, neither naked nor clothed, with a face more flushed than before. His eyes, clearly tense, anxiously roamed the floor. Wanting to see those moist-looking eyes, the Emperor reached out his hand toward Sansan.
“You’ve kept me waiting quite long. Come here.”
Seeing the imperial hand extended toward him, Sansan didn’t know what to do, so Yeongchae whispered that he should go. Unable to help it, Sansan approached the Emperor with slow steps. His feet felt heavy as a thousand pounds.
“Ah!”
The moment his target entered range, the Emperor snatched that slender wrist and yanked him over. Before he knew it, Sansan found himself sitting on the Emperor’s lap and in his confusion struggled and pushed against the Emperor.
“Whoa there—”
At the Emperor’s low warning, Sansan reluctantly lowered his head in a stiff posture like a wooden block.
“Y-Your Majesty.”
A small sigh escaping between those luscious lips touched the Emperor’s dragon robe pitifully. The Emperor lowered his gaze to look at Sansan.
Because his head was lowered, the beautiful curve formed by his round forehead and delicate nose bridge was particularly emphasized. His pale eyelashes, the color of his irises, hung down long, each strand wet with tears.
As he admired that form, the Emperor lifted Sansan’s chin with his thumb and index finger. With his remaining hand, he naturally wrapped around the slender waist like a snake.
“How lovely.”
Sansan gulped. He had no idea why the Emperor was holding him in his arms and doing this. But he was secretly pleased to hear he was lovely. It was the first time in his life he’d heard such words.
Sansan’s parents had always only evaluated him as if appraising merchandise—saying his looks were outstanding, that he had a peculiar appeal, and so on. Not only was it difficult to understand what they meant, they had never actually found him lovely even once.
Sansan was unaccustomed to anyone finding him pretty. Perhaps that’s why, from just the word “lovely,” his frightened and anxious heart felt somewhat dispersed.
Originally, Sansan had severe emotional ups and downs. He became greatly happy over small things, and also greatly sad. His parents considered all of it simply due to Sansan being deficient.
In any case, feeling somewhat warm and fuzzy inside, Sansan rolled his eyes, embarrassed by the Emperor’s unwavering stare, and just kept clenching and unclenching his ticklish palms for no reason.
“Did you apply scented oil?”
As he fidgeted quite busily, the Emperor, who had buried his high nose bridge in Sansan’s crown, asked. Sansan flinched and trembled at the waist as the Emperor acted as if taking a deep breath to smell him, then stutteringly opened his mouth.
“I-I don’t know.”
“How subtle, it smells lovely.”
While held in the Emperor’s arms as he continued to smell him, Sansan kept fiddling with his fingers. Being called lovely made his heart swell, but being like this felt somehow uncomfortable and strange. It was also stifling. His wish to quickly sleep together and then go home remained unchanged.
Meanwhile, the Emperor’s lower body was gradually heating up due to Sansan avoiding his gaze this way and that while fidgeting ceaselessly. He had a subtle talent for arousing a man. Looking at that innocent face made him seem like a lovely child, but his body was something else entirely.
He lowered his gaze further to appreciate the pure white naked body inside the sheer robe that showed everything. The pretty-lined shoulders and prominently hollowed collarbones, the coral-colored nipples were perfect down to the width of the areolas and size of the buds. The sunken belly as thin as his waist made one doubt whether it could truly contain his member inside.
It was truly a seductively alluring body. Unable to hold back any longer, the Emperor abruptly lifted Sansan’s chin that he’d been holding and immediately kissed him.
Tightening the arm wrapped around his waist even more, he released the hand holding the chin to support the small back of his head. Not knowing what a kiss even was, the Emperor thrust his tongue directly between lips that parted in bewilderment.
He urgently burrowed into the mouth, fiercely ravaging it. He coiled around the soft tongue and sucked hard, ran over the even teeth he’d thought were like corn kernels, then suddenly thrust his pointed tongue all the way to the throat in one go.
As he roughly moved in and out as if penetrating with his tongue, Sansan’s hands trembled, and finally unable to bear it, he caused an incident.
“Mmph, mmph! Aaah!”
He dared pound the Emperor’s shoulder with his fist while pushing him away, then tumbled off the Emperor’s lap all by himself.
Having rolled to the bottom of the Arhat Bed’s platform, Sansan rubbed his scraped forearm and shoulder, not even realizing that his two legs had spread wide open and his sheer robe had flipped completely over.
One eunuch, thinking that even touching the Emperor’s body without permission was a grave crime, let alone striking him, was about to drag Sansan away when—
Kheuk kheuk, the Emperor laughed while covering his forehead with his hand. Since he didn’t seem very angry, the eunuch hesitated briefly on how to act.
“Sansan-ah, do you need to be beaten to come to your senses?”
At the question of whether he wanted to be beaten while groaning in pain from his fall, Sansan immediately raised his head. Shaking his face came before any answer.
“N-no!”
“You dared raise your hand to me, so even if your three generations of kin were exterminated, you’d have nothing to say—what will you do?”
The Emperor approached Sansan with a grin. It was the expression of a vile predator cornering frightened prey for sport. The eunuch decided not to interfere and stepped back again.
“I-I’ve committed a crime deserving death. Your Majesty, please spare me.”
While it was playful teasing to heighten the Emperor’s bedtime amusement, Sansan, who could never have such awareness, sincerely trembled and begged. He was too frightened. He was scared of dying himself, but even more terrified that the baby in Sanwol’s belly might die before even being born.
The Emperor looked down at the trembling Sansan as if finding him cute, then laid that tender body down on the bare floor of the tea room and mounted him.
“Then from now on, do well. I won’t indulge you any further.”
Footnote:
Long Pipe (장죽) – Traditional Korean smoking pipe
Sheer Robe / Transparent Robe (자리옷) – Revealing sleeping garment
