※ All characters, events, place names, and settings in this work are fictional and bear no relation to reality.
Sa Ha-hyeon possesses the body of an “assassin” in a novel his late younger sister had been reading.
Firmly convinced the original story is a feel-good coming-of-age tale, he ends up saving a boy who had stumbled into a near-fatal crisis by chance.
And then, ten years later —
Disguised as a woman in place of a princess, Ha-hyeon is taken captive to an enemy nation.
There, he comes face to face with the boy from ten years ago — Wei Wuyuan — now an emperor, who has been waiting for him all along….
***
“Open your eyes, Jaein. You must look upon Us properly.”
There was nowhere to run. Ha-hyeon lifted his trembling lashes and slowly opened his eyes.
The moment he looked directly at the emperor’s face before him, he stopped breathing.
Those flawless features, as though carved from jade, had nothing in common with the blood-soaked tyrant of the battlefield.
To think that Wei Wuyuan — the one they said had neither blood nor tears — could be this breathtakingly beautiful.
But that fleeting moment of admiration was swiftly buried beneath a far greater shock.
The man before him was the very boy Ha-hyeon had gone out of his way to save, even at the cost of mangling the original story.
Ten years had passed, and every trace of the boy’s fragility had vanished without a trace —
replaced entirely by the overwhelming presence of a man who moved like a predator — yet there was no mistaking it.
He was that child from back then.
This… is a development I never could have seen coming.
“I’ve heard that the first princess has a small red birthmark below her navel, no larger than a fingernail. We shall have to confirm that for Ourself.”
Wei Wuyuan’s gaze bored relentlessly into Ha-hyeon’s waistline.
