“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
As if recalling the same thing, Huiseo also asked this while kicking the ball toward Hwan with a light tap.
The footwork that scooped up the rolling ball was quite skillful and light.
Just bouncing the ball a few times using his feet and knees, Hwan had an innocent face like a little child. Indeed, there was no better method to lift his spirits. Watching him like that, Huiseo smiled gently.
After playing like that for a moment, Hwan lightly kicked the ball back to Huiseo and asked.
“Where’d you get a ball? It can’t be yours.”
“There are ways to get things.”
“When did you create ways I didn’t know about?”
When Hwan asked this, despite having a face that couldn’t hide his inner pride, Huiseo’s footwork receiving the ball couldn’t have been more clumsy and stiff.
Laughably, it was an appearance that hadn’t changed one bit from their childhood.
“Aigoo, Huiseo-ya.”
Hwan’s face was full of a delighted smile as he called out to him as if scolding.
***
“Why are you crying?”
Little Huiseo asked in such a small, pretty voice that it tickled his ears.
Not wanting to be discovered by others, he had been crouching alone in a corner of Gyeongbokgung Palace, even among the bushes, yet he’d been found quite remarkably. Young Hwan looked up at him with a somewhat flustered face.
Though he’s saying this now, if the one asking had been someone other than Huiseo, Hwan probably would have stubbornly kept his mouth tightly shut. Even if it were his family, even if it were the palace attendants close to the prince’s quarters. No, perhaps he couldn’t tell them precisely because they were those people.
“Are you hurt somewhere?”
But this pretty-looking child his age, whom he was meeting for the first time, asked with a clear face.
Holding an armful of thick books with difficult titles that even now he couldn’t easily understand, he looked truly innocent, as if asking out of genuine curiosity. To Hwan, this was quite unfamiliar.
He didn’t know which of the two was more effective, but in any case, his mouth moved on its own.
“I’m not hurt.”
“Then?”
“……”
“Are you sad?”
“…Yeah.”
“Why?”
“…My friends, they won’t steal my ball.”
Is that something to be sad about?
At Hwan’s answer that was difficult to understand easily, young Huiseo tilted his head.
But even thinking about it now, the words that could best express young Hwan’s sense of injustice at that time were still just those. Setting everything else aside, for his childhood self, that was the most disappointing and heartbreaking thing.
Because his dream at that age happened to be a ‘soccer player,’ as children of that age typically are.
However, it didn’t take long to realize that this could never be an achievable ‘dream.’ It wasn’t because his skills were lacking or anything like that. If it were for such a reason, giving up would have been easier.
Regrettably, the reason Hwan couldn’t achieve his childhood dream was thoroughly due to external factors.
‘My friends, they won’t steal my ball.’
To rephrase those words, it meant that a game ‘played together’ couldn’t happen. Even though soccer was obviously a team play, to the point where it was painful to even mention.
Whenever Hwan joined in, the energy would completely drain out.
Tackling was out of the question—the moment Hwan got the ball, a path would open like Moses’s miracle, allowing him to go straight to the goal. Even the goalkeeper wouldn’t pretend to block it. That could never be called ‘soccer.’
So even if he scored a goal, there was no way he could cheer.
It couldn’t be called outright flattery. Coldly speaking, the imperial family had nothing new to gain from such things anyway. However, no matter how much authority the imperial family and princes had lost, they still held symbolic significance.
Simply put, it meant getting entangled and causing injury was burdensome.
Of course, it was more the adults’ influence than the children’s own will.
However, young Hwan at that time didn’t understand all that, and whenever he played his favorite soccer, he felt the most excluded among his friends. This was far too cruel for young Hwan to handle. Even at that age, it was hollow. It was sad. It was painful.
It was the same even if he changed sports.
For example, baseball.
Baseball was even worse rather than better.
In the same context as above, baseball would be even more difficult because the pitcher throwing the ball had to throw a fast ball toward Hwan standing at bat with a bat. It would be problematic if he failed to control it and hit a dangerous area like the head or something that could easily break.
So their choice wasn’t much different from those who played soccer together. As far as possible and as slow as possible. In the end, the only pitches that came in were all ‘balls’ that ridiculously missed the strike zone.
“Four balls!”
If a batter receives four ball calls, they automatically walk to first base. So Hwan could never properly swing the bat. Even later, when something called an ‘automatic intentional walk’ was created, he would be filtered out without receiving a single pitch, without even having time to plant his feet at the plate.
The time walking out to first base while everyone at the field watched was too long and miserable.
‘Is the problem that it’s a team sport?’
Thinking this, at one point he also tried challenging individual sports differently. But regrettably, that didn’t really change the story either.
Because Hwan could never be an individual.
When he didn’t get first place, instead of encouragement and cheering to do better next time, there appeared signs that he should stop now. There was no one to point fingers at specifically. His father, his brothers, the citizens—everyone was like that.
Though no one said it outright, if you thought a young child wouldn’t notice, that was a huge miscalculation. Rather, because he was a young child, there were things he could notice even more keenly.
Watching the adults’ troubled eyes, young Hwan’s heart was trampled every single day.
Since he’d noticed it on his own, he couldn’t show it either. Occasionally running away like this, hiding and crying before going back was all he could do.
“…Is it because I’m a prince?”
His feelings suddenly leaked out.
Was it because even at his young age, he knew that was the one thing he couldn’t change no matter how hard he tried? Saying this, Hwan buried his wet face in his knees in frustration.
It was such a short statement containing so many circumstances.
For Huiseo, who was likewise young and moreover meeting him for the first time that day, it must have been even more difficult to understand.
Yet Huiseo listened.
Without scolding him for being immature, without forcing him to understand it as something he should, he just silently, quietly stayed by his side. Actually, just that was grateful enough. But then, putting down that thick book he’d been holding next to Hwan, what he said was quite charming.
“Should I steal it then?”
“…Huh? What?”
“The ball.”
At the out-of-the-blue words, Hwan raised his head and blinked with a bewildered expression. The wet eyes that were revealed contained only Huiseo’s image completely.
‘…No, that’s not what I meant.’
He thought that for a moment.
But soon the opposite thought came: ‘No, isn’t that right though?’ Because all those circumstances he’d explained at length were ultimately because he wanted that. He wished they would steal his ball without hesitation like other children. He wished they would kick the ball together.
He wished someone would play together with him.
“Y-yeah, that’s right.”
When he agreed in this flustered way, Huiseo picked up the ball that had been lying forlornly next to Hwan. Seeing Huiseo like that, Hwan awkwardly stood up following him.
‘Are we going to play ball together?’
Pretending otherwise, his heart was pounding, and he couldn’t hide his expectant gaze, when Huiseo hugged the ball he’d picked up tightly to his chest and asked innocently.
“But how do you do it?”
“…Huh?”
For someone who’d boldly taken the ball, it was an absurd question.
After not knowing what to do for a moment, Hwan carefully asked.
“…You’ve never played soccer?”
“No.”
“I-is that so?”
Though Huiseo answered as confidently as could be, young Hwan was quite shocked at that moment. In one corner of his heart, he thought that perhaps this child might be even worse at getting along with friends than himself.
‘I should be nice to him.’
That seemed to be why he first had such thoughts.
Of course, that was a misunderstanding born from Hwan’s assumption, and learning that Huiseo was just a child who abnormally preferred books over soccer came a bit later.
Anyway, that day’s events became their connection, and after that, the two met and kicked the ball whenever they had time. Running around various places in the spacious Gyeongbokgung Palace like a playground, including the front yard of Hwan’s quarters.
Huiseo was, to put it bluntly, a terrible klutz.
In crude terms, he was completely ‘undeveloped.’
It wasn’t for nothing that he hadn’t played soccer. From the beginning, it was fortunate that Huiseo had no will to participate together, because otherwise he definitely would have been quite hurt, Hwan was certain.
For such a Huiseo, stealing the ball from Hwan, who liked sports and was equally good at it, wasn’t an easy task.
“Argh…!”
“Are you okay?”
Every time his feet would get tangled and he’d fall, landing on his bottom.
“Why can’t I do this?”
Young Huiseo would hold the soccer ball in his hands and deeply ponder before the gap between theory and reality he was encountering for the first time. Not that anything changed because of that—the ball he kicked with all his might would go over the wall and break windows or doors, and the sound of smashing pottery could be heard almost daily.
They got scolded quite a lot because of that.
Though it’s an image unimaginable for the current Huiseo, back then the notoriety of these troublemakers spread among the palace attendants day by day. But laughably, Hwan found it incredibly fun. The thrill of his first transgression was tremendous.
Even while being scolded, if his eyes met Huiseo’s, a grin would burst out.
Waiting every day for the days when Huiseo would enter the palace was the only pleasure of that time.
