“Honeydew melon?”
He asks while embracing Sansan’s waist from behind and kissing his cheek moistly. Sansan was staring only at the floor with a face that looked like he was about to cry. He seemed to have no capacity to answer because of the hand fondling his thigh. Eventually, Sanwol, sitting across from them, spoke instead.
“Yes. Today I prepared gwapyeon made from minced honeydew melon.”
“I see. You’ve worked hard. Still, it seems he eats the snacks you prepare at least, so pay even more attention going forward. Somehow he just keeps getting thinner.”
Looking at her belly swollen enough that it wouldn’t be strange if she gave birth today, the Emperor didn’t even formally ask once how the baby was. Just Sansan, Sansan. Only worries about Sansan. Sanwol swallowed the bitter water rising in her throat.
“Yes, Your Majesty. I will do so.”
“Good. What were you doing?”
The Emperor immediately lowered his gaze and asked against Sansan’s ear. At least he had spoken to Sanwol, but his behavior was as if Wanui Han wasn’t even visible. At the hand subtly kneading his thigh over his thin robe, Sansan felt suffocated.
It was stifling. It was because of the Emperor’s body scent rushing in from his closely pressed body. That heavy yet wild fragrance even made him dizzy. Yet at the same time, he was frightened to feel the nausea that had been subtly lingering until just before gradually subsiding.
The nausea that would typically rise when he smelled food would settle to a certain extent when he smelled the Emperor’s body scent. Though the nausea was so severe it couldn’t stop the vomiting, it was still strange. Sansan had never confided this anywhere due to an inexplicable fear that he was changing in bizarre ways.
“…So-socks! I was making socks.”
While blocking the Emperor’s hand that kept climbing up his thigh, Sansan answered urgently. Feeling him trembling, the Emperor burst out laughing and removed his hand.
If he wanted to do it, it would be proper for Sanwol and Wanui Han to vacate their seats, but he didn’t want to make Sansan, whose body was already unwell, even more uncomfortable. The Emperor took his eyes off Sansan and turned his gaze to the socks draped over the side table. He soon picked them up.
“These?”
The small-sized socks that fit right in the Emperor’s palm were clearly not for him at first glance. They were a size that only a newborn could wear.
“Why are there so many bloodstains?”
“…I, by mi-mistake. If I wash these, they’ll all come out. They’ll get clean so it’s okay. I want to give them to the baby.”
The Emperor looked down at the socks in his hand without any particular response. He didn’t much like the small socks stained with blood here and there. He strangely disliked them.
The Emperor threw the socks onto the floor of the tea room without much deliberation. When Sansan could only widen his eyes without saying anything, the Emperor took hold of both of Sansan’s hands. He turned those hands this way and that in the summer sunlight that hadn’t yet set, coming through the open window.
“Now that I look, they’re full of prick marks here and there.”
“…I, I couldn’t keep concentrating,”
“Concubine Yoon, kneel.”
At the Emperor’s suddenly sunken, chilly voice, Sanwol went down from the Arhat Bed without delay and knelt. Sansan was flustered, unable to understand why things were turning out this way again, and struggled to get up from the Emperor’s lap. But the more he did so, the more the Emperor tightened his arms holding Sansan.
“You’re more than you appear. I didn’t know you’d be this jealous over your older brother. You secretly oppress your already dim-witted older brother while pretending otherwise?”
“Those words are utterly, completely unwarranted. Please withdraw them, Your Majesty.”
Sanwol pressed her forehead to the floor and stretched out both hands to touch the ground. Her belly, raised high with the baby, was pressed here and there between Sanwol’s thighs and the floor.
“Your, Your Majesty. It’s not like that. It’s not jealousy. Wol doesn’t do that. This has been since long ago,”
“If you don’t want to get hit here too, you be quiet.”
It really wasn’t. Sansan muttered while shedding tears. Sanwol said while prostrate.
“This lowly concubine’s older brother,”
“You should say Wanui Jin.”
“…Wanui Jin originally, unlike others, cannot endure frustration well and often runs around shouting here and there. Needlework is a pastime this lowly concubine has done together with him since childhood to increase his patience. I had him do it thinking it would help…, this lowly concubine’s thinking was short. I should have been careful so he wouldn’t get hurt, but this lowly concubine failed to do so. Please forgive me. However, I swear, it was not from jealousy. Please look upon this with mercy.”
Despite Sanwol’s explanation, the Emperor was silent for quite some time. Sansan grabbed the Emperor’s hand and shook it, begging incoherently that it wasn’t true, that he was wrong. The Emperor, who had only been listening to that, finally opened his mouth again.
“Han-ho.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Throw that out.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
The socks Sansan had been making were carried in the hands of a palace eunuch who received the head eunuch’s instruction and disappeared outside Yeongnyeong Palace.
“The items for the imperial grandson to wear and use will be well prepared by the Imperial Household Department, so Concubine Yoon, you must not be greedy. If you injure Wanui Jin with something like this one more time, I will not let it pass.”
“…Your grace is, as vast as the sea, Your Majesty.”
Sanwol could barely answer in a low voice, her fingertips trembling. It was unfair. She felt like crying. But she couldn’t show it.
“Your body isn’t even well—don’t waste your energy on useless things. Haven’t I told you repeatedly? Now that you’ve entered the concubinage, everything that is yours is mine. You must not carelessly harm what is mine.”
“……”
Sansan just bit his lips tightly and didn’t dare answer. The Emperor looked down at such a Sansan and sighed from above his head.
“San-ah, you must answer. Just because I favor you doesn’t mean acting this rudely is good for you.”
“…Yes.”
Sansan answered reluctantly. However, only Sansan heard and passed it off as nothing serious—everyone present couldn’t hide their surprised hearts. It was the first time the word “favor” had come directly from the Emperor’s mouth.
It was the moment the Emperor himself acknowledged that Sansan was his favored concubine.
“Songhwa, help Concubine Yoon up now. At this rate, Wanui Jin will cry himself into fainting. He hasn’t even eaten anything, and he already faints every night as a matter of course.”
The Emperor, who clicked his tongue, stood up while holding Sansan on his lap. In bed, he did all sorts of positions so there was no end to holding and carrying him, but even so, it was the first time he’d openly held him in broad daylight, so Sansan was also surprised and flailed.
“Enough, let’s go to your quarters. I must have an imperial physician take your pulse and have a medicine prescription made for you to take.”
As if Sansan’s struggling was nothing, the Emperor carried Sansan and left the rear hall of Yeongnyeong Palace.
“Go carefully. Long live, long live, ten thousand times long live His Imperial Majesty the Emperor.”
“Go carefully. Long live, long live, ten thousand times long live His Imperial Majesty the Emperor.”
Sanwol and Wanui Han paid their respects to his back as he didn’t even look back. Until the end, Wanui Han couldn’t exchange even a single word with the Emperor.
***
The Emperor, who entered Dongbaejeon of Yeongnyeong Palace while holding Sansan, immediately strode toward the depths of the bedchamber. First priority was calming his jade stem that had been erect since earlier because Sansan was crying.
He went to bed before sunset without even washing Sansan. He hung Sansan’s two slender calves over his shoulders and rammed into him like a crazed bull. The Emperor felt his member swell to its fullest inside Sansan this time too. When that happened, Sansan couldn’t breathe well and rolled his eyes back.
The more he cried, the more he became aroused, the thicker and more voluptuous Sansan’s body scent became, shaking the Emperor’s mind hazily. He reached a climax so intense his consciousness became hazy inside Sansan every time.
“Your Majesty. Imperial Physician Do is waiting.”
In the bedchamber filled with the thick scent of lovemaking, the Emperor, who had been sucking and licking the sprawled Sansan by himself, raised his head.
“Tell him to wait.”
Even while getting up, the Emperor couldn’t take his hands off Sansan’s body as if reluctant. Approaching palace servants wiped the Emperor’s body with wet cloths. Soon the Emperor, wearing a golden sleeping robe, wrapped Sansan tightly in the golden bedding and held him.
He was going to do more after the pulse examination anyway. The thick body scent was so maddeningly good that washing him seemed wasteful. The Emperor, who carried Sansan directly like that and advanced to the tea room, sat on the Arhat Bed and had Imperial Physician Do brought in.
“I greet His Imperial Majesty the Emperor. Long live, long live, ten thousand times long live.”
Do Jin-gyeom, who had entered the Imperial Pharmacy at a relatively young age, knelt and bowed deeply. He was a young man with skill and ambition who had caught the Emperor’s eye, surpassing countless imperial physicians.
“Come close and take my Wanui Jin’s pulse.”
Do Jin-gyeom, who had heard and knew well how much the Emperor had been favoring Wanui Jin recently, moved his steps carefully with his face lowered, trying his utmost not to take Wanui Jin into his eyes. Soon arriving at the Emperor’s feet, he gently placed his fingertips on the thin, white wrist the Emperor extended.
