Sansan rubbed his sleepy eyes and sat up. When he directed his gaze toward where the sound came from, he could see one large silhouette in the darkness. Sansan, who had never been in a position to light candles and had simply lived in darkness when it was dark, had fairly good night vision.
“…Who are you?”
Sansan asked toward the silhouette. Then the silhouette that had been sitting in the chair across from the bed slowly rose. The closer it approached, the more the silhouette grew larger and larger in size.
He was an enormously large man. Sansan, who had lived his entire life confined to his room, had never seen such a huge man in his life. He became frightened for no reason.
“Didn’t I tell you?”
The man asked in a bass voice with a resonance as deep as his size. At that, the previous night that he’d forgotten suddenly came to mind. Sansan haltingly opened his mouth.
“Y-Your Majesty the Emperor?”
Having said it with his own mouth, Sansan seemed to realize his mistake belatedly and hurriedly got down from the bed and prostrated himself flat on the floor. It wasn’t a movement that followed proper etiquette at all, but it was about the posture ordinary common people who knew nothing would take.
The Emperor, who had approached right up to Sansan, looked down at Sansan bowing his head at his feet and frowned slightly.
“Didn’t Zhen tell you my given name?”
“…L-Huh, Heonjo.”
In truth, if it had been someone else, even if they remembered, they wouldn’t have dared to say it aloud, but Sansan’s thoughts didn’t extend that far. Nowhere in the entire world was there anyone who dared to speak the Son of Heaven’s name aloud.
“I was going to punish you if you’d forgotten, but you did well. Clever.”
Sansan, who had been prostrating, momentarily felt joy at the praise of being clever. So he briefly forgot the difficult situation and was about to boast, not really a boast, that he was originally quite good at memorizing names. Suddenly his body floated up into the air.
“Uh, uhuh?”
When he bobbed up, he was in the Emperor’s arms. Dumbfounded, he just stayed still with his mouth hanging open stupidly. The Emperor looked down at Sansan like that and the corner of his mouth curved up.
Sansan was simply transferred onto the bed by the Emperor’s hands. After placing Sansan on the bed, the Emperor also naturally sat down beside him.
“Since it’s the name of the one who will be your husband, you must never forget it from now on.”
The mouth that had been hanging open stupidly opened even wider. It was because it was such an out-of-the-blue statement.
“…Husband?”
“That’s right.”
The Emperor nodded while stroking Sansan’s cheek. Sansan’s eyes widened round like a rabbit’s. Sansan carefully scrutinized the Emperor sitting before him anew.
The line created by his deeply set, shadowed eyes and high nose bridge was sharp and splendid. It was a three-dimensional quality that stood out even in the darkness. Even to Sansan, who lived face-to-face with Sanwol all the time, it was an extremely handsome face. However.
His prominently protruding Adam’s apple, his shoulders that seemed twice as broad as Sansan’s own, his excessively thick chest and arms—such things clearly proved it. That the Emperor was a man. Naturally.
“M-my husband?”
“I said that’s right.”
The Emperor frowned. Sansan wondered if perhaps the Emperor had mistaken him for a woman. When he was young and playing with Sanwol, there were quite a few relatives who misunderstood them as two girls. Among them, the persistent ones wouldn’t believe it until he took off his lower garments to show them.
But since he couldn’t just strip off his lower garments like when he was a child, Sansan bit his lips hard in his difficulty.
“…But I’m a man?”
What if he doesn’t believe me? Sansan fidgeted with his fingers anxiously.
“No. You are not a man.”
Since there had been people like this before, Sansan swallowed an inwardly frustrated sigh, thinking ‘as expected.’ Even when told he wasn’t a girl, there were always one or two people who stubbornly wouldn’t believe it.
Of course, even so, he had no intention of showing his lower parts to the Emperor. It was partly because he’d been scolded by Sanwol numerous times over similar issues, and partly because as he grew older he gradually became ashamed of his body’s defect. In any case, Sansan didn’t take off his pants just anywhere anymore.
“I c-can’t show you, but I really am a man. Please believe me.”
Unable to do otherwise, Sansan earnestly appealed the truth to the Emperor with sincerity. The Emperor let out another pfft, small laugh. He suddenly reached out and lifted the face of the restless Sansan.
“You are not an ordinary man but a Cheonin. A Eum-in among them. You exist to bear children for Yang-in like Zhen.”
It was completely incomprehensible talk. It was when Sansan, who had tilted his head, had just parted his lips to ask something in return. Suddenly a dark shadow fell over his face.
Before he could even perceive it, something soft touched Sansan’s lips. Sansan didn’t know what this action was. So he just froze and stupidly kept his mouth open. The Emperor, who like Sansan hadn’t closed his eyes, slowly pushed his tongue between Sansan’s teeth.
It was just as he remembered. The narrow, damp and hot place like his inner rooms welcomed the Emperor’s tongue and stiffened with confusion. The greater the agitation, the thicker Sansan’s wildflower-like scent became and surged in all directions.
The Emperor struggled to suppress the thought that he wanted to just push him down and take him like this. He briefly swept through Sansan’s mouth and withdrew.
After ending the impulsive kiss like that, he wiped Sansan’s wet lips that were still parted with his thumb. Sansan, whose senses returned belatedly, raised both hands and covered his mouth.
“Before long, you will conceive Zhen’s child.”
“…”
Right now, Sansan was recalling the previous night through that kiss just now. Even in his confusion, there had been several vivid moments. The strong bad breath that came from the old man’s mouth and the unpleasantly sticky saliva, and how he’d tried with all his might to avoid those lips.
He instinctively realized that this and that were similar acts. Sansan bit his lips behind his hands covering his mouth. Of course, the Emperor didn’t have bad breath. Rather, he had a sharp yet heavy scent that made people tense. He must surely be carrying an expensive sachet.
But if it just didn’t smell bad, did that make the two things different?
At least not to Sansan. Sansan’s hands covering his mouth began to tremble little by little from the fear that suddenly rushed in.
“So before that, learn diligently with all your heart and sincerity in advance.”
“…Learn what?”
“How to serve the Emperor, what else.”
The Emperor lightly tugged on Sansan’s right ear as if asking how he didn’t even know that. He didn’t want to hurt him, he just kept wanting to touch him. But even that felt uncomfortable and frightening to Sansan. His body kept trembling, afraid that something like the previous night would happen again.
“Learn everything about what kind of existence the Emperor is, and therefore with what kind of mindset you must serve the Emperor. In Zhen’s view, your problem is ignorance. You must know to strive and fill in what is lacking. Did you understand what Zhen said?”
He didn’t understand any of it. His mind was already elsewhere, and the Emperor’s words were too long.
Frustration and instinctively approaching ominousness—such negative emotions piled up layer by layer inside Sansan. They were unstable emotions enough to easily erase the tears of a woman he’d met for the first time today.
Originally, Sansan felt great confusion when facing things outside his repetitive range of life, especially uncertain and indefinite things. So instead of answering the Emperor’s words properly, he only asked back what he wanted to ask.
“Th-then when can I go home?”
He’d followed along because he was told they were going to see his father-in-law. He thought he’d meet his wife. But he didn’t even get to see his wife, and his father-in-law suddenly stripped his clothes. Not only did he grope him here and there, but the old man also completely stripped and rubbed his naked body all over Sansan’s entire body.
Sansan found that act so distasteful, disgusting, and frightening. And above all, he felt guilty because Sanwol had repeatedly emphasized from long ago that he should only take off his lower garments in front of his wife. It was because he instinctively felt it was an act he should only do with his wife.
“F-Father said he would give me a chimney flue, and since I suddenly disappeared, he must be very worried… A-and also, I have a woman I’m, I’m supposed to marry. I’m af-afraid she won’t know…”
Sansan lowered the hands that had covered his mouth and spoke while constantly fidgeting with his fingers. He had expressed his conviction in his own way that he didn’t want to do that with the Emperor and wanted to go home, but for some reason there was no response at all from the Emperor.
