Chapter Text
She doesn’t mean to overhear them. She doesn’t mean to set foot on a path that will twist and turn and lead her away from everything she ever wanted. She doesn’t mean to dive in headfirst without checking the temperature, without checking for rapids and waterfalls, without checking for everything that could make her life spiral out of control.
She doesn’t mean to. It just happens.
She just happens to be walking by as the maids are taking a brief respite from their work to gossip. She just happens to hear her cousin’s name. She just happens to slow her pace.
“—don’t see why Lord Soo-Won would settle for anything less than a woman who can do it all,” a maid says. “Cooking, cleaning, sewing...”
“Don’t forget song and dance,” a second chimes in, and the third says, “Yes, we can’t forget those.”
“But we’re forgetting the most important part,” the first protests, and Yona strains her ears, not wanting to miss it. “Kissing.”
“Ohhh,” the other two chorus, and then they all burst into giggles.
“Yes, every man wants a wife who knows how to kiss,” the second maid says, and that’s the beginning of the end.
Having lived a scant sixteen and a half years—sixteen and a half incredibly sheltered years, at that—the true meaning of their words flies right over poor Princess Yona’s head. Bless her naive little heart, she truly believes kissing means kissing, and no more or less.
Later, Hak finds her out on her balcony, thinking over the words that are still ringing in her head. He perches himself on the wooden railing beside her and dares to ask what’s wrong, with no idea what he’s getting himself into. He probably expects some complaint about the state of her hair, but that’s not what he gets. Not at all.
Instead Yona asks, “Hak, would you marry someone who couldn’t do typical feminine things?”
“What?” He frowns at her, leans his weapon carefully against the wall with one hand, grips the railing beside him with the other. “What kind of question is that?”
For a long moment she hesitates, but in the end she decides that getting this off her chest will be worth him inevitably making fun of her. “I overheard some maids talking about what kind of woman Soo-Won—”
“Ahh,” Hak says, before she’s even gotten the last syllable of her cousin’s name out, as if that explains everything. “I’m sorry I asked.”
Yona crosses her arms and glares at him. “Well, you did ask, and I’m not done answering.”
“Of course you aren’t.”
She ignores the resignation in his tone. “They were talking about what kind of wife he would want, and they said they didn’t think he’d settle for someone who couldn’t cook and sew and kiss—” She can feel heat rushing to her cheeks as she says that last word and hastens to add, “—or dance and sing and play an instrument.”
Out of both nerve and breath, she falls quiet and waits for Hak to burst into laughter.
He blinks at her.
“You can dance and play the koto a little,” he says, and it’s her turn to blink at him.
“You always said my playing was terrible and you’d sooner attend council meetings for six days straight!”
“I said a little, didn’t I?” He looks away, squints up at the sun for a brief moment before returning his gaze to her. “Anyways, who cares what other people think Soo-Won wants? We know him best.”
“They said every man wants those things,” she says, though that isn’t precisely true. They only said that about the kissing, but she’s not about to tell Hak that. “Don’t you? I mean, would you ever even think about marrying me?”
He chokes on air, and while it’s nice to be proven right, there’s an odd pang in her chest that ruins her satisfaction.
She ignores it. It’s nothing. “See? You can’t stand the thought.”
“Of marrying you?” He laughs. “No, I can’t, but it’s not because you can’t cook.”
“Someone like me, then,” she says.
“You mean someone spoiled and stubborn and—”
“If you say ugly, I’m going to—”
“—stuck-up,” he finishes, and if she’s honest, she’s not that surprised. Lately he seems to have fallen out of the habit of taunting her about her looks.
“Fine, fine, I get it. I’m everything you don’t want in a woman.” He probably doesn’t even think of me as one in the first place, she thinks, and unlike Soo-Won, he never will.
“I’m suddenly seeing you as a woman,” Soo-Won confessed the night of her sixteenth birthday, just when she’d resolved to give up on him for his own safety, but those are words that she will never hear from Hak.
Words that she would never want to hear from Hak, of course, so it’s not like it matters.
As if he reading her thoughts, he says, “Doesn’t matter what I want.”
But that’s where he’s wrong.
“It does, actually,” she says, because she’s thought it over long and hard, and this is the only solution she could find. “Because I want you to teach me.”
"I don't understand," he says, clearly reaching the limits of his patience. "It’s not like he cares if you can do those things. You guys have an understanding, don’t you? Ever since your birthday... If he didn’t care then—”
“I care!”
For a second Hak seems too startled by her outburst to answer, but he quickly recovers and says, “Oh, really? All your life you’ve had people cooking and sewing for you, so why does it suddenly matter now? And what makes you think I’d be able to help you learn those things?”
It takes every ounce of Yona's self-control to refrain from stomping her foot. "I'm not talking about learning to cook or sew, I'm talking about learning to kiss!" she says, and then claps her hands over her mouth. Too loud.
Stupid Hak. Why does he have to be so dense?
"Learning...to...kiss?" he echoes, as if having trouble processing the words. Then the furrow in his brow smooths over. "Sorry, Princess, but I don't have books on kissing. Try the library."
"Books!" She scoffs at him, at the mockery in his tone. Dense, and infuriating. "Books aren't going to teach me how to kiss."
At last, understanding dawns on Hak’s face, and his eyes widen in shock. "And...I am?"
“Not if you don’t want to,” she says, because she remembers the pressure of Tae-Jun’s hand around her wrist and she remembers Hak on one knee before her father, vowing to protect her. She knows the weight of her title and of her words. “I’m not ordering you as the princess, I’m asking you as Yona, your childhood friend. Show me how to kiss.”
He scrapes a hand over his face. “Ask someone else.” Anyone else, his tone implies.
“Like who? I’ve gone through everyone I can think of, there’s no one else suitable.”
His hand moves from his face into his hair, tugging his bangs back. “Oh, so now I’m your last resort?” he asks, tone too snide for her to mistake him as genuinely hurt.
Still, it wouldn’t kill her to be generous. “Well, I thought of you before Tae-Jun,” she says.
(Truthfully, Hak was the very first person that came to mind—he always is—but she’d sooner give up every piece of finery she owns than admit this to him.)
“Stop it, Princess, you’re making me blush,” he says, voice thick with sarcasm, dropping his hand back to his side. “Surely you don’t need kissing lessons when you’re this good at charming men.”
He wants her to charm him, does he? She reaches out, grazes her fingertips along the hand that’s gripping the balcony railing so tightly his knuckles blanch, trying to ease some of the tension. He flinches ever so slightly beneath her touch, and she draws back.
“Charming men is another skill I don’t have,” she says, lifting her chin haughtily. “As you’re always quick to point out. I’d never ask you to teach me that one, though. I can’t imagine you’re any better at it.”
A shadow passes over his face as she speaks, sparking her curiosity, but before she can study it further a rakish grin drives it off.
“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong,” he says. “I have so many princes and noblemen vying for my hand, Mundok had to recruit half of Fuuga to beat them off with a stick. I didn’t want to tell you—I know how jealous you can get.”
Yona dismisses this with an impatient toss of her head, whipping her unruly red locks over her shoulder. “Why would I be jealous? I’m not stupid enough to believe you like any man you’ve ever met half so much as you like me—besides Soo-Won, but I don’t mind sharing you with him.”
His grin vanishes instantly, quicker than the smallest flame doused by a bucket of water.
“That’s not—” He gasps out the words on a startled burst of air, has to stop and draw in another breath, deeper. He scrubs a hand over his face again, like he needs a moment to collect himself before he attempts to answer her a second time. “That’s not what I meant.”
She watches him closely. One would think he’d been punched in the gut—by someone worlds stronger than I, no less. Far from dousing her mere flicker of curiosity, his reaction is a sizable piece of kindling that she latches onto with little hesitation or remorse. Hak is forever teasing her, and while she always tries to give as good as she gets, it’s rare that she’s able to truly fluster him.
Yet this mystery will have to wait; she hasn’t forgotten her request, and nor has his refusal to answer gone unnoticed.
“I know what you meant,” she says. “And now that you know what I mean, I want an answer. Will you teach me how to kiss?”
He doesn’t say anything. He stares at her for a second, eyes intent on hers before he drags them down to her lips, almost as if against his will. She would never want him to agree to this against his will, wouldn’t charm him even if she knew how. This is a request, not an order, and she needs to make that clear.
So she leans in and whispers, “Please, Hak?”
This time, he doesn’t gasp or grin or run a hand over his face. He doesn’t move a muscle, doesn’t even seem to breathe—a rather alarming development, in Yona’s opinion.
“Hak...?”
“Well,” he says at last, all the tension in him draining away before her confused eyes. “Guess I might as well do Soo-Won a favor.” He shrugs his shoulders with an ease she suddenly no longer feels, as if they’ve exchanged places. “Wouldn’t want him to end up married to someone who kisses like a fish.”
I really should be annoyed at that, she thinks to herself. I really should be.
“Great,” she says, but it comes out too high-pitched, like a mouse squeaking, and she clears her throat loudly when he smirks at her.
“I’ll let you know when and where we’ll be meeting by the end of the day,” she says, and then sweeps through the balcony doors.