Chapter 34

She touched Bipaan’s wedding dress on the wall. She made it a habit of touching it as she couldn’t hug him warmly every day. The silk of the wedding dress was soft. Touching the soft silk, she recalled another man’s soft touch she experienced in the past.

No, I shouldn’t think about him. Never.

Although she did her best to forget him, Ruhae’s face lingered in her mind on and off. She stared at Bipaan’s wedding dress, as if it was the only thing she could see.

And then she reminded herself harshly by saying, “Open your eyes wide and look at this. This is your husband. What you can hug now is only this.”

***

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Finally, the summer came to the Mok Kingdom.

While the seasons changed, Kyosul kept sending letters to Bipaan containing dried flowers. Her letters were piled under the small table right next to his desk. When there was no more space for the letters, the eunuch put a small basket beside it.

He saw the basket as he lay on his back on the bed earlier than usual.

“Even though I don’t reply, she still keeps sending them.”

By now he couldn’t resist the urge to open them.

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Obviously, her determination was even stronger that the pine trees growing on rocks, though he was not sure if it reflected her stubbornness.

“Let me pick one since I finished my work early today….”

Murmuring to himself, he picked up her latest letter. The silk wrap was as soft as a butterfly’s wing. When he opened it gently, he noticed a dried flower in the middle of the letter. With a curious look, he picked it up awkwardly.

“A letter with a flower…”

He had never received such a letter. He didn’t think anyone could send a letter with a flower inside. It was the first love letter he received in his life. The crisp fragrance of the dried flower touched his heart mysteriously. Her small and neat writing filled almost half the page.

“Oh, how could she write such a long letter about a trifling topic like summer.”

Not only her words but also her writing embarrassed him.

He hadn’t expected that the letters piled up every day contained this kind of content.

“Why does she feel good about giving flowers to me?”

The other letters had similar content. Bipaan thought that she sent the letters to gain his favor, but he couldn’t understand why she wrote mainly about such stuff. As he tended to look at everything logically, he couldn’t understand the illogical world of one’s emotions.

“What the heck are you trying to convey with your feelings about heat, rain and flowers, etc?”

He couldn’t find any practical benefits on her side. He carefully examined the letters again in order to find any hidden contents or purpose, but there was nothing significant he could find there. What was in the letters was what he saw, no more or less.

“These letters are an exact replica of this little woman.”

After carefully reviewing the letters, he lost interest. He noticed a red stamp at the end of the letter. It was a stamp she put along with her signature. At first he ignored it because it was just a stamp with her name inscribed on it, but he felt strange about the writing on the stamp.

The letters inscribed on her stamp were not in block letters. They were like a code as if it was drawn like a picture. Inside the circle stamped in red ink were drawn two letters. Narrowing his eyes, he stared at the letters.

“Doesn’t this letter ‘bi’ mean ‘rain’?”

He could read one letter ‘bi’ easily. When he confirmed it, his eyes trembled.

That was the letter she wrote so many times in her letters. ‘Bi’ meant ‘rain’ but it could also mean ‘wife’. If she meant the second, then it had the power to penetrate Bipaan’s cold heart.

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Bipaan casually put the letter at the end of the bed with his trembling hand. He rarely showed his nervousness. He quickly went to the small bookshelf in the corner of his room. It was a place for rare books, important documents and other precious stuff.

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“I think I put it somewhere here.”

As the Crown Prince, it was a precious thing, but as an individual, it was not. It took some time for him to find it. Besides, as he was impatient, he found it hard to locate it.

He opened and closed the drawer of the small desk several times, and even overturned it. While browsing through books, his fingers suddenly trembled when he found it.

He could find the document at the lower end of the bookshelf that he had been looking for.

The document he took out was wrapped in a golden silk and sealed with a red string. On both ends of the document scroll was inscribed a dragon’s face. It looked precious at a glance.

It was none other than their marriage certificate. It was a document officially declaring the marriage of the Crown and the Crown Princess and the crowing of Bipaan. On the wedding day, the emperor’s document was delivered to Bipaan, while the Queen’s document was delivered to Kyosul.

“I’ve found it!”

He hastily untied the red string. It was a document he threw into the corner without opening it after he received it on the wedding day, for his marriage to the crown princess was just a meaningless event to him as a person. But now he was examining each word of the writing in the document.

The writing was composed of old-fashioned and standard letters, but when he read half the contents of the document, he found some about Kyosul. In the document was written Kyosul’s child name clearly. That name was not used any more after she was given the official title Kyosul.

During her days in the Hwa Kingdom the name she used to use was Woorum Mokhwa. Blinking his eyes several times, he looked at the Chinese characters of ‘Woorum.’

“Doesn’t it mean ‘woo’ meaning ‘rain,’ and ‘rum’ meaning ‘cold’?”

He was familiar with her name ‘Woorum’ as he heard of it before, but little did he think the Chinese characters of her name were ‘rain’ and ‘cold.’

Cold rain, cold rain, cold rain, cold rain.

Bipaan’s eyes became hollow and dark. It looked as if some fresh flares were burning in his hollow eyes.

“Woorum?”

He felt as if he was hit in the back of his neck by somebody. He once again recited her name, unbelieving. When he spoke her name, his body shivered when her name came off the tip of his tongue.

***

The next day Bipaan couldn’t concentrate on his work. After he handled petitions, he hosted a classical reading session but couldn’t focus.

Obviously he was preoccupied with other stuff.

“Your Majesty!” Losing his patience, his master put down the book, while Bipaan closed the book. “Are you distracted, Your Majesty?”

“Not at all.”

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“You are just repeating the first chapter of the book.”

“I was pondering over its meaning deeply.”

“I think that’s enough, Your Majesty. You can move on to the next chapter.”

Only then did Bipaan discover that his master closed the book and put his hand on it.

“How much time is left until the closing of this classical reading?”

“I’ve spent more than a decade studying with you.”

The old master smiled gently at him. Though he humbled himself before him, using honorifics, Bipaan respected him as his master. So, he quietly waited when his master said something unexpectedly.

“I know you were always sincere in studying, and I can testify that you are the best prince of all the royal members that I have trained so far.”

Then the master closed his eyes briefly.

He looked back at those days when he taught Bipaan, and said, “When you turned 30, the emperor ordered you to tour a foreign country, as you remember.”