Chapter 80

Getting close enough to her to touch his chest to her back, he hugged her from behind.

“It looks like we’re playing hide and seek. I feel like I’m a spy.”

“Do you think this is interesting?”

When she compared hide-and-seek to a spy game, he couldn’t help but laugh at her far-stretched comparison. In the end, he hugged her tightly, unable to hold back the urge.

She was at a loss what to do as she was so bashful in his embrace.

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“Ruhae….”

Ruhae said, “Everytime we have to meet like this secretly, I feel sorry. As you compared our secret meeting to hide-and-seek, my heart feels much lighter now, but I feel more sorry than before.”

As they had to find secret places for their secret dating, Ruhae was always sorry for her. Nonetheless, she didn’t care about it and even burst into laughter, with her imagination taking wing like that. That made him feel much relieved but sorry and grateful at the same time.

“Why are you sorry, Ruhae?”

“Well, I would like to give you the best things all the time, but I can’t. I’m sorry about that.”

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“I take great delight in meeting you in a place like this,” she said playfully. Given her sparkling eyes and blushed face, she seemed to be serious.

Standing on tiptoes, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She leaned on him closely and raised her head to get close to his ears. Her little actions thrilled him.

She whispered in a sweet voice, “My heart is pounding wildly and I’m so nervous when I have to move around the palace secretly. It reminds me of my days in the Hwa Kingdom where I did the same. In fact, I was like a tomboy seeking hidden places like this and hiding from the court ladies. I had thought those days were in the past, but our secret dating reminded me of those days once again.”

She was so thrilled when she reminisced about her days in her motherland.

“How wonderful you are! It looks like there is nothing difficult in your eyes. I think you know how to enjoy your life,” he said, wrapping his hands around her waist.

“Enjoy my life?”

“Well, even in a situation like now you are grinning at me!”

“That’s because I was reminded of my tomboy days back in my motherland,” she said bashfully.

“It amazes me to see that you can stay happy without complaining. That’s not easy. It’s easy to complain.”

He gently touched her face with his fingers and hugged her with a soft expression.

“Kyosul, you smile at me and show your hospitality to me. I love your frank attitude.”

“Oh, it’s not a big deal. Never mind,” she lowered her head at his praise. As if she wanted to hide her blushing face, she buried it into his chest.

He looked at her gently, with his eyes full of his deep affection for her.

In fact, it was her innocence and frankness that attracted him to her blindly.

“Ooops! What is this?”

While she was burying her face in his chest, she noticed something familiar to her.

She didn’t see that as she was totally focused on him, but there were a bunch of little blue flowers near the wall. In fact, they were the same flowers she found placed on the window of her room in the past. She squatted down gladly and looked at the flowers.

“Ruhae, look at these flowers here!”

He bent down and watched her with a fond expression as she was so thrilled to find the familiar flowers right before her eyes.

“Do you like this flower?”

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“Ugh?”

She looked at him with an embarrassed expression as he continued to smile at her.

How could he not recognize the flowers that he used to send to her everyday?

Was it because he was too bashful to admit it before her?

Kyosul interpreted his reaction freely as she liked.

“Yes, I like these flowers very much. In fact, they’re my favorite flowers these days.”

As if she wanted to chime in, she answered cheerfully with a joke.

Though he knew she was trying to give him some clues on her remarks, he didn’t seem to understand her motive. He looked down at the flowers blooming under the wall..

Though they were small and beautiful, he couldn’t find anything special there. He scratched his head and said, “Come to think of it, I think I saw them a lot in the East Palace.”

Those blue flowers that he saw in the East Palace. She smiled at that expression.

She found it interesting that they still kept that secret to themselves, as if they didn’t know it.

“What’s the name of this flower?”

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“Though I’m well versed in learning, I don’t know much about flowers.”

“But you noticed these flowers, right?”

“That’s because you found them first here.”

He broke the stalk of the flower and put it into her hair.

“It looks great on you. I felt it when I met you first. You must like flowers very much, Kyosul.”

“Yes, I do. In particular, I like the morning flowers the most.”

“Oh, I see.”

She implicitly referred to the flowers placed on the window every morning, but without showing any reaction he just nodded.

This time she looked straight at him because she was confused why he pretended not to recognize the flowers. But she just gave it a pass, confused but amused at his reaction.

They went out of their way to find places no one else ventured despite the dust that gathered on their clothes, but they were so happy simply because they were together.

They didn’t necessarily look for dark and remote places around the palace, but the back garden of the outer place was their favorite dating place. Anytime of the day when they missed each other, they would come to the back garden. They found themselves heading for the place even without making prior appointments.

Sometimes either of them went there alone and returned, missing the other one. If they bumped into each other there, they spent some time together happily, nothing more or less.

“It looks like your residence is the outer palace, not the Dongbi Palace.”

“Pardon?”

“Because I always find you here whenever I come here.”

“Well, I find myself heading for this place all the time when I miss you, Ruhae. Sassi sometimes blames me for trip here in vain when I don’t see you. Nonetheless, I just don’t know why I find myself coming to this place whenever I can find any free time.”

For some reason he had a serious expression and changed the topic cautiously.

“You remember when Prince Yomin came to see you the other day, right?”

She grew nervous.

Actually, Yomin visited her recently to make that bombshell announcement. Though Yomin was stopped by several palace people until she reached Kyosul’s room, they didn’t tell Kyosul about it.

Neither Ruhae nor Kyosul mentioned Yomin as they wanted to forget the fact of Ruhae’s unbreakable bond to Yomin.

“How did you know she came here to see me at that time?”

She was even more surprised to discover that Ruhae knew Yomin had come to see her. She hadn’t mentioned it to him on purpose.

“As a matter of fact , I met her in advance.”

“Really? So, did she come to see me?”

“Nope. I stopped her while she was on her way to the Dongbi Palace where you were residing.”

He paused for a moment.

Actually, he long agonized about whether to tell Kyosul about his talk with her or not, but he concluded that both of them needed to know as the matter concerned them.

“Concubine Sassi told me that the princess came to see you.”

“How come she told you about it?” she asked, embarrassed.

Her heart sank at the moment that Sassi told Ruhae.

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Kyosul barely opened her mouth in a trembling voice, “But Sassi has never told me she told you about Yomin’s visit.”

“Sassi said she wanted to stop Princess Yomin from visiting and hurling abusive words at you. Sassi told me she told Yomin resolutely that she had to give up on me.”

Kyosul didn’t respond at all.

She couldn’t think straight at the moment. Her meeting with Ruhae was secret and was supposed to be kept secret. Even if their secret dating were detected by Yomin, his official wife, nobody in the palace was supposed to know about it, but Sassi knew about it despite her efforts to hide it.

“Don’t you think everybody knows about our relationship by now?”

“Even if they know, we have to assume they don’t know,” he said.

She looked at him with a curious look.

“It’s because they are not supposed to expose our relationship easily.”

“Oh, yes, that’s right.”

She often forgot how dangerous of a tightrope she was walking at the moment. And whenever things like this happened, she was reminded of that fact sharply: the danger of their unauthorized dating.