Chapter 130

While he was doing his work in the morning, he picked up a small letter from a pile of new scrolls. He smelled the fragrance of spring flowers from the letter. As he opened the scroll wrapped in fine silk, a small dried flower fell. It contained her handwriting on the paper attached to the golden silk embroidered with colored yarn.

He was speechless at the sight of it

Without reading it properly, he picked up the flower that fell on his knees and folded the scroll in half.

"This is a letter sent from the Dongbi Palace," said the eunuch.

His eyebrows trembled when he heard the word Dongbi Palace, which was Kyosul's residence.

Of course, nobody noticed it. He stared at the scroll intensely.

'This is a foul.'

The unexpected flower letter from her made him very nervous and confused. Obviously, it was destined to stir his heart against his will, which made him restless. On the surface, he seemed calm, but he was greatly confused deep inside. Without reading his mind, the eunuch made various excuses on explaining how he got to convey that letter to him, but he didn't care.

His eyes contained only letters from the Dongbi Palace while his nose contained only the smell of fresh spring flowers. What he smelled from the flowers was a spring scent reminiscent of her scent.

'Did I say it smelled like her?'

That was another danger alarm to him.

He frowned for a moment and said in a noise voice

"… Throw it away. "

"Yes, Your Majesty."

The eunuch crawled toward him and received the letter with both hands, with his head down. Holding it over his head, he slowly got up from his seat, stepping backwards. When he was about to cross the threshold, he called while opening another scroll, "Wait a minute."

Bipaan unfolded a new scroll.

"Put it there inside the office instead of outside."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

He walked up to the inner chamber of the office. He rolled the letter wrapped in gold silk again and placed it on the small table next to his bed.

That young woman's face kept glimmering in his mind.

As the seasons changed, she continued to send flower letters to him. It was a short letter with a dried flower, but her letters piled up under the table next to his bed.

He had never received such letters, and he never thought about sending a letter this way.

It was the first love letter he received in his life. The aroma of dried flowers stirred his mind again. Her handwriting that filled half the paper was small and neat. The first letter he opened was full of her rambling about the weather. Embarrassed, he read the next one then the next one.

All the letters were the same.

Not only her words but also her letter embarrassed him. He never imagined that she would talk about her private life in the letters. All of it was unexpected.

No matter how hard he tried to read between the lines, he could find no special meaning. What was written in her letters were just what he saw, nothing more or less.

"It is a letter that befits this young woman."

That was true. As she wrote the letter, obviously it was supposed to sound like her.

The moment he was going to lose interest in her letters, he came to notice a red seal at the end of the letter. It was a word stamped beside her signature.

The letter inscribed in the stamp was not in block character.

Letters with a lot of decoration and embellishment seemed like passwords drawn with pictures. Two letters were drawn in a small circle of a red stamp.

Bipaan narrowed his eyebrows and stared at the two letters.

"Woo meaning rain?"

The moment he checked the letters, his eyes trembled.

That letter was written on each of her letters. Woo meaning rain.

He hurriedly searched for something in the inner chamber and found the official letter from Emperor Ohyulje that recognized her as the Crown Princess. He skipped the formal and antiquated contents and found out the very expression he was looking for.

In it was clearly written Kyosul's childhood name. It was not used anymore because of her official title Kyosul.

During her days in her motherland Hwa Kingdom, her name was Woorum Mokhwa.

Blinking his eyes several times, he checked her Chinese characters.

"Woo meaning rain, and Rum meaning cold?"

Her name was Chanbi in Korean or Woorum in Chinese, meaning cold rain.

In fact, he heard about her childhood name Woorum, but he never knew the Chinese characters of her name was Woorum, but this kind of Chinese characters were not used for common names, so he never associated them with her name.

"Does her name really mean cold rain?"

He once again recalled her name, and reflected on it.

Chanbi, Chanbi, Chanbi.

"Woorum?"

He felt as if he had his head beaten by somebody. With an incredible look, he again recited her name. His whole body began to tremble when he kept pronouncing it.

He was already thinking back to the days when he met her more than ten years ago.

"Chanbi," she said, explaining to him about the meaning of her name Woorum.

"What?"

"My name is Woorum, meaning Chanbi. "

It seemed like yesterday he had that dialogue with her. He recalled it vividly.

As he tried to recall it, he could still remember it.

And that was the only warm moment left in his heart when he looked back.

"Was she the same woman then?"

His hands trembled while he was holding her letter and the emperor's official letter.

The strange feelings that he felt when he met her for the first time were not an illusion of his heart. It was his heart, not Bipaan as a human, that recognized her as a lover.

It was because he had been deceived by the passage of time.

He was blind to the feelings of love as he had been controlling his emotions.

"Why didn't I notice it much earlier?"

Funny enough, he began to realize that Kyosul had a lot in common with that little girl that he met in the Hwa Kingdom. Her round eyes full of rich emotions and curiosity, chubby cheeks and shy flushes on her face, bright smiles and unpredictable way of speaking and unpredictable actions.

The more he recalled her words and deeds, the clearer he was convinced Kyosul was the Woorum of his childhood.

A laugh escaped him.

Never did he think that little girl who he thought was a court lady was the only princess of the Hwa Kingdom.

'Was that woman Kyosul?"

His pretence of composure, which he kept all the time, had been broken in ten years. Hot tears came down from his eyes.

After he returned from the Hwa Kingdom, he couldn't forget about her and missed her a lot. The woman who stirred his mind for the first and last time became his official wife now, but he couldn't rush to her and confess right away.

He was afraid.

The more he recalled Woorum, who used to run around freely in the fields, the more he found it difficult to go and see her. .

It had already been eleven years since he met her. He was not sure if she could remember that day, but most of all, he was the problem.

'I…'

He pressed the heart hard with his palms. He stroked his face with his long fingers and touched his lips. He grew up as a man who was too cold-hearted.

Moreover, he already hurled harsh words at Kyosul. He even used bad language and violence against her. He clenched his fists.

Could he touch her again, after surely hurting her a lot?

'Would it be okay if I asked her for forgiveness? Isn't it too late?'

It looked like someone would ridicule him.

He had mixed feelings. He wanted to see her right away, but at the same time he felt so sorry for treating her so badly. He was never faced with such a complex and confusing problem before, but his angst didn't last long.

"Sometimes it is more important to listen to the echoes of your heart than to pay good attention to the scriptures and state affairs. If you are seriously ill in your mind, how can you solve the sickness of the people?"

That's what his teacher told him at the end of the day's scripture reading, noticing Bipaan's troubled heart. Bipaan stood up and headed straight to the Dongbi Palace, but she was not there.

He confirmed with her nanny that Kyosul was the same woman he met back then. He wanted to see her right away as if his angst was over.

"Where is the Crown Princess?"

"Oh, she left for the North Palace a little while ago to congratulate the princess on her pregnancy."

"I'm asking where she is right now."

"Likely in the North Place now."