Kingdom

23.Hiding Place (1)

"Nori, I am sorry.

They failed to reach an agreement and ended our engagement. I am forced to obey my brother's wishes and leave. I thought about asking you to run away with me, but you deserve better than a fugitive's life. Please erase me from your memory. Move on. One day you will wake up feeling happy again. I am sure you will.

I have no right to say that I love you. But I do, I love you."

Nori reads the letter again and again but it says the same nonsense: their marriage is never to be; he left to marry another.

Fugitive? Yes, Nori would gladly live as a fugitive. If he had asked her she would have followed him to the end of the world. Instead he left her. He. Left. This cannot be true.

"Your Highness, we must leave immediately."Jungkook continues to insist, his voice sounding muffled, as if coming from afar. "The foreign troops are getting closer, burning all in their way."

"I am not going back to the Palace!" Nori says, her mind refusing to acknowledge that her village is under attack or that anything of what is happening makes any sense.

"Most people are fleeing already," Jungkook says, crouching down next to the Princess, his eyes filled with despair. "There is nothing we can do but run."

Nori's heart is racing, a persistent hissing noise ringing in her ears. She is trapped in a nightmare she cannot wake up from; in its twisted reality Nori is losing everything: her lover, her home and her sanity. No. She cannot allow this to happen. She is to go and fight every foreign soldier with her bare hands.

"I won't run away as a coward." Nori declares, rising to her feet, the letter falling from her fingers, "I am a Princess. If I don't protect my hometown, then who else will!?"

She rushes for the front entrance, her hands closed into fists, Jungkook quickly following after her.

"We need to leave from the back door and head for the meadows." he says, grabbing the Princess's hand to stop her.

"I am not leaving!" Nori shouts, pulling away from the boy's grasp.

"Princess, come to your senses!" Jungkook demands loudly, his sudden outburst startling Nori. "There is no point waiting for him. He won't come. He left."

He left...

Nori's whole body turns weak, every bone ready to break apart. Her will to fight shrinks and disappears. Princess or not, Nori is a small and insignificant creature in a world that cares not about the things she loves, but destroys them one by one.

"You want me to leave all this behind?" Nori asks, looking around the room that holds her childhood memories. Each corner of this house is precious to her. How is Nori to live in a world without a home? Her chest is tightening, the ringing in her ears getting stronger. She leans on Jungkook's arm in order not to fall.

"Yes, you need to leave all this behind." he says firmly,"You are a Princess, you have power. One day you might be able to protect the whole Kingdom with a single word. But not here and now. Now we need to survive."

Nori doesn't answer, her eyes dropping down in defeat.

"I have no will to survive," she says.

"Think of Namjoon, think of your mother,"Jungkook says, leaning closer to the Princess, "Think of me. If you stay here to die, then I am staying with you and we are to perish together. Is that what you want?"

"No, of course not."

"Then trust me. I will take you to safety. Okay?"

Nori slowly nods in agreement. That's the only answer Kook needs. He quickly grabs the Princess's hand and leads her towards the back door.