✓ the hooded princess • kim seungmin

s i x t e e n

"Won't the King be mad?"

Eunkyung shook her head while holding the lead line to control Winter's pace. "He knows this place as well."

Seungmin lightly nodded his head and focused back on the road. Silence settled between them but it was a comfortable one. There were eyes lingering on them — of course, she's a princess and he is just a mere son of a royal archer — but none of them pay attention to it. Someday there might be rumors of them hanging out since they had never seen together before but considering they were classmates, the princess remain unbothered.

The castle was finally in sight. Seungmin could never forget the look of this grey walls that acted as the borders and the building that stood magnificently in the middle of it. He was sure he could get lost in the castle.

The guy stopped in front of the entrance, sending her off while Eunkyung got off Winter. She approached him.

"Father is probably going to ask about the reports tonight," she said as low as she could. "Just in case if he asks you, do not tell anything about the weird machine in the house or he won't let me go there again."

"Shouldn't you tell the King that?"

"I still need to go down there."

Before he could say anything, the girl walked away but Seungmin was quick to got off and called her, "Your Highness, wait up."

"What is it?"

He walked to her as his eyes glanced towards the watching guards. "Does this have something to do with why you hide yourself as Kyra in the sword fighting class?"

"I did that because my parents won't let me to join."

"But why do you want to?"

The question silenced her. Seungmin let out a small sigh, "I'm worried about you especially when Jisung acts like that today."

"Han is just a suspect of who attacked me that night. He has nothing to do with the one I'm doing right now."

"But what if the person who attacked you that night was the same who set up the machine and possibly the murder?"

"Seungmin, he cannot kill people at this age."

"Let's say if that's not Jisung. What if the person behind all of these is the same?" He braved himself to ask. Though he knew this might be confusing to her and she'd probably burst, he still wanted to give her hints. The hints that she'd probably missed or forgotten.

The princess sighed heavily. "Let's talk about this other time. I just returned from reassuring myself and we're back to this thing. Good day, Seungmin."

"Are you not going to tell the King?"

She shook her head firmly, and he gave up.

That night as she expected, her father called her and Eunji for a meeting after the dinner. Though the sisters were in a cold war, Eunkyung had already told her not to say anything about what happened down there in the village and Eunji had no choice but to agree.

The sisters were now standing in front of the working desk where papers were piled neatly at the corner and a few books presented in the middle of it. The King flipped through pages with a hand massaging his temples. It was too quiet that you could hear the sound of a pin dropping.

Eunkyung was especially nervous. She knew that in a few minutes her previous actions will be revealed.

"How long have you known about this?"

Both sisters exchanged glances. When Eunji seemingly didn't want to speak up, Eunkyung straightened her body posture and looked straight to her father, "Four years ago, after we visited there."