A/N: Because honestly, who doesn't love Jae-Ha? And because having one shipping in a story's boring, let's throw Soo-Won in the mix.
Blame the plot bunnies. I literally marathoned all of the manga chapters that was available two days ago and fell in love with the manga (and felt sad when there wasn't much fanfiction for the fandom, especially for Jae-Ha and Soo-Won).
I don't own Akatsuki no Yona. The same thing goes for the other chapters.
Edited 5/20/17.
She had been walking on the winding dirt road that led from the Earth Tribe's land into the Fire Tribe's when she heard the sound of footsteps. To be more precise, a lot of heavy footsteps. Her head whipped sideways, amber eyes desperately searching the horizon to see what the cause was. Her eyes widened as she saw a group of horses with riders on them, two of the horses' riders holding up the banner of the Emperor. She bit back a curse: she hadn't prepared for something like this, not yet.
...this was not going her ideal way.
She moved to the left, off the road and into the grassy farmland area, fiddling with her collar that clung to her neck as she waited for the group to pass by. The outfit she was wearing was dark black, camellias the shade of compelling scarlet decorating the silky fabric. Golden linings embroidered the one piece: it hugged her body closely, ending at her knees. It was a new style that had come from the Kai Empire she managed to find at one of Earth's markets.
"Oi! You!" The voice jolted her awake as she pushed back a stray strand of her midnight black hair, turning to the cavalryman who had spoken. She took a deep breath as she straightened herself and calmed down.
"Yes?"
"Bow down to the emperor, you worthless peasant trash—" The man was cut off by a hand lifting, and he fell silent as the Emperor unmounted off his horse as he stepped onto the ground, studying the woman.
"Stop, Sei." He addressed his attendant before turning around.
Soo-Won's breath caught as he recognized those unforgettable amber eyes, and he was sure that his hands and voice was trembling as he hesitantly whispered, "...Li...Hua?"
The girl froze, caught, and slowly she lifted her eyes up to meet the Emperor's gaze, ignoring the infuriated whispers of his escorts behind him. "Soo-Won," she acknowledged, a little amusement flickering through her amber eyes. "Or should I call you Emperor Soo-Won now? Your Majesty?"
"How have you been?" He slowly took a step towards her, but Li-Hua mirrored his action and stepped back one step, as if to make sure he never closed the distance between the two.
"I've been well. And you?" She threw her head up into the wind and laughed, the action sounding slightly bitter as her eyes trailed the expensive outfit he was in. "Well, I guess I don't need to ask that. Did you finally man up and marry Princess Yona?"
The man froze, and although his smile still kept on his face, it twitched ever so slightly as the girl's eyes narrowed, knowing the man far too well to be able to distinguish what all of his actions meant. He was not fine. Not fine at all, and it had something to do with the Princess. She was really out of date when it came to info about Emperor Il's death: all she knew was that he finally kicked the bucket and Soo-Won had taken up the throne. She did hear a few rumors about Hak, but dismissed it as nonsense. As far as she knew the raven haired boy, he would murder the Emperor he idolized.
Finally, Soo-Won's shoulders slumped and he sighed, running a hand through his almost annoyingly perfect blonde hair. "I suppose you don't know."
"Know what?"
He hesitated for a moment, but Li-Hua's pressing eyes prompted him to continue. "The Princess and Hak are dead, Li."
And in that very moment, the girl froze just as he had, the only thing that indicated any kind of concern or mourning being her eyes. Had it been any other person rather than Soo-Won, they would not have been able to discern the flash of pain in the woman's eyes before she mastered her poker face once again. "I...see," she said slowly. Li-Hua plastered a smile on her face, despite the fact that she knew her friend would see through it completely. Voice trembling, she murmured, "It seems like General Hak failed his job, huh?"
"...I suppose." His brown eyes were staring somewhere far off in the distance as his expression almost grew vacant, stroking the feathers of the bird on his shoulder. If she remembered correctly, Hak was the one who helped Soo-Won raise that bird. A pang of sadness and regret hit her as she buried it deep inside her, pushing away the emotions to the side. There was no time for that right now. But that rare moment of seriousness she had glimpsed from the newly crowned Emperor was gone, and the cheerful idiotic side of him was back. "So, since we're old friends, how about you join me? I can always use another bodyguard."
"I'm afraid not, Emperor."
"We have money~"
She hesitated, but shook her head as memories of fire and betrayal ran through her head. "I'd rather not get mixed into any royal affairs anymore, Soo-Wo—Emperor."
"You can call me Soo-Won, just as you used to."
"I'm afraid I can't do that anymore." Her eyes softened for a moment before Li-Hua bowed towards him, and his eyebrow twitched, irritated, as he realized that the woman had already slipped out of his grasp. Li-Hua started walking down the road they were both travelling through—her out of the Earth Tribe, and him in.
Li-Hua paused for a moment, turning back as her eyes flashed with some emotion akin to regret. She lifted a hand and waved at him, a smile tugging at her face. "See you later, Emperor Soo-Won."
He couldn't help but smile back: a true, genuine smile despite the fact that she still attached the title 'Emperor' to his name. Only one thought ran through his head: she didn't say goodbye. "Take care of yourself," the words flew out of his mouth naturally.
But by that time, she was already gone.
.
No matter how much she tried to run away from the past, it would still catch up to her. This wasn't the first, nor the last, of their chance meetings.
"Awa port, eh?" She stared down at the port, one of the many bustling cities in the Earth Tribe that were oppressed by corrupt rulers, according to the information she had gathered from one of her previous jobs. Li-Hua was on top of a massive hill that oversaw the entire city, and from her spot she could see almost anything. "Interesting."
Li-Hua donned a maroon robe with golden hemlines and cuffs, and to her right side a small purse weighed off her shoulder. It held her entire fortune in it: a vast collection of Ling she dared not to enter into any of the shady banks in the Kouka Kingdom. Two swords were slung behind her back in wooden sheath, the cheap wood serving the purpose of hiding the true beauty of the blades behind a seemingly poor sheath. Her signature dragon shaped golden hairpin was in place, pulling back her raven black hair and holding it in place, along with several other hairpins.
She stretched her weary limbs, nearly exhausted from the long walk, as she scanned the city before landing on a hot springs inn. It would suffice to shelter her for the night.
She walked through the city confidently, ignoring any strange looks thrown her way as Li-Hua noticed that almost all the women shied away from her, either shutting the shutters or hiding inside their houses with nervous faces. It seemed like there really was some kind of shady business going on.
"Hm..." Li-Hua hummed thoughtfully, tapping a finger on her chin as she veered to the right, coming across the inn as she nodded towards the person at the counter, setting down a few copper coins as she said, "One night please."
The old lady's eyes crinkled as she counted the money before giving a satisfactory nod. "Fair enough. You're free to use the hot springs while you are here."
"Thank you."
"And seeing as a nice young lady as yourself is travelling alone," the woman's voice lowered as her next words came out as a whisper, and Li-Hua had to lean in to hear the lady's words. "...I suggest that you be careful while you're here and hightail it out of the city while you can. It's dangerous to stay in a place like this."
"I see. Thank you, but I'll be fine." Li-Hua drew back as a smile curled on her lips. It seemed that even though there was still so much corruptness and evil in the world, there was still some good as well. "I'll be heading to the bath now."
The lady nodded and handed her the key to her room, and she whisked past the woman as her footsteps echoed on the wooden floor. No one else was in the hallways at the moment rather than herself, and it was almost eerily quiet as her grip on her bag tightened.
"It's awfully quiet here," Li-Hua observed, unlocking the door to her room with the key she had been given and setting down her things on the floor gently as to not disturb anyone else who might be in the rooms next door. She exited the room, locking the door. Before she headed to the hot springs, she paused for a moment, turned back, and jiggled the door knob a few times to make sure that it was secure.
The door did not open, even when she tried her hardest for it to open. Good. Li-Hua was suspicious that there might be things—or people—in the city she wouldn't want to sneak into her room while she was gone.
She reached the hot springs, undressing and setting her clothes in one of the cabinets provided to the guests as she grabbed a towel and headed into the water.
To Li-Hua's relief, she wasn't the only one in there. Despite the fact that less people brought peace, this town was too suspicious for her liking, and if anything happened it was always beneficial to have other people around.
There was one quiet looking girl in the corner of the pool, her head half submerged underwater and just high enough so she could breathe. She had auburn hair and innocent looking green eyes, and when Li-Hua had entered the girl smiled at her.
There was also two other women, both with long black hair that reached their waist, but one of them had their hair curled while the other kept her hair straight. They were sitting in the hot spring and engaged with idle conversation, so Li-Hua decided not to bother them and instead moved towards the auburn haired girl.
"Hello, what's your name? My name's Li." The half-lie rolled off her tongue naturally.
The girl looked startled, as if amazed that anyone would talk to her. "M-Mei-Lin."
"Can I call you Mei?" Li-Hua beamed, plastering on a fake smile as the girl vigorously nodded. Her amber eyes softened for a moment. This girl was kind of like Yona: a naive person who didn't have many friends.
"You see," she continued, twirling a strand of her black hair idly as the lie slipped easily off her tongue thanks to accumulated practice, "I'm a traveler and I used to live in Kuuto: I'm working on a novel about the 5 tribes of Kouka, but I don't know much about the Earth Tribe's culture. Do you mind telling me about this town?"
Mei-Lin's eyes darted around nervously, as if making sure that no one was listening to their conversation (it wasn't like there was anyone there other than the 2 other women, both of which were on the other side of the hot spring) and slowly nodded. "Awa's a port town, so we specialize in things like trading with other cities. We use the ports a lot to ships all kinds of goods."
"Like?" Li-Hua prompted, her eyes flickering with intelligence which she masked with a bright smile.
"...tea, fabric, seafood. Those kinds of things. After all, we live right next to other harbor. Although there are some...other things going around." The girl's eyes turned dark as her emerald orbs were focused elsewhere, and Li-Hua nodded in appreciation.
"Thank you." Changing the subject, she asked, "Do you want to hear about my journey around the Earth Tribe?"
"Ah, that would be wonderful!" Mei-Lin clapped her hands together excitedly, obviously relieved for the change of subject as she nodded. As Li-Hua entertained her companion with stories of her adventures and encounters with wild animals and the people who lived around the Earth Tribe's territory, Li-Hua kept a close follow on the two women's conversation (she thanked her mother's genes for having good ears).
"And...girls?"
"...heard that they never came back." That phrase caught Li-Hua's attention, and she momentarily paused in the middle of her storytelling before continuing as the women gave her suspicious looks. Mei-Lin asked her about life in Kyuuto, and from that she began talking about the Capitol-despite the fact that she didn't actually live there, she had visited it a few times thanks to Yona, Hak, and Soo-Won, talking about the atmosphere of the people and how the crowds were always bustling.
Finally, she felt that time had passed enough that it was adequate enough for her to leave without looking suspicious. She gave a smile to Mei-Lin, who had been enraptured the whole time by Li-Hua's tales.
Apologetically, she said, "I'm afraid I must retire to bed. My travels have tired me quite a lot." To prove the statement, Li-Hua yawned and covered her mouth with her hand. The girl jumped, waving her hands frantically.
"O-oh, of course! I'm sorry for keeping you so long!"
"No problem." Li-Hua lifted herself out of the hot springs, wrapping her towel around her body as she sighed contentedly before a sudden motion of wind that flew past her had her snapping around, unpinning her hair pins and thrusting them to where she had felt air rush past her. The whole action took at most three seconds, and she registered that she had made herself a very suspicious figure now but pushed the matter aside for the time being as she turned to look at the cause of the disturbance.
There was a muffled thud and her eyes widened as she noticed she had pinned a man on the bamboo wall separating the men's section and the women's section of the hot springs. It seemed as if he had fallen out of the sky, if that was even remotely possible.
The man groaned, and the rest of the women screamed. Mei-Lin and the two women rushed past her, clutching their towels to their body as they hurried back into the house.
His eyes opened to reveal startling emerald orbs with flecks of copper, and she felt almost transfixed as her golden eyes met his. Then, she realized what kind of situation she was in and almost blushed, had it not for her constant training of suppressing her emotions.
"I'm afraid this is ladies only," she said coolly, and Li-Hua was sort of surprised at how calm her voice sounded.
The man rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, his green hair falling down loosely. It seemed one of her hairpins had sliced straight through the orange ribbon he was using to tie it up. He chuckled, complimenting her as his eyebrows raised. "You have one heck of an aim."
"Why are you here?"
"I was just jumping from rooftop to rooftop when I slipped," he spoke the honest truth, although Jae-Ha knew that the woman wouldn't believe him anyways. He couldn't help but nod approvingly as his eyes slid down her near-bare figure, and she chucked the nearest object she had, which was a stone, at his head and had it not that he angled his head to the left a little, he swore she would have knocked his head right off.
"Get. Out."
"Kind of hard when I'm stuck up here." He shrugged helplessly, his eyes flickering towards the cuffs of his sleeves, hinting at the hairpins-which were more like throwing blades the way she handled them-that had pinned his clothing and thus, his body to the wall. The woman stalked over to him, partially fuming at having to do such a deed, pulling out her hairpins, before pushing him into the water as he fell into the water and resurfaced, sputtering and confused albeit a little amused at her rage.
"Pervert." She turned around and left, never looking back as Li-Hua resolved to leave this town immediately-who cared about the suspicious behavior of the people: this pervert was the last straw and she was sure eventually someone would come along and pick up the investigation from where she left off. Just in case, she made a mental note to contact one of her affiliates to help out the town later because her conscious would never let her rest if she just left the town unattended.
Behind her, she could hear the man chuckle. "Such an amusing woman. And yet... I never got her name."
It was the first reason of many, and even though she would never ask for it, this would not be the last time she met that mysterious man with the long green hair and emerald eyes.
A/N: How was that? Not too bad for a first chapter, although I suppose I could have done better. ^_^
Thanks for reading, and review please~