A king without a country is a man without a name. He sees the open laughter of villagers, commoners—and wonders if even the cheonin are happier than he is.
.
The cheonin who lie gasping in the roadway, the cheonin dead because of him, if not quite by his hand—how can it be that their blood is the same color as his own?
.
Every meeting with his mother leaves him shaken. Battles were not won with shaking hands. He has no friends—Pa Oh owes him a duty, even if Pa Oh would argue that it is more—and he has no family, either. His mother is queen before mother; she will be queen forever if she can.
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Ah Ro. An interruption. He loves her like the boy he still is and yet must never be.
He gives his heart away cheaply, he supposes, because nobody has ever wanted it before. Ah Ro can trample it in the dust, and he will pick it up again and offer it over and over, with every reckless half-truth he knows.
Half. He always lives by halves; can he not love her wholly?
.
The young bird, Ah Ro calls him, though she does not know who he is. He keeps her drawings folded under his hanbok, as though they held answers for him to find. He traces the lines of wang, king, with his fingertips and wonders if it is as his mother would have it, that power must always be high and cold.
.
He is weak, but his sword arm is strong. He is weary, but he lies awake at night. He is always waiting, but the assassin's blow is as late as his mother's notice.
He is the king, but not yet.
.
He chases Ah Ro as though her love can save him. Maybe it can. Maybe any love would save him; he would not know. He joins Hwarang because this is how he will learn to be king, this is how he will change a world that never seems willing to change for him. He longs for friendship, but he hangs back. He longs for peace, but he holds his head high.
.
The young bird, he knows, struggles on the ground. Flightless. Wings without flight are not wings at all.
If he finds his wings, his country, his name—
Perhaps then, he will not have to live by halves.