Garlands of pink, azure, and emerald paper fluttered over the red arching beams of the terrace where a man sat with his wife and child.
A table was set before them with tea and rice cakes of various shade, each one as enticing as the next. There were bowls of red bean porridge that steamed in the dazzling sunlight, marinated meats of various texture, and vegetables whose bright colors shone with glazes and sauces.
The man sat in a gray and green hanbok, his dark hair tied into a topknot. A crown of woven flowers rested on his head and a sad smile graced his lips as he drank rice wine and kissed the child in his arms- a girl not yet two months old. She wore the shade of blue that matched the man's melancholy.
Beside him, his wife sat, her feeble hands holding onto a coat around her shoulders in the middle of summer. Pale knuckles grasped lilac silk and sunken eyes did their best to smile at her husband. Lethargic from pain and dazed from sorrow, she leaned against her husband's shoulder for support.
A sad, sad birthday party it was.
Birds chirped their song and the man held his cup to his ailing wife's lips, coaxing her to drink and regain her strength.
The wife dutifully sipped, her eyes closing as the fermented drink set the sores in her mouth on fire. When she winced, her husband took the cup away.
Sing , said the wind, its breeze fluttering the tufts of hair on the baby's head. Sing , it called out as it danced past the petals on the man's head. A promise is a promise.
"A promise…" the wife breathed.
"Hm?" Her husband, a man only six months older than her, turned. "Did you say something?"
The wife nodded her head. "I promised you I'd… I'd sing." She looked up at her husband as he shook his head, his smile growing more melancholy.
"It's alright." His hand met her shoulder, feeling bone beneath the heavy silks that warmed her cold body.
The wife sat up and smiled through dry cracked lips. "I promised, didn't I?"
Beneath layers of silk, the wife was gaunt. Her body was breaking off shard by shard. She held no water, tasted no food. Her frail arms supported the delicate body that had birthed an angel for a man that was not its father.
Breathing in the fresh air that only corroded her black lungs, the wife braced herself.
Gently, quietly, prose of dancing butterflies and singing birds lilted off of the wife's sore tongue, weaving a happy story about spring animals and warm sunlight. Her gaze met her husband's, watching as tears fell from those happy, sad eyes.
As she sang, her daughter awoke from her slumber and whined when her father's tears fell onto her little forehead.
The wife's song ended and she returned to her husband's side, resting her tired body against his strong one. Her shoulders slumped beneath the weight of her sorrows, but she rose when her husband's arm supported her weak form.
With one arm he carried the child and with the other, he held his wife. Once a grand general, the man had carried dying soldiers away from the battlefield, but nothing hurt him more than watching his wife wipe the tears from his eyes off her child's forehead with fingers that were only skin stretched over bone. Now, he carried two beings who were too frail to survive alone. But while one would eventually grow stronger, the other would not.
"Happy birthday, Wang Jung," the wife said, pressing her blue lips to his cheek as her husband held her close. She leaned her weight against him as he nodded. "Make a wish," she sighed. "You get one wish each birthday. Choose wisely."
"I get to spend this birthday with my beautiful wife and my darling daughter," her husband replied through swallowed sobs. "All I can wish for is your speedy recovery."
A cold hand touched the husband's face and his wife shook her head. She closed her eyes when her husband clasped her hand with his scorching one, keeping it pressed to his cheek. "I can wish for whatever I want, remember?" he asked, hope lacing each naive word that came from his mouth. "Last time, I wished you'd sing for me on my birthday, and that came true. So this time, I'll wish for you to stay by my side until we have grandchildren running around these grounds. That's not too bad, right?"
His wife only smiled, a sad grin stretching over torn lips. "It's a valiant wish," she replied.
They sat together until the sun set, its brilliant beams casting warmth over the fortress at Chungju. Bathed in the last rays of the sun, a disgraced prince, his dying wife, and the daughter that was not his enjoyed a birthday party.