Blooming even in the mud - Chapter 8

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Blooming Even in the Mud Chapter 8
 
 
 
Since it was late into You Shi, no one would seek her out unless it was Emperor Xuanwen, but there was no sign of the Emperor himself making an official visit.
As she found it strange, the court lady hurriedly reported.
“Your Highness! Gyeong 공자 has entered!”
“What?!”
There were still a few days left until the Government Army’s return. At first, because she missed Won-ui so much, she thought she was hearing things.
“Your Highness, it is Won-ui.”
But the low voice coming from outside the door belonged to the lover she had missed even in her dreams.
“P-Please enter.”
Unaware that her voice was trembling from losing her composure, Yoo Seo-hwa clasped her hands together.
She worried what she would do if even this was an auditory hallucination or a dream, but the person who opened the door and walked in approached like the refreshing breeze she had first felt in her childhood.
“Gyeong 공자!”
During the three months without him, while she cherished the letters that arrived from time to time, she had been immersed in many thoughts.
When the expedition ended safely and he returned, how should she greet him? What should she say? What could she give him?
She had imagined herself greeting him resolutely, pretending to be bold, and she had also imagined herself saying hello and welcoming him back. She had even imagined herself finally handing over the letters containing the feelings she couldn’t bring herself to send.
They were all useless imaginations.
“I, how much……!”
The waiting that had built up over the past three months collapsed in an instant.
Having grown older and shared affection with Won-ui, she was much more mature than when she was a child, but like returning to her innocent childhood, she ran at a single bound and hugged him tightly.
“Sob…….”
The moisture that filled up damply quickly turned into tears and fell drop by drop. Rubbing her tear-stained cheeks against him, Yoo Seo-hwa poured out her past waiting through sobs.
Even Court Lady Lee, who used to watch the two unmarried people so they wouldn’t violate etiquette, bowed her head today and stepped out of the room.
“Your Highness…….”
As Yoo Seo-hwa hugged him suddenly, Gyeong Won-ui, who was flustered and didn’t know what to do, gently caressed her back. His mind was dizzy from her scent and the warmth in his arms that he was touching after three months.
The slender back beneath the palm that was slowly caressing her trembled continuously. Realizing clearly what the time without him meant to her, Gyeong Won-ui’s breathing also grew ragged.
Even though he was someone who feared nothing even when encountering enemies alone on a single horse on the battlefield, a single drop of this small woman’s tears was more fearsome than anything.
If he hadn’t returned intact, wouldn’t all these tears have become daggers and clawed at her?
“I am fine.”
He resented his own clumsy tongue, which couldn’t think of a single word of consolation that would sound nice to her. However, his single word was a sweeter consolation to Yoo Seo-hwa than anything else.
The rough hand that had held a sword for a lifetime and would live that way in the future caressed the flawlessly beautiful face of the woman.
At his careful gesture, as if touching fragile porcelain, Yoo Seo-hwa buried her face and let out a sob. His palm was quickly soaked with tears.
“Do not cry…….”
The lips of Gyeong Won-ui, who lowered his head, followed the path of the tears flowing drop by drop. The long time of waiting and loneliness she had to endure flowed into him.
“Since Your Highness is crying…….”
Tracing up the path of tears, he kissed her wet eyelashes and caressed her eyelids.
“I do not know what I should do.”
“……Just…….”
Yoo Seo-hwa barely managed to move her lips through her flowing sobs.
She wanted to tell him that he just needed to return to her side, that as long as he returned to her without getting hurt or wandering, that was enough.
She just wanted to say that one word, but passion welled up and her throat wouldn’t open easily.
“Hik…….”
Ultimately consumed by emotions, only a low groan poured out a slender trembling. As if he knew her inner thoughts, Gyeong Won-ui nodded.
His lips, which had been hovering around her eyes, slowly moved downward and enveloped even her trembling. Between the softly interlocking lips, deep affection and longing mixed and flowed.
 
Yoo Seo-hwa covered her face, unable to even think about looking at Gyeong Won-ui, who was sitting next to her on the long chair. Her wide sleeves covered her face.
It was an action unbecoming of a lover who had just shared their first kiss, but she couldn’t help it because she was embarrassed.
‘My face must be a complete mess, what should I do?’
She had already lost weight and become haggard, but it was obvious that her eyes would be swollen and bloodshot from crying so hard. She had wanted to show him only her most beautiful appearance.
“Will you not even show me your face?”
“I-It’s not that…….”
Surprised by his disappointed voice, Yoo Seo-hwa hurriedly lowered her sleeves. She saw Gyeong Won-ui’s face with a slender smile hanging on it.
She had been completely fooled by a joke rarely heard from him.
As she tried to turn her head away and cover her face again, Gyeong Won-ui gently caught her hand.
“Only now have I come to see Your Highness directly in front of my eyes instead of in a dream, yet do you keep avoiding me?”
“……I must look unsightly.”
Gyeong Won-ui replaced his answer with a bright smile and hugged Yoo Seo-hwa’s waist. Yoo Seo-hwa’s cheeks, brought into his broad chest, were dyed a rosy scarlet.
Holding her hand with his left hand and caressing her lower back with his right hand, Gyeong Won-ui lowered his head.
Passing her forehead where her hair was disheveled, his lips traced down her straight bridge of the nose and swallowed her slightly parted lips. Entwining her plump tongue shyly hidden inside her mouth, they mixed their breathing.
“Haah…….”
The sign of Yoo Seo-hwa trying to escape slightly lasted only for a brief moment.
Soon, letting out a short breath, she completely entrusted herself to his embrace.
Gyeong Won-ui’s short kisses fell tenderly on her face, which she had hidden out of fear that it was unsightly. Only then did Yoo Seo-hwa smile softly.
“Holding 공자’s hand is also the first time since that day.”
Because Court Lady Lee’s gaze was strict, she had no opportunity to get close at all after the day they hooked their pinky fingers and made a promise.
Her heart fluttered at the touch of the large, manly hand wrapping around her own, and her face flushed as she recalled the kiss they shared for the first time. As she did so, there was something that came into view.
‘What kind of scar is……!’
There was a scar on the back of Gyeong Won-ui’s hand that wasn’t there before.
Startled, she raised her head. Gyeong Won-ui’s face, which she hadn’t been able to see properly because she kept covering her face and avoiding him, came into her vision. Even a scar that thinly lined across his right cheek.
“My goodness.”
Yoo Seo-hwa shuddered slightly and caressed the scar on his face with her fingertips.
Her heart sank. Although it was mostly healed now, it was a wound inflicted close to his eye. Could it not have turned into a disaster if things went slightly wrong?
“How did this wound…….”
Because she was so shocked, her heart thounced as if it would pop out, and she couldn’t speak properly, so Gyeong Won-ui quietly shook his head at her.
As if telling her not to worry, as if it was nothing.
“It is a wound grazed by an arrowhead. I was not greatly hurt because of the helmet. You do not have to worry.”
“How can I not worry?”
Although she was someone who had never witnessed or experienced a battlefield, she knew well how rough and scary a place it was. How many people left for the battlefield and couldn’t return, or returned after suffering immense wounds that couldn’t be recovered from?
‘I have never seen his wounds in the expeditions up until now…….’
Realizing anew how rough this expedition had been, her heart ached.
No, maybe there were injuries in previous battlefields too, but he might have been hiding them so she wouldn’t worry.
“Are there no other injuries?”
“If I were hurt anywhere, would I have been able to come this quickly? In the future as well, I will not show Your Highness a wounded appearance.”
Seeing his usual smile, only then did the thouncing of her heart calm down.
“But really, how did you come first?”
“I wanted to see Your Highness.”
This time, Yoo Seo-hwa’s heart pit-a-patted with a meaning different from the previous surprise.
Gyeong Won-ui wrapped his hand around her hand, which was still resting on his cheek, and pressed his lips to her palm.
“If I had been officially appointed, leaving the army would not have been permitted, but it is not time yet. I received permission from my father and arrived ahead of schedule.”
In order to come to her a full five days early, he must have ridden his horse day and night without concern.
“You must be very fatigued because of the expedition…….”
“Seeing Your Highness, I am not tired at all.”
Gyeong Won-ui brought over a single white magnolia flower from the table. It was a flower he had been holding since he entered the room and had briefly set down on the table.
With a delicate touch, he carefully pushed back Yoo Seo-hwa’s hair, which had become disheveled from crying and being held in Gyeong Won-ui’s embrace. And he softly tucked the white magnolia behind her ear.
“It was winter when I left, but it has already become spring. Because I returned to the capital in a hurry, I could not even prepare a gift to give Your Highness. I will give you something better next time, so could you forgive me with this for today?”
Yoo Seo-hwa traced the flower tucked in her ear with her fingers. The fragrance of the flower flowed in profusely only now.
Before she knew it, it was spring when magnolias bloomed. The expedition that started in winter ended only when it became spring, but she hadn’t even known that spring was coming.
As he returned, he brought spring to her. The time that had been stopped for three months flowed as it enveloped the two of them.
Yoo Seo-hwa smiled brightly as she smelled the flower’s fragrance.
“Instead, from now on, you must go flower viewing with this young lady every spring. Understood?”
Only now did she feel like she could understand Lady Zhang’s waiting even just a little bit.
She too would wait for him like this in the future, repeating countless times. She would be anxious and she would be worried.
‘But just like 공자 brought spring to me today, no matter how long and arduous of a battlefield he leaves for, he will surely return to me.’
Yoo Seo-hwa believed it.
 
* * *
 
A thick cough burst out, tearing through his lungs. Emperor Xuanwen hacked and pressed his lips with a Silk Handkerchief. His head was dizzy from vertigo.
‘I have aged as well.’
Even the Emperor who commanded the world could do nothing about age. Although he wasn’t suffering from any particular major illness, he could feel himself growing weaker day by day.
Even though he consistently took the herbal medicine prescribed by the imperial physician, there wasn’t much improvement. Even if he endured through this year somehow, he couldn’t guarantee two years later, or three years later.
Before it became too late, he would have to finish the things he had put off while he was still going strong.
One of them was Yoo Seo-hwa’s marriage.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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