It's exhausting, being a Crown Prince.
Every glance, every whisper, every movement I make is watched.
How I eat.How I stand.How I breathe.
Even my mistakes are not my own; they belong to the nation, to the historians who record every falter as if it were prophecy.
How does one ever learn to live freely when every heartbeat echoes under the eyes of thousands?
I sat beneath the plum tree, her tree. My mother's favorite place in the palace. It used to be our sanctuary. We'd sit here when I was little, inventing worlds that belonged only to us. She said the blossoms carried stories, that if I listened closely, I'd hear the laughter of spirits.
But for ten years now, all I've heard are ghosts.
Ten years since they took her from me.Ten years since my heart learned how to harden.
"Your Highness, the King seeks your audience," Head Eunuch Min said softly.
I didn't move. My eyes remained fixed on the old swing my mother tied to that tree, it still swayed sometimes, as though she sat there still.
"Your Highness," the eunuch tried again, voice trembling this time.
I turned my gaze on him, sharp, cold, deliberate. It was enough. He froze. I'd perfected that look. The one that warned the world to leave me be. The palace knew I was… volatile. The King knew. The Queen. The Queen Mother. Even the guards and maids had learned to walk around me like one might approach a sleeping beast.
"What?" My voice came out like a blade. "Why can't I be left alone for once?"
He bowed deeper. "Your Highness, His Majesty insisted I return only with you."
I sighed, bitterness tightening my throat.Of course. Another lecture. Another performance. Another reminder to respect my stepmother.
The woman who replaced my mother's warmth with a throne of frost.
My father had called it "duty." I called it betrayal.
When my mother fell ill with my unborn brother, the royal physician warned us, one life might be saved, not both. My father refused the choice. "A king does not sacrifice," he'd said. But kings don't weep when their queens die.
I do. I did.
That night it rained so hard the heavens must have mourned with me. I remember her hand, cold in mine, her eyes dimming as I begged her to stay. Ten years old, clutching the only person who'd ever loved me for who I was, not what I was.
And when the life left her body, something left mine too.
The next morning, the King remarried within weeks, as if love were a position that needed filling. The new Queen smiled like poison and curtsied like a serpent. Her father, the Minister of War, hides his ambitions behind silk and false humility.
Together, they weave their plots, to make her son the heir, to erase my name from the scrolls of succession.
They underestimate me.
And that's my favorite part.
I almost smiled, almost. A dark, hollow smirk that even I didn't recognize.
"Your Highness?" The eunuch's voice broke through my thoughts again.
I rose slowly, brushing the dust from my robe. "Let's not keep my father waiting," I said, my tone smooth but edged with something dangerous. "I'd hate to give him another reason to hate me."
As I walked toward the throne room, the marble floors echoed under my boots, steady, deliberate, the rhythm of defiance.
The courtiers bowed low as I passed, their heads down, their eyes flickering with curiosity and fear.
I've learned to love that fear. It's the only thing in this palace that feels truly mine.
"His Royal Highness, Crown Prince Lee Ji-ho!" the eunuch announced.
And just like that, I wore my mask again, the perfect prince.
Caged in gold.
Bound by blood.
Lonely beneath a crown that was never light to begin with.