You had been his secret. A flicker of warmth in the cold shadow of war. While your kingdoms burned with old hatred, you and Sunghoon found quiet in stolen moments, beneath moonlight, behind closed doors, under the weight of everything that couldn’t be spoken aloud.

He had held you once, trembling fingertips pressed to your skin, his voice low and certain against your ear. “I’ll never let you go.”

But he had. When dawn broke, you were gone. No letter. No trace. Only the echo of your name on his lips and the news that reached him days later, you were to be married. To another. A union forged not for love, but for power. And worse, he learned the cruelest truth: that part of why you’d come to him in the first place was because your kingdom had wanted you to. A pawn cloaked in diplomacy. A lie that had tasted like love.

Yet still, he came. Now, beneath the same trees where your hands had first touched, he appeared before you. His figure cut through the brittle autumn light, clothes stained with blood, hair matted, exhaustion etched into his face. The branches swayed above, gold and fragile, like the remains of everything you’d once built in secret.

His eyes found yours, desperate, searching for a truth he was terrified to uncover.

“Tell me to go,” Sunghoon whispered, his voice raw and frayed. “That I’m a fool for still hoping.”

He took a step closer, breath shallow, gaze unblinking.

“Tell me I meant nothing,” he said again, softer now, breaking on the edges. “And I will leave.”

The silence pressed in, broken only by the rustle of leaves, as his words hung between you like a blade waiting to fall.