May You Come Back To My Side - Chapter 1

As the chief royal cook stepped into the king’s private garden’s courtyard, bearing a tray, Chang-seon, chief eunuch, shook his head, hiding a smile. The king had sent orders to the kitchen not to prepare seoksura, but the chief royal cook looked determined. Who was he to stop her? The man needed to eat, and the only one who could make him lately—or ever, for that matter—was the chief royal cook, diminutive in stature but mighty in character.

“Good evening, chief royal cook,” he said, returning her bow. “Didn’t the king send orders—”

“He did,” she interrupted him. “But he needs to eat. And,” she looked down at her tray, “this isn’t really a meal, more of a...snack. In case he has the munchies, you know.”

He chuckled, used to her unusual wording, and stepped aside. “He’s expecting you,” he murmured as she brushed past him, hiding his grin at seeing the bright red blush spread on her cheeks.

He shook his head as he melted into the shadows, away from the private royal pavilion. The two thought they were so discreet, but nothing could be kept secret for long at the palace. Luckily for them, since the execution for treason of the fourth junior consort, Kang Mok-ju, and the disappearance of the king’s uncle, Prince Jesan, they only had loyal people surrounding them. Loyal and partially blind and completely mute when it came to the king and his chief royal cook.

He grinned, expecting the chief royal secretary, Im Song-jae, to soon beat the same hasty retreat.

 

Im Song-jae bowed slightly as the chief royal cook slowly climbed the few stairs into the private pavilion. “Good evening, mama,” he greeted her, emphasizing the honorific title because he knew it would make her roll her eyes. He had no idea what his friend, the king, was waiting for before making his relationship with the woman official. They all knew it was just a matter of time.

Besides, she’d make an excellent queen.

“Shut up,” she hissed, “or no more macarons for you.”

Song-jae’s grin immediately vanished. She knew he loved those sweet, colorful little confections. She wouldn’t be so cruel...Would she?

She looked at him from head to toe and back with an arched eyebrow. “It will be good for you to stop eating them. Sugar is not your friend,” she said with a pointed look at his midsection.

Song-jae gasped. “Now you’re just being mean.”

She grinned. “You have no idea how mean I can be. Don’t push me.”

He rolled his eyes. “I didn’t even touch you. I wouldn’t dare. He’d have my head.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s an expre—Never mind. I’ll just...” She looked at the tray in her hands. “He needs to eat.”

Song-jae nodded. “I’ll leave you two alone.” He grinned as he saw the crimson blush on her cheeks. “And make sure you’re not disturbed,” he chuckled.

 

“Definitely no macarons for you anymore, you little shit,” Ji-young muttered.

Then she stepped around the privacy screen, hiding the view into the pavilion’s inner sanctum, and all thoughts of retribution fled. Because there he was, the king, in all his gorgeous, slightly disheveled glory, robe opened to the navel, abs displayed to mouthwatering perfection.

Down, girl.

He hasn’t heard her approach or noticed her arrival, since he was still hunched over the low table, brush in hand.

She knew he kept a journal; he told her he did, she’s just never seen him write in it before.

Well, he might as well stop and put it aside. He needed to eat something. She cleared her throat, and his eyes immediately snapped to her, a smile on his lips.

“Jeonha.” She bowed her head in formal greeting.

When she lifted her head, the happy expression was replaced by a frown. “I’ve long given you liberty to use my given name.”

He has, and she’s been using it...Sometimes. She felt herself blush again. “You have.”

He grinned and leaned back against the cushions. “So why do you use it only when you’re in my arms?”

She sputtered, hoping there really was no one around to overhear.

“Why is that, Ji-young?” the king insisted, using her name for emphasis. He obviously had no problem on that front.

“Because it’s inappropriate,” she hissed.

“So is you being in my embrace,” he countered, his grin turning lopsided. “According to some, that is, due to your ambiguous status, which you refuse to address. I don’t mind it at all.” A heartbeat. Then, “Well, I do mind the non-addressing of your status. It’s you being in my arms that I don’t mind.

She closed her eyes and prayed for the ground to swallow her whole as she counted to ten. Then, considering herself composed, she cleared her throat. “You need to eat something.”

She opened her eyes and quickly wished she hadn’t, because he was looking at her as if she were on the menu.

Feeling incredibly warm all over, she cleared her throat again. “You need to eat something...Heon.”

He grinned. “As you command, my lady. What have you brought me?” he asked and snapped his journal shut.

As he leaned to the side to stash it, Ji-young gasped, the tray she’d been holding crashing to the floor.

“What the actual hell?!” she yelled, pointing at the familiar book in his hand. “You had it all this time?! You bastard!”

Startled, he looked at her with wide eyes.

She didn’t know whether it was because she was yelling at him again, which hasn’t happened for a long time, or because she was calling him a bastard, and she really didn’t care. He had the book all this time, and he’s been hiding it from her. Yelling and name-calling was an appropriate reaction.

He blinked. “What are you talking about?”

Really? He was playing dumb? She pointed her finger at the book in his hands. “My book! You had it! You lied to me!”

He scrambled to his feet. “What are you talking about? I never lied to you.”

She blinked away tears of rage. “You had my book, and you told me you didn’t. You lied, you son of a bitch.”

“That’s the second time you’ve insulted me,” he growled, eyes going cold, a slight reminder of the tyrant she first met. Then, as if taking hold of himself, he slowly walked to her and took her elbow. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Ji-young. Why don’t you explain it to me?” he asked her gently, soothingly.

She glared at him, refusing to be soothed. Not after such a betrayal of trust. She thought he was different. She had the right to be angry, damn it! At him, but mostly at her for trusting him, believing him. “This is my book,” she squeezed out between clenched teeth, tapping the notebook he was still holding with the tip of her index finger. “The one I told you about. The one that brought me here. The one you promised to help me find.” A tear slid down her cheek. “You hid it from me.”

He went to brush the stray tear, but she reeled back, and he frowned. “This is not your book; it’s mine. My journal. Which, mind you, I started keeping after you arrived.”

She wouldn’t be deterred. “It says Mangunrok on the cover. That’s the title of my book. Are you telling me there are two Mangunroks around?”

He grimaced. “I wrote that after you told me about your book. I was trying to understand what it could mean.”

“Oh...” It made sense, didn’t it? She shook her head. “Nope. It looks the same. The calligraphy, too.”

He offered her the familiar-looking book. “See for yourself.”

She took it, her hands trembling. It did look the same. The colors of the binding, the inscription on the cover...the only thing that was missing was the butterfly pendant. And the hole and ring from which it hung.

She opened it on the first page... “Huh.” It really wasn’t her Mangunrok. There was nothing on the first page. No love note that had made her think it was a romance novel at first; there was no writing at all. Her vision swam with tears. Golden, shimmering tears...

Suddenly, her hands were empty and her vision normal once more.

She blinked, looked at the man who had repossessed the book. His expression would’ve been comical if it wasn’t for the fear growing in his eyes. “What?”

Seeing her shimmer and almost disappear from in front of him as the inscription on the cover glowed golden, Heon had ripped the journal out of her hands and closed it with a snap, fear and apprehension growing inside him.

He’d never seen anything similar before, and it scared him. Not the unfamiliar, magical sight, but the fact the woman he loved almost disappeared in front of his eyes.

All this time, Ji-young’s been claiming to not be from this time, to be from the future, but he never truly believed her. It was easier to accept her being from a different land where women were more easily permitted to pursue unwomanly endeavors and to act and talk more freely, than her simply appearing out of nowhere, snatched from another time.

Being from another land might mean long travel, but he could manage. If she was from another time, and she really wanted to return there, she’d be gone from his life forever.

And that was unfathomable. Unacceptable. Unallowable.

“Stay,” he gasped hoarsely, grabbing her arm. “Stay with me.”

She blinked, hiding those beautiful eyes from him for a heartbeat. “What happened?”

He could lie. He could tell her nothing had happened, that she didn’t shimmer and go translucent as she opened the book and the inscription on the cover glowed. He could distract her by pouting that she’d dropped his evening snack. He could distract her in other ways...

But he couldn’t. He refused to. He’d never lied to her before, and he refused to do so now. He couldn’t bind her to him with lies, even though he feared he might lose her with the truth.

“You...” He had to clear his throat. “You shimmered, as if you were disappearing.” Why was it so difficult to speak? “And the inscription glowed when you opened my journal.”

She cocked her head, then her eyes widened. “It did?” She went to reach for the journal, but he tucked it behind his back. “Let me see.”

He shook his head. “It couldn’t be your book, because it is mine. It couldn’t take you back to your time.”

“But it could.” She grinned. “It’s called the bootstrap paradox.”

“Bootstrap what?”

She nodded, eyes wide and bright. “The original Mangunrok brought me here. I told you about it, and you used the title for your own journal, which looks exactly the same. Once you started writing it, my book disappeared, because first, it was just created, and second, two same objects cannot exist at the same time.” She giggled, clapping her hands. “Your Mangunrok is also my Mangunrok. You’re the original author. You wrote the one that brought me here. You...”

“Oh.” Ji-young gulped. He wrote it. He wrote the love note that had caught her eye. Did he write it for her? If he did, it would mean she made it home, because currently the first page was empty. If he wrote it as a note for her, it would mean she didn’t...They weren’t...“Well...shit.”

She looked up at him, the hope of finally going home, seeing her father, warring with the sorrow of leaving this world, him, behind. Their eyes met, and she could see the same sadness reflecting in his eyes. Sadness mixing with a strange hope that she just might choose him.

God, how she wanted to, but...

“I don’t belong here.”

He dropped the book, grabbed both her shoulders. “Yes, you do. You belong with me.”

Why did it have to be this hard? Why did she have to make this choice? “I need to go home; I need to see my father. He’s probably been going crazy all this time; I need to make sure he knows I’m okay.”

“Ji-young—”

“Please. Let me go.”

He sighed, leaned down, and pressed his forehead to her. “I—”

A clearing of a masculine throat made them jump apart like guilty teenagers to look at Im Song-jae peering from around the privacy screen. “My apologies, but there is someone here to see you, Cook Yeon.”

With one last look at Heon, she followed Song-jae into the courtyard. And there they were, teary-eyed Gil-geum and senior cooks, Shin Soo-hyuk, Gong-gil, eunuch Chang-seon...even Choi Mal-im and Yoon Choon-sik.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

Song-jae sighed. “Well, I saw what happened earlier.” He lifted his hands in defense. “I heard the tray and yelling, so I wanted to make sure...Anyway, I saw what happened, and I thought you might want to say goodbye.”

So matter-of-fact. As if time travel by magical book was an everyday occurrence. As if her decision wasn’t heartwrenching.

She slowly walked down the steps and into the courtyard, watching their sad faces, the tears on Gil-geum’s cheeks. And it suddenly dawned on her that she wasn’t just leaving Heon; she was leaving all of them. Her friends, her second family.

“Guys...”

“Safe travels, Cook Yeon.”

“Don’t forget us, Cook Yeon.”

“Thank you for everything, Cook Yeon.”

“Miss!” Finally, Gil-geum threw herself into her arms. “Don’t forget me.”

“I could never forget you,” she whispered, blinking back tears as she broke the embrace and stepped back.

She could feel him behind her. It was time. She turned, and there he was, Heon, face stoic though his eyes were pained, Mangunrok in hand.

“I don’t want you to leave,” he whispered.

“I know,” she whispered back. “But I have to.”

He nodded. Swallowed. Looked at the floor, then back at her with eyes gleaming with tears. Swallowed again. Then, aloud, so everybody could hear. “I love you, Ji-young.”

She couldn’t hold her tears back anymore. Not now. They spilled down her cheeks as she flung herself at him, grabbed his robe, and there, in the middle of the courtyard, for the whole world to see, kissed him.

Gil-geum wailed; there were a lot of throats in obvious need of clearing, but Ji-young didn’t care. She cared about nothing but the feel of his mouth, his tongue against hers, the mixing of their breaths, and his hand circling her waist as he pulled her closer and deepened the kiss that little bit more.

She clung to him, savoring his taste, his smell, tucking the memory close to her heart, before stepping back.

She could offer him platitudes and promises of returning, but they would be empty. She had no idea if she could come back, even if she wanted to. No matter how desperately she might want to. She had no idea if the Mangunrok would work a second time. She had no idea if it would really work this time, but she had to try.

So, instead of empty promises, she offered him an affirmation. “I love you, too.”

He opened his mouth, like he wanted to argue, but thought better of it, shook his head, sighed, and handed her the book.

“Farewell, gwinyeo.”

With one more tear rolling down her cheek, she opened the book, steadfastly holding his gaze.

Once more, her sight started shimmering, golden flecks gathering, widening from her peripheral vision inward, until there was nothing but him...Until even he was gone.

The courtyard was enveloped in blinding golden light...Then, suddenly, as if snuffing out a candle, the light was gone. And so was the chief royal cook.

The book fell on the ground with a dull thud...