POV: Hae Na Ri
"Do you believe me? Be honest." I ask and make a lesson-worthy mistake.
I move a little too close to him.
In the next moment, my shoulder is in the Captain's hand.
His fingers dig right into my shoulder blade and force me on my knees, bruising them. If I had been holding any weapon, I would have definitely dropped it. But I am an ordinary person with empty hands.
I can only cry out in pain.
"Step back, Captain Kang!" Ryu Hajoon's deep voice commands. My shoulder is released and I immediately retreat, hugging the wall with my back and rubbing my shoulder.
How naive of me!
"Are you alright?" He asks, his sharp eyes fixed on me.
When he takes a step forward, I withdraw further at once.
This must be the norm. If anyone stepped too close to him, they would get hurt and dragged back. As if he is something special. The people around him must get hurt for little to no reasons. And with his permission.
I nod in answer, not trusting myself to speak. I can't show my resentment.
His mouth is turned down in a frown. "I believe you, Hae Nari-sshi."
And I don't believe him.
★☆★☆★☆★
POV: Ryu Ha Joon
"Have you told them to monitor her closely?" Hajoon enters his study, followed by Mrs. Kang.
"Yes, Your Majesty,"
Kang Jae Hyuk enters behind them and shuts the door. "I have appointed guards around her."
"Arrange my lunch with her too," Hajoon adds, surprising them all. There's an excitement in his tone that he isn't doing much to suppress and hide.
"Your Majesty, what's going on in your mind?" Lee Sunwoo follows him to his desk as he takes a seat behind it. She is holding a tablet with his schedule on it. "You should be sending her back if she is really from another world, or hand her over to the RIS. That's the safest thing to do."
"Yes, Your Majesty, I am with Sunwoo-sshi on this," Mrs. Kang says, hands folded under her bosom. Her face reflects her anxiety. "Whether she is from this world or not, she shouldn't stay in the palace."
Hajoon, sitting behind the desk, listens to them silently while his finger traces a circle on the lid of his laptop.
Kang Jae Hyuk clears his throat. "I do think she has accidentally entered this world. Unless she is an extremely good actor, she seemed genuinely clueless when I interrogated her." His tone darkens. "Though I was not following my usual methods, because of His Majesty's instructions."
"How could she have followed His Majesty here?" Sunwoo scoffs. "We all have tried it, His Majesty has tried to bring us along. It has never worked."
"Or maybe she is like His Majesty," Mrs Kang voices her suspicion. "Shaman Su would be able to confirm it. But for now, we can't rule out that she can be lying." She steps closer to the desk, staring at the man behind it meaningfully. "You must not forget what happened in the past…"
There are some tense moments of silence in the study after this.
"I don't forget anything," Hajoon says eventually, his words falling like a ton of bricks. "I think you all are overreacting."
What they do forget is that Hajoon is not his mother.
"I think you aren't taking this as seriously as you should," Sunwoo says, though politely.
"There's no need to hand her over to anything or send her back immediately–that is if she has followed me here. With me, this has never happened before, aren't you all curious why and how could she enter this world?" His voice is deepening with something akin to fascination.
Aish, he can't hide it.
He had opened the door and taken just two steps when he heard something. He turned back only to find a woman at his feet. A woman with round, pure eyes.
Mrs. Kang frowns, exchanging a glance with Lee Sunwoo. "You are taking too much interest in her."
"She will stay in the palace for the time being, and as a guest." Hajoon orders and then looks at each of them in warning. "Don't let her suspect anything."
Kang Jae Hyuk and Lee Sunwoo answer in unison, but Mrs. Kang doesn't seem to be done with it.
"This happened because you went to the other worlds again," she says and now she sounds like a mother reprimanding her child. He has grown up under her, of course king or not, she has some motherly instincts. "You promised to not do it again after the last time."
Lee Sunwoo has turned away, arms folded over her chest, but she murmurs. "It's his 4th time."
"5th," His Majesty corrects. Sunwoo presses her lips together and glares at Kang Jae Hyuk. He had probably gone secretly once and slipped past the Royal Guard Captain.
But the way the Royal Guard Captain stands right now it's obvious he was in on it.
"Kang Jae Hyuk!" Sunwoo advances towards him. "He was injured the last time he returned! I can't even go with him, if something happened to him, we wouldn't even know."
He stands aloof. "I only follow His Majesty's orders."
"Your Majesty!" Mrs. Kang turns desperate suddenly at this new revelation. "You can't keep going there, you can't keep opening that door."
"If you could travel to another universe and return, you would do it too," Hajoon says, a little distracted.
Something is turning and whirring inside his mind, trying to determine the presence or extent of danger.
To what extent this new development threatens their safety, if it does?
It's strange. A voice deep inside him says, "No, it doesn't." He is being urged to sit back. Naturally, he is always wary of new things and people. But something inside him is putting him in a trance.
"Not if I have the responsibility of so many people on my shoulders," Lee Sunwoo shoots back.
He regains focus at this. "Did you just call me irresponsible?"
She looks down and sounds sarcastic. "I dare not."
"She did, didn't she?" He glances at Kang Jae Hyuk for support.
Mrs. Kang nervously approaches him. "Your Majesty, you yourself said 'go to another universe and return'. That's the thing. There's no guarantee you will return the next time. Look at this woman. She came here but she can't get back."
"This seems different."
"As if that never happened to you!" Mrs. Kang glares at him.
He goes still, smoothes out his expressions in an emotionless mask.
"What does that mean?" Lee Sunwoo asks.
"That last time when His Majesty did not return for 17 days and then returned with a gash on his temple, he was not there by choice. He was stuck! He couldn't find our world." Mrs. Kang reveals.
"What?!" Lee Sunwoo turns to Hajoon and he suddenly finds an earth shaped paper weight on his desk quite interesting, examining it from all angles as if he has never seen anything like it before.
"How do you know about it?" Lee Sunwoo asks Mrs. Kang upon getting ignored by him.
"Shaman Su told me. He also forbade His Majesty to use his ability again forever. And he also said something else. Your Majesty, he told you, didn't he?"
"What? What did he say?" Lee Sunwoo is getting exasperated. "No one here tells me anything!"
Mrs. Kang takes a deep breath and turns to others, hands not moving from her chest. "He said His Majesty must not open the door and cross it again. Each time he crosses it now, misfortune will strike him. Each time worse than the one before. Nature punishes those who go against it."
Hajoon chuckles, gets up, and moves to lean against the desk in the front.
"How much misfortune can that single woman bring me?" He finds the idea extremely amusing. Hae Na Ri seems the kind who can eloquently convince even grim reapers to leave her alone, seeing as how many lies she has apparently made up on the spot.
"You must not underestimate women, Your Majesty," Lee Sunwoo says. "And this confirms that we should take care of Hae Nari as soon as possible."