I couldn't sleep, so my thoughts wandered . Wandered to what it all meant, what my role in this royal game meant.
And if I was meant to survive it at all.
I used to think being "foreign" was romantic.
Exotic. Mysterious. The girl from somewhere else.
Turns out? It just means you don't belong anywhere.
The palace corridors are long tonight. Longer than usual. The lanterns stretch like a thousand watching eyes, and I swear the walls breathe. They inhale when I pass. They exhale when I hesitate.
Back home, I knew how to survive. I understood the rules. If someone hated you, they said it with their chest. If politics ruined you, at least you saw it coming.
Here?
Smiles are sharper than swords.
Every bow feels like a calculation. Every whisper might carry my name.
I am the foreign body.
Or maybe the infection.
The unpredictable variable in a kingdom that survives on order.
Sometimes I wonder if they're waiting for me to fail. Or worse, to disappear.
And then there's him.
The Crown Prince Lee Ji-ho.
The man I was never supposed to meet, or love.
Or maybe I was always meant to.
That's the part that terrifies me.
Because what if this isn't love?
What if it's proximity?
A sense of shared danger?
The way his hand lingers just a second too long as if he's memorizing me in case tomorrow steals me away?
What if I'm just a weapon placed to distract him?
They say I'm meant to protect him.
Me.
A girl who still wakes up some nights wondering if this world is even real.
Sometimes I ask myself the question I never say aloud:
Will I live long enough to go home?
And if I do… will home still want me?
Because here, despite everything, despite the politics, the suffocating expectations, the way the court watches me like I'm a storm waiting to break out.
Here, you are either useful… or you are disposable.
And yet, I'm yet to figure out what it is.
Is it tied to him?
Or maybe to the throne.
Or even worst, to this strange pull in my chest that feels like destiny and doom wrapped up with a red bow.
They all said that fate sent me here, to protect, to deliver.
They call it destiny. I call it poor planning by the universe.
An endless train of expectation.
Everyone expects something from me.
The court expects obedience.
The ministers expect strategy.
The enemies expect weakness.
And he… he expects me to stay.
Even if stay meant losing my old cheerful self.
But what if I'm not strong enough?
What if loving him is the very thing that will kill him?
Or kill me?
What if I died in the process of it all.
What if it all goes wrong, and by some miracle I survive but tossed out and forgotten.
If the throne demanded my exile… would he hesitate?
I used to believe stories had clear endings.
You fight.
You sacrifice.
You win a happy ever after.
You go home.
But what if this isn't a fairy tale?
What if I'm not the heroine, just a temporary solution?
A mirage placed in his path so the real story can unfold after I'm gone?
The thought sits heavy in my ribs.
Still… when he looks at me like I am not foreign, not misplaced, not temporary.
Like I belong,
I want to believe it's real.
And that might be the most dangerous thing of all.
Maybe love is the price.
Or maybe it's just a lie whispered to fools who dared to pray to fate.