º maid quarters

after all the palace maids have returned to their respective chambers to sleep, yeonhee waits until everyone is asleep before exiting the room with light footsteps, closing the door behind her. insomnia is almost like a norm for her these nights, especially after that day when they met again...everything still feels like a dream, and she cannot differentiate if this is a dream or a nightmare. she can never forget those days that formed the darkest part of her life, and she will never regret or hesitate to escape; but when her thoughts drift to the man who made those days better and more bearable, she feels something clenching tightly inside her chest.

"you have been staring at me for so long, what are you thinking?" that day, they both got a little drunk, and he decided to stay over. she remembered bringing him to her own room, and they just laid down facing each other, no one wants to have their eyes closed just yet. having his eyes on her slowly rose her temperature, so she asked it away to have her curiosity solved.

"nothing...and everything." was his answer.

"what do you mean?" she was a mere commoner, to understand such words with underlying meanings (like his poems) were always challenging for her. luckily, he wasn't like any other upper-class men using this to insult her illiteracy, in fact, he would always teach her and explain to her what meanings do those words carry, what do people really mean when they say it in a specific manner.

"just that...in my life, the one thing that i have learned above all is that no individual can reach the height of their potential without the love of others." with those words, he leaned in closer, and then she felt his lips on her forehead. their eyes met when he pulled away, and he leaned in again, this time on her eyes. then her nose, and her lips... yeonhee reached up to touch those couplets as if she could feel the same tender warmth from that night, her heart racing in sync like how she did then. his dark orbs looking into hers once again, and she could see her own reflection in it, it would be a lie to say how not beautiful it was to find that fluttering even until now.

"your affection for me, just like mine for you," he smiles, that smile even growing to his eyes as he speaks. "...makes me want to be happy." that was the last line of the clip, it was also the line that kept her thinking for the longest time. did she really make him happy, did she really heal his pain? their memories kept on revolving in her head, even when she burnt all the contracts in the gisaeng house and became a palace maid, there was one person that she had struggled to forget. a person who had miraculously appeared once again, but one she could not reunion with for she had thrown all burden she carried in the past. she is no longer the gisaeng in the house, she is a palace maid working for the saro royals.

but can she really forget? that shocked face turning into pleasant surprise when he saw her, it was all too unreal, did he really miss her...? she buried her head inside her folded arms on her knees, eyes squeezed shut as she told herself not to think about it. you are not the person in the past anymore, but memories related to him kept on playing inside her brain, overlapping with the same face she has seen just recently. the muscle clutches harder inside her chest, acting as her response to those moments that she could not let go of from the past. the moon only showered its silver luminance on her, being the girl's only companion in this deep night.