Chapter Text
Jung Hoseok thumbs through the stack of new romances on the bookstore shelf, orange-covered tomes, beautifully scripted and all of them containing smut and scandal in varying proportions. He can feel the gaze of the new bookstore owner on him, and it’s inconvenient, because the owner is stunning, almost impossibly beautiful. Hoseok would like a chance to stare at him, but not when he’s being observed.
As if summoned by the warm train of Hoseok’s thoughts, the man approaches. “Are you finding anything you like, sir?”
Hobi has three romances in hand. They’re all of a type—dramas set at court, featuring an honest but beleaguered king who must try at all costs to fend off the corruption of a power-hungry and rapacious faction.
The faction led by, inevitably, one court official who is the worst of the lot.
“It’s always the Left State Minister in these books,” he muses. “Old, corrupt, murderous, violent. He almost always poisoned the previous king, and now he’s only letting the current king sit on the throne as long as he’s ineffectual and gives the Minister everything he wants.”
The bookstore owner should look afraid now, perhaps, but instead he’s annoyingly unruffled. “Imagine if we had a young and handsome Left State Minister, one with morals. The writers would be at a complete loss.”
He smiles, and there seems to be nothing but beauty in that expression: no malice, no unkindness, nothing held back or guarded. The grandson of Hobi’s predecessor—who was indeed old, corrupt and a poisoner—has returned to Joseon. And yet Kim Seokjin seems to hold no grudges.
Hobi considers what this might or might not mean. The last time he saw this man, they were both covered in mud and filth, not to mention copious amounts of ink, dripped from magical feathers. He had seemed, in every sense, an enemy.
Hobi was afraid his return to the capital was an omen. Now he’s not so sure.
A deep bow. “Don’t mind the novelists, your Excellency. The story of the corrupt minister simply makes it easier for the reader to love the king, as they should. They make his virtue shine.”
“It’s important for all readers to love the king,” he agrees.
“Long may he reign,” Seokjin-ssi agrees. Once again, there doesn’t seem to be anything hidden within the words. “Should I find you a volume of poetry instead?”
”No, I’ll take them all.” Hobi passes them over. “I can’t help it, you see. They’ve got the best love stories.”
He is gratified to see the other man is a little surprised. As he steps back into his palanquin—wishing as always that his status wasn’t so lofty, that he could have walked back to the palace—he wonders if he’ll regret that moment of honesty later.