The Flowers Walk at Night

The youngest son of the Gyo clan’s Hubeo branch, Gyo Yeon-o, meets a handsome man who visits his home one day.

Despite his first impression, the man is somewhat clumsy, and Yeon-o gradually grows closer to him through repeated visits.

Then he learns that the man is the current emperor, who killed his own blood relatives to ascend to the throne.

The emperor came to the Gyo Hubeo branch in order to take a consort from the Gyo family.

Yeon-o feels oddly unsettled at the thought that one of his female relatives might become the emperor’s concubine.

The emperor, who came to find Yeon-o, hands him a token and asks him to become his concubine.

A firm hand took hold of Yeon-o’s.

“I want you.”

The man turned Yeon-o’s hand over so his palm faced up, then placed a phoenix-pattern token made of ox horn on it. The man carefully folded Yeon-o’s hand so the ox-horn phoenix token would not fall off, and smiled gently.

“What...”

Yeon-o blinked in confusion. Was what he was seeing now reality, not a dream?

“I want you to become mine, Yeon-o.”

Yeon-o becomes the emperor’s consort, believing it to be love.

But it does not take long for him to realize that the first love was false.

The emperor has a true beloved elsewhere.

Not only that, but he has many concubines as well.

The empress dowager, whom he had trusted as a relative and expected to become an ally, even steals Yeon-o’s people and persecutes him, making life in the palace only more painful.

Then he learns that the reason he was brought into the palace was to make it easier for the emperor’s true beloved to enter.

Yeon-o realizes that he is merely an obstacle, a villain standing in the way of the two people’s love.

“Why, why was it me? Surely Your Majesty knew that the Gyo clan was needed for heirs by the empress dowager...”

Yeon-o suspected that the emperor’s cold indifference had been planned from the moment he appeared at the Gyo Hubeo branch. Yet somewhere in his heart, he hoped that was not the case.

That the emperor had simply lost interest as quickly as he had reached out to him.

The emperor approached Yeon-o. As the tall man came near, a shadow fell over Yeon-o’s face, which was stained with shock. Yeon-o, who had always strictly followed etiquette, even forgot to take the practiced formal posture of his own body.

“Yeon-o.”

A bright smile bloomed on the handsome man’s face. It was the same smile he had once shown when Yeon-o thought he had grown close to him, a smile that could seize anyone’s attention.

“...”

Yeon-o accepted that he had truly been deceived at the man’s gentle voice calling his name. His ugly feelings stirred at the familiar call, so falsely affectionate.

“I wish you had been foolish and lacking. If you had realized your position, despaired, lowered yourself, and sat quietly in the back rooms, wouldn’t it have been easier for everyone?”

At the man’s soft whispering, Yeon-o’s shoulders rose and fell greatly. The smooth words, disguised as tenderness, were warm like a spring breeze. He felt longing and regret at a whisper that only pretended to be familiar, and the emotions he felt were both sorrowful and pathetic.