He wakes to the knock on a door.

"Choi Jongho!" a voice yells, strong enough to go in through the cracks, "You have to wake up, I got an important message from Higher Commander Park for you!"

Instantly, Yeosang snaps his eyes open as he raises his upper body from where he lays. A sudden tug is felt around his waist and hinders him from moving that far, instead making him turn around to stare in fear at what is keeping him in place. The boy wants to disappear when he suddenly realizes whose orbs are looking drowsily into his own. A deep-rooted panic stretches from his bones and he holds his breath for what feels to be hours.

"I will open the door if no answers are given!"

Then he shifts his sight to the wooden door, crossing the outlines of the bed they apparently have shared, white bed curtains keeping him from seeing that much. Yeosang's blood drains from his face and he stays pale on the imaginations going around in his throbbing head. He is thrown out of his headspace when a strong hand pulls him back down to the bed's surface and he yelps.

"Quick, get down under the sheets," the knight whisper-shouts, and gives Yeosang no time to reply, before he shoves a cover over him.

The next thing he can hear happening is the heavy hinges of the wooden door groan out loud when they are moved. Footsteps stumble startled across the stone floor and a rather boyish tone gasps.

"Sir! And you have been up this whole time I have been calling for you?"

Yeosang can sense how Jongho moves his limbs under the same sheet he stays hidden underneath, and a warm heat appears in his face out of pure embarrassment. His nerves are tying knots under his skin and the sensation makes him stir slightly.

"Cailean, what may be the explanation of your so sudden intruding in my private chamber?" the knight retorts with a lick of ire clinging to his words.

"I apologize, sir! But this is important, and I-"

The boy is sure that the reason for the stop of speak, is because the sound of his beating heart is heard and he desperately tries to stop it from doing another flop. He knows that if anyone catches him laying in the sheets of one of the Knights Templar's beds, they will kill him promptly without letting him give them any form for clarification.

The hairs rise across his arms and he cannot breathe when he listens to the smirk drawing from the intruder, windling in those coming words: "You are not alone."

Indeed he is not, Yeosang thinks despite how much he wishes that it is not true. His mind has already gone cold, but in reality, his skin is burning warm and he starts to lack air.

"Get out," sternly, Yeosang hears Jongho bark at the man.

"At least you could tell me who it is! Is she pretty? Is she the one with that long dark beautiful hair and those green eyes!? Oh, or it may be the Healers' quarter's new girl, she seems like such a darling. But you probably already know- I will leave you two already, sir!"

The footsteps move away but even after the door is closed again, Yeosang is still holding his breath, unable to do anything. That is when Jongho removes the cover and cool air blows against his face. Some of his hair is pushed into his eyes. Already, he is thinking of how to remove those moments from his memory and he closes his eyes with an invisible sigh. To say the least, he supposes he has not been caught yet.

"I hope this was not a daunt to your heart, I truly had no idea that someone would come here," Jongho says to him as he draws his sight to something laying against Yeosang's chest, and Yeosang senses the shift in reflection around the other's features. Slowly he raises himself up from the soft furniture and glances down himself and sees the cross with the blue stone dangling against his form. Noiselessly, he pulls the pendant under the shirt he wears. Those garments are not his own either, he can tell, but when he lifts his head, the boy loses his voice from the moment he notices the sun rays are playing around the handsome outline of the knight. Glitters painting his skin like a holy mural and wild dark hair glowing light brown which the boy wants to tame under the will of his own hands.

Yeosang remembers the day before. When his hands had been trailing through those damp locks of hair and his eyes had been full and heavy with desires that he should not have had. When the Knights Templar had forgotten about his might and glory, nobility and oath, to have a taste of sin. The strong waters Yeosang had drunk were never enough to have him forget how ably Jongho had had his arms around him and the way his lips had played with his heart until he had become weak.

He watches the knight swallow nervously, as he places his hand flat down in front of him, "So, do you remember?"

The light reflects in the eyes that look at him now, and he presses the tip of his tongue into his teeth to keep himself from reaching forward. He has to remind himself that the knight still is a stranger to him regardless of their shared intimacy. And yet, something in the way Jongho moves closer with his expectant eyes and slightly raised brows tells him that the knight waits for a positive answer - that he hopes Yeosang remembers the night before. The boy gulps and tilts his head downwards to see how Jongho's warm hand slowly, but steadily wraps around his own, but he knows that this will never have a good ending. Yeosang still has to discover what happened with Wooyoung when his father found out about his relation to the other.

"No..." Yeosang whispers as he tries to wring his fingers out of the knight's hand, "I have no notion of why I am here or what has happened. Please do me the favor and tell me."

It is as if the chamber suddenly feels clamped and Yeosang stares wide-eyed up at Jongho who pulls his hand away from Yeosang's while his hopeful facial expression retreats for one that seems affected by anguish for nothing more than a moments before he is met by hardened features as the fearful warrior who bides by his sight. Yeosang believes he hears the voice of the other, but the sound is none other than the gust of wind.

A lie does not make you less of a sinner.

With wary eyes, he watches how the knight drops himself down upon the floor and turns around to cross the spacious chamber and open a wooden closet. The movement of his arm causes his back muscles to move along, stretching and bending by the man's physique will, as he picks up clothes from the inside. His skin is smooth and firm like iron, making the knight look like an aesthetic aureate carving, and Yeosang hardly sees the imprinted scars there twirls around the nude surface with life-threatening stories that would make whoever listen if they were told. The boy draws his attention to the cotton bandages swathed around his one shoulder and abdomen, and what surprisingly comes to his mind the first, is the verity that the Knights Templar stands there, with so little garms on, that Yeosang is too petrified to move his gaze elsewhere. Then comes the wonders of why the man has those bindings, but his orbs never drown in thoughts before he realizes why. Yeosang cannot believe he had not held this awareness to his actions, of the matter that he could have hurt Jongho, unintentionally.

"Does... does it still hurt? I mean, the wound..." the knight turns at his feet and faces the boy that still sits in his bed. Yeosang's head is still turned at the other, but a single glance down has a rosy warmth filling his cheeks. So much skin is shown that it should be called a sin - although it is when adjoining Yeosang's seething thoughts to the moment.

The knight has no shame to his exposed upper body, contrary instead pulling at the bindings so that even more of his firm abdominal muscles are revealed, "If I must be honest to your query, I will say yes, albeit it has gotten greatly better already. Thank you for your concern."

Yeosang gulps while he spends the moving time watching Jongho pulling into the Knight Templar's black leather attires. The way Jongho had answered his question has him knowing that the man is aware of more than he should be, and it has a fear latching around his shoulders with the pressure that has his lungs miss air.

Suddenly, Jongho places a bunch of the same-like leather clothes in front of Yeosang at the bed, and the boy locks eyes with the knight for a mere second, "Here, take those on and let us find Higher Commander Park before he will burst in here himself as well," Jongho tells him in an impartial voice that sounds too fallacious to be paired up with his sentence. The boy wants him to smile at him again.

"They are my older clothes, so, I suppose they will fit your form."

_____

Never has Yeosang felt this many eyes looking at him as he does while passing the courtyard where lots of knights currently stay. More than a couple of times he saves himself from stumbling because of his nervous footsteps colliding with each other. But even if the men are looking in his direction, he is still unsure if they actually are viewing him or if it is the Knights Templar walking by his side, rather calmly, to clarify their differences. With the corner of his eye, he admires the dignity that weighs around Jongho's straight shoulders as they proceed towards the head building to where Seonghwa apparently is. He wishes that he someday will bear something just as admirable as those knights. No wonder that others have to look twice when he passes by.

He has found a light throbbing to beat around in his head but Yeosang feels as if they come from his doings the day before. Or, he cannot think of any other thing than those intoxicants licurs that San coerced him to drink, and the boy believes that the aching he feels at this given moment must be the following consequences of getting a bit tipsy. His tense shoulders are forgotten when Jongho opens a foreign door into the head building that Yeosang never has been into. But the way the knight reaches out and pulls the door open makes it look as if he has done this many times before. Choi Jongho must be on good terms with both the Lord and all the commanders, Yeosang thinks to himself when he steps inside.

The boy glances around the foreign place: seeing how the wooden rafters stretch from above, down against the walls. Carvings are shaping them with the finest details that frame the entrance with nostalgia, and Yeosang urges to run his fingers against the surface to feel the satisfying roundings and patterns. The windows are wide, but torches are still lit. Shadows of fire lick against the stone floor. A long table is set in the middle, and all sorts of parchment and ink are spread across the furniture. In a corner, weapons lay.

He feels as if he stands at another place in the world - as if those indoors are not the same fortress. Yeosang swallows his tensity before stepping up to Jongho, who already is passing the table, but the boy does not come a long way before he startles from a strong voice behind him; the door is smacked close.

"Where have you been!? And why are you here! You are certus not allowed to be in this place!"

Then he is met with fuming rage and a hand grabbing around his chin in a harsh manner. A whimper leaves his lips when the Higher Commander yanks him forward with fingers that press roughly against his teeth. Seonghwa is infuriated.

"Sir, I brought him here."

Yeosang can feel the stinging red marks from the knight's jarring movements after he lets go again to look at who is behind him. His wide eyes stare in horror at the man, when he suddenly seems so alike Xalvador, and out of fright, he leans himself back until he stumbles into another. What happened the last time, is not something he essentially wishes to happen again. He can feel a pair of strong arms reach around his shoulders until his feet attain their balance yet again, and the touch is somehow allaying his startled self.

"Careful there," Jongho whispers in his left ear, and the low humming has his heart shuddering in a different way than before that makes him want to feel it again. Yeosang should not feel like this. His breath wavers while he pushes himself away from Jongho, eyes striding towards sprinkles of dust to be seen flowing in the sun rays, but not looking at the knights.

"Choi, I order an explicatio for those circumstances. Now!" Park Seonghwa shouts as he moves threateningly with his pure elegance further into the hall. The winds around him sweep any bravery off anyone's shoulders like it is mere specks of dust.

The boy cannot hold himself to only stare down into the ground, and loosely, he let his sight wander to where Jongho stands. How Jongho never falters any inch, is him a riddle.

"Pardon my loss of declaration, sir Park," Jongho starts, "When I was called for the important message Cailean brought me from you, I encountered the novice on my way here and thought to bring him with me. I apologize if those actions have brought you difficulties with finding him, but there, he told me Choi Sander had left him since the day before, and therefore I thought with my well morality, that doing him a good-seen virtue would bring him preferable through this day. The guilt is mine, sir," the knight ends as he bows his head to the higher-ranked man. But for Yeosang, he can only feel oddly placed in this situation when Jongho lies to protect him from any harming.

He turns his head to look at Seonghwa, but to his surprise, his infuriated features have left his face and left none trails behind - like it was just something the boy had imagined to be real. The tall knight sighs, now raising a small smile to his lips and his gaze is suddenly filled with gentleness, "I was only worried for Yeosang, Jongho, since he was nowhere to be found.." the man says and places an arm against the back-lean of a chair, "But, I believe this coincidence might be considered rather felix, since my message is about exactly you two."

By hearing Seonghwa's last sentence, Yeosang's blood drains from his face, running out everywhere he stands. His eyes are close to leaving his head and he accidentally bites into his tongue so much that it hurts. And Seonghwa solely stays there with his tight-sweet smile, as it humours him. Yeosang is near thinking that what is happening is unreal when the truth already hunts him down like he is prey. But, he cannot perceive how Seonghwa has gotten the information - not that this is salient when he lays dead soon.

Silently pleading, his eyes follow the pattern to the knight standing behind him, but on him, he descries no form of fear.

"And what may that be, sir?"

Seonghwa retreats from his leaning stand, and straightens his shoulders before looking down, seemingly considering the question, "As you know, have I been promotus ad alium task, which also means that I have gotten satis of work to do, but..." the Higher Commander looks up, his dark eyes looking right into Jongho's warm ones, "I want you to replace me as Yeosang's guidance counselor, I want you to be in charge of him - teach him how to fight in ipsa via, then the church shall teach him not to be a peccator."

Yeosang tries to breathe the air in the lingering silence as he listens to the echoes of Seonghwa's request. He is not wanting him dead for his reckless sins. At least not yet, but that is not what Yeosang thinks of when he hears how Jongho commences to the fate that is placed in his hands.

"I will do my best to live up to your expectations for me, sir Park."

If Yeosang were frightened before, he looks death in the eyes now. This may be his punishment for liking the wrong gender.

⚔