.six.

He nodded his head, a dark tone in his threat that was directed towards Minji. "I'll take you on, and when I'm done with you, I'm going after your friend." He gestured towards Hajin who watched him with a glare. Neither of the two girls was afraid of him, and neither of them thought about the possible consequences that came with getting into a fight with one of the princes.

The two teenagers--Minji and Eun--ran towards each other and immediately her hand latched onto his long hair which was pulled back into a pony tail. Prince Eun did the same and they were caught in a stalemate where both side were immobilized. Meanwhile Hajin only stood on the sidelines with Chae Ryung, waiting for her turn to step in since they wanted it to be a fair fight.

"Let go!" He yelled at Minji, still with a firm grip on her hair.

"You let go!" She yelled back. 

Minji became distracted for a moment as she heard several pairs of footsteps approaching them, and in her distraction, her grip on his hair loosened. Eun managed to use that to his advantage and turned her around after maneuvering himself out of her hold, locking an arm around her neck. Still pulling her hair, he said to her in a growl that was mixed with satisfaction at the fact that he thought himself winning over his opponent. 

"How you you like this, huh?" He asked her, pulling her head back so that she could meet his eyes. 

She struggled in his grasp and clamped her teeth down into his arm, causing him to scream out in pain. The prince immediately let go of her and she pushed him back away from her. He stumbled back a few feet, but quickly recovered. Now she could see that there were various people gathering around them with curious eyes. Some of them looked like nobles, while others looked like house servants. She was fighting a prince out in the open, and in front of everyone. Of all the people standing there watching, Minji didn't spot Jung among them. But she didn't have the time to really search for him since she was more occupied in her fight with the tenth prince.

Eun stomped towards her again, but Hajin stepped in between them, continuing the fight in her friend's place. "Ah, you think I won't fight you too?" The tenth prince challenged her, pushing her aside easily to get to Minji again.

He tried to get past the girl on the ground to get to Minji who was ready to fight him, pushing up the sleeves of her dress up her arms and her hands formed into ready fists. Hajin raised her foot up and stopped him by kicking him in the chest, pushing the air out of him and knocking him down onto the ground. Minji hurried over and climed on top of him, balling her hand into a fist once again and hitting him everywhere she could reach without mercy as the prince only did what he could to protect himself. He covered his face with his hands.

"Get off me, you cow!" He yelled at her at the top of his lungs, barely able to move with the girl straddling him. He was still remaining arrogant and brave despite the fact that she was above him at the moment and he was at her mercy.

"Cow your mother." Minji shot back, grunting as she hit him with every word that left her lips.

"Do you think you'll be safe after this?" Eun asked her in a menacing tone, hands still securely protecting his face from her blows. "I'll make sure you receive a punishment for daring to hit a prince." He warned her. Now he had one hand covering his face while the other reached for both her hands in an attempt to keep her from hitting him.

"You're a molester!" Minji accused, ignoring his threats. "A fucking pervert!"

"And you're a lewd wench!" He challenged, sticking his tongue out at her while he teased her despite the position he was in.

Minji huffed in frustration, giving a shake of her head. "And you're still talking, even though you know you were wrong. All of this could have been avoided if you had just said sorry to her like we asked." The fourteen year old pulled Eun's hands away from his face and pinned them down on the dirt ground below. Pulling her head back, she braced herself before slamming her head down against his--headbutting him. She could see the shock reflected on his face as she did it, and she felt a sharp pain on her head afterwards, but it couldn't have been nearly as painful as it felt for Eun.

The tenth prince looked up at her with watery eyes, and Minji smiled down at him with a satisfied smirk. There were gasps heard all around them, but no one did anything to stop her or to pull them apart.

There was only Minji and Hajin, the two girls against the tenth prince. Minji moved off him and immediately Hajin took her place while Minji crawled over to his head and she still pinned his hands down in the dirt by the wrists. Now Hajin pushed her sleeves up her arms as she informed him with a threat in her words. "People like you need to have some sense beaten into them."

Minji agreed with a nod of her head. "You think that just because you're a prince, you can treat people however you want?"

Hajin pulled her hand back to hit him in the face and Eun pulled at his restraints which were Minji's arms, trying to get free to protect himself. Just as Hajin had pulled her hand back, there was a hand that grabbed her wrist tightly, stopping her.

"Let go of me!" She yelled, looking towards the person holding her back. Her eyes widened in surprise as she saw who it was. He pulled Hajin up by her wrist with ease, and Minji noticed immediately his menacing stature and appearance. He was dressed in black from head to toe. Half of his face was hidden away by a dark mask, and his hair fell over his face, concealing it even more. His expression was cold as he looked at Hajin.

From behind her, Minji felt a pair of arms wrap around her waist and she was swooped up, back on her feet with effortlessness. Her arms were pinned down at her sides as she struggled to get free. She grunted as she pulled at the person's arms, clawing at them as she tried to get free. She thought it was Jung holding her back, but as she turned her head, she was met with the unfamiliar face of a stranger dressed in all black. He slightly resembled Prince Eun in appearance, but by the dark clothes he wore, he was more similar to the one who was holding Hajin back.

"Unhand me!" Minji cried out, thrashing in the stranger's hold.

Eun quickly got back on his feet with the help of one of the servants, the synical smirk back on his face as he saw that the two girls were being held back by his brothers. 

"Brothers, thank you for helping me deal with these dumb girls." Eun started with a sudden thirst for revenge. He didn't care in that moment that they were two girls--two girls who were younger than him since he was seventeen while Hajin was sixteen and Minji was only fourteen. What was most important to him then was that they wouldn't get away with mistreating a prince. "Hold them nice and tight." He instructed the two. "You awful wenches." He said, enraged storming towards Hajin first. 

One of the princes which Minji remembered seeing in the bath stepped in between them. "Eun." He stopped him from proceeding. He grabbed his brother's hands and pinned them down at his side.

There was a level of authority in his voice.

"Hyung!" Eun whined, every ounce of a menacing tone gone from his voice. Now he was back to sounding childish because he wasn't getting his way.

"The servants are staring." His brother tried to reason with him in a whisper, placing a hand on his brother's shoulder in an attempt to calm him down. Anyone who wasn't close enough to them would not have heard it. But Minji could hear everything and so could Hajin. "How long are you going to keep this up?"

"You..." He said nothing in response to his older brother and instead turned to Minji with a glare. If he couldn't get to Hajin, at least he would deal with Minji, since Jung wasn't around to protect her and he was certain the rest of his siblings would surely take his side.

Before he could say or do anything more, Jung emerged from the house, having missed the whole fight. When he saw Minji with her hair a mess, her clothes full of dirt like she had been on the ground, and being held back by one of his older brothers, the youngest prince rushed to her side. He stepped in between her and Eun, just as Wook had stood between Hajin and Eun, ready to defend her. 

"Hyung, please forgive her." Jung pleaded, even getting down on his knees in front of his siblings and the servants for Minji. "She doesn't know what she's doing. She can't remember anything."

He would have normally been entertained by fighting, and even encouraged it, but he couldn't when Hak Soon was involved. Even less when she knew about her condition--that she couldn't remember anything. In Jung's eyes, she was helpless and needed to be protected, and that was something  he was willing to do for her.

"Oppa," Minji tried to wrench herself out of the prince's hold to pull Jung up to standing. She was grateful that he was there trying to help her and defend her from his own brother, but she didn't want everyone to think that she was insane just because she had supposedly lost her memory. "You shouldn't be apologizing for me. Its he who should be apologizing."

Eun snorted at her words.

"Please." Jung insisted.

Eun replied in a voice dripping with venom, hands on his hips. "I told you to keep your friend away from me, Jung ah."

With that, he turned and stormed off towards the house, taking heavy and exaggerated steps which produced clouds of dust from the ground. His arms flailed at his sides in a tantrum as he left, mumbling a stream of negative comments about Park Hak Soon. Jung got back to standing and looked to his other brother. "Han hyung, you can let go of her now." He said, trying to pry his brother's arms from around Minji.

"She was attacking our brother." Han replied, a small hint of outrage in his words.

"It was a misunderstanding." Jung assured him quickly. "You know Hak Soon. She's the general's daughter and you know she isn't normally like this."

"Really? This is Hak Soon? She looks so different without her armor." Han raised an eyebrow in question. He did remember Hak Soon and her sister Soon Deok. "From what I can remember, both the generals daughters have always liked martial arts and play wrestling. This is exactly what I would expect from them." His words didn't at all sound negative, but rather positive, like it was something that he liked about them.

Even after what he said, Wang Han finally loosened his hold and Minji was free, jumping into Jung's arms gratefully. "You didn't have to lower yourself in front of him for me." She told her friend.

Jung shook his head. "He's my brother, he understands why I would do this."

She pulled away from Jung's embrace and turned to the prince who was still standing behind her a few feet off. Now that the fight had ended, the people who were gathered there to watch were now getting back to what they had been doing. Minji snuck a glance towards Hajin to find that she had already walked away. Within seconds Minji was the only one left with the two princes. The one standing before her in all black amazed her with his resemblance to the tenth prince. 

"You..." She started in an annoyed huff. "You can't just go around picking up people like they're a sack of potatoes. I think you owe me an apology." She pointed at him with her index finger.

The black clad prince scoffed. "Me? I saved your life. A thank you would be nice."

"I want an apology from you, and your twin, the shrimp prince." Minji demanded. Behind her, Jung made a confused expression when she called his brothers twins, and Eun the shrimp prince. But he said nothing of it, since he credited her mistake to the fact that she couldn't remember.

"Why don't you wrestle me for an apology?" Han suggested to her with a playful grin. 

"I'm not joking." Minji replied, full of frustration.

Looking to his younger brother, prince Han said, "For a fourteen year old, she sure is uptight now, Jung-ah." And turning back towards her, he added, "I remember when you were twelve, before I left for the battle fields with your father, you used to like play wrestling with Jung-ah and I. Did your sister come with you today? When I left, I promised her I'd come back with all kinds of great war stories." He asked, with his eyes looking around casually for Hak Soon's sister. There was a sudden interest in his tone as he mentioned Park Soon Deok.

"No." Minji shook her head and heaved a sigh. "My sister's not here."

"Well we should go." Jung wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Excuse us, hyung. I have to get Hak Soon back to her house."

Prince Han nodded his head and walked away from them, leaving them to return with his other siblings into the house. Jung led Minji to the stables where the horses were kept and one of the house servants got his horse ready for them. 

As they rode the horse out of the residence, Minji caught a quick glance at Hajin who was accompanied by one of the princes. But she couldn't tell what they were doing, since she only saw them in passing.

She sighed, realizing that she hadn't even gotten to talk to her friend about attempting to return home.

-

so i was thinking of going back and splitting the previous chapters and this one in half. what i mean by that is that every chapter already posted would turn into two chapters. my reason for doing this is that i feel like the updates are way too long and i dont want to overwhelm you guys.

what do you all think? should i do that? or are they okay like this?

thank you all so much for reading. i know i just added one prince, but i am so tempted to create another prince. though this one would serve no purpose to the plot, so his presence would be for my own satisfaction. i might do it, im still thinking about it.

thank you for reading! have a wonderful week!

-clary xx