A/N: It's Golden Week in Japan, and while Mangakas are taking a break, I am doing the opposite! 

Also, in Part One of this tiny story, I mentioned that this would be a 3-part story. I made a mistake. It is supposed to be a 4-part (because the intended Part Three was too long).

[My King At Night (Part Three)]

"What do you mean the disease might be cured? Wasn't it supposed to be the Incurable Disease? How is it cured now?" Daehyun exclaimed with surprise. 5 months ago, the very same physician had given her an apologetic expression and confirmed with her that she had contracted the Incurable Disease, and did not have long left to live.

Now the same old man was telling her that the Incurable Disease was cured somehow?

"I also do not understand how it is so, Miss..." The old man apologized. "You were a physician's daughter yourself; you knew that you showed the symptoms of the Incurable Disease. I was not lying 5 months ago, but now you are not showing any symptoms. Instead, it seems like your internal energy has somehow strengthened."

"But how is that possible?" Daehyun asked, though she could not deny the facts that the man had pointed out. She really did feel stronger and healthier. She hadn't noticed it initially because she had been so busy trying to get used to life in the palace, but slowly the realisation that her nosebleed and coughing blood were less, and that she caught colds less easily, that she did not get shivers for no reason, that she didn't was not easily tired... All these symptoms somehow were on the decline ever since she moved into the palace.

"Could it be something that you are taking routinely? Diseases of the lungs can only be treated with constant medicine intake."

"I haven't taken any special medicine of any sort ever since I came to see you 5 months ago. I was prepared to die." Daehyun admitted, thinking furiously through her daily routine now. While the food that she enjoyed in the palace was of much higher quality than she had while she still lived in the capital town, they had been different every day; there could not be possibility of her taking some medicine by accident through her food every day.

"You must think hard, Miss. Whatever you take on a regular basis; they may possibly contain a cure for this disease. It could save many lives in the future." The old man seemed cautiously excited; the way only physicians could become at the prospect of being able to discover a new cure for a disease previously thought incurable.

"I don't think I have been taking anything regularly, except perhaps tea that I share with the Lieutenant General every few nights." Daehyun answered. "It tasted weird at first, but I after I got used to it, it got better. Lieutenant General added some chrysanthemum to make it more palatable, but it does not help with the lungs..."

"Did you ask him what kind of tea leaves he used?"

"Yes, but he said that it was some jasmine tea leaves that he picked up during his long voyages to the West. It does taste and smell a little bit like jasmine, but there is a faint sour and bitter taste to it like tasting metal. Jasmine does not cure a disease in the lungs, does it, physician?" Daehyun asked, afraid that her physician knowledge might be wrong from months of disuse. While she did still busy herself with herbs daily at the Barracks, the herbs used to make salve for wounds and ease sores were radically different from those that were used to cure internal sickness.

"I'm afraid you should ask him more about it. He might have a type of tea leaves that could possibly cure diseases like these in the future!"

"I will do just that." Daehyun promised, standing up to putting on her hat again to signal that she planned to leave soon. "Thank you for your help as always."

Because it was rather dangerous for the King's Lady to go to the capital town alone -even if it was just for consulting a physician -Daehyun made sure that her clothes did not show the wealth and nobility that she had somehow gotten. The capital town was still the same; nothing much had changed but it seemed like Daehyun was the only one who had changed amongst it all.

The simpler lives laid out before her, and she gave a small sigh before she turned towards the palace gates again. It was a simple life that Daehyun could no longer return to now. She had been caught in the palace, and the place had changed her like the Lieutenant General said. The guards at the gate tried to stop her, but startled in shock when she removed her hat and outerwear to show the dress that she was made to wear to show off her status as a Noble Lady.

"L-Lady Daehyun, excuse me, I did not realise..." The guard who had stopped her stuttered in shock, but she smiled and shook her head.

"It is fine. Please don't tell anyone that I went out. The Lieutenant General will worry."

"O-Of course." The guard bowed politely and quickly ordered for her to be allowed through. Daehyun made sure not to let anyone stop her path towards the Barracks, slipping back into the small warehouse that the Lieutenant had lent to her as her tiny office to store her herbs. Like how she had slipped out through the window that banked the wall of the palace, she slipped in again, glad that she had not been caught in her short escape out of the palace.

The rest of the day went in a blink, and Daehyun laid on her bed at night, waiting for the tell-tale sounds of His Majesty beginning his nightly activities. She no longer knew what to think about the man. She had gained her position as the King's Lady, but it was clear to everyone now that she was a Lady who was slighted by His Majesty. Her gratitude to the man and frustration at him now laid within her in equal parts as Daehyun silently picked her usual way out of her room once the delighted squeals of today's chosen maiden rose, paired with raunchy tenor laughter that she had now come to recognise as the King's voice.

It was strange, though, how the King sounded so much like the Lieutenant General whenever he laughed like that.

But it was not possible that the Lieutenant General could be lying to her, because the man was there again by the pond, waiting for her when she slipped behind the Tea House.

"Lieutenant General." She greeted with a smile that appeared on her face uncontrollably.

"Lady Daehyun, you have arrived. Please, take a seat. You must be cold in this night air." He turned to face her at the sound of her voice, a soft gentle and beautiful smile drawing across his face.

Daehyun had to admit it; she had good feelings for the Lieutenant General. At first it had been just gratitude for his friendship, his easy-going nature and the extents that he took to make her feel at ease as much as possible within the palace. But over the nights that she began to meet him at the pond behind the Tea House, talking to him about everything under the sun, hearing his stories of how he and his brother had travelled to many places and learnt about many things before coming to the palace, Daehyun had become attracted to the man's gentle self.

She received his usual cup of offered tea, taking a seat where he always laid out his outerwear for her on the ground. It was their routine now, and she gratefully sipped at the still steaming tea, shivering a little as the warmth spread in her body.

"You look well tonight, Lady Daehyun." Lieutenant General observed.

"I feel well tonight." She answered with a big smile. "I have received good news today, but I hesitate to tell anyone. You are the first person I want to report to, because I think you are partly the reason I have received the good news."

"I am the reason you have received good news?" The Lieutenant General seemed softly surprised. "Do tell."

The soft, gentle nature of the Lieutenant General only appeared at night; and it was a side of him that Daehyun was really attracted to. While the Lieutenant General of the day was a very fun-loving individual and easy to get along with, Daehyun always felt that she had a closer connection to him at night, when he had a gentler countenance. It was not to say that he was less dangerous in such moments; she had seen him practice his sword skills by himself a few times at night when he had not been aware that she had arrived at the pond.

"I went out of the palace to visit the physician that I consulted right before I entered the palace, and I have discovered that somehow -I know not how -my sickness is cured!" She declared excitedly. "I am sorry for not having told you before, Lieutenant General, but I did not want to startle you by saying that I have a sickness."

"You are cured?" The Lieutenant General was surprised -but not as surprised that Daehyun had imagined he would be. She had never told him about her Incurable Disease before, because she had wanted to enjoy their friendship before Death took her. "Is that for real?"

"Yes! And we think it must be because of the tea that you have been providing me with on our nightly meetings. The tea is the only thing that I have been taking rather regularly, and my disease could not be solved unless I took some medicine constantly." Daehyun answered excitedly. "May I ask where you got those tea leaves from? They could be cures for other people with the same disease as me!"

"I got them a long time ago." The man shook his head almost apologetically. "I am sorry. Had I known they were so rare, I would have bought more."

"Then do you still have some tea leaves left? I can get my father to test it out to see if there are any ingredients mixed within the tea leaves that has never been studied." Daehyun pressed excitedly. The thought of being able to save more people as a physician (albeit amateur) was heart-pounding.

"Hm? Did you not want to keep your sickness a secret from your father?" The Lieutenant General's politely curious expression was well worn.

"Yes, but that was before I was cured. I can tell him now, because there is no need for him to worry about a disease that is no longer plaguing me." Daehyun answered. "If you can't take any more tea leaves than you have already sacrificed for my sake, then can I just take this cup? I am sure my father can work with just this cup."

"Do not bother yourself with preserving the cup. I still have enough tea leaves for all sorts of experiments you need. Drink up; the night is cold and you need all the warmth you can have." The man urged with an amused smile, as if the imagination of her carefully tottering back to her room with a cup of tea carefully tucked in her hands bemused him so.

"Thank you, Lieutenant General. If it wasn't for you... I might have been bedridden by now, unable to move a muscle to see you." Daehyun expressed as she finished the cup of tea since the man seemed really worried about her catching a cold in the night air. "I really don't know how the past months would have been like if you were not here."

"I think it would have been rather difficult for you to get used to life within the palace had you still been nursing your Incurable Disease." The man answered honestly. "The fact that you had kept it hidden for so long, even from your parents and brother must have been an invisible weight that you had to carry on your shoulders."

"It was easy to forget that I was suffering when I was kept busy at the Barracks every day." Daehyun answered, before she paused shortly, turning through the words the man had spoken with small curiosity. "I don't remember telling you that I had been keeping my disease a secret from my family, Lieutenant General. How did you come to that conclusion?"

There was a short pause that was suspicious in its own right.

"If you did not tell me about it despite the fact that you have repeated that I am a very close friend of yours within the palace, I assumed you would not have told your family about it for fear of not worrying them. I expect that you would not have wanted your father to be unhappy trying to find a cure for the Incurable Disease."

The answer would have been rational and acceptable except for one important factor...

"Lieutenant General, are you keeping something from me?" Daehyun asked carefully, not wanting to sound too accusative against the only close friend -and also the person that she had a good feeling towards -that she had within the palace. "I never told you that my disease was the Incurable Disease. I only told you that I had a sickness that was cured."

This time, the man clearly knew he was caught and the guilty silence hung between them as Daehyun monitored the man's expression carefully in the partial light that came from the man's room within the Barracks.

"Do not be angry with me, Lady Daehyun, but I only thought it right for me to let you keep your secret. I pretended nonchalance because there would be nothing good with me revealing that I knew of your secret." The man finally admitted in a quiet voice. "I knew about your Incurable Disease even before you came into the palace."

"But how? I never told anyone about getting it. I only confirmed it the day before I came into the palace." She answered, not sure what to feel about the man's helping to keep her secret. It was nice of him to not spread the word around, but it would have been nicer of him if he had told her that he knew.

"You did tell someone. A runaway wearing a mask and a scholar's hat. You helped him escape the royal palace guards by pretending that you were brother and sister returning from collecting poisonous herbs from the mountain, and you hid him in your guest room until it was safe for him to leave despite the fact that he was portrayed as a criminal."

Daehyun paused, thinking back on the incident that she had almost forgotten amidst the chaos of moving into and settling down in the palace.

"He told you? You know who he is?" Daehyun asked, surprised. She hadn't imagined that that man who she had helped innocently back in the capital town turned out to be someone that the Lieutenant General knew.

"Lady Daehyun, I do not know if you remember, but the royal palace guards were looking for someone with white hair and blue eyes that day." The Lieutenant General answered with a soft smile, as if doing his best to slide her into a realisation that she was not yet reaching.

Well, she had clearly reached it now as she turned fully to stare at the Lieutenant General in horror.

"It was you!"

"I am guilty." The man confessed. "I was escaping the palace for a short visit to the town, but was mistaken as an assassin. It did not help that His Majesty disappeared temporarily on the same day as well, and I was being hunted down as the kidnapper."

"No wonder the royal palace guards were looking for you so desperately! What happened when you came back? Was His Majesty found?"

There was a cheeky smile that for some reason, looked strange to Daehyun at night. The Lieutenant General only held cheeky smiles like that in the day; to see it at night felt a little... odd.

"His Majesty was being sneaky as well. He escaped in disguise within the chaos to take a tour around town."

"Nobody recognised him?" Daehyun asked, before she realised it was a stupid question.

"Common people have never seen his face before, and he appears before officials only in a mask. Few have seen his real face before. I don't think you will be able to recognise him even if he is sitting right beside you." The man answered, matching exactly what Daehyun knew. Perhaps the only way anybody could recognise their King within this country was if he appeared before them in his golden robes and had someone announce his arrival beforehand.

Well, maybe not everybody.

"But you and His Majesty go way back, don't you? You will be able to recognise him even in disguise?"

"I would recognise him even a mile away; even if I don't want to." The man answered with a laugh. "To me, he is practically unmistakable."

"Then how does he look like? What if I really end up sitting beside His Majesty in some plain clothes disguise, and I never knew about it?"

"You don't have to worry. His Majesty will never appear beside you with his mask. The day he decides to face you fully without fear and secret; it will be the day that he has already decided to marry you."

The statement startled Daehyun a little bit. Marriage? Where was this talk suddenly coming from?

"But His Majesty has always appeared to his officials and people with his mask, hasn't he?"

"But they are not you, Lady Daehyun. His Majesty has never appeared before you with his mask, has he?"

"Yes..." She answered, having absolutely no idea how they had gotten to this point in their conversation, and also completely clueless as to where this topic was going. "I don't understand why His Majesty has refused to see me all this while either. Have I done something wrong without my knowing? Is this his idea of a punishment?"

"No, no. Lady Daehyun, you must not think of this as a punishment. You are a special woman to His Majesty. He is just trying his best to protect you the way he can."

"You said that a long time ago, when we first met, Lieutenant General." Daehyun suddenly remembered their first meeting at the pond, and the playful words the man had said while carrying her to her quarters for a fresh change of clothes. "I never understood why you kept saying that I was a precious lady to His Majesty. I don't even know what I have done to deserve his attention; for him to think that I am precious or in need of this kind of protection. I just want to meet him at least once and talk to him."

"You cannot, Lady Daehyun." The answer was short and surprisingly strong. "If you meet His Majesty without his mask, it means that you are willing to be his bride."

"I don't know where that rule comes from. I have never heard of such a thing before! Who was the one who said that I will become His Majesty's bride if I see him without his mask?"

"His Majesty himself." The Lieutenant General answered solemnly. "I cannot let him have you, Lady Daehyun."

"I don't understand what you are talking about, Lieutenant General. I am already His Majesty's Lady. I already belong to him."

"But he has not touched you yet, has he? If he has, I will skin him alive."

"Lieutenant General!" Daehyun exclaimed in shock. "What has gotten into you? What makes you speak such words about His Majesty? Were the two of you not closest of friends? Are you two not practically family?"

"I am going to ask His Majesty for your hand, Lady Daehyun. But I must know; are you willing to come to me? Are you willing to brave the wrath of a disorderly palace if you come to me, not as His Majesty's woman, but mine? I promise to never turn my eyes away from you, Lady Daehyun. You are the one who had given me light. You are the one whose light has returned in these 5 months that I have spent, enjoying every single night that I was allowed to spend with you here."

"W-Why are you saying these things now, Lieutenant General?" Daehyun stuttered a little, this time less of shock and more of embarrassment and confusion. She got the general idea that the man had poured out his feelings for her all of a sudden, and the strength of it all as well as the realisation that Daehyun's feelings had not been one-sided; they all came into her in a rush.

"Now that I realise that you are fully cured from this Incurable Disease; that you no longer have a countdown to your days left with the Living, I also realise that you will begin to look further into the future than you have dared to for this past half year. You will imagine a future with a family, but His Majesty will not give you that future. He will not touch you. He will not give you children. He will not give you happiness in your long term future. I desire to be that one to fulfil that picture, Lady Daehyun. I am prepared to face the consequences of such desire. All I need is a consent from you. Will you be prepared to have disorder with me? Will you accept me for who I really am on the inside? Will you accept me for all my wrongs and rights?"

She knew that she should consider many things in her head; that she had a family to worry about. A Lieutenant General stealing one of the King's woman would bring so much chaos throughout the palace. Officials would urge His Majesty to take actions against her or the Lieutenant General to show that deviant behaviours like theirs would not go unpunished. They would undoubtedly suffer; Daehyun's family would definitely suffer from the repercussions of their actions.

But for the first time ever since she was born, Daehyun didn't care.

His Majesty had extended his helping hand to her; she was full of gratitude to him. But the person who had really saved her was not the King. It had been the Lieutenant General. He had been the one who had supported her when she was at her lowest; had brightened up her nights when she felt completely slighted by a man who had brought her into the palace, then never saw her.

"I am ready, Lieutenant General." Daehyun had tears in her eyes when she faced the man fully, whose blue eyes shone equally brightly in reply. "I am prepared for disorder if you will remain by my side, and keep me by yours. It will be a difficult fight, and I might blame you at times if my family is disadvantaged, but know that I have chosen to walk beside you, Lieutenant General. I love you."

"Lady Daehyun..." The man's voice was softly trembling with emotions as well as he pulled her into a hug, and she could hear his pounding heartbeat when she pressed her cheek against his chest, feeling his engulfing warmth. "I don't know how to say this better than you already have, but... I love you too. Please forgive me for my wrongs in my past, present and future. I ask that you understand my heart, because I do not completely understand it sometimes."

"I will take you as you are, Lieutenant General. For all your good, bad, and all your mistakes; I love you as you are." Daehyun declared, and there were no more truer words than these spoken.