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Upon looking back to make sure the procession was going well, Minho furrowed his brows. Seungmin was beside the carriage instead of Jisung — the brunette soldier was chatting it up with Princess but the new dark-haired recruit was nowhere to be seen.

Minho sighed and turned his horse to approach Seungmin, leaving Hyunjin and Changbin to cover the front and lead.

"Hey," he called, and the brunette's head snapped up, a slight smile still on his face from talking to Princess. "Where'd the new soldier go?"

Seungmin straightened before responding to someone of higher rank. "I'm not sure, he went back to retrieve something that Princess wanted."

The older brunette sighed again before trotting past Seungmin and going back down the road to find Jisung, the cape of his uniform billowing as he started his horse on a canter.

The crowds had grown since Princess entered the city; even more people had come to see her in the last hour. Minho realized it would be even more difficult to find Jisung when he spotted his ivory horse on the side of the road and he wasn't on her. But after taking the reins of Jisung's horse and bringing her with him, he scanned through the dense crowds for a navy uniform like his own, searching around every stall and in every clustered group.

A small search party of two horses and one worried soldier carefully made its way through the crowd, Minho being careful not to trample anyone as he searched in the lines of the stalls.

Someone near a stall caught his eye; a ravenette in uniform wasn't moving, not daring to attempt to make his way through the crowds. Minho approached the frantic soldier and shouted to him.

"Jisung! Han Jisung!" Over the constant and deafening noise of the crowd, Jisung heard his name and looked up to see Minho with two horses, one of them being his own. 

His chest loosened a bit as Minho came closer, and Jisung immediately mounted his own horse to get away from the crowd, taking the reins from the brunette who had come to rescue him.

It was like he was now safe in a lighthouse during a storm. He could see above the tossing waves of the crowd, and Glorious' footing was much firmer than his own as she stood unmoving and the people weaved around her, like a shelter built into the rock.

Jisung patted her neck, taking a deep breath of relief now that he wasn't drowning anymore, and his heart slowed down. Glorious nickered and shook her mane.

"Why did you break off from the procession?" Minho questioned, seeming a bit annoyed that he had to go and fetch a soldier who should have been doing their job. But Jisung simply pointed to a stall, which he could now see clearly thanks to Glorious' height advantage. 

"Princess wanted a donut," He said simply. Now that he said it aloud, it seemed horrible that he was almost crushed underneath a crowd for such a meaningless thing.

Was that what Princess Luna wanted of him? To prove himself by risking his life for a donut?

"Oh, from there? I'll get it," Minho offered, turning his speckled horse in the right direction and weaving through the crowd with a confident ease that Jisung envied.

When Minho came back and joined Jisung, he handed over the donut that was the cause of all this and broke into a gallop to catch up with the carriage, which was now pretty far ahead. Jisung followed and relieved Seungmin of his temporary position when they arrived.

He sidled up to take his place to the right of the carriage, the donut now crumpled in the bag in his hand, which he considered throwing at the Princess for what she put him through. But he calmed himself and reached down to give it to her respectfully.

"Damn her and her strawberry filled donut... " Jisung breathed through gritted teeth, but forced a smile as he tried to give it to the Princess. 

Princess Luna blinked up at him after glancing at the bag in his hand. "I don't want it, my appetite is gone."

Now Jisung really wanted to throw the damn donut at her, with all the strength in his body, the hand that clutched the bag still trembling slightly from before. He straightened, wondering if maybe he hadn't heard Princess correctly. "Excuse me, Your Highness?"

She repeated her answer clearly, looking away with disinterest. "It's getting dark and we've almost arrived to the lake for the festival, my excitement has chased my appetite away. I don't want the donut. Just give it to the little child there," Princess monotoned, nodding towards a small family of three whose daughter looked disappointed.

Jisung turned to look as well, and the parents were trying to comfort the girl who seemed to be on the verge of tears over something. Sighing and nodding, his grip on the bag loosening, Jisung steered away from the carriage again to fulfill Princess' wishes.

Carefully dismounting when he got closer and taking a knee in front of the child, Jisung held the donut out to the little girl. "Princess Luna wants you to have this," he told her, and the fact that he went though a substantial amount of trouble for that donut made the little girl's smile all the more special as her cute, round face lit up in delight. 

"Princess Luna..?" The girl gasped, her eyes wide as she gazed down at the donut in awe, as if the mention of Princess' name made the donut turn into gold.

The soldier couldn't help but smile a bit as well at her excitement, and the girl wiped her eyes as her parents placed a hand on her shoulder, prompting her with a soft "What do you say, Merai?"

Merai sniffed away the last of her tears and her large eyes sparkled as she said, "Thank you!" holding the donut close, like it was the most treasured thing in the world to her.

Jisung reached out and ruffled her hair as he stood up, again mounting his horse. He smiled down at her and responded, "You're welcome."

And the joy in that little girl's eyes as she bit into that donut made Jisung forget for a moment all the trouble he went through to get it.