Jae Kyung's Possessiveness, Documented

Scene One: The Shelf

The kitchen was Haebeom's domain in ways that still slightly bewildered the kitchen staff, who were professionally trained and occasionally found the Crown Princess already at the stove when they arrived.

He cooked when he wanted to think. When the studio wasn't the right kind of thinking. When he wanted the particular meditative quality of process — the knife work, the timing, the way a dish became itself in stages.

Chef Minjun had learned to read the signs and simply made himself available rather than insisting, which was the correct approach and which Haebeom appreciated.

On a Tuesday evening, Haebeom was making doenjang jjigae — his mother's version, which was different from the chef's in three specific ways that all mattered — and needed the particular salt that he had placed, logically, on the upper shelf of the spice cabinet, because it was used least frequently and therefore belonged at the back of the highest shelf.

He was 170 centimeters. The shelf was not designed for 170 centimeters.

He got the step, which was in the pantry. The step was not where it had been. He looked for it for three minutes with increasing irritation, moved a chair from the kitchen table, climbed it, reached — the salt was at the very back — stretched further—

"What are you doing," Jae Kyung said, from the kitchen doorway.

"Getting the salt," Haebeom said, through his teeth, still reaching.

"You're going to fall."

"I am not going to fall, I am going to get the—" His fingers closed on the salt. Victory. He climbed down. "Salt."

Jae Kyung was looking at the upper shelf with an expression that was moving through concern and arriving somewhere else.

"That shelf," he said, "is not accessible to you."

"I noticed," Haebeom said, returning to the stove.

"Move everything you use to the lower shelves."

"Then the lower shelves will be too crowded—"

"Reorganize the lower shelves." He paused. "Or tell me what you need up there and I'll reconfigure the cabinet entirely. Whatever you want. This is your kitchen."

Haebeom turned from the stove.

Jae Kyung was leaning against the doorframe, and his expression had settled into that look — the warm, possessive satisfaction of someone saying something that means several things at once.

"Your kitchen," he said again, quieter. "Your house. Your shelves, at whatever height you need them." A pause. "Tell me what you need and it's done. That's how this works now."

Haebeom held his gaze for a moment.

"I need the salt on a lower shelf," he said.

"Done tomorrow morning."

"And the step stool back in the pantry where it belongs."

"I'll speak to the staff."

"And," Haebeom said, turning back to the stove, "you can set the table since you're standing there being declarative."

He heard Jae Kyung move into the kitchen. The sound of the drawer opening, the quiet efficiency of a man setting a table. And underneath all of that — the particular contentment that Haebeom had learned to feel in the air around him, when Jae Kyung was in a room that was his, watching someone he loved make something at his stove.

His, all of it. Profoundly, completely.

Scene Two: The Visiting Delegation

An official visit from a foreign trade delegation required Haebeom's presence at a formal luncheon — his third public official engagement, which he attended in a deep blue hanbok that the style team had assembled with the input of no one and which Haebeom had simply worn because it was beautiful.

He sat beside Jae Kyung at the formal table and was exactly what Lady Choi had prepared him to be — attentive, gracious, occasionally contributing something to conversation that made the room lean slightly forward. He had, in the past months, developed the particular skill of asking questions that people found unexpectedly interesting, which was a function of his genuine curiosity and his artist's habit of looking for what others looked past.

One of the delegation members — a minister, well-dressed, pleasant — complimented his hanbok with an extended attention that was entirely proper and somehow still lasted one beat too long.

Haebeom responded graciously and did not notice.

Jae Kyung noticed.

His hand, under the table, found Haebeom's knee. Settled there. Light pressure. Not aggressive — just present. A simple, quiet he is with me conducted through contact.

Haebeom felt it and did not react visibly.

Under the table, he put his hand over Jae Kyung's.

He felt Jae Kyung's hand relax immediately.

After the delegation had departed, walking to the car, Haebeom said: "The minister was being polite."

"I know," Jae Kyung said.

"The compliment was appropriate."

"I know."

"You were territorial anyway."

"Yes," Jae Kyung said, with the equanimity of someone who is not interested in defending this particular characteristic. "I was."

Haebeom looked at him.

"One day," Haebeom said, "your hand on my knee under the table is not going to be a sufficient outlet for that."

"Probably not," Jae Kyung agreed.

"And then what will you do."

Jae Kyung looked at him. The particular look. "That depends entirely on the company."

Haebeom got in the car and told himself his face was behaving normally.

Social Media: A Chronicle

Posted by @Crown_Prince_JK, October:

A photograph of the house garden in early morning — the pond catching the sky, the first evidence of Haebeom's garden conversations made physical: new plantings at the pond's edge, their shapes still tentative, not yet what they would become.

Caption: The garden is growing. So are we.

Posted by @Crown_Prince_JK, November:

A video, fifteen seconds. Haebeom at the kitchen stove, not knowing he was being filmed, stirring something with the focused attention he gave to everything — head slightly tilted, lower lip caught between his teeth. The kitchen warm and lit. At the last second he turns, sees the phone, and his expression moves through surprise into fond exasperation, and then the video ends.

Caption: He is always making something.

Comments: eighteen million. The trending topic for the day was simply:— always making something.

Posted by @Crown_Prince_JK, December:

A photograph of two pairs of shoes at the front door. Jae Kyung's formal shoes, large and dark. Beside them, slightly overlapping — Haebeom's paint-stained sneakers with the replaced left lace.

No caption.

This was, somehow, the post that made people cry.

Posted by @haebeom_art, November:

(His first art post as Crown Princess, after months of the account existing in the gentle chaos of public attention)

A painting — the cove. The turquoise water exactly as he'd described it to Soyeon: not a single pigment, a mixture, the volcanic sand beneath changing it, the quality of the light at that specific hour. Two figures suggested in the composition, more feeling than form.

Caption: I remember this light. I will always remember it.

The Crown Prince reposted it within four minutes with the addition:. — Me too.

Daily Life

Mornings:

Haebeom's early classes meant early rising, which meant the particular darkness of a winter morning and the specific ritual of two people navigating a shared space in the early hours.

Jae Kyung was a light sleeper — a function of years of being needed at odd hours — and woke when Haebeom did, which Haebeom had told him was unnecessary and which Jae Kyung had acknowledged and continued doing.

He made coffee. This was the one kitchen task he had mastered — coffee, specifically, and specifically for Haebeom: the strength and temperature calibrated over weeks of observation. He placed it on the bathroom counter without announcement while Haebeom was washing his face.

Haebeom picked it up without comment.

This was love, in the dialect they had developed. Quiet verbs. The grammar of showing up consistently.

Before Haebeom left, there were always — this was also a grammar — kisses. Not perfunctory. Jae Kyung treated each departure as if it might be some time before the next one, which it often wasn't, but the treating of it that way meant something.

"Don't forget the Yun Gallery meeting at five," Haebeom said, into his collar.

"I won't."

"You forgot last time."

"I was in a security briefing."

"Tell the briefing to schedule around the gallery meeting."

Jae Kyung pulled back and looked at him with that expression — fond and slightly incredulous. "I'll mention that to the National Security team."

"Good." Another kiss. Brief, warm. "I'll be home by seven."

Home. The word still arrived with a particular quality. Haebeom noticed it each time.

Jae Kyung noticed him noticing.

"Home," he said, quietly. An echo. An agreement.

Evenings:

When Jae Kyung returned from official functions — the ones that ran late, the parliamentary sessions, the state dinners — Haebeom was often already home. Not always in the main rooms. Often in the studio, working by lamp, the house quiet around him.

Jae Kyung had developed the habit of coming to find him first before anything else. Before changing, before eating, before whatever debriefing the day required. He came to the studio door and looked in and confirmed that Haebeom was there and well and real and present — and something in him settled into the evening.

Haebeom, who worked best when undisturbed, had discovered that Jae Kyung's presence was not a disturbance. He occupied space differently than other people — with the quality of something that belonged there, that had a right to the warmth it generated.

"How was it?" Haebeom would ask, without looking up.

Jae Kyung would answer, briefly or at length depending on the day, settling on the studio couch or leaning against the wall. Haebeom would listen and respond and work simultaneously, the way he could only do with someone he trusted entirely not to require performance of his attention.

These evenings were not dramatic. They were the texture of a life, and they were, in Jae Kyung's accounting, the best part of every day.

Cooking:

Haebeom cooked on Sundays when he had time and on Wednesday evenings when he needed to think. The kitchen staff learned to expect this and accommodate it with grace.

He made things from his mother's recipes — the doenjang jjigae, a particular japchae that required thirty minutes of prep work but produced something Chef Minjun had tasted once and then stood very still about. Miyeok guk on cold mornings. Japgokbap when he was feeling meditative.

Jae Kyung ate everything with the focused appreciation of someone who understood that this food meant something beyond nutrition — that it was his mother's kitchen and his childhood and the specific comfort of being fed by someone who loved you. He never said this directly. He said it by eating with complete attention and then sitting after in the comfortable fullness of someone entirely content.

He attempted to cook, twice.

The first attempt produced something that Haebeom ate completely and described, carefully, as interesting.

The second attempt set off the kitchen ventilation alarm.

"You have many talents," Haebeom said, opening windows.

"Yes," Jae Kyung agreed.

"Cooking is not—"

"No."

"That's alright."

"Is it."

Haebeom looked at him — standing in his own kitchen, slightly covered in whatever had happened to the dish he'd attempted, entirely without self-pity — and felt something enormous and fond and slightly hilarious.

"You run a country," Haebeom said. "You don't need to also make japchae."

"I wanted to make it for you."

Oh.

Haebeom took the pan from him, moved it to the sink, and replaced it with a clean one.

"Sit down," he said. "Watch me do it. Next time you'll know."

Jae Kyung sat at the kitchen table. Watched. Asked questions that were, as always, better than average. Ate the resulting japchae with the particular satisfaction of someone who has been taught something by the right person.

-To be continued-