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Thoughts of Jung Sook had plagued Soo Ho all week long.  Even as the sorrow which he was battling over the queen’s death seemed to be attempting to suffocate him.  He hadn’t been able to outrun his memories of the regal woman.  Any more than he could forget his earlier encounters with the plain girl who seemed to intrigue him.  Despite her lack of beauty.

He had finally pinpointed it.  The thing that had drawn him to that rather ordinary girl.  That quintessential something that had grasped his attention and refused to let him go…. 

Jung Sook reminded him vaguely of the queen dowager.  The fragile way that her highness had held herself.  Her face impassive.  Yet containing an underlying vulnerability that had always seemed to shine through that countenance.  Like a light trying to break forth from beneath a liquid darkness. 

Jung Sook was serious like the queen had been too.  As though she had to hold it all together because no one else would if she failed to.  He had rarely drawn a smile from the austere woman.  And this girl seemed as impervious to his charms as the queen had been.  Maybe more so.

Was it the challenge alone that made him crave her smile?  Or was it something more?

In his quest to discover the answers to his questions, he had climbed over the wall every morning this week before sunrise and planted himself next to it simply so that he could see the young teacher when she passed by on her way to the school just after daybreak each morning.  A little wiser than he’d been before, he’d kept his comments to himself this week.  Purely enjoying her presence each day for the small bit of time that it took her to walk up to and past the hwarang complex. 

His eyes caught sight of her, willing her to look his way, but she didn’t.  Not any one of those seven days.  She simply breezed by him.  As though she hadn’t even noted his presence.  Yet, somehow, he was certain that she had.  He knew that she was intensely aware of him.  As he was of her.  His gaze had stayed firmly fixed on her back until she’d finally disappeared from his view each of those lonely mornings.

But on the eighth morning, something changed.

––

Soo Ho couldn’t have explained how the beggar could have been so foolish.  Perhaps it had been mere desperation.  To accost a woman directly in front of the fields where the king’s guard practiced running a man through with a sword.  Sheer stupidity.

Whatever the explanation, Soo Ho was present the morning that a filthy waif, hiding behind a tree, abruptly appeared on the road in front of Jung Sook.  Just as Soo Ho was jumping down off the wall.  His feet hit the ground as he heard her scream.  And he went barreling towards the man after he’d grabbed her and tugged her close to him.  His greasy hand sliding down the folds of her skirt.  Searching for something.

Soo Ho was very concerned that he knew exactly what that man was searching for.  And at this moment, her knight in shining armor didn’t think it was a little silver.  If that miscreant so much as touched one delicate hair on her skin, Soo Ho was going to leave very little evidence.

A few precious seconds later, he descended upon the man in a surprising fury, grasping him by the arm and yanking him backwards.  To land unceremoniously on his bottom in the middle of the street.  A pathway that was not busy this early in the morning.  In fact, as Soo Ho glanced around, he realized that he was the only one who had witnessed this little drama.

He had slid his arm reflexively around Jung Sook after he’d knocked the man to the ground.

He bent to breathe into her ear, “Are you all right?”

Quickly extricating herself from his grasp with a chilly demeanor, she looked down her nose at him.  “I am quite all right.”  She drew back a couple of feet from him before grudgingly admitting, “Thanks to you.”

Her eyes slid towards the man on the ground.  He gazed up at Soo Ho appealingly.  “I’m just hungry.  She looked wealthy.  I was just looking for a bit of silver to buy a meal.”

“I know what you were looking for,” Soo Ho muttered darkly, “and if you ever come for it again, I will put an end to you.”

She stared at her savior as her cheeks turned a becoming pink.  Something nudged Soo Ho, and he happened to glance her way just in time to see that lovely, little display of embarrassment creeping over her features.  She was blushing like an innocent maiden. 

Curious.

Her reaction surely made him wonder. 

But he didn’t have time to ponder her response, for the vagabond was gaining his feet once more.  Soo Ho stepped directly between him and Jung Sook.  He was not about to let that grubby thief get his hands on the woman again.

“Come with me.  You need to answer to the magistrate,” her deliverer ground out.

Jung Sook watched as the man’s face fell and his eyes grew wide with appeal.  “Please, sir, don’t.  I – I won’t touch your friend again.”  The man was mincing away.  Backwards.

“You are without excuse, sir.  No gentleman attacks a lady.”

Her eyes flew to Soo Ho’s face.

Did he truly believe those words?

She watched as he sprang forward and grabbed the man by the arm before hauling him off towards the hwarang grounds.  Soo Ho bowed his head towards her even as he hauled the thief towards the gates. 

“Milady,” her gallant rescuer breathed before turning his full attention on the culprit.

This time she was the one who stood stock-still watching Soo Ho until he disappeared.