The Night Grows Deeper
Night counseling, day one.
Ten o'clock at night. The Queen Consort's residence.
I felt fucking fantastic.
Elena opened the door. Nightclothes again tonight — pale lavender silk. Her golden hair was loose, spilling down over her shoulders in a river of gold.
...I could swear everything showed through that single layer of silk. My cock lifted its head all on its own. Shove it down, you bastard — hard at the very first hello. Fuck, I'm not a counselor. I'm a pervert.
But the atmosphere was different from yesterday. The mask was back on. She'd spent the whole night turning it over, no doubt — did I show her too much weakness yesterday?
I'd expected it. The queen's pattern. Open one step, close another.
"Sit."
Formal. The tea was the same chamomile as yesterday, but this time a maid had prepared it. Yesterday, I had brewed it; today, the maid had, in advance. Her way of drawing the line again.
"Your Highness, how was your night?"
"I had the nightmare. But... when I woke, it was easier to bear."
"So the shoulder work was effective."
"...Was it."
She didn't want to admit it. Because admitting you made me better is where dependence begins. This woman fears dependence. She believes that the moment she leans on anyone, she collapses.
But it was already too late.
Yesterday's sigh. That was where it started.
Today's session opened with formality — palace affairs, tomorrow's schedule, a report on the conservative lords. Elena's eyes lit up whenever the talk turned political. Through politics, this woman feels alive.
Elena's shoulders dropped by a fingernail's width. Purely unconscious.
Fuck, that felt so goddamn good.
Thirty minutes later, the session ended. Shoulder relaxation again — and today it was Elena who said first, "Do my shoulders." Yesterday, I'd been the one to offer.
Progress.
While picking the lock of the queen's deadbolt with a single fingertip, I kept insisting to myself that this was therapy. A lie so worn-in it made me sick.
Night counseling, day two.
Elena brought up politics.
"The conservative lords are refusing the tax."
She set down her teacup, a crease forming between her brows.
"Count Marga is the ringleader. He's rallied three northern lords. 'The wartime special levy must remain a temporary measure — collecting it for over three years is tyranny.' Convincing, isn't it? But what he really wants is profit for his own domain."
"And Your Highness's response?"
"I'm pairing appeasement with pressure. But I don't have enough cards to appease with."
Elena's violet eyes turned to me. Eyes expecting something.
Right. My advice on handling the conservatives had left an impression yesterday. She wanted to hear more of it today, too.
"Your Highness — what is Count Marga's weakness?"
"Weakness?"
"Every politician has something they'd rather hide."
Elena tilted her head, and gold hair cascaded down.
"Count Marga... has a succession problem. Three sons, and not one of them competent. The eldest gambles, the second drinks, the third chases women. He manages the domain himself, alone."
"Then we strike at the succession."
"How?"
"Propose that the Crown dispatch an administrative advisor to his domain. It grants the count face while simultaneously planting royal influence inside his lands. And should he refuse, you let him glimpse the possibility that his heirs' incompetence might become public knowledge."
Elena's eyes went wide.
"...Are you truly a mind-reader? Not a strategist?"
"Reading hearts is my trade. Politics is, in the end, people."
Elena laughed. Genuinely. A smile that reached her eyes, not just the corners of her mouth. I'd never seen it before.
"You're fun."
"Pardon?"
"Talking with you is fun. The ministers never give me answers — they only bring me problems. You give me answers."
What those words meant. No one had ever "given Elena answers." The king was incompetent and the ministers were political animals. This woman had always been forced to arrive at every answer alone.
If I became the one who "gave her answers," she would find it difficult to produce any without me.
The seed of dependence.
Elena's smile deepened. Naturally.
Pretending to hand out answers while quietly making sure she could never produce one herself. It was vile — but god, the efficiency was superb.
Night counseling, day three.
The mood was different tonight. Elena sat curled up on the sofa, legs tucked beneath her. A relaxed posture — until yesterday, she had sat with her spine straight.
Instead of tea, warm milk had been prepared. By Elena herself.
"Milk tonight. It helps me sleep better."
"You prepared it yourself, Your Highness?"
"I can manage the simple things. I used to cook, you know. Back in the day."
From before she was queen. She had brought up her "past" for the first time.
"What shall we talk about today?"
"...Lizette."
Her daughter.
Elena's violet eyes softened. Maternal love — the emotion buried deepest in this woman.
"Lizette is nineteen this year."
"I'd heard."
"She's in a rebellious phase. She snaps at me. 'You understand nothing but politics, Mother. Do you even care about me?' Things like that."
A bitter smile pulled at the corner of Elena's mouth.
"It isn't that I don't care. I don't have the time to give it. When state affairs run from morning until night... there's no hour left to sit at a meal with her."
"...You feel guilty."
"Yes."
Short. But oh, the weight packed into that "yes."
"When Lizette was born, everything was good. The king rejoiced too. We were a family. A real family."
Past tense. Were.
"When did it change?"
"Lizette was twelve. When the king took his first concubine. From that day on, she started calling her father 'Your Majesty.' Not 'Papa.'"
Twelve years old. On the cusp of adolescence — the age when the idealized image of one's parents shatters. A twelve-year-old girl watching her father betray her mother. That shock became the seed of her rebellion.
"Lizette's anger is aimed at her father, but it spatters onto you as well."
"She asks why her mother puts up with it. Why I don't drive Papa out."
"Because you cannot drive him out."
"He's the king."
Elena's voice had gone cold. But that wasn't anger. It was helplessness.
"Lizette doesn't understand. Politics. If the queen cast out the king, the kingdom would be turned on its head. The conservatives would seize their pretext. The Crown's authority would crumble."
"You swallow your own feelings for the sake of the kingdom."
"......"
Silence. Elena's eyes grew damp.
"I can't even cry in front of her. If her mother is weak, Lizette only grows more anxious."
"You may cry here."
Elena looked at me. Moisture beading in her violet eyes.
"...I won't cry. Not yet."
Not yet. The door had begun to open.
Elena drank her milk. Slowly, cradling the cup in both hands.
It felt fucking wonderful.
"Do-hyun."
"Yes."
"Lizette... would you meet with her?"
"Me? With the princess?"
"Her rebellion is so severe. She won't hear a word I say... but you open people's hearts."
The queen meant to entrust her daughter. To me. That was proof her trust had climbed by leaps. A woman may gamble with herself, but she does not carelessly hand over her daughter — least of all a woman with maternal instincts as fierce as Elena's.
"If the chance arises."
"Thank you."
Another "thank you." Every night I gathered one more of the queen's "thank yous." Gathering was exactly the word — this woman never noticed herself dropping them, and I pocketed each one.
Night counseling, day four.
This was the night the talk turned to the king.
The trigger was trivial. Preparations for the king's birthday celebration at the palace had put Elena in a foul mood.
"They want a birthday celebration for the king. Isn't that hilarious? The treasury is scraped to the bottom, and we simply must hold a birthday banquet. Not because he wants it — for appearances."
"The king didn't request it himself?"
"Request? That man does nothing. It's a mercy when he so much as leaves the concubines' quarters."
Venom laced Elena's voice. A cold anger. She doesn't hate the king — hating him would be a waste of emotional energy, it seemed. This was contempt, the thing that lives beyond hate.
But.
"The king... wasn't always like this."
Her expression changed. From contempt to old memory. Eyes gazing at something far away.
"When we married... I was eighteen. So was he. The king had a sense of duty, back then. He wasn't brilliant, but he tried. He studied through the nights to learn the crown's work, and when I helped at his side he would say, 'Thank you, Elena.'"
Elena at twenty. The king at twenty. Newlyweds.
"When did he change?"
"Two or three years after Lizette was born — right when the southern front began to stalemate. Signing documents started to wear on him. He deferred decisions. Deferred them and deferred them, until in the end he pushed them all onto me."
"The king's avoidance."
"Yes. State affairs were hard, so he ran. Into drink, then into hunting, then into... women."
Elena's hands clenched in her lap.
"His first concubine was my lady-in-waiting. A girl who stood at my side."
He'd taken her. Made his wife's own maid his concubine. Fuck — that wasn't a mere affair. That was an insult.
"That was the day I became the Queen Consort. Not a wife — a queen. I switched my feelings off and did nothing but work."
Seven years. Seven years with the feelings switched off — and three of them without so much as a marriage bed.
"Your anger is only natural."
"Anger? My anger ended three years ago. Now it's—"
She stopped.
"Now it's what?"
"...I don't know. Emptiness? Habit?"
Elena bowed her head. Gold hair veiled her face.
"Sometimes I think — if only I weren't the queen. If I were just an ordinary woman. If my husband cheated, I could pack my bags and walk out. But a queen can't, can she."
She laughed. Bitterly.
"I've said something strange. Forget it."
"I won't forget."
Elena looked at me.
"Everything you share with me stays inside this room, Your Highness. Inside my memory."
Her violet eyes trembled. Inside my memory. Those words had struck something deep in Elena. How long had it been since anyone promised to remember her story?
"I will remember" — that, too, is a weapon. I was pressing a blade into her hand while pretending it was warmth. Fucking hell. Truly.
Elena closed her eyes. For a long while.
"...Do my shoulders tonight."
Shoulder relaxation — our nightly ritual now. Tonight Elena sighed three times.
As the third sigh ended, she laid her hand over mine, there on her shoulder. Briefly. One second. Then she drew it away.
Neither of us said anything. Me neither.
But that one second of contact was a message.
"Don't go."
Night counseling, day five.
This night was different.
I arrived at the residence to find wine on the table instead of tea.
"Tonight I don't want counseling. I just want to talk."
Elena poured the wine. Two glasses. Ruby liquid swayed against the glass.
"Drink."
"Your Highness, alcohol during a session—"
"I told you. This isn't a session."
Her violet eyes were resolute. But behind that resolve — loneliness. Tonight she needed a person, not a therapist.
We lifted our glasses and touched them together. Clink.
"What shall we drink to?"
"Your Highness may choose."
"...To having survived another day unscathed."
A razor of a toast. It meant every single day of the queen's life was a battle.
We drank. Sweet, and bitter. This world's wine ran stronger than anything on Earth.
Elena poured a second glass. She drank fast. She was thirsty — not in the body. In the mind.
A third glass.
"Do-hyun."
My name. Since the third night, she had used it during our sessions.
"Yes."
"May I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"What did you do, before you came to this world?"
A question about me. A first. Until now, every conversation had orbited Elena — Elena's nightmares, Elena's politics, Elena's daughter, Elena's husband. She had never once asked for my story.
The fact that she'd begun to ask meant her interest had woken.
"I was a counselor."
"The same work you do in this world?"
"Similar. Listening to people's hearts, and treating them."
"In that world, too... are there people who have nightmares?"
"Many."
"Truly? Even in a world without demons?"
"There is plenty that torments people without any demons. Money, power, relationships, loneliness."
"Loneliness."
Elena rolled the word around in her mouth.
"In your world, too, are there people as lonely as a queen?"
"There are. The higher the seat, the deeper the loneliness."
"Isn't that the truth..."
Elena tipped back her wine. Fourth glass. Her cheeks had flushed — red against gold. Her violet eyes had gone a little loose.
"Do-hyun."
"Yes."
"Are you... lonely?"
My heart jumped.
"...Sometimes."
A lie. I am not lonely. I have Marisa. I have Karin. I have Erika. But answering no at this moment would have severed the empathy clean through.
"Really?"
Elena smiled. A smile drunk on wine. A smile with the mask peeled off.
"Me too. Sometimes. Not always."
A lie. This woman is always lonely. Saying "sometimes" is her pride talking.
"What do you do, when you're lonely?"
Elena asked. Honorifics had crept into her speech. Wine blurs the way people talk.
"...I talk. With someone."
"With whom?"
"Right now, with you."
Elena's eyes went wide. A moment. Then she laughed.
"You're right. We are talking."
Such a simple remark, and it delighted her. Why? Because the bare fact of talking together was a treasure to this woman.
"Before you came, the nights were long."
Elena turned her wine glass slowly in her fingers.
"I'd wake from a nightmare at three in the morning. And then I couldn't sleep again. Staring at the ceiling, all the thoughts would come. The kingdom, Lizette, the front lines, the taxes. Thoughts catching each other's tails, over and over, until morning came."
"And now?"
"Now... I have this hour."
She looked at me.
"I look forward to this hour."
My heart pounded. Genuinely.
This wasn't the work of Common Sense Alteration alone. The skill pries cognition open a crack — it doesn't manufacture feeling. That Elena looked forward to this hour was real emotion. She truly enjoyed her time with me.
"I enjoy this hour as well."
That one was half true. I did enjoy it. But the reasons were not the same. Elena liked the hour because her loneliness was easing; I liked it because my conquest was advancing.
A bad man. A thoroughly fucking rotten man.
The wine was empty. She didn't open a second bottle.
Elena rose from her seat — and swayed. Four glasses will do that. I caught her arm.
"Are you all right?"
"...I'm fine. The wine's a little strong tonight."
I didn't let go. One second. Two. Three.
Elena looked up at me. Violet eyes, close. Cheeks flushed with wine. Gold hair fallen loose.
Kissing distance.
...At this range my gut pulled like a son of a bitch. Don't let her feel you going hard — hold it in. A therapist, in name at least, stiffening right in front of her face. Pathetic. Fuck.
But I didn't do it. Not yet. To kiss her here would cost me. Far better to let this woman crumble under her own weight. That was the arithmetic in my head — while my mouth went bone dry.
"Rest well, Your Highness."
I released her arm. Elena stepped back.
"...Do-hyun."
"Yes."
And then Elena called my name directly, for the first time. Not the "Do-hyun" carried inside messages passed along, not the "Do-hyun" formally summoned to my face — but my name in the way her lips wrapped softly around it.
"Do-hyun."
Do-hyun, not "you."
Five days in.
"Good night."
Short. But burning.
"And to you, Your Highness."
I stepped out the door and breathed deep in the corridor.
My heart was pounding like a madman's.
Do-hyun. Elena had called my name. Do-hyun — not "you." This was no small shift.
That "you" of hers was an official form of address — the stately pronoun a queen grants her subjects. But "Do-hyun" was private. To call a man by his name is a declaration: you are special to me.
Faster than I'd expected. Why? Because Elena's thirst ran deeper than I had guessed.
Three years ignored by her husband. The kingdom carried on her shoulders alone. Nightmares gnawing at her — and no one, not one soul, to lean on.
And every night, I was handing her a place to lean.
I was digging a well in a waterless desert.
A person in the desert, once they find a well, does not leave.
The trouble is that I'm dissolving poison into that well. Fuck — I'm a poisoner posing as a well-digger.
And then Elena spoke.
Behind my back, just as I turned to leave the room.
"Come tomorrow, too."
I stopped. Turned around.
Elena stood at the door in her nightclothes. Gold hair gleaming on her shoulders. Violet eyes wet.
"...Not an order. A request."
Not an order. A request.
The queen. The true power of this kingdom. Had said request, not order.
How long since this woman had asked anything of anyone? A queen commands. But tonight, at this door, she asked.
"I will come every day."
Elena smiled. A smile of relief.
"Promise?"
"I promise."
The queen's residence. Moonlight poured through the window, and Elena's gold hair turned pale-bright in it.
This woman was falling.
For me.
And me too— no. I must not fall. This is a hunt. The moment you start empathizing with the prey, it's over.
But her words — come tomorrow, too — stayed lodged in my chest.
Not an order. A request.
Fuck.
This woman plays dirty. I know it, even as I vow not to fall — I'm already one step in. I simply pretend I don't.