It was a cold winter's day, when snowflakes from the heavens dyed the brown fields pure white.

I had gone out hunting, roaming the outskirts of the village on horseback. I was aiming my bow at a deer when I spotted something that didn't seem to belong to this world, and I lost my senses.

I saw you for the first time—a small thing with fern-like hands swollen red from the cruel weather, rubbing your palms together and blowing hot breath into them. I saw your face, delicate as a single petal. Despite the freezing wind, you climbed the slippery snowfields with your small feet to gather herbs, looking so pitiful, like a little rabbit, that I couldn't look away. In one hand you held a basket of herbs, and in the other, a worn-out hoe.

The day I first met you was a poison to me. At first, I approached you spitefully, often scolding you and telling you to leave because the hunting grounds were dangerous. Yet, even before me, the King, you did not lose heart. I couldn't tell if you were incredibly brave or just plain stupid, doing nothing but your work.

After that day, your face haunted me every night, keeping me from sleep, and I began to meet you at the hunting grounds outside the palace. Anxiety and worry that your small body might be devoured by wild beasts came first, but I never showed it when I met you. Looking back now, perhaps a new sprout was already blooming in a corner of my heart.

Only after spending the four seasons with you did I summon you to the palace and whisper sweet love under the moonlight. But contrary to my expectations, you were looking far away, and at the end of your gaze stood someone other than me.

Five years later...

I thought it was just another quiet midnight. Outside, the screams of palace servants rang out, and she had vanished. I woke to find myself trapped in a burning palace. The searing heat engulfed me. With severe burns on my face and neck, I wandered through the flaming palace, unable to even feel the pain as I searched for her, but she was nowhere to be found. I stumbled out of the palace in despair.

By the time the embers that had spread through the palace began to settle, a sword was held to my throat. With those same fern-like hands that once held a worn hoe, she now gripped the hilt of a sword, smiling alongside the traitors. She stood there, arm-in-arm with a strange man. It was never my place to begin with. I had been deceived by a game played by those who coveted my power and position.

Leaving me with wounds that could never be washed away, I was sent into exile to a small mountain village far away from the palace. It was her final, minimal mercy toward me. And so, the black orchid froze white as it met a new season.