Trapped in an Omegaverse Tragedy

The Rose Boy and the Shaman Boy

In the third year of a particularly miserable winter, the rose boy was sentenced to death.

Technically, he had not been sentenced to death.

Technically, he had been sentenced to three days of copying Buddhist sutras for climbing a palace wall.

But the rose boy considered both punishments equally unreasonable.

"I only climbed it because the gate was locked."

The palace guard stared at him.

"That is why gates exist."

"I thought they were decorative."

The guard closed his eyes.

He looked like a man reconsidering every decision that had brought him to this profession.

The boy sitting beside the rose bushes looked equally unimpressed.

He was dressed in dark blue robes, with a small bundle of bells hanging from his belt.

The rose boy glanced at him.

The stranger glanced back.

"You," the guard said to the stranger. "Tell me what happened."

The stranger shrugged.

"I saw nothing."

The rose boy immediately pointed at him.

"Traitor."

The stranger looked at him.

"You were trespassing."

"I was rescuing a cat."

"There was no cat."

"There was."

"There wasn’t."

"There was emotionally."

The stranger stared.

The guard sighed.

"I am going to pretend neither of you exists."

That was how they met.

Not romantically.

Not dramatically.

Not beneath falling cherry blossoms while music played somewhere in the distance.

They met beside a palace wall while being yelled at by a tired guard.

It was, frankly, more realistic.

The stranger was a shaman’s apprentice.

People called him the shaman boy.

He came from a small village outside the capital and had been brought to Hanyang with his grandmother, a respected mudang who had been summoned by a noble family.

The shaman boy himself had an unusual reputation.

He was said to speak with spirits.

He was said to know when someone was lying.

He was said to have once frightened a tiger by staring at it.

The last story was untrue.

The tiger had simply been asleep.

But he never corrected anyone.

Fear was useful.

Especially when people owed you money.

The rose boy was the son of a minor scholar-official.

His family owned a modest house near the palace.

He had good manners.

Good handwriting.

Good education.

And absolutely no sense of self-preservation.

His most obvious feature was the small silver rose he wore at his collar.

His mother had given it to him before she died.

He never took it off.

People called him the rose boy.

He pretended to hate the name.

He secretly liked it.

They met again three days later.

The shaman boy was walking through the market when someone grabbed his sleeve.

"You’re the liar."

He turned.

The rose boy stood there.

"You mean the liar who told the guard he saw nothing?"

"I was technically telling the truth."

"You watched everything."

"That does not mean I saw anything."

"You are impossible."

"I’ve been told."

The rose boy narrowed his eyes.

Then smiled.

"Come with me."

"No."

"I haven’t even said where."

"I know your face."

"That’s insulting."

"It’s accurate."

The rose boy grabbed his sleeve.

"Come."

The shaman boy sighed.

"Where?"

"The palace wall."

"Absolutely not."

"I found another cat."

"There was never a first cat."

"This one is real."

"How many cats are you planning to invent?"

The rose boy looked offended.

"That’s a terrible thing to say about cats."

There was, in fact, a cat.

It was stuck on the roof of an abandoned storehouse.

The shaman boy looked up.

The cat looked down.

The cat seemed embarrassed.

"I told you," the rose boy said proudly.

The shaman boy stared at him.

"You climbed a palace wall for this?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"It looked sad."

"It’s a cat."

"So?"

"Fair."

They rescued it.

The cat immediately scratched the rose boy and ran away.

The shaman boy watched.

"Beautiful."

"You could help me."

"You seem to have everything under control."

"I’m bleeding."

"Very tragic."

The rose boy glared.

The shaman boy laughed.

It was the first time the rose boy had heard him laugh.

It was quiet.

Warm.

Unexpected.

He remembered it.

He would remember it for a very long time.

After that, they became friends.

Secretly.

Because a scholar’s son and a shaman’s apprentice were not exactly supposed to spend their afternoons wandering through markets together.

But rules were easier to break when no one was looking.

They ate hotteok from street vendors.

Argued over which palace gate was prettiest.

Watched children play jegichagi.

And once spent twenty minutes following a chicken because the rose boy insisted it "looked suspicious."

"It is a chicken."

"Exactly."

"That doesn’t make it suspicious."

"It has secrets."

"You have too much free time."

"I make time for important investigations."

The chicken eventually entered a courtyard.

The rose boy stopped.

"See?"

"See what?"

"It lives there."

"Congratulations."

"We’ve solved the case."

The shaman boy noticed that the rose boy loved flowers.

Not just roses.

Everything.

Peonies.

Chrysanthemums.

Plum blossoms.

Even weeds.

Once, he caught him staring at a tiny yellow flower growing between two stones.

"Beautiful."

The shaman boy looked at the flower.

"It’s dying."

"So am I."

"Why do you keep saying things like that?"

"Because they’re true."

"You’re strange."

"You keep coming back."

The shaman boy had no answer.

That was becoming a problem.

One spring afternoon, the rose boy disappeared.

The shaman boy searched the market.

The tea house.

The temple.

Even the palace gardens.

Nothing.

He finally found him beside a stream outside the city.

Sitting beneath a flowering tree.

"You could have told me where you were."

The rose boy looked up.

"You were worried?"

"No."

"Your face says otherwise."

"My face is lying."

"You’ve been following me for three hours."

"I was walking."

"In the same direction?"

"Coincidence."

The rose boy smiled.

"You’re terrible at lying."

"So I’ve been told."

They sat together.

The stream moved quietly beside them.

After a while, the rose boy spoke.

"My father wants me to enter the civil service."

"That’s good."

"He wants me to become important."

"That’s also good."

"I don’t want to."

The shaman boy looked at him.

"What do you want?"

The rose boy was quiet.

"I don’t know."

It was the first time the shaman boy had seen him without an answer.

He wanted to reach out.

He didn’t.

Not yet.

Months passed.

The rose boy began studying harder.

The shaman boy’s grandmother prepared for a long journey.

Neither spoke about the future.

Because sometimes saying something aloud made it real.

Then winter returned.

And with it came trouble.

The king had fallen ill.

Rumors spread through Hanyang.

Some said it was poison.

Others said it was a curse.

Others blamed ghosts.

The shaman boy’s grandmother was summoned to the palace.

She took him with her.

The rose boy’s father was already there.

For three days, the palace became a place of whispers.

Officials argued.

Physicians came and went.

Rituals were performed.

No one knew what was wrong.

Then someone accused the shaman’s family.

"Her rituals have angered the spirits."

The shaman boy stood silently.

His grandmother looked tired.

The rose boy stepped forward.

"My lord."

Everyone turned.

His father stared at him.

The rose boy bowed.

"The illness began before their arrival."

An official frowned.

"And how would a young scholar know this?"

"I keep records."

The official scoffed.

"Records?"

The rose boy pulled a notebook from his sleeve.

He had recorded every rumor, every date, every visitor, every meal served in the palace.

The shaman boy stared.

"You’ve been doing that?"

"I like lists."

"You are terrifying."

"I know."

The records revealed something strange.

The king had fallen ill after receiving medicine from a particular court physician.

The same physician had treated several officials who later became sick.

It wasn’t a curse.

It was contaminated medicine.

The shaman boy’s grandmother was cleared.

The physician was arrested.

The palace breathed again.

And the rose boy became very unpopular with several important people.

Which was, unfortunately, becoming one of his talents.

That night, the shaman boy found him in the palace garden.

"You saved my grandmother."

"No."

"You did."

"We found the truth together."

"You did the records."

"You noticed the medicine."

"You trusted me."

The rose boy smiled.

"That matters."

The shaman boy looked away.

The moonlight rested on his face.

For once, neither joked.

"I was afraid," the shaman boy said.

"Of what?"

"Losing you."

The rose boy stopped breathing.

Only for a second.

But it was enough.

The shaman boy looked at him.

"I know what you’re thinking."

"What?"

"That I’m being foolish."

"No."

"Then what?"

The rose boy’s fingers curled around the silver rose at his collar.

"I was afraid of losing you too."

Silence.

The garden suddenly felt enormous.

The palace seemed very far away.

The shaman boy stepped closer.

"Do you know what people would say?"

"Probably something annoying."

"Definitely."

"What do you think?"

The shaman boy looked at him.

"I think..."

He hesitated.

"I think I would rather be foolish with you than sensible without you."

The rose boy laughed softly.

"That was almost poetic."

"Don’t ruin it."

"I’m trying."

They both laughed.

Then the rose boy reached for his hand.

Their fingers touched.

Neither pulled away.

Their relationship could not be simple.

Nothing worth having ever was.

They couldn’t walk through Hanyang holding hands.

They couldn’t announce their feelings.

They couldn’t behave like the romances written in cheap novels.

So they became experts at small things.

A cup of tea left outside a window.

A folded letter hidden inside a book.

A flower tucked into a sleeve.

A bell tied to a branch.

A walk taken at sunset.

Their love lived in the spaces between rules.

One evening, the rose boy found the shaman boy waiting beside the city gate.

"You came."

"I said I would."

"You say that a lot."

"You worry too much."

"You’re a shaman. You’re supposed to know when I’m coming."

The shaman boy smiled.

"Spirits don’t answer stupid questions."

"Rude."

"Accurate."

They walked together.

The sky was turning pink.

The city lanterns were beginning to glow.

The rose boy looked at him.

"Do you think we’ll always be like this?"

"Like what?"

"Together."

The shaman boy was quiet.

"I don’t know."

The rose boy looked down.

Then felt a hand take his.

"Why are you answering like that?"

"Because I don’t know what tomorrow will bring."

He squeezed his hand.

"But I know what I want today."

The rose boy smiled.

"That’s enough."

Years later, people in Hanyang would tell stories about the two boys.

Some said the rose boy became a scholar.

Some said he became a painter.

Some said he left the capital entirely.

People said the shaman boy traveled across Joseon.

Some said he became a famous mudang.

Some said he could speak to ghosts.

That part was probably exaggerated.

But there was one story that everyone agreed upon.

Every spring, near a small stream outside the capital, a silver rose appeared beneath a flowering tree.

And beside it hung a tiny bell.

No one knew who left them.

No one dared touch them.

The villagers said the place was protected by two spirits.

One was gentle.

The other was mischievous.

They were said to walk together whenever the moon was bright.

Sometimes people claimed they could hear laughter near the stream.

Sometimes they heard bells.

And occasionally, if someone was lucky, they saw two shadows beneath the trees.

One carrying flowers.

The other carrying bells.

Walking side by side.

Always together.

As for whether the story was true?

Well.

The shaman boy would have said spirits were complicated.

The rose boy would have said villagers loved gossip.

And the old woman who sold flowers near the stream would have simply smiled.

Because every spring, someone still came to buy two things.

A single red rose.

And a tiny silver bell.

And no matter how many years passed, they were always bought together.

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