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Seokjin found the old mirror in his late stepmother's apartments, a few scant weeks after all the dust of struggle and celebration had struggled. It had fallen from its place on the wall facing a bay window, and Seokjin tugged it from where it had gotten wedged between the wall and the floorboards of the room.
It took him a moment to decipher the spidery Hanja half-worn from the old gilt frame.
"Mirror, mirror on the wall," he read.
"You are the fairest of them all, your Majesty," said a deep, sleepy voice from within the mirror. Seokjin jumped and nearly dropped it. "You already know this, so why do you keep asking after all this time?"
"Wha—what?" Seokjin stuttered. "I mean, thank you, I'm very flattered, but—" The mirror in his hand seemed to ripple, in what he would later learn was its way of blinking.
"Oh," said the voice. "I'm so sorry, I thought you were someone else."
"Did you belong to my stepmother?" Seokjin said. "The former Queen?"
"The former Queen? Is she dead, finally? Thank heaven." The mirror rippled again. "Wait, I know your face. Seokjin, isn't it? The Fair Prince?"
"King, now," Seokjin said quietly. The wounds of that struggle were still fresh. He'd lost a good many brothers in arms taking back his father's throne from his grasping stepmother.
"Ah." The mirror gave an awkward little cough. "Well, my sincerest congratulations to you, your Majesty. I'm sure you will be a vastly better ruler than she was. I'm at your service, of course."
"What exactly are you?" Seokjin sat back on his heels, scrutinizing the glass. He saw within it just a dim reflection of his own face, marked even there with the handsomeness that had stained his life.
"I...show things," the mirror said. "Whatever you ask me to show you, you'll see it here. Within the realm of human knowledge, of course. I can't touch the metaphysical, or the incorporeal, per se." It paused. "You can test me, if you like."
Seokjin thought for a moment. "Show me Jung Hoseok," he said.
The mirror rippled, then settled into an image of a courtyard, one which Seokjin recognized as part of the palace's outer bailey. A squad of soldiers drilled on the grass, under the scrutiny of two men with the special armor that marked them as generals, charged with training and leading the King's personal guard. Seokjin leaned in to focus on the general closest to his field of view. Hoseok looked tired, but happy. He had always loved working with the younger officers, Seokjin thought, with a slight pang. He was utterly loyal to his King, never letting him get more than scratched in the years they had been on the run from the Queen's soldiers, but this was what he loved.
"Show me Min Yoongi," he said. The mirror obliged, revealing a study within the Sujeongjeon, the building that housed his advisors. Min Yoongi had doffed his court robes in favor of a more comfortable smock that was already stained ink. He looked at peace, finally, brush in hand, contemplating the view from his window.
Seokjin drew a shaky breath. Then the words came out of him in a tumble, almost of their own accord. "Show me Kim Taehyung."
The mirror rippled and blurred. When it finally cleared, it was to depict a grassy knoll that Seokjin had visited a thousand times; a beautiful place, shaded by a graceful bent pine, overlooking the river that ran outside his palace. A simple stone slab lay upon the grass; Seokjin didn't need to look to remember the name inscribed upon it.
"I'm sorry, your Majesty," the mirror said quietly. "This was the best I could do."
"I know." Seokjin bowed his head, swallowed the lump in his throat. He had tried his hardest not to remember that among his fallen brothers-in-arms had been one actual brother—estranged until Seokjin's restorationists had mustered, cut down within sight of the palace, departing this life with a boxy smile and a be happy, hyung on his lips.
"He wanted to love you," the mirror said softly. "I watched him, sometimes, at your father's request. He wanted the chance to know you. I think you could have been great friends."
"We were, for the shortest time," Seokjin said. "I wish I had gotten to know him better."
The mirror was silent, and Seokjin got the distinct feeling that it was staring at him.
Finally, "I think I will be quite happy to serve you, Kim Seokjin."
For some reason, Seokjin found himself smiling at that. "Thank you," he said. Something occurred to him. "Have you got a name?" he asked. "So that I know what to call you, when I want to see something."
Again the mirror seemed to stare. "Namjoon," it said. "My name is Kim Namjoon."
Seokjin hung Namjoon in his own apartments, and it became a daily habit to consult the mirror. Namjoon showed him the goings-on in his kingdom—farmers in their fields, fishermen hawking on the seashore, an old weaver at her loom, the court scholars and generals bent over their maps and scrolls. He also showed Seokjin more troubling things, once he learned that the young king was not afraid to look: a war-widow and her children sharing morsels of rice, royal soldiers harrassing a mountain clansman, boats crushed on rocks by an early spring storm. He took care that Seokjin in his palace did not forget the people among whom he had once walked, who had propelled him to his throne. And Seokjin sent out his ministers and his trusted generals to heal the wounds in his kingdom shown to him by Namjoon.
Sometimes, in rare moments of quiet, Seokjin paused to wonder about the being that lived in the mirror. He had no form that Seokjin had seen, but he spoke like one of Seokjin's own court scholars, like a creature straining its thoughts against the boundaries of flesh and earth and time.
"Namjoon?" he asked one evening.
"Yes, your Majesty?" the mirror said.
"Did you always live in that mirror?" Seokjin turned from his desk to look at it. As always, he saw only his own face reflected there, candlelight dancing across its peaks and hollows. "Or were you something else, once?"
The mirror thought for a long moment. "I was human, your Majesty," he said. "An...an advisor of sorts, to your late parents."
"What sort of advisor?" Seokjin asked.
"I collected whispers and reported them to the King and Queen," Namjoon said. "And I did the same work for your stepmother, when your father died and she took the throne."
"I don't recall you in my father's court," Seokjin said.
"I dealt in secrets, your Majesty," Namjoon said. "With all due respect, I was very good at my trade."
"How did you end up in the mirror, then?"
"Even a master tradesman makes mistakes," Namjoon said. "I reported in error once, to your stepmother. As a punishment, she wove a spell that confined me to this mirror, and to her will."
"And so you continued to serve her."
"I saw no other choice, your Majesty."
"You don't have to call me that, you know," Seokjin said. "You don't have to use titles, I mean." He paused. "What did she ask you to show?"
Namjoon hesitated. "She was a rather...single-minded person," he said. "She wanted...she wanted to know that she was the most beautiful in the realm. Every day she would stand in front of me and ask me the same question."
"'Mirror, mirror on the wall,'" Seokjin quoted.
"'Who is the fairest of them all,'" Namjoon finished, in confirmation.
"But why would she always ask you the same question?" Seokjin wondered aloud. "Wouldn't she always get the same answer?" His stepmother had, after all, been a blindingly beautiful woman, hideous moral character notwithstanding.
"Not always," Namjoon said. His voice had a strange tremble to it that Seokjin had never heard before. "Sometimes...a few times...the answer was different."
And from the way he said it, Seokjin knew, in the pit of his stomach. "Me."
"They called you the Fair Prince for a good reason, your Majesty."
"So you were the one who told my stepmother that she had to kill me?" Seokjin demanded. "You were the one who told her to cut out my heart and eat it?"
"I never said that!" Had Namjoon a body, he might have recoiled. "I just told her that she wasn't the fairest any more. And that you were.”
“Just that? Then why did she send her hounds after me?”
“I didn't know she was going to try to solve the problem with her magic!"
But Seokjin's mind was working ahead of the mirror's protestations. "That time in the Hoseok and I sheltered in the mines," he said slowly, the memories rushing over him like a broken dam. "I'd always wondered how the Queen's soldiers found us. That was you, wasn't it? You showed her where we were?"
"For the first and the last time, your Majesty," Namjoon said. His voice sounded strange, rough. "I...couldn't do it, after that time. I started fighting her commands."
Seokjin sat back in his chair. "Why?" he asked.
"I saw what happened to the people who protected you," Namjoon said. "Your guards, and the miners. It was wrong."
"Things like that happen every day," Seokjin said harshly. "You've shown me that. Even in this kingdom, in the corners of it that I haven't seen. Surely you helped my stepmother carry out worse things. So what made you stop?"
The mirror was silent for a long time. Seokjin had begun to think Namjoon would refuse to answer when he replied. "You," he said.
"Me?"
"I saw how you cried for the miners. The way you cooked for every family that took you in. The way you cared whether your people lived or died. I...I admired you, I guess. And I thought that someone like that doesn't deserve to be hounded by the Queen's guards. So I fought back."
"And then what?"
"I've always been good with puzzles." Seokjin got the impression that the mirror was shrugging, as nonchalantly as was possible given the circumstances. "I started figuring out the vulnerabilities in the spell that forced me to obey her. I finally managed to break it, but it took so much out of me that I basically slept, for a long while. Until you woke me up."
Seokjin ruminated on that for a while. It all made sense now—the way the Queen's soldiers had found him in the early years of the chase, but then never again; how suddenly they had seemed hampered, more careless. He had thought at the time that perhaps it had been her spies' deaths or defections that had enabled his people to muster their strength. That had saved his life, and his country.
Instead it had been this one mirror—or, more accurately, the man imprisoned within it. Something—perhaps his need to know—levered Seokjin to his feet, steered him to stand before the mirror, face just a short distance away from the glass.
"You said you fought back because admired me then," he said, slowly. "But you didn't even know me."
"I knew enough," Namjoon said softly.
"And now, now that you know me better?"
"I...more than admire you now, my king." The words hung in the air between them for a long moment. Then Seokjin reached through them, touched his crooked fingers to the glass.
"Kim Namjoon."
"Yes, your Majesty?"
"Show me your face."
"Your Majesty, I...I'm not sure..."
"May I see you?" Seokjin said. "I want to see you." When Namjoon didn't answer, he added, "Please?"
The mirror fogged over. Seokjin had learned that this was how Namjoon dithered, when he was worried about upsetting Seokjin with a vision. Then the fog cleared, and Seokjin caught his breath. Kim Namjoon had dark hair stained with sun and a mouth made for smiling. He had black eyes that seemed to pierce the depths of Seokjin's very soul, eyes as old as a god's.
"I'm sorry about...I haven't...I haven't shown anyone my face in years," Namjoon stammered. Seokjin stared; the Namjoon-image was speaking, his mouth moving in tandem with his words, and Seokjin could not help but be caught up in watching him. His hand crept up the mirror until his fingertips brushed the outline of Namjoon’s face. They found no warmth there, no softness; only the unyielding glass and metal. And yet Namjoon started, drew a shaky breath.
“I only wish…” he began.
“What?” Seokjin said. “What do you wish?”
Namjoon looked down. “I only wish I knew how to escape this mirror,” he said. “I know it’s selfish of me, your Majesty,” he added hastily. “I can serve you better here, and I’ll do it, I’d be happy to do it…”
“But it’s not what you want,” Seokjin finished.
Namjoon looked down again and nodded.
“Do you think that’s all that matters to me, how I can be served?” Seokjin said. The fervor in his own voice surprised him. “Do you know me for that sort of a person?”
“I know you for the sort of king who deserves his servants’ best work,” Namjoon replied quietly.
“I don’t want you to be my servant,” Seokjin snapped. “I want—” He broke off, looked away, because I want your friendship was too far from the truth, and I want you was far too close, even for a King.
“I know what you mean, I think,” Namjoon said. Seokjin looked back at the mirror to find those eyes gazing at him, black and deep and knowing as a winter sky. “When you’ve seen as much as I have in this mirror,” he said, “you learn to recognize some things. Patterns. In others, and…in yourself. So…I think I know what you’re trying to say, your Majesty.”
Seokjin nodded. Let out a breath; not one of relief, just a sort of surrender to the paths laid by heart and earth and time. Met Namjoon’s eyes with his own.
"We'll get you out of there someday," he said. "I promise you that, Kim Namjoon. You broke one spell, together we can break another."
And he caught his breath anew with the way Namjoon dimpled when he smiled.