I was so mesmerized that a too loud groan unwittingly escaped from my mouth...Oh my god!
I quickly submerged in the water....But...but. it was too late...
While the water was covering my eyes, I still could see him turning his head in my direction!
What do I do now?
Should I simply let myself drown and die in embarrassment?
Or should I make it look like a stupid prank and jump up from the water, shouting: "Surprise! Welcome to Peony!"?

When I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder and couldn't hold my breath anymore, I had no other choice but to resurface the water.

In my sight came the  two men staring at me.
One of them was the guard who was poking me wherever he could reach my body with his  sword, yelling hysterically: "Who are you?! Who sent you?! What is your intention?!"
The other one was Beauty, of course, standing with his back to the pool while struggling to cover as much as he could from his body with the silk robe, probably prepared beforehand by the caretaker.

"For heaven's sake, stop playing with that, I'm bleeding already!", I shouted, knocking the sword away from my arm.

"Oh my goodness! Please, please forgive me, Your Royal Highness!
I didn't recognize you, I swear on my life! Please, forgive me, I am so sorry!", the guard dropped onto his knees and kept kowtowing, hitting the ground with his forehead with  loud thumps.

"Your Royal Highness?
Who? What the?
Wang Yibo?
Is it you?
How? Why?", Beauty spoke in a very low voice. But I heard his sweet voice clearly, even though his hand was covering his mouth in shock.

"Yes, I am. I will explain everything to you.", I smiled at my beloved prince, even though I had no explanation in my mind to give him.
Then I spoke to the tormented guard, who was on the verge of crying, especially at the sight of my scratched shoulder:
"You can leave now. And don't worry, you have nothing to apologize about, you did nothing wrong.
Actually I am thankful to you for your vigilance in protecting The Prince of Rose, a guest so important to Peony." 

Oh my goodness! You’re bleeding!”, Beauty shouted in horror at the sight of the water changing its color in red around me.
“Come closer, I can’t see from here where you’re hurt.”, he said, kneeling and bending over the edge of the pool.

“Don’t worry too much, there are only a few light  scratches.
 But I am pleased to see that you care about me.”, I smiled at him, stretching up my face so as to come just a few inches from his. 
“God, you’re even more beautiful than you were in my memories.
I missed you so much…”, I whispered.
I was simply mesmerized

He reached out to my head crown and pushed me in the water, giggling with that cute, sweet voice of his:
“Woah, you didn’t grow up at all. You remained the same teen playboy.
You never stop trying to seduce your prey, not even now when you’re hurt and bleeding, don’t you, he, he?”

"I have in my luggage a  very efficient ointment for your injuries. It’s my own recipe, prepared from herbs from my own special garden. I’m going to my room to get  it. ”, he said.

But when he intended to stand up, I grabbed his hand:
”No, please  don’t go. I don’t want to waste so many minutes without seeing you."

I swear that I didn’t plan what happened next, it was not my intention, I swear!

His delicate feet slipped on the wet marble, when I grabbed his hand, and he fell into the water.

He struggled to grab something like anyone who doesn’t know how to swim.
I was there to catch him, of course, but in his frightened state, instead of letting me hold him , he kept pushing me under the water, along with himself.

Don’t get me wrong, but I had to do something to calm him down, until he wouldn’t drown us, both. The water was around 16 feet deep at that edge of the pool, though.
Thus I grabbed his cheeks and plastered my mouth onto his.

He opened wide his shocked eyes and his grip on my hair weakened, but at least I stopped him from struggling.

I felt his legs wrapping around my thighs while his eyes were slowly closing. 
I started to panic that he was going numb because of the lack of oxygen.
Damn, I didn’t want to drown him, no matter how bad I wanted to kiss him for as long as I could!
 

As the dizziness started to get to me, too, I  hurried to transfer some oxygen in his mouth through our kiss, holding him tight while whip kicking my legs to raise ourselves up from the bottom of the pool.

After we finally resurfaced the water and avidly filled our lungs with the so-needed air, he hastily unwrapped his legs and tried to push himself away from  me.

But when he started to sink back in the water, he remembered that he can’t swim and he desperately clenched  his hands onto the first thing he could grab. 

My poor, abused ears, along with a handful from my long hair were that “first thing he could grab”.

“Ouch!”, I pretended to be in pain, while smiling widely at him and pulling him at my chest with one hand, while grasping the edge of the pool with the other hand.

"Don't worry, you will soon  feel better.
I am sorry that you slept on the marble and fell in the water, but should I apologize for kissing you, too? If you want, I will apologize, but I need you to know that I kissed you with the only purpose to save us from drowning. I could explain to you in detail, if you want.", I said, stealthily kissing his wet head crown.

"Yeah, right!
You are an opportunist, you just took advantage of the fact that I don't know how to swim. ", he managed to reply between coughs.

"No, I promise that I don't lie.
But anyway, why don't you want to learn how to swim?
Wait, I have an idea!
Talking about opportunities, this is the best opportunity to learn how to swim. 
You have water, you have privacy, you have a trainer. I could be your trainer, while you could take my service as my apology for your underwater distress.
Knowing how to swim it's not only a pleasant and fun ability, but could be a lifesaver sometimes...You should know better than anyone, though.
So, what do you say, should we start the lesson?"

"Alright! But only because I wanted to learn how to swim since a long time ago, not because I accept your apology for kissing me without my consent...Again!"

Wang Yibo’s enjoyable reading time was interrupted by Liu HaiKuan’s disturbing shrieks, resounding from outside.

He grabbed his sword and ran to the palace’s yard, where his friend was desperately calling for his king.

“I am here, I am here!
What the hell is happening, Kuan Kuan?
Is someone following you, are you hurt, or why are you screaming like that?”, Yibo asked, briefly checking out  the surroundings and trying to check his friend for any  possible injuries.

But, Liu HaiKuan surprised him by pulling him in a breathtaking hug:
“Oh, thank heavens that you are alright!
We need a plan! And my brain stopped working, I don’t have any plans, god dammit! 
We must  hide you somewhere, but I have no idea where!”

“Jeez, Kuan Kuan! Calm down, I understand nothing!.
Stop a second, take a deep breath , then let’s go inside and you will drink a glass of water while telling me everything.
I think that I still have a couple of minutes  more  in the human form.”, Yibo grabbed HaiKuan by his shoulders, shaking him slightly and rubbing comfortingly on his back.

But HaiKuan grabbed Yibo by his arm and started dragging him, in great hurry, inside: 
“Yeah, it should be safer to go inside!
But there is no time for drinking water! 
Wang Yibo, my beloved friend, you are in danger! But it’s not only about you, my friend BoBo! 
My King, you are in danger, Peony is in danger!
And I feel useless because I have no idea what to do!”

“Don't stress yourself like that. It’s not you who should do something, but me!
No matter what the problem is, I’m telling beforehand that I’m not going to hide.
It’s my duty to protect Peony and to find a solution, now tell me, I’m listening!”, the king spoke. 
 

“Princess Yang Zi had vanished since yesterday morning!
The palace staff didn’t get worried at first, because they were accustomed to her daily missing, but she never missed coming home in the evening, no matter how late. But yesterday evening she didn't come back and now the whole palace is boiling, even though everyone knows that she is dating a secret lover! But what if that man kidnapped the princess?
I told you about those rumors circulating around that she has a secret lover who lives in the cavern next to the mountain lake.
Wait, there is more, it’s not only that. We could say that she remained for the night at her lover’s place, but the fact that she is not the only royalty missing, that is one of the reasons I’m getting very worried about your safety. 
The main reason is that my secret sources revealed to me two insane pieces of information!
One: a group of ten high rank nobles prepares the grand meeting for declaring you as ineligible for ruling Peony. And as you don’t have an heir, and the princess can’t rule, they think about asking the princess to present her lover to them. And if they would approve of him, they would ask Yang Zi to marry him and they would make him the Peony’s king.
Imagine that! From what I heard, her lover is actually a thug! 
And two…”

“Wait, wait! Did you say that ZiZi is not the only royalty missing, or I misheard? Who? The only royalties are me, ZiZi and him! Don’t tell me!”, Yibo shouted.

“Yes, it’s true! On my way home, I met Cheng Di, I mean lord Wang ZhuoCheng, in the forest. Even though he is upset with me for some unknown  reason, he talked with me. He broke my heart because he was crying. He said that he didn’t didn’t find the Prince of Rose in his bedroom in the morning. The bed was untouched, even though he said goodnight to Cheng Di last night after dinner. Cheng Di looked for him everywhere, the whole day, but…”

“Why the hell didn’t you start your telling with this information! Oh my god! What could have happened!
He doesn’t know how to swim, hopefully he didn’t fall into the river, lake or…God forbid!
I’m going to look for him, too, if you want, you can come with me!”, Yibo started to walk towards the door.

“Of course that I’m going with you. But before that, I must tell you the second information my sources gave me. 
I don’t know if you remember this name Wen Chao. The guy who dreams himself as the King of Rose.
King Xiao arrested some of the traitors, but Wen Chao along with three or four rebels  managed to escape. And my source said that it is believed that he hides here in  Peony.
What the hell is that?!”, HaiKuan shouted,  unsheathing his sword.

But Yibo stopped him from killing that weird  “something”. 
A bird sparkling on top of his open  journal scared the out of his friend.

“Wait, KuanKuan, it’s just a bird, a nightingale actually. I know her, it’s a friend.”, Yibo said, worrying HaiKuan about his mental sanity.
Especially when the king started to make some weird sounds: ”Ni Ni Ni!”, while walking to the window where the bird fled.

Yibo opened the window and shouted enthusiastically:
”The fawn is here! Maybe he and his friends could help us with the search for Beauty and ZiZi.”
 

~A half an hour later~

The sun was already entirely swallowed by the dark water of the lake from  the mountain, at the time princess Yang Zi carefully sneaked inside the cavern.

“Ah, it’s you! Finally! 
I was already getting worried, why are you so late?
Could you bring everything?”, a man agitatedly  spoke , sliding  his sword back in its sheath.

“It was hard, but I brought everything thanks to my trustworthy  helper,  the noble I told you about,  that he wants Wang Yibo dead. He is the head of a group of nobles who will make me a queen! 
And  you, my beloved Wen Chao, will be my king, the King of Peony!”, the princess grinned, while the thug was molding her , leaving prints of dirt on her expensive dress. 

“Why is he blindfolded?
And why is he not screaming or begging for your mercy?
Did you burn his eyes out? Or maybe you cut his tongue?”, she walked closer to the tight up hostage.

“As much as your words are  music to my ears, I can’t. I know that he would plentily deserve that,  for his eyes not appreciating the beautiful you, and his tongue not  praising your kindness. But I must keep him unharmed, to be able to negotiate with his father. 
A father is a father!
I am sure that King Xiao will choose his useless offspring’s life over his kingdom and huge wealth.!”, Wen Chao grinned, gul