The money pouch handed to him was heavy.
According to the innkeeper, it was thanks to a customer who had promised a handsome price for the painting.
"Your last painting must have caught the eye of some great personage."
He was in a hurry to make a great fuss of it before the commission — swollen in step with the high sale price — could turn into something merely satisfactory.
Hui-seo himself, though, found the whole situation bewildering. No matter how little he knew of the world, he knew this much: his paintings were not worth such a price.
"Why, it may have caught the eye of one of the consorts the emperor keeps tucked away in his private chambers."
Hui-seo, unable to take his eyes off the money pouch he had been handed, started and looked up at the innkeeper.
"You can't mean you haven't heard? They say His Majesty is gathering every rarity under heaven for the rear palace — the rumor is everywhere. The noble lords are all scrambling to find gifts to present, hoping to make an impression."
The innkeeper added this as if scolding him, however Hui-seo chose to take it.
"……"
Hui-seo lowered his gaze. He even tried deliberately clasping his finely trembling hands to steady them, but it did little good.
"You don't know? I know we're far from Sangyang here, but to be that deaf to rumor…"
Fortunately the innkeeper, who had not noticed Hui-seo's agitation, merely clicked his tongue.
"Well, if it did catch the eye of the rear palace, then your fortune is made, sir."
"……"
"When it does, don't you forget my efforts."
"…I think I should be going now."
Feigning haste, he pulled his black hat lower and took his leave.
"The weather's bad — hurry on home. And be sure to bring your next painting to me."
He was rushing off quite unlike himself, yet seeing him seen off with quiet warmth, it seemed fortunately that nothing strange had been noticed.
Half answering, half not, Hui-seo fled the place as if escaping and quickly melted into the crowd. Though no one followed, he walked on quickly as if chased, and only slowed when his breath had risen to his throat.
"……"
His hands still trembled faintly, and his heart beat wildly. Hui-seo chewed his lip for no reason. If he held a mirror to his face he would surely see his own pallor staring back.
A worn jade pendant, twisted lips, a cold gaze, clawing prose, and love shattered to pieces…
The things he had pushed far away came surging back like a great wave. For an instant Hui-seo even forgot to breathe.
He had thought he would forget.
He had thought he had forgotten all of it….
He had not.
It had all been delusion, self-deception.
Hui-seo had been standing dazed, as if lost, and what snapped him back to himself was his faintly trembling hand brushing against his belly.
At the flat touch against his fingertips he hesitated, curling his fingers, and slowly let out the breath he had been holding.
Light returned to his slowly blinking eyes, and thought became possible again.
"…I should leave."
He murmured, feeling the heavy weight at his waist.
In truth there was no reason he had to leave — none, save that his painting had sold for a strangely high price. But the innkeeper's guess, a strange queasiness, an unease, scratched at his insides in fits.
Now that unease had sprouted, lingering was hardly the wise course.
The thought of having to break down wariness toward strangers all over again, of repeating the labor of settling in, was bleak — but his resolve did not waver.
Had he not steeled himself for this — for years at first, perhaps a lifetime, drifting like duckweed?
That time had simply come.
"Where should I go…"
A place where half the year is winter — he had spent a year there; this time, perhaps somewhere half the year is summer. Or if not that, somewhere very remote. Somewhere no news could ever reach his ears.
He murmured, watching his white breath scatter, when a snowflake landed at his feet.
The snow, drifting like flower petals, thickened in an instant. At this rate it would pile up beyond anything ordinary.
If only he hadn't passed the city gate, he might have considered staying at an inn tonight. But in his distraction he had walked so briskly that it had been ages since he left the gate behind. At this awkward distance — too far to turn back now — Hui-seo let out a groan.
"Hmm…"
Weighing the road he had come against the road ahead, he chose to keep going.
Even as he did, the snow thickened until he could hardly make out what lay ahead, and soon all directions would be buried. When he glanced back without thinking, snow lay layered over his footprints, fading them.
Pushing through the blizzard, he walked a long while before an old wicker gate appeared.
Only then did feeling return — a prickling ache — to hands and feet that had gone from red with cold to numb.
"……"
Hurrying through the wicker gate with the thought of thawing his frozen hands and feet first, Hui-seo suddenly faltered.
The courtyard, deep in snow, lay silent and utterly undisturbed. And yet, strangely, he could not lift his foot to enter.
Perhaps it was the dregs of feelings he hadn't managed to outrun. Or perhaps, watching the house sink slowly into darkness, he had fallen into useless sentiment.
Hui-seo stood gazing at the courtyard as if at something unfamiliar, and what brought him back was the biting wind raking across his back as if to hurry him onward.
Hesitantly he took one step, and the next came easily. The strange unease nipping at his heels had vanished without a trace.
Useless fretting.
Scolding himself, he brushed the piled snow from his shoulders and climbed to the main hall. When he opened the firmly shut door, the hinges meshed with a creak.
Even if he would be leaving soon, this would need oiling. Was there charcoal left in the brazier? Best to light a lamp before it grew any darker.
Deliberately stringing idle thoughts together before other thoughts could intrude, Hui-seo was about to cross the threshold when he froze.
It wasn't that he was frozen with cold, for all his surprise.
"……"
Hui-seo could not even think to step back; he stared into the room, his face gone white.
The man stood with his back to him, but Hui-seo knew who it was. No — he could not have failed to know.
"You've improved a good deal, I see, since I last saw you."
The man's gaze rested on the scroll — the very painting for which Hui-seo had been paid that day.
"…Y-Your Highness…"
His mouth went dry. At his murmur, wrung out and faint, the man turned as if answering a call.
"No, Hui-seo."
"……"
"From now on you must call me His Majesty."
"Outwardly, though, you'd best call me Wi-rang," he added, looking down at Hui-seo, and asked:
"So, did you enjoy your travels?"
His questioning tone was softer than spring sunlight, yet Hui-seo knew it hid a cruelty colder than the bitterest frost.
As if to prove it, his lips were smiling, but the pitch-black eyes looking down at Hui-seo were merciless and cruel. The afterimage he had barely pushed away earlier blurred before his eyes again.
"By now you've thrown fits and tantrums enough and to spare…"
He took one long stride toward Hui-seo, who stood frozen, unable to stir, and gently drew him by the arm.
"Time to come home now, hmm?"
Hui-seo sank helplessly into his embrace.
As if this place had been his from the very beginning — as if he had never once left these arms.
"My Hui-seo… my consort."
Held in arms both warm and cold, Hui-seo froze, sunk in memory.
He couldn't breathe.
Sliding the window quietly open, Hui-seo felt the cool early breeze slip through the crack and tickle his cheek.
At the sudden chill he glanced sidelong at the seat opposite; relieved to find his grandfather still with his eyes closed, he turned back to the window.
They had not yet entered the city walls, so the scenery was little different from what he had seen all along — branches with only timid new buds poking out, flower stalks bearing only the barest buds, the grassless roadside too.
And yet his heart fluttered so — surely because at the end of this road he would see a beloved face.
When would they arrive, he wondered.
Recalling the driver's bold promise that two shijin more would do it, he gazed out at the road ahead, as if he might see beyond it.
"…Look, Hui-won."
Gauging the time that remained, Hui-seo whipped his head around. His grandfather had woken at some point and was watching him.
It was hardly a scolding, but he felt oddly guilty. Flustered, Hui-seo quickly shut and latched the window.
Before he could ask whether the cold had woken him, his grandfather looked away.
"……"
His lips moved, but no words came through them. Instead Hui-seo straightened his back and sat up properly.
Even amid the awkward silence the carriage rolled steadily on. His cold-stiffened cheeks slowly thawed in the warm air inside.
"We will soon pass Jaha Gate."
It seemed the talk of arriving in two shijin had been no exaggeration — before long, word came from the driver's seat that the gate was in sight.
The capital's gate, no less. He longed to see for himself whether it differed from Anseo's, and how much — but he suppressed it.
"Hui-seo."
After a moment, his grandfather called him.
"For your brother's dignity's sake, you must conduct yourself all the more properly while we stay in the capital."
"I will remember."
Hui-seo answered promptly. Yet his grandfather looked somehow displeased.
Had there been anything in his answer to displease? He turned their exchange over one by one, but nothing struck him.
While he puzzled over it, the carriage slowed and came gradually to a stop. After running a long while past the gate, it had finally reached its destination.
Now he could escape this seat.
Hui-seo breathed out as if in relief.
"If you feel at all unwell, say so at once."
He rose to climb down first and help his grandfather, but the rest of the words followed after him.
Given the reason for this trip to the capital, the meaning was plain: don't be stubborn, don't let some illness worsen and make trouble for everyone.
"I will keep that in mind as well."
Answering obediently, he carefully held out his hand to his grandfather. His grandfather, who had been watching Hui-seo with an unreadable gaze, silently took his hand and climbed down from the carriage.
"My lord, young master."
Once Hui-seo had fully climbed down and stepped back, the steward — led over by the coachman — came out to greet them.
"Was your journey comfortable?"
"A-beom…!"
Hui-seo's face lit with gladness as he looked at the man his grandfather had sent along with his brother on his own trip to the capital.
"It's been so long. Have you been well?"
"My, young master! I've been well, very well. And you've grown so much I hardly know you, young master."
The steward welcomed Hui-seo, whom he had not seen in ten-odd years. The little child who hadn't even reached his chest had grown this tall, meeting his gaze — it struck him as novel and marvelous.
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