“Mama, I shall come again tomorrow. Until we meet again, please stay well.”
Son Gwi-in bowed prettily and turned away. Watching the child’s retreating back as she trotted out of the rear garden holding Sang Jae-in’s hand, Wiryang murmured as if enchanted, “How can she be so adorable?”
“Young or not, she is His Highness’s concubine. Mind your idle words.”
Huian said it setting down the seven-stringed geum, and Wiryang cried out in alarm, “No, no, that is not what I meant!”
“She is still a little baby, is she not? That is all I meant. Everything she does is so cute, and everything she says is so sweet.”
Of course Huian knew Wiryang had meant nothing else. He knew he found her adorable with the same heart as his own, but there was no harm in being careful.
“When it is just the two of us it does not matter, but before others never let a careless word slip.”
At the warning Wiryang said, “Of course,” with a straight face.
“Who would I dare say such things before? As if I want to be misunderstood.” Shaking his head as if the thought were horrifying, Wiryang came up beside Huian. Wrapping the seven-stringed geum his master had set down neatly back in its silk, he said, “Anyway, I am fond of Mama Gwi-in.”
“Thanks to Mama Gwi-in, His Highness smiles often, does he not? He plays the geum often as before. And above all he often wears clothes that show his wings, and I am glad of that most of all.” Wiryang seemed to like Son Gwi-in especially for that last reason. No wonder — in Hye, the number of times he had worn wing-baring clothes in a year could be counted on one hand. And even then only briefly, when he had to attend royal ceremonies in full regalia, changing the moment he returned to Jodamheon. Wiryang had wailed, “Your wings will never grow at this rate, Mama. And they may grow even uglier,” but Huian was past the age for his wings to grow any more, and they were already too ugly to grow uglier, so he stubbornly wore only wing-hiding clothes. He had not wanted to show them. To anyone. He had not wanted to thrust the evidence of his crime before people who knew why his wings were shaped as they were, inviting their pointing fingers.
“…Son Gwi-in doesn’t know.”
Leaning his arms on the pavilion railing, Huian muttered as if to himself. Wiryang looked at his face a moment, then soon pretended not to have heard and said in a bright voice, “Speaking of which, Mama.”
“The clothes the royal atelier sent up — aren’t the ones made not to hide your wings far prettier? The robe you are wearing now suits you very well too.”
Huian glanced down at his own clothes without thinking. It was an ordinary robe of white silk. Apart from the navy silk borders on the sleeves and collar, it had no particular ornament.
“What is different from what I always wore in Hye?”
“Mama, what are you saying?” Wiryang cried as if it were absurd.
“In Hye you only ever wore simui of hemp, did you not? One white robe is not the same as another white robe.”
True to his word, unlike the simui of Hye, this robe was made of fine twill silk. And looking closely, tiny cloud patterns seemed engraved on the white silk — it looked to have taken no small labor and time to make, for all he knew.
“Now I have said something rude to the weaver.” Feeling inwardly sorry, Huian watched Wiryang, who had finished wrapping the seven-stringed geum, heave it up with an “up we go,” and told him to go back first.
“Are you not coming, Your Highness?”
“No. I mean to stay a little longer. Go on ahead.” Understanding that he wanted to be alone a while, Wiryang withdrew without a word.
Once Wiryang had left the rear garden, Huian slowly rose and perched himself on the pavilion railing. Back straight, wings spread wide and full. Closing his eyes just like that, the wind came soughing and tickled each and every feather. The exquisite pleasure of it made Huian, perversely, sad. It was a sensation he would rather never have known.
He had not known, having only ever kept them covered — but with his wings bared these past days, he could tell clearly now. Baring them openly was more comfortable than covering them with clothes. What was one more thin scrap of cloth, neither heavy nor greatly uncomfortable — he had lived over twenty years telling himself he could live on just like this, and yet in a matter of days he had grown so used to this state that covered clothes now felt stifling. And on a day like this, fine sun and fine wind, sitting with wings spread wide, he felt the relief and refreshment of one who, after crouching cramped for a long while, stretches hugely all at once.
“I mustn’t get used to this… It is time I went back to wing-hiding clothes.”
Thinking this, and yet too fond of the wind brushing his wings and stirring each plume to fold them away, he suddenly felt an unfamiliar presence behind him. Huian opened his eyes and looked back, and there, perched motionless on a rock, was a hawk, gazing at him. Its round-eyed, head-tilting stare was somehow familiar. Before he knew it, Huian greeted it with a glad face.
“Isn’t that Jingwae?”
The hawk showed no particular reaction to Huian’s words. That made it seem all the more like Jingwae, and all the less, so Huian rose, gripped the railing, and called out to the hawk on the rock.
“Come here.”
Then, as if it had understood the words, the hawk flew up and lit on the railing with a soft thump.
That made him suspicious instead, and Huian bent down, met the bird’s eyes, and asked, “Are you Jingwae?”
“If you were Jingwae, you wouldn’t mind me so well,” he said, laughing — and the hawk, staring straight at him, abruptly began preening its feathers. Seeing it go about its own business, deaf to others’ words, it did seem like Jingwae again. If it were Jingwae there would be a scar left on its wing — should he take a look? Just as he was thinking this and carefully lifting the hawk — there was a rustle of trodden grass, and Huian turned with the hawk in his arms. A tall man stood beneath the scholar tree wearing a blank-staring face. Meeting Huian’s eyes, he flinched as if startled and stepped back.
“Who are you?” Huian demanded in a low voice. “Outsiders are forbidden here.”
“Ah, I… no, this humble one… ah, no, I, that is…” The stammering man hurriedly bowed and fumbled on.
“I came to see Her Highness the Crown Princess. Hearing she was in the rear garden, I meant only to pay my respects briefly, but the hawk I brought suddenly flew off–“
At the word hawk, Huian pointed at the hawk in his arms and asked, “Is this that hawk, by any chance?”
“Eh? Ah, yes. That is right. That hawk… is mine…” The moment the man spoke, the hawk fluttered its wings, slipped from Huian’s arms, and flew straight to the man. The man naturally held out his arm and took the hawk. As he took a step forward, his eyes, hidden by the tree’s shade, caught the sunlight and glittered. The instant he saw those resplendent golden eyes, Huian swallowed in confusion what he had been about to say.
“Are you Her Highness the Crown Princess…” the man asked cautiously, having by now reached the foot of the pavilion.
Can’t you tell by looking?
He wanted to ask back, but it was no situation for that. Huian hurried down from the pavilion, stood before the man, and said, “Forgive me. Pardon my rudeness,” apologizing at once. Seeing Huian apologize, the man waved his hands in a fluster.
“No, no. I am the one who committed the rudeness of bursting in on you like this. I am sorry, Your Highness. Startling you was never my intention.”
Seeing him apologize again and again, Huian grew all the more bewildered. He was far, far from the Prince Igun Huian had imagined. He had expected a cold-featured nobleman resembling the Empress. He had thought his temperament, like the Empress’s, would belie his beautiful face and be harsh beyond measure. But no — not a single place resembled the Empress. Nor did he resemble his brother at all, either. The younger brother was a man with nothing to fear in all the world, while the elder spoke as if the whole world were frightening, stammering several times over a single word.
“First, I think we should move somewhere else.”
One could not receive royalty in such a place. Gauging the other’s temperament, Huian spoke more courteously than usual.
“And moreover, is not Prince Igun His Majesty’s eldest son and His Highness’s elder brother? If I failed to pay my respects first, and then did not even offer a cup of tea to one who came so far, that would be discourtesy to the royal house, I believe.”
And gauging the other’s temperament, he spoke more firmly than usual too. Sure enough — “Ah… very well. As you say, Your Highness.” Prince Igun, without a word of demurral, meekly began to walk, following Huian to Inyeong Palace.
Watching the man who could not even bring himself to stand beside him, head deeply bowed, trailing behind, Huian thought: truly, an elder brother with not one thing like his younger brother.
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