← A Fate Tied by a Single Thread
Chapter 11
“I should like there to be no more of this after today.”
“I apologize, my lady. As I told you at first, it was work for a single day. I am grateful enough that you took it on.”
A royal wedding ceremony had to go through a very complicated process. Under normal circumstances, he would have had to devote himself to education day and night right up to the wedding, but the prince of Seon was a Noble Consort in name only.
The prince was to hold the most meager wedding ceremony possible in the imperial palace. Even so, the nominal duties had to be settled.
The prince could receive no education either from his own family or from an aged senior court lady, so the lady had taken the teacher’s place. Though it was being rushed through haphazardly, the head eunuch was more than satisfied with merely keeping up appearances.
But unlike the head eunuch, who wore a light smile as if to say it was fine, the lady still had her face stiffly set.
“Head Eunuch. As one who serves as His Majesty’s hands and feet, are you not ashamed?”
She was a lady with a talent for making one reconsider one’s own faults with only a slight raising of her voice. The tense head eunuch swallowed dry saliva and looked back over his past. But before the head eunuch could review his words and conduct, the lady poured out her words as if she had been waiting.
“His Majesty’s favorite boy, who knows not his own station! You should not have called me, Head Eunuch, but should have shown the courage to gouge out the favorite boy’s eyes, cut off his hands, and drive him out on His Majesty’s behalf. Have you not thought what stain might fall upon His Majesty’s dignity! What will history record in days to come!”
“”Ah…”
Only then did the head eunuch understand why the lady was angry, and he let out a gloomy groan.
The reason Lady Bongbo had been chosen as the teacher for the prince’s education, which was to be kept secret, was that she was unconditionally on the emperor’s side.
The lady was a person who could do anything for the emperor. She would surely have volunteered herself, saying that even if the emperor massacred all the people, His Majesty must have a reason.
But even for a lady who followed the emperor for that purpose, the emperor had already sealed in silence the remedy heaven had told him. For that reason, the details could not be told even to the lady.
A male consort! No matter that it was for use as a curse-bearer, taking a man as a consort was an impossible thing. How could one defy the harmony of yin and yang and the providence of nature?
Moreover, if the reason for taking a male consort were revealed, the dignity of the emperor and the Retired Emperor would fall to the ground, and it was plain as day what would become of the Won Empire’s good name.
That the curse of a mere vassal state, destroyed, was aimed at the Son of Heaven of the Won Empire must not be known to anyone.
The fewer who knew the truth, the better. One never knew where words might leak out. And so the head eunuch had…
“His Majesty went out in disguise and took in an attendant boy, and he liked watching the child’s antics. Had he not sent away the Empress and Concubine Yeon and been steeped in sorrow ever since… But that child was quite charming and made him smile. Yet whether he took His Majesty’s favor for feelings of love, even after being sent to the cold palace to correct his manners…”
Out of regard for their past affection, he had not cast him out but imposed the punishment of sending him to the cold palace, yet the attendant boy did not come to his senses and kept begging to become a favorite concubine. The soft-hearted emperor had no choice but to placate him roughly. Since he had no choice but to ask a trustworthy person whose mouth was heavy, to pretend to educate him suitably. That was precisely the excuse the head eunuch had made.
Making the prince of Seon into a streetwalker was for the sake of disguising his identity. He was not an outstanding beauty, but he was the owner of an appearance that strangely kept drawing the eye, and because a story just like this had been written in the erotic novel he had read the day before, the head eunuch had displayed a formidable acting ability.
Since the head eunuch was, to the bone, the emperor’s man, it was only natural that he thoroughly removed the emperor from the excuse. A prince whose name he did not even know, and whose life would soon end, was not something to worry about, however he was treated in the excuse.
In any case, left alone, he was a man who would die in a hundred days. Even rising to the rank of Noble Consort would be but a moment, and the story that the prince of Seon had died taking the emperor’s curse in his stead would be buried thoroughly in secrecy.
“Hmm…”
Recalling what excuse he had made, the head eunuch let out an ambiguous hum, then, like a person trying to smooth over his own blunder, put on a slippery smile and bowed his head.
“I am sorry. I cannot lift my head before your loyal counsel, my lady… That boy’s stubbornness is so notorious that—”
you see…”
“So it seems.”
At the head eunuch’s answer, given coaxingly as if to soothe her feelings, the lady shortened her words, as if displeased. Whether to change the subject, she looked up at the darkened sky and opened her mouth.
“The hour has already grown so late. His Majesty…”
“He said he would go out in disguise with General Kang Shin.” The lady, who well knew the emperor’s wandering ways, showed a slightly regretful air, but it was already rather late to wait for someone whose return was unknown. After exchanging light evening greetings with the head eunuch, the lady left, promising another day.
***
In the old, shabby cold palace, a sorrowful crying that seemed about to break off yet never did rang out. In the dark room where not even moonlight could enter, Heesa’s state was a mess, lying face down with his trouser hems rolled up above his knees because his calves, red and swollen, stung.
Heat had risen so that his face was entirely red, and his eyelids were puffily swollen from crying until the skin around his eyes was raw. His inner jacket was soaked with cold sweat.
Though the beating was over, the fear and pain remained. His calves, hot as if on fire, hurt even when he stayed still, and the punishment, which he had thought would grind his legs to pieces, was itself a great fear merely to recall.
Stamping his feet at pain like his skin being torn, rubbing his calves, collapsing powerlessly again and again, still the lady wielded her switch, telling him to swear to leave His Majesty. With his mouth stopped by last night’s hasty vow, Heesa had no answer he could give.
The first harsh beating he had ever suffered ended only when the thin, hard switch broke in two.
The sun had already sunk darkly. The lady, throwing the broken switch carelessly into the yard, muttered as if to herself toward Heesa, who collapsed and wailed as if crumbling.
“Tough thing.”
And so, even after the sound of the door closing and the great gate being bound again with iron chains, Heesa, who had lain face down on the main wooden floor weeping for a long while, barely crawled on all fours back into the room.
The wronged feeling at having been beaten until the switch broke and his calves swelled welled up and became tears, and his situation, of knowing nothing at all about why he had come to the Won Empire even after this, became tears out of pity for himself.
The words, fragmented by fear and pain and still unconnected, were still unknown.
His Majesty the Emperor! Why he had been treated as the favorite concubine of His Majesty, whose sleeve he had never once brushed, why he had been mistaken for a lowborn harlot, for what reason he had been shut in the cold palace, and why, contrary to General Kang Shin’s words that the Empire needed him, he had to read a book about love-making between men.
“Huh, uh… Uh…”
No matter if he thought a hundred days over questions no one would answer, he could never realize the answers.
Heesa bit his lower lip with his teeth, half swallowing the great sorrow that had nearly escaped. He felt the fishy taste of blood and a pain as if his lip would fall off.
It was because he had bitten his lip so much while being beaten with the switch. In the end, Heesa burst into loud sobs.
Loneliness pushed Heesa further into the depths of sorrow. Wronged, frustrated, sad feelings lodged hard in the middle of his chest and showed no thought of coming out no matter how much he wept and shouted.
He wanted to go back to his hometown. He missed his nursemaid. He missed even the secluded detached palace where no people came. He only wanted, without a single thought, to greet ordinary days in his own quiet palace, familiar as it was.
“Uh, huuh, uh, uh…”
Crushed by a terrible loneliness, Heesa, who only wept loudly, did not notice the moonlight brightly lighting the room.
Gripping the holed paper door, the guest who looked down at Heesa with a stiffly hardened face gestured with his eyes to the man standing behind him. General Kang Shin, who looked at the long wounds on Heesa’s calves as if bewildered, belatedly nodded.
The man quickly knelt on one knee. A gentle touch wrapped around Heesa’s shoulder. At the careful shaking touch, as if to say look here, Heesa lifted his face, which had been buried in the bedding. His eyes, swollen and raw with tears, found the man.
“…Huh, uh…!”
It was the face of the only person in the Empire who had been kind to him. It was as if a soft breeze were blowing
through his chest, which had been cold. Heesa twisted his face wretchedly and threw his arms around the man’s waist.
“”M-my lord, huu, hwaa…!”
The man reflexively embraced Heesa, who threw himself at him with his whole body. A firm arm wrapped around Heesa’s back.
In the man’s broad, warm embrace, Heesa burst into tears as if his breath might stop at any moment, like a child who had lost its parents and found them again.
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