← A Fate Tied by a Single Thread
Chapter 13
First Night
Bright sunlight poured over the paper doors and into the room. Thanks to it, Heesa, who had lightly come to his senses, rubbed his cheek on the soft, sweet-smelling quilt and let out a soft kuhng sound.
It had been a sweet sleep after a long time. Moreover, even in his sleep he could feel his fever rising. He did not want to get up.
Just as Heesa was about to let his consciousness drift far away again.
…A soft, sweet-smelling quilt?
At the vivid sense of incongruity, Heesa’s eyes flew open. He saw the silk quilt covering his body.
The silk, with a smooth sheen flowing over it, decorated with painstaking embroidery stitch by stitch, plainly showed the care put into its making. Moreover, whether its inside had been stuffed with cotton, it was very cozy and warm.
“Ah…”
It was a luxury item ill-suited to the old, shabby cold palace. Heesa, fingering the end of the soft silk, thought of the person who must have covered him with the fine quilt.
Lord Yun. It must have been Lord Yun. Feeling shy for no reason, Heesa blushed and sat up. He really was a kind and good person. In a hoarse voice, Heesa murmured thank you, thank you, and slipped out of the quilt.
His movements were inconvenient because of the switch that had beaten his calves until they burst, but if he walked slowly, it was bearable.
This too was surely thanks to the ointment Lord Yun had applied.
But Lord Yun’s kindness did not end here. Opening the holed paper door, a newly laid meal on the main wooden floor was waiting for Heesa.
As if enchanted, Heesa took his seat before the table. Opening the meal cover, unlike yesterday, when he had had to divide it up himself, the setting looked as if a single meal’s portion had been decided for him. He could guess so because there were three bowls each of the same kind of food.
Moreover, whether he had anticipated the fever, there was also a bowl of medicinal decoction. Looking around in case the person who had come and gone might still be there, Heesa discovered another thing set on the main wooden floor.
A small basin was full of clean water, and beside it were a soft-looking towel and a mirror stand.
Neatly folded clothes were together with them.
Heesa, who would have begrudged even the time to rise, crawled on his knees and picked up the silk clothes. A clean-colored jeogori and trousers, and a pale sky-blue robe.
At the very same style as the clothes Lord Yun had worn, Heesa did not know what to do with himself. It felt as if a feather were tickling the depths of his chest. So good was it that Heesa’s face flushed red.
He wanted to wash cleanly and change into clean clothes. Heesa, who had not even thought of washing for the past several days, opened the mirror stand, leaving even his meal behind.
In the well-polished bronze mirror, his own face appeared. Heesa was nearly startled out of his wits, thinking he was a toad.
His eyes had shrunk to half their usual size, and his faint double eyelids had lost their line. The skin around his eyes was red and raw, scabs sat on his lips, and his cheeks were puffed up sulkily, as if swollen with peevishness.
Shocked by how different he looked from usual, Heesa recalled the night he had sobbed his eyes out before Lord Yun and General Kang Shin in exactly this state. Even imagining it was embarrassing. It might have been better to stick his nose in the wash water and drown.
Not even knowing that today’s appearance was far better than yesterday’s, Heesa scrubbed his face hard. He splashed cold water over himself for a long time until the heat flushed up by embarrassment subsided, and then, while he was at it, plunged his head right in too. Only then did the mortification seem to ease a little.
After keeping his head in the cold water for a long while, Heesa only lifted his face when his scalp grew too cold to bear. When he briskly toweled the water from his hair and face with a soft towel, he felt wonderfully refreshed.
Once he had finished changing into clean new clothes, Heesa felt so light he could have flown. The clothes fit his body exactly.
How could they fit so well when no one had even taken his measurements? Heesa buried his nose in the clothes, which smelled of nothing but having been dried crisp in the sun, and sniffed, trying hard to find some trace of Lord Yun.
Nothing good had ever happened to him in the Won Empire, but thinking of Lord Yun made him smile without meaning to. Heesa tried to erase the frightening people of the Won Empire from his mind, and layered Lord Yun over them instead.
The way he had gladly handed over a lunchbox filled with delicious food. The dimple that sank deep into only one cheek whenever he teased him mischievously. The arms that had held him kindly. The hands that had applied medicine to him with all force eased away. The kindness of keeping him company in conversation until he fell asleep….
Lord Yun was the only one who had reached out a hand to Heesa, shut up in the cold palace. He still did not know why he had come to the empire, but he had said he would tell him soon, so he could bear it.
No, what he was more curious about now was when Lord Yun would come. Even though they had met only twice, he could tell clearly that he was a good person.
“When will he come….”
Murmuring to himself, Heesa wiggled his toes and fingers. The feeling of heat gathering in his fingertips and toes and curling inward was unfamiliar, but not unpleasant.
Buoyed up, Heesa was even able to drink all of the medicinal decoction he usually hated so much, without any sweets.
***
The sky, which had been blue, turned red with sunset, and the sun set completely. The sky, where a red afterimage lingered, was dyed indigo, and then changed to a complete black.
It was a night with the moon and stars out. The emperor, in disguise, and General Kang Shin walked a road both familiar and unfamiliar.
The emperor’s steps as he strode boldly out of the main palace, without even avoiding the head eunuch’s eyes, looked somehow joyful. Watching the emperor swagger along with his hands clasped behind his back, General Kang Shin swallowed a complicated feeling.
To find the reason the emperor was so buoyed up, one had to go back to last night.
The old head eunuch, learning what trouble the misunderstanding caused by his own glib tongue had brought about, had turned deathly pale and begged forgiveness. Pouring out the whole story though no one had asked, pressing his head to the ground and begging to be killed, he had clearly expected to end with a stern scolding of a few words.
The emperor had a strong tendency to forgive someone who cleanly admitted their own fault instead of making excuses. Moreover, a mistake made by the old head eunuch, who was practically the emperor’s hands and feet, was something he might well have overlooked. Though it had produced an unexpected result, the process had plainly been done for the emperor’s sake, had it not?
But contrary to everyone’s expectations, the emperor promptly handed down a punishment: for twenty days, from early evening to late night, clean the stables. Work at his duties by day, and shovel horse dung by night. At a punishment that seemed to have been waiting for its moment, both the head eunuch and General Kang Shin were left dumbfounded.
It was plainly intended to pack the old head eunuch off to the stables and roam about freely to his heart’s content, so the head eunuch rolled his eyes and tried to offer blunt counsel.
….B-but, Your Majesty….
But the emperor did not miss this opportunity that had rolled his way for once. With the wheedling old head eunuch groveling low, the emperor’s tongue moved like a blade. To summarize the long argument that took place between the emperor and the old head eunuch, it went as follows.
“Shut up.”
“B-but, Your Majesty….”
“If you had done the job properly from the start, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“B-but, Your Majesty….”
“Would you like to shovel cow dung too, instead of horse dung?”
The guilty head eunuch shriveled up. The freedom thus won made it highly likely that his light-looking steps were no illusion.
But the general still could not understand the emperor’s intention. It was not only the prince who had heard the emperor coaxing and soothing him the previous night.
Of course, the prince’s lot was pitiable. But for the sake of the great cause, sacrifice was necessary. The Son of Heaven of the great empire, and a mere prince of a vassal state. There was no need even to weigh whose life was weightier.
That was why the general thought, even as the emperor set out now, that he would slip away by a side path at any moment. He was surely going to use the prince as an excuse to enjoy wandering freely.
But the emperor walked steadily toward the cold palace where the prince was confined. When the high walls of Nakyeong Hall began to appear in the distance, General Kang Shin fell into confusion.
“I thought his passing remark, ‘Shall I try educating the prince?’ was a joke. He isn’t even going to perform the rites, so what reason would the emperor have to teach the First Night himself? Moreover, the general remembered clearly how the emperor had shown not the slightest interest in the Thousand-Li Bride.”
But General Kang Shin set aside the many questions settled in his mind, and silently unlocked the cold palace, which he had visited that very morning to play the fairy wife.
Though he undid the iron chains as quietly as he could, when he opened the main gate, the prince, neatly dressed, had already come down to the front yard in his socks. The prince greeted him, kindly and presumptuously, daring to call the emperor by his name.
“Lord Yun!”
The general first checked whether the clothes chosen by eye fit the prince. Fortunately, his eye for size still seemed serviceable.
The prince of Seon, washed clean and dressed in fine silk clothes, looked quite presentable. It was an impertinent assessment to make of a prince, but the prince General Kang Shin had seen had mostly given off the feeling of a dung puppy abandoned on a rainy street, hoping someone would take him in.
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