Chapter Text
Bong Hwan-ah,
In this life, I know intimately of animosity.
I see it in the twitch of Kim Jwa Geun’s lips when he orders for the boy in the well to be left to die, and I am terrified.
I see it in His Late Majesty’s eyes the evening I walk into the lake, and I am enraged.
We see it together on orabeoni’s face, when we refuse to give ourselves to him, and I am heartbroken.
I feel it burning hot under my skin on the nights when sleep eludes me, and I push away thoughts of plunging under the cool, crisp water—of sinking deep into the darkness never to return. I drown instead in resentment.
But somehow, I continue to breathe in air, and I choose absolution.
“Punitive justice,” you tell our king once, “just makes everything worse.”
So in the year of the Black Water Rat when our Yung Jun is born on soseol, I inform His Late Majesty that I will be bringing the Grand Prince to see his uncle.
Eight months Byeong In has spent waiting for his punishment, confined in a small hut on the outskirts of the city. “He has committed treason,” our king reminds me.
“I have not forgotten,” I smile mildly. In my mind I recall the shock in orabeoni’s eyes when our arrow hits him, the hurt that twists quickly into wrath. To this day, the image is as clear as the stark Summer sky.
We take Yung Jun the day before daeseol, on a morning so cold that the capital is frozen silent. The streets, usually bustling with activity, are devoid of a single soul. Still, the little life in my arms radiates so much heat I begin to feel sticky in the enclosed litter; by the time we reach our destination I am thankful for the chill that hits my cheeks.
Orabeoni is surprised to see us, nearly snarling when he spots his nephew. For moments Byeong In simply stares, and I feel the phantom touch of calloused fingers around my neck—
When I do not move, His Late Majesty guides me inside and onto the floor, and I clutch our Yung Jun so tightly to my chest he begins to fuss.
“Why come here,” Byeong In growls, “in the cold, with—”
I don’t know— I think bitterly, I don’t know anything, anymore. My heart pounds in my ribcage, and I swallow the taste of acrid iron. “We thought you’d like to meet him,” I say softly out loud to the man who once held us over the edge of a cliff because he could not have us, “Yung Jun. Yi Yung Jun.”
“And now I have,” Byeong In responds with his eyes fixed on our king, “so you should go, before the babe catches its death.” A tendril of cold dread climbs up my spine, and I flinch.
His Late Majesty rises from where he is seated next to me, and I drop my gaze down to Yung Jun, to a face that does not yet know sin. “I will give you some privacy,” our king states blandly before I hear the door open and shut again.
“Come hold him,” I suggest when Byeong In stays standing by the exit. I am amazed that I manage to sound steady; that my voice has not evaporated.
“Your Royal Highness,” his words are rough and terse, “Please do not ask such unbearable things of me.”
I bite back on a reflexive scowl, watching our son’s eyes flickering with curiosity around the room. “Orabeoni,” I say firmly, defiantly, “come hold him.”
For several minutes I wait patiently in silence as Byeong In stubbornly looks only at the floor, his hands clenched tight at his sides. As I rock the babe in my arms, I remember a time from long ago, back when orabeoni and I were only children.
It seems so far away, this memory of mine: just shy of a decade old, and yet—it feels like a lifetime away.
Certainly, the So Yong and Byeong In from that era are dead; one day, they play hide-and-seek for the last time before parting ways for good, their hopes and aspirations tucked away in a corner of a secret garden, never to be found.
Strange, isn’t it?
That we hold such elaborate funerals for the lives that were lived and then lost, but for the lives that were lost before they were ever lived, we say to ourselves that there is no use in mourning what was not meant to be.
Stranger still, every day we say an eerily nonchalant goodbye to yesterday, to the echo of our souls now buried by the sands of time; in tomorrow there is no room for the past. No graves are dug, no rites are performed, for that which will never be again.
We simply enclose our grief carefully in a coffin deep within our hearts, in a mausoleum of memories we visit only on the nights that are too quiet, and too long. When we look up at the painfully fulgent moon, round and full in the relentless dark, in its shadows we see the vestiges of days bygone.
“Orabeoni,” So Yong once begs the cousin she loves so dearly, “please—he will die because of me.” She does not know that the boy she found when she climbed into the well is the Woodcutter Prince of Ganghwa Island, nor does she know that he is destined someday to be King.
All she knows is that he does not deserve to die—and she knows that her orabeoni knows this, too. What she does not know then, is that Kim Byeong In risks his own life to save the stranger at the bottom of the well at her behest.
She does not know, not for many, many years, why her orabeoni does not come along with her Uncle when he comes to see Father for months. By the time she realizes, Kim Byeong In has decided that life is not really worth very much at all.
——
Again orabeoni acquiesces—as he always will.
He sits down across from me, and I place his nephew into his arms. “Yi Yung Jun,” I say tenderly, “Prince Byeongi.”
“—Prince Byeongi?” orabeoni asks, his face flooding with helpless wonder, “Has it already been a hundred days?”
“No,” I laugh quietly, “but that’s what he will be.” Hope, I plead that day, A glorious, gleaming hope that illuminates the tenebrous path ahead.
The man who has spent so much of his life in shadow smiles ruefully down at our son before he begins to sob, and in that moment I know that just like with the boy in the well, there is only one right choice.
“You should be afraid,” Byeong In murmurs against my palm when I place it against his cheek.
“Of what?” I know the answer, but I do not let it stop me. In this life, I know so well of fear—but I will not let it stop me.
“Of me—,” he punctuates his argument by handing me our little prince, “Why aren’t you?”
“Because,” I tell Yung Jun, because this he should always remember, “I know that my orabeoni is a good person.”
——
For almost two years, His Late Majesty adamantly laments the loss of you by himself.
He has never seen your face, and yet he looks for you everywhere: in the silver sheen of every body of water; in the glassy bottom of a drained teacup; in the depths of my eyes in the rare occasions that he meets them.
Each time he finds only an abyss of absence, and we both never feel more alone.
I know there is nothing I can say that will bring you back—so I say nothing.
I search for you too: in the clouds that frolic in the cerulean firmament; in the brief bloom of the buds in Spring; in the delicate yet daring dance of the West Wind—in all that comes and goes with vibrant colour.
I reach you in one heartbeat, and lose you in the next breath. I let you go.
In the year of the Green Wood Tiger, our king finally follows suit—he seeks within the present instead of the past. There he finds us, waiting.
“I’d like to better understand,” he says with his signature artless sincerity, “the woman who thinks of herself as Kim So Yong.”
——
When he turns ten, our Yung Jun starts to remind me of you: the way he smiles; his bold, brazen laugh; his dreams of a distant, hopeful future.
But he is not you—you are me. We are born again, one-hundred and thirty-four years from now, on a balmy day in May 1988 to two serious scholars who only ever wish for their son to be happy.
We open our eyes again right at the break of dawn, and on our first breath everything we have come to know in this last life is locked deep in the recesses of our brain; they are swept away in the ocean of hidden memories that make up all we ever have been and ever will be.
But our soul never forgets—how we loved with all our might and still Fate did not see fit to grant us mercy—and so in this next life we are ever cavalier, careful never to let others get close.
Still, for the most part, we are happy; we do as we please, and there are very few people who dare to tell us otherwise. After all, we are a free man—the only crazy, genius son of Lee Soo Jin and Jang Gil Yeong, whose talents number in the hundreds, whose skills afford him endless opportunities and allowances that escape many unlucky others.
I saw it—the shining future that awaited us—and it made me furious.
The gulf between us is a mere toss of the coin—a simple twist of a single chromosome, and yet—
In this life we are never ourselves; no matter how much we might feel that we are our own person, we are not. In childhood we belonged to Father, after marriage we belonged to His Majesty, and after his passing, we now belong to our son.
Though we have hopes and dreams, desires and aspirations—we are nothing more than a means to an end—a womb whose duty it is to produce an heir for the glory of the country.
We are the mother of the nation, and yet where you are two centuries from now, history has already forgotten our name.
Why must I wait, until I am you, to truly be?
We are not more inherently deserving in the next life, and yet our Destiny is so vastly different.
When you and I look up at the night sky, the sea of stars that bathe the galaxy in their light are the same, and yet.
When I figure out the qualifications for fairness—
I will let you know.
— Fin.