Chapter Text
If Goo Hae-ryung were capable of embarrassment, no doubt she would be embarrassed by now.
It was, after all, probably technically the most embarrassing thing she’d ever done, at least if you counted real social embarrassment that meant something to your audience if you told people, and not the minor social faux pas of a small child uncertain how to survive in a world that suddenly seemed to have it out for her and hers.
This, on the other hand, is actually embarrassing, by any reasonable standard, and what’s worse is that she keeps doing it and handing it to the person who has the greatest potential to expose her to embarrassment about it: Officer Min U-won.
It’s fortunate, then, that she’s not actually reasonable. She doesn’t feel particularly embarrassed as she does it, and as she keeps doing it.
It’s only when she’s finally, officially caught that it really sinks in: this is the most embarrassing moment of her life. This, right here.
She’s not even sure when she first wrote it, doodling in the edges of her sachaeks, forgetting he would read them eventually.
Perhaps it was that first day, when she realized that the extremely attractive official she’d daydreamed about ever since she first saw him (well, not constantly, but enough to have a momentary surge of interest when Jae-kyeong told her she was going to get married, wondering if there was any magical way it might be him—she’d clearly been reading too many of those silly romance novels) was in fact her senior.
Perhaps it was when he insisted on their right to be present in the royal meeting, bringing all four of them to watch and learn at the most important event of the day—and stationing her right by his side, as if she belonged there.
It was definitely by the time he handed them the face book and told them to memorize it.
It was just a harmless little fantasy: there was no way a man that handsome, accomplished, and intelligent hadn’t had dozens of women throw themselves at him, and besides, she wasn’t here to get a husband. She had literally run away from her own wedding to take the exam. She should be grateful that he was clearly ignoring the notes in the margins, calmly returning her sachaeks to her with a comment here and there about how she could improve the efficiency or the quality of her work.
“Don’t list every single thing the prince does. Look for more inclusive verbs: you don’t need to say ‘took a step’ and ‘took another step’ when you can say ‘walked,’ or ‘paced.’”
“Develop a shorthand for the major players: you don’t need to write out ‘Royal Eunuch Heo Sam-bo’ every time, if he’s always there. We can expand it out later, for the administrative record and the annals.”
“Don’t just avoid opinions because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s inefficient: if you’re saying what you think of something, you’re not writing down the next thing that happened.”
Then there comes the killing blow, the final offhand mention that tells her he has to have noticed. It’s not that she thought he might have missed it; he’s too good at his job, too thorough for that. But she could still hope, until the time he takes her aside and mentions this.
“Take a moment to jot down things you think will be important later but aren’t yet—like the books he’s reading or the tools he has at hand. That way you can recall them later without having to peer over at a title or remember a term.” This itself would have been fine, but as she’s thanking him for the advice he cocks an eyebrow. “That is, after all, the purpose of the margins.”
She does not blush. She is, after all, used to being thought shameless. But she can’t maintain eye contact, not immediately. Perhaps that’s why she doesn’t notice that he’s leaning forward until the offending sachaek is already under her nose, the incriminating words right there in black and white.
“For instance, right here you clearly had the space to note down precisely which poet Prince Dowon read from for three hours.” He points at the blank space next to the words, which only draws her attention to them more clearly:
Apprentice Historian Min Hae-ryung.