Work Text:
“Who are you?”
Seo Moon-jik’s daughter smiles up at him quizzically, assessing the question. “I’m Goo Hae-Ryung?”
“Yes.” This lie sits heavy on his heart. Is it to protect her? Or himself? Is she a burden, or a gift? “And who am I?”
“Goo Jae-kyeong. My older brother.”
He nods. “Very good.” He can feel his brows creasing. It all feels like a cruel joke, but he needs to know she understands. She answers before he even asks the next question.
“We’re going to Qing. Our Father died.” There’s a flash of something in her eyes – despair and anger and fear. He hates thinking that it’s fine, it will help sell their story.
Hae-ryung tosses a glance over her shoulder at the beautiful sweet idiot behind her. “I told you - my father was a merchant. It’s not very interesting.”
“Everything about you is interesting,” the prince counters.
She pauses, and smiles – steals a moment to gather her thoughts. She’d been a merchant’s daughter for so long. Now she was a historian. She records everyone’s truth save her own, and who else could she be now but Goo Hae-ruyng? She looks at Dowon and imagines the taste of his lips, the smell of his skin. Who is she to entertain such thoughts? Well – who is going to stop her?
“Ahh, your highness, don’t be sulky. Of course, you are very beloved.” Sam-bo spreads his hands expansively. Sometimes it physically pains him that the infant he smuggled away from the palace that fateful night of the old king’s execution has grown up to be such a moody, sheltered brat. For all that, he loves him from the bottom of his heart.
“Bah. By who? No one even knows I’m alive.”
“Oh, pfft. You’re sulking because of just one girl. Do you know how many girls there are out there? Sweet girls who would appreciate you, not devious little vixens who just toy with your feelings.” Damn Goo Hae-ryung. She’d been nothing but trouble since he’d laid eyes on her. Trouble that had sparked more interest and joy in his charge than just about anything other than his books, true, but this was the other side of that coin.
“Girls who would only be sweet because I am a prince.”
“Is a prince all you are? What about Maehwa?”
He huffs. “Maehwa isn’t real.”
Sam-bo huffs right back, shaking his head. “Not real? Did you just imagine writing all those books that drive everyone wild?” Maehwa was no more true or false than Prince Yi Rim, but he couldn’t say that.
“No one can ever know. You said so yourself.”
“Bah!” Sheltered and ignorant – but it was for his own protection.
No one had ever paid Sam-bo much mind. He knows when to keep his mouth shut, and standing nearby with an infant cradled in his arms as the grieving queen fought to protect her precious grandson was certainly one of those times. He will never forget the tiny helpless thing that was put into his care.
Now, as the dowager queen draws an adult Yi Rim through the forest to perform a memorial rite at the grave of a man the prince doesn’t even know is his father, he stills his tongue once more. Dowon is no longer a child. He wonders, when the time comes to tell him the truth – who will be the one to speak?
“Good morning, grandmother.” Dowon bows low, waiting for her invitation. With a wave of her arm, she beckons him to sit.
“Ahh, Dowon, it does my heart much good to see you well.” This is not the whole truth. It brings her pain as well – she sees in him her stolen son, the life this boy should have lived, the prince he should be. But he will be king. Pain is the price she pays for hope. She smiles sincerely.
Feelings fester in Mo Hwa’s chest like an unhealed wound as she walks through the palace. How can it not remind her of everything she lost? Time stopped for her that day. Time stopped for her country. It’s not just the clothes she wears that rest uncomfortably.
And yet. She’s no one, and she glides through the courtyards on her way to a meeting with a queen. A dress and a false name are all it takes to pass unchecked – and of course, the support of Queen Dowager Yim.
Mo Hwa has never been sure if she shared her son’s visions of the future. But vengeance burns in both their breasts. It ties them together, stitched up like an incision.
There’s no bringing Seoraewon back. She burns with the desire to tear down the lies built on the old king’s dreams, but she doesn’t know if whatever comes next will make space for his vision to be made real again, for people like her to walk, proud and seen, into the future.
Who is she? Someone, Hae-ryung is sure, from Seoraewon, but her memories were too hazy. She’s always thought there must be other survivors, but Jae-Kyeong had been reticent to talk about it. Or else he’d say that if there were, it was better to avoid each other, for their own protection. Now she wonders. The physician had seemed upset to see him, and more when she’d left. There is something going on that she doesn’t understand, and doesn’t like. She sits among her things – her father’s thing – and feels unsettled, the lies of the past weighing heavily on her.
The revolution is over, such as it was, and the upheavals are still being felt. One of these is the official departure of Song Sa-hui from the Office of Royal Decrees. There is a mixed reaction from the other historians – some have been expecting her resignation since the affair with the crown prince. Others are truly surprised that she would want to leave her work. There are some who know the truth of her association with the Second State Chancellor, but they keep their lips sealed. Of course, it is Goo Hae-ryung who can’t just let it go, and the two women face each other in the laneway.
“I’ve never been a good historian,” Sa-hui says. She broke so many rules – not the least of which was sharing the daily record with the ex-Chancellor – but that’s not the real issue.
“But you could be.”
It’s meant to be an invitation. An extended hand. But Sa-hui shakes her head. “I don’t want to be.”
It was never the job she cared about. It was her path to freedom, but Min Ik-pyeong’s death cleared a different road. That and her own actions.
“You think we are alike, and in some ways maybe that is true – but I’m choosing to remove myself from the record. I will be the sole author of my life”
Hae-ryung furrows her brow, then smiles and bows politely. “In case our paths don’t cross again, I wish you a happy life.”
Sa-hui is determined, one way or another, to make one.
It’s after work. Somehow her plans to meet with Heo A-Ran and Oh Eum-Im turned into a meet up with the men of the Office of Royal Decrees, and the liquor was flowing freely. Dowon is away, exploring the world and seeking new adventures to recount in his next book, but he’ll be home soon enough.
She leans back for a moment, listening to the cheerful bickering of her friends and colleagues, and thinks about everything in her life that it took to bring her to this point: the weaving together of every written and unwritten story, every hidden truth, every protective lie. She has put herself into the story to do what she thinks is right, but she has held back even more. Whatever regrets she may have, being today’s Goo Hae-ryung could never be one of them.