Chapter 5
Little in life surprised Seojun.
His days followed a monotonous rhythm, each one blending into the next, like an endless, unchanging landscape.
But when he found the girl hiding behind the folding screen, wide-eyed and ghostly pale, a jolt of shock struck him.
Like the time he’d been thrown from his horse, slammed to the ground, winded and breathless. One could never brace for such moments.
“What are you doing there, Seojun?” Byeongho called out.
Seojun regained his composure. There was utter terror in the eyes of the girl before him. A look he had witnessed before in his own sister.
“Nothing,” Seojun replied, moving away from her. “Nothing at all.”
He tried to ignore her as he stared blankly out the window, though his attention kept slipping back to the screen. Why was she hiding? Surely there were only two reasons for anyone to hide: She was either seeking safety, or spying.
A moment passed by. Tension locked his shoulders, his every limb.
He could try ignoring her; it would be far simpler to do so … but he had never mastered the art of looking away, of brushing aside matters that bothered him. And she very much bothered him. He was much too aware of her—he could sense her anxiety burning through the screen.
Seojun ran a hand down his face and glanced around at his peers, who were lost in an impassioned debate about whether the printing quality of Joseon or Qing books was superior.
“Books made in Joseon are heavier compared to books from Qing,” Byeongho observed, flourishing his fan. “One really can’t lie down and read, and we’re forced to sit upright. Some of you argue that such a posture makes you more moral, but heavens, I should love to read while lying down—”
“Gentlemen,” Seojun murmured.
The chatter stopped at once and all eyes turned to him.
“The weather is pleasant today,” he continued calmly, wearing his mask of perfect indifference.
He cast a quick glance at the screen, which he swore had trembled again.
“Let us move the discussion out to the pavilion. Byeongho, didn’t you mention earlier that you fancied some music and poetry reading outdoors? ”
“Yes…” Byeongho idly aired himself with his fan. “I meant in the summer—”
“The day is fine. Let us all proceed outside.”
The young gentlemen exchanged glances and peered past him out the window.
They seemed to be simultaneously observing the stray blossoms on otherwise bare branches, trembling in the chilly gust of wind.
But one did not disregard a member of the Munhwa Yu clan, the son of a leading Noron faction leader.
To disagree with him was unwise; to argue, unthinkable.
Everyone exited the chamber.
Seojun strode out, feeling the woman’s gaze still prickling his back. He didn’t understand why he was assisting her, but he couldn’t dislodge the thought of his sister from his mind, similarly hiding in the women’s quarter for a second year straight, too afraid to face the unkind world.
Or perhaps the girl in hiding wasn’t even a woman.
“Perhaps it was a dokkaebi,” Seojun muttered under his breath as the doors slid shut, “playing tricks on me.”
“What’s that?” Byeongho replied, then added with a good-natured grin, “You’ve only said ten words since your scolding. Did you just utter your eleventh?”
Seojun couldn’t form a response, still too disoriented.
For a moment, he considered returning home, but his manservant—who had joined him here after feeding and washing the mutt as requested—was nowhere to be found.
It occurred to him, too, that if he left the House of Bright Flowers now, he would only be met by his father’s lectures on his return home.
Abandoning his party at the pavilion, Seojun wandered past the lantern-lit courtyard and out into the garden, where shadows had deepened as purple clouds drifted across the brilliant fuchsia sky.
Flowers perfumed the air, and the sound of music and laughter faded into the back of his mind as his gaze strayed over to the open window.
It was the one he’d stared out of moments ago, while his acquaintances had discussed forbidden books.
He froze as realization dawned on him: The girl had heard everything.
If she repeated what she knew …
You are too fearful, Byeongho would have insisted, brushing aside any concern with a wave of his fan. The censorship was reinforced two times already, and the police never bothered once to raid a single shop!
But Byeongho didn’t understand. Times had changed, and Seojun had sensed a new, growing fervor in the royal court that was determined to root out all subversive thinking.
While Seojun held no official position himself, his father was the Minister of Justice—not directly in charge of censorship, but the one who determined punishments. And his father’s acquaintances often stopped him in the street for idle conversation, uncaring of how much they let slip.
Such as how the king would not be so forgiving this time.
His Majesty believes that to eliminate unorthodox teachings, one such official had shared with him, we must first eliminate trivial literature.
What disturbed Seojun most was all the uncertainty. Not one reader or writer knew if the threat was real, if the punishments would truly be harsh.
Some, like Mistress Wol of Five Willows, had taken every precaution at Seojun’s warning—keeping her secret book-lending shop hidden, allowing only trusted patrons through.
Then there were Byeongho’s friends at the House of Bright Flowers, speaking freely of novels and the ban, convinced the government wouldn’t be able to control the situation even if the king did forbid fictional writing.
But history, he knew, repeated itself. And the last wave of censorship under the previous ruler, King Yeongjo, had been a bloody one.
Seojun gripped his hands tight behind his back, walking the grounds, hoping to outpace the building sense that calamity loomed in Joseon’s future. That the ban on fictional writing was a signal for worse things to come—
His thoughts stilled.
Light, quick footsteps sounded from across the garden, and when he looked, he spotted a stray figure hurrying through the shadows. And to his horror, he realized she was coming straight toward him.
He took a hesitant step back but she was before him too soon, her features illuminated by the light of the pink sky.
There was nothing extraordinary about her.
She had a straight nose, thin lips, and a pair of ordinary brown eyes in an angular face.
She was very common looking, passably pretty at most.
“Thank you, nauri.” The stench of liquor rose from her clothes.
He held back a grimace and took a swift measure of her.
By her veil and the silk of her dress, she was either a gisaeng or a lady—he assumed the latter.
No gisaeng would wear a castoff with ink-stained cuffs, an outdated jeogori jacket, and a hem worn thin.
It was indeed a rare sight, finding a respectable woman in a gibang house, but not unheard of.
“You were the girl in hiding,” Seojun observed.
“I was.” She dipped her head. “Thank you for assisting me.”
“There’s no need to thank me. It seemed a predicament of your own making.”
A muscle twitched in her jaw, but she kept her lashes lowered, gaze fixed on the ground. “It wasn’t of my own making. But thank you nevertheless.” She shifted, about to take her leave.
“There were voices outside the window earlier. Your sister, I presume,” he said coolly, watching as the line of her shoulders tensed. “Did you bring her here?”
She didn’t answer, but he saw a flicker of hesitation. He pressed on. “It is your duty to keep your younger sister from falling into such impropriety. Instead, you’ve encouraged her. Allowed her to indulge in a place where no respectable woman would venture—”
“I am a complete stranger to you, and yet you speak very plainly,” she said, her face flushed, her jaw tightened.
And then—much to his astonishment—she looked up.
Her eyes lit with a glint of steel, and a smile tugged at the corners of her lips.
“But let me assure you, nauri, that protecting my sisters has been my duty for eighteen years.” She tilted her head a little.
“I was also taught never to shrink from defending myself when wronged. And you, nauri, are very wrong about me indeed.”
She turned on her heel, walking too sharply for someone who was intoxicated. Perhaps she hadn’t been drinking after all.
Just as he opened his mouth to summon her back—he had more questions—she stopped and whirled around.
“Oh, and one more thing, nauri,” she said. “You claimed that Black Lotus and those like her will not be remembered by the ages.”
He felt ice trickle through his blood at the mention of Black Lotus. Of himself. A pseudonym he’d thought of while staring outside his study room, watching lotuses bloom from dark, muddy waters. “I did…” he managed to say.
“Well, I beg to differ.”
He feigned a look of indifference, even managing to arch a brow. “You beg to differ?”
“Black Lotus’s work speaks to justice and social reform. It is not frivolous—”
“So you are a reader of forbidden novels, too,” he murmured, glancing around to ensure that they were alone.
He dropped his voice low, his words for her ears alone.
“His writings are of a most unremarkable quality. Any attempt at conveying something meaningful is buried under vulgar tales about nothing of real importance.”
“Very well, you say her books are completely frivolous,” she whispered. “I suppose they are, in that sense.”
Her admission stung. “See, you admit it, too—”
“And they are awe-inspiring, beautiful, and”—her voice trembled—“and they bring me such joy!”
Everything in him quieted at those words, and the way she had spoken them. The deep love, the reverence. She spoke with a passion that could set the stars ablaze.
“Perhaps history will not remember Black Lotus. But I will remember her.”
Seojun never lost his composure, yet he felt his grip slipping. His voice rasped slightly as he said, “I’m not sure you ought to be declaring in public that you are a reader of such books.”
She cast him a disdainful glance. “Everyone reads novels these days.” Her eyes glittered in the skylight, like stars on a darkened sea. And then she mumbled under her breath, so quietly he was certain the words weren’t meant for his ears, “Only the miserable sort does not.”
He didn’t know whether to laugh or scowl as she stalked off, shoulders straight, bearing an aura of a most proper young lady.
It was then that he noticed one of her shoes was missing, her socked foot stained with blood.
Then he noticed the bundle of a second veil, which, he realized, she had been clutching behind the screen.
She must have remained to retrieve it for her sister, who had fled.
This young woman had not come for entertainment. She had run here, so fast that not even a missing shoe had caught her notice.
He discreetly moved to the little side gate, staring out at the open road cloaked in the growing darkness. He watched as she joined three other women. The veils shrouding the girls fluttered, like an illusion that hid the mischievous spirits underneath.
And then they were gone.
He had a feeling she would never forgive him for that slander, but that was of no significance. He doubted they would ever meet again.