Chapter 22
With growing franticness, Haewon had searched the house for the better part of the day, yet her book of letters remained missing. It wasn’t the first time she had misplaced it, but this time, unease prickled at her.
Returning to her room, she stood with her hands on her hips and stared in confusion. Where had she put it?
A smudge of bright yellow winked at her from beneath the low-legged writing table.
She walked over and picked it up, the petal crumbling as she handled it.
It was one of the many she had left pressed between the pages of her book.
Then she surveyed the room and found another abandoned beside Yeonhee’s wooden jwagyeong, the box that held small cosmetic pots and was topped with a collapsible mirror.
A hot burst of suspicion sparked in her.
At once, she turned on her heel and stalked out of the house, past the rows of large brown oongi crocks packed with fermented soybean pastes, soy sauce and pickled vegetables.
She followed the voices to the kitchen yard, where she found her mother and Jade washing a small mountain of dallae, wild chives with red dirt clinging stubbornly to the tiny bulbs and stringy greens.
Yeonhee sat on the nearby raised veranda, frowning into the small mirror in her hand.
“I’ve already tried painting in my brows. I look even sillier now.”
“Yeonhee-yah.” Haewon approached her youngest sister. “Did you, perhaps, see my book of letters? The one I told you to never touch?”
“I asked Jade for brows shaped like willows leaves but instead they look like—like long, long spider legs.”
“You kept saying your brows weren’t thin enough. Anyway, they will grow out, as I’ve been reminding you since yesterday,” Jade said calmly, then motioned at Haewon. “Your second sister is asking you a question.”
“Yeonhee—” Haewon reached for her, but her little sister promptly pushed her hand aside.
“Eomeoni,” Yeonhee whined, turning to her mother. “Do I really look strange? Does it look like I have no eyebrows from here?” She stood and took a few steps back. “Please tell me it doesn’t look so awful, or I will die of mortification—”
“Oh, never mind how any of you look!” Mother snapped, violently washing the spring greens.
“I am still exceedingly shocked and astonished. In fact I have never been more surprised! I heard just this morning from Mistress Jongsan, who was informed by Old Lady Mengbi, that Mistress Shinkyung—Mistress Shinkyung!—has secured a match for her eldest daughter!” She thrashed the sprouts in the water.
“And her daughter is four years older than Jade! Indeed, it seems to me Jade will never get married. Our family is ruined. So it will make no difference whether you have brows or not!”
“Mother,” Jade began in a voice of suppressed delight. Color had risen to her cheeks, as it did whenever she thought of Young Master Byeongho. “There’s something I need to tell you…”
Haewon felt a painful pressure gathering under her rib cage. It would not matter whether the young master was enamored with Jade if her family ended up in ruins. And ruined they would be if her book of letters was discovered by the wrong person.
“Yeonhee-yah,” Haewon said in a harsh whisper. “Stop ignoring me. What did you do—?”
“They’re just letters.” Yeonhee raised the small mirror back up, but she wasn’t even looking at her reflection. She was staring ahead, and her hands were trembling. “I’m going to go fix my eyebrows. I think I can draw them better this time.”
Haewon excused herself, murmuring to Jade that she would be back soon, then pursued Yeonhee down the veranda and into their shared quarters. She’d hoped Yeonhee had gone to retrieve the journal from somewhere and toss it over to her, but instead, she sat before the cosmetics box.
It was then that a thought struck her.
“What did you mean by just letters?” she asked. “What did you do to them?”
Yeonhee, despite her bravado, had turned a shade pale. “I didn’t know it was that important.”
“What did you do, Yeonhee-yah?”
At her silence, anger thrummed loud in Haewon’s ears; it was all she could hear. “If that book is truly gone, I will never forgive you.” Her voice broke on the last few words. “You ridiculous, foolish, mean girl, where is my book?”
“I am ridiculous, foolish, and mean, and you are perfect?” Yeonhee snapped, her voice rising in defense. “You, who writes scandalous love letters to Black Lotus?”
“They are not love letters.”
“He’s a man. Many speculate he is.”
“Black Lotus is not a man—”
“But what am I saying, of course you’re perfect.” Yeonhee leaned forward with a brush in hand, drawing her eyebrows back in. “You never err. You are perfect and the whole world is a joke for you to judge and criticize. You’re better than the rest of us. That’s what you think.”
“That is not what I think—”
“And I agree: Our family is ridiculous. This entire village is ridiculous. The way they go on and on about marriage and how the greatest honor for a woman is to bear a son. Well, I’ve met women who think differently.
Women who are part of the Heretical Virgin Troupe.
They have vowed to never wed, to never bear children, because they understand that there is more to a woman’s life than—”
“I don’t care! Where are my letters?” Haewon demanded, enunciating each word.
Yeonhee sat straighter, casting a nervous glance in Haewon’s direction. Then quietly, she said, “I gave it to Young Master Wuyeong.”
“You … you gave my book to someone?” Her whole body had gone rigid, and there was a ringing in her ears, all emotion numbed. “Why would you do such a thing?”
“We both share a love for books. And he didn’t believe me, that you wrote to Black Lotus.
I showed it to him … then it started raining, and he said he knew how to preserve it.
I was hoping to go to the capital, retrieve it, and bring it back without …
without you noticing. I’ll get it back to you, I promise! ”
“Do you trust him?” Haewon pressed.
Yeonhee rubbed her fingers nervously over the brass plates that decorated the wooden box. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Never had an apology left Haewon so cold.
“I went to him yesterday. Met him at Five Willows.” Yeonhee’s voice grew small.
“He—he had agreed to return it to me then. But he acted like he didn’t even know me.
” Her eyes grew red as she blinked rapidly.
“And I thought he loved me. I truly thought he did. My world lit up whenever he called me clever; no one has ever called me clever. I wanted so badly to please him, to make him look at me the way he does when I say the right things … And then one day, he started to take a great deal of interest in you.”
Haewon stiffened. “Me?”
Yeonhee reached inside the box and desperately reorganized the items within.
“Yeonhee-yah.” Haewon crossed the room and sat before her sister, waiting for her sister to be still. For her to stop searching for diversions. “You need to tell me everything.”
Yeonhee blinked, finally drawing her hands out of the box and laying them on her lap.
“Young Master Wuyeong, while taking a meal at the inn,” she began haltingly, “had overheard strange rumors from a maid visiting the Red Lantern Inn. That Black Lotus’s most treasured possession was a set of letters from a scribe named Magpie. ”
Haewon could hardly believe her ears. “Who … who is this maid?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“What else did you two talk about?”
“When he told me about this encounter,” Yeonhee continued, “I … I told him I knew Magpie. That it was you—”
“Why would you tell him?!” Haewon cried, her voice rising a notch in horror.
“He was growing so distant! He was ignoring me most of the time, and so I hoped that telling him something shocking like this might win him back. And it did. He asked a hundred questions about you, and I was so overjoyed, I answered them all without … without thinking.”
Haewon’s stomach dropped. “So you brought him the book.”
“Just to show him! Just for a glimpse!” Yeonhee cried. “But … now…” She swallowed hard. “Now, he won’t give it back.”
Haewon sat motionless. Her letters—her very soul—were now in the hands of a dishonorable stranger.
“He could expose me,” Haewon whispered.
“He says that isn’t his intent,” Yeonhee rushed to say. “He said he’ll return the book of letters, but only if you retrieve Black Lotus’s original handwriting for him. Surely there must be stacks of it in Five Willows! Just one page, eonni, and this will all go away.”
Dread surged through Haewon. “Why is he so intent on finding Black Lotus’s handwriting? And Wol,” she added, her voice thin. “If he is after Black Lotus’s handwriting, he would know to approach Wol, too.”
Yeonhee hesitated, then forced a smile. “He’s summoned her to the Ministry of Justice, just to talk—”
“The Ministry of Justice? Is he a high official?”
“Only an inspector!” Yeonhee squeaked. “Don’t fret. Wol will tell him whatever he wants to know, and then this will all be over.”
Haewon clasped her hands together; they were trembling, yet she felt numb inside. “In short,” she said, her voice faint, “you delivered my book of letters, in which Black Lotus and I shared our deepest, most private thoughts about forbidden novels and censorship … to a literary censor.”
All Yeonhee managed to say to this was a feeble “But I didn’t know he was one at the time!”
As soon as she could that day, Haewon hurried to Five Willows, hoping that Yeonhee was all wrong. That Wol would be there. That it was all a mistake. The collar of her dress was drenched in cold sweat by the time she arrived. She bent forward, clutching the pain jabbing at her side.
“I need to—speak with the merchant—for a moment,” Haewon said through her gasps for air, glancing at Maid Boram, who sat crouched on the dirt road, bemoaning her sore legs. “You—rest here.”
Haewon staggered into the shop, and when breathing became easier, she finally approached Merchant Hyoyang. “Ajusshi, is she here?”