by June Hur
It seemed the bureau would drain the joy out of all of us until we were only shells.
* * *
“Seol! Hold the lantern higher.”
Aejung struggled to balance the clinking bottles as we walked through a small gate and stepped into the western courtyard. She kept her voice low as she said, “Officer Kyŏn is also inside. He hasn’t forgiven you for stealing his bow.”
I felt as though I’d swallowed a steaming cup of hot water. I had almost forgotten that incident, but now it returned with a fury that burned through me.
“You may think he’s a lowly officer, but how do you suppose Officer Kyŏn got his position despite his poor military skills? His family was once nobility and still has old ties to powerful families.”
“I know, I know,” I murmured.
“Senior Officer Shim”—Aejung glanced over her shoulder, as though to ensure he was not following us—“he is quite the opposite. His status is lower than Kyŏn’s.”
“Eh? He’s not a nobleman?”
“He’s a seoja, a bastard. He was prohibited from taking the exams because of his impure blood.”
I frowned, confused. Police officers were selected through the mugwa military examination, and all men were allowed to take them except for illegitimate sons. A seoja was as helpless to rise in the ranks as the most ignorant peasant. “So how did he become a military officer?” I asked.
“Inspector Han. He appealed to the commander that great talent would be wasted. You know Inspector Han’s closeness to the commander, like son and father, so how could our chief—Seol! Lantern!”
I raised it high again, the flame bright through the rice paper.
“I once overheard Officer Shim say his father has no legitimate son,” Aejung continued. “And instead of making Shim his heir, he adopted a nephew. Common enough, but still … can you imagine the pain of being denied by your own father? ’Tis no wonder he is so quiet. He keeps his gaze lowered even when speaking to us!”
He bore a mark like me, I realized. An invisible one that flared across his forehead: son of a concubine.
I should be kinder to him, I thought. Another outsider, like me.
“Officer Kyŏn is free to take the military exam as often as he wishes.” Aejung grunted. “He just doesn’t have the talent to pass it. He’s not very good at anything.”
“Except being a rat. I think he’s a rat reincarnated into human form,” I said, and when Aejung spit out a laugh, I added, “But unfortunately, he does not look like one.”
Aejung laughed harder, and I joined her, the two of us filling the empty courtyard with our conspiratorial giggling. But we immediately fell silent when we arrived at the low steps that led up to a long wooden building, the officers’ quarter, illuminated by two burning cauldrons. After climbing, I set the lantern down on the veranda and slid open the door, wood rumbling against wood. There officers lounged, legs crossed, all occupied—talking, reading, or mending uniforms. Thick cotton bedding lay sloppily folded in a corner, stacked one over the other. Black police hats hung by their silk chin straps on wooden nails.
As I helped Aejung set up the low-legged tables, I sensed Officer Kyŏn’s presence, just as I might hear the whining of a barely visible mosquito. I tried to ignore him, ducking my head and staring at the bottles and bowls, but a question drew my eyes upward: Was he still angry at me?
He watched me with a tight, displeased smile that strained across his teeth.
I bit my lower lip hard, remembering how I’d snatched the bow from him as though he were a foolish boy. I wished the earth would open and swallow me up. Honor was like life to a man, and I had taken that from him. I had shamed him before all his fellow officers.
“Impudence!” An older officer’s bellow startled me. “How dare you stare into the face of your superior?”
With just the right amount of remorse in my voice, I apologized, then ducked my head again and continued to pour wine into bowls.
“That is fine,” Kyŏn said, low-voiced.
“No, sir. I won’t allow her to treat you with such disrespect.” The older officer’s voice groveled at the feet of the far younger Officer Kyŏn. “Seol is still being trained, so one must discipline her more harshly from the start, or she’ll never learn how to conduct herself properly.”
“This creature is so thickheaded she’ll never learn.” Kyŏn emptied the bowl with a few gulps. “Pour me some more.”
I did so carefully, cautiously. But before I could move away, with a snap of his wrist, Kyŏn threw the liquid onto my face. Anger exploded in my chest, but I sat still, wine streaming down my forehead, my cheeks, dripping onto my hands folded around the bottle. A servant mustn’t express emotions, I told myself as I gritted my teeth tighter. Hide it until you’re alone. Cry and yell only when all are asleep.
As though nothing had happened, he said in a smooth voice, “I hear that Matron Kim is infuriated.”
The officers did not respond to Kyŏn and instead stared at my shame-soaked face. After a beat, the older officer asked, “The mother of that noseless victim?”
“The same. She thought she would be summoned for the corpse’s examination, but proper protocol was not observed. She has ordered a servant sent from Inspector Han’s household to receive his punishment.” Kyŏn scratched at his chin as if in deep thought. As if he were capable of it. “Perhaps I will speak with Inspector Han. I’ll suggest a servant who might be willing to save his life yet again…”
His eyes rested on me, and as they did, a thought raced through my mind. Inspector Han would not dare hurt me.
“What are you smiling about?” he demanded.
“Neh?” I asked, confused. “I’m not smiling, sir.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I am not!”
He was still for all of a second, and then he lunged forward. It all happened too quickly for me to scramble away. He grabbed my collar and dragged me, tugging so hard the fabric turned into a noose around my neck, squeezing my throat shut as I stumbled across the floor. A moment later, I was in the air, crashing down the steps and rolling onto the courtyard. Saliva tinged with coppery blood rolled in my mouth as I tried to reorient myself.
“Who do you think you are, inyeona?” Kyŏn spoke with deadly calm. He had called me many nasty things in the past, but never this, never a bitch. He was standing near the burning cauldron, his face pale with murderous rage. “Do you think that you are more than a slave just because you impressed the inspector that one time?”
My stomach sank with his every step toward me. His boots crunched, crunched across the dirt, and everything in me coiled tight, waiting for him to kick me. Instead, he crouched before me and craned his neck so that we were eye to eye.
“Learn your place.” His hand smacked me across the back of my head, so hard I saw white spots. “It is serving tea”—another smack. And he went on this way, as though trying to shove a lesson into my skull. “Not solving crime.” Smack. “Aigoo, aigoo. Look at you. So proud and arrogant!” Smack. “Who do you think you are, little girl?”
I remained on all fours, breathing shallowly as I swayed against the pressure of each strike. The back of my head burned with humiliation, and my eyes stung with tears, with an emotion I’d never felt before: hatred. If my brother were here, or even the inspector, they would have put Kyŏn in his place. But they were not here, only officers who had stepped out of the building to watch and gloat. I had no one but myself.
Officer Kyŏn raised his hand to smack my head again, but I ducked, then scrambled to my feet. “Who do I think I am?” I echoed, my voice sounding like steel, and yet my knees were knocking against each other. “I am a girl who knows how to hold an arrow steady. Don’t blame me for your inability to shoot one properly.”
He stared at me, his eyes blazing with disbelief as he stood up. “Say that again, inyeona!” he snarled, spittle flying from his mouth.
“Inspector Han said that I could ask him for anything, for saving his life. Perha
ps I will ask him to send you out of the bureau.”
“Hah!” Something like madness drifted into his large eyes, each as large as a mouth ready to devour me whole. “You think he’ll give me up for you?”
“Do what you wish with me then, if you don’t believe it. Shame me. Beat me. Slap me.” I fumbled with my uniform, then pulled out the norigae ornament and held it up to the torchlight. The amber terrapin gleamed, the tassel of blue strings swaying. “Inspector Han gave this to me, and he is a man of his word. Everyone knows that. So whether he wishes it or not, I swear to you—if you lay a hand on me, I will ruin you.”
Officer Kyŏn took a step back, then another. “There is an old saying: ‘Ilsan bulyong iho.’ ‘One mountain cannot abide two tigers.’” The words trembled out of his lips, repressed fury infused into a whisper. “You and I, Seol, one of us must go. And it will not be me.”
His gaze darted around at his spectators, all embarrassed for him. They all knew that no servant would make such a large threat if it were a lie. When he turned to me again, something shifted in the pools of his eyes.
“I was going to let it go, for Inspector Han’s sake. But now I think he doesn’t deserve my loyalty at all.” A new light burned in his eyes as he grinned. “I was in charge of collecting more testimonies and found my way to a drunkard at the inn who saw it all.”
I stood my ground, still clutching the norigae, my only source of safety. I was safe, I convinced myself. Inspector Han would take my side—
“Inspector Han was the blue-robed man who crossed paths with Maid Soyi. Isn’t it strange that he didn’t mention this encounter? Like he had something to hide?”
My pulse beat faster, a franticness dizzying me. “Y-you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You think you know something?” he hissed. “Everything’s in your head, it’s all an illusion. And I’ll make sure to smash it for you. It’ll do you good.”
A plump raindrop splattered onto the earth, and Kyŏn must not have thought me worth getting drenched for; he at once slithered away for shelter. It was then that Aejung rushed to my side, gingerly touching my elbow as she whispered, “Seol-ah, let’s go.” But I stood still. More drops splashed against my neck. Then the rain came in gusts, pounding the earth. The flaming torches hissed and threw my world into darkness.
SIX
GRAY CLOUDS LURKED in the sky, the streets muddy from yesterday’s rainfall. Furnace-hot humidity left me so sweaty that everything stuck to my skin—dirt, strands of hair, my dress, more dirt. The heart-pumping anxiety made it worse. I spent the entire morning looking over both shoulders. Kyŏn’s gang of police officers followed me with their eyes, their stares prickling my shoulders, tugging at the hair on my skin.
Inspector Han was the blue-robed man. Officer Kyŏn’s words rattled in my head. He crossed paths with Maid Soyi.
A drunkard at the inn saw it all.
“The inn,” I whispered. Even Woorim, my new friend, had pointed to the inn as the crossroad of information. Maid Soyi must have run to Madam Song to ask if she or her customers had seen her mistress.
“Always daydreaming, never working.” The chief maid’s voice startled me out of my thoughts. “Do you need another beating? Go on, now! The damos are all searching for you. It is time for Commander Yi’s afternoon tea with his guest.”
A few moments later, despite the weight of reluctance rolling in my chest, I traveled through the courtyard as quietly as a passing shadow, following behind the other damos. Each of us carried a tray, and mine held side dishes neatly arranged: thinly sliced marinated pork, finely cut fruit, soft persimmons, and spice-mixed stir-fried vegetables. The dishes rattled as I tapped my finger impatiently against the side of the tray. The answers proving Kyŏn a liar were out there somewhere, answers that’d prove that Inspector Han had nothing to do with the blue-robed man who crossed paths with Maid Soyi. Yet here I was, bound to my role as a tea server.
Still, my steps remained quiet as we entered the guest room, filled with the low rumbling of male voices.
Commander Yi sat with legs crossed, the folding screen behind him. His dark beard hung from his chin, long and stringy. Eyebrows slashed across his face, flaring up at the ends. He would have appeared intimidating even without his purple scar.
The commander’s guest was not handsome, but striking in appearance. He had slender, willow-leaf brows, and his fox eyes peeked from a face of sharp angles, reminding me of a poet of sorts. He was certainly dressed to suggest a life of leisure, clad in a lightweight and sleeveless outercoat of jade green, worn over a long robe of white ramie, a thin blue cord tied around the waist.
We served the gentlemen, and then the other damos and I withdrew to kneel by the wall, our heads bowed. We were invisible. We usually heard everything, but today their conversation slid off me, like rain rolling off the eaves of a roof.
Only two things I remembered:
First, the guest’s name was Scholar Ahn. He was twenty-one winters old, and he was a tutor to the Lady O’s little brother.
Second, Ahn had asked a thousand questions, and those thousand questions had all been about the murdered Lady O. As a family friend, he was most concerned about the progress of the investigation.
Once we were dismissed, we waited outside the guest room on the veranda, in case the commander or his guest needed anything else. We also made sure, as the chief maid had instructed us, to be out of hearing distance, and to stand as still as a table or a chair, our heads bent in a position that said, We dare not be noticed.
But my mind refused to stay still. I was already planning out the route I would take to the inn.
* * *
I never quite knew to whom I was begging, but urgency drew a prayer to my lips. Please let there be answers here.
I stood wringing my hands before the inn, a thatched-roof building enclosed by a low brushwood gate. People sat on the platform in the yard, fanning themselves and smoking pipes. This place was both an inn and a tavern. Per custom, lodging and stables were free, money exchanged only for food and drinks.
“Jumo! Jumo!” a man called out for the tavern owner, shaking an empty bottle, and when no one answered, he yelled in a melodic voice, “Madam So-o-o-ong!”
A middle-aged woman appeared with a tray of wine bottles, her hair braided into a coil secured by a pin, decorated with red glass that winked at me. As she served her guests, I tried to examine her more closely. I’d met Madam Song once before when I’d gone around showing strangers the sketch of my brother; I’d be able to recognize her. But before I could catch a better look, she disappeared into the backyard kitchen. I sat down on the platform in the yard and craned my neck from side to side, hoping to see her return soon.
“Are you here from the police bureau?” a voice called out.
I turned to find the drunks and wastrels watching me, the lone girl sitting on the platform cluttered with low-legged tables, cups and bottles of rice wine, and bowls of either steaming rice or stew. An aged man in a dusty white garment waved, his hair tied in a topknot, his long beard a tangle of gray and yellow-stained white. He was sitting cross-legged behind a table to my left. “Pour me a drink and I will tell you whatever you wish to know. You may have seen me before. I was a clown famous for my storytelling. Unfortunately,” he added with a dramatic sigh, a rush of alcoholic breath sweeping into my nostrils, “I got kicked out of my traveling troupe of performers.”
For drinking too much? I thought as I slid around so that I sat before the low-legged table. Even closer to him now, I had to hold my breath as I picked up a bottle and poured him another drink. “I came because I hear Madam Song knows everything about the goings-on here in the capital.”
“Oh, she does know many things. Everything except for a certain man’s heart.” His lips twitched as though they were itchy—perhaps to gossip.
“Councillor Ch’oi, you mean,” I said.
“So you have heard the rumor!”
“Not really.”
/> “Well, well, well. Let me tell you a story, a tale of passion and betrayal—”
“Thank you, but a quick summary will do.” I looked around the courtyard, hoping to spot Madam Song. “I can’t stay long, sir.”
He swatted my request aside, as if it were a fly. “As I was saying, this is a love story between a high official and a gisaeng who never smiled. He was a competitive man, Councillor Ch’oi, and when he learned of all the men who had tried and failed to make her smile, he took hold of the challenge with the determination of a general bent on conquering a kingdom. After months and months of sharing with her all the jests he could think of, he fell in love with her, slowly but surely. Then one day, unable to withhold his feelings anymore, he confessed his love to her.”
“And that was when she smiled?” I guessed.
“No, she never did smile. Instead, he made her cry enough to fill the entire sea. They love each other still, even after twenty years. I see the councillor riding by, now and then, just to ask about her health, about her day. And I see such passionate longing in his eyes. But she was the one to end their affair, all to become an innkeeper’s wife.” He snorted. “What a prize this place must be, eh?”
“So she loved the innkeeper more than the councillor,” I observed.
“Aigoo, she loves no one more than Councillor Ch’oi. After she left the House of Bright Flowers, too old to stay there and too stubborn to ask the councillor for help, she simply had nowhere to go.”
“No family?”
“Her family sold her to a gisaeng school when she was a child.”
“Oh…” I’d heard of gisaeng schools, places where girls as young as eight were taught to sing, dance, play music, read, and write. They grew up without mothers or fathers, their tears wiped away with promises of gigantic mansions filled with servants—but only if they could become the mistress of a rich man’s heart.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “If Madam Song and the councillor love each other, why did she choose to become an innkeeper?”
