Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Ryu Hyeok wasn’t actually all that desperate for the imperial throne.

If he became emperor, he would do his utmost to look after the people, but if he didn’t, he had no complaints.

‘Perhaps not ascending the throne might be the path that enriches my life more.’

He couldn’t quite understand why his half-brothers coveted the emperor’s seat.

An emperor would have to rack his brains over affairs of state all day long. What was so appealing about such an exhausting position that they made such a fuss over it?

Wouldn’t it be far better to simply receive a modest princely title and live free of worry, idling about in a princely residence?

So he wasn’t particularly worried about losing his father’s favor.

His only concerns were practical ones: that his mother would grieve if he failed to take the throne, and that the brother who ascended it would never leave him alone, since he had been a leading candidate.

Most likely they would frame him for some crime and try to have him killed. That was simply what the imperial court was like.

Yet even that reality didn’t frighten Ryu Hyeok. If he died that way, he would accept it as fate.

Perhaps because he had been raised excelling in every way and lacking nothing, Ryu Hyeok had nothing he desperately wanted. Even his craving for life was faint.

Everything came to him so easily and so perfectly that life felt, in a way, dull. Grit and passion probably only come from weathering the storms of the world, but Ryu Hyeok’s era had been nothing but peaceful.

Even that was a blessing of his fate.

“I’ve dragged out this deliberation for too long. I shall decide within a fortnight. Not a few of the women who were candidates to be your wife have married into other houses while I deliberated, so any more delay and you will miss your marriageable age.”

“Haha, is that so? Have the candidates been narrowed down at all?”

“Yes. I’ve narrowed them to three. Each one is a daughter of a fine family. A woman, after all, is weighed chiefly by her family. Without a good family, she is bound to be lacking. I will see to it that you take the daughter of an outstanding house as your wife, without fail.”

Ryu Hyeok didn’t believe that a good family necessarily made a good wife. But since his father believed so, he didn’t bother to correct him.

The authority to decide a marriage belonged entirely to his father, and he held that it was only proper not to encroach upon it.

Besides, there was no woman he held in his heart. Countless women approached him, yet not once had he been stirred by any of them.

It might have been a somewhat cruel thought, but the women who gave their hearts to him so easily even struck him as frivolous.

Even so, he had never treated anyone carelessly because of it, nor carried on a secret affair, nor overstepped any line. He had always been an upright and neat man.

Ryu Hyeok was a man who knew the beauty of restraint. To begin with, there was nothing to be gained by indulging in women, and women as a whole had never much touched his heart.

‘Losing one’s mind over a mere woman, going completely out of one’s senses… I simply cannot understand it.’

Back then, that was how he felt.

* * *

A little while later, the emperor’s messenger descended upon our house.

Mother and I hurried out to the front courtyard, with no idea what was happening.

In the courtyard, a man was thrusting out a tablet that proved he was the emperor’s messenger.

“Hanshin of the House of Yu, Left Vice Director of the Senior Second Rank, come forth at once and receive His Majesty’s command.”

Naturally, Father wasn’t in the house at that moment. The messenger, not knowing this, shouted even louder.

“Hanshin of the House of Yu, Left Vice Director of the Senior Second Rank, come forth at once and receive His Majesty’s command!”

Unable to watch any longer, Mother stepped forward and spoke to the emperor’s messenger.

“My husband is out at the moment. May I ask what this is about?”

The emperor’s messenger looked a little flustered and asked Mother where Father was. Mother hesitated slightly, then told him he was at his concubine’s house.

Having grasped the situation, the messenger nodded and glanced at me.

“Are you the eldest daughter of His Excellency the Left Vice Director?”

Mother had come up beside me and nudged my side as if to say, Answer him, quickly.

She needn’t have prodded me; I would have answered well enough on my own. Why bother? I felt a flicker of defiance, but I was someone who knew right from wrong.

“Yes, I am.”

The emperor’s messenger coming to our house meant that something enormous had happened, whether good or bad.

Father had finally gotten himself into some serious trouble, no doubt about it.

Had the emperor ordered the extermination of four generations of our clan? Or nine?

Four or nine, I was a dead woman either way, so it made no difference. Given Father’s temperament, he couldn’t possibly have done anything good, so it had to be something bad.

So the emperor had finally seen through Father’s true colors. Surely he hadn’t been plotting treason.

Mother told one of the servants to hurry to the small house and fetch Father.

“Sir, my husband will return shortly. Until then, please come inside and have a cup of tea.”

The emperor’s messenger, his eyes still fixed on me, obediently followed Mother’s lead.

Since there seemed to be nothing more for me to do there, I was about to slip away when the messenger spoke to me.

“You come along too.”

“Pardon?”

I asked it back without meaning to. Sensing Mother’s gaze turn suddenly murderous, I hurriedly bowed my head in feigned politeness.

“Yes, sir.”

Only then did Mother’s face relax. But why on earth was I being told to come along? What could the emperor’s messenger possibly have to say to me?

Was he bored? Or did he mean to take my head before Father arrived?

Whatever the reason, I had to go. For whatever cause, I couldn’t defy the word of someone who had come as the Son of Heaven’s proxy.

Before I knew it, a tea table had been laid for the three of us: Mother, the messenger, and me. It was a thoroughly mismatched, strange combination.

Mother was demurely pouring tea into three cups, the liquid gurgling softly. I was watching those unhurried movements blankly when I felt a persistent gaze and came to my senses.

The emperor’s messenger had been staring at me for some time. He stared so hard that I felt a hole might be burned into my face.

‘Why is he doing that? Is there chili flake stuck in my front teeth? No, that can’t be, I didn’t eat anything with chili today.’

How to put it? It was like the gaze of a craftsman scrutinizing a freshly fired piece of porcelain. He was plainly sizing me up for flaws.

I was no great beauty, but I was reasonably pretty.

I took after Mother, and Mother’s looks weren’t flashy but elegant.

So I, too, looked bland, mild, and demure. My features weren’t distinct; they were hazy.

Perhaps because of my gentle looks, I had met countless people who looked down on me, so my temperament wasn’t as sweet as Mother’s.

For those who wear a gentle face, keeping a gentle nature is harder than plucking stars from the sky, because the world won’t leave them in peace to keep one.

Seen that way, my mother was truly remarkable. She had a gentle face and a gentle temperament to match.

When others looked down on her, she simply let them. As if always pressed down by something, she never asserted her own will.

All she ever did, with her quiet manner and pretty face, was nod graciously. Father said that was the thing he liked most about her.

Even when Father announced that he had fallen in love and meant to take some lowly courtesan as his concubine.

Mother, they say, showed no anger or disappointment whatsoever, and said only this:

She didn’t resist Father in the slightest.

A principal wife had the right to refuse when her husband proposed taking a concubine. Admittedly, it was a right in name only, and if the husband pushed it through, nothing could be done, but at the very least she could resist.

Yet Mother hadn’t offered even that small resistance, and had shared her husband with another woman.

When I grew old enough to understand this, I seriously wondered whether Mother might be out of her mind.

“What are you good at?”

Suddenly, the silent messenger asked me a question. He seemed to have a great deal of curiosity about me.

I couldn’t make sense of it. We had no prior acquaintance, yet one day he had barged into our house and kept shooting me unreadable looks.

“Calligraphy? Flower arranging? Needlework?”

“I can do all three, but none with any great distinction. If I must single one out, I am fond of calligraphy.”

“Modest. Modesty is a fine virtue.”

I wasn’t being modest; I was merely stating the facts. It wasn’t worth praising.

Still, I didn’t dislike being praised. How long had it been since I’d last heard a compliment?

After being treated as the family’s troublemaker all this time, hearing that I possessed a virtue made me quite happy.

“Dance or song?”

“I learned only the basics.”

“Can you read?”

“Yes.”

“Good, if you’re not illiterate. You could teach your children their letters yourself.”

Mother was earnest about my education. Thanks to her, I grew up having tried and learned nearly everything there was to try and learn.

Mother, on the other hand, couldn’t read a word. Her father, my maternal grandfather, hadn’t taught her, saying a woman had no need for skill in reading.

Mother had a habit of finding solace, through me, in what she herself had left unfinished and never been able to have. I, taking pity on her heart, simply followed along.

It was the greatest obedience I could offer.

“What do you consider the most important virtue for a woman?”

He kept showering me with questions, as though I were sitting an exam. But since I didn’t mind the attention, I answered quite composedly.

“I think it is being able to feel gratitude and joy even in small things.”

Because finding great gratitude or joy in a woman’s life is harder than finding a needle in a desert.

With nothing greatly enjoyable in daily life, if one had no habit of finding joy even in small things, one’s soul might die entirely.

Well, men have ample means to set off in search of grand happiness without bothering to look around for modest ones.

In this trash empire, this trash society, this trash system, what great happiness could I ever find?

You could call me an excessive pessimist. But if I were the only one who found this world unreasonable, I felt I would go mad.

Yet I couldn’t change this vast power structure, either. The only way was to adapt somehow and survive.

It was simply my own way of living in peace and dying in peace.

“Gratitude and joy even in small things… A fine saying.”

“Thank you.”

“The virtues a woman should possess are many indeed. Patience, tolerance, benevolence, and the like. So any answer you gave would have been correct, but yours is a perfect score.”

“I am moved that you think so highly of it.”

The emperor’s messenger smiled a genial smile, stretching the corners of his mouth up wide.

I thought hard about what that smile meant, but came up with no clear answer.