Chapter 18

Chapter 18

“Hwacheon.”

Prince Hye seized my wrist. I shook off his hand at once.

“Your Highness, please go and have tea at the Left Vice Minister’s residence. I am unwell, so I must return to the prince’s residence.”

Even referring to myself as “your humble concubine” made me sick. Why should I have to lower myself that way?

“Would it even make sense to leave you out when we’re visiting your father’s house? I accepted the Minister’s invitation because I thought you might miss home. Once a woman marries out, it’s hard for her to visit her natal family without good reason.”

“I made it plain that I didn’t want to go. Yet Your Highness accepted on your own authority. Do you think I don’t know you did it because you enjoy watching me flounder in distress?”

His claim to be acting for my sake was hateful. I despised the way he made light of it all with such glibness.

To hate him meant I had trusted him, if only a little. Had I not trusted him at all, there would have been no betrayal to feel, and nothing to hate.

Without realizing it, I must have felt that futile thing called trust toward him. How foolish could I be?

At that moment, Father abruptly cut in.

“Yu Hwacheon! How dare you speak so rashly to Prince Hye!”

I was the Princess Consort, speaking with my husband, Prince Hye, and he had the gall to interrupt. How could he not know his place?

No wonder my stepmother and Hwaryeong, watching him, had learned to act so shamelessly beyond their station.

“Lord Minister. What discourtesy is this toward the Princess Consort?”

“I-It’s not that, Your Highness…!”

“I’m certain I told you. She is my wife before she is your daughter. Even if she is your daughter, once she married into the prince’s residence, she became a princess consort of the Empire, one you are bound to serve. Is that so difficult for your sharp mind to accept?”

Father tried to make excuses, but Prince Hye gripped my hand tightly and cut him off.

“Let’s go, Hwacheon.”

He added, in a clear and resolute voice,

“Home.”

Led by his hand, I left the place. That single word, “home,” lingered in my ears.

When we had walked far enough that Father was no longer in sight, I spoke.

“Do you strike me first and then offer a salve?”

“I don’t know how you misread what just happened, but I truly accepted for your sake.”

“Are you telling me you really didn’t know I was uncomfortable?”

“I didn’t know the root of your discomfort. I only thought you longed for your family but declined out of concern for my feelings.”

He continued.

“Besides, to my eyes you didn’t seem to be merely pushing the Minister away. You seemed glad to see him, even wistful. Reading that in you, I assumed you were just being shy.”

At those words, the tears I had been holding back finally spilled over.

The truth was, he was right.

Beneath my discomfort, there had certainly been a part of me that was glad, even wistful, at the chance encounter with Father, who reminded me of my childhood home.

That fleeting honest feeling, which my reason had labored to deny, Prince Hye seemed to have pierced through as if he could read minds. He was nothing short of a spirit.

“I hate Father.”

“You should refrain from saying such things.”

“If I hate him, what else should I say but that I hate him?”

“You will soon be Crown Princess.”

“…”

“The Crown Princess, as the future Empress, must be a model for all women. Who would look up to a woman who abandons filial piety and despises her own father? And who would serve me, with a wife like that?”

Filial piety and loyalty were the foundations of this society. It meant that a woman who failed to uphold even those basic virtues had no right to become Crown Princess, much less Empress.

But when had I ever said I wanted to be Crown Princess? When had I ever wished to ascend to the empress’s seat and become a model for ten thousand people?

It was the imperial house that had put me in this position, not I. It was unjust enough to be placed in a seat I never wanted, and now I was to kill my very nature to become worthy of it.

“Why do you hate your father so?”

“…”

“I am your husband, and you are mine. We are on the same side. So lower your guard and tell me anything. Hiding it from me will do you no good.”

If I said that Father had taken in a concubine and neglected Mother and me, and that was why I loathed him, this man would surely laugh at me.

In a world where it was common sense for a man to take concubines and dote on them, he would ask whether I was truly fuming over something so trivial.

His own father alone kept countless consorts, and he himself had grown up among countless half-siblings. And wasn’t he, too, a man who would take in many concubines in the future?

So he could not possibly understand my heart.

In essence, he stood on the side of the strong, as Father did. He had lived a life in which he had never considered the position of the weak, nor ever needed to.

This was not a hasty judgment, but a sorrowful conclusion drawn from everything I had lived through.

I decided not to explain my pain. I could not let my wounds be reduced to a trifling joke for that man.

Even if I wept and clung to him begging for comfort, he would never be able to understand me in the first place.

The world always turned by the logic of the strong, and the humiliation of the weak became a thing to be laughed at.

Even Mother, who had suffered the same pain as I, had always taken Father’s side, hadn’t she? The weak had neither the thought of banding together nor the will to resist the strong.

“Your Highness, the human heart has invisible thorns, and if two people get too close, they end up pricking each other.”

“…”

“But if they keep a proper distance and take care that the thorns do not dig into the flesh, they can share their hearts without being hurt.”

“…But we are husband and wife. We have no need for lines.”

Ryu Hyeok was appalled by the words that had left his own mouth.

He was a man who had drawn lines more rigorously than anyone and guarded his self. Yet here he was, blurting out a sentimental remark to a woman he scarcely knew, saying that lines were unnecessary.

He had clearly lost his reason for a moment at the sight of a woman’s tears.

“It is precisely because we are husband and wife that we need them. Where else is there a relationship that demands as much courtesy and as clear a line as marriage? The closer two people are, the more clearly they must draw the line, and guard against being pricked by each other’s thorns.”

“…Hwacheon.”

“Because that is how a precious relationship is kept. Am I wrong?”

Silence is a kind of lie. There are lies completed by speaking, and lies completed by not speaking.

People guard against the former, but often do not even recognize the latter as a lie. Yet the latter is the most perfect deception of all.

In a situation where the whole truth would put me in danger and a complete lie would destroy trust, the cleverest course is to hand over a mixture of the two.

And so I skillfully mixed the truth with the lie of silence and offered it to him.

“But you are crying.”

Prince Hye reached out and wiped away my tears. Pale tears, mingled with face powder, stained his fingers.

Out of some inexplicable shame, I took out a handkerchief and carefully wiped the moisture from his hand. Prince Hye silently accepted my touch.

“What does it matter to Your Highness if I cry?”

“You are crying and I do not know why. It leaves me feeling stifled.”

Ryu Hyeok wanted to know Hwacheon’s inner thoughts. He wanted to uncover the secret she was hiding.

Though he knew that turning away was the easy course and that leaving things unexamined was the stable one, the urge kept rising within him.

“Then be stifled. Knowing will only make it worse. Nothing good comes from digging.”

Everyone begged him to understand their hearts. They clung to him, pleading that he understand their circumstances. They acted as though all their problems would be solved if only he knew.

Yet this woman told him not to try to know her heart. Before he could even draw a line, she had raised a solid wall and bristled with sharp thorns, warning him not to cross it.

That was strange. Strange enough to stir pity, and so it caught his eye.

Her tearful face pained him, and he wanted to do something for her, yet she flatly refused. She might have received help, but she stubbornly insisted on suffering alone.

Why did that hurt him so?

“I am a man you can trust.”

“Who said you were not?”

“You seem not to know it, so I am pointing it out.”

He gave her one more chance, hoping she would open her heart.

“I know. I know, Your Highness.”

Hwacheon smiled. It was an unfamiliar sight, a smile forced out through her tears as she dragged the corners of her mouth upward. He had never seen so sorrowful a smile in his life.

“I know you are a good person.”

“Then why?”

“That is why you must not try to know me.”

“That is why I am asking you, why?”

“If a bad person fails to understand me, I can at least rationalize it by saying he is bad. But if even a good person fails to understand me, then I truly have nowhere to lean, and it only rots me from within.”

Those words were like a verdict declaring that he could never possibly understand her.

Ryu Hyeok hated that more than anything.