The Truth-Insects That Punish Lies
Sighing, I pulled out the Eightfold Bell. Using the third bell, I opened the treasure chest and had Ansi fetch a lacquered box.
"What do you intend to use the Samsichung for, Your Highness?"
"I'm going to turn that man into someone incapable of lying."
Before dragging him off to the State Tribunal, I intended to make the wretch confess his crimes to the Crown Prince with his own mouth.
The Samsichung (三尸蟲) were three worms that parasitized the human body, watching over a person's thoughts and deeds and returning to heaven every Kyeongsin day to report to the Jade Emperor.
Mother once told me that she would hear the Samsichung's reports and pass judgment accordingly — shaving years off a sinner's lifespan, adding to their karma after death, and so on.
But humans, desperate to escape the worms' reports, resorted to all manner of tricks like the Vigil of Kyeongshin, and their usefulness gradually waned. These days, they were rarely used in the Celestial Realm.
Which is why she let me play with a few of them.
Playing with the Samsichung had taught me a few tricks.
When I opened the lacquered box, three translucent white creatures lay within, munching away on nectar.
They instinctively submitted to the Jade Emperor, so they obeyed me too, being of the Emperor's bloodline.
"Tsk tsk."
At the clicking of my tongue, the Samsichung fluttered upward, scattering sparks of light like fireflies.
I pointed at the eunuch, who was still dazed and retching.
"Go inside that man. If he tries to tell a lie, bite down. Hard."
The Samsichung wheeled around me, their butterfly wings fluttering in intricate patterns.
"You ask if you may take a bite of his innards whenever he lies? Yes, you may."
Ages and ages ago, before Mother became the Jade Emperor, the Samsichung hadn't gone to report to her at all — they simply devoured a human's innards the moment that human committed a sin.
That proved too cruel for mortals, and it was eventually forbidden. But forbidding it hadn't erased the habit entirely.
"Mm, but don't eat him to death. Stay there until I call you back."
I sent the three Samsichung flying. The translucent butterflies streamed light as they sailed through the air and burrowed into the eunuch's body — one each in his head, his chest, and his belly.
They were creatures invisible to ordinary mortal eyes, so the eunuch, still not himself, never even noticed that something had entered him.
I waited a while, and once the eunuch seemed to have regained some composure, I spoke.
"I hear you planned to sneak me out of the palace and told the Crown Prince so."
"Y-yes?"
"Did you truly intend to help me escape?"
"Of course I did— GYAAAAGH!"
Mid-answer, the eunuch clutched his stomach and rolled across the floor. I rested my chin in my hand where I sat perched on the veranda.
"Dear me. I suppose he made it all the way to that age without learning that lying invites heavenly punishment."
"Ugh... khk... Y-yes?"
"You said you'd help me flee the palace, but you were really planning to kill me, weren't you? And dress it up as the Crown Prince's doing?"
"No, my lady, how could you make such a mistaken assumpti—AGH! AAAGH!"
As he shrieked his protest, the eunuch clutched his head this time and rolled again. I snorted.
"Slow learner, aren't you."
"Uuuughh... why...?"
"Because you keep lying."
"I-if I lie... it hurts?"
"That's right. Keep it up and the pain will be the least of your problems."
"What have you done to me? What—what have you done?"
"Who knows."
I shrugged and added, "I've simply given you a little help — so that you can lighten the punishment waiting for you in hell."
"Why would *I* be punished in he—GYAAAAAAGH!"
"So you do know, deep down. Whether you're someone who deserves punishment in hell or not."
Well, at least he knows he's done wrong.
Mother once said the underworld was full of people who had done terrible things while telling themselves they were in the right.
"Hoo... hahk, hahk..."
"Now then. Ready to be honest with me?"
I asked with a gentle smile, and the eunuch — clutching at his own chest — looked up at me as though seeing a ghost, then dropped his head in despair.
"...Yes, my lady."
After that, I tossed out a few more questions to make sure he spoke nothing but the truth.
He's become remarkably docile.
"Good. Ansi, go bring the Crown Prince."
"Yes, Your Highness."
Ansi scampered to the back of the veranda and soon returned with the Crown Prince.
He emerged gloved, with a silk veil draped over his Ikseongwan crown, wrapped in layer upon layer to the point that he could barely see ahead of himself.
That was that eunuch's doing, too. Whispering that he was cursed, that he must never meet anyone face-to-face with his bare face.
Daylight Eodukseoni is relatively harmless. So long as there is no direct skin-to-skin contact, it neither summons darkness nor provokes terror.
Which is to say, treating him like this was excessive.
Wrapping a child up like a walking calamity, hiding him away like that — he couldn't even see where he was going.
Irritation prickling at me, I walked over and took hold of the Crown Prince's veil.
"My lady?"
"You don't need to wear this anymore, Your Highness."
"W-wait, my lady!"
Ignoring his startled cry, I pulled the veil away and stripped it off.
The Crown Prince hurriedly covered his face with his gloved hands. I sighed and caught those hands in mine.
"You don't have to hide. I told you."
"But Eunuch Jang said it was dangerous..."
"It was all a lie."
"I beg your pardon?"
"The whole claim that you become dangerous when you face people with your bare face — that eunuch made it up."
"...Truly? How did you learn of it?"
"He seemed suspicious, so I pressed him about this and that, and eventually he admitted it was all a lie."
I turned toward the eunuch, who was trembling violently, and asked, "Isn't that right?"
"Yes! Yes, it was false! I made it up because I feared Your Highness might grow close to another!"
The words spilled out of him in a desperate rush. Behind the gloves, the corners of the Crown Prince's eyes twitched.
"What is this all of a sudden?"
"...I have, all this time, deceived Your Highness while pretending to serve you. I have committed a capital crime..."
The Crown Prince slowly lowered his hands.
A pale, refined boy's face was revealed beneath them.
"You were... deceiving me? Since when?"
"F-from the very first time I met Your Highness. I am sorry..."
"From the beginning?"
Eyes black as a lake at night glistened and blinked with moisture.
"Why? For what?"
"The Left State Councilor... p-paid me. Money."
"The Left State Councilor."
The Crown Prince echoed the words slowly, his lashes falling.
"I see. I understand."
His face looked less shocked than wounded.
So he wasn't entirely blind to it after all.
Even with his suspicions, he simply... chose to believe. No — he wanted to believe. Because otherwise, he'd be left with no one at all.
The Crown Prince gazed down quietly at the kneeling eunuch and asked in a low voice, "Then your promise to help my lady escape — that was false as well."
"...Yes."
"Then in truth..."
The Crown Prince ground his teeth for a moment, then turned to me and bowed his head.
"I apologize, my lady."
"I'm sorry — what?"
"I claimed I would save you, and yet through my own foolishness, I nearly did you harm instead."
"It's all right. You didn't do it on purpose."
I nodded, then added, "Besides, I never intended to run away, Your Highness."
"You said you were attacked just this very day. To remain in the palace is dangerous."
"I already caught the one behind the attack, didn't I?"
When I pointed at the shuddering eunuch, the Crown Prince's expression hardened.
"That, too, was this man's doing?"
"Yes. The State Tribunal's investigation will make it clearer, but..."
"...Ha."
The Crown Prince let out a hollow laugh and dropped his head.
"That my every word and step was being watched. That even once my first night passed, my lady's life would be in danger if she lived — I knew all of it, and yet... I placed my trust in the very person I should have doubted first."
Negative emotions churned beneath that boyish face — shame, betrayal, self-blame, all of it seething just under the surface.
If an eleven-year-old could weigh and doubt all of that, that would be the stranger thing.
Clever enough that he couldn't simply live unaware of the situation; robbed too early of the bitter taste of life for childlike innocence to survive; kind and upright by nature, so he couldn't merely curse the world or the people in it — and so in the end, this was where it landed. On blaming himself.
Why does this child only grow more heartbreaking the longer I look at him?
"Your Highness."
The moment I opened my mouth to console him, the boy lifted his head again — his face already composed, its shadows neatly gathered away.
"First, we must send him to the State Tribunal. The eunuch's testimony alone won't shake the Left State Councilor, but the Tribunal's judges are loyal men — they won't dare bury this matter outright."
Why is this tiny thing so grown-up? He'd be entitled to cry over this, you know.
Far from crying, the Crown Prince continued in that characteristically calm voice, "Then we need someone to escort him to the Tribunal. With no servants left to command, I shall do it mysel—"
"No, just have Ansi do it. Ansi?"
"My lady — no, Manora, I cannot bear to leave Manora's s—"
Ansi seemed reluctant to leave my side and moved to protest. I pointed lightly at my own waist and gave the order again.
"It's fine. Go on."
"Ah! Yes, I shall go and return swiftly, Manora!"
Ansi had finally remembered that I still carried Cheoyong's warding norigae. Shoving the eunuch along, she hurried out.
The Crown Prince watched them go with a worried look, then moved to step down from the veranda.
"Where are you going, Your Highness?"
"That maid is not yet grown, is she? I fear she may be hurt if Eunuch Jang resists."
"There's no need to worry about Ansi. That girl is..."
It wasn't as if I could announce she was a phoenix.
I hesitated a moment, then recalled Court Lady Kim's misunderstanding and pulled out a convenient excuse.
"She's my shadow guard."
"A child who commands gwoeryeoknansin?"
"Something like that."
Apparently satisfied, the Crown Prince stopped on his way down into the courtyard. I tugged at his sleeve.
"Let's talk, you and I, Your Highness."
He came along without protest. We entered a room beside the main hall, closed the door behind us, and sat facing one another.
"Is there something of great importance you wish to say?"
Those black eyes, still faintly wet, watched me quietly from across the room.
He was trying so hard to keep his face composed, but he couldn't entirely hide the wound beneath it — his damp eyes trembled.
A child who had lost the last person left for him to trust and lean on.
Looking at him, I found it hard to open my mouth.
Because I'm deceiving this child right now too, aren't I?
Who I really was. What purpose had brought me here.
Even our wedding had been a sham, staged with Jujak's help.
The plan had been to talk my way through it — to persuade him roughly the way I had the King: that I meant to save the Queen using the power of the Seol clan, together with Seol Deunghwa. That once that was done, we could all breathe freely — so don't run away; stay and survive this palace together with me. That I didn't know what his darkness was, but that we'd work on it together until he could master it himself.
But how is that any different from that eunuch?
I'd told him that lying invites heavenly punishment — and here I was, on the verge of weaving one lie after another.