The Unknown
“The maids of Unyeondang have been working hard on it. They don't have enough hands to finish quickly, but they say at this pace we'll have a lovely garden to look at by spring.”
“You've gone to such trouble, my lady.”
“Not me — the maids did.”
As they stepped into the garden, the maids pulling weeds sprang to their feet. Every one of them wore a bright, unguarded smile. The Crown Prince found that astonishing.
“My lady!”
“My lady, have you come out for a walk?”
“Yes. Did everyone enjoy lunch?”
“Thanks to your generosity, my lady... !”
The maids, beaming as they welcomed Seruhwa, caught sight of the Crown Prince and froze mid-word. Cheon Gyeol-woo instinctively lifted his sleeve to shield his face — but Seruhwa hooked her arm through his, blocking the motion, and spoke to the maids.
“His Highness is all better now.”
“Ah... y-you've recovered, Your Highness?”
“He's been training constantly, you see.”
At that, the maids exchanged cautious glances, then bowed deeply from the waist.
“Jamryongseungcheon. We pay our respects to His Highness the Crown Prince.”
“We pay our respects to His Highness the Crown Prince.”
“...You may rise.”
Cheon Gyeol-woo accepted the greeting in a daze. A few words like that, and their fear of him simply vanished? That couldn't be.
“Well, I'm off. Don't overdo it — pace yourselves.”
“Yes, my lady!”
Once they had passed the maids and gone deeper into the garden, Seruhwa seemed to notice the puzzlement on his face and spoke up.
“I told them about how you and I meet every day to practice. That's why they all knew.”
“You told them, my lady?”
“Yes. I explained that Your Highness had gained a special power and couldn't yet control it, but that you were training steadily, so soon you would master it.”
“...And that alone was enough to convince them?”
“I told them it was a spirit of the night — something they already knew well from the records of Your Highness's abilities. I even named it Amnyeongsul, the Dark Spirit Art. So from now on, Your Highness should explain your power as Dark Spirit Art too.”
“...Pardon?”
Gwaei — the uncanny. Yongryeok — prodigious strength. Paeran — the subversive. Gwisin — the ghostly.
Together, the term Gwoeryeoknansin — beings of bizarre might, or the strange forces they wielded — was simply an abbreviation of those four words.
Those who communed with ghosts were shamans. Those who stirred upheaval were sorcerers. Those who displayed prodigious strength were masters of the martial arts. Those who commanded the uncanny were wielders of Daoist magic.
Seruhwa smiled slyly.
“Powers over nature are lumped in with Daoist arts and classified as the uncanny anyway, so calling the Eodukseoni's power 'Dark Spirit Art' isn't wrong at all, you know.”
“That may be so, but why go to such lengths... ?”
“Your Highness — what people fear most is what they don't understand. Fear, for the most part, is born of ignorance.”
Cheon Gyeol-woo gazed down at Seruhwa, half in a daze.
The crown of her head, silver hair neatly braided and adorned with an inlaid jeweled pin, was small and round. His young wife could be as cute and innocent as a child, and yet — now and then — she would utter words only the most weathered of elders might manage, as casually as breathing.
Just like now.
“Even something unfamiliar becomes less frightening once it's understood. The more you explain it in familiar terms, the truer that is. Gwoeryeoknansin is already a familiar concept, so we frame your power within it. So that people can accept it easily.”
“A familiar framework...”
“Yes. So that you appear as a being they can understand.”
The boy turned the girl's words over in his mind, almost without thinking.
Explain it within a familiar framework, so it is easy to accept.
Make yourself appear as something they can understand.
He felt on the verge of some realization — as though he could suddenly see how he ought to live from now on, how he ought to present himself to the world.
“If people understand me... will they stop fearing me?”
“It won't go smoothly at first, but in the end, yes. Just like how the more you learned about your own darkness, the less it frightened you.”
“...!”
She was right.
Ever since Cheon Gyeol-woo had learned what he was, his terror had indeed diminished. At first he had despaired at the thought of having become a true monster — but the difference between knowing nothing about himself and knowing that he was an Eodukseoni was the difference between heaven and earth.
The more he practiced, the more he came to understand his darkness, the less he feared it. That was simply true.
Now he understood why his wife had explained his power to the others as a kind of Daoist art.
“Of course, none of that matters if Your Highness is truly dangerous — so training comes first.”
“I will work harder.”
“That's not what I meant. You're already working hard enough. In fact, there are things Your Highness is already doing — all on your own — to keep people from fearing you.”
“Things I am already doing, my lady?”
“Eating dinner with me. Thanks to that, the maids of Unyeondang have grown very used to you. After all, you don't even need to eat, yet you make the effort anyway.”
“...!”
Cheon Gyeol-woo jerked back, wrenching his hand from Seruhwa's in shock.
He had not felt hunger once in the past two years. Right after the black liquid, while he had lain motionless in his chamber, he had realized it — a week without food, and still no hunger, no loss of strength.
How his skin had crawled at that moment.
That was when I knew for certain. That I was no longer human — that I had become a true monster.
And yet he felt no aversion to eating. Food tasted normal to him. It was simply that he didn't need to eat — nothing more.
But living without eating a single thing felt too much like living as a monster, so he had forced himself to keep taking his meals. He had thought he'd hidden it well.
As he stumbled backward, Seruhwa watched him with a mildly bewildered expression.
“Why are you so startled?”
“Y-you knew?”
“When I explained about the Eodukseoni, I didn't mention... ah.”
A troubled look crossed her face, and she let out a small sigh.
“I'm sorry, Your Highness. I really didn't explain this part. That day, we were so focused on the darkness itself...”
“...So you have known since then.”
“Yes.”
“And yet you had meals carried from Unyeondang all the way to Jamryongdang, and dined with me every single day?”
Knowing that he had no need to eat — and still, every day.
Why? To what end?
“Why did you do it?”
“I'm sorry?”
“What were you thinking, performing an act that served no purpose whatsoever?”
A monster who could live without eating. As his wife watched that monster laboriously choke down food while pretending to be human — what had gone through her mind?
Had she been thinking something else entirely all along, just as Eunuch Jang had posed as his ally for two years?
At the thought, Cheon Gyeol-woo was seized, all at once, by fear.
Not anger — fear.
It was not that he was afraid Seruhwa might have been deceiving him with some ulterior motive. It was that he suddenly dreaded whether her words — that she would keep living as Crown Princess, that they would do well together here in the palace — had been lies.
Being used was fine. Even being deceived was fine. So long as she did not abandon him and walk away. So long as she simply stayed by his side.
The boy realized he had already grown accustomed — dangerously accustomed — to the peace he felt in the girl's presence. If she left, it felt as though he would be locked away once more in a darkness without a single ray of light. Back to the days when he could not face another person, could not take a human hand, when only despair and nightmares kept him company. Back to the days when he lived without even knowing what weather lay beyond his walls.
Swamped by a terror that swelled beyond his control, he struggled to steady himself.
No — there's no way she would leave the palace now, of all times!
It was Seruhwa who had told him what the Eodukseoni was. It was Seruhwa who had kept helping with his practice all this time. She had refused to flee even when he told her to run — surely she would not suddenly abandon him now?
I'm overreacting. That's all this is.
That was what his head told him, but his heart would not settle.
It felt as though the person he most wanted to impress had glimpsed the flaw he most desperately wished to hide. As though he had lived pretending to be human, only to be exposed at last as an irredeemable monster.
...She knew I was a monster from the very beginning. So it's fine. It's fine... !
At his feet, he felt a shadow stir and ripple. The Crown Prince pressed his lips together hard.
Then Seruhwa's voice came, flustered and earnest.
“I'm sorry? Oh — that was just because your meals were so meager, Your Highness.”
“You knew I could live without eating. What difference could it possibly make whether a useless meal was meager or not?”
“You can eat, you can taste it — you simply don't need it. Then it matters, doesn't it? It matters a great deal.”
“...Pardon?”
“If people had dismissed everything unnecessary, humanity would never have advanced the way it has. Humans became special precisely because they poured effort into things that had nothing to do with survival.”
Once again, Seruhwa spoke words far beyond her years as though they were nothing at all — as though she were something other than human, an observer who had watched mankind for ages untold.
“Eating something delicious makes you happy, doesn't it? I'm not hungry at all right now, but I still want sweets. Isn't it the same for you, Your Highness?”
“...”
“Out of all the sweets I've ever tried, I love Okchundang the best! They're so pretty to look at, and when you let one melt slowly on your tongue, your whole mouth fills with sweetness. It feels like holding happiness in your mouth.”
“...”
“What sweets do you like best, Your Highness? Dasik? Jeonggwa? Yeotgangjeong? Yumilgwa? Songpyeon?”
Endlessly grown-up one moment, then chattering away the next with a child's innocent delight.
Cheon Gyeol-woo stared, entranced, at the girl's sunlit expression — she looked as if she had a candy tucked in her cheek — before finally managing to answer.
“I, I like taragwa.”
“Even now?”
“...Pardon?”
“Now that you've become an Eodukseoni — do you still like taragwa?”
“...Yes.”
“See? It matters plenty after all.”
Seruhwa beamed at him.
“I wanted you to enjoy delicious things, since you were eating anyway. So let's keep enjoying lots of good food together from now on.”
“...Haha.”
All the tension drained out of him at once, and laughter spilled out of him before he knew it.