Unknown
Seok-ran wriggled bashfully, twisting her body this way and that. Come to think of it, her fox fur did seem a shade silkier than before.
"Your fur's gotten prettier?"
"The princess really knows her stuff, nya! Kyang kyang, that Heavenly Peach worked wonders, nya! My fur's turned to pure silk, nya! And it's not just the fur, kyang! My scent's gotten sweeter, and my human form's prettier than ever, nya!"
"O-oh? Well, that's good."
If I hadn't mentioned it, she probably would have sulked something terrible. Her reaction was that explosive.
"Keheng, the Heavenly Peach is the best, nya. Thanks to it, I finally landed that Royal Guard officer who wouldn't give me the time of day, nya! It was a night of burning passion, nya. Keheeheng."
The white fox narrowed her eyes into crescents and let out a strange, chittering laugh—kehek, kehek.
Beside her, Ansi pulled on an imperious scowl and edged discreetly away from Seok-ran.
I rested my chin on the desk.
"So? You're madly in love—what did you come all the way here for?"
"Ah, we're not seeing each other anymore, nya."
"Huh?"
"We broke up yesterday, keheng."
"……"
"Nyaa? Don't look at me like that, princess. It was only ever going to be a fling from the start, nya. If I stay with one man too long, I can't meet any others, kyang kyang! Do you know how many handsome men there are out there? I can't waste my time like that!"
"That's…… awfully cruel to the poor man, though."
"We agreed from the beginning it would only ever be one burning night, nya. You're a baby princess so you wouldn't understand, but full-grown adults do have these arrangements, you know."
"……"
"Ah, it's all fine, nya! If you don't believe me, go to the Royal Guard and look for an officer called Kang Cheol-su. He was so satisfied his face is all dewy and glowing, keheng!"
The fox protested as though deeply wronged.
I couldn't quite wrap my head around it, but since the human in question was apparently satisfied, it wasn't really my place to say anything. I pressed a hand to my temple and waved her off.
"Fine, fine. I don't care about your love life—just tell me why you're actually here."
"I want more Heavenly Peaches, nya!"
Seok-ran blurted it out as if she'd been waiting for the opening. I tilted my head.
"For free?"
"No, nya! I'm a fox with a conscience, nya!"
Shaking her head frantically, the fox wagged her lush tail in something suspiciously close to flattery and added,
"Princess, isn't there anything you need me to do? Kyang, wasn't I pretty useful before? Give me work, nya."
Seeing her like that, something occurred to me.
Keeping tabs on the palace's inner workings.
Too young, and saddled with the status of Crown Princess, I found it difficult to know precisely what was unfolding at court.
This time I could fall back on the Samsichung I'd planted in the Left State Councilor…… but going forward, I'd need an informant to keep watch over things like this for me.
And in that regard, Seok-ran was a fitting candidate. She knew my true status, so she couldn't betray me lightly—she had a prior success to her name, too.
She was exactly what I needed, right when I needed it. What luck.
I gazed quietly at the Maegu, then lifted a finger.
"One peach per full moon. How does that sound?"
"……!"
Seok-ran's eyes went round as saucers, and her tail spun like a pinwheel.
"A long-term hire, nya? Kyang! What do I have to do, nya?"
"Informant."
I smiled gently and went on.
"Keep a steady watch on the palace's movements and mood, and report to me. And if I ever ask you to look into something, you'll dig it up for me. If I give you extra work, you'll be paid separately for it."
"Same as before, nya? If that's all, I can do it as much as you like, nya! Heavenly Peaches! Keheng heheng!"
Delighted, the fox spun her eyes gleefully and let out that bizarre laugh again. Apparently, that was the sound a fox mouth made when it laughed like a human.
I drew a single Heavenly Peach from my Paljuryeong and held it out.
"Here. Payment up front."
"Kyaaang! The princess is the best, nya! So generous, nya! Truly a princess of Heaven itself, nya!"
Seok-ran clutched the Heavenly Peach to her chest and murmured in tones of pure bliss.
"Such a treasure…… something even thousand-year foxes only receive on rare occasions, for great merit, and here it is, just like that…… churrrrp."
"You do understand it's not free?"
"Of course, nya! Just say the word for anything, nya! I'll serve you body and soul, keheng!"
Ansi glared at the fox with a sour face and grumbled under her breath.
"'Serve you body and soul'…… it's supposed to be 'tear you limb from limb,' you fool of a fox yokai……. Even a fool like Ansi knows that much."
Apparently, Ansi resented me putting a Maegu to work when I had a proper secretary in her. I made a mental note to placate her later and turned back to Seok-ran.
"Then let's start with how the palace has been running since the Donggung arson."
The white fox sank down onto a cushion with the Heavenly Peach cradled in her arms and began her report.
"The court's been locked in a fight to the death lately between the Royalist faction and the Prince Waneon faction, nya."
Word was, the Left State Councilor had been identified as the hand behind the attempt on the Crown Princess's life and the Donggung arson. The Crown Prince's own eunuch had confessed everything point by point, and the testimony extracted from the Jamryongdang arsonists Ansi had captured stood as evidence.
Yet the Left State Councilor denied any connection to the eunuch, and to the arsonists, alike.
And what the Prince Waneon faction had insisted, rallying to shield him……
"The theory that the Crown Prince is the culprit, nya."
"……What?"
"He's the cursed Heukju Daegun, isn't he, nya? They're claiming the prince finally lost his mind, or the curse has worsened, nya. Ordering his eunuch to assassinate the Crown Princess, setting fire to his own palace—all of it, the Crown Prince's doing, they say, nya."
"Does that even make sense?"
"They worked hard at faking evidence, apparently, nyang. That eunuch was a close attendant of the Crown Prince's for two whole years, and the palace that burned was the Donggung—they spun it all together quite neatly, nya."
"Unbelievable. And people actually buy that?"
"The Crown Prince's reputation wasn't great, kyang. Even the King's madness until recently—it was hushed up, but everyone knew, didn't they, nya."
Word had it that in the halls of court, people had even begun saying, 'It seems His Majesty remains in confusion, and is not yet in a state to render wise judgment.'
In plain terms: how can we trust a lunatic king? It was open mockery—laughing in the King's face and asking whether he was even sane.
The royal authority had fallen utterly into the dirt.
And since the King really had been mad for the past two years, it was a difficult problem to untangle.
Because of it, the Royalist faction—dominated by the rising reformist ranks who had been pressing the Left State Councilor—was forced onto the defensive to protect the throne's dignity.
Far from holding the Councilor to account, they had grown desperate merely defending the King and the Crown Prince.
And so the question at court had shifted entirely—from 'Is the Left State Councilor the hand behind the Crown Princess's assassination and the Donggung arson?' to 'Are the King and the Crown Prince in their right minds?'
They attempted outright assassination, committed arson on top of it, and still managed to pivot the argument like this. And the Moderates are just getting swept along, bleating after them.
So that was why reputation and authority mattered so much.
As I pressed a hand to my brow and sighed, Seok-ran's ears pricked up and she continued.
"Just when the Royalists looked completely cornered, the whole situation flipped again yesterday, nya."
"Yesterday?"
"The little prince brought evidence with his own two hands, nya. A secret ledger from some merchant house, keheheng—and it turned out to be the decisive proof exposing the connection between the Left State Councilor and the arsonists, nya!"
"Wait—he brought it himself? Not an investigation he ordered someone to run?"
"Kyang kyang, that's right, nya! What servants or faction does the Crown Prince even have to command? There's no doubt he carried it back himself, nya!"
Seok-ran explained what had happened in the Pyeonjeon, saying she'd heard it from her Royal Guard officer.
The previous morning, rain had poured down until the sky was dark as night.
While the Prince Waneon faction droned on—politely veiled, of course—that the mad King ought to be locked back in the Junggungjeon where he belonged, and that since the Crown Prince had gone mad like his father and set his own palace alight, he ought to be deposed now…
…the great doors of the Pyeonjeon burst open.
A boy stood there, shoulders heaving, drenched through with rain, dirt, and dust, blood seeping from a scatter of small wounds.
The soldiers guarding the hall scrambled in alarm to bar his way, but the boy simply bowed to the King where he sat, then held out the cloth bundle in his hands.
"Father, your son has brought the evidence for this affair."
They said his voice, his bearing—utterly unlike the rumor of a cursed child driven mad—was remarkably clear and composed. Even in that bedraggled state, he carried the dignity befitting the Crown Prince of a realm.
Seok-ran's former lover—no, the Royal Guard officer—who had been attending the King at that moment took the bundle directly from the prince, confirmed its contents, and delivered it to the throne.
Inside lay a secret ledger holding evidence so unambiguous that the Left State Councilor could not possibly deny it.
The moment the documents were made public, the balance of the court flipped on its axis once more.
My jaw fell open in sheer disbelief.
Hold on—an eleven-year-old child obtained intel that important, alone? How?
What dangerous things has this little brat been doing while I was away convalescing?
So that's why he was nowhere to be seen!
"Keheng, thanks to that ledger, the Royalists launched a full assault on the Left State Councilor yesterday, nya. The Prince Waneon faction keeps howling that the ledger is a forgery and insisting the culprit is still the Crown Prince, nyong."
"They're holding out even with the secret ledger laid bare before them?"
"They are, kyang. With the King's and the Crown Prince's positions being so shaky to begin with……"
So in the end, the root of it all is distrust of the King.
This was nothing new, and with the rumors already spreading far and wide, public sentiment toward the royal house was poor as well.
No wonder the Left State Councilor could hold his ground even with undeniable proof in the open.
Honestly, given that the King spent two years as a raving madman, the mere survival of a Royalist faction is a miracle in itself.
What a headache.
I heaved a long sigh with my chin still propped on the desk, then asked Seok-ran,
"What about the Moderate ministers? The Chief State Councilor especially."
"The Chief State Councilor? He mediated the ministers' squabbling, saying they should verify whether the secret ledger was genuine first, nyang. They say both the King and the Left State Councilor accepted it, and that's how yesterday's assembly ended, nya."
Verification, hm.
I very much doubted the Prince Waneon faction would allow that ledger to be properly verified.
I'd better make use of the Samsichung I planted in the Left State Councilor.