124. Three Kings (3)
At the same moment.
Shin Jo-woon and Rembrary each drew their tiles as well, and seeing the meaningful smiles on the faces of Lee Sang-seon and the other staff, both thought the same thing.
Did I draw something wrong?
Did someone in the middle get strange instructions from the staff?
But it was neither. The staff playing royal attendants had all smiled in common not because the script told them to smile on purpose, nor because there was some trap of a concubine planted among them.
They simply smiled because imagining it was funny.
The three concubines the kings had drawn would each be summoned to dine in nearly identical locations, at the very same hour. After that, the three attendants had been instructed to make the kings move from their seats at least once, by any means necessary.
How bewildered would a king be if he stepped out for a moment and came back to find a different concubine?
And how bewildered would a concubine be if the king who'd said he was stepping out returned as an entirely different person?
The attendants found the mere thought of it so delightful that they simply couldn't stop smiling.
And at last, dinnertime arrived. Rembrary made his way to the pavilion prepared for his evening meal with his concubine.
Overhead, a row of soft lanterns hung suspended, lending the place an air of quiet romance. Inside the pavilion sat a low table, and before it a woman dressed as a royal concubine kept lifting a hand to her hair and drawing it away again and again. The traditionally styled updo seemed to feel hopelessly awkward on her.
But the woman fidgeting with her hair belatedly spotted Rembrary, sprang to her feet, and blurted out without thinking.
"Wow, Woo Yeon-woo!"
Then, catching sight of the court ladies and eunuchs standing around him, she hastily course-corrected.
"Yeon-woo-yeon-woo-YEON! What a coincidence that we should meet like this, Your Majesty!"
The moment the words left her mouth, she sank into self-loathing. She'd strung the name together — coincidence, Yeon-woo, coincidence — trying to play her blunder off as a joke, but once it was out there it felt even more embarrassing. She should have just let the slip stand and said nothing more. Already she was dreading how her family and friends who watched the broadcast would never let her hear the end of it.
Watching her, Rembrary recalled the tile he had drawn and asked.
"Royal Noble Consort Hui?"
To his surprise, the woman playing the concubine replied, flustered, "I'm sorry? I'm Suk-bin?"
Rembrary grew flustered in turn and asked again. "You're not Royal Noble Consort Hui?"
"I'm Suk-bin?"
As the concubine stood there bewildered, Rembrary asked, somewhat put out, "Then where has Royal Noble Consort Hui gone?"
"How should I know?" Suk-bin shot back, then flared up for no particular reason. "Wait, what is wrong with you? You summon me here to share a meal and then go looking for a different concubine?"
Rembrary could only mutter, bewildered. "The one I chose was Royal Noble Consort Hui."
"What, did you think I tied her up and came here in her place?"
"Ah — so you did tie her up?"
"I said I didn't!"
Rembrary still couldn't make head or tail of it, but he soon decided it must be some trick of the staff's and said with a smile, "Let's just eat for now."
Though the person across from him had changed, the table groaning under a feast beyond his expectations was more than enough.
That was all that mattered. He had come to eat, after all.
"You won't be dining with Royal Noble Consort Hui, then?"
"Dining with Suk-bin suits me fine."
At that same moment, the Royal Noble Consort Hui Rembrary had been searching for was with Shin Jo-woon.
But Shin Jo-woon's feelings upon beholding his concubine were considerably more complicated than Rembrary's upon beholding his.
Because Royal Noble Consort Hui was a magnificently built man — broad-shouldered, hulking, and imposing.
Apparently finding the hairpiece a bother, he had set it aside entirely and sat in a completely relaxed posture, and no matter how one looked at him, his was the musculature of a man who played sports for a living. The tiger tattoo peeking through the gap in his robe stole the eye with startling force.
When their gazes met, he flashed a wide grin — the smile of a man who would come charging over and throw the first punch if his king went looking for another concubine.
Shin Jo-woon, disgruntled, carefully tried, "Royal Noble Consort Gong?"
The man answered flatly, in a voice packed with force. "I am Royal Noble Consort Hui, Your Majesty."
Then he leapt to his feet and thrust out a hand, asking for a handshake.
Shin Jo-woon shook it with ill grace, but the moment he heard the concubine had been swapped, he understood — the staff had pulled a prank midway.
"Are all the other concubines men, too?" Shin Jo-woon asked outright, and Royal Noble Consort Hui shook his head.
"No, Your Majesty."
At the same moment, Jang Tae-ri was every bit as flustered.
The one she had chosen was Suk-bin, yet somehow Gong-bin had shown up before her instead.
Did I get the wrong room? she wondered.
Meanwhile, Gong-bin clasped her hands together and bounced up and down with delight.
"Your Majesty, I'm your biggest fan!"
Having cried it out in high spirits, Gong-bin soon fell into private confusion — Huh? Do they not say "fan" in this era? — and hurriedly papered over it with an improvised backstory.
"Your Majesty, I — I lived abroad until recently!"
Not the concubine she had chosen, true, but the sight was so endearing that Jang Tae-ri burst out laughing. Either the staff had botched the logistics or this was deliberate — one or the other. Satisfied with that rough understanding, she sat down across from Gong-bin.
Meanwhile, Rembrary was throwing himself into his meal at the fastest possible pace, haunted by the thought that his food might be snatched away mid-bite.
The swap of a person had never much concerned him in the first place. Only the possibility that the food might be swapped did.
Several variety shows had taught him that their staff harbored a deep-seated prejudice against letting cast members actually eat their food. Since they would absolutely never let him finish this mountain of dishes in peace, he had to devour everything in the shortest time possible.
How long had he been at it? Sure enough, an attendant called him away, saying he had somewhere to step out to.
"I knew it would come to this. They were never going to just sit there and let me eat in peace."
Rembrary heaved a sigh and went outside.
"Where are you taking me?"
"Ah, we are headed to the place where the eunuchs gather, Your Majesty."
"Why the eunuchs, in the middle of a meal?"
Lee Sang-seon had no answer for Rembrary's question and only laughed awkwardly.
Of course you have nothing to say. The point was never for me to meet the eunuchs — the point was simply to get me out of that room.
So Rembrary thought to himself, even as he followed the attendant along without protest. Digging in his heels and refusing here would only make him look stubbornly difficult on the broadcast. In real life he wouldn't trail after someone for no reason, but on a set like this it was better to simply do as asked.
But as they walked, he spotted a court lady off in the distance, glancing this way and that as though she had lost her way.
And indeed, the lady kept murmuring to herself, "Where did everyone go? Where has everyone gone?"
A civilian participant must have gotten lost.Really, they ought to hand out maps before letting people wander in here. Clicking his tongue inwardly, Rembrary moved toward her. He didn't know the layout himself, but with Lee Sang-seon beside him serving as a human navigation system, he could surely help the lady find her way.
Yet a few steps in, Rembrary stopped dead in his tracks.
That is no human being.
From a distance she had looked perfectly ordinary, but up close, the lady's face was wrong — its upper and lower halves transposed. Her mouth sat where her eyes should have been, and her eyes where her mouth should have been, and the eyes in the mouth's position were darting left and right without pause.
"Your Majesty? What is the matter?" the attendant asked at his side.
"Do you see anything over there?" Rembrary whispered back, tilting his head discreetly toward the lady.
Lee Sang-seon answered, utterly puzzled. "I don't see anything at all, my lord..."
Rembrary clicked his tongue and issued a warning. "Let no one wander this vicinity at night. That is a royal command."
The order struck Lee Sang-seon as strange, and he felt an odd chill creep over him for no reason he could name. Come to think of it, he'd been so used to Rembrary's crackpot image that he'd forgotten — hadn't the man once made headlines with a series of creepy pronouncements?
He took the words to heart and made sure to memorize the exact location of this spot.
The attendant led the way onward, and Rembrary walked past the wandering court lady without a backward glance.
Their destination turned out to be a place where ordinary participants, dressed in identical eunuch garb, were living out a schedule that faithfully followed the daily routine of the palace's eunuchs of old — though, naturally, the actual workload was somewhat lighter.
The whole reason A Week in a Time Machine had proven so popular with audiences was precisely this: it let people step into a world far removed from modern life and experience it as though they truly lived there.
Because of that, the eunuch participants here had grown close with one another, laughing and chattering, the atmosphere thoroughly cheerful.
Then Lee Sang-seon cried out, "His Majesty the King approaches!" and everyone froze in place, equal parts fascinated and astonished.
As the group stood there dithering, the staff members planted among the participants hurriedly helped them arrange themselves into formation.
Even lined up in rows, the eunuchs kept craning their necks to steal looks at Rembrary's face. They bore none of the expressions eunuchs ought to wear before their king — rather, they looked like passersby who'd stumbled into a celebrity on the street. Then again, one could hardly expect acting chops from participants thrown in with zero rehearsal.
Well, the editors will sort it out somehow. Lee Sang-seon, recalling the seasoned eye of the veteran PD, turned to Rembrary and prompted him. "Your Majesty. The palace runs as smoothly as it does because so many eunuchs and court ladies labor devotedly on its behalf. Would you offer a word of encouragement to these hardworking eunuchs?"
You dragged me away from my meal just to have me say this? Rembrary barely swallowed the words that leapt to his lips.
Had Jong-woo witnessed this scene, he would have wept with pride.
He's only saying it because it's in the script, surely. Rembrary forced himself to accept his dissatisfaction with that thought, and praised the eunuchs for their toil.
"You gave up so much — underwent castration, even — to enter the palace. You have all suffered greatly."
"!"
Lee Sang-seon had been smiling gently beside him as he listened to the royal blessing, when he choked and doubled over coughing.
In the heads of the eunuch participants, whose thoughts had been running Wow, a real celebrity... as they gawked at Rembrary, the exclamation smoothly morphed into Wow, it's actually Woo Yeon-woo...
So THAT'S the legendary mouth I've heard about.
He really does speak with no filter whatsoever.
Wow, they said he was a lunatic, and they weren't kidding.
Recovering from his coughing fit, Lee Sang-seon offered Rembrary a tactful piece of advice. "Your Majesty. Your phrasing is a touch... explicit."
"Is it, now?"
"Yes. Perhaps a different choice of words?"
"You suffered much to be neutered?"
This, in its entirety, was Shin Jo-woon's fault — for ever since Rembrary had been cast as a eunuch, the man had never ceased mocking him as a castrated pig, a neutered pig, and the like.
Lee Sang-seon shook his head vigorously. "No, that's not it — it's that there was no need to bring that up at all. Do you think hearing that will put heart into the eunuchs? What I meant was, a story that would truly inspire them."
"Ahh."
Rembrary nodded. "Why did you not say so from the start?"
He had very nearly been cast as the eunuch himself before coming here, and in his shock, he had researched eunuchs quite thoroughly. There must be some advantages to the position too — that had been his reasoning.
And after diligent study, he had turned up several genuinely good points. One of which was—
"Are you aware? Castration extends one's lifespan."
As Rembrary delivered this tidbit with the gentlest of smiles, Lee Sang-seon covered his face with both hands and shook his head. The expressions of the eunuch participants went blank.
"You will all live long lives."
Rembrary then elaborated a little further, invoking the examples of eunuchs who, despite their station, seized tremendous power and shook the very nation to its foundations — fanning the flames of their ambition all the more.
"Take these Ten Regent Eunuchs, for instance."
Lee Sang-seon silently gaped, mouth opening and closing in silent horror.
"Ah, though of course the historical Regent Eunuchs behaved so wickedly that their final years were wretched. Let that be a lesson to you all — even if you seize power, do much good with it. You've been castrated, so you'll live long regardless; you may as well live well."
With the humble address he had constructed by deploying as many difficult words as he could muster, Rembrary was quietly pleased with himself, and a soft smile spread across his face.
The viewers watching this broadcast will learn it soon enough. As they reflect with remorse on the days they dared call this body a blockhead, they will sing the praises of Woo Yeon-woo — how remarkably articulate he truly is.
The End of Chapter 124: Three Kings (3)