Suspicion
It had already been three days since the A Week in a Time Machine team moved into the palace.
Rembrary opened his eyes in a daze. Perhaps it was because there were no curtains — the morning sun here was blindingly bright. Wanting to lounge about a little longer, he rolled around inside the blanket for a while.
Napping back at the dorm had never been easy. The place was cramped to begin with, and no matter what the schedule was, they always had to leave early and spend ages getting made up at the shop. Here, by contrast, there was no one nagging him that sleeping in was forbidden. And the food was excellent, too.
Ah. The whale.
But as he rolled around, Rembrary belatedly realized this was no time for lazing about. President Shin Jo-woon — he'd been hooked by the palace maid ghost yesterday, hadn't he? It was about time he went to lend a hand.
Rembrary yawned and sat up. The plan was to go find him and detach the palace maid ghost that had latched onto him.
Truthfully, he would have preferred to leave the man to stew a little longer, but Rembrary had a magnanimous streak befitting a High Priest. A High Priest, after all, must possess the broad-mindedness to avenge a slap on one cheek by going no further than jabbing out an eyeball with his third finger. Rembrary had exactly that kind of generosity.
Ghosts were admittedly less dangerous than evil spirits or demon beasts — but that was only ever a relative distinction. A ghost was still a ghost. Even if the ghost itself had no intention of harming a person, the simple fact of it clinging to someone's side was a bad influence in itself.
And Shin Jo-woon was an ordinary man, wasn't he? When an ordinary person endured a ghost's presence for too long, their body weakened for no discernible reason. The ghost had to be removed before that happened.
"Hm······."
Then it occurred to him that an evil spirit was also attached to his own shadow, and Rembrary looked down at the floor. His shadow, perfectly ordinary-looking, lay sharp and clear in the sunlight — but nothing about it seemed to be hiding an evil spirit. Woo Yeon-woo, held captive by the thing, was equally invisible.
"What in the world are you?"
Rembrary impulsively addressed his shadow. Naturally, there was no answer.
"Whatever you are, latching onto me was not a wise choice."
Even a stern warning drew no reaction whatsoever.
Rembrary stared at the shadow a while longer, then turned and went outside to find the Sangseon — the staff member playing the palace's chief eunuch.
"Hoo······."
At that moment, the Sangseon staff member was standing out in the sun with a bewildered look on his face. He seemed more confused and dazed than he had yesterday afternoon — most likely because of what Shin Jo-woon had pulled in the middle of the night.
Sensing a presence, he turned around, and on seeing Rembrary, his face read I have no idea what to say to this man.
"Sangseon."
When Rembrary called out to him anyway, the man sighed and came over.
"Yes, Your Highness."
"Where do you keep my anchovy?"
"Per the show's rules, you're not supposed to meet him here."
"This is not about the broadcast. Did you not see the state my anchovy was in yesterday?"
"!"
"He seemed somewhat off, and it worries me. Let us go have a quick look at him."
The Sangseon staff member wanted to refuse flat out. But he couldn't.
After Shin Jo-woon had left the previous night, the man had lain awake in fear until dawn, unable to sleep properly.
On the surface, Shin Jo-woon's words had sounded like mere nonsense or a prank, and the audience might well have taken the whole situation as comedy. No — the other eunuchs and palace maids who'd heard the story secondhand had all been snickering over it.
But the Sangseon staff member had found the whole affair chilling, and had been unable to laugh along with the others.
Besides, he'd been attached to Rembrary the entire time, so he remembered the string of strange incidents that had occurred before Shin Jo-woon started acting oddly.
First, Rembrary had abruptly stopped somewhere, then warned everyone not to wander the palace grounds after nightfall. Later, at the pavilion, he'd issued a peculiar warning to Royal Consort Hui as well — that she must never give anyone directions, no matter who asked. That warning hadn't sounded like a joke either.
Of course, no matter how earnestly he said it, if any ordinary person had said such things on a variety show, it would have been easy to brush off. But coming from Rembrary — who'd already been the subject of several unsettling rumors — it felt far more frightening. Not that the Sangseon staff member was particularly brave to begin with.
And then last night. Shin Jo-woon, barefoot and draped only in a royal robe, had approached Rembrary and behaved in a way that was nothing like himself. At first it seemed like a prank, but then Shin Jo-woon had suddenly snapped back to his senses, only to sink afterward into a face full of self-loathing and torment.
The way he'd been so mortified when Jang Tae-ri teased him gave absolute certainty that he hadn't sought out the King's favor willingly. Something was clearly wrong.
In the end, the Sangseon staff member hesitated, then decided to be flexible.
"Very well."
"Good lad. Shall I order you some sardines?"
"No, thank you."
Rembrary washed up, bathed, changed his clothes, and then went to Shin Jo-woon's quarters. But when he arrived, Shin Jo-woon had already gone somewhere.
Shin Jo-woon's Sangseon staff member had gone along with him, and the only ones left were the applicants playing the palace eunuchs.
"Where has Jo-woon gone?"
The ordinary applicant playing the eunuch was flustered when Rembrary appeared out of nowhere and asked him this, but he answered according to the show's setting regardless.
"He said he was stepping out for a stroll, yet here you are already, Your Highness."
A stroll, then.
"I see."
Rembrary answered naturally and stepped inside Shin Jo-woon's quarters.
Am I even allowed in here? the eunuch wondered, staring bewildered at Rembrary's back — but the door shut behind him with a firm, decisive clack.
The eunuch grew even more flustered, but Shin Jo-woon's Sangseon — the one person who could tell him what to do in this situation — was off on the stroll with Shin Jo-woon. Hesitating for a moment, he decided the editors would sort it out somehow.
After all, if the premise was that the three kings were indistinguishable, then wasn't he also supposed to not know that the person who'd just walked into the room was Woo Yeon-woo rather than Shin Jo-woon? No need to worry.
Once inside, Rembrary — just in case — searched for the golden jar full of onion cookies that had been sitting only in Jang Tae-ri's room, but there was no cookie jar in Shin Jo-woon's room either.
The onion cookies had clearly been slipped in by some staff member who happened to be a Jang Tae-ri fan. Come to think of it, he'd never gotten to eat one yesterday. What had they tasted like? Had they actually tasted of onion? Rembrary sat sulking in the middle of the room, staring blankly into space.
How long had he been sitting there? When roughly thirty minutes had passed by his reckoning, Shin Jo-woon finally returned.
On seeing Rembrary, Shin Jo-woon raised an eyebrow as if surprised, but instead of demanding what he was doing here, he offered a seemingly affectionate greeting.
"Good morning."
Rembrary was low on energy, but he returned the greeting anyway.
"Is that tender greeting meant to conceal yesterday's embarrassment?"
"You're awfully good at talking down to me, aren't you?"
"You seem eager to change the subject."
"······."
It took less than a minute for the warm smile on Shin Jo-woon's lips to curdle into a smile that smiled without smiling at all.
But Rembrary never saw the change — he was too busy searching for the palace maid ghost that ought to have been clinging to Shin Jo-woon. The ghost was the whole point; he wanted to detach it quickly, go home, and get back to sleep.
Had the ghost dumped him somewhere during the stroll? The palace maid ghost was nowhere to be seen.
Did it come off on its own?
If so, that was a relief, for now at least······ Rembrary let himself relax and rose from his seat. Then, to announce that he would be leaving, he looked at Shin Jo-woon — and noticed that something about the man's gaze was different from usual.
Fuller of curiosity than normal, perhaps?
Is he possessed by the palace maid ghost again, like yesterday?
The change was distinct enough that Rembrary reflexively raised a hand and waved it back and forth right in front of Shin Jo-woon's eyes.
But Shin Jo-woon didn't react in the slightest.
With that odd look in his eyes, not so much as blinking, he asked Rembrary:
"Pig. Can you see ghosts, by any chance?"
At that blunt question, with no attempt to soften it, Rembrary froze mid-wave, his hand hanging motionless in the air. Unsettled eyes turned toward Shin Jo-woon, who was still smiling.
Rembrary was thrown. He'd only come to detach the palace maid ghost — being interrogated like this was not part of the plan. His mind began to spin.
What is this? How does he know to say that?
Could Shin Jo-woon be part of Nakru — that organization?
But for someone from Nakru, he got along awfully well with that ghost, didn't he?
Then some other organization? I assumed he was possessed by the palace maid ghost — was he actually carrying it around on purpose?
Like that man in the suit who walked around with an evil spirit or whatever it was on a leash — is this an organization that keeps a ghost of its own on hand?
But every hypothesis sounded plausible, and he couldn't pin anything down. This world abounded with such organizations, each with cunningly different aims — and every last one of them was a secret society. Once things reached this point, it became impossible to tell who belonged to what. Though, of course, Shin Jo-woon might belong to none of them at all.
One thing, however, was certain —
"Can you see ghosts or not?"
If Shin Jo-woon truly couldn't see ghosts, there was no way he would ask such a question at this exact moment. Even jokes had their timing, and hadn't Shin Jo-woon just been carting a ghost around yesterday?
Besides, Rembrary had flattened that ghost with his own hand yesterday. If Shin Jo-woon couldn't see ghosts, he would almost certainly have believed Rembrary had simply patted him on the shoulder.
All of it could be coincidence of timing — but when coincidences stacked up one atop another, one was obligated to suspect that they were no coincidence at all.
A smile rose to Shin Jo-woon's lips.
But before he could answer — knock knock knock knock — someone rapped rapidly and repeatedly on the inside of the closed, old-fashioned wardrobe.
Rembrary and Shin Jo-woon's gazes swung to it simultaneously.
A moment later, the wardrobe door opened, and from within, the palace maid ghost revealed herself.
Her features were still inverted, though her eyeballs weren't spinning as furiously as they had when they'd first met.
[It's······ cramped in here······.]
Muttering this, the palace maid ghost shuffled fully out of the wardrobe. So she did know how to hide herself away in such places.
But then she did something strange. The moment she caught sight of Rembrary, she flinched, hurriedly scrambled back into the wardrobe, and even pulled the door shut behind her.
While Rembrary tilted his head at that lightning-quick retreat —
Shin Jo-woon narrowed his eyes and studied Rembrary's profile.
Meanwhile, Hwan-shin was rewatching the footage of Rembrary's broadcast, gasping in admiration over and over.
At his constant rewinding — watching it again, and again, and again, and again — the demon sitting on the one-seater sofa nearby, reading a newspaper held upside down, finally complained.
[What are you doing. What is it. What are you planning?]
Instead of explaining, Hwan-shin pointed at the TV.
"Do you see that scene?"
[My eyes are right here. I have eyes. They're just hidden.]
"Who says you don't?"
[······]
"Watch this."
Hwan-shin rewound to the scene he'd been replaying again and again.
As the footage ran backward, it settled on the moment Rembrary gave Shin Jo-woon's shoulder a light tap — and the instant he did, the ghost on the shoulder went flat and fled.
Hwan-shin's eyes gleamed; he was clearly delighted by the scene.
"The moment the King, bewitched by a ghost, began spouting nonsense, White Hair tapped the ghost right off him and pinned it. What would you call that scene?"
[Assault. That's rotten. Isn't that supposed to be our department?]
"Mr. Demon, do you retreat when another demon hits you on the head?"
[Never. No way! If it's strong······]
Hwan-shin smiled with satisfaction.
"I told you before, didn't I? That of White Hair, eight parts is something strange, one part is human, and one part is occupied by something like you. It may be that the demonic portion, though it takes up only a small corner of him, is extraordinarily powerful, or······."
[Or? Or? Or what?]
"That eight might turn out to be exorcism-type or divine-type."
The instant Hwan-shin finished speaking,
the demon's features slowly emerged.
His lips stretched into a long, sideways grin. It was a face of pure delight.
[An enemy? So he's an enemy? He might just be an enemy.]
But instead of answering, Hwan-shin tilted his head and furrowed his brow.
"But there is something odd."
[Again? What now? Every single time?]
"That eight, I mean. Judging by how the ghost fled, the odds of it being exorcism- or divine-type are certainly high. But the way it felt to me — it was absolutely not divine-type."