The Title Appears
There had never been anything impossible in Min Do-yeong’s life.
Born the favored son of the Min family, he could have anything he wanted, and everything in the world had always bent itself to his expectations.
There were only two exceptions.
The first was Im Chae-yeon, the love that Crown Prince Yi Geon had stolen from him. That pitiful woman the crown prince had kidnapped.
And the second was this—this grotesque, absurd spectacle unfolding right before his eyes.
A metallic tang filled the air as a bead of blood slid down his chin.
Min Do-yeong didn’t even realize his lower lip had split open and begun to bleed. He kept chewing at it until it nearly came loose.
“Song Hak-su... that filthy bastard dared to stab me in the back?”
At last, a beastlike rasp burst from Min Do-yeong’s mouth, his lips ground raw and bloody.
Im Chae-yeon loved me. The only woman who melted my frozen heart!
She was supposed to be by my side. There was no way Chae-yeon would abandon me for some man like that.
And yet that arrogant crown prince had stolen his woman away.
So he had prepared everything. From this mountain retreat villa he had arranged for her, to the uprising that would turn everything upside down.
The target was the Emperor and the crown prince.
He had never dreamed Song Hak-su would take the entire wedding hall and turn it into a sea of fire, wiping out the imperial family in one sweep.
He killed the whole royal line? This was why people from the low classes were useless.
Those fools hadn’t even known how to seize control of the country, and in the end they had ruined everything. Most of all, they had ruined his love.
A mere west-clique—no, not even something fit to be called a yangban, just a filthy pig-like cur—like Song Hak-su!
And Lee Jin? Where the hell had a man like Lee Jin come from? What sort of collateral relation was he to show up calling himself Emperor and then crush the army?
That incompetent piece of trash Song Hak-su had even gone around blurting out his name.
It hurt. It hurt so badly. The fever of failed love, the woman he could never see again, felt as if it were eating away at his very life.
But rage could only carry him so far. This was no time for that. Min Do-yeong’s cold reason was already warning him that he needed a plan, even now.
He twisted the safe dial with jerky fingers.
Out spilled dozens of bundles of bearer bonds, bars of gold, and carefully forged passports from various countries.
“Chief Choi! You’ve got the car ready, right? We’re heading to Seosan Pier. The smuggling boat should be ready.”
“Yes, sir. A vessel is standing by.”
“Good. We leave immediately.”
He had more money than he could ever spend. He didn’t know how long exile would last, but politics never stayed the same forever.
When the time came, he would return in triumph and grind to dust the bastards who had brought this disaster upon him, the bastards who had stolen his love.
Min Do-yeong stuffed the valuables into a leather bag and hurried out of the villa.
“Chief Choi.”
“...Yes, sir.”
“I’ll make sure you and your people aren’t disappointed. Ten times the advance payment I gave your company... no, twenty times. Just risk your lives and protect me, understand?”
Dogs who were loyal to money and nothing else.
To Min Do-yeong, he was the master, and everyone else was just a dog that wagged its tail if you tossed it a bone.
And yet Chief Choi, who had always obeyed his orders without question, stood rooted in place as if nailed there.
“What are you doing? Didn’t you hear me?! Get the car ready now!”
Chief Choi looked down at Min Do-yeong with expressionless eyes. Then, slowly, his lips parted.
“Why would we?”
“What?”
Min Do-yeong’s brow twisted grotesquely.
Had he ever heard such a question from anyone in his entire life? Except for Im Chae-yeon, that brazen girl...
But his opponent was nothing more than a hairy old man. Naturally, Min Do-yeong’s fury surged even higher.
“You bastard, have you lost your mind? Do you know how much money you’ve swallowed from me up to now?”
“Congressman.”
Chief Park drew a silenced pistol from inside his jacket.
“His Majesty, our newly enthroned Emperor, made it perfectly clear. Even those who sided with the rebellion will be shown leniency if they surrender.
Since we’re people who simply did what we were told, if we bring you in, maybe we’ll at least get some ‘consideration.’”
“You, you son of a—”
“You don’t seem to have any duty to protect you here anymore.”
“You motherfuc—”
Min Do-yeong did not get to finish.
Pfft—!
The dull crack of a suppressed shot echoed through the air.
* * *
Let’s turn our memories back a little.
Even in the drama I originally knew, the imperial family was never portrayed as a normal institution.
It was a swamp of corruption, overflowing with luxury and vicious power struggles.
The main story itself followed the stubborn, tireless heroine Im Chae-yeon, a woman from a common background, as she clawed her way through that sewer and stubbornly won both her dream and her love. The crown prince was usually framed as a young ruler who wanted to reform the imperial family alongside her.
...Well, maybe the depictions got weird from time to time because they needed to cram in whatever looked cool that episode, but that was more or less the idea.
Setting the main couple aside, what about the second male lead?
A classic second-lead type: handsome, gentlemanly on the surface, while hiding a mad, obsessive fixation on the heroine underneath.
He would appear whenever the heroine was in danger and play the black knight, only to get pushed aside by the crown prince in the end and spiral into darkness. That overused setup.
By my amateur psychiatry, he didn’t really seem like a psychopath so much as the usual obsessive bad-boy archetype, but...
So this was where it had all led.
At this point, though, it hardly mattered.
On the screen, Min Do-yeong—just arrested by the special task force—was being loaded into an ambulance, the whole thing broadcast live.
The bastard, drenched in blood, was screaming at the reporters hurling flash after flash at him.
[Let go of me! I said let go, you bastards!! Chae-yeon! Do you know what I did for you? How can my love, my sincerity, be called treason? I only wanted to save you!! Chae-yeon, you—!!]
“...He’s completely lost it.”
Do you have any idea how many people died because of your little love story?
Honestly, what the hell was wrong with this makjang-drama world?
“That is correct. Whenever someone gets tangled up with Her Imperial Highness the Crown Princess, they tend to... lose their reason rather often.”
Seo Yu-jin let the end of her sentence trail off.
Come to think of it, even in the drama she’d had a hard time cleaning up after all the mess created by that triangle.
“But if Min Do-yeong is appearing like that in front of the media, perhaps the lawyers could argue diminished responsibility...”
“That’s nonsense. Tell the joint investigation team to ignore any outside pressure whatsoever.”
Though whether there were any idiots with the guts to apply pressure in a treason case was another matter.
Right now, everyone connected to the Min family was being linked together like a string of beads.
“Since Min Do-yeong was captured, it seems the underlings who served him have started talking as well. They’re all scrambling to save themselves by digging up each other’s dirty laundry.”
A bunch of people without a shred of loyalty, thrashing around in a desperate attempt to reduce their sentences.
But whatever their motives, the conclusion was simple.
Anyone tied to the rebellion would be uprooted completely.
* * *
Jangdong.
Far removed from the ominous night air hanging over the capital, only the faint scent of orchids drifted through the secluded inner chambers of an elegant hanok residence.
The Ministry of Joint Investigation has launched a surprise search of the Min family, relatives of former Daehan Party congressman Min Do-yeong. The task force continues an intensive, all-encompassing investigation into the rebellion’s participants, including the former congressman, whose emergency treatment has now been completed...
[Multiple arrest warrants have been requested for those connected to the former Congressman Min, who is under suspicion of building slush funds through shell companies and smuggling explosives...]
“...So the Min family is finished.”
Someone finally spoke.
The middle-aged man sitting across from him, idly turning a silk fan in his hands, let out a scoff.
“My, my. A family can produce a rotten child and still be ruined this badly.”
“Indeed. A crazy fool, interfering in imperial affairs over his own private feelings because there wasn’t any woman around to keep him in line...”
To meddle in the affairs of the imperial house for something so personal, not even understanding his own station, and drag his whole family into the jaws of death.
Over the long history of the great old families, there had never been a shortage of fools who acted as if the world belonged to them from the moment they were born, but this had crossed the line.
And all it had taken was one day.
In the span of a single day, heaven and earth had turned upside down, the imperial family had been swept away, and sitting on the sacred throne was Lee Jin, a collateral relation who had come in with an army at his back.
“Truly heartbreaking. To commit such a deed when he ought to have been devoted to serving the imperial family all the more faithfully...”
Even men who had seen every storm life could throw at them were bound to feel uneasy in a situation like this.
And with good reason— even if only the Min family had been tied to the capital crime, how many among the rest were truly innocent of other offenses?
It was time to keep their heads down for a while. Rebels were tearing through Seoul, and the Emperor had all the legitimacy on his side.
“We may be next. Chairman Kim, shouldn’t we have some sort of countermeasure?”
“Enough.”
At the voice from the seat of honor, everyone gathered at the meeting fell silent at once.
The old man called Chairman Kim—Kim Yang-han—looked around the room with a blank face before speaking.
“His Majesty rose from a humble village and cut down the rebels in a single stroke, then restored the imperial line. A man so brilliant would never accuse innocent people without cause.”
“...Well.”
No one could agree, and no one could deny it either. The attendees could only wet their lips and shift in their seats.
“Fortunately, at the moment when the imperial bloodline nearly ended, Heaven intervened and placed a man like His Majesty in the line of succession. We scholar-officials need only serve the imperial family with loyalty and righteousness. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Y-Yes, of course.”
“We can only hope His Majesty recognizes our sincerity...”
Kim Yang-han paid those answers little mind.
His gaze remained fixed on the TV, where Lee Jin’s image was being broadcast without pause.
“He looks just like the late Emperor.”
“Pardon?”
At the abrupt remark, the people gathered there reflexively asked again, but Kim Yang-han merely lifted his teacup to his lips and said, “The late Emperor was once also so full of vigor. Youth is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?”
Kim Yang-han spoke slowly.
“I am a sinner who could not attend the wedding ceremony because of my weak constitution, and so I could not die with the late Emperor, but I intend to offer my humble service to His Majesty. That is the duty of people like us...”
The duty of the great families of Gyeonghwa.
So Kim Yang-han murmured.
* * *
In one dark, damp storage room.
Over the past few days, the only things that had come and gone here were three meals a day, a few newspapers, and the rats that had somehow made it through the strict quarantine.
Under the dim light, newspapers lay strewn about with headlines like “New Emperor Ascends,” “Rebel Faction Purged,” and “Min Do-yeong Arrested.”
The woman with her head buried in the papers muttered, “So they went around acting all high and mighty as the Min family, and now they’re worse off than servants. Serves them right.”
“Miss.”
Then the door to the storage room opened, and someone’s voice slipped through the crack.
“It seems it’s time for you to come out.”
Only then did the woman inside lift her head.
“Oh? That was quicker this time.”
Kim A-ra.
The conglomerate heiress from smiled with a bewitching curve of her lips.
“Looks like Father’s in quite a hurry.”