Snow White Flower
Seolbaekhwa — the Snow White Flower — was a rare liquor strictly controlled by law.
There were conditions for drinking it. First, one had to be a nobleman. Second, one had to hold an official post. No matter how deep one's coffers ran, it was not a drink that money alone could buy.
"I doubt such a precious liquor could be found in a remote valley like this. My apologies."
"Oh, but it is."
And so every man in the kingdom dreamed of tasting Seolbaekhwa at least once. Drinking it was proof, plain and simple, that he was among the chosen few.
A liquor drunk across a line drawn sharp and clear between oneself and the lowborn — nothing else in the world could compare. It was sweet, dreamy, and fragrant all at once.
"Before Jang-hwa and Hong-ryeon died, I wonder how many bottles of Seolbaekhwa were emptied in this pavilion."
Seoryeong gave a soft snort as though she already knew every drop, a vivid sneer settled on her face. Her voice rang through the quiet pavilion.
"That's right. If you wish to lie through your teeth, then I'll be gracious enough to play along."
Seoryeong extended her mercy to Hwa-yeong, who sat beside her, speaking as tenderly as one might offer a passing joke. And with that, the events of mere hours ago came flooding back.
"What do you think you're doing? You're drawing far too much attention to us."
"Mm-hm~ That's the whole point. I'll take this one too! No, no — one of each color!"
Seoryeong, buying anything that caught her eye, hummed a tune right through Myeong-do's protests.
Everyone had wondered what could possibly fill such a large bundle. The answer: gold ingots, jewels, silk — every treasure imaginable, all of it converted to coin and now being flung about like water.
"Hmm, this one's rather nice."
"You have an excellent eye, young master! It came in from across the sea, so it's a touch on the pricey side."
"See? I knew it. Lovely, lovely. How much?"
When the merchant held up five fingers, Myeong-do's brow furrowed.
"That won't do. One moment, please."
Having bowed his head slightly to Seoryeong as if asking her indulgence, Myeong-do then abandoned every ounce of that courtesy and seized her by the nape of the neck.
"Hey! You lunatic! Ya! Let go! Let go of me!"
Dragged kicking and dangling behind him, Seoryeong only won her freedom once they reached a deserted spot, where she bounced up and down on the spot in a fury.
"It's my money and I want to spend it! What business is it of yours? This is infuriating!"
"...You were paying at least three times the fair price."
"What did you say?!"
"Do you even know what these things are actually worth?"
At that, Seoryeong's mouth fell open.
"I may lack the aesthetic eye for spotting beauty, but when it comes to telling genuine articles from fakes, I am second to none. I spent long years on investigations prosecuting fraud, after all. That item didn't come from across the sea. It was made right here in Yeomhoguk."
Myeong-do pressed a hand to his forehead and sighed.
"Trading and selling silk and other precious luxuries at crooked prices is nothing new, but when you make yourself such an obvious mark, no wonder the merchants can't resist."
At his deadpan answer, Seoryeong went into a fresh rage.
"You absolute madmen! I — I have always paid these prices!"
"So you've spent your whole life fattening up every merchant you met. And, for the record — that jade ring you just bought at five times the price? Also a fake."
Seoryeong, whose head barely reached his chest, had such nimble footwork that she bobbed up level with him with every hop.
"If you understand, then let's head back. Since everything must be repurchased at its true price, I'll need to demand every coin back."
At Myeong-do's words, Seoryeong clutched hard at the hem of his robe.
"Look... what's done is done. It stings to swallow the money, but I can always earn more later by fleecing some other fool. That much I can live with. My fault, entirely my fault. I was born too beautiful to help it — what can you do? My crime is being gorgeous without being the least bit tough or worldly-wise..."
There wasn't a shred of conscience anywhere in it, but Seoryeong ground her teeth with perfect composure.
"Then all that's left is to head straight for the pavilion. A fresh pigeon just wandered into the village — word will spread fast."
"The pavilion? What are you..."
"You didn't hear it yesterday? There was a smell of flowers."
Seoryeong was sharp as a blade, nothing like someone freshly swindled. Somewhere, a slow, low pipe melody began to drift beneath the silence.
"Right now, the flowers haven't even properly bloomed yet. So when Jang-hwa and Hong-ryeon died, it would have been hard to find a single living blade of grass. Then where do you suppose that flower scent came from?"
At her deduction, Myeong-do's gaze sharpened.
"Plum blossom and white cypress."
"Exactly. And one more thing."
Seoryeong turned her head — toward the distant quarter where the magistrate's office of Cheonmaekji stood.
"Seolbaekhwa. Liquor always leaves a stronger trace than perfume."
The scene returned to the present. That furtive, scheming melody still played on.
"What is the meaning of this? Stopping mid-performance... I must say, the liquor's lost its charm."
"My apologies."
With trembling hands, the girl forced her playing to continue. The sound of the geomungo was wretched. As the sluggish melody crawled on, Seoryeong drew a hairpin ornament from inside her robe.
"Here — your performance fee."
She tossed it carelessly at the girl's feet. Snickering, Seoryeong then jingled the pouch laid on the table, toying with it.
"Keep your hands busy and your smile busy too. This one's the price of your smile."
The blatant mockery made the fingers on the gayageum strings tremble with shame. She pressed her lips together and tried to lift the corners of her mouth, but it wouldn't come easily.
She was still at an age where calluses had yet to form on the heart.
"Not enough? There. Then this as well. My, what an expensive smile you have."
Seoryeong kept tossing down coins, one after another. It was Hwa-yeong who caught her hand.
"My lord, please — don't. Might I play a piece instead? She's still too young to know how to keep her hands from shaking."
A smile as if painted on floated across Hwa-yeong's face. Seoryeong swept her thumb slowly, deliberately across the back of Hwa-yeong's hand — a touch that lingered like a taunt — and spoke.
"You catch on quickly, don't you. Good. You're haehwa — slave flowers — so if you're told to smile, you smile; if you're told to weep, you weep."
Hwa-yeong held her smile even under the barb. Because Seoryeong was right.
"It festers inside, doesn't it? The rage keeps boiling up. And yet what choice do you have? Standing still and swallowing it all is simply what you were made for."
She was not a person. She was only a flower.
"Are you going to live your whole life like a flower with no voice?"
The thumb that had been stroking her hand pressed down hard.
"When the girls you cherished start dying one by one — what then? Will you be able to smile through that too? Swallow every last bit of it?"
Her nails dug into Hwa-yeong's skin.
"Seeing nothing, hearing nothing, as if none of it ever happened? Is that how you mean to live?"
Hwa-yeong's smile began, slowly, to fall. The calculating coquetry in her eyes shifted into something else entirely.
"After Jang-hwa and Hong-ryeon, whose turn will it be? Try thinking for once."
She spoke now with the listless air of someone grown weary.
"Why have you set foot in this Cheonmaekji?"
"Questions are not yours to ask. They're mine."
Only then did Seoryeong release the back of Hwa-yeong's hand.
"If I swore that no one — no one at all — would ever break another flower again... would you follow me?"
Hwa-yeong looked at the girl who had been playing the geomungo. Then her throat bobbed as she swallowed something down.
Sorrow swallowed, shame swallowed, filth swallowed, hatred swallowed, fear swallowed, loneliness swallowed — the inside of her had been burning pitch-black for a long, long time.
Here in Cheonmaekji, where clear water ran, Hwa-yeong's countless emotions had stagnated and rotted where they pooled.
And the more they rotted, the more beautifully she bloomed. Yes. They were haehwa — slave flowers.
"...I will follow you."
But flowers of such beauty are, without fail, flowers that carry poison.
On the verge of snapping, the geomungo string rang out one last, trembling note. Episode 3 of Strange Tales (Gimyodam) had ended.
"Our station's mortal enemy..."
This was the MBS Drama Center, and once again today the Center Director was in tears.
SBC's blockbuster drama. TVM's runaway hit. And what, one might ask, had the other two networks been doing?
"Seoryeong—!"
Yes. That's right. They were plunging smoothly, gracefully, headfirst into the abyss.
Every digit of that single-digit viewership tore the MBS Drama Center Director's heart to shreds.
To be fair, the drama MBS was currently airing had its own modest audience and a fanbase of sorts.
Let's take a closer look at Holiday — the MBS drama that had gone up against Gimyodam and Top Class.
...And let's stop taking a closer look there.
"Hold on just a moment, Director..."
The hand that came down squarely on the weeping MBS Center Director's shoulder belonged to this era's healing director, So Ye-sol.
"The name Seoryeong doesn't actually appear in episodes one or two of Gimyodam..."
So Ye-sol was razor-sharp. For a moment, the Center Director's shoulder trembled.
"You've... been reading the synopsis...?"
If she'd read as far as the synopsis, it was a certainty she'd watched episode one in its entirety. So Ye-sol turned to the other PDs nearby and said,
"...Deal with this person."
"Wait! No! Know your enemy and know yourself—!!!"
The Center Director was dragged off somewhere. Listening to his screams fade, So Ye-sol checked the reactions to Gimyodam episode 3 and let out a small sigh.
The mention volume around Gimyodam had shot up dramatically. By this time next week, articles titled things like "The Gimyodam Syndrome" would probably be uploaded every hour on the hour.
"Still... this is really bad, isn't it..."
What kind of script would it take to bring Han Yeo-reum in? It wasn't hard to predict that once Gimyodam finished its final episode, an all-out bidding war for Han Yeo-reum would erupt.
"Now that I think of it — KBC announces their 50th-anniversary special drama soon..."
"Hey, this is seriously well made."
This was the editing suite for Faster Than the Law. Beside Director Gong, a man watching Gimyodam on the screen alongside him let out a whistle of admiration.
"You've finished watching, so now — please, tell me about Faster Than the Law, sunbae. Quickly. How entertaining it is, how it'll do at the box office, and why you think so."
Timid as ever, Director Gong was hoping for a little sympathy today too.
But the man brushed past his plea and had already picked up his phone.
"Look at these reactions."
"They hooked the early audience with real cleverness. The direction, the storytelling — all of it."
This man was a living legend of the drama industry, with hit long-form series stacked behind him.
Director Ja Seok-hwan, famed for making everything feel like cinema no matter the genre. He handled modern-era period pieces especially well, and was a heavyweight who routinely opened at a base rating of 30%.
"Hey, save me a seat at tomorrow's VIP premiere. I'm coming!"
"Sunbae, if you would just listen to me for one second... Wait, you were busy last time, so you came today instead..."
"I need to have a conversation with this one! Get me in there!"
"How can a grown man be this immature... Look, we're talking right now, in front of you!"
"Well, this works out. I was wondering who could be Korea's Daisy... and then — this desolation! This pitiable quality! The provocation simmering just beneath the surface! And on top of that, the skill is usable. Usable. First on my shortlist. Okay."
Director Ja sank deep into his own world. He was the director of KBC's upcoming founding-anniversary special drama, The Great Garand — and though this role was not the lead, he had been wandering in search of someone who could carry a part every bit as explosive as one.
Bzzt—. Bzzt—. Bzzt—.
Director Ja's phone rang. It was the casting director.
"Oh! Perfect timing! I was about to call you!"
Director Ja shouted in his excitement, and the casting director on the other end shouted right back.
—Director! An recommendation just came in from the investors for the young Yeon Hee-jae role.
"Oh? Who is it?"
—Solid line delivery, decent acting, and the investors are backing her...
"I said, WHO?"
—Ki Joo-ye. The youngest daughter from Top Class.
At the casting director's answer, Director Ja patted Director Gong's shoulders twice as he laughed.
"Ah, her? Yeees. Let's meet and talk it over. Sure, I'm over at — well, where I am right now is..."
And Director Ja walked straight out, abandoning Director Gong where he sat. Left behind in the sudden desolation, Director Gong's eyes grew misty.
"But I'm supposed to be in Faster Than the Law 2 as well..."
What if, later on, Yeo-reum got so famous she refused to appear in the work of a mere 3-million-admissions director like himself? Director Gong's sigh deepened under the weight of that worry and dread.
Now, with only three weeks left until the official release of Faster Than the Law, tomorrow was the day the VIP premiere would open its doors.