A Midnight Tryst
I gaped at the true identity of the secret rendezvous partner now laid bare.
"What kind of plot twist is this…?"
So the husband who'd slipped out of the house in high spirits, hiding from his wife, to meet someone in the dead of night… was meeting a slender eunuch?
Ilhong beside me looked just as shocked, mouth hanging open for a long while.
"Ilhong, when you become a eunuch, does that… change your sexual preferences?"
"W-well, I wouldn't know?"
Even Ilhong, who knew everything except what she didn't, apparently had no knowledge that far.
"Oh-ho-hong."
That distinctive, coquettish voice of a eunuch I'd heard once before in the silkworm chamber wormed its way into my ears.
The two of them stood pressed close, whispering something quietly into each other's ears. Since I couldn't make out the content, from a distance it looked for all the world like a lovers' tryst.
"What do we do, Boss?"
Faced with a situation outside our expectations, Ilhong asked me for direction.
"We should report it to the client, right?"
"Damn it, how am I supposed to tell Madam Yang this?"
Your husband turns out to be having an affair with a eunuch—something like that? People of this era might faint dead away hearing news like that. Would she even believe me in the first place?
"…wait for the… time… choice…"
And the two of them, whispering soft and low into each other's ears.
"Only you…"
"Wait… the choice… deliberation…"
They clung together like that for a while, then nodded and finally parted. Both of them looked slightly flushed. I felt like I'd just witnessed something deeply bizarre.
I supposed I should count myself lucky they hadn't progressed to the next stage.
"Well, that was rather platonic… Is it because they don't have the equipment?"
"Plato-what?"
"It's a thing."
Every case of adultery evidence-gathering I'd done until now had been thoroughly sordid, after all.
"Well, with two men, of course it'd be wholesome. What else would they do?"
She was more innocent than I expected in this department. The type who'd only ever studied by the book, like a model student.
"Yeah, just like the two of us."
"…."
She glared at me with her lips stuck out in a pout, clearly not amused.
"What?"
"You'd be shocked if you saw me out of these men's clothes…"
"Oh my, is that so."
Watching a kid so much younger act like that was just entertaining. When I laughed, treating her like a child, Ilhong huffed and puffed in indignation.
"Stop treating me like that. There's only one year between us."
"Sure, sure."
From her perspective, I looked like a peer, so I supposed her reaction made a kind of sense. But from my point of view, she was young, and I'd mostly seen her in men's clothes, so I only thought of her as a close little brother.
"…then… until then… decide…"
And in that time their meeting seemed to have ended; they whispered their final secret words and parted ways. I crunched on a wheat cake in place of popcorn as I watched their receding figures.
"So, Boss, how do we tell the client about this?"
"How else? We tell it straight."
Report exactly what we saw and heard. That was the selling point of our agency.
"That's impossible! It can't be!"
And I immediately came to regret that decision. Madam Yang slammed the office table, violently denying everything she'd just heard.
"I saw it with my own eyes. Two men… wait, is one of them not a man? Anyway, it was a scene of them sharing a private conversation."
"Stop! Stooop!"
At my words she slammed the table again. Thanks to that, the tea Ilhong had carefully poured went flying in every direction.
"I saw it too, right next to the Boss. Ma'am."
Ilhong provided supporting fire from beside me. The two of us put on faces that said we'd clearly seen something, like servants in some drama. Faced with those trustworthy expressions, Madam Yang seemed gradually persuaded, and eventually dropped her head with a thud.
"I never dreamed, not even in my dreams, that he had such… tastes… Then why did he say he loved me… That terrible man…!"
Denial, then anger. The five stages of a human accepting shocking news.
"It's still too early to jump to conclusions. From what I saw, it seemed they were only exchanging private words."
I tried to convey the most objective facts possible. After all, I hadn't clearly heard the conversation. But once suspicion takes root, it doesn't disappear easily. Instead it only gains momentum, like a boulder rolling down a slope. Why else would words like pathological jealousy even exist?
"If you wish, we can close this commission here."
Wanting to wash my hands of this, I said as much, but she shook her head.
"There must be… more to it. You said he was a eunuch of very high rank, didn't you? Perhaps he's being threatened somehow for the sake of the family…"
She could accept the affair, but there had to be a reason. Had we entered the bargaining stage? I calmly waited for her to reach acceptance.
She fell silent for a moment, seeming depressed, then, having decided on something, jerked her head up.
"I need to confirm it properly one more time."
Declaring she'd pay any amount more, she plunked down her money pouch and changed the details of the commission. In this era, even if someone committed adultery, gathering hard evidence was impossible anyway.
"This time, I'll go to the scene myself."
All that was left was catching them in the act on site. She vowed that when the two met, she would leap out and confront them.
"Lying in wait isn't easy work, you know."
"He'll be busy with Imperial Palace business soon, so if they're going to meet, it'll be before long. And I know which days he has free."
She'd already figured out the dates, apparently. If she was this proactive, there was no helping it.
"But you must not do anything impulsive."
At my warning, she nodded. Somehow the atmosphere was turning as serious as the old days when I used to get stabbed.
Well, it'll work out somehow.
This body of mine wouldn't die no matter what you stuck into it, after all. Some people might grumble that using the flesh of the Heavenly Killing Star for something this trivial was absurd.
Well, it was still far better than getting tainted by that bastard and slaughtering people indiscriminately without a thought for anything else. And seeing as it was something that bastard hated, I figured it had meaning of its own—so I sprang to my feet with Ilhong.
One day, with the still-chilly spring wind blowing, we were once again keeping watch at the exit of the Seomok family's secret passage. And, just as I'd half-expected and half-hoped against, Family Head Seo Mok-won slipped out stealthily toward somewhere.
Watching from a distance, Ilhong shook her head back and forth and opened her mouth.
"How could he do this? Leaving behind his principal wife, with whom he shared hard times since childhood, and losing his mind over someone else…"
She lamented with a sigh, asking how love could change like that.
"But why are you saying that while staring straight at my face?"
"No reason. Just thinking of old times."
She smoothly changed the subject, saying the beggar's outfit made her think of the back alleys.
"Huh, but this time the person he's meeting is different?"
Last time, it had been someone slender enough for a man that I'd initially mistaken for a woman. This time, he was making contact in a deserted spot with someone who openly showed signs of martial training.
"Whoa, so it wasn't just one person? But that back view looks familiar somehow…"
"Oh my, what varied tastes. That man is something else."
As the two of us traded remarks, our client let out a voice thick with emotion.
"Please stop…"
We'd only been staking out alone together until now, so we'd been muttering without thinking. We both clamped our mouths shut.
Then, as moonlight and starlight seeped into the alley, the sturdy man's face was revealed. First to catch the eye were white whiskers that didn't match the body, and a pair of eyes gleaming with spiritual light.
"What—it's the eunuch uncle…?"
Why was that man, who should be at Princess Dohwa's side, popping up here? I gasped at the appearance of someone I'd never expected.
He was gesturing, carrying on some kind of earnest conversation. What were they talking about?
"…Imperial Guard… Lord… you…"
He was at a level where he'd sense our presence the moment we approached, so I was pouring inner energy into my hearing from a distance, straining to catch snatches. The conversation seemed to be going in a direction completely different from what I'd thought.
Don't tell me—had we completely misunderstood based solely on the client's words? It seemed this wasn't an affair at all, but something of a different nature.
"Come to think of it, that man is also a eunuch, technically."
"Well, yeah, but…"
"His tastes are remarkably consistent, that family head."
"Hey, we're not alone here."
Shocked by the scene, Ilhong had muttered to herself again, forgetting the client's presence once more.
"Grr…!"
At that, Madam Yang, unable to endure any longer in multiple ways, burst out into the back alley in the dead of night.
"Seo Mok-won, you…! What on earth is this?!"
The family head and the Eastern Depot uncle startled at the piercing scream that shook the alley.
"W-Wife? What are you doing here…?"
And with my long-honed troubleshooter's instinct, I was certain. That wasn't the face of someone caught doing something bad—it was the face of a man who genuinely had no idea why his wife had suddenly appeared here. Meaning the idea that her husband was sneaking out every night for secret trysts had been the client's misunderstanding or misapprehension.
"Never mind that—explain first…! You have a wife like me, so why?! Why are you going around meeting other men—e-eunuchs, no less! Was I not enough for you?!"
"Wife! What in the world is this preposterous nonsense?!"
Lacking a master's hearing, she still held the same misunderstanding as Ilhong. Faced with such accusations, Family Head Seo Mok-won naturally leapt up as if he couldn't believe his ears.
"…."
And the middle-aged man, wondering what this bizarre situation was, let out a hollow laugh. Then I locked eyes with him in the darkness. His eyes immediately narrowed, as if glaring daggers at me.
"Boss, how do we clean this up?"
"We don't."
Things had gotten thoroughly tangled. And when that happened, quietly slipping away was a true troubleshooter's duty.
"You grabbed the advance payment, right, Ilhong?"
"Of course."
"Okay, we're withdrawing."
As we tried to sneak off, the Eastern Depot uncle's brow furrowed thinner and thinner. But then, from the opposite side of the alley we'd been about to escape through, a group of people began approaching with measured footsteps.
Unidentified figures bearing long swords, dressed in yellow silk robes—the symbol of the imperial house—and red leather boots.
"Oh-ho-hong. So you really were playing both sides, Family Head Seo Mok-won."
Wang Jin-gong, standing at the very front, let out his distinctive laugh with an expression of deep disappointment.
"…Boss, those clothes and ornaments—that's the imperial Jinyiwei, the Embroidered Uniform Guard."
Unlike me, Ilhong recognized their identity at once and spoke in a tense voice. The imperial armed force whose main duty was suppressing traitors and rebel factions of the court. Of course, in this era, "traitor" was a label that stuck wherever you hung it—on the nose as a nose ring, on the ear as an earring—so they mostly served as a blade for the powerful to purge opposing factions.
And this felt very similar to the Eastern Depot, which also served as the palace's secret police and intelligence agency.
"In fact, they've clashed a lot over the years, and now that the sides are completely split, the moment they run into each other outside, swords might start flying, you know?"
As if on cue, upon coming face-to-face with an Eastern Depot official of clearly high rank who was also Princess Dohwa's hand, they were all stoking some rather ominous fighting spirit.
"What the hell is this situation?"
With Family Head Seo Mok-won and Madam Yang stuck in the middle, both ends of the alley were sealed off by Eastern Depot and Jinyiwei forces.
"We're the shrimp caught between two whales fighting."
Smart Ilhong neatly summarized our situation.
"Then let's just slip out toward the uncle's side for now."
At least that side wouldn't start swinging weapons at us right away.
"Who goes there!"
But then, a flying dagger flashed from far away and buried itself right in front of my toes.
"Holy shit!"
We immediately scrambled back toward where the client was.
"…Wife, who on earth are these people? Do you know them?"
"Well… it's a long story."
The two of them in panic, and this gaze burning a hole in the back of my head. It was definitely that man's.
"Haha, Cheon Su-gyeong—good to see you again after last time."
At that, the middle-aged man opened his mouth with a thoroughly displeased expression.
"It's Cheon Su-gong, you carp-brained idiot."
Ah, right. That was the name. I'd been through so much and so much time had passed that I'd forgotten.
"Honestly, this pipsqueak of a brat…"
Cheon Su-gong clenched and unclenched his fist as if he wanted to thrash me. Seeing him again after so long, he seemed just as delighted to see me.