What Was Reeled In
Looking up at the night sky, you sometimes catch stars that shine especially bright.
And the man before me seemed to be gazing at one of those stars. His appearance was shabby, yet something in his words and manner carried a strange, quiet power.
"If you're fishing for time, does that actually make you any money?"
I'd only meant to take a quiet walk and sort through my thoughts, but having someone to talk to wasn't half bad.
At my question—wasn't fishing for time a pointless waste?—a faint smile spread beneath the brim of his bamboo hat.
"Money isn't everything in this world."
He watched the bamboo float bob once, sink with a soft plop, then rise again on the lake's surface, and continued.
"In fact, nothing is quite as meaningless as that."
True to the man who claimed he fished for time instead of fish, his words carried a peculiar sort of insight.
So the money I was scraping together so desperately was meaningless, was it? Well, people like that did exist—those so drowning in wealth that it no longer stirred them, or those like monks who had simply detached themselves from material things altogether.
Judging by clothes that looked worse than a low-ranking palace servant's, the middle-aged man in front of me seemed to fall into the latter camp.
"If you've nothing better to do, sit down. Looking up at you is making my neck ache."
He pointed to a flat rock beside him.
A lakeside with a fine view, a thin veil of mist settled over it like something out of a dream. Perfect place to kill time.
With nothing else on my plate, I parked my rear on the rock.
"How'd you know I was new to the Empress's palace?"
"Simple. I'd never seen your face before."
Apparently the gardener of the Empress's palace kept track of the faces that came and went.
Out of boredom, maybe? If so, he was one leisurely gardener.
"So how is life in the Empress's palace treating you? Hard to adjust?"
Still watching the float drift, the lakeside fisherman offered the kind of counsel that suggested he'd been through it all himself.
"It's... manageable enough."
A quiet atmosphere, broken only by the occasional soft splash of the hook and float against the water. The complete opposite of the nightmare I'd witnessed and lived through the night before.
Maybe that was why, listening to his strangely calming voice, I felt something in me begin to loosen.
"Heh. 'Manageable,' is it? Even a humble gardener like me knows about the Empress's fiery temper."
As someone who worked under her as well, he understood her temperament perfectly, and he was building a little common ground with me.
"Still... how could I speak ill of a member of the imperial family? Please forget I said anything."
I waved my hands hurriedly, worried any criticism might leak out.
The middle-aged man gave a soft snort of laughter and reeled in his line.
"Hah! They say even the Son of Heaven gets cursed when he's not in the room."
He seemed thoroughly amused by my reaction and laughed heartily.
"And looking at your clothes, you seem to hold a fairly high post. Are you really afraid of being overheard by a mere fisherman like me?"
He even threw in a little provocation. No one cared what a nobody like him said, he claimed—so go ahead and vent all I wanted to the lake.
He himself came here the same way whenever feelings piled up inside him, to let them out.
"So I'm allowed to curse the Son of Heaven a little?"
The fisherman flinched; clearly he hadn't expected me to skip the Empress entirely and go straight for Emperor Hongrak.
"...Of course."
I pulled a strip of jerky from my robes, chewed on it, and spoke.
"I've been watching how the Imperial Palace runs for a while now, and the biggest problem here is... well, no matter how you look at it, it's the Emperor."
So much for "even the Son of Heaven gets cursed when he's not around"—the moment I actually said it, the fisherman fell silent.
Wondering what was wrong, I glanced over at him.
"Should I stop?"
"No, continue. I'm curious myself."
Guess he thought well of the Emperor. Still, the man needed to know the full picture.
With the stage nicely set, I laid out everything that had been festering inside me, without holding back.
"Honestly, it's frustrating. If he'd just step up and pick the next heir, all this chaos would sort itself out. So why suddenly pit everyone against each other for the Crown Prince's seat? I don't get it."
As someone who kept getting dragged into the palace's messes, I thumped my chest in irritation.
I was busy condemning the Emperor's way of thinking as incomprehensible when the fisherman, still staring at the lake, spoke in a low voice.
"Do you think he didn't start out thinking the same way you do?"
"...The same way I do?"
"Indeed. He chose the natural succession of the eldest son to prevent strife—only for Heaven to snatch that son away with illness. His mind changed midway."
He had summoned countless famous physicians and offered every renowned medicine across the Central Plains. Yet even the invincible Son of Heaven of the Central Plains had been nothing more than a powerless father before his own son's disease.
He could only have seen it as Heaven's own cruel game.
So he changed his method—this time intending to leave everything to whichever child proved strong enough to survive. That was the idea, the fisherman said.
"How does a gardener know all that? Are you the Emperor or something?"
"..."
He'd spoken with such certainty that I couldn't help the jab.
The middle-aged man closed his mouth and simply stared at the lake as if gazing at distant mountains.
"If you're going to select a Crown Prince through competition, you could at least make it fair."
As I poured out every emotion I'd accumulated while being tossed around the Imperial Palace, the middle-aged man's ears seemed to perk up.
"You're saying His Majesty is not being fair?"
"Yes, that's right."
I picked up pebbles from the lakeside and tossed them one by one into the exact center of the water with soft plops, nodding as I did.
"He's basically practicing total neglect. There have already been multiple poisoning and explosion attempts inside the palace, and he just sits there with cloudy eyes claiming there's only circumstantial evidence."
I'd been caught up in both incidents myself, so I had plenty to say about Emperor Hongrak sitting on his hands and watching.
Because he merely observed from afar, the Empress had gone completely berserk—and the one left cleaning up the mess had been me.
"Perhaps there is a reason for it?"
"What reason?"
This uncle was looking more and more like a hardcore Emperor Hongrak supporter.
At every turn he insisted there must be some reason, speaking as if he could read the Emperor's inexplicable inner thoughts.
"He was simply being cautious."
"Cautious... not indifferent?"
"The two are different. The moment the Emperor intervenes without clear physical evidence, his subordinates will exaggerate his intentions and act on them."
If the Emperor appeared to favor one side—even if that wasn't his intent at all—people would twist it and scramble to join either the Empress's faction or the Imperial Noble Consort's faction.
So, to avoid misunderstanding, he was being extremely careful with every move. That was the explanation.
"Misunderstanding, huh... even when one side smuggles a vicious Murim criminal into the palace itself?"
"...What do you mean by that? A Central Plains criminal, inside the palace?"
In a flash of temper I'd almost named a faction I shouldn't have mentioned.
This wasn't something to spill in front of some ordinary gardener skipping work while everyone else was busy.
"It's nothing."
"You're no fun, you know that?"
Whether out of consideration for my circumstances or something else, the middle-aged man didn't press further.
He simply lifted his rod to check what he'd caught.
Of course nothing was on the hook—only the wet needle glinting in the sunlight.
"...Is there actually any point to this?"
I watched him cast again with a soft whirr, the float and hook plopping back into the lake, and asked once more.
"There is no meaningless act in this world. Even the flutter of a foolish butterfly's wings carries meaning somewhere far away."
What on earth was he talking about? This uncle was starting to sound a bit like Hwang Geolgae.
"Is this fishing some kind of setup? A move on a larger board?"
It certainly didn't look that way to me, so I asked.
All I could see was a man killing time.
"A setup, you say... It could be. Speaking of which—do you know how to play Go?"
The moment the Go term came up, the middle-aged man glanced my way with a look of mild surprise.
Then, as if suggesting a match, he flashed a grin beneath his bamboo hat.
By the way, was this guy not busy at all? The other palace servants were working themselves to the bone.
"I don't play."
I stood up abruptly and shook my head.
The middle-aged fisherman sounded faintly disappointed.
"Come now, just one game?"
"No. My master told me never to play Go if I ever entered the Imperial Palace."
"...And why is that?"
"He said there's one strange person there, and if I'm not careful I might draw his attention. Especially with my personality, the odds are high..."
So far, though, I didn't seem to have gotten seriously involved with that "strange person" Hwang Geolgae had warned me about.
At most we'd crossed paths a few times at large events like the garden banquet, so I was probably still fine.
"Hah! You have an interesting master. May I ask his name?"
"There's just a guy like that. You don't need to know the name."
Thanks to talking with this fisherman, a number of worries that had been itching at the back of my mind felt a little more settled.
His manner and way of speaking had a strange pull that made you talk more than you meant to without even realizing it.
"Anyway, Uncle—about the badmouthing of the Emperor we did here... you're not going to tell anyone, right?"
"Heh. Don't worry. This mouth of mine is extremely heavy."
In that regard, everyone trusted him, he claimed—so I should too.
"Who exactly are you, Uncle?"
"Just a fisherman who fishes for time."
Ah. So a freeloader, then.
I was starting to doubt he was even a real gardener.
"Alright. See you next time."
The sun was climbing toward noon, so I waved at the mysterious fisherman and left the lakeside.
Once Dan Mujin's footsteps had faded from the lakeside, a shadow stirred within the thin mist.
A figure suddenly rose beside the middle-aged fisherman.
Even at a glance, the man radiated the unmistakable qi of a formidable expert. He dropped to one knee and spoke in a low voice.
"Your Majesty, give the word and I will twist that insolent bastard's neck and present it to you."
He pointed at Dan Mujin's retreating back, his expression asking only for the command—the Emperor's secret guard.
"No. There's no need."
Emperor Hongrak removed the bamboo hat with its missing teeth and smiled faintly.
"He's an entertaining fellow. Leave him be."
At those words, the secret guard reined in his sharp aura.
Entertainment. Not many beings ever touched the Emperor's mercy, but among those who did were the ones who managed to amuse him.
A certain beggar from the past had won the Son of Heaven's favor in much the same way.
"By the way—who is that man?"
Sunlight lay across the lake's surface.
In that mysterious space, the middle-aged man with unfathomably deep eyes pointed after the departing figure and asked.
"He appears to be the Beijing troubleshooter employed by Cheon Su-gong's side—Dan Mujin, Your Majesty."
Beijing troubleshooter Dan Mujin. At the somewhat familiar name, the Emperor's brows lifted slightly.
The same troubleshooter who had stopped the poisoning attempt on Princess Dohwa, and who had—together with some thief—thwarted the assassination attempts aimed at the Imperial Noble Consort and Consort Yang.
And after those incidents, a separate investigation had turned up one additional fact.
"So he was that old beggar's disciple. No wonder he felt familiar."
Like master, like disciple indeed.
Memories of the past rose unbidden, and Emperor Hongrak couldn't help but laugh.
"Hah!"