The Loyal Subject
Though he still had to be moved about in a chair, Kong Ryang’s eyes alone burned with fierce life, shining brighter than those of any idealistic youth.
“Heh heh. First Young Master. This old man can still see that day as clearly as if it were yesterday.”
Yeon So-hyeon received the old man’s words with a warmth Kang Ho had never once seen him show.
“By that day, you mean the day you yourself became Chancellor, do you not?”
“Yes. That very day.”
Knowing full well that this was no place for him to open his mouth, Kang Ho could only tilt his head inwardly in puzzlement. Grandfather’s story suddenly becomes the day he himself was appointed Chancellor… why?
“That day…”
His doubt was naturally resolved by Kong Ryang’s next words.
“It was also the day Elder Gang Sang—who had opposed the Northern War resolution centered on the Sixteen Imperial Capital Families to the very last—laid down the office of Chancellor.”
At that,
“Huh? Elder, as far as I know…”
Kang Ho found himself interjecting before he could stop himself.
“When a man of the Chancellor’s stature resigns, the appointment of a successor is—”
“Correct. The appointment of a successor should have come much later.”
Knowing that Kang Ho was Gang Sang’s grandson, Kong Ryang overlooked the young man’s rudeness.
“By custom, out of respect and reverence for the former Chancellor, the next appointment is not even begun for at least a month or two.”
Even knowing he ought not to insert himself into the conversation, Kang Ho could not help asking; it concerned his own grandfather.
“Then why were you, Elder Kong Ryang, appointed Chancellor at once?”
The answer came from Yeon So-hyeon.
“Because your grandfather, Elder Gang Sang, left the palace after delivering too great a shock.”
“…What? A shock?”
Yeon So-hyeon offered no further reply, merely giving a bitter smile.
“That day…”
The answer came from Kong Ryang.
“Elder Gang Sang stood before His Majesty the Emperor and laid out the reasons why the Northern War must never be waged. There were fully sixteen of them.”
Kang Ho cried out as if screaming.
“I have never heard such a story!”
“Because everyone in the Imperial Palace buried the matter in secrecy.”
Kong Ryang gave a short laugh.
“And the true shock was not those sixteen reasons.”
“…What?”
That day in the past.
An old man of such colossal build that he seemed more bear than man stood towering in the hall.
“…Those, Your Majesty, are the reasons this war must never be fought.”
The old man who truly deserved the word “giant”—Gang Sang—looked up at the Emperor with eyes that held a conviction that would never break.
“Your Majesty, will you still grant your sanction to this war?”
“Th-that is…”
The young Emperor was powerless.
“Surely the war…” The words “must be avoided” never left the boy Emperor’s lips. He possessed the judgment, yet he could not “dare” to decide.
And so the answer came from the man at his side.
“Chancellor!”
A sharp, ringing voice.
“This war resolution has already received His Majesty’s sanction—does the Chancellor not know that?!”
The owner of that voice was the eunuch who then served closest to the Emperor: Gongsun Na-gang.
“Yet you behave with such insolence in His Majesty’s presence! This is disloyalty!”
“Disloyalty…”
As Gang Sang repeated the word in a tone of self-mockery, the great ministers pressed in upon him.
“Even a Chancellor may not act thus!”
“This is an insult to the Imperial House!”
The civil and military officials of the court assailed him. Their words flew like blades, seeming to slash his body to pieces. Words loosed like arrows seemed to pierce him countless times.
“Chancellor…”
The Emperor’s anxious murmur was drowned beneath the ministers’ furious shouts and faded into emptiness.
Yet Chancellor Gang Sang only straightened that enormous frame of his and endured every assault alone.
Whether they were the loyalist faction that followed him or the reformists, the few who remained dared not speak. Chancellor…
Among those reformists stood their leader, Kong Ryang himself. Forgive me for being unable to aid you.
The tide had already swung heavily toward the pro-war faction. All of them… blinded by the profits a victory in a war not even begun will bring…
To step forward now would only bind the minority who had opposed the war to Gang Sang’s actions and bring them catastrophic harm.
Yet Gang Sang merely gave Kong Ryang a slight nod and cast him a single warm glance.
Kong Ryang instantly understood the meaning in those eyes. Do not intervene. And I leave what follows to you.
Kong Ryang clenched his teeth. Elder Gang Sang…!
“The Chancellor must kneel at once and beg pardon for his insolence!”
“The Chancellor—!”
At that moment a voice like a thunderclap burst from Gang Sang.
“This humble servant, Gang Sang!”
With only those two words the entire court seemed to fall silent.
No—it only felt as though it had fallen silent. Voices still raged on, yet Gang Sang’s voice cut cleanly through them all and rang out with perfect clarity.
“I wish to lay down the office of Chancellor—so do not forgive this disloyal servant to the very end!”
And then…
“Wh-what?!”
“Wh-what is he doing…?!”
Right there in the hall the Chancellor removed his official hat, set it on the floor, and began peeling off his court robes with great sweeping motions.
“Chancellor!”
The more he stripped, the more the muscles that belied his age stood fully revealed before the court.
“What in Heaven’s name do you think you are doing in the imperial presence?!”
Gongsun Na-gang’s face flushed with such fury it seemed ready to burst.
“What am I doing, you ask?”
Gang Sang answered as though it were nothing at all, still shedding clothes.
“Everything this old servant wears and carries was bestowed by His Majesty’s grace.”
At last he stood utterly naked.
“When a man lays down his office, must he not return everything and leave?”
The giant, every muscle of his body bared, prostrated himself fully toward the Emperor—the five-body prostration.
“Your Majesty! This disloyal servant now withdraws—may you live ten thousand years in perfect health!”
“Th-that madman…?!”
Palace eunuchs rushed forward at once, yet even several of them could not drag the naked old man from the hall.
“I beg you—think of the countless common people who will suffer in war…!”
Thud! Thud!
The old man now began slamming his forehead against the floor.
“I beg you—preserve the national strength and prevent the great powers of the West from casting their eyes upon this realm…!”
Thud! Thud!
With every blow cracks appeared in the old man’s skull and blood sprayed.
“I beg you—do not let this nation’s fortune decline; keep the ancestral temples and the altars of state whole and intact…!”
Thud! Thud!
It was the restraining eunuchs who were flung aside. The old man’s head was already a matted, blood-soaked ruin.
And that bizarre spectacle continued until the Emperor himself descended from the throne to stop him.
“Good heavens…!”
Hearing a secret history no one had ever told him, Kang Ho pressed a hand to his forehead.
“I had heard that Grandfather performed many eccentric deeds in the past and was even called the Madman of the Imperial Capital… but to think he went so far as to perform a naked five-body prostration in the Emperor’s presence…!”
“That was not the end of it.”
Kong Ryang chuckled.
“Having laid down his office, Elder Gang Sang intended to walk all the way home still naked.”
“What?!”
Kang Ho’s mouth fell open.
“Fortunately we stopped him by force and prevented that much, at least.”
Yeon So-hyeon shook his head.
“I heard he still walked naked as far as the great gates of the Imperial Palace.”
“He did. He truly did.”
Kong Ryang laughed again, the memory still vivid, while Yeon So-hyeon only smiled bitterly.
“…Ah, Grandfather.”
Kang Ho hung his head in shame.
“It was a tide that could not be stopped—why go so far as to—”
“‘Such a thing,’ you say?”
Kong Ryang’s voice was low.
A chill ran through Kang Ho; he jerked his head up.
“So even though you carry his blood, you are still nothing but a green youth?”
As Kang Ho floundered under the old man’s cutting words, Yeon So-hyeon spoke as if to mediate.
“Kang Ho. Because your grandfather discarded every shred of dignity that day…”
His tone was calm, yet the content was not.
“The history of the Central Kingdom was rewritten.”
Kang Ho’s eyes went wide.
“History was rewritten…?”
An alteration of history—the scale of it was so vast that Kang Ho could not even begin to grasp it.
“Yes.”
Yeon So-hyeon nodded.
“And so the Northern War, which by original fate could only have ended in utter defeat, was able to conclude with a peace treaty instead.”
Hearing that far, Kang Ho recalled the words that had opened the conversation.
“By that day, you mean the day you yourself became Chancellor, do you not?”
“Yes. That very day.”
“Ah…!”
Something clicked into place; Kang Ho looked at Kong Ryang.
“Because Grandfather withdrew after delivering so great a shock…!”
If his grandfather Gang Sang had been the head of the loyalist faction, then the man before him now—Kong Ryang—had been the head of the reformists.
“His Majesty gained the justification to appoint Elder Kong Ryang, leader of the reformists, as Chancellor!”
“Yes.”
Yeon So-hyeon nodded in agreement.
“Moreover, the need to restore order after that shock and chaos provided the pretext to ignore custom and appoint a new Chancellor at once.”
“And so…!”
Kong Ryang inclined his head.
“This old man rose to the chancellorship, yet because the previous Chancellor had stepped down so abruptly, I obtained the perfect justification for having received no handover whatsoever.”
“That too was Grandfather’s design!”
Kang Ho could not hide his excitement.
“Yes. Thanks to that, this old man was able to revise from the ground up the war plans that had been thrown together in the most slapdash fashion.”
“And thus you changed the course of a war that would otherwise have ended in defeat!”
They had been unable to stop a war already decided—but they had been able to change its outcome.
“To think such a thing was possible…”
Only now did Kang Ho fully understand how his grandfather’s eccentricity had “rewritten history.”
“Still, seeing that you can follow this conversation at all, you are not an ordinary green youth.”
Kong Ryang revised his assessment of the stunned young man.
“Blood will tell, it seems. Even a tiger cub is still a tiger.”
The praise did not even reach Kang Ho’s ears. I thought it was nothing more than Grandfather’s eccentricity…
The profound political design contained within it, and the power to make that design strike true—that was the seasoned mastery of a man who had served as Chancellor under two Emperors.
“And at that time,”
Kong Ryang’s story was not yet finished,
“there was a separate reason Elder Gang Sang and this old man could be certain of the Northern War’s outcome.”
“Of course.”
Roused from his shock, Kang Ho focused on Kong Ryang once more.
“Both of you had to be certain of the result of a war not yet begun if you were to accomplish all of that. Yet…”
He adjusted his glasses and tilted his head.
“How could you be certain of the war’s outcome?”
Kong Ryang answered at once.
“Elder Gang Sang and I had a vague prediction of the result, but…”
Kang Ho nodded.
“You could not be certain.”
Of course not. One might “believe” a prediction of the future, but one could hardly declare an event that had not yet occurred as if one were a prophet.
“Yet a letter arrived for us.”
“A letter?”
“One day a letter came from a young boy who claimed he already knew the war’s outcome.”
As he continued, Kong Ryang’s gaze turned toward Yeon So-hyeon.
“Surely not…!”
Kong Ryang nodded.
“Yes. That letter was sent by the First Young Master seated here.”
“…!”
“And each of us, after reading it, was persuaded enough to be certain of the war’s outcome.”
“…I see.”
Kang Ho was astonished, yet he neither panicked nor doubted the tale’s truth. That a letter from a mere boy could move the heads of two great factions of the Imperial Capital to act with certainty would normally have been the most absurd claim imaginable. Yet to the Kang Ho of this moment, the thought that Yeon So-hyeon could have done exactly that felt entirely natural.
“And thus all of these things became possible.”
With that, Kong Ryang’s story came to a close.
Now Kang Ho also understood why, at the very beginning,
“How much do you know of your grandfather, Gang Sang?”
Yeon So-hyeon had asked him about his own grandfather.
Looking at Yeon So-hyeon, Kang Ho spoke.
“The First Young Master has ended his seclusion.”
Then he looked at Kong Ryang.
“Elder Kong Ryang has returned as head of the Kong Family.”
Then he turned his gaze toward the scenery beyond the window—the direction of the Imperial Capital.
“And now word has come that Grandfather is re-entering the palace.”
Kang Ho understood.
Those three events might appear separate, yet they were by no means separate.
And—
“All of those secret histories did not end on that day in the past; they continue even now through all of you.”
Kong Ryang smiled.
“Yes.”