If he covered his ears and ran away here, their conversation would end here too.
Dan-ye would be erased from Sahyeon’s options forever.
That might be the better path if he sought safety.
But seeing Dan-ye barely bring up the topic and wait for Sahyeon’s answer…
‘…In exchange for siding with him, he’ll tell me about the hidden relationships inside the palace that an outsider like me wouldn’t know?’
He was proposing a deal.
Suddenly, Sahyeon looked back at the path he came from.
The entrance was hidden by dense trees and no longer visible.
A fleeting thought crossed his mind—if he screamed here, would anyone outside hear it?
Dan-ye wasn’t an idiot like Yubaekhu, so he wouldn’t do anything reckless… but then again, who knew?
If Sahyeon tried to take advantage of him and then step away, Dan-ye might still use him as fertilizer to enrich the pines.
‘Of all things, he had to mention Dan I-jae. That’s what’s bothering me.’
If he had just mentioned Dan-yoon instead, it would’ve been easier to decide.
The moment his thoughts reached that point, Sahyeon clenched his fist tightly.
What the hell was he doing?
Why should Dan I-jae’s existence factor into his decision?
He just needed to take the path that benefited him most.
After all, Sahyeon didn’t have enough information right now.
So no matter what Dan-ye was plotting, it would still be in his favor to extract even one more word from him.
So for now…
“What does Taejeonggong’s gender have to do with Your Highness?”
He needed to open the floodgates of this conversation.
Dan-ye smiled, baring his white teeth.
Then he stepped closer to Sahyeon and continued in a secretive voice.
“Oh dear, I thought you’d gotten quite close with the palace attendants, but has no one told you yet? Well, I suppose they assumed you already knew, since it’s such a well-known story inside the palace.”
“I’m talking about Taejeonggong. She and my mother were quite close. Ah, I suppose putting it like that might be misunderstood. It was before my mother was summoned by His Majesty.”
It was a story from the childhood of both Taejeonggong Dan-gyeong and Lady Yeongeon.
Thanks to her outstanding intellect, Yeongeon was recommended early and, before entering Jeonghan Palace, she worked at Un-gyeong Palace as a scribe, helping Dan-gyeong with her studies.
Dan-gyeong, who generally preferred women over men, quickly became ‘close’ with the beautiful Yeongeon.
Dan-gyeong had many lovers, but it seemed Yeongeon was special even among them.
Despite the instability of her position as heir, Dan-gyeong proposed to Yeongeon, promising that even if she became Taejeonggong and ascended to the throne, all the children she would have would be designated as Yeongeon’s children.
By law, the father of a child born from the womb of a monarch was determined by the monarch’s will.
So, regardless of who the actual father was, having them recognized as Yeongeon’s children wouldn’t have been an issue.
The only problem was that Yeongeon did not want to live the rest of her life in the inner palace as the king’s wife.
Yeongeon, born into a prestigious family and raised under the high praise of her parents, was ambitious.
She wanted to become a high-ranking minister, serving the king’s side and being remembered in history books as a loyal subject.
So she politely declined Dan-gyeong’s offer and instead pledged her loyalty—though she wouldn’t become her wife, she would devote herself only to her for life.
Dan-gyeong was moved by this and promised Yeongeon: no matter what happened, she would always protect and trust her.
But that promise was broken in less than a year.
Because the king, Dan-heul, chose Yeongeon—young enough to be his daughter—as his wife.
Everyone blamed Yeongeon’s beauty for catching the king’s eye, lamenting her tragic fate, but in truth, everyone knew.
Dan-heul had chosen Yeongeon as a sacrificial pawn to subdue Dan-gyeong, the legitimate heir, and to tame the prestigious Jin family that supported her without the king’s approval.
Yeongeon, who had rejected Dan-gyeong’s proposal just to avoid being a royal wife, now faced the cruel fate of becoming the old king’s consort.
She tearfully begged Dan-gyeong:
‘Please appeal to His Majesty. So many in the palace know about us. If you push back strongly, the king may hesitate to force me into this marriage due to scandal.’
But Yeongeon, being intelligent, already knew the truth.
The more Dan-gyeong resisted, the more the king would insist—he would not let Yeongeon go.
She was already caught in a trap she could not escape.
So she came to Dan-gyeong with resolve, to reaffirm their bond and the promise they had once made.
If Dan-gyeong truly tried to protect her by standing up to the terrifying king, Yeongeon planned to stop her and accept her fate.
And of course, she believed Dan-gyeong would do just that.
“But our dear Taejeonggong, in front of my mother, only shed tears while reading books. She was afraid that if she stepped forward, my mother wouldn’t stop her.”
That’s when Yeongeon realized:
Dan-gyeong’s love was just a fleeting pleasure within the safety of her own status.
Blinded by the pettiness of that person, Yeongeon lost everything she had dreamed of.
So she swore: everything Dan-gyeong had tried to protect by offering her as a sacrifice—she would take it all away.
People whispered that if Taejeonggong had been a man, Dan-ye’s parentage would surely have been questioned—but they didn’t know the truth.
Long before Yeongeon conceived Dan-ye, she and Dan-gyeong had become mortal enemies who could no longer live under the same sky.
“That’s why you’ll understand now, Scholar Baek. My mother doesn’t care who becomes the next king, as long as it isn’t Taejeonggong. And I’m well-trained at playing the puppet for her.”
Dan-ye shrugged as if further explanation were unnecessary.
But even putting aside whether he was telling the truth, a more critical issue remained.
“You still haven’t told me why you mentioned the Eighth Prince.”
Dan-ye was suggesting Dan I-jae as the one to oppose Taejeonggong.
“People say my mother was the favored consort, but the one my father truly cherished was someone else. I-jae’s birth mother—Lady Jaya.”
“Hard to call that favor, given how it ended…”
“Lady Jaya always used to say things like, ‘His Majesty will forgive me,’ and ‘He will surely reveal the truth.’ But then, why did someone who trusted the king so much take her own life so tragically?”
A deep frown formed.
Dan-ye had said Dan I-jae had a reason to oppose Taejeonggong.
If that was the case, then… could it be…
“Does the Eighth Prince know about this suspicion?”
“He probably does. Whether he believes it or not is another matter.”
“That…”
Sahyeon tried to press further but shut his mouth.
Dan-ye’s eyes now gleamed with certainty—he had seized the upper hand.
“…If he already knows, then there’s no hope. You know better than anyone how the Eighth Prince has been living in the palace all this time.”
“Well…”
Dan-ye began to speak, then paused, exaggerating his hesitation.
“Ha, so they haven’t even told you that. The officials of Gamcheondang are more evasive than I thought.”
Sahyeon lifted the corner of his lips into a deliberately awkward smirk, as if to say, “Say whatever you want.”
“So that’s why you were so displeased? When I asked about the ‘secret method’?”
The secret method?
Was he talking about when he asked how Dan I-jae was taught?
“Everyone inside the palace already knows.”
His roundabout way of talking was irritating, but Sahyeon held back.
That chill creeping up the back of his neck told him he needed to hear what came next.
“Do you know about my younger brother’s heart illness?”
Of course, there were rumors—he had seizures, acted overly sensitive.
But even after all of Sahyeon’s annoying persistence, Dan I-jae had never shown signs of anything that could be called an illness.
He had thought those rumors came from misunderstandings due to I-jae’s foul temper and sharp eyes.
“I haven’t been here long, so I haven’t seen it myself, but I’ve heard there are occasional issues…”
“Occasional? My brother is always like that. He recoils if anyone so much as brushes against his skin, and he claims to smell a strange stench no one else can detect.”
He had heard about the “smell” from the palace officials.
That if he ever mentioned a smell, you must avoid him no matter what.
So it wasn’t an actual stench coming from his body due to some strange illness?
But still, it was strange.
Even if Sahyeon couldn’t know for sure whether he was actually smelling something, it was odd that he reacted so unpleasantly even to just the brush of skin.
Yet this was the same person who hadn’t minded when Sahyeon grabbed his wrist—and who had even gone so far as to pinch Sahyeon’s cheek.
“He’s not always like that. Not once have I…”
“That’s why everyone keeps asking.”
“Sorry?”
“They wonder what trick you used to make my younger brother act like a normal person in front of you, Baek Munhak.”
“What do you mean by that…?”
“What do you think, Baek Munhak? Is he just enduring it? Pretending to be fine in order to win your favor?”
What was this now?
Dan I-jae, pretending to endure something?
He was the type who couldn’t hold back and always said what he wanted to say.
And pretending to be fine?
Would someone pretending to be fine go around pinching his teacher’s face?
There could be only one possible explanation.
This man had been faking some “true madness” all along just to avoid being told to study.
But then, in front of Sahyeon—the outsider—he had behaved normally, and people happened to see it.
But Dan I-jae, acting?
Even going so far as to smoke that wretched Yeonhwacho plant just to sell it?
“Whether you know the reason or not, Taejeonggong probably won’t want to keep Baek Munhak in Un-gyeong Palace much longer. The only reason he could feel at ease about I-jae was because of his mental illness. But now that you’ve cured that, Baek Munhak…”