Dan Ijae staggered up into the pavilion.
He didn’t want to breathe the warm air right now.
He only wished that the harsh night wind would freeze everything and shatter it to pieces.
How long had he been resting his forehead against the pillar?
Palace attendants came running on tiptoe and placed a brazier and a long pipe tightly packed with lotus-scented tobacco beside him, then quietly withdrew.
Would burning incense make the smell disappear?
But whenever the thick scent of the lotus smoke managed to sneak through the stench and briefly reach him, Dan Ijae was reminded all over again that this rotting smell tormenting him wasn’t real.
And every time he took the end of the pipe in his mouth and inhaled the smoke, the terrible pain tearing at his tongue would barely anchor his fading consciousness.
This is the pain of reality.
This pain is proof that I still stand on this earth.
It kept repeating to him, as if to engrave the reminder.
“…Ha.”
With a long sigh, white smoke thickly spread through the air.
Only then did Dan Ijae lift the eyelids he had tightly shut.
A pitch-dark winter night.
The shadows of trees with bare, skeletal branches.
The black pavilion indistinguishable from the darkness.
The mirror pond did not reflect the shadow of the pavilion.
Perhaps someone could see the wavering spirits beneath that ice.
The day the late king appointed the current monarch as his successor and made a ‘decisive’ choice for the future of the kingdom—on that day, the king’s consorts took their children in their arms and hid here, in Gamcheondang, the deepest place within Un-gyeong Palace.
In the brutal chill of winter, the late king sealed off the walls and doors of Gamcheondang, where the once-beloved consorts and their children, born of his own body, wailed.
He forbade anyone from entering or leaving.
The food and firewood ran out within four days, and soon the children’s cries grew quieter and quieter.
Day and night, agonized wailing echoed from within—whether it was screams or desperate sobs, no one could tell.
Then a month later, with only the crows’ cries ringing in the sky, the late king personally opened the doors to Gamcheondang.
The pond fish had long since been eaten.
Blood had pooled and festered throughout the pavilion.
Inside, only Taesan-bugun, once a warrior, and his children were found alive—chewing on raw, bloody meat of unknown origin.
Taesan-bugun and his offspring were dragged out like beasts, executed for murdering royals and desecrating the bodies.
The remaining victims, who had died horrific deaths, had their status posthumously restored and were buried at Chamneung.
All the pillars and floors of Gamcheondang, stained with tragedy, were lacquered in black to erase the traces.
Since then, Gamcheondang had been abandoned for decades without a master.
Until they gave it to Dan Ijae, newly arrived at Un-gyeong Palace, as one of the “vacant pavilions.”
Some palace maids whispered that Dan Ijae’s “madness” was a curse from the spirits.
That it was no wonder ghosts were confused—how could someone who had the same “eyes” as the late king end up here?
Nonsense.
If anything, it was because of this place that Dan Ijae could barely cling to his fading sanity.
A hall that tried to cover its hideous history with black lacquer, pretending nothing had happened.
A place where, no matter how much the palace attendants scrubbed and polished, the stain of rotting blood and bodily fluids never faded.
Here, it felt like the stench wasn’t an illusion, but the truth.
“…Hoo.”
He felt just a little more at ease.
The sound of wind brushing through bare branches resonated like the wailing of the dead.
It was a cruel night.
The archive room was completely empty.
Only the old archivist sat in a corner like a potted plant, scratching away at bamboo slips.
The second princess, Dan-yun, whistled as she pretended to browse books, flipping through rolled-up scrolls.
The old man, who had buried his nose in the slips for a long time while pretending not to see her, finally turned his head when Dan-yun came right up behind him and blew a whistle at the back of his head.
“How come a princess herself has come all the way here?”
“Just thought I’d read some books after a while.”
Dan-yun smiled slyly with an armful of books she’d already read long ago.
The old archivist shook his head and put down his inkstone.
“Let me guess—you’re here to use this old man as your personal bamboo forest again. I’ve seen nothing of bamboo except these slips all my life—what karmic punishment this is.”
The archivist had been in this position since Dan-yun was very young.
Even when he had a good chance of promotion, he never left this post.
He seemed to have no interest in politics, or maybe he was just too timid to risk stepping out.
Either way, to the book-loving Dan-yun of her childhood, he was a beloved literary companion and the only one she could confide in.
Like a diary that left no record, nothing she said to him ever leaked out.
“Where are the other archivists?”
“Who knows? How should I know what the youngsters are up to?”
They’ve probably gone off to see Lord Taejeong or the Fifth Prince.
Sometimes, a few did visit Dan-yun.
Usually, she just gave them a drink and sent them off.
She sat down across from the old man.
Flipping open a random scroll, she rested her chin on her hand.
When she looked at the archivist with sparkling eyes, his wrinkles seemed to deepen.
“What about Scholar Baek?”
“He’s at Gamcheondang.”
“If he’s not back yet, he must still be teaching, right? I don’t know if you’ve heard, but apparently last night, Ijae either beat or stomped on a palace attendant from Sugyeongdang.”
“So of course everyone in the palace was making a fuss this morning, saying he’d have another outburst. I told them he wouldn’t, but no one believed me. But look—he’s just quietly teaching, isn’t he?”
The archivist didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled the whetstone toward him and began sharpening the inkstone.
Shaak shaak—the scraping sound tickled Dan-yun’s ears.
Watching the blade edge turn white, she fiddled with a book he was repairing.
One charred bamboo slip was sticking out diagonally beneath a leather string.
“You said you used to work at Shinneung, right?”
The old man’s hands, which had been moving all day, finally stopped.
With a long sigh, he glanced sideways at Dan-yun.
“Scholar Baek says he doesn’t want to go to Shinneung.”
“Who?”
“Who else? Scholar Baek.”
“Oh no! You brought it up too early! Our Ijae was supposed to gently charm him with that handsome face and get his heart all fluttery first. Then, just when he was wavering, we were supposed to casually hint how nice and warm Shinneung is.”
“That way, when Ijae is granted the title of Shinneung Lord and says, ‘I like you. Come with me to Shinneung,’ Scholar Baek would go, ‘I can’t,’ but his heart would go thump thump—wouldn’t that have been perfect? People in love do crazy things they’d never normally do!”
“I already told you to stop reading those trashy novels.”
Dan-yun pouted with full displeasure.
“This isn’t from some book. Someone once told me this.”
Then, in a more subdued tone, she murmured:
“Ja-ya said that.”
Lady Jaya.
The birth mother of the 8th prince, Dan Ijae.
And…
The old archivist let out a troubled sigh and put down the inkstone.
Some might find it odd that a woman who stayed in the palace for just over two years and died so long ago—25 years, in fact—still lingered in people’s hearts like a bitter aftertaste.
But it was only natural.
Everyone in the palace had loved her.
Even that harsh king.
“When she was pregnant with Ijae, Jaya once said, ‘I feel like I’ll have no choice but to love this child.’ At the time, I thought it was just the kind of thing mothers always say. But I realized later—when she took her own life to protect Ijae.”
The Jaya that Dan-yun remembered had been full of curiosity about the world, with a will to live stronger than anyone’s.
For such a woman to give up her life while declaring her innocence, all to protect her newborn child—wasn’t that exactly the kind of madness only someone in love could commit?
The night before Jaya died, Danyun went to see her.
He comforted her, saying he would plead with the king, so she should hold on just a little longer.
At that moment, Jaya clutched Danyun’s hand with her frostbitten fingers, blue from the cold, and said:
“If something happens to me, please, my lady, protect this child.”
The next morning, as Danyun was on his way to plead with the king for Jaya, news of her death reached him.
Jaya’s baby, who had barely opened its eyes to the world, had vanished without a trace.
In the end, Danyun failed to keep even a single promise he made to her.
“You should keep trying. After all, Baek Munhak is a person too. If he keeps seeing our Lee Jae every day like this, wouldn’t affection eventually grow between them?”
“A person who wants to go to Jeonghan Palace won’t recover unless they actually go to Jeonghan Palace.”
The elderly scholar, unusually firm for once, pulled out a damaged bamboo slip and tossed it aside.
A newly shaved, pale bamboo strip slid between the well-worn ones, sticking out awkwardly like a white heron caught among a flock of crows.
But there was no need to worry.
Before long, it too would darken like the rest.
***
“I told you, didn’t I? Who in the world would interpret this as saying a parent can kill their child?”
“I heard some lunatic in the land of Yujoo cut off his thigh to make soup for his father. Who was it that praised that as filial piety again? Ah, wasn’t it your teacher?”
“Damn it, you sure pick up a lot of strange stories.”
“How many times must I tell you—aren’t those the kind of things you’re supposed to mutter quietly to yourself so no one hears?”
“Come on, it’s not like I insulted Confucius or anything. Let’s go over this point by point.”
Lee Jae rubbed his smooth chin, briefly wondering, “Wait, is ‘damn it’ even considered a curse?”
Meanwhile, Sahyeon pulled out the Records of Filial Piety (효문록), filled with tales of dutiful children, and unrolled it across the desk.