“Oh my, you startled me. My lord, why are you sleeping there again?”
It was obvious the innkeeper had come early to fill the feed trough and found him there, yet she pretended to be surprised, which was annoying.
Not that he was in the mood to argue over every little thing.
“There’s a rotten stench in the air.”
Dan I-jae casually plucked off a piece of straw dangling from his bangs and tossed it aside, murmuring like a sigh.
“It must be the smell of manure. Let’s see here.”
The innkeeper leaned over the wall and sniffed in Dan I-jae’s direction.
Dan I-jae, too annoyed to even get angry, pressed her face away with a loud chop and staggered to his feet.
“Where is this rotten smell you’re talking about coming from? You burned so much yeonhwacho (lotus blossom herb), and yet even after waking up in the stable, I only smell lotus on myself.”
“Good for you. I smell nothing but rot.”
“You’re being unsettling again. And today, there’s no Lady to hold you back if you go mad.”
“Wasn’t it that sister of mine who left me here in the first place?”
“Well, you did lock her up in the barn before, didn’t you? Why do you two always drink like one of you has to die before you stop?”
“Damn it, why does my head hurt so much? Did someone spike the drink?”
The innkeeper, who had been chattering behind him, fell silent at that remark.
Dan I-jae stopped in his tracks and looked back at her with a sharp expression, as if telling her to speak the truth.
“It wasn’t anything weird. That brewer, Do-go or whatever his name is, apparently made a ridiculously strong liquor and gifted it to the Lady. It’s so strong you can’t even sip it without water, but she went and dumped a whole bottle into your drinking pot…”
No wonder she had suddenly insisted on drinking.
It was payback for locking her in the barn.
Dan I-jae clenched his teeth, vowing not to let it slide once he returned to the palace, and slumped onto the porch.
The headache wouldn’t go away.
He pressed his temples, trying to soothe the throbbing pain stretching from his forehead to the sides of his head.
As the innkeeper said, there was no “Lady to stop him from going mad” here today.
Noticing the mood, the quick-witted innkeeper promptly brought over a long pipe stuffed with yeonhwacho and a small brazier, setting them beside him.
As soon as she lit the coals, a delicate lotus fragrance wafted through the air.
The people in the inn courtyard who had been noisily slurping their noodles paused, drawn by the scent, and glanced toward Dan I-jae.
When they met his fierce gaze, they quickly hunched over and buried their faces back into their bowls.
Dan I-jae drew the pipe to his lips.
The fragrant smoke with the subtle lotus scent filled his mouth, but the taste was bitter—like chewing crushed poison herbs.
The smoke passed down his throat like blades, and he exhaled deeply.
The clinging rotten stench seemed to retreat slightly before the overpowering fragrance.
“So, my lord, are you feeling a bit better now?”
“No. I still want to kill something.”
“Would you like to butcher a pig? We are short on meat for dinner, after all.”
“Weren’t you the one with nine fingers? Maybe today’s the day I balance that out.”
“Oh dear, oh dear. A change in fortune sure makes people cold. Well, holler if your stomach acts up. A bowl of noodles will set you right.”
The innkeeper walked over to the hearth in the yard and began boiling a huge pot of broth.
Her mother muttered something and dragged a pig toward the back of the inn.
The innkeeper paused, wiped her sweat, and stared in silence at the spot where the pig had disappeared.
Amid the noisy clamor, the squeals of the animal mixed in and then faded.
Children on the street blew air into a pig’s bladder and kicked it around like a ball.
Seeing the kids playing, the townsfolk realized the inn had butchered another pig, and they lined up with hemp sacks in hand to buy fresh meat.
The innkeeper bowed to each greeting, added more water to the broth pot, and steam began to fill the yard, warming the air.
Leaning against a pillar, Dan I-jae watched the cycle of life and death unfold in mere hours.
He drew in the last of the lotus-scented smoke.
As the white vapor flowed past the bridge of his nose, he laid down the burnt-out pipe and closed his eyes, waiting for the burning sensation from tongue to throat to pass.
That was the nature of yeonhwacho. Apart from its fragrance, it had no redeeming qualities.
Those drawn by the subtle lotus scent often gagged on the first puff and cursed at why anyone would put it to their lips.
The taste was like chewing bitter wormwood rubbed on the tongue, the pain like a knife scraping one’s mouth and throat.
The more you inhaled, the sharper your mind became, making the pain feel even more vivid.
Unlike tobacco, it had no addictive pull.
Common people only used it to scent their homes.
The only ones who smoked it were meditating monks or people whose worth increased if they smelled good.
That’s why, earlier, people had turned their heads away at the scent—once they realized what it was.
Dan I-jae’s problem was that he didn’t belong to either of those groups.
-Screech!
A white falcon perched under the inn’s eaves let out a high-pitched cry, absurdly loud for its size.
Dan I-jae finally opened his eyes and looked up.
-Screech!
Its beak wide open in protest—it must’ve caught the scent of pig’s blood.
“Shut up.”
-Screeech!
He hadn’t starved it, but it hadn’t hunted in a while.
Maybe he should ask the innkeeper to toss it a few pounds of meat.
As he turned his head, the bird flapped its wings and flew away.
It left empty-beaked, which felt like an ominous sign.
If that bird caught a chick somewhere, Dan I-jae would be blamed, since he was its owner and had even tied on a name tag.
“It’s already flown off, huh.”
The innkeeper looked up at the sky with regret as she carried freshly cut pork, still dripping blood.
Noticing that his pipe had gone out, she brought over a bowl already filled with noodles and toppings, and opened the pot lid.
Steam once again filled the courtyard.
Dan I-jae frowned and waved the hot air away from his face.
“Eat up and be on your way.”
Whether because she wanted this volatile man gone or out of genuine concern for someone who couldn’t be away for long, she presented the soggy noodles floating in weak broth.
Dan I-jae looked back and forth between the bland noodles and the innkeeper’s smiling face before sighing and taking a spoonful of broth.
After a few spoonfuls, the innkeeper, who had been watching intently, lowered her voice and whispered:
“When will you be allowed to set up your own household?”
The same question she always asked.
Dan I-jae clicked his tongue and stirred his noodles.
“Who knows? When the one who still lives with his married brothers and sisters finally lets me go?”
“You said you had no interest in the throne. Then just leave. A pine caterpillar feels best when it eats pine leaves, doesn’t it?”
A pine caterpillar.
Dan I-jae smirked, raising just the corner of his mouth.
He tried lifting the noodles with his chopsticks, but they snapped and fell apart.
Honestly, how does this inn stay in business serving crap like this?
“If a pine caterpillar quietly eats only pine leaves, no one pays it any mind. But if it suddenly declares, ‘From today I will only eat pine leaves!’ it raises suspicion. ‘Why the sudden declaration? Was it secretly eating mulberry leaves this whole time and finally feeling guilty?’”
“I just worry about you.”
Dan I-jae scooped up the broken noodles and slurped them.
“And that’s why I’m here, eating pine leaves.”
The youngest son of Dan Heul, the aging king of the great kingdom of Pasa—Eighth Prince Dan I-jae.
In the royal family of Pasa, there had long been fierce disputes over succession.
It was only a year ago, when the current king reached the age of seventy (the age of “following the heart”), that he finally appointed his eldest legitimate daughter, Dankyeong, as the Grand Princess Taijeong.
Although the decision came after nearly fifty years of weighing the merits of Dankyeong—who was widely regarded as a woman of great royal talent—her position remained far from secure.
This was because the second princess, Dan-yun, whom the king most favored and had even publicly declared his desire to name as heir, and the fifth prince, Dan-ye, son of the king’s beloved consort Lady Yeongeon, were still frequently mentioned among the people as possible successors.
Even in this situation, Dan Ijae managed to avoid being the subject of gossip and lived quietly, surviving on pine needles, so to speak.
His circumstances were simply different from those of the other princes and princesses.
A pine caterpillar in a mulberry field.
Dan Ijae stood up, brushing off a piece of straw still clinging annoyingly to his robe.
The innkeeper clicked his tongue as he looked at the barely touched bowl of noodles left on the table, muttering complaints like, “Back in the day, people couldn’t even dream of wasting food like this.”
“Shut it, and just pack the meat I brought earlier.”
He planned to throw it to Baeksonggol (White Pine Wolf) if he happened to run into the creature on the way back to the palace.
If it was fated to eat, it would come find it.
Otherwise, he’d just toss it to the dogs in front of the palace gate.
While the innkeeper rustled about in the kitchen, Dan Ijae casually peeked into the stable.
It seemed that his ‘dear sister,’ even in her drunken state, had kindly taken the horse he had ridden in on.
Instead, hanging from a post tied to the feed trough, he found a familiar sword.
Dan Ijae instinctively felt around his waist—it was, as expected, his sword. Just who had gone and hung it there?