“No. All I wish,” she said, her voice steady, “is for the police to stop harassing our family. I wish for no more reminders of the horror my daughter endured.”
Inspector Han pressed on. “When murder is committed, grieving relatives of the victim will plead for sangmyŏng, ‘requital for a life.’ They appeal to us to redress the grievance suffered by the deceased with the sacrifice of another life, that of the perpetrator. Yet you do not ask for justice. Instead you ask that we forget it ever happened?”
Long shadows crept around us as the purple sky deepened, clouds gathering. There would be no sun today.
“It is because I am afraid,” Matron Kim said. “I am afraid of what more I will discover about my daughter. What more she was hiding from me.”
“Your daughter died alone on the cold ground, bleeding. Her nose was sliced off—”
“Must you remind me?” A tremor shook her voice.
“Her slender throat was slashed without hesitation or remorse, deep enough to sever her vocal cords, silencing her cries for help. How will you face your daughter in the afterlife when you have kept us from finding the truth? How will you look into her sad eyes?”
Matron Kim’s eyes turned red-rimmed, and in that moment, I remembered she was a mother. And I remembered my own mother’s eyes, the last time I had seen her, red-rimmed like the matron’s. My last warm memory of Mother was of a wooden bowl of rice prepared for us all. We had all eaten together, and Mother had looked at me with those red eyes. I hadn’t known it was a farewell before she’d jumped off a cliff.
“This investigation is nothing more to you than a mere crime among the multitude.” Matron Kim’s upper lip curled slightly. “My daughter died on her birthday. I made a jeogori jacket for her as a gift, sewed the silk pieces together myself, and I knew the length and circumference of her arms, the length and breadth of her torso, all measured meticulously. I knew her. She was my daughter. And from the day of her death, all you saw was a crime to be solved. From that day, you disrespected my affection for my daughter, and even now, you speak to me with a cruel, impatient look in your eyes.”
Inspector Han stood tall, not slumping forward in guilt as my own shoulders did. Never had I thought of the dead Lady O as someone who had been precious, as my own family was precious to me.
“I promise I will find the one who killed your daughter,” Inspector Han replied. “Should I not live up to my promise, I shall bear the consequences.”
She lifted her grieving eyes to him. “How?”
“I will submit a formal report and resign from my post.”
Senior Officer Shim frowned. Everyone else exchanged wide-eyed glances. I could feel what they were thinking: Inspector Han was putting too much on the line, and they couldn’t understand why.
“Do I have your word, Inspector?”
“You do.”
Matron Kim nodded and the dagger in her eyes softened into a well of tears. “Everything in my daughter’s chamber remains as is,” she whispered. “I have not permitted anyone to disturb her room since her passing.”
* * *
“The medical exam is in a few months,” Aejung whispered as we entered the women’s quarter. “I’ve hardly had any time to study. How are we expected to pass it and return to being palace nurses when half the time we’re solving crimes?”
Hyeyeon shook her head. “You must sacrifice something to achieve your goal, Aejung. I sleep only three hours a day, so I only need to master Injaejikjimaek now. But you’ve mastered none of the five required texts.”
“That is because I’m focusing on the investigation for now,” Aejung retorted. “Inspector Han will be forced to resign otherwise.”
“So it’s true,” I whispered. “He does mean to resign if he fails.”
“Are there no such things as consequences in the countryside?” Hyeyeon asked. Her voice was elegant, yet her eyes sent me a cutting look. “Someone must take the blame.”
With tension pressing in around us, we climbed up the steps to Lady O’s chamber, where stale air loomed over us like a lost soul. At the far end was a folding screen with a calligraphy of butterflies and flowers painted onto the panels. Before it was a silk cushion and a low-legged writing table. Furniture lined either side of the room.
Hyeyeon searched the two-tiered wardrobe made of pagoda tree, pulling open the miniature doors that revealed folded fabrics. She pulled everything out, but found nothing. There were also four small drawers in the wardrobe’s upper tier, all of which she examined, turning over every article. Again, nothing.
Aejung opened all the heavy chests, pulling out dusty books and pausing to read their contents. Her eyes flicked up and down, up and down, reading so quickly I watched with awe. “Verbose nonsense after verbose nonsense,” she murmured.
As Hyeyeon made her way to a ground-to-ceiling bookcase, where side-stitched books rested in piles, I moved over to a lacquer cabinet, with elaborate mother-of-pearl inlaid scenes of strange creatures with fish tails, turtle shells, and the heads of mammals. Butterfly-shaped brass lock plates and hinges decorated the double doors. Opening each door, I discovered porcelain pots of color, hair ornaments, and a brush with strands of hair in it. Lady O’s hair. I reached for one and the moment I pulled a strand free, it struck me how transient life was—one night a woman was brushing her hair, the next night she was dead.
I left the cabinet and checked behind the folding screen, then sat before the low-legged table, which had two drawers on either side. I tugged at the left drawer, and it slid open to reveal calligraphy brushes. I tugged at the next—
Surprise punched my chest. It was locked.
“Here, here!” I called out, excitement bubbling. “This drawer. It’s locked!”
“It’s locked?” Aejung threw the scrolls back into the chest and hurried over to me. She too tugged at the right drawer. Locked indeed. “I’ll look around for the key. Must be here somewhere. It wasn’t on her person when we found her.”
“Couldn’t we just break the desk?” I asked. “I have my club.”
“No.” Hyeyeon frowned at me from where she stood. “We were not given permission to sabotage. You are so thoughtless sometimes.”
Her rebuke stung. Trying to ignore it, I pulled at the drawer with all my might, but in vain. All we could do was find the key, but after what seemed like ages, Aejung shook her head, her forehead glistening with sweat.
“I’ve looked everywhere!” she whined. Wiping her brows, she glanced at Hyeyeon. “I’ll go ask if we can use force … There’s no other choice.”
We both waited on Hyeyeon for permission, for she was our senior and we never did anything without her agreement. And yet Hyeyeon stood frozen before the bookcase. She was examining a book, then flipped it shut. “These books are all journals, and this seems to be the most recent one, though dated four years ago.”
“There is nothing more recent?” Aejung asked.
“I have thoroughly inspected them all. This is still something.” She tucked the book under her arm, ill-disguised thrill straining her countenance as she hurried out of the room. Aejung followed her.