“I overheard Officer Kyŏn talk about it a year ago,” Aejung explained. “He seemed to have a keen interest in Inspector Han’s life, including those close to him like Officer Shim. And what I didn’t learn from Kyŏn, I learned from local gossip.”
She rolled her sleeves up to her elbow, her wrists moving with grace as she wrote.
I couldn’t look away, and neither could I breathe, seeing a movement almost identical to that of earlier, when Inspector Han had rolled up his sleeve to write, exposing a part of his history. The side of his right arm, a burn from long ago, as though he had once tried blocking himself from scalding hot liquid.
Something in my mind clicked. I saw myself, a young girl, peering in through the cracks of our hut. Older Sister was hissing, “Go to the capital then, that place of terror. We are not family. We are finished.” Her cruel hands tore our genealogy book, the history of our family. My brother slapped her face, shocking them both. But Sister was too proud and no one had dared hit her before, so she hurled at him words of hate, as well as a pot filled with boiling tea. He had tried blocking it with his arm.
The memory disappeared in a few seconds. And those seconds left me drenched in cold sweat.
“Are you not feeling well?” came Aejung’s voice. “You look ill.”
I looked up at Aejung. She was watching me, her hand still holding the calligraphy brush. Desperation ravaged me. I had to write to Older Sister, demand answers from her. She had withheld too many secrets from me.
Who is our brother? What made you scared?
I moved quickly to Aejung’s side. “Is it very difficult to write?”
“No…” There was uneasiness in her voice, as though frightened by the gleam in my eyes. “It is so easy to learn that a fool can know it in a day.”
“Could you teach me how to write? Then I can write to my sister as often as I need.”
Aejung scratched a corner of her lips. “I wish I could help you … but I must study for the medical exam—”
“I’ll do your chores, as many as I can. I’ll sweep and mop, I’ll sew, I’ll do your laundry. Then you’ll have plenty of time to study!”
She hesitated, and her long silence chipped away at my longing. Not for me, the voice said as it pulled me away. Literacy is not for me. Knowledge is not for me.
I pressed my fingers against my eyes until I saw stars. What madness had drifted into me? Was I truly suspecting that the blood flowing through Inspector Han flowed through me as well? I needed only approach the inspector to confirm that I was sick. Only a sick person would dare assume blood connection.
Whatever Aejung saw when she looked my way compelled her to change her mind. “Even if the chief maid asks me to bring water from the well,” she said gently, as one would to a wounded bird, “you will go for me?”
I did not have the strength to answer, too stunned by the workings of my mind.
“Come, sit closer.” With a sigh, she took out another fresh sheet of paper. “This is how I was taught when I was a girl.” With long strokes, she drew a large square, dividing it into columns and rows, and in the boxes she drew shapes. I took this all in with a stare filled with tears, my mind still whirring.
“Fourteen consonant letters are on the vertical side; ten vowel letters are on the horizontal side. One must assemble the two together to create a word.” She dipped the brush into the ink and dragged it across the paper, another black stroke across white. “And when you write, every brushstroke must be decisive, with no going back.”
“It is like life,” I said under my breath, as a warning prickle ran down my spine. “There is no going back.”
* * *
The other damos were asleep by nightfall. I crept out of the servants’ quarter, holding my breath. I dared not wake anyone. No one could know where I was going. The House of Bright Flowers, the place this entire investigation had circled back to yet again.
Once outside, I inspected the inside of my sleeve. It was still there, a blank paper folded into an envelope, which Aejung had given me to write home to my sister. Instead, I would find a servant at the House to bring me to Madam Yeonok and say that Inspector Han had sent me to personally deliver a letter to her. But hopefully, instead of her, I would be guided to her maid, from whom I might collect secrets more easily.
There is no going back, I reminded myself as I strode out of the police bureau. My heart pounded loud in my ears and my dress clung to my perspiring body as I passed by patrolmen prowling two by two, unmindful of the women who wandered the streets with their paper lanterns. For women were not considered threats to the capital, as men were, when darkness fell.
And I was a girl, and thus harmless in the eyes of the patrolmen.
Gods. They had no idea what I was about to do.
My sweat felt like ice water, the weather having cooled considerably. My limbs trembled by the time I crossed the stone bridge over the trickling Cheonggye Stream, closer to the wild and windy desolation of Mount Nam.
And yet the memory of Older Brother’s radiant smile burned. The brightness of his memory chased after me like a ghost in flames as I ran down the muddy path, shadows of grass and trees swaying. Field crickets chirped and leaves rustled, and soon, the nocturnal hum gave way to woodwinds whining over the beating of a drum and the rumbling of laughter.
I saw the House of Bright Flowers. Its roof, illuminated by hundreds of hanging lanterns, rose into a peak, then curved into flared eaves, in harmony with the rolling slopes of Mount Nam in the background.
I repeated the words, gathering every ounce of courage in me, “There is no going back.”
A true police officer would have come to this place determined to find evidence that would bring down the inspector, determined that an inspector who blackmailed truth seekers into silence ought to be brought down. Yet it was not so with me.
The desperate roots crawling through my soul longed for something more than justice. I wanted to know who Inspector Han was. And his story crouched hidden in the House of Bright Flowers, perhaps a story of anger accumulated over a decade. Or a perverse hunger that would reveal many dark deeds strung throughout his past. Or something about his family—who they were, where they lived, and why no one had mentioned their existence.
Wiping the sweat from my face, I walked along the wall, then stopped at the side gate. A maid entered through it, balancing buckets of water on a shoulder pole. I clutched my lantern tighter and followed her into the servants’ courtyard.
Large brown pots lined the wall, filled with soy sauce, soybean paste, and pickles. Servants strode in and out of the kitchen, from which steam drifted, oiled with the scent of pork boiling in ginger and other herbs. Within, maids cut vegetables into piles of colorful slices—carrots, spinach, eggplants, cucumber, radishes, clumps of garlic cloves. Straw baskets lay piled with fried scallion and zucchini patties.
“Are you lost?”
I whirled to see a maid with graying hair along her temples, perhaps a senior-ranking servant. With tight lips, she held my gaze, and I could sense her refusing to look at the mark on my cheek. It often made other servants uncomfortable, reminding them we were property.
“My master sent me with a letter,” I said. “I’m not sure where to go.”
“Who are you looking for?”