Chapter 15: An Unexpected Guest

The sound of thin spring rain calmly filled the quiet Myeong residence. Perhaps because the Grain Rain season was approaching, the rain had become exceptionally frequent.

For once, a guest had come to the manor. This very small guest was none other than Yeo Song, the son of the late Crown Prince.

After the Crown Prince’s untimely death, the Emperor had bestowed Jeong-an Palace—a small detached palace within the capital—upon the Crown Princess Consort to honor her, and titled her the Palace Mistress. Though he had not granted Yeo Song any fiefdom, he had conferred a princely title upon the boy to soothe the anxieties of the Palace Mistress.

Four years ago, the boy was always seen cradled in his mother’s arms, but Yeo Song was now six years old, grown enough to easily step over the high thresholds of the residence.

“Uncle!”

Arriving at the main building under the guidance of Eunuch Oh, Yeo Song spotted Yeo Jae-won, who had just finished his official duties, and ran toward him with a bright, beaming face.

In the Imperial Family of Great Jin, there were not many who showed such unreserved affection toward Yeo Jae-won. When the Crown Prince was alive, the couple of the Eastern Palace had kept him close and cherished him, but the other princes and princesses found him extremely difficult to approach.

“How can you be so ill-mannered toward His Highness?”

The stern voice belonged to the Palace Mistress of Jeong-an, Yeo Song’s mother and the widow of the late Crown Prince. Seeing his nephew quickly hide behind his back at her words, Yeo Jae-won shook his head with a faint smile that bordered on a soft laugh.

“It is quite alright.”

To Yeo Jae-won, the late Crown Prince and his wife were like a second set of parents. While he often built walls around himself and wore a mask of indifference for others, he used to return to being an ordinary younger brother only in front of his brother and sister-in-law.

“Song, it’s been a while. Let me see your face.”

Turning toward the child hiding behind him, Yeo Jae-won lifted his nephew high into the air. Finding it delightful to be suspended in the arms of his exceptionally tall uncle, Yeo Song burst into a peal of giggles. It was a stark contrast to when he was two years old, and Yeo Jae-won had been almost afraid to hold him.

In that moment, Yeo Jae-won felt a strange headache spreading from his temples once again. A bizarre sense of déjà vu bloomed—the sensation of holding an even smaller, warm infant.

Was it from when Song was first born?

Yeo Jae-won furrowed his brow slightly and quickly searched his memories. However, from the time Song was born until he passed his hundredth day, Yeo Jae-won had been staying in his fief, Hamyeong-ju. He clearly remembered soothing his regret by sending letters and gifts to the Eastern Palace.

…Then when did I ever hold a child so small?

Afterimages flickered before his eyes like dots of light, but they failed to take shape and scattered like smoke.

“Uncle?”

“Ah… yes. Let us go inside.”

Answering late to his nephew’s call, Yeo Jae-won adjusted his hold on the boy. He turned and headed into the main building, pretending nothing was wrong.

Even after entering the inner room, Yeo Song took up a spot right on Yeo Jae-won’s lap. The Palace Mistress frowned, giving him a silent warning, but the child simply buried his face in his uncle’s chest and feigned ignorance, making the warning meaningless.

As Yeo Jae-won continued to stroke Song’s small head, the Palace Mistress spoke with a tone of half-resignation.

“He threw quite a tantrum saying he wanted to see his uncle.”

“You are welcome to visit comfortably at any time.”

The words weren’t empty, but Yeo Jae-won knew why the Palace Mistress had been hesitant to frequent the Myeong residence. Since the three-year mourning period ended, she and Song had only visited once to pay their respects and had otherwise communicated only through occasional letters.

It would not look good if a widowed sister-in-law and a fatherless nephew frequently visited a brother-in-law who was avoiding his official duties under the pretext of recuperation.

“I came today to deliver a gift.”

“A gift?”

“A wedding gift. It is already near the Grain Rain, so the bride’s party will arrive soon. I should give this to you in advance. These are jewels that the late Empress kept, intending to divide them among the spouses of her two sons. I have been daring enough to keep them until now, but the time has come to return them to their rightful owner, has it not?”

In truth, Yeo Jae-won had been quite young when his mother passed away, so he had almost no memory of her. He had only just learned that she had left such items behind. Even if it hadn’t been a legacy from the late Empress, he could not refuse a gift from his sister-in-law.

Yeo Jae-won nodded and bowed politely. “I will accept them with gratitude.”

At that, Yeo Song, who had been glancing back and forth between his mother and uncle, said with a smile, “Congratulations on your marriage, Uncle.”

“Yes, thank you.”

Though it was a marriage he never wanted, Yeo Jae-won did not let it show as he ruffled Song’s hair.

The Palace Mistress took a sip of the tea served by Lady Lee and then signaled to Yeo Song’s nanny, who was standing quietly in the corner. It was a sign to take the child away so she could speak privately.

Yeo Jae-won also knew she hadn’t come just to deliver a gift. He carefully lowered the child to the ground, and Yeo Song, quick to catch on, left the room with his nanny.

“Do you know much about your spouse?”

“Is he not an Eumin man from Baekya-bu?”

Indifference dripped from his lackluster expression.

While he was politically sharp, he was blunt to the point of being cold in matters like this. The Palace Mistress mixed a thin sigh into her next words, unable to openly click her tongue at him.

“Do you at least know his name?”

“He likely doesn’t know mine either.”

“He surely knows you are the Third Prince of the Great Jin Imperial Family.”

“And I know he is the third son of the King of Baekya.”

He won’t yield a single word, the Palace Mistress thought, closing her eyes deeply.

It wasn’t that she didn’t know this about him. In fact, she and the late Crown Prince knew the Myeong Prince’s temperament—whom they had raised like a youngest brother—better than anyone. However, she couldn’t lecture her twenty-seven-year-old brother-in-law, so she simply swallowed her frustration.

“His name is Ahnok, of the Seol family.”

Ahnok.

The name was like an anchor. Even though he had only pronounced it in his mind, it seemed to sink his entire being into an abyss. Sharp fragments pricked at his memory, as if asking if he knew.

“It seems Noble Consort Sa has already completed her investigation.”

The lowered voice of the Palace Mistress pulled Yeo Jae-won back from his thoughts. The Consort had already finished a background check on the future Consort of Myeong. If anyone was to hold the most information about the Prince’s future bride, it should have been the Prince himself.

Yeo Jae-won slightly arched a thick eyebrow.

“He is the King of Baekya’s bastard. His mother was a Shaman of Baekya-bu. When the King found out she was pregnant, he offered her a position as a concubine, but she refused. The King then publicly declared the Shaman’s child as his bastard. …In Baekya-bu, bastards are treated with great contempt.”

“So they sent a bastard because they didn’t want to send a precious, well-raised child to the Imperial Family,” Yeo Jae-won remarked, cutting straight to the core of the matter. The Palace Mistress nodded in silence.

“Even so, he has only just turned twenty. He must have had a difficult life in Baekya-bu; how much harder will it be for him in the capital with no connections?”

She was telling him to treat the boy well. There was a limit to how much the Palace Mistress could intervene. She had become a somewhat marginal figure in the Imperial Family, lacking the power to serve as a strong background for a Prince’s consort who was ignorant of the capital’s ways.

Yeo Jae-won struggled to maintain his composure against the fragment-like headache that had been stirring in his mind. He rinsed his mouth with tea and resumed his characteristically indifferent face.

The déjà vu he thought was an anchor kept grabbing his ankles, pulling him into a quagmire. To escape the compulsion to remember something, Yeo Jae-won focused on one small fact he knew.

“I will not be negligent in treating him with the respect due to a consort. However, is he not an Eumin?”

“…You are a Yang-in, so it is only natural you take an Eumin as a spouse. Do you mean to say you won’t even produce an heir because you dislike that your consort is an Eumin?”

The late Crown Prince and the Third Prince shared a common loathing for taking concubines, having been disgusted by their father’s numerous consorts. The Palace Mistress narrowed her eyes; the Prince had refused suggestions to take a concubine first, saying he wouldn’t do so before taking a primary consort. If he intended to keep his distance now because the consort was an Eumin, what did he intend to do about an heir?

“Doing anything with a child seven years younger than me is more than enough of a burden as a marriage,” he replied.

The fact that the consort is seven years younger won’t change even if they live together forever—what a ridiculous excuse, the Palace Mistress thought. She finally let out a hollow laugh.

The Prince had been like this since he was young. Knowing he would only be satisfied if he had his way, she shook her head as if giving up.