The Ring She Left Behind
Inside the limousine gliding along in silence, breaking news flashed up on a muted screen.
The anchor's mouth opened and closed without a sound, but the gist was easy enough to guess. Today's performance by Grand Prince Uigu had been a success. Whatever had passed inside that hall, where a hundred serpents must have sat in attendance, no one outside the imperial family would ever know—and armed with this pitiable new image of himself, the day he laid hands on the throne could not be far off.
Those eyes of his, hiding behind his faction all through the clan council while they calculated without end. A man who at times could not be bothered to conceal his greed, and at others buried it with meticulous care to deceive the nation. At the very least, she refused to watch that man draw near the throne. The sight of him wearing grief like a costume made her sick. The Crown Prince had barely drawn his last breath.
Strength gathered in Seon's fingertips. There was little she could do here and now. She held no position from which to issue decrees like the Emperor, nor any power to overturn the board. But there was one thing she could do: make certain he never ascended the throne as though nothing had happened. She wanted to believe that was the true intent of the order she had received, and it seemed the least courtesy owed to the departed.
Bzzt—
The phone in her hand had been buzzing on and off for some time. It would be her mother, attending the Crown Princess as she was moved to Suhakwon Hospital, or her father waiting at the detached palace for word of the clan council—but she didn't bother to check the caller.
"You're not going to take that call?"
With the buzzing showing no sign of stopping, Seok-cheol in the passenger seat finally turned to ask. Seon deliberately shifted her gaze to the window. Whether he understood what she meant by it, he offered nothing further.
Soon the limousine carrying them rolled through the gates of the National Police Agency. Two security guards posted at the main entrance caught sight of the imperial crest emblazoned on the car and came running. Out of habit, Seon checked her collar and her appearance. One of the guards, flustered as he drew near, rapped softly on the window. Seon took a deep breath and lowered it—only after trading her grave expression for a calm, gentle smile.
"Ah—Princess Cheongyang."
The moment the two confirmed the face framed in the window, they snapped to attention and saluted. Stiff white caps, yellow vests, and postures rigid with nerves. Seon softened her voice all the more.
"You've been working hard."
"Not at all. Though—what brings you here, of all places..."
Their eyes darted to the limousine and back to her.
"We were given no notice of any visit, you see."
"I've gone and startled you all for nothing."
The official engagements of the imperial family ran on exhaustive planning and fixed schedules. Her last visit to the TF office had been no different: the corridors along her route were sealed off, an elevator placed under control, and even a separate parking route laid on so she would not cross paths with other staff. Compared with that, today's arrival was conspicuous to a fault. The imperial limousine wore a traditional lacquered finish meant to emphasize heritage, crowned with the imperial crest at its center. It might as well have been an advertisement announcing exactly where royalty could be found.
Beyond the glass she could feel furtive glances stealing looks at her. With the Grand Prince having just flaunted his grip on the TF team, she could hardly ignore the weight of those eyes. But Seon did not stop talking.
"I lost my ring when I visited the agency yesterday, you see. Fortunately Inspector Kwon Tae-oh found it for me, so I've come to collect it."
At the lie unspooling so smoothly from her lips, she heard Seok-cheol's head turn in the passenger seat.
"I'm sorry... what was that?"
One of the guards echoed the words back, suspicion plain in his voice. With every outlet in the country clamoring over the Grand Prince's tearful devotion to his late brother, the dead Crown Prince's niece turning up to hunt down a lost ring was bound to look pathetic. Seon met the guard's eyes. Something bright gathered bit by bit in her round gaze until it brimmed over with tears.
"My uncle gave it to me to mark my coming of age. I want it back as soon as I can have it."
"Pardon?"
"It's a precious thing to me—the one keepsake that brings my uncle back to mind. You've heard the news, of course... I kept thinking I must wear it to the funeral, and my heart grew impatient."
"Ah. Of course, Your Highness!"
Whether the performance had landed or not, the other guard answered promptly. The stiffness had gone from his face, replaced by unmistakable pity.
"I'll look into it right away."
The guards withdrew a few paces from the car and began speaking into a radio. Watching them, Seok-cheol shook his head slowly.
"Blood will out, as they say. Never was a saying more apt."
"If that's a jab at my mother, I'll take it as a compliment."
Before long the guards returned.
"Inspector Kwon Tae-oh says he will meet you in the conference room on the third floor of the main building. Shall we show you the way?"
Seon blinked once. Tae-oh had yielded far more easily than she had expected. She had braced for him to storm out and read her the riot act, or in the worst case turn her away at the door. It seemed fair to take this as proof that he, too, had been weighing yesterday's conversation in the elevator with complete seriousness. At last, something in Seon's chest felt lighter.
"No, thank you. Going with my aide will be enough. I appreciate the consideration."
Perhaps because she favored them with one last bright smile, the guards stayed helpful to the very end. Maybe they were simply too far down the ladder for the Grand Prince's reach to touch, but kind they were regardless—walking them to a parking space and holding the door open so she could step out of the limousine. And so Seon set foot inside the police agency once more.
Even without an imperial investigation piled on top, Tae-oh was already busy enough. The cases stacked up in the detective division alone left him gasping for air, and fresh work kept arriving without pause. Amid the deluge he did feel a flicker of ennui, but the change he'd been hoping for amounted to, at most, starting some modest exercise routine or catching a film. What he'd wanted was a little seasoning for his life—not the faintest intention of shouldering a special investigation with royalty tangled up in it.
Honestly, he believed this business ought to be closed out as an accident. The top brass seemed to be leaning that way, and to Tae-oh's eye it was the more convincing story besides. As if the Crown Prince could have been murdered. Stretching the thing into a homicide would only leave more people worn thin. What good ever came of wading deep into imperial affairs? Tae-oh had neither interest in that world nor expectations of it.
It was true that something about the scene had gnawed at him. But a detective's career is full of such feelings, flashing past by the dozen. Cling to every one of them and ten bodies wouldn't be enough. Even if the report didn't sit right, he had no wish to burn energy on a matter whose course had already been set from above. Tae-oh knew full well that there were moments when playing ignorant was the comfortable choice.
It had been that way the first time he met Princess Cheongyang, too. When he first laid eyes on that woman, the Crown Prince's niece, his thought had been: so now they send figureheads even to places like this. A comely face and a smile that looked manufactured. Were royals all cut from that cloth? The sort whose clean, composed faces gave no hint of what moved behind them. The type who made any entanglement exhausting.
And yet, strangely, after a few exchanges with her she kept snagging on his attention. She should have been a nuisance, yet somehow she refused to be dismissed. What was that woman looking at? Why did her eyes hold such unyielding resolve? She grated on his mind for no reason he could name. Not the investigation, not the case—her, just her.
"Ha."
Tae-oh raked a hand through his hair in irritation. The photographs strewn across his desk seemed a fair portrait of the state of his mind. He had gone over the pictures from the scene of the Crown Prince's accident again and again, and now he could feel cracks spreading through a judgment that was supposed to be rational. There was no glossing over it. Perhaps because that woman's vivid, living gaze kept rising before him, simply covering the photographs and walking away felt like a betrayal.
Anyone in the police agency knew exactly how busy Tae-oh was. That they had still singled him out to lead the TF team carried an unspoken pressure of its own. And yet the words drifting through Tae-oh's head would not dissolve.
"That warrant. If I take it upon myself, will you be able to make a choice of your own, Inspector?"
He had assumed she was simply another royal too pampered to tell sense from self-interest. Instead, that comely face of hers produced nothing but what was right. His crooked mouth reached for a rebuttal and got nowhere. Naturally. Sarcasm never lands on the truly upright.
Autopsy. That single word had shaken Tae-oh all night. Within imperial matters, autopsy was taboo—a realm never once entered in all of history. Not once had an autopsy been performed within the imperial family, and even an official of the Imperial Household Agency could not so much as issue an autopsy warrant without the Emperor's sanction.
It might become the first of its kind. That fact alone was enough to stir him. The thought of opening a road no one had ever walked set a flame to a passion that had long been fading into the background. But as a road chosen on private feeling alone, it was far too punishing. The Office of the Inspector General's attitude alone said plenty about where Seon stood within the imperial family. With talk going around that the commissioner's post was his for the taking even if he did nothing, there was no need to push himself out of his superiors' good graces. He knew nothing of the imperial power structure, but even he could tell that everyone gave Seon a wide berth.
A shadow fell over Tae-oh's head as he agonized. It was the youngest detective, just off a phone call at the far end of the office.
"Sir? They're saying Princess Cheongyang is outside asking for you."
"What?"
Tae-oh gave a hollow laugh. When he looked out the window, the tail end of a limousine was faintly visible.
"She says she left a ring behind... and that you found it for her, sir?"
"I did, did I?"
Still wearing that incredulous laugh, Tae-oh soon nodded, his expression settling into resignation. Tell her to come up to the third-floor conference room. He watched the youngest detective's back as the man dashed off to deliver the answer. There was nothing complicated left to weigh. It was time to go meet the woman who had shaken him this thoroughly.