The Emperor Is Waiting

Ding—

The elevator chimed with a cheerful ring. Yesterday, every minute spent inside it had felt like an eternity; today, strangely enough, the ride was over in no time.

Seon quickened her pace. Her steps toward yesterday's conference room carried a curious lightness.

"It will surely have reached Grand Prince Uigu's ears."

Seokcheol whispered, glancing around uneasily.

"Coming here instead of the detached palace—he'll find that suspicious."

Unlike yesterday, the third-floor corridor was fairly crowded. She even caught people whispering behind their hands as they watched her.

"It's fine."

The police commissioner had joined hands with Grand Prince Uigu, and she knew full well there were others besides him who had taken the Second Grand Uncle's side. This was, after all, a man confident enough to believe he could bend the task force to his own will. She was under no naive illusion that her visit to the police agency would go unnoticed.

But even if today's deviation reached the Second Grand Uncle's ears, she was not afraid. She had to come back to this place. There were knots Seon needed to untie.

Her steps stopped in front of the conference room door. Then she turned to Seokcheol.

"I'll meet him alone."

"This isn't an official meeting today, so I hardly see the harm in my coming in with you."

Seokcheol answered in a disgruntled voice. Yesterday's cold reception at the door still seemed to rankle.

Seon gave a faint smile and patted him on the shoulder. It meant: say no more.

"How am I supposed to win against you, my lady?"

In the end, Seokcheol sighed and stepped forward. The hand gripping the door handle looked unusually tense. For all his visible displeasure, he opened the door for her in the end.

As it swung open, the interior of the conference room came into view. Yesterday the room had sat in darkness for the presentation; today the lights burned bright.

And beneath those lights was Taeo. Perched on the edge of the desk with his phone in hand, he lifted his head at the sound of the door.

His eyes met Seon's in midair as she stood in the doorway, staring at him.

For a moment, silence hovered between them. Taeo's sharp gaze swept over her.

It brimmed with insolence, probing her—but at least it was different from yesterday. Different from that rudeness that had written her off as pathetic for no reason at all.

Thud—

When the outer door closed, an even deeper quiet settled over the two of them. A man still taking her measure with his eyes. A woman meeting his gaze head-on. In this space, only the two of them existed.

Even with her round eyes trained on him, she felt a flicker of nerves. She had acted so serenely confident when she told him to make his choice—yet here she was, turning up after a single day, and the thought struck her as almost comical. She worried, too, that he might already have his refusal prepared.

But Seon knew how to keep her face in order. Hiding what she truly felt and showing only a royal's grace was a discipline she had practiced all her life. So even now, as always, she could conceal something as small as nerves.

Seon stepped into the conference room. The click of her heels rang out across the floor.

Feigning ease, she strolled unhurriedly toward the seat she had taken yesterday and ran a finger lazily along the desktop.

Her fingertip found the smooth stretch of a desk dressed up in wood-grain veneer, passing itself off as solid hardwood when precious little real timber had gone into it.

In a voice pitched just so—not too dark, not too bright—Seon spoke.

"I trust you've had plenty of time to think?"

"Ha."

At her question, Taeo's guard cracked. That gaze which had shadowed her every movement with unnerving precision finally drifted away.

Taeo gave a hollow laugh and crossed his arms.

"I thought you came looking for your ring."

"Ah. That—"

She parted her lips slightly, feigning surprise at his words. Then she drew the ring from the pocket of her tweed jacket and held it up between two fingers. Emerging from her pocket in perfect condition, the ring glittered under the lights as if to taunt him.

"Thank you for finding it for me."

Taeo's brow twitched, ever so slightly. His gaze touched the ring, then climbed slowly back to her face.

"And I'm the one who found it for you, am I?"

Seon tilted her head, the picture of unconcern.

"Aren't I?"

In that instant, Taeo moved. He sprang up from his perch, closed the distance in a heartbeat, gave her wrist a light tug, and caught the fingers holding the ring. At the sudden contact, Seon's eyes dropped.

"I never received any word that you'd lost your ring," Taeo said, low. "So how exactly did you come to find this?"

The distance between them had collapsed in an instant. A smile played on Seon's face, but her eyes had gone cold.

"You'll have heard the news about His Highness the Crown Prince. The count of those needing autopsies has grown by one."

"Is this how Your Highness makes use of people?"

Taeo's gaze traveled over her face. His eyes held displeasure and curiosity in equal measure.

"You're more blatant and forward than I took you for."

Even at that, Seon did not pull her hand free. If anything, she met his eyes more squarely.

Silence stretched between them. Neither was willing to speak first.

It was Taeo who raised the white flag on the strange standoff. At last, with a hollow laugh, he lifted her fingers and slid the ring into place himself—deliberately slowly, as if in mischief. His thick knuckles brushed against her skin.

"Honestly, you did surprise me."

The ring settled back where it belonged. As he toyed with the diamond, the corner of Taeo's mouth curled into a crooked smirk. He let go a beat too late as he spoke.

"Your Highness really is... unlike any other royal. Quite singular, I'll give you that."

"Is that a compliment?"

"No."

Taeo's voice was sharp. Nothing in it suggested goodwill. But the mere fact that it was different from yesterday's look was good news enough.

"Being told I resemble the other royals is what I hate most. So I'll take it as a compliment."

At her answer, Taeo frowned.

"There's a matter we need to settle first," he said abruptly. "In the entire history of the imperial family, an autopsy has never once been performed. I combed through every record yesterday—even in the case of Prince Uiyeong, who died in a strikingly similar traffic accident, no autopsy was carried out."

At the name Prince Uiyeong, she flinched before she could stop herself. It was a name that ached no matter when she heard it.

"There are records, of course, showing that some argued for an autopsy even then. But by the will of the imperial family at the time, the body was given only an external examination before being handed over to the bereaved."

"My uncle Uiyeong's accident—"

Seon began slowly. It was the first time she had ever spoken of Prince Uiyeong to anyone outside the imperial family.

"It was a tragedy, and one that caused me great pain as well. But coldly speaking, that case and this one are a little different."

Seon fought to keep that day's grief off her face. She, too, had been a victim of Prince Uiyeong's accident. Merely hearing his name was sometimes enough to send her back inside that overturned car.

"His Highness the Crown Prince is the foundation of the state."

"That's not a very convincing argument."

Taeo's voice turned sharp again, sharp enough to flay skin.

"From where I stand, His Highness the Crown Prince and Prince Uiyeong are the same thing: victims of a traffic accident."

Succession orders, the weight of the crown prince's position—none of that meant anything to an ordinary citizen outside the palace walls.

Seon had to choose words a detective like Taeo could accept and readily understand—even if it meant exposing a vulnerability to do it.

"If you've read the case files, you'll know I was at the scene of Prince Uiyeong's accident too. I was seriously injured and laid up in the hospital for a long while."

She spoke on, quiet and steady. Even now, closing her eyes brought back the smell of antiseptic that had clung to her for months on end. It was like returning to that seven-year-old girl lying helpless in a hospital bed, wrapped in bandages from head to toe.

"If I had woken up just a little sooner back then, an autopsy might have been possible."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Isn't uncovering the truth a detective's job? As one citizen among many, I'm simply raising a question."

At her level voice, Taeo's eyes shifted.

"Do you truly believe there is no possibility at all that His Highness the Crown Prince was murdered?"

She asked it without the slightest rise or fall in her voice, and she could see his face harden. Taeo held her gaze, frozen, for a long moment before finally letting out a short breath.

"Surely the odds of a simple traffic accident are higher than the odds of an assassination? We're hardly a nation at war."

"You're free to think that. But the imperial family is a different world."

Her answer, still so composed, made Taeo's eyes waver.

"What is it you want, Your Highness?"

"What I want is the truth. And the decisive evidence that will take me down that road."

Taeo shifted, his mouth opening and closing as if he had more to say. But all that came out of him was one frustrated groan after another.

Seon curled her fingers gently into a fist. If she couldn't persuade even this man, she would never be able to hold her head up before the grandfather who had trusted this to her—nor before the uncle who might have met an unjust death.

"The autopsy."

At last, Taeo spoke. Seon fixed her eyes on him.

"It was a rather clever choice. In this day and age, there's no evidence more certain than that."

She couldn't tell whether it was praise or mockery. While she wavered inside, Taeo pressed on.

"But as you said, there are now two victims to autopsy. And one of them is none other than the Crown Prince. What's your plan if His Majesty objects?"

There it was. Steering the conversation this far meant she had already seized the upper hand.

Seon lifted the corners of her mouth into a smile.

"His Majesty is waiting for me to bring you to him."

"Pardon?"

At that very moment, as if fate were playing a joke, the phone in her pocket rang. As if spellbound, Seon checked the caller, and her expression brightened. Taeo's gaze moved from the phone to her face.

Having typed out a reply with Taeo standing right in front of her, Seon raised her head. At the question she abruptly tossed out, his brow furrowed.

"Do you happen to do Miracle Mornings?"