Before Dawn

Lying on the duty room bed, Tae-oh felt as though something had taken hold of him. When he tried to piece together what on earth had happened over the past two days, it all came back in a haze. The Crown Prince's death, the special investigation task force meeting, and Princess Cheongyang, Yi Seon.

At some point a baseball had taken up residence on the duty room floor, left behind by someone and rolling around ever since; he picked it up and threw it at the ceiling. The ball rose straight and true, fell short of touching the plaster, and dropped right back into Tae-oh's hand. He had hoped the mindless motion might buy him a little time to sort out his thoughts, but even that proved difficult.

"I'll come here tomorrow at five in the morning."

Seon's voice, so level when she said it, kept ringing in his ears. He felt pathetic for skipping his trip home and holing up in the duty room just to keep the appointment, and he couldn't explain why her words kept swaying him. But he couldn't deny the simple fact that she kept coming to mind.

The fingers so smooth they had nearly slipped from his grasp, the skin that showed not a single flaw up close, even the sweet scent that had wrapped her body—there wasn't a corner of it all that didn't haunt his eyes.

To him, the royals had always been a headache. They courted trouble at the drop of a hat, and far from showing remorse, they did nothing but hunt for loopholes in the law and slip through them like loaches. A single background check meant cutting through agency after agency, and with the formidable friendships they kept in high places—pressure arriving at regular intervals—even an ordinary summons for questioning was hard to arrange.

Getting a warrant issued was, naturally, next to impossible. Unless a royal stood deeply implicated in something, the police would tire of the hassle and give up the investigation altogether.

Whenever Tae-oh watched them at it, he thought them pathetic. What was so extraordinary about the blood they were born with that they went around grandstanding at every rally there was? They were citizens of the Republic of Korea, bound to answer to public authority like anyone else—what made them so special that they dismissed it wholesale?

He was the kind of man who dodged troublesome business at every turn, yet given the chance he would gladly have attended a gathering of the abolitionists who wanted the monarchy gone. There was no such thing as a royal worth the name in this country.

But she was different from what I expected.

He thought it lying there with his arm pillowed beneath his head, staring up at the pitch-dark ceiling.

Princess Cheongyang, Yi Seon. Honestly, she was a woman he barely knew.

The royals in Tae-oh's memory were, as a rule, the troublemaking kind—the sort who made regular rounds of the Cheongdam-dong clubs or stirred up scandals for throwing their weight around. Seon, by contrast, was upright to a fault, carrying herself with the unbending poise of bamboo that refused to snap.

And then there was that smile of hers. Her mouth laughed readily enough, open and easy, but her eyes held no feeling whatsoever. It was the exact opposite of the gentle warmth she had put on to charm him—her eyes brimmed instead with a cold, bloodless indifference.

That was why Tae-oh found himself curious about Seon. The sorrow that pooled at times in her eyes when she thought of her dead uncle, the disillusionment that flickered through whenever the other royals were mentioned—those intrigued him too, but more than anything he wanted to know how far the real Seon intended to go.

I'm a detective. Of course I am.

He rationalized it, squeezing his sharply slanted eyes shut. If Seon's guess held and the imperial family was entangled in the Crown Prince's death, then she could not be ruled out either. A true detective withheld suspicion from no one. So wanting to know Seon could be written off as part of the investigation.

Tae-oh reached a hand toward the ceiling. His thick fingers, ridged with calluses, hovered just short of the plaster, drifting back and forth. He studied his own hand for a moment, then clenched it hard.

Lived moderately, without any grand passion, simply drifting where the current took him, and a life of unbroken success would have been waiting for him. Obstacles like this one were meant to be lightly trampled and left behind. He knew that perfectly well, and still Tae-oh burned with pointless curiosity.

Whether it was the passion for detective work that had gone out long ago, the small pity of wanting to find real answers for the bereaved, or plain curiosity about Yi Seon herself, he couldn't have defined it precisely.

The car carrying Seon had been parked in front of the National Police Agency since ten to five.

She had left the detached palace at four thirty. Palace and police agency alike stood on Jongno ground—everything there, Changdeokgung included, lay within a stone's throw of everything else—but hers was a life that had never once known lateness. She needed at least ten minutes of margin before her mind could rest.

Seon had watched the second hand of her wristwatch tick along, and the moment it read 4:59 she gripped the limousine's door handle. Her composure had begun to fray.

In front of Tae-oh she had played it cool, as if there were no way he wouldn't come over to her side, saying she would pick him up at five. But underneath, the anxiety gnawed at her: what if he didn't come out?

He had never once given her a positive answer. He was always the one asking questions, and Seon the one answering them. She believed she had persuaded him as far as persuasion could reach, but that didn't mean she could trust Tae-oh completely.

"I'll go in and check," Seok-cheol said quietly.

"He may have overslept, wouldn't you say?"

"No. It's better if I go. Coming across like any other royal would only cost me."

This was a man who bristled at the mere idea of an aide trailing after him. If she sent Seok-cheol in her place and Tae-oh changed his mind over nothing, it would be a disaster.

"I'll go just as far as the main lobby."

"And if Inspector Kwon truly doesn't come out?"

Seok-cheol asked in an even stiffer voice, trying to hide his unease. Seon, for her part, was imagining the worst as well.

"Then I'll have to enter the palace alone, won't I."

Seon's answer came out bitter. However official her place on the investigation team, what she could manage alone amounted to little more than raising doubts. She could neither formally request a warrant nor press for the investigation to be reinforced.

Leaning on the Emperor would have its limits; that much was certain. Which was precisely why Tae-oh's help was so desperately needed.

"I'll do what I can, even if it's alone. It's what Grandfather would want, too."

Veins stood out on the hand clenched around the door handle. Seon squeezed until the back of her hand went snow-white, then let out a short breath.

The instant she pulled the handle and the door swung open, the dawn wind rushed at her face. Autumn, no longer permitting any warmth, made its presence known with a distinct chill. Her eyes closed briefly against the wind on her cheeks, and the moment they opened again, a musk she had already grown used to pricked at her nose.

"Ah."

From the front seat, Seok-cheol groaned.

Seon, unmoved, looked up at him with perfect calm. Tae-oh stood at the door looking a little worn, as though his sleep had been broken.

Arms crossed at a slouch, he stared at her.

"You're not going in, then?"

At Tae-oh's irritated question, Seon raised an eyebrow, let it sink slowly back down, and shrugged. Then she moved to the seat behind the driver. With a place open in the back, Tae-oh climbed in after her without ceremony.

The doors had barely shut before the limousine glided away from the police agency. It was just past five in the morning, and the Jongno roads were still quiet.

Seon, apparently with no intention of sitting beside Tae-oh, pressed herself against the window behind the driver and stretched the distance between them as far as it would go. Tae-oh clicked his tongue at the gulf she had opened and crossed his legs. Seok-cheol, who had watched the whole performance, cut in bluntly.

"When you are received by His Majesty, you will need to be more respectful than you are now."

Tae-oh's sharp gaze traveled through the rearview mirror and landed on Seok-cheol. It was the stare of a grim reaper, the kind said to make criminals' knees buckle. But Seok-cheol, whose years of hard service in the palace were no less formidable, did not wilt an inch.

"The imperial household has its code of conduct."

"And you're telling me to observe every last one of them?"

Tae-oh snorted in disbelief.

"Let their noble highnesses keep them diligently. Don't force them on someone like me."

"Jeonwi Jo is speaking of your manner during the audience with His Majesty."

Seon added from where her head rested against the cold window. Her long lashes rose and fell as though to swallow her eyes.

"His Majesty rarely meets private citizens, but he isn't a difficult man, so there's no need to worry too much. You should remember, though, that he is advanced in years."

"Honestly... I have that much common sense. Do you really think I'd be rude to a man of ninety?"

However poor his feelings toward the royals, he wasn't so far gone as to lack basic decency.

Even Tae-oh, who knew little of the imperial family, knew at least how deeply respected the Emperor was and how much he had contributed to the nation's modern history. All the more so since the Emperor was now an old man in earnest—even a small shock could become a grave poison.

And the Emperor was the bereaved. An unfortunate father who had lost his son only yesterday, and who must be feeling a pain far greater than Seon's own.

It wasn't as if Tae-oh were some psychopath. The Emperor was as human as anyone under heaven. In a situation like this, a detective chose his words with care and made an effort to think from the family's standpoint. That, too, was part of a police officer's work.

"I'm relieved to hear you say so."

Seon answered with a shrug, as if the concession had surprised her.

Just what kind of figure did he cut in Seon's eyes? Did she take him for some thug who'd eaten his manners for breakfast?

Tae-oh studied his reflection in the window glass and sighed. Ever since he'd met Seon, day after day had become a string of moments where he hardly seemed like himself.