You Must Become the Emperor
A whirlpool of confusion hung in the air of Huijeongdang, and in such an atmosphere no one would dare open their mouth.
The Emperor wore the face of the fabled tiger of Mount Paektu, the beast said to have vanished decades ago. His blade-sharp glare bore down on them with savage intensity, and the aura rolling off his frame had the sheer force to bring even Taeo—a hardened detective—to his knees.
Yet even under that pressure, Seon stood unbowed. Head inclined at precisely the proper angle, eyes steady without a single tremor, she waited for the Emperor's answer to fall.
Taeo knew little of the imperial family, but even he could tell that Seon's conduct was exactly the right attitude for the moment—and indeed, the Emperor's stormy aura was beginning, little by little, to ebb.
"An autopsy of the Crown Prince is not a matter to be raised lightly. You of all people, Princess Cheongyang, cannot claim ignorance of that."
"Indeed, Your Majesty. How could I possibly not know?"
The Emperor's words could be heard as censure—why speak of it at all when she plainly knew better—and yet they seemed touched with consolation, too.
"But, Your Majesty. In the evidence from the scene and the details of the investigation, there was something I found suspicious."
"Having doubts does not mean every question yields the answer you wish for."
And yet the Emperor seemed, somehow, to be sounding her out. In eyes clouded by age, a vitality rarely seen of late glimmered through, as though he were waiting to hear something in particular.
"And if this is not an accident but a crime? Must the culprit not be caught, no matter what?"
Seon lifted her head, very slowly, by degrees. By the time her face had risen level, Taeo found himself meeting it—bright and gleaming.
Her expression was as serene as ever, but this time even the faint smile at her lips was gone. Her voice was grave, her eyes alight. She looked almost consumed with yearning, as though the thing she longed for hung just before her.
"I merely hope my uncle's death is not left behind as a mystery."
She drew the sentence to a crisp close. Her words carried a double edge: the uncle who had been the Crown Prince, the uncle who had been Prince Uiyeong—and, beneath both, a heart that refused to let them pass on shrouded in unanswered questions.
"And if you disturb even his final rest and turn up nothing, who then will bear that responsibility—tell me."
"Your Majesty. I know full well that not an inch of doubt may be left behind."
But this time, Seon had no intention of meekly stepping back. She was no longer that seven-year-old child.
Just as Prince Uiyeong's death had been left as nothing more than a baffling traffic accident, she refused to let the Crown Prince's death be dismissed as another tragedy of fate.
She wanted no one else to die. She could not stand by, eyes open, while someone kept stealing away the people she loved. And if this was someone's handiwork, she would never let it pass.
Nor could she bear to watch such a person take the throne. Whether he possessed any legitimate claim worthy of it—that much, at the very least, had to be verified. That, she believed, was her duty.
"The chance for an autopsy, once lost now, will never come again. I beseech you—grant your sanction."
Watching her bow in respect, the Emperor's face was harder than at any moment before. He soon shifted his gaze to Taeo, who had been quietly observing the exchange.
"So Princess Cheongyang feels that way. And what say you?"
"Ah, I..."
"You didn't go stirring up my granddaughter, now, did you?"
When the rebuke changed course, Taeo's fingertips trembled once more. Under that gaze, which seemed to weigh the very fiber of his character, he took a moment to choose his words.
"She reads a case's blind spots more sharply than I ever could as a frontline detective. I intend only to follow the points Her Highness has raised and verify them."
"To the outside eye, my granddaughter wields neither power nor authority worth the name. So why trouble yourself to follow Princess Cheongyang all the way here? Investigating the imperial household is no easy road, as you well know."
Before the Emperor's frigid expression, Taeo hesitated for a breath.
He knew as well that none of this was like him. He could have feigned ignorance and quietly let the matter be buried. But having come this far, regret was pointless. Taeo answered with the utmost gravity.
"I believe this autopsy can yield a great deal. At the very least, it will tell us definitively whether anyone intervened. Finding the truth is a detective's duty—Her Highness made a point of reminding me."
"Hm. And you're certain you'll find your answers?"
"It will be conducted far too rigorously to leave a single doubt behind. You trust your granddaughter—then trust the course she has chosen as well."
"Haah..."
The Emperor let out a long, deep sigh.
With his answer given, Taeo stole a sidelong glance at Seon. Standing tall, hands folded before her, she looked every inch a dignified member of the imperial house—someone altogether different from the royals he had seen on the news. A true royal, through and through.
Taeo's drifting thoughts snapped back to center at the sound of the Emperor's sigh that followed.
"Officially, I cannot permit it."
"Your Majesty!"
Seon called out to him in alarm. But he pressed on, resolute.
"Through the funeral rites, the Crown Prince must lie in the Binjeon. The whole world will believe his body rests there."
The Emperor's words were an enigma. But Taeo, a detective to the bone, caught the meaning instinctively. This was not a declaration that the autopsy must never happen.
He had said he could not permit it officially. Which could just as easily be heard as: find an unofficial way, and I will turn a blind eye.
Seon beside him seemed to have taken it the same way, for she held her tongue for a moment, her eyes moving busily as though searching for something.
"Your gracious heart is weighed and understood, Your Majesty. But it will be no simple matter to turn every gaze aside."
"What of convening the Imperial Clan Council? Once they're gathered, a single person will be enough for you to hold in place."
There was an edge of bone beneath the Emperor's words. He had had his reasons—and his suspicions—when he went out of his way to name Seon for the investigation team.
For some reason, Seon felt relief. The frustration of never quite grasping what her grandfather wanted seemed to loosen, just a little. So we were moving in the right direction after all. That single thought unknotted something in her chest.
"Yesterday, even royals who are not council members came in to observe the Clan Council, did they not?"
"Yes, Your Majesty. Enough to be a genuine headache."
"Then that is a blessing. The more royals attend, the more the press will believe the gathering actually means something."
No heir had yet been proclaimed, and the Emperor's own leanings remained veiled. Grand Prince Uigu might be the nominal successor, but this was not yet a stage where anything could be stated as certain. The royals would attend on the off chance something shifted; the reporters, hungry for an exclusive, would hang on every word.
And it was precisely when such hopes lay scattered in every direction that a council session made the perfect lure for every watching eye.
"I will announce the agenda through Imperial Prince Gong. But the session cannot be dragged out for long."
"I will settle the detailed arrangements in consultation with Inspector Kwon."
Seon answered, throwing Taeo a sidelong glance. He flinched under it and promptly agreed to do exactly that.
The Emperor watched the exchange between the two without a word, then gave a small nod. He drummed his fingers lightly on the desk for a moment before speaking, slowly.
"Inspector Kwon. Would you step outside for a moment?"
At the Emperor's words, Taeo bowed at once. It was a command to leave.
Seon's sharp glare, as if to ask what he was still doing there, cut into him head-on.
A stab of wounded pride made him swallow a bitter laugh. Had he truly let himself get roped into this? Sneering inwardly at himself, he backed slowly away.
His long legs carried him back a step, then another, the distance widening with each stride. The footsteps faded, then vanished altogether beyond the door.
Thud. The door closed, and with that sound, Taeo was severed entirely from the room.
Only then did the Emperor's gaze settle on Seon. A weighty stillness stirred, and the air between them began to drift somewhere strange.
"Seon."
The Emperor called her name, his voice heavy with weariness.
"Yes, Grandfather."
She answered meekly, gauging her grandfather's mood. Thankfully, he looked merely tired, not displeased.
"That you came before me today—will you not come to regret it?"
Regret? Seon turned the word over in her mind. But her answer was already made.
"I do not regret it."
She could never, not even at the cost of her life, regret this. She could not have closed her eyes and walked past an accident so hauntingly like Prince Uiyeong's death.
Know her place and act accordingly? If the world truly demanded that of her, it should never have stolen Prince Uiyeong from her when she was seven. It should never have let Princess Cheongsong die as she did, either.
Having carried those two deaths in her heart all these years, Seon could never retreat from this. And if someone's hand was behind this accident as well, letting it pass was beyond all contemplation.
The moment the Emperor commanded her to join the Imperial Special Investigation Team, she had already stepped across the line drawn before her.
"Good. That is a relief."
The Emperor was unexpectedly matter-of-fact. No scolding, no counsel. He only gazed at his granddaughter for a long, long while through eyes steeped in decades of hard-won experience.
How much time had slipped by? By the time the pre-dawn wind had died away beyond the tightly sealed windows of Huijeongdang and the first light of morning began to seep through, the Emperor spoke again.
The instant the words reached her ears, Seon swayed hard where she stood. Proof that what she had just heard was no illusion.