The Butterfly Perched on a Vase (8)

"Madam President!"

"Ah, Director Cha. How long was I in Jungcheon?"

"Three hours and eleven minutes."

The precise figure left Ji-won's lips before Gaon had even finished asking, and only then did it dawn on her that she had vanished without a word of explanation in her haste. Oh no. He must have been watching the clock the entire time, worried sick. He handles everything so deftly that I keep forgetting he's still a rookie.

"Thank you for your trouble."

"It was nothing. All I did was observe from the sidelines, but you look considerably worse for wear, Madam. Did that creature give you trouble in Jungcheon as well?"

"A little. But I sent him safely down to Myeonggye. It's time we headed back to London."

"Yes, ma'am."

When they stepped outside the manor, not a trace remained of the merciless downpour; a clear sky glittering with stars welcomed them instead. Gaon swept her gaze over the old castle, which the malignant presence had gripped so tightly, and nodded in satisfaction before climbing into the car. From now on, no daughter of this family would ever again die young and without cause.

Of course, they must never again do anything to earn someone's grudge. A sincere apology to the victims would be owed as well. The price the descendants had paid for their ancestor's sins was undeniably cruel — but had the wrongdoer never committed his cruelty in the first place, there would have been nothing to hand the vengeful spirit its pretext.

"Madam President, could you look this way for a moment?"

"Hmm?"

Gaon had been sinking into the plush seat, quietly sorting through the instructions she would need to give her estate manager. At Ji-won's request, she turned her head to find him already wearing sanitary gloves and holding out a tube of ointment.

"It's not the kind of wound that would fester, but since it's on your face, you should put something on it."

And before she could answer, he dabbed the ointment onto a cotton swab and smoothed it gently over her cheek. There was a faint sting, and Gaon had to make a small effort not to wince. Ji-won's face was so grave, his hands so feather-light and meticulous, that the care in his touch made it utterly impossible to let her pain show.

"By the way, Madam President."

"Yes?"

"How did you know that creature wasn't really Archibald Rosenbalov? To my eyes, he was flawless. His manner of speech, his gait — not a single thing felt off."

"True. It's not as though I saw through him at a glance either. If you hadn't pointed it out, Director Cha, I would have caught on much later."

"Me?"

"Mm. You said the portrait depicted a man in his thirties, remember?"

The dead generally take with them the appearance they had in life. It was rare, therefore, for a spirit's outward form to differ significantly from their age at the time of death. That was why something had struck her as unnatural about a malicious spirit wearing the exact face of a portrait painted in its youth. The spirit impersonating Archibald Rosenbalov had likely studied that portrait day after day, refining his imitation of it.

"The deciding factor was his hands. They were coarse and rough — hands that could never have belonged to a nobleman. The surface can be copied, but not that. He couldn't have known how fastidiously the nobility of that era pampered their hands. A bitter irony, really."

"And here I thought you could see straight into a spirit's stomach, Madam."

"As if."

Gaon let out a low laugh and shook her head slowly. Perhaps because her body and mind were both limp after the grueling work, the confidences she had never shared with anyone while alive came spilling out of her before she realized it.

"Director Cha, I am not a god. I was merely assigned the role of judge, and now I flail and struggle simply to survive my term without incident. These days I've accumulated enough experience and sharpened my instincts enough to pass for seasoned, but in the beginning I was an absolute mess. For about thirty years, I cried and wanted to run away every single day."

The vertiginous emptiness of beholding Jungcheon for the first time, with nothing in it, nothing prepared, still felt vivid as yesterday. Gaon could still recall with perfect clarity the face of the very first soul to stand before her on the day she began her duties as Master of Jungcheon. When that soul's ugly deeds — the shame it would never have wanted exposed before another living being — were enumerated one by one, Gaon finally understood, in her bones, how heavy and how terrifying the responsibility given to her truly was.

She would never forget the moment she gripped her trembling hands together and delivered that ultimatum to the soul. She had turned it over a thousand, ten thousand times through sleepless nights, and the conclusion never changed — yet for a very long time, the gnawing doubt tortured her: had she not dealt a punishment far too cruel to a soul that might, perhaps, have been saved?

Gaon, you would do well to structure the system so that you avoid facing the dead directly whenever possible. Burning through your emotions like this will exhaust you before long. You were granted a lifespan of a thousand years, but that doesn't mean the lives you take into your own hands can be given back. And a Master of Jungcheon abandoning her duties midway is equally unthinkable. This isn't a matter of duty. I'm worried about your soul.

Looking back now, taking Chae-i's advice had been unquestionably the right call. Had she not built that system then, keeping pace with the exponentially exploding population would have been physically impossible. There had been many hard passages, but when the plague swept through Europe, she had genuinely breathed a sigh of relief. The previous Master of Jungcheon had said wars were the hardest to bear — but no war in the world ever claimed a hundred million lives in a mere seven years.

"I am the Master of Jungcheon only within Jungcheon. In the mortal realm, I'm no different from any ordinary Guide. I can merely distinguish merit from sin — it isn't as though every life of every soul lies bare before my eyes. I have simply lived longer than all of you, and in that time, I've picked up the knack for it."

Realizing she had chattered on far too long, Gaon gave a small, hollow laugh and closed her mouth, looking faintly embarrassed. Ji-won had mountains of questions piled up inside him, but he found himself unable to voice a single one.

The two of them reached London in the small hours of the morning and surrendered themselves, for the time being, to sleep. When Gaon finally stirred late in the day, having slept deeply and dreamlessly for once, Ji-won — already dressed and ready — was ringing around to rearrange her upcoming schedule.

"Madam President. Your booked flight isn't until tomorrow night, so if you want to return home today, the head of security says he can have a private jet in the air right away. What would you like to do?"

"Don't bother. A private jet, just for me? That's a waste. Tell them I'm going tomorrow as planned."

"Understood."

Unwilling to throw a crowd of people into a flurry, she had decided to stay one more day in London — but once a leisurely late lunch was over, there turned out to be nothing left to do. What was there even to see in London? She wasn't likely to fall back asleep, and she ought to go somewhere and look around, shouldn't she? Ji-won, who had been watching her deliberation quietly, ventured a careful suggestion.

"Madam President, if there's nothing else you'd like to do, would you care to visit the Sotheby's preview? Most of these works will pass into private collections once the auction ends and may never be seen in person again, so they're worth seeing at least once."

"Ah…"

If it's that, Director Cha would have to stop by anyway, so my tagging along shouldn't get too much in his way, right? No — shouldn't I stop dragging the man I semi-forcibly hauled out on vacation into my work by now? Watching Gaon fail to make up her mind, Ji-won smiled a little to himself. Her eyes are darting around. How on earth does nobody else see through a person whose face gives everything away like that?

"You'd be bored going alone, so come with me. Viewing art is more fun with company, after all."

"Then… shall we?"

Gaon, visiting an exhibition hall for the first time in ages, looked happier than anyone could have expected. She studied each work with the utmost care, and when she occasionally came upon a piece that truly captured her, she sank into it so completely that she didn't even notice the person beside her nearly bumping into her. Then, the moment Ji-won came to a stop before the glass vase — the very piece that had been the original purpose of this London trip — a small gasp escaped Gaon's lips of its own accord.

"How… beautiful."

The gorgeous vase, shaped like a flower blossom in a harmonious blend of crimson and violet, held Gaon's gaze for a long, long while. Ji-won, by contrast, never once spared it a glance — his eyes were fixed intently on Gaon alone. He squeezed them shut and opened them again, barely swallowing the torrent of curses surging up his throat. Those cheeks flushed red as a child's, those eyes brimming over with wonder — there was no sight on earth more beautiful.

I'm done for. It's over. I've lost my mind, Cha Ji-won. I've fallen for a woman I can't even tell is human. The instant he recognized his own heart, every inexplicable thing he had done of late snapped into perfect, dazzling clarity. From the very beginning, I only ever wanted to keep looking at this woman's face. That's it — honestly, even I wondered what the hell I was playing at.

So what do I do now? He was staring up at the ceiling, utterly dumbstruck, when his pocket buzzed. He checked it — a call from the friend he was supposed to meet in London. Only then realizing he had forgotten the appointment entirely, he could do nothing but laugh hollowly at himself.

"Director Cha. Isn't that your phone ringing?"

"It's spam."

Having cut off his decade-long friend with surgical brevity, Ji-won fired off a quick one-handed text while explaining the next piece to Gaon.

"When is the auction?"

"Next Friday, but having seen it in person, there's no need. You can bid online or send a proxy."

The following night, Ji-won — who had after all boarded the flight bound for Incheon — gazed back and forth between the pitch-black night sky beyond the window and Gaon's peacefully sleeping face, sighing silently, and without end.

"A whiskey, please. Johnnie Walker, straight."

He had resolved not to drink on business trips, but the soothing touch of alcohol was desperately needed. He downed the forty-proof scotch like water, and a searing heat slid down his esophagus as though he had swallowed fire. Regrettably, it fell woefully short of calming the tangle roaring inside him.

A man in a loose, billowing robe, his foreknot hanging undone, sat slouched in an enormous, lavishly ornamented chair and gazed down at the condemned with an air of languid indifference. It was the magistrates who determined sentences, so there was no need for him to involve himself personally. Hayul, who occupied the seat purely to cultivate an atmosphere of terror, could no longer bear the tedium and abruptly rose to his feet.

Another interminably dull day. I may as well go take a nap. Hayul was on the verge of leaving the Law Palace when he caught sight of one bedraggled spirit being dragged forward in fetters, and a flicker of interest stopped him in his tracks. Well, well. A big shot who died in the eighteenth century, is it?

"Oliver Mason. For the crime of human trafficking, one count, and murder, thirty-four counts, a sentence of three hundred and fifty years—"

"Wait."

Hayul studied the terrified spirit closely for a long moment, then took the man's chin in his hand and bared his teeth, his crimson eyes flaring.

Hah. Chester-born, are you? You made an already busy woman travel all the way out to that backwater? Because of vermin like you, catching a single glimpse of that woman's face is like plucking a star from the heavens, you understand? Hmm? Hayul looked down imperiously at the shuddering spirit and delivered his thunderbolt of a ruling.

"The condemned defied his Guide's instructions and inflicted grave burden upon the Master of Jungcheon in the midst of her overflowing duties. Therefore, the sentence pronounced by the magistrate shall be executed at twice its length."

Ah, Ju Gaon, that woman is truly beyond words. It would be so much simpler to just cut them down with her sword. Tsk tsk — no need to pour such devotion into worthless little things like that. Then again, I suppose that's exactly the kind of woman she is, for it to have stolen my heart in the first place.

With a languid flick of his hand, Hayul seized the afterimage trailing from the spirit's final memory and hung it suspended in the air, a broad, contented smile curving up the corners of his mouth. It was a small pleasure, dropped into his tedious existence like a gift.