The ones under suspicion—the maid and her mistress—were both being held in the confinement wing, so it couldn’t have been either of them.
Which meant it was someone else. Which meant someone new from their little group had started to move.
“How many of them are there?”
Muttering irritably, Hwayeong rose from her seat and began pacing the room, tracing every step of the situation from the beginning.
It had started with Seonhwa. In the early days, someone had thrown pebbles at her window, or spilled water on her embroidery cloth—petty pranks.
But after Sinyeong ‘fainted’ and chaos swept through the quarters, everything stopped.
‘Right. Up to that point, it was just childish mischief.’
There was definitely malice in it, but nothing that crossed the line—whoever it was clearly hadn’t meant to cause serious trouble.
That’s why, when Seonhwa’s embroidery cloth disappeared, she’d figured it was just hidden somewhere in the room.
