My maid spread the silk hanbok on the bed. It was a deep blue garment, like the sky before the stars surrender to the sun. She wrapped me in the layers of fabric, adjusting the Jeogori (the short jacket) and tying the Otgoorum ribbon with a precision that suffocated me. As she combed my tousled hair, gathering every rebellious strand into a flawless bun, I felt the mask of formality seal over me. I looked at my reflection in the bronze mirror: the girl who had laughed loudly at the top of the world was gone. In her place was a scholar of the Joseon dynasty, neat and silent, preparing to enter the wolf's lair.
As my Momjong slid a silver Binyeo through the strands of my hair, her warnings fell on me with the weight of a sentence. She implored me to behave in a manner befitting the circumstances; these were not mere patrol soldiers. The man talking to my father was a Janggun, a general who led the King's most important strategic fortresses. But it was his deputy general, the Bujang who escorted him, who was the subject of whispers throughout the palace. Praised by the ladies of the court and coveted by the most influential nobles for their daughters, his fame preceded him like a trail of fire.
With a trace of mockery in my voice, trying to hide the trembling in my chest, I asked her: "And tell me, who is this prodigy that all women seem to adore?
She did not hesitate. She leaned toward me and, her breath brushing my ear, dropped the name like a confession: "He is Kang-dae.
In front of the bronze mirror, my eyes searched for his reflection while my lips, almost without permission, stammered his name. I pronounced it with deliberate clumsiness, as if a part of my soul refused to give each letter substance. After a brief silence, the name came out again, this time with a different, more electric vibration: "Kang-dae."
"I've never heard his name before," I confessed to my Momjong, turning to her.
My maid looked at me with a mixture of astonishment and reproach, as if I had admitted to not knowing the name of the King himself. "How is that possible, miss?" she exclaimed. "In every corner of the palace and in every noble house, they talk of nothing but his courage and his stature."
I smiled bitterly. "I am just a scholar who works in the shadows to assist my father," I replied, regaining my composure. Beyond the star constellations and my hours of solitude on the cliff contemplating the moon, I know nothing else.
Then, with a sudden agitation in my voice, as if trying to stifle an internal fire, I added coldly: "I cannot waste time on trivialities. Those whispers are for those who do not have the weight of the sky on their shoulders.
Leaving my chambers, I entered the long wooden corridor escorted by a small retinue of ladies. My heart was beating with unusual violence, with the frenetic speed of a meteorite crossing the atmosphere; I felt the rhythmic pumping of blood claiming every corner of my body. That night, the sky seemed to have surrendered to a denser darkness, and the stars, my eternal confidants, looked dull, as if they were silent in the face of my confusion.
I kept asking myself why I felt this way. After all, I was only going to meet two more soldiers from the many who visited my father for palace feasts, events at which I was already an expert. However, I was terrified of reaching the door of the Sarangchae. I wished the hallway would stretch on forever, that the evening would end before I had to cross that threshold. I couldn't explain how a voice and a name had managed to fracture my composure to the point of making me doubt whether my Hanbok looked impeccable.
"You're crazy," I whispered to myself, shaking my head in an attempt to regain my senses. "How can you feel overwhelmed by someone you don't even know?"
Suddenly, the procession stopped. My Momjong looked at me with a mixture of surprise and concern, wondering if I was all right. It was then that I realized, with a start, that my thoughts were no longer safe inside me: they had begun to escape from my mouth.
As we reached the threshold, the oil lamps cast the shadows of those men onto the paper door, elongated silhouettes from which my instinct was to flee. My Momjong, ever faithful, announced our arrival to my father, the Yangban. In that instant, the tension became almost physical. My father's voice, charged with a joy that was foreign to me at that moment, boomed through the room: "Let her in!"
My feet felt as if they were anchored to the wood, refusing to move forward while my mind struggled to decipher the source of my agitation. With slow and solemn steps, I approached my father, who was waiting for me in front of me. The two guests stood with their backs to me, like two walls of silence. I took a deep breath, trying to calm the chaos in my chest to avoid any recklessness that could tarnish the honor of my house.
When I reached my father, I performed the Keun-jeol, the great bow, feeling the silk brush against the floor. It was an act of devotion and suspended time. As I stood up, my heart pounding in my chest, I began to turn to offer the official Ban-jeol to the General and his Deputy General. The world seemed to stop just as my eyes, behind the veil of courtesy, finally sought out that man's face.