[Be warned: the last part of this chapter might be a little disturbing and gross and a lot more graphic than the rest of the story. If you’re not comfortable with it, please just skip the paragraphs in italics ^^”]

-

When a delegation from abroad would come to Solen, they would often stay for many weeks given that the journey to Solen was long and arduous. Because of this, Yewon slowly and gradually became familiar with the new faces of the Chinese delegation in Solen’s palace.

She recognized one of those faces in the library one day, but it wasn’t the face of a royal. Rather, Yewon recognized that it was one of the translators who bridged the langu between the Chinese royals and the people of Solen. The translator seemed to be looking for something specific as he perused the shelves.

“Do you need any help finding something?” she asked the young Chinese man.

When he saw her, he bowed politely and greeted her formally.

She bowed back.

“Thank you for offering your help, princess,” he said. “But I’m okay. No need to trouble you.”

“It’s no trouble. I’ve been living here for so long, I’m familiar with all the shelves and where the books would be.”

“Believe it or not, I’m familiar with them too, your highness,” he said with a smile. “I used to live in this palace a while back as well.”

“Oh, I see,” she said. “Small wonder you speak the language so fluently.”

“Actually, I knew the language before I lived here. I studied it back in China, and then was recruited here to be a translator,” he told her. “I used to translate some of the Chinese manuscripts to a young scholar that used to work here.”

“I see,” Yewon said. “Well, I hope you’re happy to be back.”

“Happy is not how I would put it,” Minghao told her. “It’s actually a little sad to be back and not have my master around anymore.”

“You mean the scholar you worked for?”

“Yes, my master.”

“Where is he now?”

“Dead,” the young man said with a regretful look on his face.

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Yewon said.

“Don’t be, your highness,” he replied with a polite smile. “Anyways, my name is Minghao. Pleasure to finally have the chance to speak with you.”

“The pleasure is mine, Minghao.”

-

Since that conversation, Yewon had run into him on many occasions, and had fleeting conversations with him. He was a funny guy, she thought, someone she liked being around. Before long, they became friends and were talking on a daily basis, meeting midday in the library right before heading to dinner together.

One day, she learned the truth about the scholar he had worked with in his time in Solen.

“It was Mingyu,” Minghao confessed. “You know Mingyu, right? Sir Jeonghan’s alleged murderer?”

Yes, Yewon knew Mingyu, and the truth was that his name sent shivers down her spine. There was so much mystery shrouding this Mingyu fellow, and it just disturbed her. Although she had only seen the guy once when he confessed to killing Jeonghan, she still vividly remembered his face. He was a handsome, tall man with bushy hair, a man that had a disturbing relation with Soonyoung the night of that murder.

“Mingyu can hardly be considered an ‘alleged’ murderer,” she replied to Minghao. “He confessed to the crime.”

“Oh, but I don’t actually believe Mingyu killed Jeonghan, your highness,” Minghao said in an almost hushed whisper, as if he were relaying top-secret information to her.

Yewon narrowed her eyes.

“I spent a lot of time with Mingyu, and I knew him well. He was a very kind man, and he would never kill anyone. He was against the war with Galacia because he didn’t like seeing people die. How can someone like that kill someone else?”

Yewon rejected even the mere possibility, because to consider it would be too strenuous for her. She wondered how Minghao could hypothesize about the murder with such ease, like it was some kind of game.

“That’s nonsense,” she quickly dismissed the possibility. “It was him. It could be no one else.”

“You’re wrong about that. There are a lot of people who hated Sir Jeonghan. Any one of them could have done it.”

“Please, let’s not talk about this,” Yewon shut down the conversation, because it was making her anxious. Just the prospect was beginning to undermine something that she had come to terms with and accepted, and she couldn’t bear the thought of revisiting that dreadful murder once again.

-

The more time she spent with Minghao, the more she came to like him, and the more he bombarded her with his conspiracy theories regarding Jeonghan’s death. The closer she became to him, the more he trusted her, and so the crazier his theories became.

“Maybe it’s Prince Seungcheol!” he suggested once in hushed voice.

“That’s the most ridiculous theory I’ve heard yet,” Yewon told him. “Seungcheol and Jeonghan were very close.”

“That’s what he wants you to think!” Minghao remarked.

‘That’s what he wants you to think’ became Minghao’s trademark. As Minghao shuffled through the infinite suspect possibilities of what really happened the night of Jeonghan’s murder, Yewon always tried to refute them, and Minghao always replied with those very words.

“The King would have no interest at all in killing Jeonghan,” she would say. “That’s what he wants you to think!” he would reply.

“Wonwoo wasn’t even in the palace at the time of the murder.” “That’s what he wants you to think!”

“Yulhee isn’t even strong enough to kill anyone.” “That’s what she wants you to think!”

Yewon never took Minghao’s theories seriously, but went along with him for the fun of it. She found his enthusiasm about his theories even more entertaining than the theories themselves, as he was so comically impassioned by his mission to find Jeonghan’s real murderer and clear his master’s name.

“New theory!” Minghao said to her one day as he sat next to her in the library where they had been meeting.

“Oh no, not another one,” she groaned.

“No, this one’s a good one!” Minghao insisted, and then lowered his voice so that only she could hear.

She leaned in close, eager to find out the next crazy suspect.

“So I’ve been investigating, and apparently, Mingyu was secretly engaged before he died. I think his fiancée killed Jeonghan, and Mingyu turned himself in to cover for her,” Minghao said confidently.

“Her? A woman wouldn’t have the strength to do what was done to Jeonghan,” Yewon replied.

Minghao then gasped a little. “Do you think Mingyu was engaged to a man? Maybe it was Wonwoo!”

Yewon couldn’t help but laugh at that. Another ridiculous hypothesis was blooming, and this one was a little amusing, especially given what she knew about Mingyu and Soonyoung’s rendezvous that night.

Of course, if Minghao was aware of this rendezvous, it would probably end Minghao’s so-called mission to clear his master’s name. According to Soonyoung, Mingyu was seen bloodied the night of the murder, and that itself was all the reassurance that Yewon needed to know that Minghao’s theories were all baseless fantasies.

But Yewon didn’t even consider telling him that piece of information. It was a secret given to her in confidence by someone that trusted her, and she could never betray that secret to entertain some wild and unreasonable mission to vindicate an obvious murderer.

Minghao continued thinking of various candidates for Mingyu’s fiancée, men and women alike.

“Maybe it was you,” Yewon added for good measure.

“Better yet, maybe it was you,” Minghao bit back jokingly. “You hated Jeonghan, didn’t you? And weren’t you the initial suspect?” As soon as he said that, Minghao gasped, as if he had just come to an important realization: “It all makes sense now!!!” he exclaimed. “I know the reason that Mingyu turned himself in! He wanted to protect you.”

“Me? I never even spoke to the guy.”

“You don’t understand!” Minghao said. “You were very important to him, because you are a symbol of peace and the end of the war, and that was what he spent his life advocating: peace. He needed to protect that symbol of peace, and so he turned himself in, for you!”

That theory struck a chord with Yewon that none of Minghao’s other theories had, because this one didn’t seem nearly as farfetched or as ridiculous. She suddenly had flashbacks to that night, when she was held in court as a suspect, and Mingyu had barged in to confess to the crime himself. She remembered very vividly how nervous the guy looked, and how he had periodically glanced at her as he made that confession.

Why did he look at her like that?

Was it really because he only confessed to protect her?

But accepting that did not mean accepting Mingyu’s innocence, Yewon reasoned. Maybe he did only confess to protect her, but still committed the crime. The two weren’t mutually exclusive.

Still, for the first time since she spoke to Minghao, a seed of doubt was suddenly planted in her head, and a part of her began to consider that maybe, just maybe, Mingyu was innocent.

-

It bothered her for a long time.

Tossing and turning in bed one night, she remembered that she did have evidence in her possession that testified to Mingyu’s guilt. Although she had planned to never look at it again, suddenly she was desperate for some kind of assurance that this doubt was groundless, and that this case was rightfully closed ages ago.

She went to find Soonyoung’s journal. There, she would look for Soonyoung’s accounts of Mingyu the night of the murder, and that would help her feel more self-assured. How can the man who was covered in blood that night be innocent?

She also had Seokmin’s letter which stated that there was trail of blood leading from the scene of the murder to Soonyoung’s room. That was all the evidence she needed to conclude beyond any reasonable doubt that Mingyu was the murderer.

She found Soonyoung’s diary hidden among a pile of novels. She took it out and took a deep breath before opening it.

She didn’t want to see the drawings of herself, and so she quickly flipped through, eyes scanning to find depictions of men so that she didn’t have to focus too much on all the women. She only needed to find the part about Mingyu.

But she skimmed through the pages once, twice, and the third time a lot more carefully, but found no drawings of men whatsoever.

But Soonyoung did say that there was a part about Mingyu in this diary and even asked her to read that part. Maybe Soonyoung only wrote about Mingyu, she reasoned, and so she begrudgingly went back and skimmed through the written parts, eyes searching for the word “Mingyu.”

But nothing.

Starting to feel anxious about what that implied, she opened the diary from the very beginning and began to read it word for word. Maybe she missed the name, or maybe Soonyoung referred to Mingyu some other way? She just needed to read it carefully.

And so she read it: the parts about herself, and the parts about other women. Carefully, she perused the pages to find some reference to Mingyu, but she found nothing at all about Mingyu. Nothing about Mingyu whatsoever.

She did, however, find quite a similar story to the one that Soonyoung had told about Mingyu:

“She was stripping down her bloodstained clothes in the halls that night, a black cloak hung loosely over her bare shoulders. There was a lot of blood. She was mortified when I found her, but I only grinned.

Of all women that I had ever bed, this one’s flow seemed to be heaviest. So much blood coming down from her. So much blood.

Her hands were so bloody, and so I knew exactly where they had been. At that time of month, women were monsters, and wow, she was definitely a monster, stripping and touching herself publicly in the palace hallway.

She was so tempting, and she enticed me more than any woman I had ever met. My love for danger made this maiden so alluring; bloody and half-, undressing and pleasuring herself in the palace hallways.

Then she stripped all the way for me and began to touch herself again, rubbing the blood all over her bare, , beautiful body. She was trying to seduce me, and it worked.

I dragged her in my room and devoured her.”

The rest of the account detailed the ual encounter between Soonyoung and that woman, which involved burning the woman’s ‘bloodstained maid’s dress’ in Soonyoung’s fireplace.

Yewon read it, empty-minded, trying not to think about what it meant. It was only when she saw the pictures that she realized, with dread, that the woman in question was actually Haein.

A/N: idk what to say