Since the dreams had faded, Jieqiong hasn’t made any progress on discovering who the artist was, and not for lack of trying. Jieqiong takes advantage of her newly restful nights of sleep and stays up later, bent over her laptop, trying to piece together something, anything that might give away who the artist is. Jieqiong has hit a block. Jieqiong is sure it shows too. Even her boss, Park, has been looking at her worriedly, although, Jieqiong supposes, that could be from the time Park caught her asleep on the job.

Just as she’s starting to lose steam, thinking that she’ll never know anything about the artist, she has a three-am realization. The room is too plain for a princess’ room. In the more than a dozen paintings that depict more than the bed, there is almost no decor, no ornate carvings on the furniture or beautiful jewelry on the table. With another artist, Jieqiong might think the lack of detail a style choice, but the artist depicts the room so carefully that Jieqiong can’t help but to think that this is what the room looked like.

Jieqiong springs out of bed and slides into her slippers, wrapping her blanket around her shoulders to ward off the cold. She can’t be bothered to pull on pants. She needs to know now. 

She crosses the room to her desk and the crate next to it. She removes the quilt she’d lain over the crate to hide and protect it and digs around for the paintings of the room. When she has them all laid out on the floor of her bedroom, she surveys them. She’s right. The room is really too plain for royalty. Jieqiong furrows her eyebrows. If this wasn’t her doppelgänger’s room, whose was it?

Jieqiong purses her lips in thought and plops down in front of the paintings. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe the artist was only depicting the woman as royalty. Maybe she was-no. Jieqiong is certain that her doppelgänger was part of the royal family. But how? Who?

Jieqiong glances over the paintings once more. They’re the same pictures she’s been looking at for the past few weeks. She begins to look more closely at the backgrounds of the more…intimate images, not letting herself get distracted my the subject’s - her - state of undress. Or the filthy faces her doppelgänger is making. Or the clarity by which the artist depicted the strands of hair plastered to her doppelgänger’s forehead by sweat. The room is plain. Like Jieqiong had thought, the room is much less lavishly decorated than the portrayals of the Joseon palace she is more familiar with. Although, Jieqiong thinks, there is no proof the luxury of the public rooms in the p