Author's Note:

                                                •••••    To My Readers     •••••

I have re-posted this story, over at another fiction website, wattpad.com.

Here is a link to my story.

https://www.wattpad.com/story/188690157-the-last-empress

I have re-edited Chapters 1 , 2 and 4, and added some new paragraphs.

To make it easier for general viewing, and for viewers who have not watched the drama, I've altered the reposted version slightly, and changed it to an autobiographical narration of Oh Sunny's life as the Empress of Korea, instead of Oh Sunny's early musings, recorded in her diary, which is the version appearing here on AFF.

I'm going to keep both versions, because both are dear to me. 

In addition, the autobiographical version at wattpad.com has allowed me to upload pictures as well. You can see an anime-illustrated, romanticized version of a dashing, charming Hyuk. Haha.

So, if you are interested in seeing what the revised chapters look like, just hop over to the link that I've posted above. If you're lazy, just carry on reading at this site. I'm just happy you came and shared my journey, all the way, right from the start. Thank you so much. It means a lot to me, that you're reading my story. I wouldn't have reached this point without your support and encouragement.

This chapter has been really hard for me to write, and I put off writing it for a very long time. Several versions ran through my head, but, in the end, I decided on this version. Thank you for reading, and I hope you'll stay with me till the end. Happy reading!!!!

                                                                                                                                                          Kaizen22   

                                                                                                                                                       19 May 2019        

                                                      •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Chapter 23: The Path to the Past

March comes, and the snow thaws; the rivers run again, and the sun shines brighter.

Woo Bin pays me a visit, to my pleasant surprise. He bows low, and smiles at me. He seems glad to see me. I smile back at him. It is nice of him to be glad to see me. We sip tea quietly in the Morning Room, and exchange pleasantries. I listen to his quiet voice drone on, content, and a little drowsy. Dear Woo Bin. I  am always so at ease in his company. I don't find him dull or uninteresting, perhaps because I am similar to him. We are both quiet, unassuming people, more observers than participants in the vibrant, exciting game of life. I lean back in my high-backed chair, and wonder idly why he has never married. He would make a good husband: solid and dependable, and, while many would call him dull and boring, I know that that uninspiring facade belies the quiet strength that lies beneath.

"Woo Bin," I say on an impulse, breaking the comfortable silence, "why have you never married?"

He looks shocked, and his face turns slightly pink.

"Your Majesty." He clears his throat awkwardly, and says stiffly, "I am content with my single status. I have no need of - companionship." 

"But surely you must be lonely, at times." I put my head to one side, and say teasingly. "Perhaps I should play matchmaker..."

"No, please, Your Majesty." A look of agony crosses his eyes. "I - I have no desire for a companion. There is someone in my heart -" He blurts the rest of his words in a rush, and stops, his face turning red.

"Oh?" I laugh. "Who is she? Do I know her? Do you want me to put in a good word for you?" I clap my hands excitedly.

"She - is already taken..." His words are so low that they are almost inaudible.

"Oh, what a shame..." I look at him in sympathy. "This woman...does she know of your feelings for her?"

"No." He looks down at his hands.

"What is she like, this woman? And why is she taken? Is she in love with someone else?"

"She is beautiful, modest and kind, and above me," he says quietly, and raises his eyes to mine. "She is married to a good man, whom she loves with all of her heart. I can only worship her from afar, and protect and guard her all of my life." 

He is looking at me, and for the first time, the mask of calm and friendship slips, and I see his heart in his eyes.

"It is enough for me, that I stand beside her, and guard her all of my life." There is a faint glimmer of tears in his eyes.

There is a long silence.

"Woo Bin," I say, my voice breaking, "Woo Bin, I'm so, so sorry, I never knew - I never guessed - "

"Your Majesty." He rises, and bows. "Your Majesty is not to be blamed, not in any way at all. I beg Your Majesty not to take this to heart." He smiles, a little sadly. "But I would like Your Majesty to know that it has been my privilege and my honour to know such a great and wonderful woman, and I consider it not a foolishness, but a blessing, to give my heart to this most rare and precious of jewels..."

He bows once more, and straightens, the mask back in place.

"Your Majesty may rest assured that this matter will never be spoken of again. I bid Your Majesty good day."

I look at his departing back through a blur of tears. 

What would it have been like if I had met Woo Bin first? Ours would have been a quiet and comfortable relationship. We would have plodded on with our lives, quietly and peacefully, there would have been no highs, or lows, either; we would have grown old together, good friends, content with each other, neither one expecting, nor demanding, more of the other. There would have been no storms, or tempests in our lives; we would have sailed on serenely, placidly, over calm waters and peaceful seas.

How different it would have been from my life with Hyuk, how different he is from Hyuk. How different I am with him, how different I am with Hyuk. With Woo Bin, I am relaxed, at ease, content, glad; with Hyuk, I am on edge, ecstatic one day, miserable the next, wild with excitement one moment, desperately unhappy the next. With Woo Bin, life would be tranquil, safe, predictable; with Hyuk, life is a constant rollercoaster of emotions: soaring up the crest of wild exhiliration one moment, plunging down to the depths of despair the next.

But my choice is clear.

It has always been Hyuk from the beginning, and it will be Hyuk till the end. For my place is beside him, and my heart belongs to him. I was his from the moment I laid eyes on him, and I will be his forever more.

April dawns, and Yoon comes to me to bid farewell.

He is of the same age as I, one of those"boys" that Hyuk had once said, in a moment of bitter regret, that I should have married, someone younger, someone whose life stretched ahead of him, whose past has not been smeared with painful memories and dark secrets.

But, as I look at him now, smiling sunnily at me, a burst of sunlight illuminating his face, bathed in the  radiant glow of youthful enthusiasm and irrepressible hope, I feel old, a decade older than him. 

"Sister-in-law, you're looking refreshingly beautiful this morning." He bows low over my hand. "I have come to bid thee farewell, O lovely rose of the Palace." He presses a hand against his chest dramatically.

I laugh.

"Are you really leaving?" I ask. "Why?"

He shrugs.

"The palace is getting on my nerves. And my mother." He scowls, and flops down onto an armchair, stretching out his legs. "She's annoying."

"Oh," I say, privately agreeing with him on that last bit. The Empress Dowager and I hardly speak at all, and there is an uneasiness between us, a false cordiality on the surface, masking the simmering resentment beneath. Like a lull before a storm waiting to explode.

"When are you leaving?" I ask.

"The day after tomorrow." He shrugs. "I've got to get back to my book." He looks moody for an instant. "I can't write here. The palace is - stifling."

He looks at me.

"About that - matter I spoke to you about...your mother..." He looks uncomfortable. "I'm sorry about what I said. I shouldn't have, but I had to get it off my chest." He looks directly at me. "You're a nice girl, and I had a little bit too much to drink that day, so I kind of blurted it out...I'm sorry..."

"It's okay," I smile at him. "It's over, it wasn't Hyuk's fault, and I'm not angry anymore. We've talked about it, and we've put it behind us. So don't feel bad..."

"That's good to hear." He looks relieved. "I can be a bit of an idiot when I'm drunk..." He looks rueful.

"Were you close to So Hyun?" I ask.

He sits up, looking surprised.

"Why would you ask that?" he says, staring at me.

"I'm just curious, I guess." I smile at him. "It's okay, you don't have to answer me. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable."

He looks at me musingly.

"I wasn't that close to her, personally," he says slowly, "I never really talked to her much, she had her own friends..."

"They were having problems, weren't they, Hyuk and her?"

"Why would you ask that?" His voice has suddenly become very quiet.

"I don't know - but I've heard things - "

"What things?" There is a sharpness to his voice. The lazy, sulky air has dropped from him, and he is sitting upright, his body tense, his eyes on me, unblinking, watchful. "Who's been talking to you?"

"So Jin mentioned something about it..."

"In front of her husband?" There is no mistakening the palpable note of anxiety in his voice.

"No, not in front of her husband, we were on the phone, she mentioned it in passing, and it just troubled me, I mean, that So Hyun was spending so much time in the cottage...I thought it was odd...and she was seven months' pregnant, and she didn't tell anyone about it...it was just strange..." My voice trails off weakly.

"Have you spoken to my brother about this?" His face is white, strained; it reminds me of Woo Bin's expression when I questioned him about So Hyun once, a long time ago.

"I tried to, several times," I say quietly, "but I'm afraid he doesn't want to talk about it..."

He passes a hand over his face, and then looks at me. His face is drawn, it's as if he has aged in a space of ten minutes.

"I'm going to tell you something that I've never told a soul, and I'm only telling you because," he clenches his fist, "it's been on my mind all these years, ever since she died, and I need - I need to tell someone, but you must swear - swear to me that you'll never tell anyone, not a soul - " 

"Tell me," I say, and my chest is so tight all of a sudden that I can't breathe.

I have to know.

I have to know what happened to So Hyun.

I can't go on, pretending that everything is fine, just because Hyuk and I are together once more.

"Tell me," I say once more, more firmly. "I won't tell anyone, I swear."

"I was the one who found out about - So Hyun first, did you know that?" I shake my head mutely. "I was the first among the family members to know."

"I came back late that night, at about 5 am in the morning. I'd had drinks with a few friends, old college friends. I walked down the passageway in the Old Wing - my room was next to my brother's, on the left, along the side, his room and So Hyun's were next to each other, at the end of the passageway. His room was on the left, and So Hyun's room was on the right."

"I walked down the passageway to my room, and it was dark, except for a dim light at the corner, and I could see light coming from beneath Hyuk's room. His room was the only room which had the lights on, the other two rooms were in darkness - my room, and So Hyun's. There were only three of us staying in that section of the West Wing..." 

"I thought nothing of it, at first," he says flatly. "I wasn't drunk, or anything - I was driving my own car, and I made sure I was sober, so I clearly saw that his lights were on."

"I opened my door, making quite a bit of noise, and when I looked again, my brother's room was in darkness." A feeling of dread was building up in me. "He switched off the lights when he heard me."

"So I went into my room, not thinking much about it, except that, maybe he'd decided to go to sleep, after hearing me. Which was odd, because I stayed in the room next to his, all those years, and my brother never slept past midnight - he was very particular about getting enough sleep, because he had to attend functions and all that palace stuff all the time..."

"I took a shower, and fell asleep, but woke up because I was feeling hungry, so I decided to go down to the palace kitchens for an early breakfast, and then go back up to sleep - this was about 7.15 am."

"I was the only one up, the breakfast room was empty, and Mrs. Kim brought me a plate of fried eggs and sausages, and I had just taken my first bite when the guy came in - " He broke off, and swallowed.

"It was a gardener," he says quietly, "one of the workers that handles the palace grounds, and keeps it neat and tidy. He was up early at the lake, because he had to go off early that afternoon, his wife was due to deliver their first baby that evening, and he wanted to leave early to fetch her to hospital..."

"He was distraught, and shaking. He fell to his knees before me, and said that he had seen something horrible: a woman was trapped in a net beneath the pier, and half-submerged in the water. He couldn't see her face, because she was floating head down, but," he swallowed, "she was wearing a hanbok, and he was almost certain that it was - that it was Empress So Hyun..."

"I was in shock. I asked him what he had done with the body, and he said that he had run away, because he was afraid, and came here to tell someone. He had left the body where he found it, lying face down, entangled in a net, beneath the pier at the lake."

"So I called Woo Bin, and told him what had happened, that So Hyun might have drowned in the lake, but I wasn't sure, and he said that he would find out who it was, whether it was So Hyun  and he would handle everything, and I was not to worry. He told me to wait for his call  and not to do anything at all. So I waited. After 20 minutes, I received a call from him. He said, yes, it's So Hyun, she's dead. He said that I had to wake up my mother and my brother, and tell them at once what had happened. That was all I had to do. He would handle the rest. Don't worry, he said, leave it to me."

"I went to my mother's room, knocked on the door a few times, before she finally woke up, I told her what had happened, and she was so shocked that she almost passed out - so I rang for her maid, and had her take care of her. Then I went to my brother's room, and I knocked on the door, once. He opened it at once. I said, it's So Hyun. Something's happened to her. She's had an accident, and she's dead."

"And then," he said slowly, "he said the oddest thing - he said, have they carried her out of the lake?"

I am so cold. I am shaking all over.

"How did she die? What kind of an accident was it? You'd expect him to ask these questions. I mean, that's what normal people would do - that's what I would do. You'd want to know why she died, how she died..." He slams a fist against the armrest. "But," he continues, his eyes agonized, haunted, "he didn't ask me any of these questions. The only question he asked was whether they had carried her out of the lake. And, see, that's the other thing that bugs me..." There's a rising note of panic in his voice. "I never mentioned that she was in the lake, not once, so how did he know that she was in the lake?"

He clenches and unclenches his fist.

"And I remember he opened the door at once when I knocked...he wasn't surprised, or shocked; he looked like he was waiting, that he'd been waiting for that knock on the door...and I couldn't help thinking, that he had probably been waiting all night, and that's why his lights were on, when I came home, because he'd been waiting, and forgotten to switch off the lights, because his mind was so caught up with waiting, that he'd forgotten about everything else..."

"What else did he say?"

"He said, I'll change, and be right down." Yoon frowns. "That's it. He was very calm, very quiet. He didn't seem upset, or emotional about her dying like that...it was unsettling, watching him so calm, it didn't seem right, somehow..."

He stops speaking, and there is a long silence.

"You asked me a while ago whether they were having problems...to tell you the truth, they were arguing a lot, all the time, in their rooms, when they were alone. They would be all lovey-dovey and affectionate in public, though, but when they were alone, that's when they would start fighting. I could hear them fighting from my room...the walls are pretty thin in the Old Wing, compared to the newer wings."

"And after she died, from that day on," his voice is the barest whisper, "he never slept anymore. I would hear him pacing, up and down, up and down, back and forth, back and forth...the walls, like I said, were very thin...he became very ill, and the doctors said that he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But he recovered, slowly, and one day, about a month later, he moved out of his room, and he had the Old Wing closed."

The sun has gone behind the clouds, and I shiver.

"All these years, I've been lying to everyone. They think that I left the palace, because I wanted to be free, to write a book, to be myself." He laughs cynically.

"The real reason why I left was because of my brother," he says, his eyes filled with pain, and sadness. "I couldn"t bear to wake up each morning, and look at him, and think all those thoughts, that he knew something about So Hyun's death, that... ," his voice dwindles to a whisper, "...that he killed her, he drowned her, that night, in the lake..."

I walk past the woods, to the path that diverge into two.

I stand there, and close my eyes, and feel the wind on my face.

I could take the left path that leads to the Valley of Dreams and the enchanted world. Or, I could take the right path that leads to the cottage in the woods, that desolate graveyard of bleakness and despair.

I take a deep breath, and open my eyes.

I step forward, onto the path, that would lead me, once more, to the past.

Behind me, I hear the plaintive, mournful wail of the wind, and the lone, shrill cry of a gull swooping down over the Valley of Dreams. Turn back, they seem to say, turn back at once. But I close my ears to their cries, and walk on, for the answer lies in that cottage, I feel it in my bones, a strange certainty, that the truth lies shrouded beneath the ash and the dust, the decay and the rot...

The door to the cottage swings open at my touch. Someone has been here, and has left the door unlocked. The sofa bed has disappeared, and the rotting books, the chairs are missing, as well. I walk to the window behind that overlooks the backyard, and look out. The freesias are gone, every single one of them; there is nothing left, but damp soil, and brown, rotted petals, half-buried in the damp, sodden earth. 

I walk back to the living area. A lone table stands, like a forgotten tombstone above a cold and lonely grave.

I take a step forward, and stumble.

One of the wooden floorboards is loose, and creaks, the harsh, scrapping sound breaks the silence, and a cloud of dust stirs beneath my feet, and rises, like a ghoulish spectre. I breathe in the ancient, feathery air, and almost choke. Hurriedly, I push open the window at the side, and the wind rushes in, together with a sudden, great burst of sunshine, dispelling the gloom, and soothing my throat almost at once; and then, something catches my eye, a tiny speck of gold, glittering beneath the rotting wood, wedged deep within a crevice, where it has lain, undiscovered, undisturbed all of these years...

I stare at it.

It beckons to me, the gold glinting, shimmering in the beam of sunlight.

I bend down, and reach out my hand to touch it.

It is soft, and smooth, sinuous as a serpent, refusing to stay still, shying away from my questing fingers. I grasp hold of it, and pull...

It emerges slowly, uncoiling, twisting and turning, as I pull it from its dusty prison.

Finally, it is free, liberated. It lies in my palm, a long, narrow and jagged strip of fabric, fraying at the edges, as if it has been forcibly torn off. Sensual and silky, it glides across my open palm.

Very carefully, I brush my thumb over it. The dust falls away, cottony caterpillars of grey, dangling off the ends of my fingers, and falling lightly, dreamily, upon the dusty wooden floor.

The tiny golden freesia winks at me, brightly, mockingly, standing proudly alone, on the upper edge of the strip of cloth, perfect and beautiful, timeless and eternal, untouched by the ravages of Time, a golden phoenix rising from the ashes of decay and dust.

I trace it slowly with my finger. Slowly, a memory surfaces.

Mrs. Kim, wearing a bright red silk dress, with pretty embroidered yellow motifs, smiling.

Snatches of her voice, disembodied fragments of conversation, drift to me from a yawning distance.

"This blouse is only worn for very special occasions. The material is imported from France, and was a gift from the late Empress So Hyun." "It was her last gift to me. The late empress was very generous."

Another memory surfaces.

Mrs. Kim touching her blouse reverently, saying tearfully, "Empress So Hyun wore a hanbok made from the same fabric the night she died." "She was in the same hanbok when they found her in the lake. I know, because I was there, I saw her." 

And the final, most terrifying memory of all: the sunlight from the glass windows catching the gold patterns on her blouse, the tiny embroidered patterns bursting into life, shimmering, dazzling, and Mrs. Kim, saying in a hushed tone, "They are so beautiful, are they not? So vivid, so alive." "These are not crowns, but golden freesias." "Empress So Hyun loved yellow freesias, they were her favourite flowers..."

The door slams shut behind me.

I startle in shock.

I turn.

It is Hyuk.

He is staring at me.

I can't breathe.

His eyes fall to the strip of fabric lying across my palm.

He raises his eyes to mine.

His eyes are wild, terrible.

He takes a step toward me.

"So," he says, his face white, "it's happened. The thing that I feared for so long has happened."

"What thing?" I whisper.

"The thing that I've dreamt about, day after day, night after night. It's finally happened, today, now."

I walk to him, and hold his hand. It is icy cold.

"What do you mean?" I whisper. "Tell me. Let me share it with you."

"That..." He looks down at the strip of cloth clutched in my trembling hand, "belongs to So Hyun." His eyes are dark, tortured. "It was torn from her hanbok the night she died."

"No," I whisper. "That's not possible. She didn't die here. She died in the lake, she drowned in the lake. It was an accident, she fell in, and drowned. It was an accident."

"No, she didn't drown in the lake. She died here, in this cottage, at the very spot where you are standing."

"No." I shake my head. "It's not possible. She drowned. In the lake. It was an accident."

I am shaking so hard that I can hardly stand.

"She didn't drown, and it wasn't an accident." His face is drawn and haggard, his breathing laboured, ragged.

"No," I whispered, "no...it is not possible..."

"There never was an accident, and she never drowned." His eyes are bleak, hopeless.

I don't understand, I don't understand what he's saying.

"I killed her." He says slowly, very clearly, and takes a step toward me. "I killed her here, in this cottage, at the very spot where you are standing." His voice is harsh. "Will you look into my eyes and tell me that you love me now?"