“He has far too much time in his hands and not enough distractions,” he frets, wizened fingers drumming against his forearm.

Koo Seo-ryeong enters politics bloodless and unassuming. That doesn’t last. She blazes, utterly brilliant, a dash of pink in drab black-and-grey.

She continues to run her podcast and notates well-received advocation of a transparent parliament for the empire. She still slaves some days and most nights attending a meagre fish-shop, busting tables on odd weekends. There is always time for ambition and opportunities.  

Lee Gon sets the media on the trail of her many colourful boyfriends—men with deep pockets, good looks, sprawling family connections, bruised egos and salacious tales. He keeps shattering secrets for last.

She sways the public into her favour instead. The darling of lower class. Champion of the underdogs. Humble beginnings turn asset for the woman daring to soar high.

Her bold scarlet-lined lips and enthralling smile becomes the face of radicalised movement led by liberal youths, out to upend the illustrious empire built from the ashes of Gon’s ancestors.

They rarely cross paths.

Once, she sidles up to him. Far refined than their first meeting, she is ethereal encased in indigo and silver meshed laces. Almost looking at home in events designed to pilfer off the upper class for cause of the month—these things blur altogether after a while.  

“Are you a patron of technology now? Part of your image is rooted in the glorified past, isn’t it?” While other bows to the long list of kings behind the Lee name, she stares at him, unblinking.

“I have not seen you lately around. Lost your invitations, I presume,” Gon says, lifting a teasing brow. “Or are you here on someone else’s merits? It is hard to tell with you—or your lot.”

Steel streaking the satin of her smirk.

“I intend to ration out our meetings,” she purrs, but doesn’t close their distance. “Absence has been proven to make the heart goes fonder, Your Majesty,” she adds, chuckling and darts away in glass slippers.

Precisely to his left shoulder, gritted teeth hones Yeong’s bladed angles and restless eyes into a rare oeuvre of dangerous delight. Gon’s favourite look yet.

The Royal Palace is a temple as Noh Ok-nam is its guardian. The parquet floor sings of a period where announcements are laboriously ushered through electric telegraphs and radio griped an empire through real-time sports and scripted dramas.

Decades on, its song pulsates beneath her feet when her knees ache. Today is one of those days. She takes a deep breath and turns around, smiling. “Gon’s schedule is overrun by various charities, official ceremonies and meetings, Your Highness. You will have to return again, perhaps next month.”

Lee Jongin possess none of his cousins’ hardness or naïveté. “My nephew is not the reason why I am here, Lady Noh,” he says, grins. She’s come to distinguish graveness from joy in the twist of his lips. Sees not a hint of joy in them.

She dismisses the court ladies with a wave. “Let’s move this to somewhere private.”

He offers her his once-toned arm. “My study should be perfectly fine. No one touches it.”

“Housekeeping do, highly supervised,” she says, looping her feeble arm around his.

Each step is a sweeping gaze, scouring nooks and crevices as he walks. As if the presence of a royal could coax something from invisibility. “What about Manpasikjeok? Have you found it?”

“We’ve turned the palace upside down every year and there is still no sight of it. The replica, however is safely tucked inside its case. None the wiser.”

“Good. Keep up the search,” he replies, a quiet pat of gratitude over her arm.

“So, why are you here, Your Highness?” Her question is merely a whisper in the hearing hallways.

Half of his greying brows rose, his grin turns genuine. “No more small talk, Lady Noh? You wound me.” He pastes a dramatic hand over his chest.

Between his cousins and him, Jongin is prone to theatrics of the foolish kind. She welcomes it like spring after the thawing of winter. “Time is a precious luxury for people like us,” she retorts, smiling.

He sighs, melodramatic even. “What a fountain of wisdom you are, Lady Noh. Our long gone youths have left us with the gift of pain and sickness.”

His study is modest, varnished birch makes for furniture and walls papered in lapis blue. The kingdom’s emblem bolted to the wall over the mantelpiece. Archaic scrolls, collected over the dynastic empire’s lifetime, decorated the walls.

Prince Buyeong settles into his armchair, taking off his rimless glasses and folds them. “In a matter of speaking, I’m here because of Gon,” he tells her, steepling lined hands. “There are troubling news about his recent treatment of the parliament.”

“What has he done now?” she asks, indifferent.

His mouth curls into a taut smile. “He’s spring-cleaning. Five are currently lodging in prison for various misdemeanours. Two voluntarily went on permanent vacation abroad,” he pauses, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Such innocuous words carrying alarming implications. She resists to massage away stubborn throbs blooming in her temples and neck.

“The Royal Public Affairs Office will take care of it. They’re familiar with the process and they have stellar record in handling such sensitive cases.”

“They can’t keep glossing over his actions. All it takes is just one breeze to bring down his house of cards.” Moroseness stipples his sigh. “Admiral Jo’s son was supposed to rein him in. That was a huge waste of time and a colossal misstep.”

She twists the jade ring around her finger, not-absentmindedly. “We have no way to predict that he would enable Gon’s wilder tendencies.”

Tiredness deepen the creases on his forehead. Afternoon heat is garishly unkind, highlights the years of apprehension on his face more than Ok-nam expects.

“He has far too much time in his hands and not enough distractions,” he frets, wizened fingers drumming against his forearm.

“I think his schedule begs to differ, Your Highness. Gon’s on the verge of mandating a decree for studies in teleportation.”

He laughs an airless chuckle. “How are your talismans though? Any signs of them working properly? Or working at all?”

“There’s no viable catches yet, Your Highness.”

“I may have three shamans on speed dial, say the word, Lady Noh and they are at your disposable.” His toothy grin has no mirth, dread trapped in his thin lips. “Lim already highlighted the dark taint on this family. Gon might be the one to accelerate its collapse. We need a heir before that happens.”

“When you want to destroy someone, boy. Make sure you strike at the things that hurts them the most,” the one-eyed man rambled, his upper lip curled upwards, parting yellowed teeth. “The king’s family always relied on good reputation to keep rebellion in check. Those cleaners aren’t cheap.”

“Yes, sir.” Kang Hyeon-min nodded, pudgy hands gripping the classic umbrella tighter like a gift on Christmas eve.

His one-man crusade begins with a terror campaign on crown-owned properties. He is not a heartless man. The news mentioned a possible wiring accident. The grapevine spun conspiracies and no casualties. That is not without calculated risk and meticulous effort poured under flickering argon light.

Most of all, the kingdom’s emblem tarnished is left unreported.

He works in a tiny all-night bar on weekends. Mindless chores bounce ideas; his next target, the next blast.

“One beer for that hot lady in the corner,” slurs another regular, nameless and hopeful. He raises his near-empty beer mug up, tipping his chin at her.

The lady in question is unassuming, yet there is a degree of attractiveness to her looks. She accepts the offer, pays it with a coy curve of her lips and sprightly fingers fishing in his back pocket.

They flirt, definitely. She laughs to something he said, nonsense and fanciful promises of whisking her away into a steady, mundane future. His watch is now wrapped around her wrist.  

Hyeon-min does not interfere in the affairs of patrons. It would be stupid of him, to draw attention to him, when his plan is far from completion.

Later when torrential rain fades into bearable pour, he sees her making her way underneath a suspiciously oversized trench coat. Hyeon-min rushes after this woman, holding the black umbrella over them.

“I’ll walk you to the bus stop if you promise to keep your hands from my belongings,” he says, his trust already clumsily preceding caution.

“I don’t steal from the poor,” she retorts. Her grin is a mesmerising blend of intense parlous and ragged loveliness.  

The walk to bus stop is an awkward silence mangled by his nerves fraying at arranging hypothetical replies to unasked questions.

“I know of you,” she tells him, narrowing shadow-rimmed eyes. Her crescent earrings sparkling in the passing motorbike headlight.

“I don’t think we ever met.” He frowns. “I’m Hyeon-min,” he quickly adds, ing his hand out. There is no logic in revealing his name, but he doesn’t care the slightest.

She spares his outstretched hand a swift amused glance. “I said I know of you. Not you, specifically. People like you.”

“What does people like me look?” he asks in earnest.

She is pale moonlight shaped like a woman of feline grace and unyielding gore, he resolves, catching her blood-tipped fingernails as she tucks a stray curl behind her ear.

“Angry. Ex-military. Driven.”

His heart losses its rhythm, ploughing steady beats into a frenzied rapture. Luna, he thinks, seems such a fitting name, if she chosen not to disclose that secret yet.