Failures do not exist in his vocabulary or the numerous foreign language he speaks.

The deaths of disgraced soldiers are unfortunate, to be expected of such scenario. The absence of fair trials is understandable, when the defendants are cold, bleeding on the floor. To kill terrorists so they would not be held accountable in a fair trial is  outrageous.

Koo Seo-ryeong recognises the ‘17 calamity against peace’ for what it is; a tragedy—and an opportunity. No doubt Lee Gon himself would too.

The media—the ones he discreetly owns more than fifty percent in stocks and shares—wages exultation of his gallantry and quick-thinking, comparisons to an emperor haloed by the divine rights are made and callousness masked as decisiveness.   

She highlights the flaws of their feudal justice system, raises inquiries on the terrorists and their supervillain origins, emphasises the inconsistencies in the ramblings of impartial witnesses.  

In spite of the noisy backlash by the press, she perseveres, sailing on the galley of a true democratic vision and her popularity soars, like never before.

Months later, there are artworks of her decked in a fishmonger’s boots and apron, whittling the blood-soaked throne for an equal future.

Failures do not exist in his vocabulary or the numerous foreign language he speaks. Lee Gon’s fury smoulders beneath the visage of a compassionate king.

“Commissioner, I expected those fugitives would be dead by now,” Gon says, the amused twinkle turns iced toothy shards. “Yet I hear nothing.”

“You Majesty,” he stutters, “we are doing everything we can—”

“I’ve given you two chances,” Gon abruptly intercepts, “Not only you failed to prevent their attack on the peace summit, you also failed to capture the fugitives.”

The commissioner is on his knees, piling pleas of mercy to deaf ears and a grown man sniffling his tears is a ghastly sight. “Your Majesty—”

Lee Gon is a mathematician at heart. The catastrophic let-down seals the commissioner’s fate in tormented execution, reducing his value 1, useful, to dashes, non-numerical, worthless. “Bring him away, Yeong. You know the rules.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” He halts in his steps, tossing a look over broad shoulder. “The task force would need a new head, would you be happy with the promotion of Fire Chief Lee Hae-young?”

“That’s up to your liking. Prepare the paperwork for me to sign it off before the announcement of a terrible car accident Ki-moo will have. Also ensure his family will be supported as per the rules.”

Head Court Lady Noh Ok-nam brazenly corners him, three talismans in hand, when he steps out from his bathroom, wringing water from his hair. His promise to a date falls wayside in the amidst of wrangling peace and normality back to the empire.

“Has anyone told you you’d make a wonderful assassin?” Gon smirks, lifting open palms in the air.

“I’m far too old to make career choices, Your Majesty,” she says, ersatz innocence curling lined edges of her lips into a toothy smile.

“Shame. I reckon you’d give Yeong some trouble.” He relents to a date this weekend, when she brandishes the talismans knife-like at the towel coiling around his waist.

The girl he’d chosen to bestow his perceived favour to, is a random picking, a name that happens to be at the pointed nib of his Montblanc pen. The fourth actually, and Yeong tilts his head sideways, puzzled.

“Not the best choice?” Gon asks, narrows his eyes at his guard. “Underneath best traits, you wrote ‘beautiful, clean image, and dutiful. Are those qualities not satisfying enough?”

Yeong shrugs. “Unexpected, Your Majesty. But she might surprise you.”

Such generic, safe reply. From Yeong’s tone alone, Gon hears the sudden hitch in his guard’s utterance of unexpected—a lie, but not dire to warrant a punishment. After all, he enjoys Yeong’s white lies as much as his guard wallows in Gon’s attention like a strutting peacock.

“Be a nice little boy and arrange a meeting. Nothing too serious.”

“So, no candlelight by the famous Busan skyline? I thought you aim to sweep her off her feet, Your Majesty,” Yeong says, burgundy lips quirking out the barest of grins.

“Tell her I’m a fan of her movies, in particular, Architecture 101. This is merely me thanking her for the recognition she brings to the Kingdom of Corea. I trust you to prioritise discretion.”

Yeong’s excellence in discretion is a given fact. He selects a fearsomely archaic cottage, white and timbered, with rows of lush trees naturally fences the house, keeping it hidden from prying eyes. Its proprietor is KGB defector, a former chef, living off the land and in solitude. She’d sooner pull the trigger of her shotgun at trespassers before they could explain their reason.

She arrives in an unmarked van, driven by her manager, under the covers of a well-earned vacation and dusk-streaked skies. For an award-winning actress, her emotions are splayed across her doll-like face like a billboard downtown on the busiest nights.

Go Hye-mi is Ok-nam’s zealous prayers moulded into flesh and bones. The bearings of a fine-boned woman, with a stately golden diadem sitting atop her head. Her obedience to traditions and propriety is endearing. But it’s her reluctance to question him in his actions and his thoughts, Gon supposes he could overlook.

The empire is his and his alone. He will not share it with a child he does not trust—even one that is of his own blood.

She is smitten.

That will suffice for now.

Koo Seo-ryeong is far deadlier when she flexes her journalistic muscles, dispensing enough intrigue and plausible evidence of conspiracy to stir dissent among his people. So much of the discord is gaining traction—Lee Gon has waited ing long enough.

Gon announces of a new election when the news of Prime Minister Lee Ho-cheol’s accidental drowning splashed across all the news platforms.  

True to her words, Assemblywoman Koo wins the presidential election in an extraordinary landslide, leaving her opponent demanding a recount. No one bothers with his request.

He lets her have her fun. Six months of introducing bills he will not signed, reshuffling her cabinet to her liking—she earns his admiration when she slapped four separate proposals on his desk to tackle the economic and social issues he spent half a decade to solve—and for once, the people almost believe in her vision of the empire.

On an afternoon basked in the warm sunglow, he dissolves the entire parliament.

She does not command the cooperation of her cabinet members or the squabbling political parties, much like she dazzles the kingdom’s common folk. Twice, they squander their chances to form a new coalition.

By the end of the fourth week, Lee Gon steeples his hands as he declares the kingdom will have to bear with a caretaker government until the foreseeable future.

Commissioner Kim Ki-moo retires when his car crashes into a ditch on the foggiest night in Corea. This is what the media reports, written verbatim off from her press release. She spends three nights, polishing crude words of execution and torment into innocent ordinary accident.

“Miss Myung, have you filed the necessary paperwork for the late Commissioner Kim’s?” questions Yeong, echoing in the deathly quiet office.

Shock has her nearly dropping the files in her arms, almost knocking her milky tea onto her pants—but it doesn’t. “Yes, once I send this to the legal department, everything will take effect immediately,” she stammers, chagrined magenta tinting her sharp cheeks. “It will nullify all his existing arrangements including his pension.”

The captain of the Royal Guards walks on cloud-padded shoes, she thinks. His stealth will the death of her clothes one day, her peace is fraying minute by minute.

“Excellent,” he says tersely.

He is perfect, in his swoon-inducing appearance. Inky black hair combed slickly to a Princeton cut. His face—the epitome of stoic sophistication—unblemished. The stark sable suit clinging firmly onto muscled torso.

“But the amount here, is it correct? Only 3 million won? Per month?” Seung-ah frowns. She re-did the maths twice, preparing a mock expense budget—standard protocol, her supervisor mentioned—and her projections foresee the amount won’t able to cover the family’s living expenses for the next decade.  

Dried scarlet flecks staining his cuffs. The entirety of him reeks of burnt flesh and acrid cooper—and she strives to ignore the stench of decay.

“The late commissioner lasted only three hours. Therefore he is entitled to three million only. Until his daughter reaches the age of eighteen.”

That is merely formality, Seung-ah knows. Yet she cannot resists in prodding a stick to a hornet’s hissing nest. “Is that really fair?”

“Then he should have endured more for the sake of the family he’s going to leave behind,” he replies, monotonous and a sneer outlining the corners of his ruby-painted mouth. “Now would you excuse me, Miss Myung, I am in desperate need of a shower.”

Koo Seo-ryeong is a prime minister without power. Her venture to cut the monarchy at its limbs, twisting the king-worshipping constitution into a true democracy, has ended in her slaving her days as the custodian of a government on autopilot.

Still, she shows up in his study, like spring-operated grandfather clock, in her zebra-printed pumps, silk-satin blouse that previews her collarbone and crushed draped skirt above her crossed long legs as she sits on his varnished oaken desk.

“So predictable. Trying to bank on the popularity of the nation’s most loved actress to supplement the waning favour of your people. There’s a fifty percent chance you’ll get Grace Kelly, instead of a Mrs. Simpson.”

Her comment wrenches a momentarily pause from his scribbling. His eyes, however, remain firmly on mathematical equations peppering all over the latest economic report. Her greatest rival might not even be sentient, something intangible and absolutely not six foot of sourpuss expressions.

“All work and no play makes pretty Gon a dull boy,” she chides, adding a yawn for effect.

“You’re highly chirper for a woman whose life-long ambition I just snuffed out,” Gon mumbles, leaning back into his chair, and props his chin on his upturned palm.

“I have plenty goals, Your Majesty. Being a prime minister is just one of them. Not the end,” she says, rolling her eyes a bit, and turns her steel smirk into enticing pursed of her lips.

Life is an ungenerous mistress to a girl navigating a childhood in the Corean slums. Seo-ryeong has always been adroit at improvising—and patience is a virtue a hungry child learnt to handle as a weapon. She cannot reveal all her cards yet—where’s the fun in that?

He moves away from behind his desk, to standing in front of her. There isn’t much distance between them, she brushes her foot softly against his pants. “So are you aiming for something else? A queendom perhaps?”

“And if I am, would you bequest me that position coveted vastly by the young Corean women?” She arches a sculpted brow, folding her arms. The ends of her garnet-lined mouth curving into a coquettish smile.

“You would have to fulfil the requirements. I doubt you’d pass. You already failed to meet the minimal—a child out of wedlock wouldn’t reflect the throne well, now would it?” Gon retorts. His teeth gleaming dangerous white underneath the lights.

His sneer stabs her in nasty prickling cuts. There is a lot Seo-ryeong can take, the wall she built protected her before—but this remark ruffles her into a brief stun. She recovers quickly, that all Gon sees is the flat line of her lips.

She points her chin at the door, grinning. “I suspect you would freely grant Yeong that position, even if he was a bastard—of course, he’d first have to have a pair of shapely s and the proper equipment.”

“Careful now, Prime Minister, you are within your rights to taunt me—but he cannot bear anymore of your riposte,” he says, slanting forward, and his spearminted-breath on the blade cut hinge of her jaw—she tries her best to not shiver right there.

In all the logical assumptions she has of the king and his guard’s intimateness, she fails to comprehend the rationality behind having Yeong to be within earshot of tonight’s possible torrid exploration of tangling limbs and mingling embraces.

“Is that why you have him waiting outside, instead of his usual place behind you like an overaged puppy?” Seo-ryeong croons, removing his moon-glasses, and places them neatly on the desk.

“I like to have my antique vases in its glorious original conditions, not shattered all over the floor.” Gon drops his gaze to the hollows of . But his eyes haughtily flicker at the door—and she wonders if this carnal affair is a of two bodies and one spiritual listener.

“I can only strive to keep the noise down, but this is not a promise,” she purrs into the shell of his ear.

She breathes in sharply, when he presses his lips against hers. Outside, a vase shatters into a thousand anger-tainted splinters.

Somewhere in an obscure town, with a too-long name for a non-local to pronounce, a newly-wedded couple strolls into the motel, and pays for a room. The motel receptionist later recalls they paid in stacks of cash and the wife flashes him a fanged-smile.

The husband is a bearded man, strapping shoulders and  his bangs touching his eagle-like eyes. He finds work as a bouncer for a family-owned bar. His wife, petite and wears her dyed chestnut hair in a bob cut, is the new taekwondo instructor who only wears sundresses.

Playing house is refreshing, Luna finds, but each day feels like they’re actors living on borrowed time.