Rain fell in steady drops. As I left the library, I held the books tightly against my chest, frustrated at myself for not bringing an umbrella and worried they might get wet.
I hurried toward the subway and saw an empty can right in my path. I hesitated, wondering whether to kick it, but somehow felt I shouldn’t, so I simply stepped over it and kept walking.
Grasp.
“Time’s almost up.”
“!”
The moment I passed the can without kicking it, an old woman suddenly appeared and grabbed my wrist with a firm grip. She looked familiar, like someone I had seen before, but I couldn’t immediately recognise who she was.
Who was she, and why was she holding my wrist, saying that time was almost up?
“Grandmother!”
But soon, I noticed that one of her eyes was clouded over white. I clenched my hands tightly, recognising that this was the old woman who had sent me to that strange world.
I realised belatedly that this place was actually a dream. As it dawned on me that even the old woman I had met again existed only within it, I shouted desperately.
“I didn’t do anything that wrong! How can I go back? Please tell me!”
“On the day it reaches three months, you will return to your original world.”
“Three months?”
“Until then, the dizzy spells and collapses will grow more frequent. It will be on the day the three months are up.”
I jolted upright.
“Haa! Haa!”
When I sat up, the bedding I had been lying on was soaked with cold sweat.
I would return to my original world on the day it reached three months? What kind of bizarre dream was this?
“Yewon.”
“Ah!”
“...”
Still shaken from the dream, I screamed when someone suddenly reached out, mistaking it for the old woman's hand. The towering figure who withdrew their hand was the king.
It wasn’t that I was startled, but seeing the king’s expression darken so rapidly, I shook my head.
"A nightmare… It’s because I had a nightmare."
I recalled feeling dizzy, but when I opened my eyes again, my mind was like a blank sheet of white paper. Did I pass out?
Judging by the fact that even the candle was lit, it seemed I had slept for quite a long time.
Hearing that I had a nightmare, his expression softened slightly, but seeing me still visibly tense, the king rose to his feet. His face showed that it was enough just to have seen me awaken.
“I was startled when you suddenly collapsed. Make sure to eat properly. Fortunately, they said there’s nothing wrong.”
“Until then, the dizzy spells and collapses will grow more frequent.”
Though it was just a dream, the old woman’s words fit my current situation quite well. Before I collapsed, the king had also told me that it had already been nearly three months since I arrived here.
How much of this was I supposed to believe? Would the miracle of returning to my original world really happen on the day the three-month mark arrived?
Recalling the brief conversation I had with the old woman, my head throbbed again. A chilling shiver ran down my spine in the midst of this incomprehensible situation.
Clutching my face with my hands and gasping for breath, I felt the king, who had been rising, hesitate and remain where he was.
“Get some rest. I’ll leave now.”
He looked like he wanted to stay a little longer, but seeing me cover my face, he seemed to decide it was better not to and turned away again.
At that moment, just as I had in the flower garden, I clutched the hem of his clothes from behind. The chill running down my back wasn’t likely to fade anytime soon, and I didn’t want to be alone in this room, lit only by a candle.
“...”
But still, this wasn’t exactly a situation where I should be holding onto the king.
However, he had already stopped in his tracks because I had grabbed the hem of his clothes.
“…The nightmare keeps coming back… Please stay with me a little longer.”
“!”
It was the first time I had asked the king to stay by my side, so it was no wonder he looked surprised.
Moreover, hadn’t I gone a full ten days without seeing him?
The king sat back down, still wearing a look of disbelief. Yet, whether from astonishment or being at a loss, he stared at me without blinking.
Having the king right in front of me wasn’t exactly comfortable, but the shivers seemed to be gradually easing, and I let out a deeper sigh than before.
“What kind of nightmare did you have?”
The king asked about the dream that had made me speak words I normally wouldn’t. Recalling my former self, clutching books in front of the library, my expression darkened as I compared that image to who I had become in this unfamiliar world.
“If you don’t want to recall it, you don’t have to.”
I nodded.
“I’ll stay by your side until you feel better. Do you need anything else?”
Instead of answering, I shook my head. Since I didn’t speak, a quiet stillness lingered in the room.
In this unfamiliar world, devoid of even a cell phone, the king sat in silence after hearing my request, his gaze fixed straight ahead.
It was strange — someone who had been so furious with me had become so calm after my suicide attempt. I never expected his attitude toward me to change like this, especially after he said that five women had died.
Swish.
“What a terrible wound.”
Once again, it was the king who broke the silence.
As I watched him staring straight ahead, he soon turned his head and met my eyes, then flinched in surprise and lowered his gaze. I followed his eyes to my wrist, wrapped in white cloth.
The cloth covering the still-healing wound on my wrist had loosened slightly when I woke abruptly from the dream, revealing a small part of it.
Seeing my own wound made me feel sick, so I instinctively tugged the cloth down to cover it, but he grabbed my hand.
My heart sank, and my shoulders tensed, but the king, his expression calm and unreadable, took my hand and brought it to his neck — just below the left side, where a blade had left its mark.
“With time, it will fade like this. Do not worry.”
The scar on the left side of his neck, which I had seen when we first met, was now as thin as a thread.
Could such a hideous scar really change like that?
“By then, even the emotions that drove you to attempt suicide will ease. I will make it so.”
What did he mean by saying he would make it so?
In my dream, the old woman had said I would return at the three-month mark, while the king said he would help ease my troubled feelings.
My mind suddenly became a whirlwind of thoughts.
I was in a confused state, unable to take the dream as just a dream or the king’s words as just words.
“How did you get that scar on your neck…?”
My thoughts were in a jumble, and I worried that if my expression slipped, the king might blame himself again. So, I suddenly asked a question, something I’d never really cared about before. But when I realised I’d only asked to spare his feelings, my own face betrayed my surprise.
‘Why am I like this?’
“...”
The king fell silent at my sudden question. Then he released my hand and, as if to cover the scar on his neck, gently touched it with his hand.
It might have been a memory he didn’t want to recall, and just as I was about to tell him he didn’t need to speak of it, his lips moved first.
“In the palace, it’s forbidden to mention this scar.”
“Ah…”
“However, since you asked, I will answer.”
I heard the king say he would answer, but somehow it felt like Pandora’s box — something that should never be opened — was slowly creaking ajar.
Why did I suddenly feel the urge to clamp my hand over his mouth and stop him right then?
Despite myself, with my emotions tangled beyond my control, my lips parted slightly, as if to tell him he didn’t need to say anything.
However.
“It’s a scar from when a woman I once loved tried to kill me, but failed.”
The king had already spoken. No sooner had that shocking confession reached my ears than he added yet another staggering revelation.
“To be precise, it was my mother who tried to kill me.”
The unease I had felt after the old woman appeared in my dream sank the moment the king finished speaking.
And in its place, a stunned disbelief settled in.
For a moment, I couldn’t reply, my face frozen as I stared at him. The king, now wearing a look of nonchalance, lowered the hand that had been rubbing his neck.
“There was a woman whom I thought I truly loved for the first time — so much so that I felt I didn’t even need to ascend the throne. But she wasn't someone I could ever promise to marry. One night, as I slept, I woke to find her standing over me, holding a knife.”
I wanted to tell him he didn’t need to speak, yet the king, speaking calmly, seemed to be hiding a heart torn with pain. Quietly, he began to reveal a past I had never known.
“The moment I opened my eyes, she swung the knife in a panic. I could have grabbed it, but I had no idea why she was suddenly doing this, so I just lay there defenceless.”
“...”
“I bled so much that the blanket was completely soaked, but when I opened my eyes again, I was still alive — only to find that she had already been killed by someone else. Even now, I cannot know what was truly in her heart. All I know is that, as I collapsed in a pool of blood, she told me she hated me enough to want to kill me. That she had never loved me, but had deceived me to kill me. She was the daughter of a family my father had completely annihilated.”
“Haa...”
“The last thing I saw of her was her telling me that story with a face that was half-smiling, half-weeping, before she dropped the knife and ran out.”
"...You don’t have to say any more...."
“It’s true that she tried to kill me. But the one behind it was my mother. It turned out she wasn’t my biological mother. I had grown up thinking she was, only to discover that I was actually the child of a palace maid who served her.”
“!”
My eyes widened. Was it really okay for him to reveal the secret of his birth to me so casually?
What if someone else overheard?
I reached out in alarm, but he lightly took my hand.
“She believed she could not bear children and tricked my father into lying with a palace maid. I was born from that union. But when I was six, she miraculously conceived and gave birth to a son. After he was born, she planned to kill me, who shared no blood with her, and put her own son on the throne.”
“...”
“That’s why she had that woman attempt to kill me — and this scar is from that.”
“I… shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, I made them all pay for trying to kill me. Even if I went to the temple and begged for forgiveness, the bloodstorm I unleashed could never be pardoned.”
At that moment, I suddenly remembered something the king had once said to me long ago. Back then, I couldn’t understand it and simply let it pass. But now, I finally understood those words.
On the day I lied that I was crying because it was my mother’s birthday, he had briefly mentioned his own mother.
“I didn’t even get to see her face.”
“And because of my existence, she had to suffer a miserable death.”
The part about never having seen her face and having to die a miserable death was referring to his biological mother.
I suddenly felt a deep, overwhelming guilt toward the king for sharing his past with me, even though he knew I had been lying back then.
To hide the fact that the child was born to a palace maid, they would have had no choice but to kill her. No — if this was the palace I had come to understand over these past few months, the mother would have been doomed from the very moment that plan was conceived.
After the story ended, the king sat in silence, staring straight ahead. Just like the faint scar on his neck, he showed no regret for the past, nor shed a single tear. Yet in his eyes, I could see the remnants of that wound, hardened like stone, still clinging stubbornly, as if alive.
The king let go of my hand.
"The only reason I’m on the throne now is because my brother, the Grand Prince, was killed. Even the woman I thought was my own mother met the same fate."
By deliberately recounting the sins he had committed, the king seemed almost accustomed to driving himself into a corner — far more than I ever experienced when I failed the civil service exams. Yet the more he did this, the more I felt that he wasn't truly an evil person.
Even when he handed me a sword and ordered me to kill him, it was because he couldn’t bear all that had befallen him. It was his way of atoning, in some measure, for everything that had already happened.
Who could remain sane upon learning that the woman they once thought they loved had driven a blade into their neck, and that the one who ordered it was their mother? And then, after decades, to discover that the woman they had believed to be their mother was actually a palace maid, and had been killed. No one could possibly keep their wits about them.
“I have committed sins that, if I were to die, would cast me straight into Hell. But you needn’t worry. I won’t show that side of myself in front of you anymore.”
“...”
“Back then, when you tried to give up your life because of me, I vowed again and again. So, take good care of yourself.”
As I lowered my head to hide the aching feeling welling in my heart, the king clenched the hand that had held mine firmly and rose from his seat.
The way he seemed to want to take even the fleeting warmth of my touch with him made my heart ache in a strangely unfamiliar way.
“I’ll stay outside and won’t go far. Rest now.”
After showing me his monstrous past without holding anything back, even the sight of him trying to step outside, perhaps afraid I might be scared, made my heart throb.
I thought he was a cold, ruthless man, but after hearing about the past that made him that way, who could truly blame him?
Tuk.
I grabbed him.
I grabbed the king’s hand again just as he was about to leave.
The hairs on my arms stood on end, and I felt as if I wasn’t myself. But this feeling, right now, was entirely my own.
“It’s late… and since it’s cold, you should leave in the morning.”
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