The Red Palace

by June Hur

To enter the palace means to walk a path stained in blood, our medical teachers had whispered. There will be bloodshed. I only hope it will not be yours.

His Highness was obsessed with Taoist scripture, magic formulae, and teachings on how to command ghosts and spirits.

I would not love, unless I was loved first and loved the most. I would be nothing at all, if I could not be first.

Police torture was notorious—so notorious that even King Yeongjo was always advocating to prevent the reckless beating done by police officials. His Majesty had tried to limit flogging to thirty strikes, and torture could not be repeated within three days. But it was common knowledge among us lowborns that the police did not follow His Majesty’s commands, and often beat suspects to death.

Damos were extensions of the police, mostly dealing with dead female bodies and violent female criminals, since male officers were forbidden by law from touching women unrelated to them.

Like the MC in her first book

Under Confucian law, men and women could not touch each other if they were not kin, and this custom was enforced and followed by highborns. We, the uinyeos, had therefore been formed after a series of unfortunate—and preventable—deaths among female royals who had refused to be touched by male physicians. In the eyes of most, we were merely assistants to the royal physicians, forbidden from making any decisions of our own.

Inspector Seo. I knew that name, and knew of him well. He was Jieun’s cousin. He was also the young man I’d overheard Father mention to Mother not long ago—the new inspector who had passed the civil service examination at a young age, so young the king had held off on passing a position down to him for two years.

Reading her pulse was like listening to and deciphering a secret. And the longer I listened, the more I understood Her Ladyship. She was different from how she presented herself. She could lie to everyone, but her pulse could not. For a woman who was only three and twenty, her pulse was tight. She carried the pulse of a grief-stricken fifty-year-old with the propensity to worry, to be beaten daily down by waves of thoughts, the weight crushing.

“We are women,” she continued, “and nothing short of death stops us from doing precisely what we wish to do. That is what the laws and restrictions binding our lives breed: determination and cunning. The likes of you will not obey me. You will tell me that you intend to be as still as a rock, and yet I know you will dart from shadow to shadow like a fish.”

A murder investigation is like a game of janggi: The moment one picks up an octagonal piece, time stills and the world falls away, leaving only strategy, tactics, and questions.

Everyone must choose the paths they will walk. And when you choose, remember to count the cost. Do not live with regrets.”

It is those you love that make a wretched life worth living.”

“When the time comes,” he said quietly, holding my gaze the way he held my hand. “You watch out for me. And I will always watch out for you.”

“Revenge begets revenge; the anger is unquenchable. We become the monsters we are trying to punish. Justice, however, brings closure, and that is what I want. It can only be achieved by remaining sober-minded and rational.

I wanted to love and be loved. I wanted to be known. I wanted to be understood and accepted.

We must value the lives of others. And those that are most vulnerable are the most precious of all.

“It is the greatest compliment. I dislike being around people for too long. But when I am with you … I never feel the need to be someone I am not.”

Some dreams, I’d learned, were meant to fade away. And to let go of them didn’t mean to let go of myself, but to release the life I’d imagined I wanted.

it occurred to me that love wasn’t all that I’d feared it to be. I had imagined that it was a wildfire that incinerated everything in its path. Instead, it felt as ordinary and extraordinary as waking up to a new day.