has, and it’s someone close to this case. Someone whose name starts with an R.”
“Do you mean…” I paused, remembering a name mentioned by Commander Yi at one point. “Ky?n?”
Hyeyeon arched a brow. “I said, starting with the letter R. I forget you don’t know your Hangul characters. But yes, I was referring to the same person. Ky?n, the Rat.”
“I’ll wager it is him,” Aejung hurried to say. “I’ve seen him sneaking in and out of the bureau often these days. Like today, I overheard him tell an officer that he’s going to get his hands on something that will bring Inspector Han down. He mentioned ‘false accusation,’ but by then he was too far for me to hear the rest.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why is he suddenly going against the inspector?”
“It’s because he’s jealous,” Hyeyeon said.
“Of who?”
“He is jealous of you.”
“Me?”
“Ky?n is only two years older than you, Seol-ah. He despises you for discrediting him, and he despises the inspector for rewarding you when you saved his life by stealing Ky?n’s arrow. But above all, he cannot stand you because you are a girl who did all these things.”
“Because I’m a girl,” I repeated. A sickening sensation rolled out from those words, and in that moment, the gravity of his hatred became real before my eyes. A hatred that did not wallow as a mere emotion, but toughened into a blade that would make skin bleed.
Aejung’s face drained of color, too. “Do you think we should actually be worried for the inspector?” she whispered.
“Inspector Han has an alibi. He has someone to prove that he was elsewhere during the time of Lady O’s killing.” There was a solidness to Hyeyeon’s voice, leaving no room for doubt. “He had nothing to do with the killing, so we needn’t worry. Ky?n can stir up lies, but in the end, the truth will remain.”
I’d always prided myself on my sense of loyalty; I’d had the best of friends at home in Inchon Prefecture because of it. Yet compared to Hyeyeon’s, mine seemed watery.
My voice sounded too light as I asked, “Then who do you think the killer is?”
“Someone without an alibi.”
* * *
False accusation.
The term had blown by me when Aejung had mentioned it, yet now it was all I could think about. Those were the words Officer Ky?n had uttered in the same breath as his claim that he’d discovered something that might ruin Inspector Han.
I had once been too young to understand this term, but it had stuck to me, and with passing years it had grown in meaning. Hidden truth—injustice, the victim hurting while the criminal went unpunished—a veil of lies and misunderstandings that needed to be torn down. False accusation. Those two words had turned into a sharp bone caught in my throat, digging and piercing, refusing to go down no matter how hard I swallowed.
Whatever Officer Ky?n was up to, I needed to know. Everywhere he went, I tried to follow. Sweeping the verandas, mopping floors, carrying trays in and out of quarters, delivering letters for clerks and officers. I did anything that would keep me close to him. As invincible as Inspector Han seemed, I knew he was human, his life as fragile as my mother’s. And how easily her life had shattered into splintered bones upon the rocks. Lies could easily topple the inspector off the edge, too.
“I’m convinced of it,” Officer Ky?n was telling his gang of officers. “This year, I will pass the mugwa examination. I’ve failed getting in each time, because it’s not about skills, it’s about whether you know the right people…”
Nothing about Ky?n’s behavior seemed out of the ordinary, until evening approached that same day, hours since Aejung had shared Ky?n’s plan to falsely accuse the inspector.
The purple sky deepened into midnight black. A darkness so deep and quiet, swamped in slumbering silence, that Ky?n must have thought himself sneaky. But in the western courtyard where I crouched, hiding beyond the screen of blue fog, my eyes widened at the sight of him. He snuck out of the officers’ sleeping quarter and now stood on the pavilion veranda. Sneaking around like the rat that he was. A creaking step forward, stop, another step, pause. He glanced in all directions, except at the shadowy area to his side, where I was hiding. At last, he pulled open the sliding door, then disappeared into the Office of the Inspector.
My straw sandals muted my steps as I hurried along the veranda toward