rumble from deep within his chest. “Is that what you think?”
“I don’t know, sir. I’m always changing my mind.”
“They say many things here in the capital…” He paused, as though weighing whether to speak on. In a too-light voice, he said, “When I was young, they called me the sun, the great burning star, but when my father’s sin besmirched me, I became lower than dirt.”
My lips formed into a silent O as I looked at him closely. The golden light illuminated his face, allowing me to see details I hadn’t noticed before: the strain around his eyes, the oppressive stillness of his gaze, the small scars littered across his right hand. I knew little about his past, and this glimpse into it revealed a world filled with humiliation.
Silence continued to hang over us, intensified by the whistling chirrup of a lone sandgrouse, and at length Inspector Han said, “Whether you are the sun, the earth, or the moon, you are a capable girl. To me. Your mind, somehow, can grasp the chaotic threads of this case. There aren’t too many like you, Damo Seol. Man or woman.”
I sat still on my horse, fingers weakening around the reins. For the first time since my brother had disappeared, I felt seen.
* * *
It was past noon when we arrived before the fortress surrounding Suwon. The four-hour-long journey had filled my heart with one prayer—a prayer so immense, it felt as though I’d swallowed a heap of cloud. In my next life, I wanted to be Inspector Han.
Look at how tall he sits on his horse! I wanted to call out to the crowd bustling outside Hwaseong Fortress. Look at how the peasants kowtow before him, trembling. Look at how he spares them nary a glance.
This was my master, and I was his extension.
At the fortress gate, Inspector Han presented his identification tag to the guard, and at once we were permitted entrance. Never would I have imagined that by becoming a lowly damo I would be traveling around the kingdom, seeing places I’d never have visited while living with my sister back home.
The town of Suwon was a crowd of shops and people, a labyrinth of streets and alleys. Bristling along the walls were intimidating blockhouses, observation towers, bastions, and other military facilities built to fortify the defense of our capital a short distance away.
As we rode through town, Ryun reached into the sack tied onto his saddle and pulled out a ball of rice. “Here. It’ll keep you full for a while, Seol.”
I lifted it to take a bite, which was when I noticed Inspector Han’s light brown eyes again. They looked almost golden in the sunlight.
“You will stare a hole through Inspector Han,” Ryun’s voice broke into my thought, “watching him so fiercely like that.”
I took a bite into the rice ball, chewing on the sweet and slightly undercooked rice, the grain sticky on the outside but hard in the center. “I wonder, if someone dies and is reborn again, would they look alike?”
“I don’t know,” Ryun replied. “But I think you would feel a tug … a feeling of affinity. Why?”
I only offered him a smile, his question disappearing into the silence. The similar hue of my brother and the inspector’s eyes comforted me. It was as though Older Brother had sent his spirit and had lodged it in the eyes of another. But besides the color and the warmth of spirit, their similarities ended there.
I took another bite, but this time I tasted nothing, lost in memories of the past.
Older Brother had always been fragile, more of a sensitive and deeply feeling poet than a fierce military official. Most of my memories of my brother were of him sitting before a table, studying and memorizing Confucian classics. And while Inspector Han was capable of shooting two hundred arrows a day in rain, snow, or sleet, I couldn’t remember my brother hunting down any of the wild dogs roaming Heuksan island.
But similar or not, my brother was dead, and it was my sister’s fault.
I once asked her why Brother had run away, and her only response had been that they’d had a dreadful fight. One thing she didn’t know was that I had seen everything: her throwing at him an earthenware pot filled with boiling tea, her yelling, “Go to the capital then, that place of terror. We are not family. We are finished.” Older Brother had run away and had died alone because of her, and I