How difficult is that? my sister had reprimanded me several times. I had felt the same knots of tension when in her presence; a weighty quietude packed with secret thoughts.
Our tense journey finally ended when we arrived before the Capital Police Bureau, an intimidating establishment I’d mistaken for the palace itself when I first laid eyes on it, with its elaborate pagoda gate, wooden beams painted red, and tiled rooftops.
“When you tell a lie, Damo Seol, how do you feel?” Inspector Han said unexpectedly.
It took me a moment to realize he expected a reply. “Extremely nervous, sir.” Just as I felt a moment ago.
“Anxiety is a potent trigger. It leaves clues all over you. The pattern of your speech, the color of your cheeks, the movement of your hands.”
I remembered Maid Soyi’s eyes, those black, unknowable pools. I dared myself to ask a last question. “What about the eyes, sir?”
“They break away sometimes. Hiding secrets makes an individual flighty.”
“What if they stare intensely at you in a very unusual way?”
He swung his leg over the saddle, and for a man of his height and build, he landed on the ground with the lightest crunch. “There is a special breed of liars who will lock their eyes on you. They are those who know how to manipulate and control.”
Before I could say anything more, he handed the reins over to a manservant, then strode into the bureau. I paused before it and felt myself fold up; my head lowering, my shoulders drawing in, one hand hiding under the other. I shrank into my shell every time I beheld the invisible warning on the gate: Be careful. Cross no one. Obey always.
Cautiously, I passed through the gate. Everyone was bustling about the courtyard. A servant boy with a dirty face pushed a cart, its wooden wheels whining; a line of maids passed him by, holding trays of side dishes, neatly arranged; two men appeared—Officers Goh and Ky?n—carrying a wooden stretcher with a corpse hidden beneath a straw mat.
“Inspector Han! You have arrived!” Ky?n said with a simpering air.
“What is it?”
“The commander wishes us to move Lady O to the examination room.”
“Do so.” Then Inspector Han looked over his shoulder. “Seol, assist them.”
I stared at the stretcher, at the sight of lifeless gray fingertips left uncovered. Keep it away from me, I wanted to say. But I kept silent before Inspector Han. His waiting gaze upon me, I wrung my hands as the odor of death reached my nose again, and at last dragged my feet forward, if only to show him my obedience.
I followed the officers into the drafty room filled with the scent of vinegar and decay. On a stand was an open book, an illustration of the human body. Next to it, a table with tools: knife, ruler, bowl, needle, a silver pin. My attention lingered on the pin. The last time I was in this room, a corpse had been brought in with witnesses claiming he’d died from drinking poison. I had watched the coroner’s assistant inserting the pin into the corpse’s mouth, then the anus. Apparently, the pin turned black in the case of poisoning.
“Servant!” Ky?n called out. “Lift this corpse onto the table. The head needs to point south and the feet to the north.”
The moment I grabbed and lifted the stiff corpse, my skin crawled. I had carried people before, like when I’d piggybacked my friend while playing, but her weight had felt different. She had felt alive. A corpse was nothing but a slab of meat. Death was heavier. When at last I dragged her onto the wooden table, I stepped back and waited for my stomach to settle.
“Get used to it.”
I looked over my shoulder and found that I was alone with Officer Ky?n, the other man gone. “Neh? Get used to what, sir?” I spoke to him in honorific, using the polite form of the language, as if he were a venerable soldier. But he was a low-ranking police officer, hardly two years older than me.
“You saw all those corpses this week.” He picked the book off the stand and flipped through the pages of calligraphy and human body illustrations, stopping at the drawing of organs. “Commander Yi moved most of the corpses to another region to avoid autopsy. The rest were buried in surrounding hills, their killers acquitted or lightly punished. Do you know why?”
This was no trick question. I was always observant, watching everything from the corner of my eye. “The