drew shapes. I took this all in with a stare filled with tears, my mind still whirring.
“Fourteen consonant letters are on the vertical side; ten vowel letters are on the horizontal side. One must assemble the two together to create a word.” She dipped the brush into the ink and dragged it across the paper, another black stroke across white. “And when you write, every brushstroke must be decisive, with no going back.”
“It is like life,” I said under my breath, as a warning prickle ran down my spine. “There is no going back.”
* * *
The other damos were asleep by nightfall. I crept out of the servants’ quarter, holding my breath. I dared not wake anyone. No one could know where I was going. The House of Bright Flowers, the place this entire investigation had circled back to yet again.
Once outside, I inspected the inside of my sleeve. It was still there, a blank paper folded into an envelope, which Aejung had given me to write home to my sister. Instead, I would find a servant at the House to bring me to Madam Yeonok and say that Inspector Han had sent me to personally deliver a letter to her. But hopefully, instead of her, I would be guided to her maid, from whom I might collect secrets more easily.
There is no going back, I reminded myself as I strode out of the police bureau. My heart pounded loud in my ears and my dress clung to my perspiring body as I passed by patrolmen prowling two by two, unmindful of the women who wandered the streets with their paper lanterns. For women were not considered threats to the capital, as men were, when darkness fell.
And I was a girl, and thus harmless in the eyes of the patrolmen.
Gods. They had no idea what I was about to do.
My sweat felt like ice water, the weather having cooled considerably. My limbs trembled by the time I crossed the stone bridge over the trickling Cheonggye Stream, closer to the wild and windy desolation of Mount Nam.
And yet the memory of Older Brother’s radiant smile burned. The brightness of his memory chased after me like a ghost in flames as I ran down the muddy path, shadows of grass and trees swaying. Field crickets chirped and leaves rustled, and soon, the nocturnal hum gave way to woodwinds whining over the beating of a drum and the rumbling of laughter.
I saw the House of Bright Flowers. Its roof, illuminated by hundreds of hanging lanterns, rose into a peak, then curved into flared eaves, in harmony with the rolling slopes of Mount Nam in the background.
I repeated the words, gathering every ounce of courage in me, “There is no going back.”
A true police officer would have come to this place determined to find evidence that would bring down the inspector, determined that an inspector who blackmailed truth seekers into silence ought to be brought down. Yet it was not so with me.
The desperate roots crawling through my soul longed for something more than justice. I wanted to know who Inspector Han was. And his story crouched hidden in the House of Bright Flowers, perhaps a story of anger accumulated over a decade. Or a perverse hunger that would reveal many dark deeds strung throughout his past. Or something about his family—who they were, where they lived, and why no one had mentioned their existence.
Wiping the sweat from my face, I walked along the wall, then stopped at the side gate. A maid entered through it, balancing buckets of water on a shoulder pole. I clutched my lantern tighter and followed her into the servants’ courtyard.
Large brown pots lined the wall, filled with soy sauce, soybean paste, and pickles. Servants strode in and out of the kitchen, from which steam drifted, oiled with the scent of pork boiling in ginger and other herbs. Within, maids cut vegetables into piles of colorful slices—carrots, spinach, eggplants, cucumber, radishes, clumps of garlic cloves. Straw baskets lay piled with fried scallion and zucchini patties.
“Are you lost?”
I whirled to see a maid with graying hair along her temples, perhaps a senior-ranking servant. With tight lips, she held my gaze, and I could sense her refusing to look at the mark on my cheek. It often made other servants uncomfortable, reminding them we were property.
“My master sent me with a letter,” I said. “I’m not sure where to go.”