courtyard. Go, and don’t dally around like you always do!”
Memories scorched my skin as I made my way back to the front of the bureau. I expected to see only Inspector Han, the man I dreaded most. Instead, I saw a team of legal clerks and officers gathered, as well as the coroner’s assistant and the police artist. I was to accompany them.
Curiosity ought to have sparked in my mind with a question: Where are we going? But not today. The inside of my skull felt so bruised from the tsunami of one crashing thought after the other. All I wanted to do was hide under my blanket and sleep for an entire week. To be surrounded, for once, by nothing but silence.
My stare blank, I followed the team, leaving behind the filthy maze of streets and marching into desolation. The wilderness grew thick around us as we climbed up Mount Nam, trapping in the shadows and a creeping sense of uneasiness that woke me from my dazed spell. The past two times I’d ventured into the mountains, something dangerous had occurred. My wounded fingers tingled as though sensing the nearness of hostile spirits.
“Commander Yi spoke to me today.” Officer Shim’s voice drifted through the forest, somewhere ahead of the line. “He said you haven’t been sleeping at all. You don’t do well without sleep, sir…”
“Long few days,” Inspector Han replied. “It would be easier to find rest if only I could see the sun, to feel its soothing warmth. All this darkness leaves me restless.”
Physical exhaustion distracted me from the inspector’s presence, and I was grateful for that. Twigs cracked and soil crumbled down the slope as the men climbed upward. We were not even halfway up the mountain, yet already officers were losing their breath.
Consequences, Inspector Han had said, threatening me for my meddling ways. I wished I could tell him that there were consequences, too, for those who threatened my family.
I looked around. No one was close in front of or behind me. I drew out the norigae, the inspector’s gift to his dead sister. I was about to release my fingers and watch it drop, drop, drop down the mountainside until I could no longer see the terrapin, until I could no longer feel the ties connecting me to the old promises or to the new what-if fears.
But an ache in my chest stopped me.
I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t in me to punish. Not this way. I could not throw away Inspector Han’s token of affection for his sister.
Cursing under my breath, I shoved the norigae back into my robe, and it was then that a light drizzle fell, like sea mist spraying through the leaves. The soil released a moist, earthy scent. Strands of my hair became plastered onto my face, and when I pushed them back, I saw that I was too far behind. Hiking up my skirt, I hurried up until I was close enough.
“Three months have not yet passed since the king’s death…”
The legal clerk ahead of me spoke to another, his robe hanging from his slight figure and narrow shoulders, his black cap looking almost loose on his small head.
“… and yet someone dared to kill a cow? Whoever did it, does he think to live?”
So we were heading over to investigate a slaughtered cow. I could already imagine what we would find inside.
As a child, I had once stumbled upon the scene of a butchering. An illegal one, for it was as forbidden to slaughter a healthy cow as it was to kill a human being. Cows were too precious to our farming kingdom. Careful to keep quiet, I’d watched the rogue strike the cow’s head with a heavy iron hammer, and almost immediately, the creature had fallen over. In the next moment, the rogue had stripped the animal of its hide and had cut off its legs. What had terrified me most hadn’t been the slaughtering, but the fact that throughout the brutal process, life had continued to hang on so desperately to the stumps quivering on the legless cow.
After climbing higher, there appeared a shed made of planks and logs, a thatch roof, and a brushwood door. The peasant’s voice echoed ahead, and he was panting, “It was—it was this—this shed!”
Inspector Han crouched and observed the ground. “No hoofprints of the cow, but here are footprints, and the deep tracks in the mud suggest the men were carrying something heavy.”