disappear, but I’ve made sure to hide it well, and the world will learn of your dark ways. Even if you kill me, the world will find out.” Then I held my breath, waiting to see if he would see through my bluff.
“Will they?” His voice was as cold as the snow-dusted peaks of Mount Taebaek. He looked over his shoulder, down at me, and his lips twisted into a smile, as though he found me grossly comical. “Tell the world your little secret; they will not believe. You’re nothing more than a slip of a girl. No, less than that. A mere damo.”
And just like that, he tore off my mask, so quick and painful my eyes watered. A blink, and the burning drop fell. I couldn’t understand why I was crying. But as I stared at Inspector Han, the thoughts of Woorim drained away, and all I could think about was my brother. That brother was gone now. Dead. No, worse than dead: he had changed into an awful stranger.
This realization pushed me to my feet. Before I knew what was happening, I was running, then my fingers swung across Inspector Han’s cheek, as though I were trying to peel off his mask. My heart thundered against my ribs, and yet I felt a growing sense of detachment as I finally stepped back. I saw a welt on his cheek, inflicted by my chipped nails, yet I did not care.
“Not my brother,” I whispered to him, backing away. “Never my brother.”
His hand remained over the bloody scratch, his eyes following me as I stumbled out of the room, across the courtyard. I wasn’t certain where I was running to, but I knew what I was running from. I had committed a crime, assaulting a high official, and I had no time to rot in prison. Not now.
SIXTEEN
THE NEXT DAY, I stood on the dirt road wending through the field of reeds, their golden hair loosened to the wind. The sun pulsed in the seashore-blue sky, and with my hand, I shielded my eyes from the brightness as I looked around. If not Inspector Han, then who took you away, Woorim?
I had run toward Lady Kang’s mansion immediately after escaping the police bureau, and while the undercover officers were rotating shifts, I’d run up to the entrance only to be denied. The fearful gatekeeper had answered that it was a bad time to visit, that the mistress was not even home. It was up to me to find Woorim. Yet no one had seen a man in a bamboo hat, especially not one accompanying a palanquin. Then an urchin had pointed her finger at the fortress gate, saying she had seen such a man leave the capital.
I had wandered all that day and evening searching for Woorim, imagining her nose sliced off. Not a trace of her called out to me in the streets and alleys outside the fortress, not even in the nearby mountains. No torn fabric dangling from a branch; no straw sandal left behind; no blood smears. An old woman found me stumbling down the road, half delirious from exhaustion, and had allowed me to stay the night at her hut. But sleep evaded me. All I could think about was Woorim. It was as though she had vanished from the earth.
And now I stared at the expanse spread out before me, and I understood what Older Sister had meant when I’d once heard her whisper, “The world looks so immense when you’ve lost someone.”
I staggered back toward the fortress gate later in the morning, my legs weak with exhaustion. Ahead of me stretched a long line of people, mostly farmers with their wagons filled with produce. I waited for what felt like ages, then as I got closer to the gate, what appeared to be a red speck in the distance turned out to be a fierce-looking guard with a broad nose and curled lips, his robe vivid red. My heart beat low and heavy, the anxiety making it difficult to breathe. At any moment he might yell out, “Arrest her! She dared to strike an official!” The wiser thing to do would be to run as far as I could from the capital, but I couldn’t leave Woorim behind. I couldn’t live with that guilt.
At last I arrived before the guard. He towered two heads above me as he inspected my identification tag, then gestured at me to enter. “Next!” he bellowed. I walked