she was thinking of Lord Ch’oi. She blinked, and the sharpness returned to her eyes. “On the day the edict is announced, you ought to return home. The capital will turn into a place of great disorder. No one will notice your absence.”
At the word “home,” a burning pain knotted my throat. I finally understood why my brother from years ago had sunk into a dark, grieving silence whenever the word “home” had been mentioned. Home, that place your soul longs for with an exhausting intensity, just as a bird might hurt for the sky, or as a flower might pine for the sun.
“Even if I had the chance, madam, I cannot leave,” I whispered.
“You have nothing here.”
“There is a friend here I promised to help … and I have responsibilities I cannot abandon.” I needed to be strong a while longer, so I ate another spoonful of stew, forcing myself to chew and swallow.
Madam Song rested her hand on the table, tapping it in a contemplative motion. “Me, I wish I had left this place. I did not return home and now my parents have left me, gone to the netherworld. They did me wrong; still, they were family. My remorse never lightens.” She glanced at me, as though to say that such would be the weight I’d carry if I didn’t return home.
“Then why did you stay?” I asked.
She tapped her fingers some more. “The truth is … I thought it would be enough just to be near him.”
I took another bite of my stew, slowly this time, allowing her words to sink in. She had loved Councillor Ch’oi deeply, yet she had still chosen to end the affair.
Her face tilted back, eyes squinting up at the sun. “I intoxicated Councillor Ch’oi one night so that he would tell me more about the pendant, which I knew he had been wearing for seventeen years. I wanted to know why he never took it off, why he always touched it whenever he was having his black moods. But perhaps I ought never to have asked … What I learned, I could not bear it. He spoke of a woman named Byeol, ‘Star,’ who had birthed his illegitimate child. He had not known of her pregnancy until thirteen years later, when she sent the necklace to him with a note. I can still remember it, for the words he recited to me were burned onto my heart.”
When she fell silent, I gently prompted her, “What did the note say, madam?”
“It read: ‘Since you left me, my mind was hopeless and I was resolved to die, yet was reluctant to commit the final act. There was my concern for our child’s survival, but now I think it would have been better if he never lived at all. Now nothing prevents me from fulfilling my lifelong wish: to escape shame.’
“Councillor Ch’oi wept and wept,” she continued, “calling out her name in front of me. That is the day I stopped receiving his visits. I couldn’t continue loving a man whose heart had never stopped weeping for another woman.” Her jaws locked as though she were biting back a rush of old feelings. “A man never forgets his first love, and I could not bear living in her shadow. How could I compete with her? The dead always look lovelier, warmer, and brighter. A living woman pales in comparison.”
I watched her wipe the corners of her eyes, and I wondered what it must feel like to deeply love another human being, so much that even after a decade or more, the memories of him still hurt her. After allowing her a moment to compose herself, I asked, “What did the pendant look like?”
“It was a horse-dragon pendant.”
I held back a gasp, my mind thrown into confusion. “Horse-dragon?” I repeated. The wooden pendant Officer Goh had found by the South Gate—also a horse-dragon pendant. “The pendant … it is made of wood?”
“It is made of jade.”
There were two? Two pendants of the same mythical creature, one worn by Councillor Ch’oi for many years, and the other found at the crime scene …
“So why did his lover, Madam Byeol, send him a horse-dragon pendant?” I whispered. “I heard that creature is from the ‘Mighty Infant’ legend.”
“How did you know it was that particular legend?” Madam Song’s brows knitted together as she stared at me. “I thought only I knew the story behind His Lordship’s pendant. It took him three bottles of wine to get him