A romance mystery set in the fictional Empire of Korea. Oh Sunny is just an ordinary girl who has harboured a crush on the fascinating and charming Lee Hyuk, the Emperor of Korea, for years. He is unattainable, or so she thinks, but Fate would have...
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January 2019
When I first came to the palace, I was young and inexperienced, naive and foolish. I was too sensitive, too raw, I read too much into too little, sensing thorns and stings in carelessly spoken words, seeing barbed criticism and veiled disdain in casual glances. In retrospect, they were insignificant and inconsequential, barely monumental enough to stir a ripple in my world and hardly merited those agonizing moments - of which there were many, far too many - of self-doubt, self-hate, and self-reflection (numerous hours were spent on this last in front of the unflattering mirror in my room). But when one is young, one is hardly brave, and a careless word would linger for hours, days, and weeks after, and a smirk, a look, a glance beneath the eyelashes, would burn and sear, red and raw and unforgiving, and brand itself into an open sore, an eternal scar. Today, sheathed and shielded in the complacent armour of maturity and experience, these little brushes with unkindness, real or imagined, are shrugged off lightly, and are swiftly forgotten.
The visitors continue to pour into the palace, but where once I had hated them, and begrudged the hours I had to suffer their presence, the new me no longer lives in dread of them, and strangely enough, I have even begun to thrive in their company, and I do not need Hyuk to be at my side any longer to rescue me. I have become a master at the art of conversation, parrying remarks and comments lightly and easily, steering conversations glibly, smoothly, adroitly, to safe grounds, quite unlike that young, gauche, badly-dressed me who floundered, tongue-tied, in the middle of a sentence, her bitten fingernails clutching desperately at the edges of her ill-fitting skirt, her voice trailing to silence, her face red with mortification and embarrassment. The new me sits nonchalantly with her varnished nails and her expensive dress, her hair swept up in the latest style, relaxed and serene in her favourite chair, elbows propped casually on soft plump cushions, smiling a little, and leaning forward at the correct moments to interject a clever little remark here, a funny innuendo there. At times, I believe I even eclipse Hyuk who would lean back and watch me, a faint smile playing upon his lips, a tiny gleam of pride in the depths of those dark eyes, as I hold centre stage with my rapt and adoring and ever-widening circle of admirers. What a feat indeed! Little Miss Nobody from Nowhere has finally evolved into A Woman of Substance, and I could not be happier. My sister, Helro, has declared it a miracle ( her exact words were: "There IS a God, after all!"), and no one compares me to So Hyun any longer; now when they speak of the Empress, it is Empress Sunny that they speak of. The other one has been forgotten, it is as if she never existed. For such is the fickleness, the inconstancy of human nature, that even So Hyun, the brightest of stars, that most dazzling of beauties, could be so carelessly cast away, so callously forgotten in the blink of an eye. She has been consigned to the dusty ashes of history, she belongs to the past, to yesterday, while I, Oh Sunny, am the glowing, living, vibrant present of today and tomorrow.
It is New Year's Day, and Hyuk and I have been invited to a grand bash at the opulent mansion of the wealthiest man in Korea and Asia, Kim Yong Dun, a businessman with interests at home and all over the world, reputed to be the third richest man in the world, and appears without fail in Forbes' Richest List year after year. His mansion sits on top of a hill that overlooks the city of Seoul, and rivals the Grand Palace in its sheer size and majesty. He and his wife are waiting for us at the entrance as our black limousine glides in. A flurry of activity ensues, the car door opens smoothly, and Hyuk steps out of the car first, and turns to me, taking my hand and helping me out. He introduces me to the rotund, beaming man standing beside him, and the multi-billionaire bows to me and straightens, and says, with a wide smile, "Welcome to my humble abode, Your Majesties." His wife, a pleasant-looking woman with a sweet smile, bows to us as her husband introduces her formally to me.
