“How is it?”
The Emperor looked down at Do Jin-gyeom with a sideways glance as he remained silent for a while while taking the pulse, and asked. Do Jin-gyeom, thinking “Oh no,” hurriedly removed his fingertips from that wrist, bowed his head again, and opened his mouth.
“Your Majesty. With utmost trepidation, I will ask repeatedly about Wanui Jin’s symptoms for an accurate diagnosis. You said that he retches every time he eats, vomits frequently, and complains of stuffiness as if his solar plexus is blocked even when his stomach is empty. Is this correct?”
“He tires easily even in bed. Sometimes he falls asleep during the act. He’s visibly lost weight over the past few days.”
“If so, I speak with utmost trepidation—could you clear the room? For now, the fewer listeners, the better, Your Majesty.”
The Emperor, who had been looking down at Do Jin-gyeom with assessing eyes for a moment, dismissed everyone around except for the head eunuch.
Of course, the guards hidden out of sight remained at their posts, but they were like the Emperor’s shadows anyway, so he paid them no mind.
“Your Majesty, this is a presumptuous question, but how long has it been since you received attendance from Wanui Jin?”
“I think it’s been about four and a half months.”
Hearing the Emperor’s answer, Do Jin-gyeom suddenly bowed deeply to the Emperor with an exaggerated motion.
“Your Majesty, I speak with utmost trepidation, but Wanui Jin appears to be with child. Judging by the symptoms, it seems to be about a month along. I offer my congratulations. Long live, long live, ten thousand times long live His Imperial Majesty the Emperor.”
“Ha.”
Immediately, a dumbfounded laugh burst from the Emperor’s mouth.
“Are you in your right mind?”
Words unhesitatingly doubting Do Jin-gyeom’s state fell. Do Jin-gyeom pressed his upper body even closer to the floor and continued speaking.
“Your Majesty. How could I not know you would find this absurd, but would I dare joke as a mere subject? Please believe me.”
“Believe you?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. There is something I have been investigating for several years, but due to my incompetence, nothing has been clearly revealed yet, so I have been putting off reporting it day after day, fearing I would only disturb Your Majesty’s mood unnecessarily. Please forgive me. However, since this is a matter that could overturn the very foundations of yin and yang, I had no choice but to be even more cautious. Please look with mercy upon this lowly subject’s loyalty.”
“If you are speaking frivolous falsehoods right now, you will pay the price for insulting me.”
“How could there be any doubt, Your Majesty? I have a witness who can prove this. I beg you to grant permission for that witness to stand by.”
Do Jin-gyeom raised his upper body, then bowed flat toward the Emperor with an even larger motion than before. The sound of his forehead striking the floor rang heavily through the quiet tea room with a thud.
“What witness?”
“I am currently protecting a man in full term at my private residence. Please allow me to summon him.”
The Emperor did not answer immediately. He gathered up Sansan, who had fainted in exhaustion from the intense lovemaking, held him, and gently touched his forehead with his lips.
It was an absurd story. Words not worth listening to.
But to just pass it over—the Emperor himself had personally experienced things over the past month or so that had never happened before. Things like Sansan’s voluptuous body scent that no one else could smell and his jade stem swelling inside Sansan were things the Emperor had no proper way to explain either.
“Han-ho.”
After nearly half a shichen, the Emperor called the head eunuch. The head eunuch, who had been silent, came before the Emperor at that call.
“Do you know anything about this too?”
The eunuch organization was vast and secretive. For the Emperor who used eunuchs as his hands and feet, such an eunuch organization was a double-edged sword. It was useful because they knew everything, and dangerous because they knew everything. However, the Emperor was not such a pathetic type of scarecrow who feared his own hands and feet.
For his own needs, he turned a blind eye to whatever the eunuchs did behind the scenes. He also did not keep eunuchs by his side who could not prove their usefulness.
“…It is a story spread knowingly or unknowingly centered around the marketplace, especially the red-light district.”
“What is the probability that the Yoon family knew about it?”
The Yoon family referred to Sansan and Sanwol’s biological father. The head eunuch swallowed once to moisten his parched, dry throat, then continued speaking.
“Since he frequents the red-light district as if it were a dining hall, I believe he also knew to some extent, Your Majesty.”
“Have that witness stand by immediately.”
Finally, the Emperor’s permission fell. The imperial guards and eunuchs from the Office of Punishments secretly moved to Do Jin-gyeom’s private residence. While waiting for the witness to enter the palace, the Emperor had the head eunuch summon Eunuch Lee from Hondangsa. He ordered him to wash Sansan, who could hardly regain consciousness, and put him to bed.
Do Jin-gyeom, who had been personally examining the witness all along, was confident in his diagnosis, yet had to spend suffocating time worrying whether something might go wrong on his way here. Sweat filled his palms and his mouth went dry. That was how bizarre and difficult to understand the events occurring within the empire were.
One sikgyeong, two sikgyeong—the accumulating time soon approached one shichen. The Emperor, unable to endure the tedium, roughly threw the book he was holding onto the table.
“Is it still not here?”
“Your Majesty. They say he has just arrived. What are you all doing! Bring that person in quickly.”
The head eunuch urged the eunuchs under him while gauging the Emperor’s mood. Not long after, a man with a belly as swollen as Sanwol’s was brought in, practically dragged by the imperial guards into the tea room.
He had a height taller than an average woman, angular shoulders, and hair tied up in a topknot, which suggested he was male, but there were also ambiguous points that made it difficult to definitively say he was male outright. His rather pretty face, his chin without a single beard hair, and especially his slightly protruding chest were particularly so.
“I need to confirm if he’s a man.”
The full-term man, who had only been reading the room, untied his clothing strings himself upon receiving Do Jin-gyeom’s gaze. He removed his robe, removed his trousers, and removed even his undergarments. Then his modest breasts that seemed to have just begun to swell, his belly swollen like a woman at full term, and below that, his male member were exposed without filter to people’s gazes.
“Huh.”
The Emperor burst out laughing once more. The man tactfully picked up his clothes and put them back on.
“Do you happen to carry something like a sachet?”
Right after the man had finished dressing, the Emperor asked him in a low voice.
“I do not carry such things, Your Majesty.”
After that, rapid-fire questions continued in succession.
“Besides me, has anyone else said you smell?”
“There have been a few times, Your Majesty.”
“Were you born a eunuch from birth?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“It’s not that you’re sick, but there really is a human child in that belly?”
“…That is so, Your Majesty.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“He—this is not his first child…”
At the unexpected answer, the Emperor was momentarily at a loss for words. Meanwhile, the full-term man, ignoring even protocol, began to ramble his story as if lamenting his fate.
From his unfortunate childhood when he had to survive by begging after being abandoned by his parents, to the process of drifting into the red-light district, to the story of his belly that had swollen as if afflicted with some terrible disease.
“…So the first and second were both lost to plague, and what is currently in my womb is the third. My body was greatly damaged giving birth to the second, so I thought I could no longer bear children, but I was fortunate to meet the imperial physician. He treated me and said he would care for me until I gave birth, so thinking I wouldn’t have to give birth in the red-light district anymore, this lowly one shamelessly stayed at the imperial physician’s residence.”
Though he maintained an indifferent expression, the Emperor was quite shocked. How much effort had he put into the people’s livelihood issues that year so there would be no elderly or children abandoned on the streets to starve to death?
He felt ashamed that even in the present era, publicly acknowledged as a time of great peace, there were parents who abandoned their own children, and people who had to sell even the scene of childbirth as entertainment to make a living.
“Are there others like you?”
“In the red-light district of Hagyeong alone, I know there are roughly a dozen or so, Your Majesty.”
“Are they all eunuchs?”
“Not necessarily, but I heard most are eunuchs, Your Majesty.”
“That I did not know while things spread this far is my failure. Now that I know, I promise to understand the situation and correct it.”
“Your grace is boundless, Your Majesty.”
“To do so, there are things I need to know more about people like you.”
“Please command, this lowly one will answer to the best of my meager knowledge, Your Majesty.”
“Did you conceive by sleeping with men? Or did you sleep with women and conceive?”
“From what this lowly one knows, all slept with men.”
“Have you also experienced a man’s genitals swelling inside you?”
“…There have been a few times, Your Majesty.”
“Where do you give birth from?”
“…From below, th-through the anus. There seems to be a path, a path separately connected to the womb. When giving birth, the midwife put her ha-hand in and felt it.”
“Including you, are all those who gave birth safe?”
“Yes, all are well. To the extent that we can receive customers again a few days after giving birth, there seem to be no particular difficulties. In my case, the second came out feet first because he was positioned upside down… So my body was damaged…”
“Then those breasts swell for the baby?”
“…Yes. If I breastfeed, at some point they go back in.”
After asking everything he wanted to ask, the Emperor fell into a long contemplation for a while.
