“Alright, girls — had enough rest? Let’s do something even more fun.”
With this much snow piled up, they simply had to build a snowman. The old memories surfaced again. The image was vivid in his mind — young Wei Wuyuan, eyes clear and bright as a deer’s, using his small fern-like hands to carefully decorate each snowman one by one. The boy had loved those snowmen dearly. He would unwrap his own scarf and drape it around them in case they were cold, and when the sun came out he would fret over them melting, standing there with arms spread wide to cast his shadow as shade. And when the snowmen finally melted, he had grieved as though losing a cherished friend.
That kind of innocence was nowhere to be found in Wei Wuyuan now. Instead, Ha-hyeon gazed at the young women who still held within them the innocence Wei Wuyuan had lost forever — and smiled, an expression both tender and bittersweet.
“My lady, I made one of you. Look here.”
He looked to where Wol and the girls were pointing, and there stood four snowmen. Three of them were roughly the same size, while the remaining one was dramatically larger than all the rest. By the looks of it, the biggest one was meant to be Sa Ha-hyeon.
“Since my lady’s title name is Songbaek, we specially decorated the hair with pine needles. Ha ha ha.”
One of the maidservants offered a rather clever explanation along with her teasing. Meanwhile, Wol had dashed inside and came back out carrying an armful of accessories. Among them were the ornate jewels that had arrived with the gifts Seoran’s king had sent — ostensibly filled with a father’s love for a daughter going off to marry in a foreign land.
Looking more carefully, the composition of the snowmen was a curious one. The largest was Ha-hyeon, the two small ones were the young maidservants — but the remaining one was not Wol.
Wol was carefully dressing that last remaining snowman with precious ornaments and fine silk fabric she had brought out. These were things too fine to waste on a cold lump of snow. Only belatedly did Ha-hyeon realize whose snowman it was.
The features were only roughly suggested with stones and twigs, but that snowman was the princess back in Seoran. Ha-hyeon moved to Wol’s side as she worked so attentively on the snowman and said quietly:
“She looks just like me.”
Wol, who knew that the “me” Ha-hyeon spoke of was in fact the real princess in Seoran, lowered her head shyly.
But the young maidservants, who knew nothing of it, pointed at the large, hulking snowman and laughed.
“Not at all, my lady — this one is you! A strong, sturdy woman!”
“Is that so? You made me quite a bit smaller than the real thing. Thank you, girls.”
Ha-hyeon quickly shaped one more sizable snowman. The one standing about a head taller than Ha-hyeon’s own — that was Wei Wuyuan. But when it came time to add the features, his hands hesitated.
……This is a problem.
He could do whatever he liked with his own snowman’s face — poke in random pebbles, for all it mattered. But this was meant to be a likeness of the Emperor’s own face. He couldn’t very well go around pressing in grimy black rocks rolling on the ground or rotted twigs.
“No — that won’t do. I can’t use just any old rubbish for His Majesty’s face.”
“Then what will you do?”
“Can you look around and see if there’s anything suitable?”
“Where do you mean?”
“I was going to go to the training ground. There are good materials there.”
“We’ll come with you.”
Who in their right mind would be wandering around outside in a snowfall like this.
Ha-hyeon looked up at the snow coming down as if the sky had sprung a hole, and thought. Everyone in the palace would obviously be huddled inside next to their fires. With no one watching — it was the perfect day to nip out quickly for a little walk.
“No! I’ll go by myself. I’ll be right back — don’t worry.”
Ha-hyeon wrapped his thick fur cloak snugly around himself and set off from Byeoksong Palace in high spirits. Crunch, crunch. In the pristine white snow that no one had yet set foot in, only Ha-hyeon’s footprints stretched out in a long trail.
Sa Ha-hyeon crept along the edge of the training ground like a stray cat. Just as expected — this place had materials for decorating snowmen scattered everywhere. Beneath the boxwood shrubs planted as a fence, dead twigs lay in heaps, and there were also many smooth, rounded stones of various colors.
Ha-hyeon crouched down on the ground and gently swept the accumulated snow aside. Unbothered by the cold numbing the tips of his fingers, he began selecting the stones that would become the Emperor’s eyes. They needed to be as black as ink, with the quiet depth of still water.
By the time his cheeks had gone rosy red, Ha-hyeon had finally picked out two smooth black pebbles that satisfied him completely. Not wanting to lose them, he carefully tucked them away in the inner pocket of his chest, then headed straight into the training ground. He was going to borrow a bow to place in snowman Wei Wuyuan’s hands.
In truth, giving him a weapon hadn’t been the original idea. But while rolling snow into a ball earlier, the image had flashed through his mind — Wei Wuyuan riding on horseback at the Winter Hunt, pulling a bowstring taut with commanding dignity. He had considered making one out of twigs to look the part, but he couldn’t put a crude bow in the hands of the most exalted person in the realm.
If you’re going to do it, do it properly.
He decided to borrow one of the practice bows from the corner of the training ground. There was obviously no way training would be held in a blizzard like this — and besides, hadn’t the Emperor already given him permission to use this place whenever he liked?
Sa Ha-hyeon picked up a bow from the rack. The way it settled into his grip felt good. He was briefly tempted to take a few shots for the exercise before heading back to Byeoksong Palace — when he heard an unfamiliar voice from behind him.
“Even on a day with snow pouring down like this, it seems you can’t afford to neglect your training. Good grief…… Is she a concubine who came here to serve her husband, or a gatekeeper who came to guard the palace doors — who could possibly tell.”
Ha-hyeon startled and turned around, still holding the bow. On the snow-white field, dazzling enough to sting the eyes, stood a woman dressed in a crimson silk overcoat. The face above the collar trimmed with black fur bore the deep marks of many years of life. She was easily over sixty, by any estimation.
“In a snowfall like this, wandering about alone without even a single attendant. Perhaps in the lowly palace of rootless Seoran you were free to do as you pleased without servants, but this is the imperial household of an empire — and propriety has its place here.”
“……I am deeply sorry.”
Yet her posture was as straight as bamboo. Even with an enormous ceremonial hairpiece atop her head — the kind that made your neck ache just looking at it, as though two footballs had been stacked together — not a single inch of her head wavered. The extravagant ornaments glittering at her earlobes and knuckles made it plainly clear she was not some ordinary concubine like himself. Then again, she was far too old to be a concubine.
Then — is she His Majesty’s mother?
Behind her stood no fewer than ten palace attendants arranged like a folding screen. One of them held up a large ceremonial parasol lined with red silk — the size of which rivaled a beach umbrella planted in the summer sand.
That thing must weigh an absolute ton……
He genuinely felt sorry for the eunuch’s arms holding up that snow-loaded parasol. In any case, Ha-hyeon’s instincts told him this was no ordinary person. He hurriedly lowered his head in a deep bow.
But he couldn’t get the words out — he didn’t know what greeting to give. He needed to know exactly who this person was before he could address them with the proper title and show the appropriate deference — and Wol, who would have whispered a hint in his ear, was nowhere nearby.
Ha-hyeon was breaking into a cold sweat and fumbling awkwardly when the elderly senior court lady standing behind the woman like a shadow glared sharply and snapped in a cutting voice:
“How dare you behave so impudently in this presence! This is the Grand Empress Dowager! Show proper respect at once!”
Thanks to the senior court lady’s razor-sharp cry, Ha-hyeon now knew with certainty who stood before him. Without hesitation, he dropped to his knees in the snow.
“This subject greets the Grand Empress Dowager.”
Ha-hyeon bowed so deeply his forehead nearly touched the ground, and then the crunch, crunch of footsteps in snow drew closer and closer. Soon, a pair of red silk shoes embroidered with elaborate patterns stopped in Ha-hyeon’s field of view. Then a pale hand shot forward and roughly seized Ha-hyeon’s chin, forcing it upward.
That commanding grip. That arrogant gaze looking down from above. It was disturbingly similar to Wei Wuyuan — to a degree that sent goosebumps crawling.
Blood truly does tell.
The Grand Empress Dowager tightened her grip on Ha-hyeon’s chin and turned his face this way and that, examining him — then clicked her tongue and spoke in a cold, cutting tone.
“A barren stone field.”
“……Pardon?”
A stone field? What on earth was that. Ha-hyeon couldn’t make sense of it at all — and the court lady who had shouted earlier added a sharp-tongued clarification.
“It means a field full of rocks. You dense creature!”
