Even If Flowers Bloom on a Broken Branch - Chapter 54

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

54.
Chae Mun had been spending quite a few bewildering days lately.
His house was always bustling with guests, and his days were packed with appointments without a single moment of respite.
After Eun-oh became the Queen, anyone wishing to have a Tea Discussion with him had to wait a month as a baseline. Recently, however, something felt rather strange.
‘Why does this feel so unsettling?’
The appointments were still being made without change, yet it felt somehow empty. Even those who came to speak with him seemed to just wet their lips with tea and leave without any real substance.
They clearly had something to say, but they wouldn’t speak their minds openly, which was incredibly frustrating. He tried to coax them and even asked directly if they had something on their minds, but no one gave him a straight answer.
And he finally learned the truth at a drinking party.
“Well, they say six graves were made on the exact same day at the exact same hour. In the lower-class burial grounds on the western outskirts of the palace.”
The western outskirts of the palace was where Sajik-dong was located. The lower-class burial grounds there were where government slaves were primarily buried.
‘Six graves.’
Chae Mun filled his cup with wine, his expression bitter. It was something he already knew.
Still, as he quietly listened, the story flowed out just as he had expected.
“If they were Her Majesty the Queen’s palace maids, they aren’t even government slaves, so why bury them there?”
“My goodness, just how great a sin did they commit?”
“That is…”
The courtesan, who had been whispering while leaning against a man’s chest at the drinking table, glanced around slightly and lowered her voice.
“You know, that story that was spreading wildly around here not too long ago. His Majesty…”
The courtesan’s voice dropped even lower.
“The rumor that he doesn’t visit her.”
Chae Mun’s hand, which had been reaching for the wine bottle, instantly froze. He slowly raised his head.
Beyond the folding screen, the whispering between the man and the woman continued to drift over.
“Hey, it’s too quiet, I can barely hear you. Are you saying the Queen was heavily scolded by His Majesty?”
“Oh, no. Is that so? I suppose even those of high status get scolded sometimes.”
Peeking through the gap in the folding screen, the courtesan was feigning wide eyes and covering her mouth with her hand.
“No, I mean that thing people do when their hearts match. Like this…”
As the courtesan spoke, she slapped the man’s hand right onto her own voluptuous breast.
“This kind of business between a man and a woman.”
“Oh, my word, how scandalous.”
The man guffawed, making no attempt to decline as he fondled the courtesan’s breast.
Laughter rippled through the room, but Chae Mun, who was watching the scene through the gap in the screen, could not smile.
‘Just… what on earth are you doing?’
He already knew for a fact that Eun-oh had flogged six palace maids to death.
He had heard it from a guest who came to his house, and he had been personally summoned by the King to be rebuked for the matter.
‘The Mother of the State must look after those closest to her first. If she cannot even understand the hearts of her own Palace Attendants, how can she embrace the grand nation?’
Honestly, he was shocked. Very deeply shocked.
The Eun-oh he knew was stubborn and full of pride, but she did not possess such a cruel nature.
‘Of course, she always bared her teeth and acted sensitively toward Lee Yeon of the Seo family, but…’
Still, she wasn’t of a disposition to kill people. Or so he had thought.
However, the rumors continuously trickling out of the palace only made his heart more uneasy.
Furthermore, what was this story he had just heard? The business where a man and a woman’s hearts must match, a matter dirty enough to prompt such vulgar sounds, was clearly referring to ‘that’.
‘To think they still haven’t had their Consummation.’
Considerable time had already passed since the Gukhon was held. Yet, the fact that they still hadn’t carried out the deed was what shocked Chae Mun the most.
‘Even though I emphasized countless times that it is the most important matter.’
Great affairs were often decided by pillow talk. He had taught and instructed her to hold on tight and never let go, to make him taste the pleasure so he would keep seeking her out again and again, but it was mind-boggling that she hadn’t even taken the first step.
That was why, as soon as dawn broke, he hurried his preparations and entered the palace. Yet, the expressions of the people who saw him were one and all bizarre.
‘Why do they look at me like that?’
The Palace Attendants, who would normally greet him politely by asking if the Gukgu had arrived, were now subtly avoiding him. He felt as though the eunuchs and the soldiers alike were avoiding his gaze.
Suppressing his rising displeasure at this strangely alienating feeling, Chae Mun stepped forward to the Grand Hall and spoke to a eunuch.
“Inform His Majesty that if he is inside, I wish to grant him an audience.”
In his heart, he wanted to go straight to the Queen’s Palace the moment he entered, but there was such a thing as a minister’s duty.
Because he was a minister to the King before he was the father of the Queen, he had come to greet the King first.
However, the eunuch who went inside to deliver the message returned not with the words he expected—’Please enter’—but with something else.
“He says he is fatigued today, so you should come next time.”
Having rushed over as soon as dawn broke, he was likely the very first person to enter the Royal Court, and since no meeting had even begun yet, the King’s claim of fatigue worried him, but it also made him suspicious.
He couldn’t understand how the King could be so fatigued as to refuse even an audience when he hadn’t even carried out the deed last night.
“Could he perhaps be unwell somewhere? I possess some fine medicinal ingredients, so I can offer them to him.”
“Would His Majesty lack anything that you possess, Lord Gukgu?”
The eunuch spoke politely and bowed his waist.
“Today does not seem to be the day, so please return next time.”
The subtly sarcastic tone grated on his ears. He almost flared up for a moment, feeling as though he were being looked down upon, but Chae Mun barely managed to hold it in.
And so, he turned his steps toward the Queen’s Palace.
‘This was where my business lay anyway.’
Thinking to himself that it was for the better, he arrived at the Queen’s Palace and had his arrival announced, but this time too, he was bewildered.
It was because the faces of the Palace Attendants who saw him turned utterly pale.
‘Could it be because of the recent incident regarding the deaths of the palace maids?’
He thought so for a moment, but their expressions were the definition of pure bewilderment.
‘And something feels…’
Disorganized.
That was the perfect word for it. The entire palace was unkempt, and everything felt strangely frantic. It was a feeling just like a hen house where the breeding hen had vanished.
‘Where is the court lady?’
Usually, there were at least three or four court ladies in the palace. Strangely, however, there was only one court lady in the Queen’s Palace. And the Palace Attendants walking around right now were all wearing nothing but the clothes of a Palace Maid.
Just as Chae Mun was about to look for someone wearing a green ceremonial robe to give them a piece of his mind, someone timidly called out to him.
“Excuse me, Lord Gukgu…”
Chae Mun slowly turned his head.
Standing there was a palace maid whose face was ghastly pale. Looking young enough to be a novice at a single glance, she was pitifully trembling all over.
“R-Right now, Her Majesty the Queen is unwell, so…”
The palace maid spoke in a fading voice.
“It seems it will be difficult for her to see you.”
Chae Mun’s eyebrows twitched.
This was already his second rejection since entering the palace. Being turned away by both the King and the Queen in succession put him in quite a foul mood.
Moreover, putting the King aside, the Queen was his own daughter. For his daughter to dare refuse a meeting when her father had entered the palace immediately soured his mood.
“How is she unwell?”
“That is…”
The palace maid turned her head to scan the surroundings. However, there were only the two of them in the wide palace corridor.
The palace maid spoke with a tearful face.
“She was out all night long and returned only at dawn today, and she is burning up with a fever.”
The words that she was burning up with a fever entered his ears, but the words that preceded them offended him even more.
“She was out all night long?”
It meant she wasn’t in the palace at night, but had gone out. And that was the Queen, the one who was the master of the Queen’s Palace.
Chae Mun’s face froze coldfly.
“Lead the way.”
“B-But…”
“I told you to lead me to the Queen.”
Chae Mun’s tone was refined, but an undeniable pressure could be felt from it.
Furthermore, the palace maid before him was a novice who had only recently entered.
Because those above her had refused, she, the lowest rank in the Queen’s Palace, had ended up greeting the Gukgu. Her knees and jaw couldn’t help but tremble automatically.
“I-I understand.”
Unable to refuse any further, the palace maid took the lead with quick, short steps.
As she guided the way, her spine became damp with sweat, as if she were carrying dark rainclouds on her back.
It felt as though a bolt of lightning was about to strike at any moment.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————