I Became My Ex-Boyfriend’s Concubine - Chapter 96

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 96

The following day, in the Crown Prince’s chambers.
“You speak of knot-work tassels?”
“Yes.”
Rang’s brow furrowed, confusion evident across his face.
“Then, Your Highness—did you perhaps see a vision?”
“It was closer to a dream than a hallucination.”
“A dream, you say?”
Several days had passed since that afternoon when he’d ventured to Cheongbing Lake in search of the blue light.
Hyeon was only now laying bare to Rang what had transpired with Dan-bi there beneath the water.
No matter how many times he turned it over in his mind, those moments defied all reason.
The frigid water through which they’d plunged together, the blue luminescence traced along his fingertips, cold and sharp.
And in the center of it all, that Yellow Ornament, gleaming with an otherworldly radiance.
According to the fleeting memory Hyeon had witnessed like a dream, it was unmistakably a knot-work tassel that had hung from the end of the Royal Seal.
“Yet how did the Noblewoman Dan-bi come to possess such a thing?”
Watching Rang’s bewilderment, Hyeon too felt the sting of uncertainty catch in his throat.
He could make no sense of this strange affair either.
Though he had seen with clarity that the ornament belonged to the Royal Seal itself, he could not fathom how Dan-bi—raised entirely beyond the palace walls—had come to have it in her possession.
At first, he’d tried to dismiss it as nothing more than a phantom glimpsed through the water.
But he had felt it then, and felt it still: this was no mere hallucination, but rather a fragment of his own lost memory, returned to him.
His reason could offer no explanation, yet his instinct whispered the truth.
That left only one riddle unsolved.
How Dan-bi had come to possess it.
According to his attendants, she had owned the thing since her time in the Commoner’s House.
As this thought took shape, a memory surfaced unbidden—Woo-sang, clutching the true Royal Seal in secret, hidden beneath the water.
‘Could it be that the tassel fell loose then, and she recovered it?’
It was the most plausible hypothesis he could muster.
Without it, there would be no way for Dan-bi to have encountered any trace of the Royal Seal, which had long since vanished without a trace.
Of course, this required the assumption that all the secrets Dan-bi had confided in him were true.
Yet he had no intention of doubting her now.
True, before their visit to Cheongbing Lake, a thread of suspicion had lingered in some corner of his heart—but now that he’d recovered that dream-like memory, even that had become meaningless.
He could not know the full truth. But this much he could be certain of:
In his lost memory, she was surely intertwined, perhaps deeply so.

“Your Highness, is something wrong?”

It had been the moment he was about to leave the cave entrance.
A memory had flashed across his mind in that instant, and the moment he saw Dan-bi, tears had spilled forth before he could stop them.
He could no longer say what that memory contained. But one thing remained certain.
Dan-bi had been there, in the memory he had lost.
‘What manner of memory could it have been?’
No matter how he tried to grasp it, it scattered like smoke, beyond his reach.
Only the warmth of tears that had traced his cheeks remained, a mark upon his skin bearing witness to that day.
Hyeon shook his head as if to dispel the trailing thoughts. Then his gaze fell directly upon Rang, who stood like his own shadow.
“What of the matter I commanded you to investigate previously?”
“Yes, Your Highness. I have made thorough inquiries, but……”
Rang lowered his head and hesitated, having sensed that his sovereign’s mood was grave.
“Forgive me, Your Highness, but there are testimonies from the Attendants that the Queen Consort remained within the Inner Palace of Queen Consort at the time of the fire.”
“Attendants, you say—the Attendants of the Inner Palace of Queen Consort?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Tch.”
Hyeon clicked his tongue sharply.
“Worthless.”
“Forgive me, Your Highness.”
As Rang bowed deeply, Hyeon closed his eyes.
There had been reason behind his secret command to Rang.
Regarding the mysterious fire that had broken out in the Abandoned Palace Hall not long ago, he had ordered Rang to investigate where certain persons of interest had been at that time.
Among them all, it was the Queen Consort whose suspicion had settled most heavily in Hyun’s mind.

“Damned woman…….”

Though it was the past, Hyun remembered it vividly—the Queen Consort’s savage hands tearing the Rain Ritual Garments that Dan-bi had made to shreds.
The wild, murderous glare in her eyes, as if she meant to rend Dan-bi to pieces, still burned in his mind’s eye.
And that was not all.
Hyun already knew that it was the Queen Consort who had blocked Dan-bi’s path when she came to the Royal Wardrobe Office for this ceremony.
Each time he faced the Queen Consort with Dan-bi at his side, he could not overlook the keen edge in her eyes that she could not hide.
So it was scarcely surprising that suspicion of the fire’s origin had turned toward the Queen Consort—it was, in truth, the only natural course.
“Are there no other witnesses?”
“Forgive me, Your Majesty, but aside from the Attendants of the Inner Palace of Queen Consort, we could find no one else who saw the Queen Consort at that hour.”
That itself was enough to fan the flames of suspicion higher still.
During the fire, the Queen Consort had remained only within the Inner Palace grounds, and only the Attendants behind those walls swore they had seen her—leaving no room to press the matter further.
The more seamlessly their alibis aligned, the more a shadow of doubt crept in—as if some vast truth were being cunningly concealed.
Hyun cast off the bitter taste that lingered on his tongue and turned his head toward Rang.
“Rang. Make ready to depart for Oon-cheong-gak at once.”
“You intend to see the Noblewoman Dan-bi, Your Majesty?”
“Yes.”
In the end, his thoughts always returned to Dan-bi. The moment her image flickered before him—her eyes trembling uncertainly in the grip of flame—his heart tightened.
The instant Hyun’s order fell, Rang swiftly withdrew. Hyun himself was rising, straightening his robes, when—
“Your Majesty.”
Sang-seon’s urgent voice pierced the silence beyond the Royal Bedchamber door.
“Chief Minister Park requests an audience.”
“……Park Dae-young?”
At the unexpected report, Hyun’s brows twitched faintly.
Park Dae-young—who had begun openly baring the blade he’d kept hidden in his sleeve since the Rain Ceremony.
Hyun was in need of a strategy for how to contend with such a cunning adversary.
For a moment, doubt flickered through him as to whether meeting now would prove advantageous; but he set his jaw firmly.
Before a powerful official, he must never show weakness.
“Have him enter.”
The heavy door swung open at the command, and Park Dae-young stepped inside.
With an almost excessive courtesy, he lowered his head—then approached until he stood directly before Hyun, bowing even more deeply.
“I pay my respects to Your Majesty.”
“Chief Minister, what brings you here at this hour?”
Hyun asked as if nothing were amiss.
At moments like this, he could not afford to yield ground. Only thus could he remain ready for whatever blade the other might draw.
He could not hide and cower before him forever.
“I have come bearing urgent matters to report to Your Majesty.”
Hyun’s eyes narrowed at Park Dae-young’s words.
In ordinary times, this man would not burst in so rudely and spill forth his designs.
He was a cunning schemer who ordinarily wielded the Court’s watchful eyes and ears as a shield, manipulating people through righteous pretense to bend them to his will.
The fact that he had requested a private audience was proof that he held a winning hand.
“……And what is that?”
“It concerns the Noblewoman Dan-bi, Your Majesty.”
“The Noblewoman?”
At the unexpected name, Hyun’s brows twitched.
“Some time ago, I made a certain bargain with the Noblewoman Dan-bi.”
“A bargain? What sort of——”
Park Dae-young paused for effect, then twisted his mouth into a smile.
“In exchange for Her Highness delivering the Royal Seal to me, she pledged that she would no longer set foot in the Royal Wardrobe Office.”
“……!”
In that instant, Hyun’s breath stopped.
As if his head had been struck a heavy blow and his vision tilted, a fragment of memory surfaced from the depths.
Dan-bi’s peculiar suggestion at the time before the Rain Ceremony—to coat the bottom of the Royal Seal with Luminescent Stone.

“Luminescent Stone on the Royal Seal, you say?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. In case of unforeseen circumstances.”

At the time, he had simply assented to her plan, believing it a means to maintain appearances before the officials who opposed the Rain Ceremony.
Yet looking back, that move had been exactly what was needed—a strike at Park Dae-young’s blind spot, cutting through his accusations that the Royal Seal was a forgery.
I’d wondered privately how Dan-bi had conceived of such a cutting stratagem.
If it was true that she had actually negotiated such a bargain with Park Dae-young.
Then everything finally made sense.
Now I understood where that subtle scheme had come from—the one that had ensnared Park Dae-young so perfectly.
But.
Surely she hadn’t conducted such a dangerous exchange with Park Dae-young behind my back without saying a word to me.
“You confess of your own accord that you made a bargain with the Noblewoman? And to think you dared use the Royal Seal as the instrument of trade. Do you comprehend what you are saying, Park Dae-young?”
My voice sank low.
Rage boiled up within me.
Not only had Dan-bi hidden the truth from me, but I could not fathom Park Dae-young’s intention in now confessing this deed late, with a blade already concealed in his sleeve.
Park Dae-young bowed his head deeper still.
“I beg your forgiveness, Your Majesty. Yet there was indeed compelling reason for me to accede to such a bargain.”
“Reason? Do you believe such an act could be pardoned under any pretext?”
A faint smirk crossed Park Dae-young’s face.
“Does Your Majesty perhaps know that the Noblewoman Dan-bi intends to depart for the Other Realm ere long?”
I fell silent.
‘So he knows that much already.’
Breaking the heavy stillness, I spoke first, my tone glacial.
“How came you by that knowledge, Park Dae-young?”
“On that very matter, I have something I must convey to Your Majesty most earnestly.”
Park Dae-young lifted his head slightly, meeting my gaze. His eyes were wet and flat as a serpent’s.
“You must not permit the Noblewoman Dan-bi to depart as things stand.”
“What do you mean?”
“The moment the Noblewoman Dan-bi leaves this place.”
Park Dae-young’s voice dropped with absolute certainty.
“This world will vanish without a trace.”

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