Royal Coup d'État - Chapter 15

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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 15
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Inside the limousine gliding silently, a breaking news alert scrolled across the muted screen.
[Ui-gu, lost in sorrow. Consolation speech for the nation]
[Ui-gu sheds tears during speech at Danbong Gate]
The announcer’s voice was inaudible, lips merely moving, but the content was plain enough to guess.
Ui-gu’s performance today had been flawless. What lay beneath that carefully curated grief—that pit writhing with a hundred serpents—no one outside the Imperial Palace would ever know. And with that piteous image now cemented, his ascension to the throne couldn’t be far off.
Those calculating eyes that had hidden behind his faction’s shadow throughout the Royal Relatives Council, eyes that sometimes couldn’t conceal their avarice, eyes that at other moments masked their schemes to deceive the nation—she knew them well.
At the very least, she wouldn’t sit idle and watch that man draw closer to the throne. His pantomime of mourning nauseated her. How long had it even been since the Crown Prince drew his last breath?
Sun’s hands clenched. There wasn’t much she could do at this moment. She held no position to issue commands like an emperor, no power to overturn the board entirely.
But there was one thing she could do.
Ensure he never ascended as though nothing had happened. She needed to believe that was the true purpose of the order she’d been given—the bare minimum of respect owed to the departed.
Buzz—
Her phone had been vibrating continuously. It was likely her mother, attending to the Crown Princess at Suhakwon Hospital, or her father waiting for news from the Royal Relatives Council at the Detached Palace, but she didn’t bother checking the caller.
“You’re not going to answer?”
At the persistent buzzing, Seokchul finally turned from the passenger seat to ask. Sun deliberately shifted her gaze toward the window. He seemed to grasp her meaning and said nothing more.
The limousine carrying them pulled into the Police Station. Two guards stationed at the main entrance rushed forward the moment they spotted the Imperial Crest embedded on the vehicle. Sun checked her collar and appearance out of habit.
One of the guards hurried over and rapped lightly on the window. Sun took a deep breath before lowering it, and only after composing her expression into a gentle smile did she do so.
“Oh, Young Lady Sun.”
The two guards immediately saluted upon recognizing her through the window.
Rigid in their crisp white caps and yellow vests, they stood at attention. Sun deliberately softened her tone.
“You must be working hard.”
“No, ma’am. But what brings you here…?”
Their eyes darted back to the limousine before returning to her.
“We didn’t receive any prior notice.”
“I apologize for surprising you like this.”
Royal family business operated with meticulous planning and strict schedules.
Even the last Task Force Team visit had followed that protocol. Corridors were sealed along her route, elevators controlled, and separate parking lanes arranged so she wouldn’t encounter other staff.
But this arrival was far too conspicuous. The exterior of the Imperial Palace limousine was lacquered to emphasize tradition, and that Imperial Crest mounted in the center announced her presence as loudly as a herald.
She could feel eyes stealing glances at her through the windows. Ui-gu had just demonstrated his control over the Task Force Team, and those gazes couldn’t help but make her uneasy.
Yet Sun pressed on without hesitation.
“I misplaced a ring during my visit to the Police Station yesterday, you see. Inspector Gwon Tae-o was kind enough to find it, so I’ve come to collect it.”
The lie flowed smoothly from Sun’s lips, and she heard Seokchul turn slightly in the passenger seat.
“Now… did you say?”
One guard’s voice carried doubt. Every news outlet was fawning over Ui-gu’s touching devotion to family, and here the dead Crown Prince’s niece showed up chasing a lost ring. It would appear careless.
Sun held the guard’s gaze. In her round eyes, something bright began to gather until they glistened with moisture.
“It was a gift from my uncle for my coming of age. I want to find it quickly.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s a precious thing that lets me remember my uncle. You’ve heard the news, I’m sure… but I felt I absolutely must wear it at his funeral. I’m afraid my heart simply rushed ahead.”
“Ah, I understand now!”
The other guard beside him answered promptly, perhaps moved by her performance. The stiffness drained from his face, replaced by sympathy.
“I’ll check on it right away.”
The guards moved away from the car and began speaking into their radios. Watching them go, Seokchul shook his head slowly.
“Blood will tell, won’t it.”
“If you mean it as a compliment to my mother, I’ll take it that way.”
Before long, the guards returned.
“Inspector Gwon Tae-o asks if you could meet him in the Main Building 3rd Floor Conference Room. Shall we show you the way?”
Sun blinked once. Tae-o had cooperated far more readily than she’d anticipated.
She’d thought he might come out and have words with her directly, or at worst, simply turn her away.
The fact that he was meeting her this way felt like proof he was taking yesterday’s conversation in the elevator seriously.
For the first time, Sun’s heart felt lighter.
“No, thank you. It will be sufficient for my aide and me. I appreciate your consideration.”
Thanks to Sun’s final bright smile, the guards cooperated with her without reserve. Perhaps their low rank meant they hadn’t been reached by Ui-gu’s influence, but in any case, they were kind. They even showed her to the parking spot and opened the door so she could exit the limousine smoothly.
And so Sun stepped into the Police Station once more.
* * *
Even without the order to conduct an Imperial investigation simultaneously, Tae-o was already stretched thin enough.
The cases piling up in the Criminal Investigation Division alone left him breathless, and new ones never stopped arriving.
Buried beneath an avalanche of work, he’d felt a touch of ennui—though the change he sought amounted to little more than starting a modest workout routine or catching a film or two.
He simply needed a bit of seasoning in life; the last thing he wanted was to shoulder a special investigation tangled up with the royal family.
Honestly, he believed this whole affair should be wrapped up as an accident. Even the higher-ups seemed inclined that way, and to Tae-o’s eye, it looked more plausible as well.
There was no way the Crown Prince had been murdered. Inflating it into a homicide would only breed exhaustion among those forced to deal with it.
What good would come from wading deep into Imperial Palace affairs? Tae-o had neither interest nor expectations in that world.
Still, there had been something unsettling about the scene.
But detective work had taught him that such feelings flickered past countless times. Chase every one and you’d need ten bodies to cope. Even if a report didn’t sit right, once the brass set the direction, he saw no reason to fight it.
He’d learned long ago that sometimes it was easier not to know.
It had been the same when he first saw Cheonyang Hyunju.
When he first laid eyes on the Crown Prince’s niece, his thought had been: were they really sending window dressing to a scene like this now? A pretty face and a practiced smile.
He’d assumed all royals were cut from the same cloth—polished, composed, their true thoughts hidden behind an impenetrable mask. The type that brought nothing but headaches if you got tangled up with them.
Yet strangely, after exchanging words with her a few times, she’d begun to linger in his mind.
She should have been an irritant he could dismiss, but something wouldn’t let him. What was she looking at? Why did her eyes hold such quiet resolve?
It bothered him—not the investigation, not the case, but her alone.
“Hell.”
Tae-o raked a hand through his hair in frustration. The scattered photographs on his desk seemed a perfect reflection of his tangled thoughts.
He’d examined the photos from the Crown Prince’s accident scene repeatedly, and felt the cracks spreading through his rational judgment.
He couldn’t simply brush past it. Whether it was her bright, vivid gaze that kept surfacing in his mind, or something else—there was guilt in covering the photos up and moving on.
Everyone at the Police Station knew how swamped Tae-o was. Yet they’d deliberately assigned him to lead the Task Force Team, and he’d felt the unspoken pressure in that choice.
But one thing she’d said kept drifting through his head, refusing to fade.
“If I bring you the warrant, does that give you the option to choose, Director Gwon?”
He’d taken her for just another clueless royal. Yet from that pretty face had come only words that were perfectly, undeniably right.
Even his cynicism couldn’t argue back. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway—righteous people couldn’t be touched by spite.
Autopsy. That word had shaken him all night. In Imperial Palace cases, autopsy was forbidden ground. In all of history, no autopsy had ever been performed on a member of the Imperial family. Even among Imperial Household Ministry officials, without the Emperor’s approval, no one could issue an autopsy warrant.
It might be a first. That possibility alone had stirred something in him—a chance to walk a path no one had walked before, igniting a passion that had grown quiet and small. Excitement kindled.
Yet following emotion alone would be too steep a climb. The Censorate’s stance alone made clear what standing she held in the Imperial Palace hierarchy. He’d heard whispers that the Police Commissioner’s promotion was already assured even if he did nothing—why invite scrutiny and risk falling from favor for a reckless move?
He knew nothing of Imperial power structures, but he could read this much: everyone wanted to avoid her path.
A shadow fell across his troubled thoughts. The junior detective at the far end of the office, off a phone call, turned toward him.
“Team Leader. Cheonyang Hyunju has arrived outside.”
“What?”
Tae-o let out a bewildered laugh. Through the window, he caught the faint glimpse of a limousine’s rear end.
“She left behind a ring… She said you found it for her?”
“I did?”
Still chuckling in disbelief, Tae-o’s expression soon settled into something flat. He nodded sharply: tell her to come to the Main Building 3rd Floor Conference Room. He watched the junior detective sprint back to his desk at the instruction.
No point in overthinking this. It was time to meet the woman who’d shaken him this thoroughly.

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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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