Behind the Painted Curtain
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 3: A New Arrangement
Lady Eum’s reassignment came through within the week, dressed up as an honor — oversight of the royal kitchens and household stores, a position of genuine consequence, the kind of promotion no one could reasonably question. She accepted it with the same composed neutrality she brought to everything, bowed correctly, and was gone from Hyo Rin’s quarters within two days.
Her replacement was a woman named Lady Soh, younger than Eum by perhaps fifteen years, sharp-eyed and efficient in a way that suggested she had earned her position rather than simply aged into it. She managed the household with a competence Hyo Rin noted and respected immediately — schedules kept, supplies accounted for, the maids under her neither slack nor frightened, which was its own kind of skill.
Hyo Rin had her summoned alone on the second evening, after the others had been dismissed for the night.
“You have been told what is expected of you in this household,” Hyo Rin said.
“Yes, Your Highness. I am to manage the daily affairs of your quarters with the same diligence Lady Eum—”
“That is not what I mean.” Hyo Rin’s voice did not rise, but something in it changed register, and Lady Soh went still. “I am told you are very good at what you do. I expect that to remain true. I do not expect you to be curious about anything beyond it.”
Lady Soh said nothing, which Hyo Rin noted as the correct instinct.
“There will be evenings when my schedule does not look the way you expect it to look. Visitors at hours that seem unusual. Instructions that do not come with explanations. You will manage these as you manage everything else — without comment, without inquiry, and without repeating a single detail of them to anyone, inside these walls or out.”
“I understand, Your Highness.”
“I am not certain you do. So let me be plain.” Hyo Rin held her gaze, level and unhurried. “My intelligence network in this palace is larger than yours. Larger than you can currently imagine. If a single word of what happens in the Crown Princess’s quarters reaches ears it should not reach, I will know where it came from, and I will know within days. And I will have your tongue removed.”
The room went very quiet.
“Do we understand each other?”
Lady Soh’s face had lost some of its color, but her composure held. “We understand each other completely, Your Highness.”
“Good.” Hyo Rin’s tone softened, fractionally, the warning already filed away and replaced with something closer to ordinary instruction. “Serve me well and you will find me generous. Serve me poorly and you will find me exactly what I have just described. The choice has always been simpler than people make it.”
“I will not disappoint you, Your Highness.”
“See that you don’t.” Hyo Rin gestured toward the door. “That will be all tonight.”
Lady Soh bowed and withdrew, and Hyo Rin sat alone in the quiet that followed, turning the conversation over once, satisfied, before setting it aside the way she set aside everything that had been properly handled.
~ ♡ ~
She sent word that she wished him to join her for tea, a request ordinary enough on its surface that no one in the household thought twice about it. A husband visiting his wife’s quarters in the afternoon was nothing worth remarking on, even a husband who had visited so rarely since the wedding that the staff had quietly stopped expecting it.
Yi San arrived looking faintly uncertain, as though he could not entirely account for the summons, and settled across the low table from her with the same careful courtesy he brought to everything between them now.
Hyo Rin glanced at the maid standing near the door. “Leave us.”
The girl bowed and withdrew without a word, and the sound of the door sliding shut behind her left the room in a quiet that felt different from the ordinary quiet of the palace — smaller, more deliberate.
“You wished to see me,” he said.
“I did.” She poured for him herself, which she did not normally do, and watched something in his face register the deviation. “There is something I need to tell you, and something I need to ask of you. I would rather you hear both plainly.”
He set the cup down without drinking. “Go ahead.”
“I have spoken with your father.” She watched that land — the brief flicker of alarm before he mastered it. “He knows what the physicians know. He has known for some time, longer than you realize. I did not tell him anything he had not already been told by people whose duty it was to tell him.”
Yi San’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing.
“I am not here to shame you,” she said, more gently. “I am here because the dynasty needs an heir, and you cannot give it one, and doing nothing was never going to be a choice either of us was permitted to make. So I made a different one. With your father’s full knowledge and his agreement.”
He understood before she said it outright. She watched the understanding arrive in his face — first confusion, then the dawning shape of it, then something that was not quite relief and not quite grief but sat uncomfortably close to both.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.