Behind the Painted Curtain
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 7: What the Physician Confirmed
Lady Soh arrived first, composed as always, and took one look at the basin and understood without being told. She said nothing beyond what was necessary — who would be informed, what would be arranged, how the morning schedule would be quietly restructured — and withdrew with the efficiency of a woman earning her position and her silence in equal measure.
The physician came within the hour.
He was an older man, careful in the way of men who had survived long careers in royal households by being careful, and he examined Hyo Rin with complete propriety and complete thoroughness and when he was finished he sat back and looked at her with an expression that was professionally neutral and personally satisfied.
“Your Highness,” he said, “is with child.”
Hyo Rin received this the way she received everything that mattered — without visible reaction, her hands folded in her lap, her face giving nothing away. “You are certain.”
“Certain enough to report it, Your Highness. The signs are consistent and clear.”
“To whom do you report?”
He met her eyes briefly. “His Majesty the King. Directly.”
“Then do so,” she said. “Today.”
He bowed and withdrew, and the room was quiet, and Nari who had been standing at the far wall through the entire examination crossed to her and knelt beside her and took both her hands and held them and said nothing because there was nothing to say that the hands did not already say.
Hyo Rin looked down at her and felt something move through her chest that she did not examine too closely — not quite relief, not quite fear, something that contained both and several things she had no words for yet.
“It worked,” Nari said finally, barely above a breath.
“It worked,” Hyo Rin said.
Yi Woon received the physician’s report that afternoon behind closed doors, alone, the way he received everything that mattered. What passed across his face in the privacy of that room no one would ever know. What emerged from it was a man who summoned his steward and gave three instructions in a quiet voice and then stood at his window for a long time looking at the winter garden.
That evening he sent Hyo Rin a single gift — a bolt of the finest green silk, the color worn by women of the highest rank, with no accompanying message because no message was needed.
She understood it when she unwrapped it. He was telling her she had done what she came to do, and he would not forget it.
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