RC 05

Chapter 5

After leaving her father behind and returning to her room, Seon found Guard Officer Jo waiting for her.

He was pacing around with the brown briefcase he always carried and a tablet in one hand.

Seeing that nothing about him was different from usual, Seon relaxed a little and let out a short breath.

As she crossed the room toward the sofa, she asked,

“What about what I asked for?”

“It wasn’t easy.”

“That’s why I asked Guard Officer Jo.”

With a small groan, Seon sat down on the sofa. As the soft cushions embraced her body, she felt her tense muscles begin to relax. When Seon gestured to him, Jo Seok-cheol adjusted his glasses and sat across from her.

Seon always tried to show people only her composed side, but there were a few people around whom she could truly relax. Seok-cheol, who had been by her side for seven years since she turned twenty, was one of them.

Apparently unwilling to disappoint her expectations, Seok-cheol lifted the tablet from his lap and handed it to her. Seon accepted it naturally and turned on the screen.

Several official documents appeared on the brightened display.

Documents from the Imperial Household Office, the National Police Agency, and other government departments. He had even obtained documents from agencies to which he had no access authorization.

“I couldn’t get the photographs from the scene of the accident. I was able to obtain documents classified as Level Three Confidential, but anything above that will probably take a little more time.”

The Crown Prince’s accident was a matter serious enough to have a devastating impact on the entire country.

He wasn’t just any Imperial family member. He was the Crown Prince.

Even someone as well-connected as Seok-cheol, who had opened doors in all sorts of places, would not be able to obtain highly classified information that easily.

Seon scrolled rapidly through the tablet with her finger. Her eyes quickly absorbed the changing words as her mind simultaneously began piecing together the situation.

Her eyes moved rapidly until they suddenly stopped at one point.

Tracing the words with her finger, Seon read them aloud slowly.

“Both drivers died?”

The National Police Agency’s accident investigation report clearly stated that both drivers had died at the scene—the driver of the Eastern Palace vehicle and the driver of the other vehicle.

Seon clenched her fist and stared at Seok-cheol.

“Yes. Exactly as you read.”

Seok-cheol adjusted his glasses once more before continuing.

“They say the other vehicle’s owner is scheduled for an autopsy. But based on what they’ve determined so far, he is believed to have been intoxicated to the point where his license would have been revoked.”

“That makes no sense!”

Seon gave a hollow laugh and narrowed her eyes.

“Even if His Highness didn’t want the roads closed because he wanted to maintain a friendly relationship with the people, it’s not as though the roads would have been completely open, right?”

He was an Imperial family member. And not just any member, but the highest-ranking one after the Emperor—the Crown Prince.

He had been traveling for preparations for a state event, not on a private outing. He might not have wanted the entire road blocked off, but there should at least have been security and partial traffic control along the route.

So how could a drunk driver have gotten onto that road?

“How could he have gone through every checkpoint without being stopped?”

“The details are still under investigation. We’ll have to wait and see.”

At Seok-cheol’s stiff answer, Seon clicked her tongue.

“No matter how I look at it, something doesn’t add up.”

She was beginning to understand, at least vaguely, why the Emperor had mentioned that the accident was suspicious and why he had asked her to participate in the investigation.

There were simply too many strange things about this accident.

The Crown Prince’s vehicle had been swept into an accident by a drunk driver’s car that suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

The impact had been so severe that the dashcam was badly damaged, and they said there were no witnesses.

Could something like this really happen to the Crown Prince?

Death itself was impartial. It came to everyone equally, regardless of status or position.

But could a death like this really happen within the Imperial family?

Fate could be cruel, so perhaps such a thing could happen once.

But surely it should never have happened twice to the Imperial family.

Seon’s thoughts reached the deepest wound in her heart. No matter how much she tried not to connect the two, the memory kept resurfacing.

Perhaps that was why the Emperor had summoned only her and entrusted her with this task. Perhaps he had been thinking the same thing.

“The Grand Prince Uiyeong accident.”

Seon spoke quietly. Seok-cheol looked at her with a questioning expression.

“Isn’t it similar to this accident?”

“I understand what you mean by similar… but wasn’t that case already concluded as an accident?”

At Seok-cheol’s question, Seon pressed her lips together for a moment.

An accident.

Yes. That was how it had ended.

But there had been something suspicious about it back then, too. That suspicion had remained buried in Seon’s heart for her entire life, shaping and tormenting her.

If she failed to resolve this question again, this case would simply be buried as another accident.

As long as there were things that did not make sense, she could not back down this time.

“Is this why Grandfather entrusted this to me?”

Seon murmured.

“What?”

“You know I was the only survivor of the Grand Prince Uiyeong accident, don’t you?”

“…Yes.”

Seon remembered that day with perfect clarity.

She remembered barely escaping serious injury because her cousin had shielded her with her body. She remembered coming in and out of consciousness, her entire body covered in blood that she could not tell was hers or her cousin’s.

She remembered someone approaching her.

The persistent gaze checking whether she was alive.

The foot kicking at the window of the overturned car to see whether she was moving.

And the cold-heartedness of the man who, despite knowing how serious the situation was, left without reporting it.

“It was similar to what happened this time. The driver who was driving the car died. So did Grand Prince Uiyeong. And so did my cousin, Cheongsong Hyeonju.”

Twenty years had passed.

The little girl who had been held in her dying cousin’s arms, unable to do anything but shed silent tears, had grown into one of the Imperial family members who received the most attention from the people.

She had survived a terrible accident and grown up well. Praise like that had followed her throughout her life like a permanent label.

But Seon could never forget that day, no matter how hard she tried.

Every relative who had been laughing and talking with her inside the car only moments earlier had died.

Her mother, devastated by the news of the accident, had even miscarried the younger sibling she was carrying.

How could Seon ever forget the day when everyone had been wounded in one way or another?

With her memories still so vivid, how could she not connect it to this accident?

“If a civilian driver who was following behind hadn’t reported the accident, I would have died too. The cousin who was shielding me died from excessive blood loss in the ambulance. If that man who checked whether we were dead had only changed his mind and called for help…”

“What are you saying? There was a witness?”

Seok-cheol’s voice trembled faintly.

This was a secret known only to a few people within the Imperial family.

“Then why didn’t he report it? I’m confused. That isn’t even in the case records.”

It was only natural for Seok-cheol to be confused. An ordinary person would not simply ignore someone who had been injured and left helpless after such a serious accident.

Any human being should have felt compassion.

But the fact that the witness had simply walked away was precisely what convinced Seon.

That accident had never been an accident.

“I was too young, and my injuries and shock were so severe that I remained unconscious in the hospital for a long time. There weren’t many dashcams back then, either, and there weren’t really any other witnesses.”

It had been the perfect location for something deliberate.

A quiet road with few security cameras and little passing traffic.

And that was exactly where their accident had happened.

“By the time I had recovered enough to give a statement, the case had already been closed. So of course it wouldn’t be in the records.”

She had been only seven years old.

There was very little a child that young could do.

“Did you tell His Majesty? I heard Grand Prince Uiyeong was the son he cherished most.”

Seon thought of Grand Prince Uiyeong.

He had been the Emperor’s brightest and cleverest son. As the third son, he had never had a chance of becoming Emperor, but he had received more love from his parents than any of the others.

He had freely given that love to the people around him as well.

Even Prince Gyeongan, the lawless man no one could control now, would back down when Grand Prince Uiyeong spoke.

He had been that warm a person.

That was probably why, when he had briefly been entrusted with his niece, he could not simply leave her to the driver. He had personally driven her home to see her off.

For Seon, that decision had remained a source of guilt for her entire life.

“I told His Majesty as soon as I regained consciousness.”

Seon spoke as calmly as she could.

“His Majesty conducted his own careful investigation, but the case had already been closed. There wasn’t enough evidence, and in the end, it was concluded as an accidental death.”

The emptiness she had felt back then was beyond words.

She had seen something.

If only she had awakened a little sooner.

If only she had revealed the truth a little earlier.

“I still don’t believe that accident was simply an accident. And I have a feeling this accident might be the same.”

“Is there anyone you suspect?”

At Seok-cheol’s question, Seon fell deep into thought.

It would have been easier to choose the people she did not suspect.

Wasn’t this the Imperial family, where someone could be smiling at you today and stabbing you with a knife tomorrow?

There were very few people in the Imperial family whom Seon could trust without reservation.

“Back then, with Grand Prince Uiyeong, it was difficult to focus on a single person. It was hard to believe that anyone would deliberately target the Emperor’s third son.”

That was why the case had ultimately been buried as an accident, even though her grandfather had trusted Seon enough to conduct a separate investigation.

They had been convinced that there could be no group that would deliberately murder Grand Prince Uiyeong, who was, after all, only the Emperor’s third son.

“But His Highness the Crown Prince is different.”

“Are you talking about the abolitionists?”

At Seok-cheol’s cautious question, Seon gave a bitter, mocking smile and shook her head.

A man’s face had come to mind.