Empress Handbook

Chapter Forty-Six | Skyfall

The door clicks ajar, and Yunhee enters after ordering Assistant Goh to wait outside.

"Good afternoon, Mother," Yeoreum says. She puts down two cups of tea and heads to the kettle, clearly not intending to leave the room.

"It is indeed a good afternoon," Yunhee says, sitting down with a sarcastic smile. "Are you not going to leave, Empress?"

Yeoreum places a third cup of tea on the table and sits down with an equable smile tugging at her bright red lips. "His Majesty and I are a married couple. In other words, we are a combined body. There is no reason for me to leave, Mother."

Yunhee lets a cold tsk. "Song Yeoreum, someone as lowly as you do not deserve to be in this family."

Taehyung slams his cup on the table. It's the loudest he has been to his mother since birth.

"Mother, you didn't come from a financially fit family. Why would you use that as an insult to degrade Yeoreum?"

Yunhee growls, "I didn't come from a good family? I am the daughter of the politician known to be Korean politics' silver bullet. I am a prestigious—"

"I know how you became Park Inseong's daughter, your real birth name and my actual grandmother," Taehyung cuts in coldly. "Since we're already at this step, just stop pretending, Lee Hyemi—"

"It looks like I've underestimated you, Taehyung," Yunhee says. She rises to her feet with a new frightening emotion coiled over her dull gaze. "Yes, my actual mother is an idiot like your sister Eunseo. Taehyung, you don't know what it's like to live in a rooftop room in the poorest corner of the city. Do you think you had it hard because you were locked in that study room? You had a roof over your head and three meals a day."

Taehyung narrows his eyes. "So, is this your excuse to ditch my grandmother and start afresh?"

"Ditch her?" Yunhee emits a bitter laugh. "Her sister introduced her to a housekeeper at Park Inseong's mansion, where we could live. Park Inseong, that lusty old cunt ripped off his revolting mask and raped me when my mother was cleaning downstairs. I was only thirteen. To this day, I don't know if my mother heard my screams or not."

Yunhee casts her eyes over Taehyung's pale profile with a scornful smile playing about her lips. She grabs his chin to force him to meet her stone-cold gaze.

"Stop making that shocked face. I'm explaining the turning point in my life, so listen carefully, son. I seduced Park Inseong until he took me in as his long-lost daughter and became Park Yunhee. Taking down your father was easy. I recovered my hymen and used some simple tricks with him but ditching Park Inseong was much harder. I had to blackmail him with a ton of his scandals—"

"Please stop talking," Taehyung snaps, choking on an emotion that has smothered the last tinge of colour away from his face.

"What? Are you disturbed?" Yunhee scoffs. "You have been incompetent since you were a child, so I didn't expect anything less. Now, I will talk about something you'll be interested in, Taehyung. You made a mistake by accusing your father of being the inventor of Shinji. Shinji has been around for a long time. Its prime time came eight years ago, but it started before you were born."

"What?" Taehyung exclaims.

"Nobody knows who the actual inventor of Shinji is. Everyone who knows that has already died. Before your father, the leader was Park Inseong. Shinji initially recruited all walks of commoners who would be thrown on a deserted island to do the same thing as what the people at Cheonji Island are doing now. Your father's brother, Prince Joonsang, was mentally unhinged, and he murdered someone."