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Escape From The Palace - Book II

Summary:

Go Ha Jin wakes up in 2016 and finds life harder here than in Goryeo.
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My lips were dry and cracked. I was back, but it was more painful than ever to be alive.

“Prince Wang So--” I managed to get out.

“Oh, is that your boyfriend?” The nurse replied. “I’ve already called for your mother. She’ll be here in an hour! Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

“No. He’s...he’s.” I looked around the hospital room. A flat screen TV was mounted in the corner, running the results of the recent presidential election. The EKG monitor beeped rapidly. I took a deep breath and took in the hospital air, half bleach and half antibiotic. Everything was sterile. This was the new world.

Chapter 1: Back to the Future

Summary:

Go Ha Jin wakes up in Seoul with terrible memories.

Chapter Text

1.

Back To the Future

The hissing sound of the humidifier was the first thing that Ha Jin heard when she woke up in a hospital room. Her nurse, Na Ri, dropped the clipboard she was holding when she saw that Ha Jin’s eyes were open and blinking.

“Otoke! She’s conscious! Someone call the doctor!”

There was a flurry of activities as medical professionals poked her, checked her vitals, read her test results, checked every limb for function. Ha Jin’s lips were dry and cracked from the months she spent in the hospital. She was back, but it was more painful than ever to be alive.

“Wang So.” She managed to get out.

“Oh, is that your boyfriend?” The nurse replied. “I’ve already called for your mother. She’ll be here in an hour! Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

“No. He’s...he’s.” Ha Jin looked around the hospital room. A flat screen TV was mounted in the corner, running the results of the recent presidential election. Her EKG monitor beeped rapidly. Ha Jin took a deep breath and took in the hospital air, half bleach and half antibiotic. Everything was sterile. This was the new world.

Where was her baby? Ha Jin realized that no one would have any idea what she was talking about. Ha Jin felt her chest sag and the tears from another lifetime behind her eyes. She wouldn’t cry because she knew that she would never see him again. It was just like her death from before. This one she would have to live through. Her vision was blurred and she tried to take a deep breath. Her lungs weren’t cooperating. The more she tried to breath, the harder it was. Her chest convulsed and her heart beat faster than ever. When her EKG monitor beeped wildly, her nurse ran back into the room to see Ha Jin, white as a sheet, sweating buckets, and almost choking on her own breath.

“She’s having a panic attack!” One of the interns cried out right behind the nurse.

“Ha Jin!” The nurse gripped her hands and smoothed down Ha Jin’s hair. It didn’t matter. Ha Jin couldn’t talk. She was in mental shock from being thrown one thousand years in the future. Her brain was drowning in all the new sensations of the twenty-first century. Fire swept through her temporal lobes, like her memories from Goryeo were burning themselves into each synaptic bridge. Her brain was on fire. The process of soul transfer was very painful, Hae Su thought as the she struggled. No one bothered to write a time-travel pamphlet that covered heartache and devastating losses of ancient loved ones.

“We gotta get her stable. She just came out of a coma! Give her a sedative!”

Ha Jin’s eyes fluttered closed when she felt the prick of the needle on her right arm.

When she woke up again, she saw her mother at the foot of her bed. Ha Jin smiled weakly at her.

“Oh my child.” Her mother, Joon Young, burst into tears and hugged her lost daughter as tightly as she could. She cried out her daughter’s name over and over again. “Ha Jin! Ha Jin, it’s Oma.”

Ha Jin eyes travelled over her mother’s face. The familiar cheekbones, the kind eyes, the screwy perm. It was real.

Joon Young stroked her daughter’s cheeks. “The doctors said your brain was active, but you were unresponsive to all of us. We didn’t know how long we would have to wait for you. I was so worried that you would never wake up.”

“Oma.” Ha Jin cried into her mother’s arms. Those long years in Goryeo were so painful. Especially because Ha Jin kept losing women that were like mothers to her. Now that her real Mom was in front of her, Ha Jin let out the grief suffered in a lifetime over a thousand years. She cried for Myung Hee. She cried for Lady Oh. The women who sacrificed themselves so that she could live and love. Her eyes were red and puffy, but seeing the face of her real mother felt like a moment with god. She squeeze her mother as tight as she could, reveling in the realness of her family. She was back.

The doctors discharged Ha Jin after another week of observation. They told her that her coma was unusual, lasting an entire year, but not completely unheard of. Sometimes, unresponsive patients in comas were just letting their brains heal. Comas were still mysterious things. She was told that the little boy she dove into the lake for was safe. He was one year older because he was lucky enough to be rescued by her.

“Do any of your patients have new memories formed during the coma?” Ha Jin didn’t know if they would put her into a psyche ward for her question so she phrased it casually.

“Miss Go,” the handsome young neurologist pursed his lips, “the brain is a funny thing. It’s the organ through which we perceive everything. So if memories are created during a coma, it’s a combination of external stimuli triggering a complex synaptic reaction. Sometimes, that forms a new memory.”

“My body was here the entire time.” Ha Jin explained, almost to herself.

“Yes, your body was here.” He grinned at her. “You were my favorite patient.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, even in your coma, you looked like you were happy.”

“Really.” Ha Jin grimaced. “Thank you for your time.”

Ha Jin looked up at her mother and nodded. Her mother pushed her wheelchair and they went out into the world. Ha Jin felt herself immediately shrink back as her wheelchair sped past the glass doors.

Everything was so fast and bright. Ha Jin winced at the bright whiteness of the outside world. There were no gentle palace grounds or Lake Dongji, no beautiful mountains to escape to picnic, no garden where she could accidentally drench a napping prince. In Seoul, there was only miles and miles of concrete and traffic. The sounds of the city filled her ears and she felt like she was being buried in noise; the rush of cars, the beeping of horns, loud people talking on their cell phones, the blast of music from other cars, the ever present constructions noises of Seoul. Was the world always this loud? Ha Jin cringed. This was her world, but she had spent nearly a decade away. She felt like a tourist now, looking at the the mad rush of people, cars, planes--their lives in an uninterrupted stream that would only bump into each other if one person realized that another person was in their way.

She felt torn. She said to Jung that she would forget it all, but here she was, each memory as intact as the day she made them.

At the curbside pick up, Ha Jin waited for her mom to pull around their small family sedan. Before her mother left for the car, she place the small glass brick in Ha Jin’s hand. It was her phone. Ha Jin stared at the phone, not quite knowing what to do. She pressed the home button with her fingers and realized that she had forgotten her passcode. She never needed a passcode in Goryeo. She stared at the phone for a solid minute before realizing that her code was her mother’s birthday.

Her mother’s yellow Kia pulled into view and her mother stepped out quickly to help Ha Jin into the passenger seat. Ha Jin sighed when she sat down. Her body in this life was not as damaged as Hae Su’s body. How delicate her other body had been at the end of her life. In Seoul, Ha Jin always used to joke that she would not survive without her cell phone. But she had. She had lived almost ten years in a country that was hers, but 1,000 years earlier. She had not thrived in Goryeo. But she had loved. And lost bitterly.

At the end of her life in Goryeo, Hae Su had many regrets. It wasn’t all horrible. The life of a person was never all good or all bad. After she left the palace, Hae Su kept herself alive with her memories. She ached to see his face. She longed to see his handwriting. To hear his clear low voice calling for her. She missed touching his hand, holding him when he had nightmares. She wished for the Wang So she fell in love with everyday she spent with Jung. There were traces of the fourth prince left in Gwangjong, but so little of it was there. Hae Su could only see glimmers of it, shining back at her, at moments alone with him in the palace.

She left Gwangjong because she still loved Wang So.

The last time she made love with the king, she felt only sadness. Things went from bad to worse in a matter of months. The first month when she missed her period, Hae Su felt nauseous and ill, a different kind of feelings than her usual heart palpitations and weak knees. She thought that she might be pregnant and she was terrified. The thought that she might be pregnant, but that the Queen, Yeon Hwa was not, sent her into night terrors. Yeon Hwa was such a clear and present danger that Hae Su began to send out her maids to monitor the queen so she could avoid running into her anywhere in the palace. She didn’t know what she would do if Yeon Hwa found out about her pregnancy. Hae Su remembered a vague rumor about Lady Oh’s tragedy. Lady Oh was true love of Wang So’s father, King Taejo. When she conceived his baby, Queen Yoo became jealous and sent her poison tea under Queen Hwangbo’s assistant, thus framing Hwangbo for the miscarriage that Lady Oh never recovered from. Yeon Hwa’s family suffered from the fallout of that framed miscarriage. Hae Su knew that Yeon Hwa would not hesitate to revisit the same fate on her. Clutching her stomach, Hae Su knew that above all, she would protect the baby.

The complexities of palace machinations always made Hae Su feel like she was on an alien planet. How could people be so cruel to each other. How can they look at a living breathing human as an obstacle to be conquered. Hae Su knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that that’s all she was to Yeon Hwa. She was a movable chess piece, ready to be knocked off the board as soon as Gwangjong made one mistake. Hae Su couldn’t afford any room for error. This was their baby she was thinking about. And it wasn’t just Yeon Hwa Hae Su was worried about. The ninth prince was always strangely distant with her, never warming to Hae Su’s friendly remarks. There were Gwangjong’s advisors, many of whom who saw her as his only weakness. She had enemies everywhere. Baek Ah couldn’t be there all the time. She hadn’t spoken to Wook in years. Jung was in exile. Hae Su was alone, truly alone. She could be attacked at anytime. In her breakfast, during her walks around Lake Dongji, while she was in bed with Gwangjong. There wasn’t any where especially safe in the palace if someone had put their mind to harm.

Hae Su knew that royal babies were vulnerable. Incredibly so because she did not have an official position at court and because she had no powerful clan support. Hae Su winced when she thought about the conversation that Gwangjong had with her only a few days after she knew she was pregnant. He promised to make her a royal concubine and that when she conceived a child that she would automatically become second Queen. She swallowed hard and pushed down her nausea so that he wouldn’t notice that she was reeling. She knew what he was doing. He was cementing her position in the place, but he may as well have set her feet in wet cement and thrown her in a cage with her worst enemy, Yeon Hwa. Hae Su knew how much he wanted their child. He had begged her for it. But she couldn’t tell him.

She once told Wang So that when she was at the palace, she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Now it was more true than ever. And at the end, she could not tell him. If he had known that she had his child, the King’s decree would come down like a stone gate and she would be trapped. She left because she had to save her daughter, it was the one thing left she had of Wang So that was beautiful and untainted.

Her anxiety attacks increased everyday. Hae Su would wake up in the middle of the night, afraid to look onto the sheets to see a patch of red which meant that she would have lost their baby. Every night it didn’t happen, Hae Su prayed during the day at her rocks. But with her deteriorating health, there was no way she would be able to carry this baby to term if she were next to all the dangers of the palace. She would protect her baby by throwing away Gwangjong. Hae Su knew all of a sudden that she had to leave. If she had to break the king’s heart to do it, she would.

It took three tries. Three heart breaking tries before Gwangjong finally walked away. Hae Su watched the father of her child walk away, dejected and angry that he thought she still had Wook in her heart. Of course, she made Wook tell Gwangjong about their terminal engagement from years ago. Hae Su knew that would be the thing that could break them. She had never told Wang So about her affair with Wook because it was an affair that began when she was a teenager and ended when Wook threw her away. Gwangjong didn’t know. Maybe he would forgive her eventually, maybe he wouldn’t. Hae Su counted on her Gwangjong’s confusion; the painful accusations that she never loved him, the altogether contrast of why she said yes to Wook but never to him, were they any normal couple, it would have been a fight. But there was too much at stake and Hae Su was stabbing his heart to free herself.

Sometimes, Hae Su thought about how cruel it was that she chose Jung to marry and not Wang So, knowing their long bitter fraternal rivalry. And then equally, how cruel it was to Jung that she would never love him the same way she loved Wang So.

Jung’s hometown of Chungju was far. Almost two day’s ride from the capital in Songak. The most malicious thing about Chungju was an especially large duck population in the fall. Hae Su remembered feeling peace when she finally got to Jung’s house.

Hae Su missed him everyday, but she knew she could survive until the next day. Until she couldn’t anymore. Being away from Wang So made his spectre her closest companion. She had a personal Wang So, much like the one she kept with her when he was exiled to Later Jin. Of course, her personal So wasn’t as good as the real thing. Still, she thought it was better to love him from afar than it would be in his regime up close and personal. She had already tried that fate. It was not for her. Now that she was free from the cruelty of the palace, she spent every waking moment with the Wang So she loved. She saw him as clearly as if he was there.

Toward the end of her time in the palace, she barely saw the king. He was forever in meetings, dealing with governors, with complaints, with clan leaders, with the huge problems of a young country. Gwangjong tried to spend every night with her, but more often than not, she was alone in her room. A pretty little cage as Yeon Hwa referred to it.

Hae Su thanked her body for surviving everyday when she woke up in Jung’s house. But the long hours stretching forward, marching on, without Wang So. It was lonely. Sometimes she truly wanted to give up. Some days, a beatific smile from Jung could be enough get her through a few more days.

“Noona.” Jung pressed a piece of pork into her rice. Even after a month of marriage, Jung still called her sister. “Try eating this. The cook tried a new recipe.”

Hae Su smiled back at him and tried to choke down the food. She hadn’t tasted food in weeks but tried to eat for the sake of the baby.

“Jung.” Hae Su took a sip of tea and looked at his happy face. “You should take a concubine.”

“What? But you always said you hated polygamy.”

Hae Su fell silent.

“Is it because I’m not So?” Jung was wounded. He could read between the lines with Hae Su. She wanted him to take a second wife because she did not love him in the same way she loved his older brother. She smiled at him.

“God knows I’m no first wife.” Hae Su reached out and grabbed his hand. “I am grateful for all you have done for me. But you are a man. A young man. And I know that you have needs. It is unfair for you to wait by my side when there’s hardly a person left to wait for.”

“Don’t say that.” Jung dropped his chopsticks. “What about the traveling after your pregnancy? We will go to Gobi desert. There are people who’ve travelled the silk road that tell tales of sand storms and horses that store water in their backs! Don’t you want your daughter to see it all?”

“Yes. You should.” Hae Su’s eyes still twinkled at him. “I will wait for you.”

“No. I’m not leaving you behind. Not like what my brother did. You’re not one of my women. You’re the only one.”

“Jung-ah.” Hae Su sighed. Sometimes she felt like her one wish was for Jung to understand Wang So and it was so hard. She cursed Queen Yoo from time to time, for warping her sons so badly that they couldn’t even understand each other when they were from the same family. They shared so many things in common. They both loved fiercely, without holding back. But while Jung had the luxury and reassurance of parental love, Wang So never did. So’s love for her became obsessive and suffocating whereas Jung’s love for her was sweet and yielding. Hae Su regretted that she did not love Jung. Not in the eternally damned way she loved Wang So. The fourth prince had carved himself into her. They were like two trees intertwined, their shape forever twisted and gnarled by their past together.

She had memories. So many memories she made with the fourth prince. It was rich enough to enjoy for days when she would stare out at the lake near Jung’s house. Sometimes, she would just fall into a meditative silence for hours and no one would be able to reach her. When she lost her appetite, she knew that she had no more will for living. Not even for the baby.

The car sped pass a huge Lotte duty free sign. Ha Jin looked at the garish letters. Was anything in Goryeo so ugly? Ha Jin clutched her belly in her mother’s car. She had baby with Wang So. The awful emptiness in her chest, that was the love she had for her baby. She wondered if it would be forever. If her life was real in Goryeo, then her baby died a thousand years ago. The ache of being separated from her child made her feel insane. How would she ever be able to explain this state to anyone. No one would be able to understand. She remembered her baby’s face, the sweet little girl who looked like both of them, with perfect fingernails and black hair.

She regretted leaving the palace. No she didn’t.

It was impossible, improbable, to regret a destiny that was written in the stars and she was just a mover in game of thrones for Wang So. Once her purpose was done, she helped him ascend to the throne, she was suppose to be knocked off the board. She couldn’t stand the palace. So many people died within its red walls. Since Wang So wouldn’t do it for her, she had to do it herself.

She knew that she would never feel right about the way she treated Jung. He was such a lovely boy who wanted nothing more than to see her happy. She granted him his wish of marrying her, but he married a shell of Ha Jin and Hae Su. Jung loved her without wanting too much out of her and that’s all Hae Su had to give at the end of her life. She felt lucky. At the end, someone who loved her held her as she died.

“What are you thinking about?” Ha Jin’s mother asked.

“Nothing.” She replied and tapped the cool glass on her window.

The family sedan pulled into the familiar brick house atop of a hill side in a middle-classed area of Seoul. Ha Jin wondered why she had been picked of all people to go back in time to find Wang So. After all, she was so ordinary, so trusting, so gullible. Ha Jin hoped that she would live long enough to truly love Wang So, but she wasn’t cut out for Goryeo. Medieval bloodshed, brother against brothers, lovers killing lovers: life was nasty, brutish and short. Ha Jin shuddered. She was back in her time now, everything should feel right. Things could make sense again. She could live her life again.

Her mother turned to look at Ha Jin, barely able to believe that her daughter was once again among the living.

“Ha Jin.” Her mother spoke softly. She noticed that Ha Jin wasn’t as bubbly as she used to be. Her entire demeanor seemed to have changed. The year in the coma hadn’t aged Ha Jin physically, but she seemed weary mentally.

When the family gathered around the table for dinner. Ha Jin’s eight-year old brother, Na mGil, sat next to her, curiously staring at Ha Jin.

“Noona.” Ha Jin turned to Nam Gil and expected to see Eun or Jung, but it was Nam Gil.

“Yes?” She reached over and pinched his cheeks and Nam Gil started laughing hard, the joyful crinkly-eyed laugh of children. Ha Jin remembered that Nam Gil was a solemn little boy, except around her. He looked the way that her baby girl used to smile.

“Why are you crying?” Nam Gil asked her.

“Oh.” Ha Jin wiped away her tears and tried to grin at her baby brother and mother. “I’m just so happy to see your face again.” She leaned over and kissed Nam Gil on the head.

“Oma.” She turned to her mother, whose eyes were filled with worry. “I just think I need to lie down for a little bit.”

“But you haven’t eaten anything.” Her mother pushed the plate of spicy octopus towards Ha Jin, her favorite.

“Aish, let her sleep.” Ha Jin’s father nudged her Joon Young. “Ha-Jin-ah, my dear. Go upstairs and sleep. We’re going to have a big celebration soon, okay?”

As she went up the stairs, Ha Jin could feel the eyes of her entire family, worrying. She didn’t want to scare them, truly. But as she laid in her bedroom, the room was unchanged except for new sheets, she stared at the ceiling, willing herself to go back to sleep. How do you explain to your family that while you were in your coma, you went back in time to ancient Goryeo, fell in love with a prince, started a family, and then died tragically waiting for that same prince who was now a king. Ha Jin tried to stop crying, but the tears wouldn’t. The last thing she remembered was the song Jung hired musicians from Songak to sing to her. It was, as the singers explained, the song that made the King fall in love with a court lady.

He hadn’t come.

Ha Jin felt broken. Maybe that’s why it was so hard in this life. To know that Wang So never forgave her for leaving. She tried to send letters. Jung sent messengers. Clutching her old comforter, Ha Jin tried to burrow into the darkness.

“I’ll never let you go.”

His low voice was in her head as clearly as the day he said them.

I had to let you go, Ha Jin thought.

That night she dreamed of the ocean, the lake, Wang So and her walking around with the little girl she named, Byeol, or star.

Ha Jin woke up the next day, her eyes puffy like she hadn’t slept in months. She rubbed her right leg, expecting the morning stiffness to creep up, but it wasn’t there. She had ghost sensations from her former body, but that's all she lived with now, ghosts.

“Oma,” Ha Jin stirred her porridge and looked at her mother busying herself in their bright yellow kitchen. “I want to go back to work.”

“Ha Jin, it’s too early for you to go back to work. You just got out of the hospital.” Joon Young was worried about the dark circles under Ha Jin’s eyes. Sometimes she spoke using ancient words and she worried that her daughter suffered more brain damage in the coma than the tests showed.

“It’s been two months, and I’m going insane in the house.” Ha Jin took a sip of coffee. At least that tasted good. Especially since she hadn’t had it for more than ten years. She had been slowly trying to get use the world again, but it was proving to be difficult. Much harder than she thought. Almost everything in the the modern world gave her slight shock. This was her world, so why didn’t she feel like it was? Why did plastic feel so terrible? Why did vegetables taste different? Korea smelled different too. Why were the skies not the same kind of cerulean that she remembered from Goryeo? She cringed when she saw new buildings being constructed, tearing into the earth, ripping up trees in favor of another new glass and concrete monster.

Funny, she never had these feelings before. The only place Ha Jin liked to go was a Dongmyo park, where there was a temple built in the classical Chinese style that she found to be comforting. It reminded her of Wook’s home. The graceful sloping roofs and carved pillars reminded her of a home where she used to have long talks with Wang So.

“We’re having your homecoming party next week. Can you wait until after then? We wanted to wait until you were strong enough to see people.” Her mother walked over to her and stroke Ha Jin’s hair.

Ha Jin nodded.

“How about you go buy yourself a pretty dress? You haven’t left house in a while. And stop reading all those books about ancient Goryeo. Do you want to be depressed? That was some of the most bloody times in our country’s history.”

It was true. Ha Jin was depressed. It was even more difficult to explain the depression to anyone that wouldn’t understand the emotional toll of time travel. It wasn’t like Ha Jin got a metrocard and jumped into the past. She was still reconciling the loss of so many people. She missed her baby, Jung, Baek Ah. She never got to say goodbye to Wang So, maybe that’s why she felt like she had unfinished business with the past.

Living in the present, she felt the death of all of her people. She was searching for them in all those books. In a way, because she had lived through the time, the books were so strangely deficient. She was left to piece together decades of information. After all, history was not lived by people, but by huge event shifts. Time rolled on. Whether someone was happy or not, whether someone suffered or not, history did not pay attention. History only knew achievements, laws passed, changes in regime, changes in fate. She felt like she was looking at a painting faintly outlined with figures, with gigantic holes, trying to piece together an entire story. Where were the long passages about Gwangjong’s health? Was he happy? Did he sleep well every night. No one writes the personal histories that she needed to know. If only she could ask him.

“Take my credit card. Hum?” Her mother pressed the plastic into her palm.

Ha Jin nodded and put down the definitive text on Goryeo pottery from professor at the University of Seoul. She stack the tome on top of the five other books she was reading: Goryeo Household Income Taxes, Goryeo Kings and Successors, Gwangjong’s Legacy. Ha Jin grabbed a coat and shuffled out the door into the bright winter morning.

In the middle of the Gangnam district, Ha Jin clutched a shopping bag from Lucky Chouette and rocked back and forth, waiting at the intersection filled to the brim with cars. She should have brought her headphones, the city was so incredible dense and loud. The overlapping conversations drove her nuts. Taking a deep breath and closing her eyes, she tried to zone out. When she finally succeeded, she opened her eyes again and started walking. But Ha Jin forgot that she had to wait for the little standing man to turn into the walking man. A blindingly white taxi skidded to stop directly in front of her, only a fraction of second away from hitting her. The taxi driver blasted her with his horn and Ha Jin felt herself being yanked back by a man’s arms. As he yanked her out the way, Ha Jin looked up and knew she recognized him.

TO BE CONTINUED...