Chapter Text
The funny thing was that they didn’t figure it out through their oppas first.
That’s how it should have gone, amidst all the fighting and the pranking, the hair-pulling and taunting, the competition and rivalry––
“That was all you,” Kka-bi says.
“Excuse me,” Eun-bi says. “I’m speaking.”
“I’m just fact-checking,” he points out. “That’s what responsible people do in the age of disinformation. Yeong hyung said.”
“Feminists let other people finish what they’re saying. Eun-seop oppa said that, so there. Now, where was I?”
Anyway, they were at swim camp at Boryeong and hated each other on sight, and fought so much that they got put into time-out together, and that was when they discovered the fact that they had identical twin brothers who were bringing them up on opposite sides of the country. But that was only after Eun-bi had nudged Kka-bi with her elbow and gotten him to jump up from his chair, which was why he banged his knee on the desk and went hopping about the detention room, howling, and Eun-bi told him not to be a baby and he called her a double-baby and then ran from her, so she chased him out of the room and down the corridor and past the pool and into the boys’ dorm which was empty, and Kka-bi swooped under his bed and stayed there, while Eun-bi’s feet in their Dooly the Dinosaur sneakers stumbled to a halt by his bedside table and stood there like they were turned to stone––
––and when Kka-bi peeked out he saw Eun-bi staring at the little photo in its frame that Kka-bi always kept next to his bed, and when he crawled out and told her, half-afraid and half-defiant, “Don’t look at my parents, okay?” she turned to him with wide eyes, and held out her phone, and her lock screen was a picture of the pool and her wallpaper was a picture of her with a swimming medal but the last picture on her camera roll, the first one she’d ever had, was a picture of her mum and dad, and it was the same picture as Kka-bi’s.
It all started when Eun-bi got off the train at Busan Central station and saw the handsomest man in the world, wearing his blue linen jacket and aviator shades, waiting for her.
“Eun-seop hyung is handsome too,” Kka-bi reflects.
“Eun-seop oppa is the handsomest man in the world too,” Eun-bi agrees. “He has curly hair and the best smile, and Seung-ah eonni, that’s Miss Myeong Seung-ah the novelist, she says he has an artist’s hands. But the story starts with Yeongie oppa.”
“Actually,” Kka-bi interrupts, “it started when we became rivals at swimming camp.”
“Actually-actually,” Eun-bi flashes back, “it started when our dad died protecting us when we were little babies. You’re making me tell the whole story over again, Kka-bi!”
“Context is important,” Kka-bi reminds her.
So fine, yes, Eun-bi and Kka-bi were a year old when their parents died, which was super-sad and gory. Criminals invaded their house in Seoul with guns while they slept. The older Jo sons, fresh out of the Naval Academy, had gotten wind of the danger to their parents and swooped home on wings of urgency, but arrived too late to the rescue. By the time they tore into the house, it was as dark as a tomb, and Admiral Jo was slumped across the threshold of the nursery in a pool of blood. In the crib behind him, two noisy little babies were wailing their hearts out, shivering in the chill from an open window and a bloody footprint on the carpet. It was beyond catastrophe.
The sunny, happy Jo home was destroyed in the seeming twinkling of an eye. Unable to withstand the ruins of their life, desperate to keep their siblings safe, Jo Yeong and Jo Eun-seop took a baby each and parted ways.
“They fought, obviously,” Kka-bi interjects. “They felt guilty for not spotting the danger soon enough, and other stuff like that. You know, soldier stuff.”
“They’re not very brave,” Eun-bi nods. “Not when it comes to emotions. But they’re much better now than they used to be, of course, ‘cos they have us.”
Have them they did. Each son devoted the next eight years to bringing the children up far away from the circumstances of their birth and the shocking family tragedy. Yeong built a house for Kka-bi on the cliffs outside Busan. They had horses and dogs and a private path that led all the way from their backyard to the sea. When he was old enough to go to school, a car with a chauffeur and a guard took Kka-bi to the palace every day, where he went to the school attached to the Royal Household, and sometimes went to take tea with Queen Mother Min before coming home. He didn’t get to do it all that often, because he was busy, with art and swimming and Chinese lessons and that one summer Yeong hyung decided to get him a programming tutor.
“You have to know this about Yeong hyung,” Kka-bi says. “He’s kind of exhausting.”
“He’s the most fun,” Eun-bi says stoutly. “Obviously he’s not ideal company for lazy people with no self-motivation.”
“Eun-seop hyung is the most fun too,” Kka-bi says.
“Eun-seop oppa is different,” Eun-bi says.
Eun-seop took Eun-bi all the way to the other side of the country. They came to live not in a city by the sea, but a tiny house in the mountains, in a village where everyone knew everyone else. Small, tight-knit and familiar, it was the sort of place where your door was always open during the day, and you shared whatever you had with others. Eun-seop worked at the village post office next to the primary school, where Eun-bi naturally became a star pupil as soon as she was old enough to go. When she was little, Eun-seop would put Eun-bi in his pack and go hiking in the hills, just until she could walk and climb rocks by herself. He taught Eun-bi the names of the stars and the mountains. He told her myths and lore about Baekdu-san, whose crags they could see from their home. He made her unhealthy, delicious treats after she did well on school tests, and he got her to learn taekwondo from Master Jeong, who Eun-seop always called “Jeong sonsaeng-nim” very formally, but who Eun-bi called Tae-eul eonni, and when Eun-bi said she wanted to learn to swim Eun-seop said “O––oo––oops!” and elbowed her into the village pond fully dressed, which made her so mad that she became the best swimmer in her school and her village and her district and got chosen to go to summer camp at Boryeong––
––where she met the best swimmer in his own class at the palace school, Kka-bi.
“That was challenging,” Kka-bi says. “Yes, I think that’s the word I would use.”
Some really predictable things happened when Yeo Eun-bi and Seo Kka-bi met at swimming camp: shock, dismay and suspicion, to be precise. But all of that blew over after they saw the identical photo of their smiling, beautiful parents in each others’ possession. After all of that, after they'd told each other all about their lives and shown each other photos and videos of their older brothers and listened in to each other's nightly phone calls with them, two things had become obvious. One was that they were clearly twins and had the same parents, even if their oppas had adopted different family names.
The second thing was that there was really only one thing to do with this information.
“Technically, we could just go back to our homes and stay in touch on the phone,” Kka-bi had pointed out. “Then we can make a plan and bring them both to the same place at the same time, and then we make them tell us what happened.”
“That’s too risky,” Eun-bi said. Kka-bi opened his mouth as if he were going to object, then closed it again “They could be hiding big secrets from us and from each other," Eun-bi went on. "We have to go undercover and discover what they are.”
“If hyungnim has a secret it’s probably for a good reason,” Kka-bi said.
“Nonsense,” Eun-bi replied briskly, though this was secretly what she was afraid of. “We’re just going to see if we like each other’s oppas,” she said, improvising the public spin on the situation. “Frankly I’m doing you a favour, ‘cos I want you to see the village and our house. It’s the coolest place in the world, and you’re gonna love it so much you’ll want to stay there forever and ever.”
“You said everybody knows you there,” Kka-bi said. “They’ll know I’m not you.” He wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know how to talk like you. You talk like a mountain bear.”
“Oh yeah?” Eun-bi flew into a temper. “Well, you talk like your voice comes from a fish’s open mouth, so there!”
Once they sorted that out, everything else fell into place pretty easily, though Eun-bi had to cut her braids, which she was very proud of, to match Kka-bi’s stupid bowl cut. “That isn’t even the worst thing,” she said, mournfully, as Kka-bi held up the tail he’d lopped off to show her in the bathroom mirror. “When you go back to Rimyongsu everyone will think I chose to cut my hair to look like yours.”
She did feel a bit bad for Kka-bi when he hopped around the place trying to get into her leggings. “I could just wear my clothes,” he grumbled. “I know how to wear my clothes.”
“Your clothes are monogrammed,” she said. “And they all have labels saying Made With Pride In Busan By Tailors To The King.”
“This is true,” Kka-bi said. He did not appear to find this weird.
“You obviously can’t handle my style, so don’t try too hard,” Eun-bi said. “Ask oppa to get you new clothes when you get home.”
Kka-bi looked dubious. “Won’t that seem weird?”
“Nope,” she said, after thinking about it a moment. “Soo-hyun eonni in our village used to be Soo-hyun oppa a while ago and no one said anything when she changed her clothes and hair. You’re good. Oppa said I was growing out of my old clothes, anyway.”
“That’s cool, then,” Kka-bi said, and slipped his feet into her prized Dooly sneakers. Eun-bi sighed as she watched him trip over the laces.
“Tell Tae-eul eonni if anyone makes fun of you,” she said. “She’ll throw them in the waterfall for you. And I’ll throw you in the waterfall if you spoil my stuff, so don’t you dare get rid of anything around while I’m gone, and especially don’t touch my IU t-shirt. Don't even breathe on it.”
“IU’s my favourite too,” Kka-bi said. “We should get them to take us to her concert together.”
Eun-bi was quiet as the shadow of doubt crossed her mind again. Kka-bi was a silly baby, but he was nice. Every single person they met seemed to like him. He’d made friends with everyone at camp even though he’d won half their daily races. (Eun-bi had won the other half.) He never lost his temper and always shared his things. Eun-seop oppa never lost his temper either. He had a smile for everyone and a hug for anyone who needed it, too. He was unfailingly kind, and he would have no problem liking Kka-bi.
Yeongie oppa might not like Eun-bi, though. Maybe he’d crossed the whole of Corea to go away from Eun-bi because he hadn’t liked her as a baby. And if he still didn’t like her now that she was almost grown up, then––then––
“Don’t give Eun-seop oppa a hard time,” she told Kka-bi briskly. “He’s very kind and very soft-hearted. He cries real easily, so it’s on you if something happens to make him unhappy.”
“He sounds nice,” Kka-bi said softly. “I really want to meet him.”
“I probably won’t like your brother,” Eun-bi said, to cover for the nervous flutter of her heart. “But if he’s not a total worm then I guess he can talk to my brother.” But she hugged Kka-bi and he hugged her back and they linked pinkies to keep their promise. They would get to the bottom of the problem that had torn their brothers apart all those years ago. They would solve it. They would bring the oppas back together again.
And so when the train peeled into Busan Central station, Eun-bi got off the train and saw the handsomest man in the world, wearing his blue linen jacket and aviator shades, waiting for her.
She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again, because it was Eun-seop, but he was both less and more. His fluffy curls were gone, neatly cropped and styled. Eun-seop was always tanned and wind-burnt from all their mountain hikes and picnics. This man was sleek and sharp, with no outward flaws. His jacket was creaseless and fit him like a glove: she could never imagine him in Eun-seop’s puffy jackets and baggy trousers, the shoes with neon laces and large tortoiseshell glasses. This oppa’s whole face was serene, unreadable behind his shades. He looked like he had never smiled once in his life, and also like he’d never cried.
She turned back to the train, wondering if it was too late to climb on and return. Kka-bi had told her that other people thought Yeong was scary: “but he isn’t, you know, he just likes being reserved and living a disciplined life.” But everyone knew that ‘reserved’ and ‘disciplined’ were words that could easily mean ‘stern and ‘forbidding.’ She was out of her depth, floundering in the steamy sea air of this new city; this oppa was scary.
She scrunched her toes inside Kka-bi’s stupid leather shoes and squeezed her eyes shut, then gasped and whirled around when someone tapped her shoulder. It was the scary oppa. He was kneeling beside her.
“H-hi,” she gasped.
“Seo Kka-bi,” he said, in the quietest, calmest voice she’d ever heard in her life. “I missed you very much.” And as she looked at him, he broke out the tiniest smile, after all. It had a dimple at the corner of his lip, the opposite corner from Eun-seop’s. Eun-bi realised that she loved that smile, and also that she hadn't come all the way across the country to turn back from the most important task of her life, so she dropped her bag and jumped into his arms.
“Oh my gosh,” she said. Under the crisp sun-warmed linen and the cool nothing-smell of his hair gel he smelled exactly like Eun-seop: that was Eun-seop’s aftershave, and that was that soapy, clean oppa-smell in the crook of his neck, too. “Oh my gosh, I missed you too.”
“What’s that?” he said, and oh, he had a wonderful laugh, quiet and soft. “You go away for two weeks and come back with received pronunciation? You weren’t even in Seoul proper, little duck.”
“Oh,” she said, exhaling shakily with relief. “I––I lost a bet with someone and now I have to speak like this for the rest of the summer.” Kka-bi was going to say the same thing to Eun-seop when Eun-seop asked him what happened to the munwhaŏ, Eun-bi’s speech that set so many northerners apart from the rest of Corea. “Anyway,” she said, gaining in confidence as Yeong––Yeongie oppa––no, Yeong hyung ––led the way out of the station, taking her backpack and tucking her hand into his palm. “Anyway, you’re always telling me to speak like you and the palace school teachers. So there, hyungnim.”
“So here,” Yeong said. There was a pause as he fished for his car keys. Eun-bi’s eyes practically popped out of her head when she saw the car, a gleaming red Corvette purring like it was ready to race you to the moon if you wanted to take it there. She scrambled in, feeling a slight pang for Kka-bi. (“Eun-seop oppa will be at work when you get in,” she’d instructed him. “So take the bus from the station to the post office and wait for him in the staff room. Here’s my pass, and here’s the route in case you lose your way,” and Kka-bi had said, a little faintly, “...a bus?”)
They'd both prepared a lot of things to say to their new brothers in their first conversation, to sound smooth and convincing and very much like they belonged in each other's lives. But Eun-bi didn't need any of it, it turned out. Hyungnim didn’t talk much, and didn't even seem to notice Eun-bi after a while, which turned out to be good because she became very busy gawking at Busan city. Kka-bi had said it was big, but he hadn't said it was big, different from anywhere she’d been, even Pyongyang. It was full of things she had never seen in her life: streetcars and food and shops and buildings; and people wearing all kinds of clothes and shoes and expressions, all under a sky that was a totally different blue from the one over Baekdu, with that billowing, salty air blowing through it all. It took everything she had not to press her nose to the window, trying to breathe it all in through the glass.
“I took the bus, by myself, ” Kka-bi said in a tone of hushed awe over the phone, later. “It was amazing. Eun-bi, your village is the most amazing.”
“Your house is the most amazing,” Eun-bi replied. She was lying back on the softest mattress she’d ever known in her life, in a room that looked out on a sunny garden with a carp pond surrounded by trees with lush, dark boughs of green bowing over the water. Behind the garden were the stables, with four horses that stamped their hooves and whinnied softly when Eun-bi had run in to say hi to them, breathlessly. Kka-bi had told her their names, but not that they were so pretty, with such soft noses and clever eyes. A bunch of dogs had run up to her, barking, too, which had made her almost scared (almost; she was not a baby), but Yeong had just whistled sharply at them and told them to come back when they were better behaved, and they listened. Yeong was some kind of magician, Eun-bi thought.
Kka-bi had all the Hong Gil-dong adventure books on his bookshelf, just like she did, and there was the same poster of IU in his closet that she did back in hers, even though his closet was way smellier and his IU t-shirt wasn’t half as nice as hers. A maid had come in to draw her a bath in the gigantic bathroom and put in something that made it smell like bananas and cream. It was like a fairy tale house.
“It’s lit,” Kka-bi agreed. “How’s hyung?”
“He’s okay, I guess,” Eun-bi said, guardedly. One afternoon wasn’t anywhere close to enough time to assess him, even if he did look like he could carry the whole world on his shoulders and drove a super-cool car. “How’s oppa?”
“He fed me ramyeon,” Kka-bi said, in tones of deep reverence. “Yeong hyung’s never allowed me to eat ramyeon ever. And then he took me to the corner store where he bought me ice cream, and now he’s gone back in to lock up the post office and we’re going to ride back together to your house on a motorbike. Eun-bi, Eun-seop hyung has a motorbike!”
“I am aware,” she said, a bit sniffily. “It’s older than I am. Tae-eul eonni says it’s older than her, too.”
“It’s vintage, I like it,” he said. Then he said “Hang on,” and switched on his video. He was lying in the grass in the field behind the post office, which she recognised, because she knew the summer flowers in that field, and they were coming up all around him as he lay there, with the sun in his dumb haircut, sparkling off the spangles on Eun-bi’s third-favourite dress.
“Doryeon-nim,” a knock came at the door just then. It was the maid. “Cook says to get ready and come down quickly,” she told Eun-bi. “She’s made your favourite japchae for lunch.”
“I can’t believe you have servants,” Eun-bi told Kka-bi when the door had shut again. “Servants who call you young sir. You’re so uncool.”
“They’re just polite,” he shrugged, and then, hurriedly, “You have to be polite to them too, you can’t be rude to them! They’re hyungnim’s employees and they’re my friends.”
“What am I, some kind of snob?” Eun-bi scoffed. “Bye, I’m going to eat your japchae now.”
Kka-bi grinned. “I’m going to eat your favourite tofu stew tonight, in a diner. A real, actual diner. Eun-bi, I think we should live in your village when we get our brothers back together.”
“It’s the best,” Eun-bi agreed loyally, and she did miss home terribly over the next few days, especially at night, when the big room felt dark and lonely and the nodding trees outside cast all sorts of shadows within. School was out for the summer, so neither she nor Kka-bi were missing classes. But summer was also when she and her friends got to play outdoors all day long. They piled into each other’s houses and shared their lunches and cycled down to the drive-in theatre two villages over, where they played old kung fu movies from Hong Kong in the afternoons and gave kids free tickets as long as they bought something from the food carts.
Kka-bi had friends, too, or so he said. Eun-bi discovered that they were all away summering in St Petersburg or Srinagar or on Kilimanjaro, or going to maths summer school and ballet workshops and sketching classes, their own version of swim camps.
And Yeong, after that first day, was away all the time, too. “He's an advisor at the palace,” Kka-bi said, when she brought up the fact that he left home before she woke up and came home after she went to bed every day. “Sometimes he gets busy with crises. You know, matters of national importance.”
“But we have a matter of national importance to resolve too,” Eun-bi said impatiently. “How am I ever going to get the truth out of him if he’s never home for me to talk to?”
Maybe he’s avoiding you, the shadow of doubt in her heart whispered, but that was silly. Yeong didn’t even know she was Eun-bi and not Kka-bi.
“Eun-seop oppa––I mean, Eun-seop hyung––hasn’t said anything either,” Kka-bi told her. “He’s around all the time when he’s not at work but we’re just going bird-watching or firefly-walking or cycling in the woods or fishing in the stream, and I keep forgetting what I’m supposed to ask him.”
“Really, Kka-bi,” Eun-bi said. “A little focus, please? We don’t have much time.”
But a scolding was easier to deliver than results, and even though she practiced her speeches and questions, and set her alarm to wake up in time to eat breakfast with Yeong, for days after she arrived, all she seemed to see of him was a flash of his aviators and a swish of his long coat as he stalked out of the house on Matters of National Importance.
“What do you even do all day,” she grumbled to Kka-bi on the fourth day running that she missed him.
“I have a schedule,” Kka-bi confirmed. “With my governess.”
“Your who?” Eun-bi said.
It could have all gone very wrong, but it didn't, because it turned out that Miss Myeong Seung-ah didn’t really give Kka-bi lessons or anything. Eun-bi suspected she didn’t even pay him all that much attention, because when she turned up she just held out her hand for a high-five and said “Hey champ, I heard you swam to Japan and back at your swim meet!” when she saw Kka-bi-who-was-really-Eun-bi.
“She’s kind of distracted cos she’s writing a novel,” Kka-bi said. “Don't ever ask her when she’s going to finish it, she says that's the worst thing a human being can ever ask another human beings.”
Eun-bi followed these instructions, which were not a great hardship. Miss Myeong obligingly took writing breaks to sneak Eun-bi out in her car to go get ice-cream at their version of a corner shop, which wasn’t a corner shop at all but a fancy beach resort ten kilometres along the coast. The ice-cream was way better than the popsicles from Grocer Hong’s freezer back home, and it turned out Miss Myeong was funny and interesting and an amazing photographer to boot, and could speak English like she was an American and didn’t mind spending hours playing Legend of Zelda in battle mode. “She can deflect guardian beams mid-air,” Eun-bi told Kka-bi in low, reverent tones when they spoke. “She showed me how.”
“She’s great,” Kka-bi agreed. “Her parents tried to get her to marry Yeong hyung, which he wouldn’t do ‘cos he doesn’t want to marry a lady. And then she got in a fight with her parents and left their house and she’s writing her book and hyungnim made her my governess so she can have a regular salary and an office until she publishes it and it becomes a bestseller.”
“She’s so smart,” Eun-bi sighed. “She’s the most beautiful. Kka-bi, I think she might be more beautiful than Tae-eul eonni.”
“She is not,” Kka-bi said disloyally, having sworn eternal fealty to Jeong Tae-eul the minute he set eyes on her. Even Eun-bi had to say that this was fair. Tae-eul was severely cool by any standards she knew of. “Anyway, she’s not the most beautiful, our eomeoni was the most beautiful.”
“Yeah, but our eomeoni’s dead.”
“And next after her is that reporter on Corean Broadcasting, Miss Koo, and Miss Koo’s a tie with daebi-mama.”
“Daebi-mama?” Eun-bi asked.
It turned out that Kka-bi really hadn’t lied about taking tea with the Queen Mother.
“I think we’d better abort mission,” Eun-bi told him, faintly, after Yeong came home and said “You’re invited to tea at the palace tomorrow,” just like that, as if it was something that happened to people every other day.
“Well,” Kka-bi said. “Not every other day, she’s busy because she has a country to lead, because she says his Majesty is a rep–rip– reprobate, who only cares about maths and horses and his hair. Anyway, she’s super-chill, and she stocks the best jam biscuits in the entire galaxy for tea.”
“But she’s the Queen Mother, ” Eun-bi said. “She’s scary.”
“That’s only on TV, when she’s wearing hanbok and giving speeches,” Kka-bi reassured her, and then came up with the sensible idea that she borrow a pair of Yeong’s wireless earbuds so that she could stay on the phone with Kka-bi when she came to the palace. She listened to his voice in her ear as he described, sight unseen, the gorgeous maze of corridors and hallways through which she was escorted into the anjeon, the inner halls of the palace that were closed to everyone except the royal family and their guests. The stiff collar of Kka-bi’s jacket felt stifling as a pair of large wooden doors softly snicked shut behind her. Suddenly she could sympathise with him struggling with her lycra leggings from Emart.
“Hello,” a very tall woman said from behind a giant desk. She wore riding boots and a velvet jacket over a man’s shirt and breeches. Her dark hair, dramatically streaked with grey, was piled into a topknot. Eun-bi stared at it. It was stuck through with the dragon hairpin of the queens of Joseon, passed down from woman to woman over five hundred years. There was a picture of it in the Corean Encyclopaedia For Children.
“It’s good for stabbing people,” Queen Min said, and Eun-bi, reeling from the general aura of magnificence, said “Really?” in a voice that surprised even her with its smallness.
“Not that I’ve ever committed murder with it, but it’s pleasant to fantasise about now and again.”
Eun-bi straightened out of her bow and found that the queen had turned her head away. Her voice was rough and her eyes were suspiciously shiny, but when she turned back to face Eun-bi, she was smiling.
“Take your hyung, for example,” she said. Eun-bi blinked. “An infuriating young man even by the standards of young men. Don’t you think? Of course, he’s an angel compared to some others I could name.” She unfolded herself to her great height and moved to the tea table in a whisper of velvet and leather and Boy Chanel. “Come, let us discuss affairs of state.”
And then she really did. She told Eun-bi all about the fight the government and the opposition were having in parliament over coal mining, and about the Defence Minister and the External Affairs minister getting into an argument about the new digital security rules over dinner at the house of the Minister of Broadcasting.
She talked about the new Silk Road trade agreements and what Corea expected to get out of the negotiations. She took Eun-bi seriously when Eun-bi asked her if Corea had to be friends with China and Russia and explained the history of what she called “the neighbourhood” to her. She talked about air pollution and education subsidies and made it all seem really interesting, even though Eun-bi suspected this was not actually the case for the adults working on these issues. She even asked Eun-bi for an opinion on whether the royal household should patronise the new Busan Zoo the mayor’s office was looking to build.
“No,” Eun-bi told her firmly; she’d had four jam biscuits and two helpings of chocolate milk, served in flowery crockery that was as thin and translucent as Eun-bi's fingernail. Her courage was at an all-time high. “Animals should live in their homes, not in zoos.”
“Not every animal has a home,” daebi-mama said, gravely.
Eunbi hadn’t known that and wasn’t sure if it was true.
“But,” the queen continued, “I suppose you will say that it is our duty to make homes for them, rather than steal them away and plant them in the middle of ours.” She stretched her long legs out from under the table. “Wise as always, young one. What are your thoughts about living away from home?”
“I don’t know,” Eun-bi said, falteringly; she would give away her and Kka-bi’s secret if she wasn’t careful. “I like my home.” She was thinking about her village, of course. But daebi-mama would be thinking about Kka-bi’s grand house on the cliffs, with the garden and the carp pond and the stables with the beautiful horses.
And even though it had been just a few days, Eun-bi couldn’t exactly say she wasn’t thinking of it either. It was where Yeong was; it was where she fell asleep at the top of the stairs night after night waiting for him to come back. It didn’t feel like not-home.
Daebi-mama cast her a long look over the tops of her half-moon glasses, then unexpectedly, reached out and brushed Eun-bi’s fringe with the tips of her fingers gently.
“Never mind, my darling,” she said. “It was a preposterous question.”
“I’m your darling?” Eun-bi squeaked. Kka-bi had said he took tea with the queen mother often. He hadn’t said that the queen mother liked him. It made Eun-bi feel shy and happy and jealous all at once.
“Why, yes,” daebi-mama said. “I don’t think I’ve ever told you before, you know, but your mother was my very best friend in the whole world. So you were my darling long before you were born. And then you were born, which was awfully jolly of you, and now you’re here, and you’re scrumptious.” She leaned back and smiled. “So you see, I’m grateful for your existence, and you are and will continue to be my darling. I’d go so far as to say, given the competition, that you are unbeaten in the darling stakes.”
“Who’s the competition,” Eun-bi asked, feeling very small and also like she was big enough to leap over the sky at once. Her pulse was thrilling. Daebi-mama had known her and Kka-bi’s mother. That means she also knew that there were two of them, and also two of the oppas.
But daebi-mama got up just then, brushing biscuit crumbs off her shirtfront, and she took Eun-bi’s hand and led her to the lilypond, where they looked at the blooming flowers and the dragonflies, and daebi-mama told Eun-bi several outstanding jokes about frogs and swimming and water, and made her double over laughing and generally didn’t let Eun-bi get a word in before it was too late.
“Wait!” she said desperately, as two tall ladies in suits came, one to take the queen to her next meeting, and one to escort Eun-bi away. “Daebi-mama, wait!”
Queen Min turned around and raised a splendid dark eyebrow at Eun-bi. “I have to ask you some questions,” Eun-bi told her desperately. “Really important ones.”
The queen looked down at her for a long moment. Then she bent down and kissed the top of Eun-bi’s head.
“Forgive me, my darling,” she said. "I wish I had any answers."
It was quiet on the car ride home; Kka-bi’s phone had run out of charge long ago. Eun-bi had never felt as small and confused as she did, climbing the steps to the house on the cliff, and even though Madam Kim the housekeeper had made crab fritters and chicken stew for dinner, the most delicious things Eun-bi could ever remember eating, she found herself without an appetite. She showered and got into Kka-bi’s blue silk pajamas and went to say goodnight to Miss Myeong, who was on a hot streak writing and didn’t look up from her screen when she said goodnight back. Then she got into bed to think about what to do.
The next thing she knew was starting awake at a loud clap of thunder. It was pitch dark outside her drawn curtains, but the sound inundated every pore of the house: it was the rain, sweeping over the rocks and the churning sea below them, making a crash of water she had never heard before. She sat up in bed, then gasped as a streak of lightning cast its colourless bladed illumination over her room. She wasn’t scared of thunderstorms, not exactly; but back home it wasn’t so hard to jump out of bed between one streak of lightning and the next, diving into Eun-seop’s bed just as the thunder rolled over their heads, letting him wrap her up in his quilt and tuck her into his side, patting her back as they fell asleep again listening to the rain. But Kka-bi’s room was bigger than both hers and Eun-seop’s put together, and even if she could make it all the way out she didn’t know where Yeong was, if he was even home. Probably he wasn’t. Probably Kka-bi wasn’t half-afraid of thunderstorms at all, and never gave Yeong any trouble about it.
The lightning flashed again as Eun-bi’s door opened, and a man in a long, flaring coat entered the room. She choked back a scream. It was Yeong, and at first sight he looked as cold and sharp as the lightning itself.
But he closed the curtains against the darkness outside and turned on the night light that she’d forgotten to switch on before she got into bed, and when he came to sit down next to her he just looked tired, the ordinary sort of tired that Eun-seop got, too, at the end of a long day. He was warm and dry when he put a hand on her back and she wiggled around him like a tiny worm. For a minute, everything felt peaceful and secure.
Then she remembered her fear, and hurried to reassure him: “I’m not scared,” she said, because she needed to convince him that she wasn’t troublesome, even if she wasn’t like Kka-bi.
“No,” he said. “You’re very brave––the bravest person I know.”
She screwed one eye open and peered up at him.
“You’re brave too,” she said, when it became clear he wasn't going to speak further. “You deal with matters of national importance.”
He laughed quietly, and now that she had heard it more than once, Eun-bi knew that it wasn’t a happy laugh, not exactly.
“I’m cowardly,” he said. "About so many things."
“Like the thunder and lightning?” Eun-bi asked him, and even though she found out later that he was not, in fact, afraid of storms in the tiniest bit, he said, “Yes,” so she said, “You can sleep next to me, then,” and he smiled his tiny dimpled smile and took off his slippers and his big gleaming wristwatch. Then he wrapped his summerweight wool coat around Eun-bi and snuggled her into his side the same way she was used to with Eun-seop. She caught a whiff of his aftershave and his oppa-smell, and laid her head on his chest to listen to his deep and steady heartbeat.
“Op––I mean, hyungnim?” she said, after the next crash of thunder. “Hmmm?” he rumbled, curling an arm around her, and oh, he was safe, as safe as any house Eun-bi had been in in her whole life.
“I'm not afraid of the storm,” she murmured. Her eyes wouldn't stay open. “I'll be brave for us both, don't worry.” He didn't say anything, but when she was asleep, pulled in to the undertow of her dreams, she heard him say “Thank you, my Eun-bi.”
The next morning was bright and washed-clean, and he was waiting for her at the breakfast table in his own pajamas when she started awake and bounded downstairs, afraid she had missed him again.
“Oh,” she said, crashing to a halt when she found him waiting for her.
“Good morning,” he said gravely.
“Mornin’,” she replied. “Aren’t you going to work?”
“I feel like playing truant today,” he said. “Why should you be the only one in this house who has a holiday?”
What is going on!!!!! Eun-bi texted Kka-bi. IDK!!! Kka-bi texted back. He never takes days off!!!!! One time he had the flu and Gamma had to carry him back home!!!!
WHICH HORSE IS GAMMA!!!! Eun-bi asked, but there was no time to pursue the matter, because they were going out, on a trip, into the city.
Once they were both dressed in their jeans and black shirts, Yeong lent her a pair of his sunglasses, and then Miss Myeong drove them into Busan proper. Yeong was indescribably cool. He took Eun-bi to the pier, where they went for a walk through a botanical garden and ended up at a fancy restaurant on a boat, where he allowed her to order a pina colada. (“Virgin,” he intercepted the waiter to say, which puzzled Eun-bi: “I don't want olive oil in it,” she told him, but the waiter assured her there would be none. He wasn't lying, because it tasted dope when it came.) Then they went to the Corean Museum of Natural History where they spent the morning looking at dinosaur and whale skeletons and mouldy old rocks that turned out to be millions of years old, older than Baekdu-san even, Yeong told her.
It was a golden day: a bejewelled day. Yeong was heaps of fun, in a totally different way from Eun-seop. He didn't talk so much, and he always paused to consider his answers when she asked him questions. He made jokes that you would miss if you didn't keep your ears open, and some of them made Eun-bi giggle because they were mean, but they were mean in the same way that she was mean.
Yeong was even better at listening than he was at talking, and he heard Eun-bi through as she told him everything on her mind, all the things daebi-mama had told her and all her feelings on the horses and dogs; and then, because Eun-seop knew everything about her but Yeong knew nothing, she told him her deepest and most important opinions about The Legend of Zelda and IU and the Pyongyang Panthers baseball team, her favourite. She was going to see them on her next birthday, Eun-seop had promised--
“Seo Kka-bi?” Yeong prompted her. But she kept quiet about that.
They had kimchippang and corn dogs at a street cart for lunch. Then he took her shopping, which was even better than the dinosaur museum. She got to run around and make Yeong buy her a ton of things, from a new Zelda case for her phone to the fourth and newest Shieldmaidens Of The Blue Dragon book, which would take weeks to come to the only bookshop in the village. He got her a new pair of Dooly sneakers to replace the ones Kka-bi had taken.
“Op––hyungnim,” she said, boldly. “Can I have a leather jacket?” It was a test; Eun-seop had always said no because no one else in the village had one. But Yeong only said, “In high summer?” and then shrugged and said, “Why not? We'll probably get it at sale price,” and took her to a frighteningly large and expensive department store and bought her one, just like that. It was her dream come true, except for the fact that the shop also had a puffy, spangly sea-green tutu that was the most beautiful thing in the history of the solar system, and she wanted it very extremely badly, except she couldn’t have it on account of how she was in Kka-bi’s body and Kka-bi didn’t wear tutus.
“Looking good,” Yeong said, when she put on her new leather jacket and did a little twirl for him. “Now, what else would you like?”
“That poufy ballet skirt looks pretty great,” Miss Myeong piped up, from where she was typing away on her phone on the bench outside the fitting room.
“It does,” Eun-bi said sadly. “But boys don’t wear ballet skirts.”
“Sure they do,” Miss Myeong said. “Don’t they, Mister Seo?” And Yeong nodded solemnly and said, “Why don’t we both get a skirt?” and that was how Eun-bi got both a leather jacket and a sea-green tutu, and Miss Myeong pursed her lips critically and ran her fingers through the racks of the grown-ups’ section before she pulled out a long, gauzy black skirt and held it up against Yeong. “Suits you,” she told him.
“Put it on my card,” he said, and then Miss Myeong made them put on the skirts over their jeans and posed them both against a wall outside the store in the late afternoon sun and took pictures, saying things like “Give me tough!” “Give me cute!” “Give me a little Hell’s Angel––here, Kka-bi, put on that leather jacket, perfect, perfect. Blue steel, babies!”
It was the best day of Eun-bi’s whole entire life, and she wasn’t ready for it to be over when they piled into the backseat of Miss Myeong’s car, surrounded by loads and mounds, acres of shopping bags. She burrowed into Yeong’s side, feeling the rumble of his laugh as she reached out to tickle his ribs.
“What should we do now?” he asked, putting an arm around her and walking up the driveway when they got home. “Should we get jjajangmyeon and play a game?”
“Rocket League!” Eun-bi shouted, and he laughed and said, “Done. Go get washed and changed, I’ll be down in just a minute,” and disappeared into his office while Miss Myeong went to put away all their purchases and tidy up Kka-bi’s room, and that was when the front door opened with no warning at all and an exceedingly tall man in a long, gaudy coat popped in, with his hair falling in his eyes.
“Yeongie, I'm home, the IJM's accepted my paper for peer review!” he called, and then looked at Eun-bi, cocked his head, and said, “Who are you?”
“I’m Seo Kka-bi,” Eun-bi said, narrowing her eyes. “Who the heck are you?”
“I am the king of Corea,” Lee Gon said, “and you are a big fat liar.”
“‘Gamma’ is code for Gon hyung,’” Kka-bi said when they got him on the line, much, much later. “Hi, hyungnim.”
“Don’t ‘hi, hyungnim,’ me, I’m your king,” Lee Gon said sternly, peering into the screen. “Stand up and let me see you properly. All limbs intact? Good. Show me your ears, did the kidnappers snip them off? Vultures peck out your liver?”
“Vultures don’t eat living people,” Eun-bi hissed, embarrassed for herself and Kka-bi, and for the whole entire nation of Corea.
“I’m not kidnapped, hyung,” Kka-bi said peaceably. “It’s really pretty here and the food slays and Eun-seop hyung, I mean Eun-seop oppa, is great.”
“Of that, I have my doubts,” Gon muttered. “Now talk, you two. What is the meaning of all this?”
It was late evening, and Eun-bi had spent the last few hours in a state of terror that could only be described as the exact opposite of the beatitude of her day out. Lee Gon was the exact opposite of his mother, in that Queen Min was awesome and cool and beautiful and Lee Gon was hopeless and mean and looked like three wannabe popstars stuffed into a silk greatcoat.
In her desperation to stop him from spilling the beans to Yeong, Eun-bi had clung to his elbow while he tried to shake her off and, lurching as he swung her around like a kitten, saying, “Hush, you can’t tell Yeongie oppa, you can’t!”
“I don’t have to listen to you,” he said. “In fact, as I am supreme overlord of the land, I’m pretty sure you have to listen to me.”
She plastered herself to his side, then swiped open her phone and showed him the picture of her and Kka-bi standing side by side in the bathroom of the boys’ dorm at swim camp, each holding up one of her chopped-off braids.
“This is not adequate proof of life,” Lee Gon had said, as though Eun-bi were some kind of murderer. “Get him on the line.”
Yeong’s footstep sounded on the stairs just then, and Eun-bi clung to Gon’s coattails and said “Not now, later, I promise, I promise!” and he’d looked down his long nose at her with extreme suspicion, but when Yeong said, “Majesty,” in a surprised voice, he only looked away and smiled brightly.
“Where’ve you been?” he said. “I went home to look for you but they said you were out for the day.”
“Kka-bi and I were having a holiday,” Yeong said.
“Without me?” Lee Gon said. “I see how it is,” and Yeong laughed, in a way that Eun-bi suspected he only laughed around Lee Gon. “Kka-bi,” he said, “let’s do Rocket League another day,” and then he led them down to the sea and they went sailing, in a little speedboat with an actual sail and everything, and watched the sunset from the boat before they came back to shore and climbed up to the house. “Come help me in the kitchen, Kka-bi,” Gon had said when they got in, and so they’d sent Yeong off to shower and dress for dinner while Gon took charge of a bag of oysters and set up the grill in the backyard to cook them up. It could have been a very fun party and the food was objectively extremely delicious, but Eun-bi's appetites were wholly suppressed by nerves.
She’d sat on tenterhooks all evening, toying with the idea of looking up ‘how to poison oysters accidentally on purpose.’ But then she saw Yeong laughing that rare laugh of his, deep in conversation with Lee Gon about something that only the two of them understood and that mattered only to them. Anything she did would necessarily have to take Yeong’s happiness into consideration, and contrary to all logic, Lee Gon appeared to make Yeong happy.
“Obviously I do,” Gon frowned as she recounted a version of these events on the call with Kka-bi at bedtime. They were in her bedroom, pretending to play Zelda while Yeong took a call in his office. “We’ve been best friends since the day my father died and Yeong, aged four, thought the best way to comfort me was to offer me a cookie in the middle of the mourning rites.”
“You ate a cookie when your dad died?” Eun-bi asked, shocked.
“I might have,” Gon said. “But Eun-seop sneaked up and took it for himself, and then Yeong chased him around the courtyard trying to get it back for me.” He huffed a laugh to himself. “It caused quite a distraction amidst the adults.”
Kka-bi peered at him through the phone just as Eun-bi lifted her eyes to his, beseechingly. “What?” Gon said.
“Tell us the story,” Eun-bi said.
Lee Gon opened his mouth to speak, but just then Kka-bi’s phone screen fell with a noisy clatter as a voice said “Hey puppy, what did your oppa say about screen ti––?”
“No!” they heard Kka-bi gasp.
“No what?” “Not my ph––mmmmph!”
The screen went dark for a moment. Then it righted itself, and Eun-bi gasped.
“Oh my god,” It was Jeong Tae-eul, peering into the screen. “Oh, my god.”
“Hi Tae-eul eonni,” Eun-bi said, totally defeated. Really, this might as well have happened. “It’s me.”
“Jesus, Buddha and all the spirits, Eun-bi––I mean, Kka-bi––I mean, other twin,” Tae-eul said. “Are you okay? What are you doing with a Lee Gon impersonator?”
For a moment, everyone was dumbstruck. Tae-eul jogged the phone impatiently in her hand. “Hello?”
“That’s not an impersonator,” Kka-bi, sitting next to her, piped up.
“Hi, Tae-eul eonni,” Lee Gon, gazing at the screen in wonder, said. Jeong Tae-eul scowled at him, nostrils flaring.
“I’m going to need some explanations,” she said.
“I’m really not an impersonator,” Lee Gon said, still gazing at her. A silly smile had curled up on his face. “Though there is a singular chance that my whole life leading to this moment has passed in a dream.”
“Are you soft in the head?” Tae-eul demanded. “Start talking, or I’ll sic my cop pals in Busan on to you.”
“You know cops in Busan?” Lee Gon said, smiling. “That’s one way to begin your life here, I suppose.”
“Gon hyungnim,” Kka-bi interjected, seeing that the conversation was about to spiral out of control. “The story.”
“Ah,” Gon said, and seemed to return to himself. He looked at Eun-bi next to him, and then at Kka-bi.”
“You are Jo Eun-bi and Jo Kka-bi,” he told them.
“No, I’m Yeo Eun-bi,” Eun-bi said. “He’s Seo Kka-bi. Our brothers are Yeo Eun-seop and Seo Yeong.”
But it turned out that this wasn’t the truth. “Your brothers were born into the Jo clan, and grew up all over the country, because your parents were serving in the forces,” Gon told them. “They both joined the Naval Academy straight out of school, just as your parents were transferred to Seoul. That’s where you both were born––the happiest day of your parents’ and brothers’ lives.” He smiled softly. “I remember visiting you both in the hospital. My mother was the first person after your parents to hold you. She gave you your names, you know.”
“Daebi-mama was our eomeoni’s best friend,” Eun-bi said to Kka-bi. “She told me.”
“She must have been sad when eomeoni died,” Kka-bi said sympathetically. “I would be sad if my friend died in an accident. That’s why Yeong hyung never lets me cross the road alone.”
“An accident? No, silly, eomeoni fell ill with a fever and died,” Eun-bi said, scornfully. “And so did abeoji. That’s why Eun-seop oppa never lets me leave the house without a raincoat.”
“Er,” Tae-eul said. All three of them looked at Gon.
“Death,” Gon said delicately, “is a matter of interpretation.”
“No?” Tae-eul said. “It isn’t? Death is very much not a matter of interpretation, it’s the one thing in human life that is not––” She broke off, glaring at Gon, who was looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “You really are a charlatan.”
“Look, do you want to hear your brothers’ story or no?” Gon said, and Eun-bi and Kka-bi said “Yes!” in chorus.
“Then be quiet and let me continue,” he said.
“Yeong and Eun-seop were devastated when your parents died, as you might imagine. Your mother and father had eloped, and didn’t have any close living relations, so they were suddenly alone in the world with the two of you to care for. It was a terribly hard time, wracked with grief and regret. And because of that, they had a big fight––the first and last fight they ever had in their lives. You see, your parents had been working on a top-secret security issue. That’s––” he stopped and frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t know how to explain that to nine-year olds.”
“Matters of national importance,” Eun-bi said. She waved a hand at him. “Go on.”
“Thank you,” he said. “These matters had earned your parents some dangerous enemies, and both your brothers knew that. Eun-seop thought the best way to protect you both from people with bad intentions was to go into hiding, far away in the countryside. He wanted to bring you up in a small and peaceful place where no one knew you, and very few new people went. But Yeong brought you to Busan, Kka-bi, because it was where he could use the family money to build you a safe house, and give you a secure childhood where you could have everything your heart desired.”
“Eun-seop hyung was right,” Kka-bi said, reflectively.
“Yeongie oppa was right too,” Eun-bi said.
“They brought up two cool kids,” Tae-eul, who’d been quiet all along, said. She put her hand in Kka-bi’s hair and ruffled it affectionately. “So they were both right, in their way.”
“Maybe,” Gon said. “But the fight drove them apart for good, and once they’d both chosen the lives they wanted for you, they decided not to meet, for fear that they would be tracked and you’d all be discovered. That’s why they changed their names. Eun-seop vanished from his old world and everything he knew, and Yeong––” Gon’s mouth curled up in a smile again, but this time it was thin and unhappy. “My Yeong gave up his life and identity, and came to work at the palace so that he could draw the protection of the crown around himself and, by extension, you.” His mouth quirked. “One of you.”
“I’m sad for them now,” Kka-bi said.
“Yes, this is all very dramatic and terrible,” Tae-eul said, “and I’m still not sure my buddy Eun-seop is actually the kind of guy who can hold a grudge for eight whole years––”
“He’s not,” Gon said. “Not by nature or upbringing, and especially not where Yeong’s concerned.”
“They don’t––they don’t hate each other, right?” Kka-bi asked, haltingly.
“Your brothers?” Gon said, and for the fraction of a moment Eun-bi had to revise her opinion of his dumb face, because it got soft and kind of glowy, like whatever he was thinking of was warming him up from the inside out.
“Yeong and Eun-seop are the sun in each other’s skies,” Gon told them. “And when you were born you became their shining stars. There aren’t two people in the world who hate each other less, or love you more.”
They were all quiet for a minute.
“So,” Tae-eul asked, curiously, “now that the water’s flown under the bridge why can’t the two of them just meet?”
“That’s what we wanted to inves––investimate–– find out, ” Eun-bi said, through the tangle of her feelings. “I’m sad for them too.”
“They’ve been very brave,” Gon said softly.
“They’ve been super dumb, ” Eun-bi said. “I would never stay mad at you for eight years, Kka-bi.”
“No, me neither,” Kka-bi agreed. “I guess they’re dumb about family even though they’re real smart about everything else. I mean, they didn’t even figure out we were each other.”
This time it was Gon and Tae-eul who shot each other speaking looks through the screen. “Oh, boy,” Tae-eul said. “I don’t know how to break this to you kids.”
“Yeong figured out who you were the minute he set eyes on you,” Gon said.
“Eun-seop did, too,” Tae-eul said. “So did everyone else in the village, by the way. Eun-seop got in touch with your swimming camp and figured out what happened pretty soon. Everyone’s been keeping quiet to see what you were up to.”
The news struck them like a hammer.
“We’ve been deceived?” Eun-bi said, confused.
“You came to deceive,” Tae-eul said solemnly. “You were deceived in turn.”
“It was meant to be a secret,” Kka-bi said. “That was the whole point. We were going to spring a surprise on them and make them meet to switch us back!”
“I feared you would say that,” Gon interjected. “Your grasp of strategy leaves much to be desired.”
“You’re both brave, good children,” Tae-eul hugged Kka-bi, and gave Gon the stink eye.
“I mean, honestly,” Gon told Eun-bi. “Quite apart from the fact that your brothers were trained to be elite intelligence operatives, the chief element of any surprise attack is speed.” He shook his head. “Have you even paid attention to your Sun Tzu?”
“I don’t pay attention to crusty old bores,” Eun-bi, who had only a hazy idea of who Sun Tzu was, shot back. “Have you even read all the Shieldmaidens of the Blue Dragon books?”
“The time to have caught Yeong by surprise was the minute you got off the train,” Gon went on, unperturbed. “You ought to have waylaid him and insisted that he take you back to your home. Meanwhile Kka-bi should have pulled the same lightning manoeuvre the minute he spotted Eun-seop. You’d have taken away home advantage for both of them, destabilised any ideas they might have had in the short-term, and achieved victory.”
“Sun Tzu,” Tae-eul snorted under her breath.
“They’re wise to you now,” Gon said. “They’ve had time to think about their next moves.”
“They’ve been playing us,” Kka-bi agreed, sadly. Eun-bi couldn’t speak. Her heart had plummeted into her socks.
“Cheer up, bunnies,” Tae-eul said, sympathetically. “We’ll think of something.”
“No need,” Gon said. “I already have.” He beamed at Tae-eul. “That is, if I may have the co-operation of Kka-bi’s babysitter.”
“I’m a taekwondo master,” Tae-eul said, as soon as they met. “I’m not a babysitter, I was doing Eun-seop a favour when I looked in on Kka-bi last night.”
“And you’re doing me one right now,” Gon said, and then covered whatever he meant to say with a cough and a flip of his hair. “Cadets, ahoy.”
“Ahoy!” Eun-bi and Kka-bi said, holding hands. Gon came to stand in front of them and put his hands behind his back. “Mission Oppa is go,” he said.
It was the morning after their long explanatory phone call, and they were in Seoul, putting Gon’s brilliant plan into action. “We’ve lost one chance at surprising them,” he’d explained, “so we’ve just got to create another. You’ve both got to run away from home.”
“How dare you,” Tae-eul had said, covering Kka-bi’s ears.
"Obviously, you’ll be accompanied by trusted chaperones,” Gon clarified. “Kka-bi, you leave the village on the first train out to Seoul. Eun-bi and I will drive up from here. Your brothers will wake to discover that you’re nowhere to be seen. They will simultaneously have a meltdown and power straight into battle mode. But before they can rampage through the provinces and turn Corea upside down, we shall rendezvous in Seoul, where we meet at the Gwanghwamun Gate.”
“Oh, I’ve always wanted to see it!” Eun-bi said.
“Just so. There, under the statue of King Sejong, each of you will take a selfie and send it to a brother apiece, with a text saying: Miss you, come get me!
“Then we repair to the royal suite of the Hotel Heonjong, and eat breakfast while we await their arrival. As they are steaming into the city, we will have proceeded to the new exhibition of the lady Saimdang’s works at the Museum of Joseon while we await them. They arrive in tandem. The halls of the museum are clear since I, your king-emperor, am in attendance.”
“It’s a Monday,” Tae-eul said. “The national museums are closed to the public, anyway.”
“We duck into the passageways off the Inks & Stonepaints gallery and watch as they approach each other. Overcome with shock and emotion, they fall into each other’s arms. We join them. Voilà, your family is reunited, you get to meet both your oppas at once, and an eight-year mistake is repaired.” Gon beamed. “We can go to lunch afterwards,” he told Tae-eul. “There’s a new Chinese restaurant in Jongno that’s been getting rave reviews for weeks.”
“Are you asking me out on a date?” Tae-eul said. “While we’re trying to stitch a broken family back together?”
“Rather better than doing so when breaking a family apart, I should think,” Gon said. “À propos, I do hope you aren’t in a serious relationship right now, though naturally arrangements can be made should that be the case.”
“Eun-bi,” Tae-eul remarked to her, “I’m going along with this plan, but only because I want to rescue you from this man.”
Eun-bi had privately nurtured several doubts over the efficacy of any plan made by a man who looked and talked like Lee Gon, but even she couldn’t deny that it was very dope to ride all the way up to Seoul in the fanciest car she’d ever been in, even nicer than Yeong’s Corvette; and it was super-duper amazeballs to see Tae-eul, and to hug Kka-bi tightly because she’d missed him even though they hadn't known each other for all that long, and were mostly long-distance siblings even after they'd met.
The selfies at Gwanghwamun duly went through and elicited perfect reactions. Gon even got a call on his phone from Yeong. “Hi, bestie,” he’d said with a bright, cheerful smile, which progressively diminished at the sound of whatever Yeong had to say to him on the other end of the line. “Yes, Yeongie,” Gon said meekly, and then “No, Yeongie,” and then “No, of course not, Yeong,” and then, “Oh no, we’re quite safe, we have a taekwondo master protecting us.”
He didn’t say anything for several long moments afterwards, and, indeed, was a bit morose when the call ended. But it didn’t matter, because Eun-bi and Kka-bi got to eat scones and jam and Victoria sponge cake for breakfast, in addition to eggs and orange juice and bacon and chicken porridge, and they practically had to be rolled into the museum. They’d barely looked at the lady Saimdang’s paintings before Gon got an alert on his phone, and said, “It’s time! Duck!”
They dashed into an alcove just as Gon ushered Tae-eul into a facing niche, at the sound of quick, light footsteps. “Oppa”, Eun-bi whispered, as Eun-seop walked into the gallery, frowning. “Jeong Tae-eul?” he called. “Eun-bi?” And then, after a pause, softer: “Kka-bi? Where are you?”
He reached the end of the gallery, then whirled around as if on instinct. The twins watched, hearts in their mouth, as he turned to face--
“Hyungnim,” Kka-bi whimpered.
They were nothing like each other, except that it was plain to anyone who saw them that they were, after all, these two. They were one soul in two bodies; it showed in their faces and the identical looks of quiet devastation upon them. It was in the hands that Eun-seop lifted, trembling, to smooth down Yeong's collar, and in the tremble of Yeong’s own as he caught Eun-seop’s outstretched palms in his own.
“Where have you been?” Yeong asked. “Why did you go away?”
“Why didn't you call me back?” Eun-seop asked. “I waited for you for so long.”
“I was scared,” Yeong said, which made Kka-bi’s eyes fill with tears. “I was so scared without you.”
“I've been so lonely without you,” Eun-seop said, as tears started in his own eyes.
“It was my fault,” Yeong bowed his head and said. “I should have--”
“You didn't know,” Eun-seop said. “We neither of us knew. Yeongie--”
“It was because of me,” Yeong said, head still bowed, so that they couldn't see his expression. “Abeoji and eomeoni--”
“--died because of me,” Eun-seop said. “Because if you blame yourself then you have to blame me too, don't you? I was the one who decrypted Lee Lim's messages.”
“I was the one driving us back home,” Yeong said. "I was too slow."
“You didn't shoot abeoji, Jo Yeong," Eun-seop said. “You didn't take eomeoni--” and then his tears were overflowing, and he and Yeong were in each other's arms, crying. “We didn't deserve that, and neither did they, and most of all the babies didn't deserve it.”
Eun-bi was dimly aware that her palm was squeezed tight in Kka-bi's, and that it felt clammy and cold. Spots were dancing before her vision, and she felt like throwing up. Shot. Taken. Suddenly she did not want anyone to look at her face, either. She stole a look from beneath her bangs at the alcove across the way, where Gon and Tae-eul were crouched. Gon looked pale and distressed, and Tae-eul, stricken, was staring at Eun-bi and Kka-bi. She tilted her head as she watched them.
“Eun-bi,” Kka-bi whispered in her ear, squeezing her hand hard.
A frown started to form at the centre of Tae-eul’s forehead.
“Let’s go, I feel sick,” Kka-bi said. Eun-bi looked at Tae-eul and at Gon, and then off to the side of the two men at the centre of the gallery at whom it was suddenly impossible to look directly.
“Me too,” she said, squeezed his hand back, and then they turned their back on the adults and ran, just as Tae-eul called out: “Wait––!”
They didn’t wait; they scrambled through the corridor and banged the old wrought-iron gate shut over the entry just as the grown-ups started behind them. “The lift!” Kka-bi gasped, and slammed his hand against the elevator behind them. They got in and closed the doors just as Gon got the wrought-iron gate unlatched and dashed towards them, calling “Children, listen––”
“He’ll take the stairs,” Eun-bi said. “He’ll be waiting for us at the bottom.”
“We’ll run in separate directions, they’ll have to split up,” Kka-bi said. “Go to the girls’ toilet and climb out of the window, the front gate isn’t far from there. I’ll go down to the basement, there’s a staff lift there, hyungnim showed it to me when we came here last year. I’ll come up and jam the doors behind me. Meet me at the Sejong statue across the road!”
She nodded, and they got on their mark and set to run as soon as the lift opened. They’d been right, there was someone waiting for them at the bottom, but it wasn’t their brothers, and it wasn’t Tae-eul, not even Gon. It was someone who threw a bag over their heads as soon as they raced out, and tripped them up and bound them and threw them into the back of a car, and that was how Eun-bi and Kka-bi got kidnapped.
“Excuse me?”
“We’re fine now,” Kka-bi says. “They had to keep it out of the news, but we didn’t even get hurt, and we got found. Obviously.”
“Yes, and we went to therapy to address the trauma,” Eun-bi adds. “So we’re not problem children or anything. I mean, we are, but Auntie Min says that’s just our inherent devilry.”
They were in a cold, dark room for many hours, thrown like little sacks amongst a heap of empty boxes. It wasn’t easy to tell time, or how it passed. The warehouse was deadly quiet, except for the sobs of their own breaths and the small, scurrying sounds of insects around them. Eun-bi couldn’t help it; she was crying after a while, and it was all she could do to scoot close to Kka-bi and cower beside him, trying to stay warm and together.
They’d both dozed off when someone crouched beside them, but though they gasped awake and shrank in fear, the touch was gentle, not quite familiar but not quite dangerous.
“Be very quiet and listen to me,” a low voice said. “You’re in a warehouse outside Seoul. If I open the doors and hit the men guarding you can you sneak out, the way you did in the museum this morning, and run very fast to the main street?”
“Y-yes,” Kka-bi said, teeth chattering.
“It’s a long way down the road, but you have to keep going until you find a police station and call the palace,” the low voice said. “Tell them your names––your true names, Jo Eun-bi and Jo Kka-bi––and ask to speak to Auntie Min. She’ll keep you safe, alright?”
“Not this time, I’m afraid,” a new voice said, as the doors of the warehouse were flung open in every direction, letting in floods of neon light from the yard outside. Masked men with guns poured through and took up positions at the exits. They were pointing their guns at Eun-bi and Kka-bi––or no, at the person, the woman, helping them.
“Young Master Jo,” the cold voice said. “Miss Jo.” It belonged to a cold man with a smiling face, suspiciously, threateningly smooth and youthful. “We never seem to meet in congenial circumstances.”
“Leave them alone, Lee Lim,” the woman beside them said. She had hollow cheeks and deep shadows under her eyes, and her hair, which was cut even shorter than the twins’s, was a shock of silver. But her voice was calm, and as she stepped in front of Eun-bi and Kka-bi they could see that she was very strong, and very determined. “It’s me you’re after.”
“It grieves me to disagree with a lady,” Lee Lim said, “but on that count I must plead not guilty, Colonel Choi. After all, it is I after whom you have been, for all these years.”
“Let them go, and we can debate it in a courtroom,” Colonel Choi said, still calm. She had a pistol stuck in her waistband. Eun-bi had to put her bound hands over her mouth to stifle a scream.
“My business is not meant to be picked apart by my inferiors in a courtroom,” Lee Lim said, with contempt. “Nor by plebeians in militaries and bureaucracies. Not even, forgive me, by a plebeian as extraordinary as yourself.” Colonel Choi’s hands crept ever so slowly behind her back as he advanced on her, standing in front of Eun-bi and Kka-bi.
“And yet, for the last eight years, you have followed me around the world, upsetting my plans and plundering my works,” he said, his voice low and quiet, at odds with the menace on his face. “I shan’t grudge you; a great man must have a great adversary. But I’m tired of circling my rightful place on the throne. You must be tired of keeping me at bay, too. I wouldn’t go for that gun if I were you, by the way: we must, quite literally, think of the children.” Quick as thought, he flicked out a hand, the one holding a slim, elegant cane, and brought it to rest on Colonel Choi’s collarbone. This time Eun-bi did squeal: there was a blade extending out of it, thin and deadly.
Colonel Choi put her hands up slowly.
“But of course, you are thinking of the children,” Lee Lim said, drawing close. The sound of several safety catches going off filled the room: his goons were aiming at Colonel Choi and at Eun-bi and Kka-bi, in warning if they tried anything on their master. “I could let them go, after they have seen you die. But I’m a reasonable man, Colonel Choi, and the age of collective punishment is gone: I’m not looking to punish them for thwarting me.” He dug the blade into her skin, and a thin line of red sprang up and ran along the length of the steel.
“Stop it,” Kka-bi said.
“It’s you I want to punish,” he said. “And so you’ll see them die––”
“Stop it!” Eun-bi said, louder.
“––and then my dear sister-in-law will see you die, and last of all, my unworthy nephew will see––do not interrupt me when I am speaking, brats!” he said, raising his voice and his arm.
But he had left it too late, and Colonel Choi was faster than him as she ducked under him to take the blow meant for the children, then twisted his arm and wrenched his head back, staggering under his weight as he became a human shield against the bullets of his henchmen. “Run!” she panted, as another door burst open, and Tae-eul’s voice, frantic, called, “Eun-bi! Kka-bi!” She came in like a tornado, armed with a crowbar, roundhouse kicking her way through the henchmen at the back.
From the door behind Lee Lim, Gon stalked in with a sword in hand; the great Four Tiger sword of the monarchs of Joseon. Behind him, their own weapons in hand, Yeong and Eun-seop fanned out, with flint in their eyes and steady, deadly hands, intimidating their way through the men trying to stop them from getting to Eun-bi and Kka-bi.
“Lee Lim,” Gon called, and there was something as cold and dreadful in his voice as there was in Lee Lim’s own. “You are out of time, and have strayed very far from your place. Now you are subject to my justice.” He looked around and spotted Eun-bi and Kka-bi. “No,” he said, almost to himself. “Our justice.”
Yeong and Eun-seop both saw the woman who had taken Lee Lim captive at the same time, and both of them froze, as surely as they’d been cast in ice.
“Boys,” the white-haired woman breathed, and for the first time, her voice sounded unsteady. “My boys?”
Gon, hearing her voice, stopped in his tracks too. His grip on the sword wavered, and his eyes misted over suddenly.
“Auntie Ji-yeon?” he said.
“Okay, hold on,” Inspector Kang Hyeon-min says.
“And then––yes?” Eun-bi says.
“Are you telling me your mother is Choi Ji-yeon?” he says. “As in Colonel Choi Ji-yeon? National heroine Choi Ji-yeon, who brought the traitor Lee Lim to trial and condemned him to life imprisonment on the strength of her testimony? Recipient of the Order of the Gold Cheok, honorary dean of the Military Intelligence Academy, the RAF's most accomplished test pilot of the 1990s Choi Ji-yeon?”
“I mean,” Kka-bi says modestly, “she’s just our mum.”
Inspector Kang takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“I admit,” he says, “you had me for a bit there.” He puts his glasses back on. “Your accents are pretty north and south, you’re good at those. You’re both unmistakably family by birth. Queen Mother Min is best friends with Colonel Choi––”
He frowns; he knows that only because his own mother works at the palace, and is sometimes on hospitality duty in the inner court.
“I know Jeong Tae-eul from the NPU, before she dropped out,” he continues. He stops and frowns deeper; Tae-eul does seem to be in Busan very often these days. “Are you,” he asks the children, and then stops. “Is she––?”
“Dating his Majesty? Yeah,” Eun-bi says. “She was going to hold out but she’s never dated a really tall guy before and it’s always been on her bucket list.”
“And she and Auntie Min loved each other when they met, so now Auntie Min's told his Majesty that he has to be on his best behaviour and do everything in his power to persuade Tae-eul noona to marry him, or Auntie Min is going to make his cousin Se-jin the ruler,” Kka-bi says.
“Why are you telling me all this?” Inspector Kang Hyeon-min says, in a tone of deep concern, with something of a pleading note in his words.
“Well,” Eun-bi says. She looks at her watch. Then she looks at Kka-bi. Then she looks back at Inspector Kang and smiles. “We like you. We’ve liked you from the time you came to our class to give us a lesson on civic law and order.”
“You were really fun and smart,” Kka-bi agrees. “And you seem like you’re brave and cool, too. We chilled with your mum when we went to the palace for tea one time, and she was really nice to us. She told us all about your Prime Minister’s Medal for Bravery and your community policing efforts and that you play the guitar really well. And Tae-eul noona says you were the cleverest guy she met in the whole entire police academy and she wouldn't have dropped out if more future cops were going to be like you.”
“Thanks,” Inspector Kang said. “I think.”
“Eomeoni had to be in the hospital a lot after she came back, but she's better now,” Eun-bi says. “We've been going to school regularly this year. Eun-seop oppa’s on leave from the Corean Postal Service while he's finishing his degree in computer science. He's dating Miss Myeong.”
“He doesn’t know it,” Kka-bi explains. “He thinks it’s one-sided love but it isn’t.”
“So that leaves Yeongie oppa,” Eun-bi says. “He’s very busy and important these days, he’s heading up the palace’s task force on domestic security.”
“But he still has lots of time for us, he’s a great brother and friend and son, everyone says so,” Kka-bi says. “He has lots of interests outside work, he goes riding and sailing and he runs half-marathons on weekends. Oh, and he’s learning to cook from eomeoni, he’s getting quite good at it.”
“And he has that gruff outside but soft inside thing going on, like you, you’ll totally relate,” Eun-bi says.
“Did you just,” Inspector Kang says, “pretend to be lost children and come all the way into town, then sneak out of the public safety area and come to find me in the Violent Crimes Division, on my desk reporting day ––” he pauses and tries to come to grips with the situation, “––to tell me that your brother, if he is really your brother, is handsome and successful and has a great personality?”
The twins are quiet for a moment. “I think you inferred some stuff,” Kka-bi says. “But essentially, yes.”
“And you told me a bunch of state secrets in the bargain.”
“You’re a responsible civil servant,” Eun-bi says. “We trust you.” “And no one will believe you if you tell them, anyway,” Kka-bi adds.
“This is all very ridiculous,” Inspector Kang says.
Eun-bi looks at her watch again, and taps her foot.
“Any minute now,” Kka-bi says.
“Any minute what?” Inspector Kang says, and then understands immediately when the most beautiful man in the world sweeps into his office, dressed from head to toe in black. He makes a beeline for the kids, who jump up happily to wrap him up in hugs as soon as they see him.
“Why are you in Haeundae?” he asks, and Inspector Kang feels a bell striking deep in his soul at the sound of his voice. “How did you get here, are you alright?”
“We got lost,” one of the little devils says, and the other says, “But we’re fine, Inspector Kang rescued us!”
“Thank you very much for that,” their unsuspecting brother says to Kang Hyeon-min. He bows and holds out a hand, and Hyeon-min is suddenly flooded with a warm and protective urge. He can’t say if he wants to protect the children from their terrible family, or if he wants to protect Jo Yeong from his terrorising siblings, but he thinks this is a chance he just might have to take.
“You’re welcome,” he says, and holds his own hand out.