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Friends, family, and readers know I’m all about K-Dramas, especially ones set in the Joseon period. I’ve watched so many, they tend to run together sometimes.
Korean Gold
The Left State Councilor and the Right State Councilor were in cahoots. The Grand Queen Dowager, the Queen Dowager, the Queen, and the Crown Princess had formed an alliance. The King, the Crown Prince, the Crown Prince’s brothers and his sisters and his cousins and his aunts were all on the same page. The Confucians were at one with everybody else, scholars and aristocrats agreed on everything.
The middle class and the slaves, the butchers and the executioners, the merchants and the moneylenders felt the pressure of peace.
“This won’t do,” the bookseller/smuggler with the mole on his face said. “Without councilors sending secret warriors all dressed alike and with masks on their faces, we hardly know what to do with ourselves in the back alleys and abandoned residences.”
“Exactly,” agreed a devastatingly handsome bandit with flowing black hair bound up in a flowing black scarf. “I suppose I could slip into an aristocrat’s house and steal myself a bride.”
A cheeky maidservant smacked his arm. “Not when nobody will try to stop the Secret Royal Inspector from getting to the bottom of it. You’ll be bang in prison before you can say tteokbokki, with no one to disguise himself as a guard and try to feed you poison.”
They sat in disgruntled silence for a while. It had been weeks since anyone had forced a Royal to jump off a cliff into a raging river. The town official hadn’t even claimed that the Crown demanded a tribute of seven unavailable animals per person, or that everybody had to get married before the end of the week. There had been so few ambushes in the forest, nobody could hope to become a replacement court lady or escort guard. Seamstresses used to be able to count on maybe twenty new court lady dresses and thirty new escort guard outfits a season, and arrow-smiths stayed in business replenishing ambush guys’ arsenals.
A drunken disgraced former aristocrat waved a bottle of unspecified alcohol. “Let’s all go to the kisaeng parlor! All the women can dress as men and the men can dress as women and we’ll hide behind screens and eavesdrop on everybody.”
A snot-nosed guttersnipe gave him A Look. “Nobody ever says anything they shouldn’t anymore,” he said. “I haven’t been bribed to keep my mouth shut in over a year.”
“I know!” A heavy-set woman clapped her hands. “We’ll open taverns!”
The bandit lit up at that. “And my crew and I can use them for hang-outs. We can hide things in the walls and ceilings and things.”
“Oh!” said a man who hadn’t passed his civil service exam, “and we’ll write racy novels!”
The bookseller/smuggler liked that idea, and took down the names of everyone who agreed. “I can fail to honor my contracts with you. You can threaten to beat me up and I can make funny faces and talk you out of it.”
“We don’t need the high-born to keep things interesting,” an odd-jobs girl said.
Seven escaped slaves cheered and decided to open a noodle shop together.
Everybody else decided to go be ghosts and make life inconvenient for live people.
Life was good again.
~~ Lens flare of finality ~~
My nails this week are done with another of Maniology‘s Korea plates. The base colors are off-white, green, and mauve, with fluid decals of those colors on my thumbs and little fingers and stamps in Heart of Gold.
MY PROMPT FOR TODAY: K-dramas
MA
