“This is the first time I have witnessed the blatant, intense discrimination that I had previously only read about in history books,” Mi-Reu wrote, her brow furrowed in deep concentration. She muttered the words under her breath in English, the sounds foreign and sharp in the quiet room. “Not only did I witness that cruelty, but I also saw the sheer horror caused by smallpox and the deadly superstitions that thrive when people are faced with an unknown disease.”

  She dipped her brush into the ink stone once more, continuing to form the slightly clumsy, awkward English letters across the secret scroll with her brush. To any eavesdropping servant or official, her writing would look like meaningless, jagged scribbles, but to her, it was the only way to process the trauma of the burning village.

  “Mi-Reu, enough! Come on,” Gi-Reu groaned, tossing aside a random book he had been trying to read. He had been loitering in her chambers for hours, unable to settle. “How long are you going to keep writing in that strange future language in your secret book?”

  He stood up, pacing the length of the room with restless, pent-up energy. “It has been three whole days since the incident. Father has officially grounded us to the palace grounds! We can’t just sit here while the Red Death consumes that village and the ones beyond it!”

  “And what exactly do you suggest we do?!” Mi-Reu retorted, her own frustration finally boiling over. She rolled up her scroll with a sharp snap and turned to face him. “We are nothing but eight-year-old children with no authority! I have no idea where to even begin with dismantling centuries of systemic class discrimination, much less how to combat a viral nightmare like smallpox!”

  “You need to think! There has to be something in that head of yours!” Gi-Reu pleaded, stepping closer to her. He lowered his voice, his eyes darting toward the door. “I had Escort Choi sneak the official military reports to me this morning. The plague is spreading. Reports of the Red Death reaching three more villages near the capital and many more in other regions came in just today!”

  “What good does that do me? I was an accountant, Gi-Reu! An accountant!” Mi-Reu replied, her voice trembling with a mix of sternness and desperation. “I balanced ledgers and calculated tax margins! There is no possible way I have any relevant medical information tucked away in some dusty corner of my past-life memories!”

  “Ha...”

  Both of them, utterly exhausted from the weight of the past few days and the helplessness of their situation, let out a deep, synchronized sigh of depression. They slumped onto their cushions, the silence of the room feeling heavy and suffocating as the reality of their limitations set in.

  “Pass me the reports... even if we can't do anything, let me at least take a look at the data,” Mi-Reu said in a defeated voice. They shifted on their cushions, the silk rustling in the otherwise still room. At first, it was merely a distraction, a way to channel their restless, charged emotions into something tangible as they pored over the messy, hand-written copies of accounts from the village magistrates.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  After several minutes of silent reading, Mi-Reu’s eyes narrowed. She leaned closer to the scrolls, her finger tracing the lines of ink. “Something... something is incredibly odd about these numbers...”

  Gi-Reu, confused but instantly curious, leaned in as well. “What is it? What did you find?”

  Mi-Reu grabbed a fresh sheet of parchment and a brush. With her usual unsteady hand, she began sketching out rough axes, but the complexity of the data was too much for her brush writing skills. She huffed and passed the brush to Gi-Reu. “I need you to draw this. Referencing these reports, I want you to make a chart categorizing every group of people from each village, organize them by their social class and occupation.”

  Gi-Reu, who possessed far better control over the brush, began making perfect, fluid strokes. For the next few hours, the room was silent except for the scratch of horsehair on paper and the occasional rustle of a turning page. They cross-referenced the death tolls, the infection rates, and the locations of the survivors.

  Finally, exhausted and ink-stained, the twins sat back to look at the visual results of their labor.

  “This... this is definitely something, right?” Gi-Reu asked, his voice barely a whisper as he stared at the staggering disparity displayed on the paper. He pointed to the far end of the chart, where one specific category of people showed almost no bars at all.

  “It’s not just something!” Mi-Reu replied, her exhaustion momentarily replaced by a surge of adrenaline. She slumped back against her cushion, her eyes bright and reflecting the flickering candlelight. “Gi-Reu, do you see it? The people the village called 'unclean', the butchers, the tanners, the ones working with the cattle, they are the only ones left standing.”

  She gripped the edge of the table, her mind racing through the fragments of her past life. “The court thinks they are the ones spreading the curse, but the data shows the exact opposite. They are the only ones the plague cannot touch!”

  They sat in stunned silence, the flickering candlelight casting long shadows over the revolutionary discovery that the royal court had completely overlooked in their panic and prejudice. Just as the gravity of their discovery began to settle, a sharp, rhythmic rapping on the sliding doors broke the silence. Both twins jumped, instinctively shoving the newly drawn charts under a pile of discarded scrolls.

  "Enter," Mi-Reu called out, her heart still hammering against her ribs.

  The door slid open to reveal the head Eunuch, his face tight with a professional yet strained urgency. He bowed low, his silk robes rustling. "Your Highnesses, I must inform you of her majesty, Queen Myeong-Hwa has arrived. She is currently making her way across the bridge and will be entering these chambers momentarily."

  Gi-Reu and Mi-Reu exchanged a panicked, wide-eyed look. Their mother’s visits were rarely just social; she was likely here to check on them or perhaps to deliver further news about the lockdown.

  "She’s already at the bridge?" Gi-Reu hissed, frantically trying to hide the ink stones and the reports they had "borrowed" from Escort Choi.

  "Please prepare yourselves," the Eunuch added, his eyes lingering for a second too long on the ink-stained fingers of the young royal twins. "Her Majesty appeared... troubled."

  With a final bow, he retreated. The twins barely had a moment to smooth their robes before the faint, regal scent of jasmine and the distant sound of a royal retinue announced that the Queen had reached their doorstep.