Secret of the Red Lotus Flower (빨간 연꽃의 비밀)

Author's Interlude

In 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island, wrote a novella about a lawyer named Gabriel. While on a walk, Gabriel ran into Henry, an old friend and physician. Henry had recently taken in a boarder named Edward. Gabriel had heard rumors about Edward's violent ways and how Henry had been paying off his boarder's victims. Fearing blackmail and knowing that his friend was a righteous man, Gabriel advised his friend to cut Edward out of his life. Despite his warnings, the good doctor allowed Edward to stay with him for another three years.

Everything came to a head when Edward beat another man to death. The police got involved in the search for the murderer. Henry gave them a note that he claimed to have found from Edward apologizing for his actions and stating that he was leaving London for good. While the police were satisfied, Gabriel believed it to be a forgery because he recognized his friend's handwriting.

For the next few months, Henry returned to his jovial self and Gabriel was happy for his friend. However, soon, Henry became secretive and erratic again, rarely leaving his house. After Henry's butler came to the lawyer with concerns about his employer, Gabriel broke into his friend's office to discover that Henry had killed himself. It was only after reading his suicide note that Gabriel learned the truth about Henry and his connection with Edward.

Robert Louis Stevenson's story was titled The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

For the readers of the time, the story was fairly revolutionary and not something they had seen before. They had spent two-thirds of the novella thinking that they were reading a simple mystery/morality tale only for it to suddenly turn into a gothic horror. The term 'Jekyll and Hyde' soon entered the English vernacular. The twist became so ubiquitous that future adaptations didn't even hide the twist any longer. By the time they started making film versions in 1908, Gabriel Utterson was dropped from the story, Henry Jekyll became the tortured protagonist, and the secret of Edward Hyde was typically revealed in the opening act.

While I would never put myself in the same category as such luminaries as Robert Louis Stevenson, he was a large influence on this story. No, it isn't a gothic horror story. It is still a historical love story. However, I wanted to put the reader in the same shoes as the protagonist who was trying to figure out the secrets around them.

Most gender-bender stories are told from the perspective of the individual hiding their true gender or the people that were in on the secret. There was a reason that one of the tags for this story was 'Mystery'. I wanted the readers to try attempt to figure out the mystery at the same rate as the main character.

Having said that, I also wanted to give everyone as much of an opportunity to solve it as well. My mother's literary addiction was to Sue Grafton and other mystery writers. My fondest childhood memories were cuddling with her and watching 'Murder, She Wrote'. I am a huge believer in fair-play mysteries, so I made certain to drop 1-2 hints in almost every chapter. I won't tell you all of the hints (I will let you attempt to discover them), but I can reveal a few. I've always divided the hints I planned to drop into four categories:

Descriptive – When describing Ha-neul, I purposefully used words that, while can be used to describe men, are primarily used for women, like 'slender', 'delicate', and 'beauty' while also playing up the differences with other men by highlighting their heights, builds, and beards. Furthermore, if you want an idea of who is in on the secret, read the sections told from the POV of characters other than Soo-yun. I avoided using masculine pronouns or descriptors for Ha-neul when in the presence of those that were a part of the conspiracy. For example, the king referred to Ha-neul as 'his son' while the queen used 'her creation' instead.

Subtext – Two of my favorite chapters were the one where the queen confronted Ha-neul in her rooms and the later conversation about Princess Uisun. Knowing the secret, the things that Ha-neul said take on completely different meanings. I also did an inverse 'From the Mouth of Babes' by having the elderly be perplexed by Ha-neul and get dismissed by others: the Chief Eunuch confused Ha-neul and Soo-yun for his daughters on the night of the banquet, Yeo-jin waving away Mrs. Kang's comment about not seeing any other men standing next to Lord Min, etc.