Capítulo 115: Chapter 111: Seon-Ho/ Hwa-Wol
I thought about calling out to her again, but then I had second thoughts, so I hid myself before she could even turn around properly. Now just what the hell what she up to now? Why would she change her appearance again if she wasn't up to something? I saw her look around again until she was called in for a meeting of some sort. I followed her as soon as all of the women disappeared but not before she ran into what appeared to be the madame of the establishment. I kept myself out of sight but close enough at the same time in case she needed my help; by the way the madame and the other girls were staring at Yeon, it was already clear that she was not popular at all in this place. "...so, the tutor had agreed to come out of retirement just to teach you ever since he heard you show off your talents to him for all the world to see. You know, if it isn't bad enough that the girls that we house here are all of noble lineage and we barely have any men around to take a look at them, now you; a lowborn phrased epileptic comes and steals all of the attention that should be given to them as if you're actually worth something! Why exert all of this unnecessary effort if you know that no man will ever want you?" She scoffed, before she bumped into Yeon so hard that she almost fell onto the floor...but not before Yeon moved ever so slightly no the madam had no choice but to fall onto the floor face first! In front of everyone! She didn't even look back as she made her way outside again as I followed her out towards the market with no supervision at all! I know she was grown up now but I really didn't like the fact that she just went anywhere at all without any fear of harassment or bad talk about her. But that was the difference between us; because of what my father had put me through my entire life I was constantly conditioned to be flawless in my appliance and think 5 times before I took any action at all. But Yeon...she had never cared what anyone thought about he even form the beginning. She didn't look at the people who mocked her fits...she only cared about her brother...and myself...
She courted a lot of attention as she made her way, but she was completely oblivious to it a she made her way to an old noble home that looked like it hadn't been taken care of in a while. She greeted the old man who appeared to be waiting for her quite fondly before they stared taking a wha around the front courtyard. I was honestly quite impressed when I recognised him, my father used to try to do everything he could to hire this renowned tutor for my brother, but he never could quite fathom how much he was despised by everyone he thought worshipped him. "...did anyone give you a hard time about myself coming out of retirement just to teach you?" "Well...it's not important sir, I just want to learn everything that I can." "Well,, I have to say that it I most unusual for women to become this highly educated. There are some women who possess a high intelligence level...but I have to admit that with your beauty...are you sure that you would not rather just settle down into marriage?" That question stopped her in her steps as it did mine. I needed to hear this answer no matter what.
"No...no I do not think I could marry at all." She replied quietly as she kept her face pointed to the ground as she kept walking along. "Really? That is a big decision for a woman to make as it is their main duty in society, to marry and to provide their husbands with children..." "...from the moment I had my first epileptic fit in public, I knew that I would never have that privilege...courting, dates, finding love...having children...even if my epilepsy has been dormant for years, that filth is still mixed in with my blood. So how can I dare to think that I could serve a man or give him children with my condition...it would be extremely selfish of me..." "I imagine you have already countered that possibility?" "I...I dumbed myself down for a decade; no makeup, baggy rags, childish hair and behaviour..." "well well, I wasn't wrong about you. It takes a strong person to prepare for a lifetime of loneliness, and you haven't seemed to have left any details out..." I collapsed onto my knees when I heard this...and I had so much regret about how I treated her and saw her. I could've done better. I should have paid more attention to her from the start. I should have spent more time with he ran my father's home instead of creating so much distance between us that she had clearly gotten used to. Who knows what she knew and heard about me when she was putting on that act? But most importantly...why did she hide it from me? Why did her brother hide it from me from the moment he had introduced me to her? Why?
I just sat on the cold ground, oblivious to the servants who were walking past me and taking about me as I heard the rest of their conversation about her education plan, which I couldn't help but notice was almost identical to mine...but how would she know that? But luckily she seemed to have already half completed her studies. I couldn't even imagine that such a thing would make me as nervous as I was becoming; she was taking on far more subjects than even I would have been able to comprehend at the same time...but when I heard her say that she was also taking on 'a kiseng education' I had had about al I could take and I planned on confronting Hui-Jee once and for all. Yeon was becoming far too bold for her own good and now I knew who was responsible for this. She was so damned reckless that every step she took by herself unchaperoned and without he broth ray her side was enough to cause me so much stress...she couldn't go on like this, no matter what her plans were now.
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I had just settling down after a long day managing the gibang after the passing of the former madame, a very close friend of my long dead mother who worked in this very establishment. I had just began to undress when I seemed to notice a man staring at me far off in the reflections of the mirror. I didn't even have time to turn around; as soon as I caught wind of his familiar scent, I turned around and I instantly ran up to Moon-Bok and his men, who had chosen to surprise me. I had seen Yeon do this so many times with her brother but I had hard had him to myself from the moment we met. We were either always constantly around other people, taking care of his sister or doing errands for the third prince. Even when he came here it was always with his men...so now that we were finally alone I couldn't help but feel...excited. "I take it you missed me" he chuckled, holding me even tighter. "No, don't let go yet, I'm not done with you." I held onto him for as long as I could before I could feel some of his old scars getting hard and rigid as if he had not tended to them like he promised me that he would. I let him go and I shot him a sour look but he only looked at me apologetically before I just rolled my eyes and I pulled him into another room where we kept the medical equipment. But of course, I could never get things to go my way. We were barely alone for 10 minutes before a very angry Seon-Ho can bursting in the room ad demanding that we have a talk, but from the way that Hwi was rolling his eyes I thought that maybe he was just angry in the moment and that he would have a chance to calm down since I didn't know him that well. I was wrong.
"What's the matter?" I asked him in a dull tone "do you have any idea what that brat of a sister of yours is up to now?" He almost shouted at Hwi who just pretended to ignore him as I still tended to his man. "She's at the etiquette place I sent her to and completing her education? What's wrong with that?" "Are you kidding me right now? You would get a heart attack when you couldn't find her at home after we trained and you just sent her off alone!" "Well, it's not like I've got much of a choice now is it! Remind me again, who exactly got me involved with the damned prince in the first place? And how? For how many years!" Hwi seethed, getting just as flared up as Seon-Ho was, but I remembered that Yeon warned me to keep out of their fights since it was rare and it would always blow over in a matter of minutes. "If I wasn't forced to do what I did then believe you me, I would have taken my sister somewhere far away so we could forget the past and start over again. But now the Prince won't let me go and I have no choice but to have her in various people's care in my place when I am gone. The madame-in-charge is a contact of one of Chief Park's acquaintances so I have no choice but to put my trust in that, since I am now bound to the palace thanks to you and our father." He spewed bitterly before turning on Seon-ho "and why do you suddenly care about my sister and what she does? If I am not mistaken, I'm pretty sure that you have a powerful wife waiting for you at home." "she...is not my wife and she never will be." "Your concubine then or whatever" "No! You don't get it...she's not even my concubine. Legally...she's nothing at all...she's just..." "...someone you took in to make Yeon jealous?" I finished incredulously. I could barely recognise him to be honest, this was not the man I met when I met his best friend Hwi and this was most certainly not the man who pursued me as...as if it was expected of us. But looking at this man now and how angry he was getting that the woman he had never considered as anything more than a sister for a decade and had kept her at a fair distance for the entirety of her stay, was now so far away from him...he looked like he was a man possessed...
I do not really know why but in that moment I swore that I felt a tinge of...jealousy? From what I had witnessed they had barely got to spend any time together and he was already raging like a mad man when he had no rights to her at all...as for myself and Hwi..."you cannot be serious. You got the girl who tortured my sister and you thought that would make her want to stay with you? And here you are, asking me to marry Yeon alongside that poisonous little...how on earth do you expect me to take you seriously when you want to take the most precious thing I have and do what exactly? Torture her with that witch around her because I hid my sister's true nature from you?" "You are really going to just leave her there? Penniless?"
"Yeon isn't penniless, she is sure to be working odd jobs everywhere she goes." I really regretted not saying that quietly but it was too late now and I had to tell her bother exactly how she made money so they would both stop fretting over her. "What do you mean?" "Look around you, have you not noticed how quiet the gibang has gotten?" "Hwa-Wol" "Yeon...she gave the kisaengs here house training so that they had more options in life. And it worked; most of the girls here have been married off and are flourishing in their new roles as housewives that they paid for. So Yeon has money, don't you worry about that."
Capítulo 116: Chapter 112: Chimchag (Composure)
I could only close my eyes in disbelief, this bastard could see right through me, but when it came to the most intelligent women that I now knew, she couldn't be any more slow-witted even if she tried. "So you're just going to leave her there? And then what? What is your plan?" "I...have no plan." He admitted in quite a pained tone. "I made an agreement with her after our father...and because of what she has suffered through that damned epilepsy of her's, I promised her her freedom as soon as she turns 20 years old in just a few months." "Are you not even going to marry her off?" "Do you think that I haven't tried! Since she was by my side I had been extra careful to make sure that she never feels insecure about what she has been though, yet since the moment she escaped from your father's home, all she can do is recount the reasons why she is unfit to marry at all. Either you or your father did something to her to make her want to run away from the village were our parents met and isolate herself from society for the rest of her life. If you want my sister and you want me to take you seriously then you had better fix whatever it is you have done to her! But be warned, just because I am giving her her freedom it does not mean that I have stopped being her brother." I watched him storm away to calm himself down as I began to work myself into an angry panic and I had no idea why. She was fine, she was safe and she was well; so why was I being like this? I thought I had come to resent her a lot more than what I had also began to feel about her...but I guess that I was wrong, and not for the first time either.
"Do you even have the faintest idea of what you're doing to them both?" Hwa-Wol asked me in an incredulous tone. "I...Yeon...she used to idolise me every single day for 10 years. She respected me, she listened to me, and she trusted me to take care of her and I did! So why..." "You really don't have a clue do you? What you've done to her? Because even though you grew up with both of them, you were never really close to Yeon before this so you have no idea what she is thinking, do you? And it's killing you now, isn't it? Your father kept you isolated all your life to be able to read people and manipulate their characters and desires, so you did what you did to Hwi because you knew deep down that he would survive...but you cannot read Yeon because you never really knew her." "I've done everything that I can think of; I let her stay in my home after...I didn't cross her, I didn't stand in her way when she reduced my family to ruins, I didn't question her education..." "Because she did those things for you. She rescued you, she risked her life every single day to interact with you, she dissolved your family so that you could start anew for yourself and your future, which she gave to you." "Exactly! She gave me this life so she..." "she should be by your side to reap the benefits? After you broke her heart and her trust, even though she forgives you truly? Do you...really honestly have no idea what you meant to her?" "What...what does that have to do..." "Yeon was a prodigy child that was reduced to an epileptic lowborn orphan, and then you come along when your friendship blossomed with Hwi. But Yeon? You were everything that her brother couldn't be; you were these rest of the family that she has lost, you were her protector and saviour. And because of what she was reduced to, obviously she idolised you without question. But despite the fact that she knew you had no choice, she now know that you are capable of lying to her as you did every single day for 4 years, of keeping her locked up as her brother did before you and because of how ambitious you are, she does not trust you to accept her the way she truly is...even though it is ironic because now she just reminds me of you. She is just as studious as you are, she I just as ambitious as you are although nowhere near as greedy and selfish as you...she is the better version of you, a prosperous version you could be if she knew that you accept her...and mean it."
I stayed up all night at the gibang to digest what Hwa-Wol had said and to wait for Hwi to come back, which he did as soon as I finished my conversation with his woman. He brought us some food and we ate in silence before he told me he was going to visit Yeon tomorrow and that I had better come with him instead of me 'even attempting the idea of secretly visiting her without his permission', even though we both knew that wasn't going to stop me. He then returned to his woman for a while as I settled down in one of the spare rooms that she had kept for her man and his friends. I...I had missed Yeon's tender care, to the point that I was now...worrying about her like she must have about me from the moment she woke up in my father's home; was she eating well? Was she being bullied by that dreadful madame or anyone else? Did she have all the recourses she needed? She had never lived alone before so I hope she knew how to live well without myself or her brother...because it would not last very long.
We both settled to leave earlier than planned since we both could not sleep at all; as well as Yeon being his sister, I had alway shared that bond of deep feeling and overprotectiveness of his sister long before I finally realised my own feelings towards her. I had quite a lot of work waiting for me when I returned but it was worth it when we finally brought her home, or convince her to when she had finished her studies. I would rather travel miles to see her than even comprehend the fact that one day I might show up and she was nowhere to be found and doing god knows what with her capabilities...
I let the others have their time together before Hwi met up with the made to get a progression report and before he had to leave for an appointment he had closely. They had barely had any time to reunite but she had become a lot more affectionate towards her brother, which was something I had no right to envy but couldn't help it. She was in the middle of singing practice, which was something I had never thought I would hear from such a studious girl, but it turned out that she was equally gifted in the musical arts, as well as art itself as I got to look over her paintings and drawings that had been pasted all along the hallways of the establishment to portray their work and influence men to take a look at the unmarried women there. Hwi then all of a sudden had to leave earlier than planned but he looked quite happy with his sister, so I could only hope that she was in a better mood when I showed up. But I was proven wrong when I could tell that I was the last person that she was expecting to see again, the tears in her eyes said it all. But she also noticed how every girl in the establishment had gathered around me and she somehow managed to keep her composure by walking straight past me and leaving me with these girls who were starting to beg me to accompany them to their rooms.
This made me angry, so angry that I lost myself and I started walking furiously behind her back to her room when I grabbed her by the arm and I almost threw her into her room. She tried to escape me but I wrapped my arms around her waist to turn her around and face me, and that was when I noticed a look of defiance in her that just made me more attracted to her than ever before, so much so that I began to feel some strange urges that completely overwhelmed me in the moment and soon enough I had her pressed up against the wall with my lips on hers, desperate to taste something sweet and feel something to fill the misery that I had felt since her departure. She tired to fight me off but I wasn't having it and son enough she had no choice but to surrender although she had nearly managed to push me away which was just made me even more angry. That made me want to make her suffer without me ask couldn't stop undressing her...but just as I was about to see some skin there were an awful amount of knocks on her door that completely took us by surprise and pulled us apart. She pushed me onto the floor and tried to serve me something as soon as the doors busted wide open and suddenly the horde of girls all starting asking us to meet the madame in the main hall or whatever that meant. I saw a frustrated look come across her face which was rare for her before we both made our way together.
I soon realised that this so-called etiquette class was for women who were looking for husbands which explained all of the attention that I was getting. The madame however didn't look upon Yeon fondly and had all the other girls serve me snacks and tea and show off their talent. I felt as if I had been dropped off into a talent show so I could choose and pick what woman I wanted to try out to become my wife, and I certainly was not used to this new found attention. But I already had my eyes on the one I wanted to take to another room and...well...explore my new feelings. So I cut off the talent show as soon as it started much to everyone's disappointment as I kept asking questions about Yeon who looked just as irritated as I felt the minute we were dragged here. I saw the same face on the madame as my father had every time somebody brought me up which just encouraged me even further. The madame would usually answer my question and accompany it with something negative to say about her and highlight all the other girls who came from noble families and who were mostly around my age. Yeon was still 4 years younger than me but she was a mixture of being both older and younger than her years sometimes that just drew me to her even more. She was young, unpredictable and her interests were so different and unique from every other woman who was shopping for a husband and tried to become the perfect wife. Yet despite all of this Yeon miraculously possessed noble etiquette and traits in defiance of the resources she lacked growing up by he brother's side. She was the perfect blend of the two worlds that were the essence of our nation. She tried her hardest not to look in my direction but the minute she did after her name was brought up, she was well and truly caught in my gaze that the world seemed hell-bent on breaking up.
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