SH | Chapter 1.5

That was it. Geum Jinsa had issued an absurd order. Even if he had to be beaten with a stick for making noise, Donggu would have had to grab his trouser leg and stop him. They couldn’t all become tiger food because of Geum Jinsa’s madness.

“If you, in the young miss’s place, go through the wedding and then spend the night together, the other side will have no choice but to bury it and move on! Then we can all live!”

“Then how am I, being a man, supposed to do that? How can I, a man, wear the bride’s wedding clothes, and how can I, a man, spend the night with the groom, who is also a man? Please think clearly, Master!”

Donggu also hammered his own chest, looking as if he might explode from frustration. Even if he were to grit his teeth and take the young miss’s place at the wedding, the people who should be stopping him were Geum Jinsa and his wife.

He himself was tall and well-built. Even if he wore women’s clothes, he was the sort of man people would immediately recognize as a man.

“And if you want to find someone to stand in for the young miss at the wedding, shouldn’t you use a maidservant, not a man like me?”

“Who in this house is still unmarried among the maidservants, huh?”

“No, I mean why did you suddenly pair off all the girls without leaving even one?”

“I was happy because Soyi was marrying into a good family, and the marriageable girls seemed to envy her, so I showed generosity, didn’t I? I paired off those whose hearts matched. What was wrong with showing kindness?”

“You should have left one!”

“I did leave one! But what was I supposed to do when Ipbun disappeared along with Soyi?”

Until time passed and the morning of Young Miss Soyi’s wedding came.

Like a dog waiting for food.

Until the wedding day dawned and he saw the detached quarters where the young miss had vanished.

With Ipbun gone too, right alongside Young Miss Soyi, Donggu felt like a dog whose rice bowl had been snatched away before he’d even taken a bite.

He could only stare in despair at the empty dirt where his bowl had been.

And yet, like a dog wagging its tail at its master’s call, Donggu followed dutifully.

Even when hungry.

Even when he whined in sorrow.

Without any doubt, he trailed after his master all the way.

Even if his master’s hand held the noose meant to hang his own neck.

“What? I can’t do that, Master!”

The detached quarters smelled pleasant. Sensing that smell, Donggu didn’t even feel the slightest pride of having entered a forbidden area. Kneeling politely with his back bowed as he listened to Geum Jinsa’s order, Donggu suddenly shouted.

“Hah! You miserable wretch! Are you saying you want us all to die?”

“No, I’m saying it’s just a wedding that was ruined!”

Even with Geum Jinsa’s threat, Donggu held firm. His master looked as if the shock had driven him out of his mind.

“You fool! This is the Left State Councillor, the son of the household of the Left State Councillor who could make even birds fall from the sky! And not just any commoner’s son, either, but one who won first place in the state exam! If this isn’t something worth dying over, then what is?”

Geum Jinsa hammered his own chest with his fist. His face was red, looking ready to burst. Listening to him, it did seem like a very big matter.

“Even so, this is ridiculous!”

Still, wrong was wrong. Like a dog barking furiously as it tried to stop its master from charging at a tiger without fear, Donggu bounced in place.

“How am I supposed to hold the wedding in the young miss’s place?”

As if anger were surging up in him, Geum Jinsa shouted. Thinking of Ipbun, who had vanished without a trace alongside the young miss, made Donggu feel downcast.

The young miss knew he had feelings for Ipbun. So when the other maidservants were matched off, he thought the young miss must have told Master and Madam about him.

He had secretly grinned whenever he saw Ipbun, who kept wearing a braid instead of putting her hair up in a topknot. He’d been so grateful, thinking the young miss truly had a kind heart.

Watching everyone else find partners and live sweetly together, he had thought even Ipbun’s thorny, prickly temper might eventually soften. He had hoped that if he stayed close and flattered her a little, she’d soon fall for him.

But Soyi and Ipbun disappeared, and he realized everything had been an illusion.

Seeing the empty detached quarters, he understood. The young miss had only needed Ipbun when she was leaving for some unknown place. That was why she hadn’t married Ipbun off.

If the kind-hearted young miss hadn’t wanted Ipbun to go with her, she would surely have said so. But the two of them vanished together. That meant Ipbun had wanted to go too.

It was sad enough that his own love had been ended by force, but before he could even grieve properly, he was handed this absurd command. To go through a wedding in the young miss’s place.

No matter how he thought about it kindly, it still made no sense. A servant going through a wedding? And with a powerful young noble from one of the most influential families in the land?

The difference in status was serious, and so was the fact that they were the same sex.

Could a powerful family be just any powerful family? It was the household of the Left State Councillor, after all. They were sky-high nobles, utterly incomparable to a country jinsa. Without even time to explain himself, he’d be bound in ropes and dragged away. He would surely be beaten until his flesh split open and his bones showed for daring to dishonor the Left State Councillor’s family as a slave.

As Donggu imagined his future, dying from the swelling of anger, his blood turned cold all by itself.

“Besides, all the girls have only just been married off! Just pick any one of them! Even if it’s a woman, that’s still much better than me, who’s obviously a man!”

Servants had to at least pretend to die if they were told to die. Servants had to serve even if they already had husbands, if their master ordered them to attend to him at night.

So what was the point of being picky about marrying someone else when one’s own husband was already there? Besides, if they somehow got away with it, wouldn’t the person end up becoming a yangban lady anyway?

Donggu was ashamed of the ugly things he was saying, but right now his own situation came first.

“What a wicked bastard you are! A woman’s chastity is more precious than life itself! And how are you supposed to send a bride who’s already used to a new groom?”

At Geum Jinsa’s raging, huffing face, Donggu lost his words. Geum Jinsa was not the kind of man who abused servants like ordinary yangban did. He also wasn’t the kind of person who would take female servants by force.

But that wasn’t the issue, was it?

Donggu swallowed his words. He had never felt so bewildered.

“There’s no time. Stop all this back-and-forth and get ready at once.”

At Geum Jinsa’s firm command, Donggu clenched his teeth. Whatever he thought, whatever objections he made, he could not refuse.

Geum Jinsa could be called a good master. So even though he was a servant, Donggu had lived with some freedom to speak his mind. But because he had been a servant since birth, subservience was carved into his soul.

His soul whispered in his ear.

He was a servant.

A lowly servant who had to do as his master said.

His master kicked his dog. The dog kicked by the master fell to the ground without even being able to yelp. Ahead of it, a tiger had its mouth open.

In order to live, the master had tossed Donggu to it without a second thought. A servant was, quite literally, just a dog.

Donggu’s chest stung as if salt had been sprinkled into it.

He was wrapped in a long, trailing red wonsam, so moving felt difficult. It was strange how they had found a wedding robe that fit him so perfectly. His frame as a man and the young miss’s frame as a woman should have been as different as that of a cat and a mouse. Donggu tilted his head.

Well, there were some large women out there too.

Given the situation, Donggu was confused. That made it easier than usual to accept things. But no matter how well it fit, it was still a woman’s garment. For a man like Donggu, it was awkward and uncomfortable.

To someone who had only ever worn underpants, trousers, and jeogori, a formal woman’s outfit, let alone a wedding robe, was like fitting a horseshoe to a dog’s paw.

There were layers upon layers of underskirts whose names he didn’t even know, plus a chest covering. It was embarrassing enough already, but the way it compressed his chest made breathing hard. Sweat gathered on the hand hidden inside the wide hanseom sleeves.

The clear blue jade phoenix hairpin pinned into his twisted hair, the front daenggi and doturak daenggi hanging from it, all of it, too, made his head feel like it weighed a thousand pounds, even before the jokduri was put on. On top of that, the hand patting powder onto his face was horribly ticklish.

The fourfold misery of stuffiness, heat, weight, and tickling made Donggu squirm constantly.

Seolseol, the housemaid dressing him, sighed.

“Stop fidgeting. You really have no patience.”

“How am I supposed to help it when it’s suffocating? Try wearing this yourself, madam. It’s torture, plain and simple!”

“My goodness, you thunderhead of a fool! What are you going to do if you keep being this tactless?”

Seolseol smacked Donggu’s back hard.

Startled, Donggu glared.

“Why are you hitting me? I’m already absurdly bewildered and stifled, to the point I could die from this!”

His back hurt. Donggu shouted furiously. Not only was he trapped in the long, ornate red wonsam and unable to move, he was getting hit too. Tears even sprang up from frustration and hurt.

“You’re a man standing in for the missing young miss at her wedding. Do you not understand how dangerous your situation is?”

“…What, if I refuse the first night and the gentleman ends up hating me, won’t that solve it? Since they requested the marriage, they can’t openly shame us. If I keep avoiding anything at night even after going to their house, that gentleman will have his pride too, so he won’t keep coming to the detached quarters. Then I can just live quietly like I’m dead, and at the right moment fake my death, hold a funeral, and run away!”

Donggu came up with his idiotic so-called solution with bright eyes. Seolseol was nearly driven mad.

“You idiot! If you’re unlucky, you could die on absurd charges. Do you not get what it means for you to go through the wedding in place of the missing young miss? Hm?”

“What charges? I’m just following my master’s order.”

“The person you’re marrying is the son of a powerful family that can make birds fall from the sky. Do you still not get it?”

Clearly not, because Donggu just blinked.

✿ • ✿ • ✿