SH | Chapter 1.2

She had gone up to Hanyang to attend her maternal grandfather’s sixtieth birthday banquet. Her mother’s family was crowded with endless visiting relatives. Because she was a girl, Soyi had been shut away in the detached quarters. The house inside and out had been noisy, but Soyi had been bored.

So she had secretly gone to a nearby temple with only her maid Ipbun. She thought maybe breathing some cool air would help her feel better.

That was where she met a girl around her age, one who had come to rest there because of illness. Ipbun had gone off to pick wild strawberries, so she hadn’t been by Soyi’s side.

“It’s her older brother.”

The memory of secretly peeking over the wall at the scholar who was with that girl, the girl’s older brother, remained vivid.

The scholar’s face, as he carefully circled the pagoda while praying for his younger sister’s recovery, was so excessively handsome that it had been etched into her memory.

[He doesn’t even use that gorgeous face properly. What kind of man never even goes near a pleasure house?]

The girl’s expression as she watched her older brother circling the pagoda for her sake was strangely hard to describe.

Grateful, guilty, a faint irritation, a tiny burst of anger, a passing conflict, and then fading distress.

The girl’s thin fingers, gripping the stone wall, trembled lightly. Soyi said nothing to the girl’s face, which was full of tangled expressions. How could she define the feelings a girl would have toward a body slowly losing life?

Like girls their age, who had just reached a half-grown, bratty stage and complained for no reason, the girl pouted stubbornly and picked at her splendid older brother’s flaws.

[If he were a proper scholar, he should know how to resist temptation and always keep his body and mind clean. You have an excellent older brother.]

Respecting the girl’s effort, Soyi gave a response that sounded reasonably plausible. Whatever the truth was, unless he was a complete scoundrel, wouldn’t he at least restrain himself for the sake of a younger sister suffering from illness?

[Oh, you don’t know what you’re talking about. He enjoys hunting with the classmates he studied with, and whenever he gets the chance, he sweats buckets playing polo. One day he got so excited after winning that he and the other men ended up hugging and rolling around shirtless. Watching it made me so embarrassed my whole face burned!]

[…I see. Still, it sounds like your brother is exercising very healthily and training his spirit.]

The girl’s answer, unlike what she had expected, left Soyi at a loss for words for a moment. Even so, she did her best to squeeze the conversation along.

Seeing the girl, who had been forcing herself to criticize her older brother and then really did end up saying too much, Soyi felt a little relieved by the girl’s childishness. At least for a moment, she had looked like an ordinary girl.

She even felt a little proud, as if a peer had helped that girl find some of her girlishness.

When her maternal grandfather’s birthday banquet ended and she had to go back down, that was the end of the connection with the girl. Before leaving, she had gone to say goodbye. In those few days, the girl had become even more visibly sickly.

…Unless a miracle happened, there was no sign her condition would improve.

By now, she was probably already on her way to the afterlife. Soyi hoped that the sick, lonely girl had been able to enjoy meeting someone her own age, even for a short while.

And on the way out after saying goodbye, she had asked a monk at the temple who the girl was.

…The daughter of Park Sihak, Minister of War. No, now she was the Left State Councillor who could supposedly make even birds fall from the sky.

She had been surprised to learn she was the daughter of such a prominent family. And then she had realized that heaven was fair. There were still things even a powerful lineage could not overcome.

No, to be honest, she had found it a little satisfying. And she had been annoyed with herself for thinking that way. Mixed feelings didn’t disappear easily.

Soyi, who had been blankly sunk in the past, woke from her thoughts as the wind blew against her.

What was this?

Yoongong was looking this way. Soyi could tell that this was what a heated gaze looked like. But something felt strange.

His direction was clearly toward her. And yet she could feel that the gaze had slightly missed its mark. The heat of it brushed past her.

Soyi’s eyes turned sharp.

“Young miss, that scholar is still looking this way! It seems he fell for you at first sight!”

Just as something in Soyi’s mind was beginning to take shape, Ipbun’s excited voice stabbed into her ears. Soyi shook her head slightly and pushed the stray thoughts away.

Looking to the side, she saw Ipbun at a loss, as if she herself were the one receiving that gaze. Soyi gave a small laugh at her, then quickly covered her mouth with her hand when she saw Donggu standing like a post.

If she didn’t, she felt like she might burst out laughing like some vulgar village woman at the well, gossiping about everything she’d heard.

Unlike his stiff posture, Donggu’s face looked extremely busy. His cheeks were red, his lips twitched, and he kept rubbing his palms against his pants. He kept turning his gaze away, then back again.

He looked exactly like a dog that had seen a bone and didn’t know what to do with itself. Unlike his slack, lovestruck appearance, he still didn’t seem completely mindless. He immediately pursed his lips whenever Ipbun muttered in a dazed, enchanted way.

“She’s not even looking at you, so why are you squealing like that? Do you think if you make a scene beside her, that handsome scholar will look at you too? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“What’s it to you whether I squeal or not? What does it matter to you what I think while looking at the scholar!”

The moment Donggu finished, Ipbun shot back sharply. Donggu, who had been sulking in jealousy, immediately flustered at her energy. He blinked with those big black cow-like eyes of his, then subtly turned his head away from Ipbun, who was hissing like a kitten.

“What an attitude. I only said it because I was worried, and you snap at me like that.”

“Hmph! You’re really something else. Who are you to worry about me?”

Arms folded with a haughty air, Ipbun turned her head away with a sniff and ignored Donggu. At her attitude, Donggu whined like a discouraged puppy. Soyi snorted a laugh.

These two were obviously a dog and a cat. Even though he always took the brunt of Ipbun’s temper, Donggu still seemed to be the one who picked fights with her first, like a bratty child teasing someone he liked.

But Donggu didn’t look like he had any hope. Ipbun was clever and quick at calculating. Donggu, on the other hand, was obedient and helpful at tasks, but innocent and incapable of thinking in terms of calculation, which made him not to her taste at all.

Of course, whether a servant was clever or innocent, there was no future in it either way.

Soyi was sharp, and she knew how cruel reality was. No matter how highborn a woman might be, she still could not fully escape that cruelty.

The best one could do was belong to a family with more power. That was the only way a daughter of a respectable house could defend herself against the harshness of reality.

If a daughter of a good family had a decent character, she was more likely to earn high marks from the ladies of yangban families seeking marriage matches.

Soyi’s temper wasn’t bad, but in truth it wasn’t exactly good either. She merely pretended to be a gracious young lady who treated her servants kindly so she could land a good marriage match.

Well, she didn’t particularly enjoy tormenting people for no reason either.

Soyi looked at the still-bickering pair with detached eyes. She was acting, but that didn’t mean she had a cruel nature. At the very least, she was an upright young lady.

Soyi set the trinket she had been looking at onto the stall. After scanning the items, she picked up a coral trinket.

Her face stung, so she looked up.

The off-center gaze was still pouring heat over her. She could see the hem of Yoongong’s robe fluttering beside the nearby stall. Since Soyi was on edge too, she could even make out every single thread in the silk sash wrapped around his waist.

I don’t know what you’re plotting.

Soyi pulled the skirt-covering veil back over her shoulders and wore it properly. Yoongong’s gaze remained misaligned. Looking at him through the veil, Soyi turned around. A prickling sensation she couldn’t clearly define crawled over her skin. It felt like discovering a snake coiled beneath her feet just as she was about to step forward.

“Let’s go.”

“Huh? You said you’d buy just one trinket, young miss!”

“There isn’t anything I like.”

With Ipbun tilting her head and Donggu following along, Soyi moved elsewhere. The gaze kept following her. With that gaze still stabbing into the back of her head, Soyi felt a strange chill rise to the crown of her skull.

The misaligned gaze was now fixed exactly on Soyi.

How utterly strange.

Soyi knew she was rather pretty. Whenever she stepped out into the market for even a little while, she always drew the eyes of men.

Most of those gazes were either innocent admiration for her looks or the greedy, animal-like stare of those who licked at her with their eyes. The root of the gaze directed at Soyi had always been lust.

But this strange, unfamiliar scholar’s gaze was quite sharp. She could feel the cold, merciless quality of a merchant wondering what profit he might gain if he got his hands on that item, and how much.

What was a young man from a distinguished family looking at in a plain country girl like me with such eyes?

What does that scholar want?

Soyi lightly tugged at her veil and looked back. Ipbun’s snappish face and Donggu, looking gloomy like a puppy, were following close behind her.

Between the two of them, she thought she caught a brief collision of eyes with the scholar. Soyi looked at the scholar for a moment, then turned her face forward again.

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