"Young Master, why would you call upon me like this? You know that we cannot be seen anywhere near each other! Not after you…." "Please, enough! I am regretting leaving you like that every single day! Ever since I made the mistake of entering the goddamned palace, I would gather some nonsensical 3 or 4 things to do at the same time just to keep me distracted!" "Young Master? What on earth are you talking about?" " My life is ruined! Some bimbo airhead Princess has kept her eyes on me since I entered the palace with my cousin and now she has demanded to marry me! Demanded! Not asked, not pried, not investigated, she just demanded to marry me on the spot! And because she is a damned Princess, she always always gets what she wants! My parents cannot even refuse this marriage and I myself cannot get out of this!" "But Young Master, isn't this exactly why you left me? To marry a woman of nobility? Isn't a Princess an even better choice for you?" "She is a demanding spoilt brat with not a thought in her head other than becoming a socialite of this village! I genuinely wanted to work hard in the palace as my cousin did and now what? I have to be her damned servant as a husband? I should have worked harder and had a career before I entered the palace, but my father always chose his illegitimate children over me! I didn't earn his favour, I just dumped you when I should have brought you out of that brothel and I hate The Royal Family! They are just tyrannical and overbearing! They might take me as hostage if myself and my sister do not agree to marriage straight away!" "Young Master! What on earth is wrong with you! We have a houseful of ministers here and you are only making a fool of yourself!" "It is good that you understand! Only you can understand me, I see that now. So you do not hold namer grudges against me, do you? I know that the only reason you agreed to come to this Nam yangban was because of me, and now that we are together again, we can…"
"Come here for you? I am your cousins concubine and I had no idea that my Mistress would even call you here!" "What! So you do…still hate me then?" "I have moved on long ago from you! Can you really not understand that my life doesn't revolve around you! It never has and it never will! So you fulfil your familial piety of getting married, whilst I try to win over the man who can give me what you never did." "Oh really? And what is that exactly!" "Peace! I want peace and happiness! Being greedy doesn't work out for everybody, I see that now! And if we keep looking back all of our lives, how can we ever live in the present? Your wife may not be the person that you wish to marry, but it still sounds like she treasures you, even more so than anyone in your life has ever done to you. And I will also treasure my life with my husband from now on…" "Do you love him! That freak of a man that keeps defying nature with his freak of a woman! Was he ever like me? Not sleeping throughout the night because I was thinking about you! Have you ever even thought about him like you did about myself! Did you ever cry whilst thinking about him!"
"Yes I have! I have cried unimaginable bitter tears for him! So you stop following him everywhere, because you will just ending up putting him in danger with your non existent intellect! And don't you dare to think of sabotaging him by fling complaints against him in The Emperor's court! You never thought about me once before this, so why should I have to do it now? He is a good and sensible person who isn't oppressive, misogamist and cruel like you are! You are a precious pearl in your family, but it isn't like that for me! You can do and say whatever you want but I cannot! I must live my future days here in this yangban! So do not come crawling back to me just because you are not getting your way for the very first time in your life! It has to be me who is really happy enough to say that I am happy, you do not get to dictate my life for me! So let me go like you intended to back then, and…" "You crazy, vindictive, viscous and manipulative bitch! You are bearing evil intentions towards his wife who has been nothing but good to you, and you sit here and call me ungrateful!" "You…" "And exactly what is going on here? Concubine? Cousin? Does someone want to explain to me why you are both breaching impropriety by screaming at each other at the top of your lungs!" "My Lord! Please forgive me, I just…your cousin here approached me in a drunken manner and I am just fighting him off of me and I…" "Concubine, return to your quarters and wait for me there. And as for you cousin, follow me into my study! Right now!"
"Look cousin, I just…" "So you have a connection to my concubine? Well? What is it? Tell me so that I can let her go from my care." "How I wish I could…but she wants to stay here and…" "Boy, your father has clearly hardly paid you any attention growing up, so listen to me and do it well. If a man likes a woman, he will ask for her hand as soon as possible in spite of these suffocating and overlapping Confucius laws. Dragging it out until the last second will always ensure that you loose the girl and you have done it long enough to catch the eye of another who is certainly more powerful than you are. You will then cowardly say that you were left with no choice and use your family as an excuse to cover up for your indecisiveness. Not everyone will stand waiting for you as you try to make a decision or flourish in the future, and you cannot blame them for that in return for you wasting their time!" "So what will you do then cousin? Will you let her go? Will you give me your concubine?" "With pleasure, and do not forget to take her with you to the palace."
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Panic overtook me like nothing before as I made my way to The Mistress Han in a hurry. I knew that I was supposed to wait for The Lord Nam in my chambers but I was to frightened of the consequences that could take place due to The Young Master Nam's recklessness. He had always been this way; a spoilt brat with little awareness of the consequences of his actions, but that didn't mean that I was going to let him take him down with me! I wanted to be with The Lord Nam and work for his favour instead of being with an untamed and unruly little boy who had no idea how to keep a woman, never mind make her happy in any aspect at all. I could already see where this was going and I wanted no part of it at all, so I had to get counsel from The Mistress Han on my next move. I wasn't going to let her down this easily, not after everything that I owed her. But as I quickly made my way over to her, I started to think about what I had already done for The Mistress Han and how many years I had been under her service for. Yes she had saved my life and I had already given up 2 years of my life to her service, but when exactly would it be enough? She wanted me to use my status as a concubine to rile up The Madame Nam, but even I knew that she would never allow me to become so close that I could ever hope to get pregnant. But that also didn't mean that I would take my chines with The Young Master Nam either; he was too broken already at a young age to love anyone genuinely. And as for The Lord Nam, I guess it was easier for him to have obsessions than love, but I still couldn't tell at times what he felt for Seo Yeon. Maybe he was still struggling with who he was as he still had no clear career path at this time or even any plans to take back what he lost, but I was sure that as long as I could make my way around it, that I actually had a higher chance of longevity here rather than The Mistress Han herself. Her very existence under the same roof made The Lord Nam extremely hostile and aggressive. It would be fair to say that she brought out the very worst in him due to her nonsensical equality stance that she was taking too far…
"…My Lady? My Lady, are you even listening to me? The Mistress Han is calling for us and you should really change your clothes, for they are all muddy now…" "Very well, dress me quickly servant, for I have to quickly meet up with her before The Lord Nam calls upon me and…" "The Lord Nam has taken his wife by carriage somewhere, who knows when they will be back since they didn't let anyone know where they were going or when they will return…" "What! Is that it? He didn't seem…angry at all?" "Not really My Lady, why? Should he be angry right now?" "No never mind, it is just that…he really didn't leave any instructions for me? At all?" "He told us to keep you confined in your quarters as you transcribe the books that he has handed over to us, but nothing else." Nothing else? He didn't even leave me a direct note or letter that he constantly sent to his wife 30 times a day, he didn't even leave me a parting gift as he did her, he didn't leave me anything at all. He didn't even want to see me, I wasn't even worthy of that? He barely looked me in the eyes when he confronted me with his cousin….in fact, I do not think that he has ever made eye contact with me at all, even when I looked after him as a servant and even when I tended to him today for the first time. This was maybe the first time that I had ever seen him act somewhat like a gentleman at all. He never looked another woman in they eye even if it was his own family members and he even kept his distance from The Minister's Wives who all kept pulling him into their conversations. I just simply couldn't figure this out; he turned heads wherever he went, so why wasn't he taking advantage of his natural charm? Even if he had fallen in society, he was still undeniably handsome and heinously manipulative. He could have bedded all of his enemies wives at this point, he could have bribed them or used them in other ways, but he didn't seem to think about it at all? What sort of man was this whom had the attention of so many women, and yet he wasn't even tempted in the slightest? The Mistress Han was only slightly older than him and she still had her charms, enough for him to have at least her when he wanted under his roof, but he didn't? What was happening? Was he only with his wife due to some secret? Everyone knows how she chased him shamelessly throughout her childhood, and after she became his hostage…maybe she knew some of his secrets? Yes, that made the most sense throughout this delicate web that I have been entangled in. Seo Yeon was intelligent and beautiful, but her lowly status was surely something that dragged The Lord Nam down, so why was he choosing to overlook that when it came to her and yet he clearly looked down on myself and The Mistress Han for our backgrounds. So that was it, the only way I was going to get rid of that orphaned girl whose status was no different then main, was by uncovering what secret it was that she was holding over a man who was surprising his natural desires for anyone else! Surely that would work better than whatever it was that The Mistress Han was trying to do, because nothing she had planned against the girl had ever worked. Maybe this was fate; I was going to be the one to replace Seo Yeon in The Lord Nam's life instead of The Mistress Han. And who knows, if she ever became an obstacle to me, then I too would rid myself of her the exact same way that I would do to Seo Yeon.