Chapter 9

Chapter 9

On the brightly colored mats spread across the courtyard, the new bride bowed to her parents.

Mother swallowed the words she had left unsaid and wept, while Father looked down at me with a troubled face, his thoughts impossible to read.

When I finished bowing and rose, Mother gripped my hand tightly. Her chest was heaving hard. It looked as though she were trying to suppress her welling emotions with deep breaths.

I was about to say something to Mother, but looking toward where Father stood, I spoke instead.

“Father, please take good care of Mother.”

“…Yes.”

And so I turned my back. Leaving behind the house that had shared every day of my life, I climbed into the palanquin.

When you turn away, you must not hesitate; you must cut it off cleanly. Otherwise, in the end, the only one who gets hurt is yourself.

The cramped palanquin rattled, followed by a sensation of floating as my body lifted. The bearers seemed to have raised it.

A small sigh slipped out between my lips without my meaning it to. It felt as though all my strength had drained out with that sigh.

The long procession began to move.

Regardless of my dejected heart, cheerful music rang out.

People passing along the street saw the bridal procession and let out envious remarks.

“Whose young lady is it, holding her wedding with such a dazzling procession?”

“It’s the daughter of the Left Vice Director. They say she’s marrying Prince Hye as his consort.”

“Prince Hye? Now that is a grand celebration!”

The bride everyone envied sat dazed, her complexion like a corpse’s. Neither the cheerful music nor the people’s admiration offered her any comfort.

For this one day, I had learned, studied, and polished all those things. For this one day, I had turned away from the cruel years.

Merely for this one day, merely for something like this.

‘If only I had been born a man.’

A dreadful sensation rising from my lower belly crept up and tickled my soul. I pursed my lips and let a small word slip out.

“Concubines…”

Even on a day like this, that word tormented me. The protagonist of today was surely me, yet even on a day like today, that word kept circling in my chest.

“Haa… The Eighth Prince, of all people.”

There had been a time when I had hoped that if I happened to meet a good husband, at least my own marriage might escape the shadow of concubines. It was not so distant a past.

But as of today, that hope had become completely irretrievable.

What lay spread before my eyes was the history of the imperial family and its favored concubines. Lecherous creatures. If they liked concubines that much, they shouldn’t have taken wives at all.

I ground my teeth, endlessly repeating inconsistent, absurd thoughts and curses.

The one who had picked me as the Eighth Prince’s wife was surely not the Eighth Prince himself.

We hadn’t even known each other, so it must have been decided purely on the basis of my family. And the one who made that decision must certainly have been the emperor.

‘Damn old man.’

Even as I cursed him for quite a while, I wondered whether it was too frivolous to behave so toward the man who would soon be my father-in-law, and I stopped.

I dislike this indecisive side of mine, which seems exactly like Mother’s.

“…I should have hugged her.”

If I was leaving anyway, I shouldn’t have turned my back so coldly; I should have embraced those small shoulders even once. Even though I was a thoughtless daughter, she was a mother who had cherished even someone like me as if I were her whole world.

‘They say everything is regret once you turn around, that whichever path you choose, regret remains, but still, I should have hugged her.’

I lightly bit the tender flesh inside my lip. A sound close to a groan escaped, but fortunately it was buried in the music and did not spread. My slender waist slowly tipped forward.

Just then, the palanquin stopped moving, and I felt the bearers set it down on the ground.

The time had finally come.

The music the procession had been playing faded, and then another tune, the one played when the groom’s house welcomes the bride, reached my ears.

Swallowing that melody, which seemed to blow in like a sob, I stepped out of the palanquin.

The servants neatly straightened my rumpled attire. It was a necessary procedure to leave a good first impression before stepping over the groom’s threshold.

When the arrangements were finished, my steps at last began to move. The ornaments in my hair jingled, capturing everyone’s attention.

The bride’s foot crossed the threshold of the gate. As I entered the groom’s house, a solemn bell rang out. It was the announcement that the bride had at last arrived.

A clean red silk was laid long across the ground. My small feet began to tread upon it. Head slightly bowed, paying the utmost attention to my bearing, I walked on to the place where I was to stop.

I swallowed dry saliva down my throat.

‘I’m scared.’

That thought lasted only a moment before I came face to face with a figure I took to be the groom.

‘…He’s big.’

I had no time to check even his face properly. But from the glance I stole, his build was imposing. Far more than I had imagined.

My breath trembled before a presence that weighed upon me just by standing in front of me. The thin breath I let out pushed the red cloth covering my face ever so slightly.

“The bride and groom shall bow to each other!”

At the sound of the voice, I slowly bent my body, bowed, and rose. The melody that dizzied my head kept playing without end.

“The bride and groom shall bow to the gods of heaven and earth!”

This time, rather than bowing to each other, I bowed facing forward.

“The bride and groom shall bow to the sun, moon, and stars!”

I bowed once more. By now I had mastered bowing. It would be no exaggeration to call me an expert.

“With this, the marriage of the two is proclaimed before all the spirits! The bride and groom shall share a cup of wine and swear a hundred-year vow!”

Now the important rites were all finished.

But that did not mean the wedding ended there. The groom had to entertain the guests with the utmost hospitality, and the bride had to wait in the bridal chamber until every guest had left and the groom had finished his duties.

In other words, it was only the groom who suffered. That was why it was not uncommon for the first night to go unconsummated because the groom, deeply drunk, arrived at the bridal chamber in no condition.

If Prince Hye held his liquor poorly, the same would happen to me. For it was customary for the guests to ply a new groom with drink to make a fool of him before the wedding night.

Well, I would have no regrets if the first night went unconsummated. If anything, it would be a relief.

That was what I worried about most right now, so if the groom got drunk and passed out, I would only be grateful.

‘Even if the wedding night doesn’t happen, it isn’t as though I can escape forever. But if I can catch my breath for even a single day, I’ll be thankful.’

I would not love my husband. Nor would I push him away. I would fulfill the duties a married couple must keep, but I would not hand over my deepest feelings.

If I gave away my heart and ended up falling in love, my future would be plain to see.

Watching concubines rise day by day, I would come to resent my body as it aged and wore out with the passage of time.

There was nothing as tenacious as a woman’s devotion. A man’s devotion can change in a single night, but a woman’s is truly stubborn. One need only look at my mother for the answer.

They say that if you love too much, even the concubines your husband takes start to look pretty. I didn’t want to be trapped in that wretched cycle.

“Please follow me this way.”

A rather elderly maidservant spoke to me. She seemed to mean that it was time to go to the bridal chamber.

Without so much as a glance toward the groom’s side, I followed the maidservant. Whether the groom was looking at me or not was beyond my concern.

‘Get roaring drunk, get soused, and don’t come to the bridal chamber. Just pass out.’

* * *

It may sound rather obvious, but Ryu Hyeok held his liquor well, too.

He was strong even in the smallest things, which made him lack human warmth. A little flaw is supposed to make a person endearing, after all.

The guests, who had drunk as though drowning in the wine jars, shook their heads at Ryu Hyeok, whose complexion had not changed in the slightest. He was surely not human.

“Urgh!”

Among the guests clutching their chests and retching in drunkenness, the sight of Ryu Hyeok loftily sipping from his cup was enough to inspire awe.

The household servants, holding back their own nausea, saw off the guests who rushed out of the gate. Now only one guest remained: Ryu Jin.

Ryu Jin was also notorious for being able to drink by the barrel. The two had comparable capacities, which made them good brothers and drinking companions. But the one who always kept his wits to the end was Ryu Hyeok.

“Why don’t you head home soon?”

“Why! Are you in a hurry to get to your wedding night?!”

Flushed with drink, Ryu Jin pounded the table with his palm. Anyone could see he wasn’t in his right mind.

His eyes had even gone hazy, and it would have been nice if he had called it a night and gotten himself home.

“I simply think there is work that needs to be done.”

“How can you be so precise even about your nights, Brother? Don’t you tremble, or look forward to it, or have any feelings like that? Can’t you feel them?”

“I wonder why I should feel such things at all, and isn’t the union of husband and wife not meant to be for pleasure?”

“Pleasure is one of the purposes too! Is producing offspring the only purpose? There can be several purposes! You can’t be so rigid, Brother. When you handle a woman, you need to be a bit smooth.”

“Is that how well you handle women, then? Is that why you were caught visiting a courtesan house and are now despised by your wife?”

“Ah! Why bring that up now! I’m already worried half to death…”

Ryu Jin bit his fingernails anxiously. The ragged, chewed nails looked unsightly, so Ryu Hyeok smacked Ryu Jin’s lips.

“Stop biting them. How long ago did Father tell you to break that habit? You still can’t hold out on even that one thing.”

“I hadn’t done it for quite a while, but given the nature of the matter, my anxiety came back. At this rate I’m going to get divorced.”

Being divorced was nonsense. A prince could cast out his wife, but a wife had no right to demand a divorce first.

If such a thing happened, it would become a shame to go down in history.

But thinking about it another way, it also meant that Ryu Jin’s situation was desperate enough for him to utter such nonsense.

Ryu Jin’s wife, Princess Consort Yeong, was as strong-willed as she was beautiful. Somehow she had wrapped around her finger the imperial court’s libertine, whom even the emperor had thrown up his hands over, and left him unable to move.

Thanks to her, Ryu Jin had seemed to pull himself together and live like a proper person, but in the end he couldn’t break the habit and had dealt Princess Consort Yeong a great wound. If he was going to cause trouble, he could at least have conducted himself well enough not to be caught.

‘Or else he could simply face it with some dignity.’

There was nothing as laughable as a man who trembled under his wife’s force of will. Ryu Hyeok found the so-called henpecked husbands the most pathetic of all.

A woman must not be treated carelessly, but living crushed under a woman was also not the way of a head of household.

‘Born a man, one ought to know how to show some backbone.’

He had thought such men shameless, and now that his own younger brother was doing it, he found it all the more risible.