Chapter 5

Chapter 5

With that outstanding face of hers, my father’s concubine had landed my father, that easy mark, quite thoroughly.

For a courtesan born of low status, there would have been no reason to refuse when a high-ranking official wanted to take her in as a concubine.

A person’s life changes its shape depending on the angle from which it is viewed. Perhaps she, too, had simply made the best choice among the options available to her.

Even so, I hated the concubine. I prayed devoutly every day for my father and the concubine to live long, ailing lives, but Heaven was heartless and turned a deaf ear to my earnest prayers.

Today, too, I prayed with all my heart that harm would befall at least one of them, Father or the concubine. I beg you, I beg you. To the gods of heaven and earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars, to the Jade Emperor, I beg you, I beg you. To the Buddha, I beg you, I beg you. Whoever it is, please hear me.

While I was offering up my solemn prayer, the concubine’s daughter, Yu Hwaryeong, appeared.

“Sister!”

Sister, my foot.

“Not Sister. Miss. How dare a nobody like you call me Sister? You’re a concubine’s daughter, so know your place.”

I spat out exactly what I thought.

What was there to hold back? I was about to leave home to be married, and before I left I wanted to let it all out, just once.

“Have you lost your mind?!”

As expected, Father flew into a rage at me. As was his habit, he raised his hand high, and I smiled and retorted.

“Are you going to hit me?”

“…”

“Are you going to mark the body of the future Princess Consort Hye? Wouldn’t that lower my market value?”

“Do you think you were chosen for that seat because you’re so remarkable? It was all me…!”

“Yes, yes. I’m walking on a road you paved for me? But what can I do? I’m not the least bit grateful.”

He had only ever thought of selling me off at a high price, to suit his own tastes, now that I’d reached marriageable age. Who could have known I would be offered up to the imperial family regardless of his wishes? Father, too, must have found this situation startling and strange.

He had been negotiating matches with several families, hoping to marry me off somewhere he could keep me firmly in his grasp, so this was a real shame.

If he had quickly sealed an engagement with some other family, I might have slipped out of the imperial family’s sight. But he had only been poking around here and there without committing to anyone, and so he was caught out.

He had made this blunder because he had no awareness at all that I was a prize valuable enough for the imperial family to covet.

Father had an unconscious habit of underestimating my worth, so it wasn’t surprising that things had turned out this way.

If he had thought the imperial family might lay a hand on me, he would have concluded my betrothal as soon as possible instead of merely testing the waters.

But now that the other party was the imperial family, he had no house he could wave around at will, and no one would dare touch me lightly.

From Father’s point of view, it wasn’t the best match.

Father had tried to use my marriage negotiations to cement his influence in political circles, but when caution drags on, things go awry.

Forming ties with the imperial family brings good fortune, but it brings trouble in equal measure.

One has to watch other people’s reactions twice as carefully, and not the slightest gap can be tolerated. In political circles, it amounts to walking on thin ice.

Well, he was such a shrewd man that I figured he would manage fine on his own without my needing to worry.

“Sister, you’re truly too harsh… We may not have come from the same womb, but we came from the same seed. Half of our bodies run with the same blood, so how can you forbid me even to call you Sister…?”

The moment Yu Hwaryeong opened her mouth, the concubine began wailing loudly.

“Did my daughter want to be born a concubine’s child? How can you be so cruel! Hoo…”

The concubine had a point. Hwaryeong hadn’t wanted to be born a concubine’s daughter.

But shouldn’t that kind of complaint come from those who were born as concubines’ children and raised amid discrimination?

Even born a concubine’s daughter, she had done everything she wanted, eaten everything she wanted, and been given plenty of love by her parents. It seemed to me that Hwaryeong’s life had been far more dazzling than mine.

In name she was a concubine’s daughter, but in practice she had carried herself as though she outranked the legitimate daughter, so when she said such things, I could only find them laughable.

“Ha!”

When I couldn’t hold back and let out a loud scoff, Father’s eyes rolled back with a glare. He looked ready to strike me. As far as I was concerned, it made no difference whether he did or not.

“When did I ever say your father and my father were different? I never said that. I’m only talking about right and wrong. Is ‘know your place’ really so hard to understand?”

Before these detestable creatures, I was fully confident that I could be as nasty a girl as I pleased.

I wanted to be their nightmare. I wanted to be a great stumbling block in their lives. I wanted to be someone they would fear for a long time to come.

I wanted to make them so afraid of me that they couldn’t utter a peep in front of me, or in front of my mother.

I wanted to be their eternal archenemy.

“Concubine. Don’t ever bring up cooking or rice cakes or anything of the sort to my mother again. If one more word of that reaches her ears, I’ll tear your mouth open, concubine or not.”

At last unable to hold back, Father struck me on the head. It was the most sensible place to hit. Even if a lump or bruise formed, it would be hidden by my hair and hard to see.

But that was beside the point, and my head rang.

“If the concubine and Hwaryeong had kept to their place, I wouldn’t be like this. They keep crossing lines they shouldn’t, so I cross lines too. Each of us just needs to live in the place we’ve been given and play our own part. Why do you covet what you have no right to covet? That’s what I’m saying.”

I looked straight at Father and said:

“It’s all your fault that this household is in such a state. If you had properly established the distinction between legitimate and secondary, it wouldn’t have come to this. No matter how much a concubine runs wild, a concubine is a concubine, nothing more, nothing less, and she can’t so much as touch the principal wife’s seat.”

“Yu Hwacheon!”

“So I’m telling you to keep them in check from now on. It was something only you needed to get right, and you got it wrong. If you make Mother tiptoe around them, I’ll burn this house down. If you like that idea, then go on behaving like this.”

I had to be hard. It was less a choice than a necessity. Only then could I protect the weak. Otherwise, we would simply collapse together.

I couldn’t fall. There was someone I had to protect.

Mother, who looked only to me. That gaze suffocated me, and at the same time it held me up.

If the pillar Mother leaned on collapsed, nothing would be left after that. So I had tempered myself.

I suppressed my emotions, abandoned my hopes, and hardened my heart.

I piled up my resentment. Anger, grievance, even the tears I had forcibly swallowed, I stacked them all like bricks and raised a fortress wall that would not crumble easily.

With the sturdy castle I had built that way, I fended off my enemies’ attacks. This was my first tactic.

“You were raised as the legitimate daughter, lacking nothing. What more could you possibly want? What have we done that’s so wrong?!

“Hwaryeong, people only remember what they themselves have suffered and only recognize their own sorrow. That’s why I don’t know your sorrow and you don’t know mine. Honestly, I don’t even want to know yours. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“How can you say such a thing…!”

“I’m not saying you and your mother did something wrong. But a concubine and a concubine’s daughter should keep their mouths shut and stay meek even if they’ve done nothing wrong. When you keep making a fuss like this, I want to trample you.”

I stroked Hwaryeong’s pretty face with my fingertips. Hwaryeong looked terrified, as if she had come face to face with a ghost.

I was in quite a cheerful mood.

“Sister…”

“Miss. I told you, Miss, Hwaryeong. I don’t recall ever permitting you to call me Sister, so why do you keep doing it? How presumptuous.”

“Must sisters go this far with each other…?”

“Until you die, no, even after you die, you’re beneath me, and even after I die, I’m above you. You’re my servant forever. Hm? Our Hwaryeong has a pretty face but not much of a brain, it seems.”

“You received every benefit because you’re the legitimate daughter. You even got the seat of Princess Consort Hye without lifting a finger or making any effort. I can’t even rise to such a high position… And yet you covet my share too?”

“What is your share?”

“Father’s love! You could at least give me that much!”

I did give it to you. Or rather, it was taken from me. Either way, I gave it.

You received a hundred sacks of rice worth of the love from the father of whom I got not a single grain, and yet you blame me for your share not being enough?

Still, I understood. You, too, are a victim of this system. You, too, are a little pitiable.

“Keep it.”

“…What?”

“I said, take plenty. Take it all. It was already all yours to begin with. I don’t even want it. What use would I have for a father’s love?”

Even if I received it, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

“Take it all, pretty Hwaryeong. And live with your mouth shut. Meekly, sweetly. Then marry well, whether into an official’s household as a concubine or as a second wife, like your mother. Being a concubine’s daughter, you’ll find it hard to land anything but a concubine’s or second wife’s seat, but surely your father will fetch you some respectable son-in-law from a distinguished family.”

I snatched Hwaryeong’s hand and wrote characters on her palm.

A clear distinction is made between children of the primary wife and those of secondary wives.

“You’re illiterate, so you wouldn’t know, would you? It’s the phrase ‘the legitimate and the secondary are distinct.’ Surely even your small, pretty head can work out what it means? Can’t you manage even that?”

I flung Hwaryeong’s hand away with force. Hwaryeong slowly sank to the ground in the pose of a tragic heroine.

Even that was so lovely it made the onlooker’s heart ache, so Hwaryeong would surely be deeply loved by her husband even after she married.

“I’m off. Goodbye.”

I waved her off carelessly and left the small house.

Having burst it all out instead of letting it pile up inside, my chest felt cool, as if a breeze were blowing through it. It even felt as though a long-standing blockage had cleared at last.

If Mother heard that I had dealt a blow like this, I would be scolded severely again. So what?

It was worth enduring a severe scolding. There was no day when I felt as refreshed and as proud of myself as today.

I suppose I really am suited to playing the villain.

* * *

Ryu Hyeok and his half-brother, Ryu Jin, Prince Yeong and the emperor’s ninth son, were playing baduk.

The two had been born around the same time and had been as close as true brothers since childhood.

In the bleak imperial court, where there was no one to open one’s heart to, Ryu Jin’s presence had been a great comfort to Ryu Hyeok, and likewise Ryu Hyeok’s presence had been a great help to Ryu Jin.

By now the two had each been granted a princely title and lived separately in princely residences outside the palace, but whenever they had time, they would meet and chat about trivial things or play baduk.

Ryu Jin wasn’t particularly clever, so he had never once beaten Ryu Hyeok at baduk.

“You’ll lose again anyway, so I don’t understand why you always ask for a game.”

“It might be different this time. Even when I know it’s a battle I can’t win, I like to dream of a miracle.”

“Haha. What a silly fellow.”

“Because someday, even just once, you might waver, Brother.”

They say not to even look at a tree you cannot climb, but what could one do when the very fact that it couldn’t be climbed made it draw the eye? If it had been an easy tree to climb, it wouldn’t have caught his eye in the first place.

With that mindset, Ryu Jin kept challenging Ryu Hyeok, and Ryu Hyeok, never seeming to tire of him, faced him every time.