Episode 1
I hate concubines.
Concubine, secondary wife, side consort, lesser wife, father’s concubine, royal consort. Any word to do with concubines makes me grind my teeth.
What kind of idiot came up with the system of keeping concubines in the first place? What deranged piece of garbage invented it?
Of course, there must have been some reason the system came to exist. Maybe there was some grand, rational justification that I can’t fully grasp.
‘So what? Justified or not, what do I care?’
I wish every man in the world who keeps a concubine were miserable.
No, I wish this entire society, which stands by and tolerates the system, would just collapse. Damn it, damn it, damn it all.
“Hwacheon, take these rice cakes over to the other house, would you?”
“……What did you say?”
Mother held out a basket of rice cakes with her usual gentle face.
I couldn’t stand the sight of that serene expression, so I flung the basket she handed me onto the ground. I hurled it with all the strength in my body.
The rice cakes burst out of the basket and scattered through the air like flower petals.
As though determined not to let a single one of them escape, I ground the cakes that had fallen onto the dirt underfoot, stamping on them again and again.
The servants of the household, watching me, made noises of dismay and stared.
“Don’t you have any shame, or any jealousy? Don’t you even pity us?”
Mother looked at me with trembling eyes, as if genuinely startled. What exactly was there to be startled about? If anyone should be wearing that expression, it was me.
Her husband had been stolen by another woman, and she was blithely telling me to carry rice cakes to that wench’s house.
“……Hwacheon.”
As if her stern tone could ease my rage. Anger never fades unless it’s let out.
“Why should I bring rice cakes to that lowborn wench?”
“Yu Hwacheon!”
At last, Mother shouted. A woman who only ever spoke in soft, gentle words was now angry at me.
But why was she angry at me? I wasn’t the one she should be angry with. Why blame the wrong person?
“If you want to give that bitch rice cakes so badly, send the servants. Why me? Why? Am I a servant? Am I your errand girl?”
“Your father is there, isn’t he!”
“That’s exactly why I don’t want to go. That’s why!”
Mother seemed to believe I needed my father’s warmth, and she kept pushing and pushing me toward the father who never came home from the other house.
“You need to be in front of his eyes, or he’ll forget you!”
It isn’t that I don’t want to see Father. It isn’t that I don’t love him. I do want to see him, and I do love him.
But at the same time, I hate him enough to want to kill him.
“You have to claim what’s yours. You have to take the love you’re owed from your father! A parent’s love is never enough, even if you receive it your whole life.”
“That parent set up a household with another woman because he doesn’t want to love me, so why should I go looking for him? There, I’m nothing but a nuisance and an obstacle! If that’s the kind of love it is, I’d rather go without. Why should I crawl around begging like a coward? Why should I!”
Mother rushed over and slapped my cheek. Ah, it hurts. My ears are ringing and muffled.
How can a hand raised so delicately sting this much? If she had slapped Father’s cheek with this stinging hand, would things have turned out differently?
But Mother wouldn’t be able to. Even if she were given the chance, she wouldn’t.
That’s why Mother is a fool. A simpleton who gets robbed with her eyes wide open. A dolt who even lets her husband be taken from her. My poor, pitiful fool.
My poor mother.
Thick tears dropped from my eyes. Mother looked at me and burst into even more sorrowful sobs than mine.
She was the one who struck me, so why was she weeping so hard? If Mother cries harder, I can’t even show how unfair it is that I was the one who got hit.
“Can’t you just be loved, instead of wallowing in misery like your mother? If you bowed your head to your father and charmed him a little, he’d dote on you, so why are you so stubborn? Why……”
She was trying to project onto me the love she couldn’t get from her husband, so of course things were never going to work out.
I don’t understand why a woman who had never shown a shred of ambition in her life was so greedy about her daughter being loved by her father.
Her foolishness made my chest burn.
Without me, how would this frail woman survive in the world?
Just then, someone kicked open the front gate and came in.
A man whose face I could barely remember, since I hadn’t seen it in so long. He looked strangely familiar and strangely foreign, and after glancing over the two of us clinging to each other, he hurried into the study.
‘Damn father.’
Dumbfounded, I stared at the man’s retreating back with my mouth hanging open like an idiot.
Mother, oblivious to what was in my heart, tugged at my sleeve and said:
“Your father is here. Go to him, quickly.”
“Why do I have to go alone? Was I the one in this house who wanted to see Father most? No, I wasn’t. If anyone’s going, it should be you, Mother. Whether I see him or not makes no difference to me.”
“I have to prepare supper, so you go first and rub his shoulders a little. Please?”
“The house is full of servants, so why are you the one cooking?”
“Your father won’t touch any food that isn’t made by me. He says the servants’ cooking doesn’t compare.”
So that was why she had cooked the meals herself and delivered them all the way to the other house. Mother is truly easygoing. A smile bloomed on her face because her husband had set foot here for the first time in a million years.
Foolish woman. I will never live like Mother. I will never become a submissive, self-sacrificing woman like that.
I refuse to live a life crushed beneath a husband, unable to do a single thing of my own will.
Grumbling nonstop, I dragged my steps toward the study where Father was.
Father glanced at me and asked:
“What’s wrong with your face?”
“……What do you mean?”
“Did your mother hit you?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“What do you mean, no? It plainly looks like you’ve been slapped. Even your saintly mother can’t put up with a temper like yours, I suppose?”
Then he went back to peering at his dull book.
I hated that indifference of his. He doted on the daughter his concubine bore, acting as though he would give her the whole world, yet he was always like this with me alone.
He was utterly heartless. He was the kind of man who wouldn’t so much as blink if I died, and would just keep reading his books.
“Tell your mother to send some rice cakes to the other house tomorrow. Your stepmother said she can’t praise your mother’s rice cakes enough. How kind of her.”
“Who’s the kind one? My mother, who makes rice cakes for her husband’s concubine? Or that damned wench who stole someone else’s husband and now demands rice cakes on top of it?”
Before I had even finished speaking, Father threw his book at my face, his expression thick with rage.
It hit squarely on the bridge of my nose, and it hurt ten times more than Mother’s slap.
“Damned wench? You dare call your stepmother a damned wench?”
“……Well, a damned wench is a damned wench.”
They say that even if your mouth is crooked, your words should be straight. How could I stand it if I couldn’t call a damned wench a damned wench?
That woman and that woman’s daughter are both damned wenches to me. But the most damned of all is the man standing in front of me, Father.
“Is anyone there?!”
When Father called for a servant, huffing with fury, one of them opened the door and came in.
“Yes, Master.”
“Bring me a switch!”
The servant bowed and scraped, pretending not to see the angry red swelling on the bridge of my nose. The servants in this house are skilled at feigning blindness to anything.
Perhaps it’s because they know that the moment they acknowledge something, the blame will fall on them.
‘If you screamed like that at the other house, the two of you would have split up long ago. You only play the commander when you’re in our house. You don’t even have your own servant there. You can’t say a word against whatever your concubine tells you.’
The instant I slowly lifted my skirt hem, Father’s hand moved without a moment’s hesitation.
The switch lashed my calves without pause.
The beating was always like this. By the time I could ask why, it was already too late, and my excuses were broken before I could even begin.
As the pain spread with the sound of the switch splitting my flesh, I clenched my teeth. If I made a sound, I lost.
Groaning was a luxury. Tears were a weakness.
“Stubborn wretch. You won’t even let out a single groan!”
By now, I could no longer tell who was the concubine’s daughter and who was the legitimate one. Only the titles remained, and those titles protected nothing.
I know in my head that my miserable fate isn’t entirely that girl’s fault.
But when I endure a beating like this, staring at the floor, I can’t bear it, feeling as though her peace has been built upon my misfortune.
So I hate her. Even if my reason denies it, I can’t deny the emotion that blackly wells up in one corner of my heart.
* * *
My calves, beaten by Father, hurt so badly that I couldn’t force even a sip of water down my throat. In the end, I went hungry until lunch the next day.
I wasn’t particularly hungry, so it caused me no discomfort. My heart was hollow and my stomach was hollow, a perfect match.
Taking pity on me, Mother came to my room carrying perilla seed porridge.
‘Ugh, how embarrassing……’
I was ashamed of lying there after taking such a beating, so even though I knew she had come, I pretended not to and closed my eyes.
I kept up my fake sleep for a long while, but the room had gone strangely quiet.
When I eased my eyes open to check whether she had left, Mother was staring down at me.
“Wh-what is it?!”
I was so startled I nearly fainted and shot upright, and Mother clicked her tongue. On the tray she had brought, there was ointment beside the perilla seed porridge.
Setting the tray beside the bed, Mother flung my skirt hem up.
To lift the skirt of a fully grown young lady without even asking permission. Mother is far too careless, truly.
Then again, if she had had even a little carefulness, she would have noticed with uncanny sharpness that her husband was running around making mischief outside.
I know it too. Mother is not the offender, she is the victim. And yet the wounds I’ve received feel so much closer to me that I can’t look squarely at Mother’s wounds.
Neither of us is a sinner, so why are we both living like sinners? Is it because we’re weak, or because we’re women who are looked down upon?
“Does it hurt?”
“……Of course it hurts. I was hit with a switch, so naturally it hurts.”
Her hands smearing ointment on the welts were not gentle. I could tell she was pressing hard on purpose, to make it hurt even more than it already did.
Mother must hate me too. I suppose she resents that I stood up to her husband.
Would Father even appreciate it if she did that? If he wouldn’t, what was the use of her faultless loyalty?
“That’s what you get for talking back to your father. If you can’t tame your temper, you’ll suffer after you marry. A woman must know how to bow low. What husband would cherish a spirited, headstrong woman like you?”
“Then let him not cherish me. Was I born to be cherished by a husband? Is that the purpose and destiny of my life, just that? I’d rather not live a life like that.”
“How dare you say such a thing to me, of all people! Do you want to see your mother collapse into her sickbed?”
Loyalty that the other person finds no merit in is worse than garbage. It’s foolish to cling to such garbage and keep on living.
“Don’t cry. If you’re going to cry, go outside and do it. I’m sick of seeing you cry. I’m sick of this house, I’m sick of living, I’m just sick of everything.”
