Chapter 63: Seon-Ho

"We worked alongside Seo Yeon a few years ago while she was living in your father's mansion. She told us a family friend took her in whist her brother was away fighting in the Liadong war. She worked in a few households alongside us in middle-class areas. Unfortunately, there was a specific house world where we worked were our mistress was a little...temperamental. She was especially jealous of Yeon..." they looked like they wanted to stop there but I promised to not only get them better full time jobs, but that it would pay enough to support their whole families as I had now made some connections high up since my promotion came directly from the King. "Seo Yeon is a beautiful girl indeed, and very mature for her age even though she doesn't like to display it. The young master of home...he took a fancy to her after she was caught giving secret tuitions to his younger brother. He saw that she was the closest to us and he tried very hard to make us persuade her into agreeing to him possibly courting her, even though he was engaged to be married at the time. She refused his advances again and again, to the point where he wanted to break off his engagement. But she wanted absolutely nothing to do with him no matter what. He started taking his anger out on us...to the point where he framed us for stealing. His mother didn't like her from the start and blamed all of us for her son's changed behaviour and fired us all, but Yeon volunteered to take on all of our punishments."

I do not know how I managed to restrain myself at all; but I was confident I knew the reason why got into a lot of trouble at her work, and the reason why she hide it from me for so long. "Did she have a lot of suitors? Was she...in any relationships?" It was hard for me to even say it, never mind imagine it. "She did have a lot of suitors in the short time she worked. But she didn't look at any of them; she even had a few noblemen that could have taken care of her for the rest of her life. But she always rejected them; we asked her once why she shied away from men. She told us that she was in love with a man for many years...who was in love with another woman and just left it at that."

I had to walk away and get something to drink, as soon as possible. Just when I though she would disappoint me for the first time, she went above and beyond as usual. The realisation that Yeon had not only never abandoned me for a single day since the moment we met, but that she was really running far away from me so I could pursue a foolish fleeting crush I had years ago that I deeply regretted a long time ago completely crushed me. The fact that she saw everyday and did what she did for me, potentially knowing that I was in love with someone else all that time...I drank myself into oblivion in a dark corner somewhere before crawling to the opium house when I decided that drinking 5 bottles was still snot enough to try to make me forget what she had been through behind my back, and what she was still up to now. And the fact that she was running away from me, for what? To wrestle with her fears and doubts? To put her own happiness and love behind her for my sake? At that moment I really wondered what good-fortune or merit I held to come across her in my lifetime; almost every obstacle I faced, she was by my side to heal and overcome it. She helped me achieve my dreams and my goals, and she even loved the one other woman who died loving me; my concubine/ slave mother who my father tried all his life to make me ashamed of.

I sat in my usual corner and I was soon in and out of consciousness for while before I saw a blinding light that shone directly on my face. I guess the doors had opened and someone didn't bother to close them, but I was too out of it to even speak, and frankly I didn't want to. The light only shone brighter to the point where I had to drag my arm up to shield my face...but someone beat me to it. I heard a conversation in low voices as I could barely make out a short figure in what seemed like a dress holding her hand up to my forehead to block the light. But I didn't want to talk to anyone and I just wanted to be left alone...but I could swear that the voices sounded familiar..."how long has he been here for? And why on earth is he in this state?" "Forgive me...we had no choice but to tell him everything...he didn't look too well when he left..." "No...I do not believe that could make him upset enough to come here. Maybe something happened to him that we have no knowledge about. Maybe...something between him and his woman" I could tell her voice was faltering at that last part. But when I thought about it again I tried to wake myself up and see if it was who I thought it was. She seemed to have caught on to what I was trying to do as she helped me sit up. Her perfume was all too familiar and so were the shapes of her clothes; no other girl dressed like her. She gave me some water to drink as she cupped my face into her hands; I had tears spilling out of my eyes so I had a harder time identifying her, even though I knew deep down inside that it was Yeon, who else could it possibly be after all these months? But I longed to see her face, I wanted to see her look at me and only me. I wanted to use myself in her eyes just like I always was since we met. I wish...I wish felt what she felt for me a lot sooner, before I was forced to betray them; who knows, maybe we could have been happier if I knew that she was always like this...if only I had recognised what she was hiding from me and I gave her a chance despite her young age...I couldn't see or hear anything anymore, but I swear on all things living I felt her kiss me before the light began to fade.