Chapter 94: Sul (Alcohol)

I somehow managed to stagger home alone, more drunk than I ever had been in my life. I saw that my father was very anxiously waiting for me but I wasn't having any of it right now. But he in turn, wasn't having ignore him either. "You worthless fool! You were the one who placed that lowborn on a pedestal before the nobles that you should have paid tribute to, to advance your own career or to even help me; your Lord and Master. You will not make the same mistake that I did when I took in your lowly mother..." I had gotten angry before, Hwi always called me a hothead whenever I caused trouble. But the anger that was now seeping out of me for the insults I had to bare about the only women in my life that had ever noticed me, cared for me, paid attention to me and loved me was putting me over the edge of my own sanity. Where was Yeon? Did she abandon me? Did my father scare her? Was she waiting for me somewhere? Or did...please god no, did Hwi take her somewhere? When she couldn't even recognise him? What if...what if he told her everything? What if she now hated me?

"...and that is not all. We have enemies that are working against our family. It is only if we stick together..." "You mean the enemies that you have made? And you expect me to defend you at every single turn? Without thinking about the dangers it would pose on my own life?" "What else did I chose to take you in for?" "And have you actually considered who would be left to defend you if I am dead? Because you don't exactly have any following out of loyalty do you?" That put him in his place as I struggled to even pull myself up off of the floor.

"Your woman is waiting for us at the brothel, and she has the connections to help us get back on our feet at last. The concubine who suffered a miscarriage didn' make it, so we need this kisaeng girl now. And I will kill the man who has tarnished our reputation..." "Oh really? You will kill Hwi now when he is now the Third Prince's right hand man? It only took him a short amount of time to gain the prince's trust, do you really have more time to find someone else to get close to him? As if he hasn't had his own men and brother's killed out of suspicion? You cannot touch Seo Hwi, not anymore. I can just as easily walk away and leave you to deal with theses so-called enemies alone. And by the way, Hui-Jee isn't my woman, not anymore."

I snuck away to the one place where the lights were still on; my mother's old quarters where I had settled Yeon into. I was very surprised to see her alive and unharmed by my father in my absence although the reason why was soon clear; she had been escorted and guarded men who carried seals from the palace. Luckily I carried my seal on me at all times, so I was able to enter her room without any difficulties, and I was able to enter her room with ease.

No matter how drunk I got I NEVER lost my senses so I observed her for a while silently as I noticed her writing in what looked like a series of diaries that she managed to have hidden from all of us. She kept looking around secretly, so I assume that she had written down all of her secrets and the life that she had lived. I still had my eyes on it as I noticed where she had hid it and I waited for a while before I approached her, grabbed her by the arm, cornered her and covered her mouth so she couldn't scream. She was doing a good job of trying to wrestle away form me, better than I had expected in fact but I was not in the mood to play games to day as I easily overpowered her and we both knew it. I had never been this close to her in my entire life, so I had no choice but to inhale her perfume which had started to stir something within me when I leaned in closer to smell her hair which was also heavily scented with something else. I got lost in this for a while as she froze from the moment I touched her until she tried to kick me in my shins. I just laughed at this when she kept asking me what the hell I was trying to do, all I could do was take a good look at her before I embraced her for the first time in my life. That was when she got quiet, really quiet and honestly deep down I wished that this moment would never end...until I remembered the way she acted in the palace, like she had already set herself against me...as if everything I had done for her meant nothing at all, just like how everyone else thought.

Before I could do anything further, we could both hear my father making his way over in a complete fit of rage, but before even I could do anything, she grabbed me and sat me down on her bed as if she was the one who was protecting me from him instead.

She didn't even flinch when my father threw a few things out of anger as the guards were stationed outside although she stopped them with a mere hand gesture. She let him have a his little tantrum before she came and sat next to me onto the bed where I put my arm around her shoulders without thinking but it was purely for protection. He just looked at us both in disgust...from what I could see anyways, but he didn't dare to embarrass myself in front of the palace guards by lashing out at me...or so I thought. But I should have seen his unpredictability going from a mile away since he never even thought of the possibility of him loosing everything he had worked for and had failed. It was simply not an option for either of us, and he had never experienced it yet until now, so all could do was to wait and see what he did while I tried to sober up as quickly as I could.

"Can I help you?" She asked in a very cold tone of voice that I had never heard from her at all. "How...how for...for how long..." she just rolled her eyes at this and sighed before she actually undid her jacket and undid her hair in complete frustration. "After you most likely rubbed my situation in my brother's face you made your son take me 'to meet' him and cut off ties with him for good even when I didn't remember him at all. And I saw that tense conversation that you had with your son which just made me all the more suspicious. So I followed my brother every chance I got until I recognised him...but I still didn't reach out to him. Instead I worked very hard to expose you; the lowly man from the Royal Stables who thinks that just by doing god-only-knows-what to get a little money that you are above everyone else." She ended that cruel but truthful statement with a chuckle as if she really did find the whole situation absurd as she started to brush out her long hair which just suddenly made her look so much more mature that even I was taken aback once again. He tried to slap her but I actually managed to intervene, but then my father sucker punched me really hard in my stomach, which left me completely winded onto the floor. He had never psychically hurt me himself but we were all out of our senses at this point. But what I didn't expect was for Yeon to actually catch his next hand and push it back himself. In fact, I was pretty sure that I had dreamed that part...until he tried to hit her again and this time she drew my sword from my side and actually managed to slash my father's face, just as Hwi slashed Sung-Rok's face. My father was frozen in shock and he actually managed to scream a little. Hearing my father scream for the first time was doing something rather odd to me as it was usually me screaming in pain but no one heard me at all, not usually. But what was most unusual about this whole interaction was the angry face that she had on her from the moment that my father laid his eyes onto me. Even though I was still half drunk, I coldest erase the fury that emanated from the once quiet and shy girl. But it was quite clear to me now that that girl no longer existed...or maybe she never existed at all. The Yeon that was in front of me now was bold, fearless and incredible intelligent, maybe even more so than Han Hui-Jee...and the way that she was handing my sword in her fair hands...

I will never in my life forget what happened next, it was as if the memory was reared into my mind... but I'm pretty sure that she took on the men who suddenly attacked the palace guards single handedly...as if she had been practising or years...I must have blacked out or I most likely was still very drunk, but when I finally began to feel myself covering up, I indeed was surrounded my men injured onto the floor and there was blood on my sword that she was holding in front of may father who was still bleeding from his face but he had his eyes locked onto Yeon as if he was really seeing her for the first time- as was i.