Part 4: Present Day 2-Chapter 44: Hablihwa (Rationalisation)

I couldn't see him anymore, no matter how hard I looked and ran around the entire brothel, Seon-Ho had once again left without saying a single word to me. For almost up to a year now, I had to endure his pointed stares following me everywhere I went, but I was just as helpless as he was and we all knew it. Even my brother could tell what was going on, but he wasn't too happy about the situation either. His 'woman' ran off with his best friend, so where did that leave me? Hwi had a new woman and after everything we had all been through, all I could do was to keep the peace with everyone. Seon-Ho was with Hui-Jee, so why wasn't he happy with her? Why did he always look so miserable? And why was he always finding excuses to stay around me? If I...If I knew that he would be this depressed and doing so badly at work then I wouldn't have done it, any of it. I would have stayed in his life, I would have helped him more if he let me, I would have looked after him and I would have...

You would have what, Yeon? What are you talking about? What were you thinking about? Have you already forgotten what has happened to you? Orphaned in childhood, separated from your brother for almost 3 years after suffering from memory loss, being a hostage, getting your heart broken by that man over and over again and...I still could not bring up the last thing that happened to me. Nobody knew that, and I wasn't planning on letting anybody know, not even Seon-Ho himself. It wasn't like anything was going to change anyways, so what was the point of bringing it up and reliving that pain al over again? I was stuck in a brothel and nobody knew why or how, but now that I was here I wasn't going to turn my back on these girls like Hui-Jee had the moment a man wanted her enough to buy her freedom from the brothel she grew up in. I was going to better their lives before finding a way out of here, I owed that to them...and my mother who was also thrown into this place. Not because we had committed any crime, we didn't shame our families and we were not crippled women...well, she wasn't at least. We were thrown into this place that every women left her dignity behind because we were different from everyone else. We were not weak and timid women who only spoke when spoken to, we were not women who could be kept locked up in our houses and we were not uneducated and illiterate women. We were far from that, we were women who had a deep hunger of knowledge, and we would do anything to get our hands on anything we could learn from. But we were still in the Goreyo Dynasty, and I doubt that even the next dynasty was ready to educate women like they did to men who were lucky enough to go to school and have tutors brought to their home to teach them whilst women had to only suffice with needlework and poems. And that was only for noble women as well.

After looking around once again, I returned to my own quarters, only to see a new flower on my bed that o wasn't familiar with. It was pretty and it was long-stemmed, it was clearly picked out by someone just for me. But Dal was long dead and there was nobody to pay attention to me like this anymore. But before I even got the chance to smell the flower, all of the candles in ihwaru were suddenly blown out all at once and we were left in darkness. I could hear the girls screaming in fright and see the men running around like headless chickens. I turned around to see what on earth was going on, but I couldn't open my door. There were no locks on these paper windows, and I entered my room barely two minutes ago, so I had no idea what could be blocking my door. I shouted from my door repeatedly for a while before I realised that all of the noise had suddenly stopped. I couldn't even hear a single whisper even though my quarters were located in the centre of the brothel so I could see and hear everything that I needed to.

I do not recall how long I was locked in my room for, but it was long enough for me to crawl around my room to see if anything was missing. Robberies had taken place in this brothel before due to it's flourishing reputation, so I was expecting some of my jewellery to go missing. But nothing could have prepared me for the fact that my private journals were the items that went missing. That made my heart drop to the floor and I started panicking immediately. My whole life; present, past and future was on there and I didn't even let my own brother touch them. Who could have...who even knew about them? I only wrote in them in private and in my spare time and there was nobody in my circle who could understand Chinese...unless...

"Are you looking for these?" No, I had to be dreaming. This wasn't happening, not right now and not him of all people. Not again. No during the worst timing ever, even worse than before. "Why aren't you answering me?" "How did you find out about the journals?" "Aren't you even going to look at me? It is rude not to look at your senior in the eyes when we are conversing." "I thought that women had to look down onto the floor when addressing a man who is not their family." "So we are not a family anymore?" "You were the one who broke us up!" "You mean my father and you know it. In fact, you have learn about it for a while now , haven't you? Even when you were pretending that you still had amnesia?" I could hear my heartbeat almost doubling the pressure when Seon-Ho lit up a new candle in my room and placed it right in the middle. How did he find out? It wasn't like my brother was on speaking terms with him yet, and Dal swore to keep my secret if I...

"There is no need to panic Seo Yeon, it isn't like I am going anywhere until I get my answers. So you have time to come up with any and every excuse that you can find, whilst I make myself comfortable in your bed, just like old times." "Please, I...this really isn't the right time..." "Isn't that what you said the last time? And we..." "Stop it! You have a woman and..." "What woman? I do not have a woman in my residence at all, unless you are talking about the new concubine that I just took in only hours ago and nobody knows about it yet." As predictable as he was, it still hurt me every time that he pulled this stunt on me. "Of course, you did. Well I hope that you..." "There you go again, congratulating me as if you are not hurt by it." "Stop it." "You are very different from your brother you know. As smart as he can be when he wants to be, he cannot hide his emotions no matter how hard he tries. You are the one who can mask everything so easily, which is unusual for a girl...woman since you are supposed to be emotional by nature." "I said stop it!" "Why? Weren't you congratulating me only a few moments ago? So let's keep talking about it since you are so happy for me..." "Will you just stop! Stop it! Stop this! Stop torturing me like this! Just like you did back then!" "So you admit it. You were upset back then in my father's manor. That is why you suddenly kept your distance from me..." "Just stop! What does any of this matter now! We cannot go back in time and change the past!" "But if you would?" "You are just so stubborn aren't you. What does this matter now? You have Hui-Jee and..." "Hui-Jee. Han Hui-Jee. The woman who never wanted me, even when I chased her all around the village. And you knew it all along, didn't you?"

I was starting to feel like everything was hitting me all at once and I had no way out; I had no idea how or why, but he was starting to uncover all of my secrets whilst I lived with him and his father during the time of my amnesia. "Please, I am begging you to just leave..." "Why? How much more time do you need to stop grieving over that asshole servant who betrayed me!" "He did not betray you! You were always in love with somebody else and you always treated me poorly in that home..." "...because my father would have killed you if he knew how close we were getting. Until Dal told you about that kisaeng woman." "So what was your plan? To continue to pursue my brother's woman whilst getting close to me? Or jus using me as bait?" "It did not happen that way." "I saw everything with my own eyes! You were flirting with us both but you chose her and..." "You know, at first I really was angry with you over the secrets I found in your first journal. As a nobleman, I have every single right to enslave a lowborn woman by my side for that reason alone." "Enslave...what are you talking about? I am a free woman! And I..." "You are no yet twenty years of age, Yeon. And in order to house you under my roof, I had to sign a certificate of guardianship over you until your next birthday, which happens to be in 6 months time." You..." "I have my soldiers barricading this place, it will not be open for business until you talk to me. That means heavy profit losses for you and the loss of your impeccable reputation."

I could not believe this was happening, but at the same time I had grown accustomed to his reckless and impulsive behaviour. But he had never done anything like this before, not on this scale and certainly not for me. "So...you want to...enslave me...after ruining my reputation the last time wasn't enough for you?" "Could you remind me what happened the last time we were left alone together? I cannot seem to recall..." That crossed the line and he knew it. He had no idea why I had become touchy over that subject, but he had to have realised that we have not had contact with each other since then. But it was enough to make me lunge at him and try holding onto him so I could throw him out of my room, but the doors were still locked and we were still tuck together. And he caught my arms and locked them by my side with his embrace before I did anything that I regretted. "Let me go! Let me..." I knew this was his favourite position to keep me in as he buried his face into the back of my hair straight away and started touching me again to his heart's content. And it was putting me in a place from my past that I was not ready to revisit again, it was too soon after...

"Like I said, I have enough reason to enslave you for just keeping these secrets that you have in your first journal. But would you mind explaining a few more things to me? Like why you keep getting so angry whenever I bring up the past? Or why you are in a place like this that ruins your reputation?" "You already ruined that for me with your malicious gossip, so why do you care about that now?" "Because it looks bad for me if I am going to lock you up again." "What are you..." "What happened? Wha secret are you keeping from me this time? And why are you here? No? You don't want to talk to me about that yet? Fine, then you can start with when you got your memories back and what you did under my nose soon afterwards. And when did your little romance with Dal started?" "How dare you....you were with another woman! You have no right to question me..." "oh really? After I took care of you for how many years? Tended to your needs? Indulged your every whim?" "What are you talking about? Dal was the one who helped me more than you did! He educated me! He took me out! He helped me to learn how to cook and he...what? Why are you looking at me like that?"