"Madame! Why did you simply let her go? In all my years of being, i have never come across such a wilful babe, she doesn't even bow down as per our traditions! An epileptic, lowborn orphan girl really acts like she doesn't know her place at all! No wonder she has so many enemies that want her dead." "A woman like that is bound t make enemies one way or another, just like her mother. I never thought that i would be entailed with that women again, and yet here i am faced with her daughter who was dropped off to me in the exact same conditions. What sort of a fate do these Seo women have?" "Not a very good one from the looks of it, especially if she has a daughter herself…" "And an equally powerful man chasing after her, no doubt. It seems like only yesterday when that scrawny little man would climb through her window for their secret meetings. He wouldn't allow her to serve anyone, he wouldn't let any man look at her and even I myself could barely interact with her as long as Seo Geom was around. That girl was here for all of 3 months and he had happened to meet her on her very first day here! That girl was supposed to be a kisaeng and she didn't serve anyone at all! Not even to tea and snacks! Never in the history of prostitution has a woman escaped serving men…now will I be saddled with another? Who is her man again?" "A rising star in the palace who has the privilege of having direct meetings with the Emperor himself at barely the age of 30 years old. There have been officials who have served in the palace for decades and they have never been granted the pleasure of meeting the Emperor even once…and that isn't all." "What do you mean?" "This girl is a bigger threat than her mother and i have proof for it. The very man who is infatuated with her as equally as her parents were with each other? She killed his father, she handed him over to the Emperor himself. And this man has chased her all over the kingdom…" "to claim her? That is a very dangerous man indeed, even more that Seo Geom…no. I have some powerful enemies in front of me if they wish t find her, but I will not be faced with insolence again. Men! Drag that girl out of her quarters and make her kneel all night long with the other girl that they brought in here, the new one."
That was the first time that i heard of my parent's courtship from anyone, not even my own brother told me this story before. I was still in shock to the point where I didn't even resist when the servants found me to make me kneel outside all night long with another girl looked to be around the same age as myself. She was a noble woman who was refined, elegant and didn't let anyone see the fear in her eyes as did i. But she was noticeably sad as her fair skin were covered in fresh cuts and bruises and her hair was out of place. i recognised this girl from the banquet but I didn't know her well enough to remember her name. "Madame, you say that my family overcame the Kim family who brought me here, but what about abut you? How has my family overcome you for you to treat me so?" "You are different from this other girl; your family received great favour after the demise of my own; as I lay devastated here, your family enjoyed the height of the Prince's exclusive favour. So you tell me, who should be held responsible for my family's loss?" "Obviously, the blame should go to the fickle-minded Prince, but you do not possess the will to harm him, so you come after my family instead." "As for the loss of your family, that is the fate you deserve after my family were burned to death for god-only knows what!"
"The fate of your family lay in the hands of the Prince, and you just put mine through the very same thing for a family who gave up on you long ago. What come of you blaming me for no reason at all?" "Shut up! It was your family who reported on me for no reason at all! It was you! You reported my affair with the prince and this why his wife dropped me off here!"
"Every action has a consequence; having an affair with a married man will surely impose punishment on anyone who dares to break up a family." "You bitch! You dare to openly offend me, Kim Hyeon! Servants! Slap her face until she bleeds…" "Don't you even think about laying your hands on her, or you shall have me to deal with! I am the daughter of a swordsman and I know how to use my hands well!" I couldn't help but to interject as I felt strangely protective over this girl. I had come some real bitches in my lifetime, but this Kim Hyeon girl was not one of them, not in the slightest.
"Now that you girls are both out of favour, I present the rightful authority to discipline you…" "Who says that i am out of favour? As soon as any Prince realises that I am missing, they will all find me, no matter where you hide me." "Shut up girl! You dare to defame your superior! I will have the servants personally tortured if they do not hit you…" "that will not happen!" "And why not?" "I have been here for less than a single day, and i cam already tell who owns this establishment and the servants who come with it! And it is most certainly not you! I am afraid that your own favour will disappear if you do so!" That managed to shut her up for a while as my mind continued to race and formulate a plan for how I was going to spend my time here without serving anyone just like my mother did…
"Who are you? And why do you protect me so?" "I am a cousin of Kim Areum who kidnapped me here and is attempting to sell me off." "You are her paternal cousin…Seo Yeon? The one who arrested her at the banquet?" "And you are?" "Her maternal cousin, we also didn't get along well growing up ands finally found the chance to kill what remains of her maternal lineage after the passing of her mother, my aunt." "Why?" "Just as competition between her and yourself existed, it also happened between my mother and her's. Aerum is just taking her mother's revenge on us…" "I am sorry for the loss of your family." "And for yours. You were quite brave today…" "Let us stick together Hyeon. I have a plan to escape from here without any of us sullying our bodies and dignities, and I shall need the help of an educated noble woman such as yourself, since we are practically family." "Very well then, are you expecting any help?" "My brother should be arriving soon, he should know where to find me." "Your brother? The one that she is currently obsessed with?" Seo Hwi, and yes, the one that she can never possess in this lifetime."
I had been punished, almost tortured, humiliated, burnt out and even starved on a few occasions, but none of that mattered to me until I achieved my goals. I had a lot of time on my hands on my hands after I had regained my memories and I found out quite a lot of things other than sorting out Seon-Ho's parents. My cousin and her new friend were a constant source of pain to me but she also looked like she knew me and I was curious about what she knew, which lead me down a rabbit hole of information…including the connections between her family and mine unfortunately. I asked around for information every time I got time off and I didn't stop until I found out what I needed…about my own mother who died after giving birth to me.
I had been punished, almost tortured, humiliated, burnt out and even starved on a few occasions, but none of that mattered to me until I achieved my goals. I had a lot of time on my hands on my hands after I had regained my memories and I found out quite a lot of things other than sorting out Seon-Ho's parents. My cousin and her new friend were a constant source of pain to me but she also looked like she knew me and I was curious about what she knew, which lead me down a rabbit hole of information…including the connections between her family and mine unfortunately. I asked around for information every time I got time off and I didn't stop until I found out what I needed…about my own mother who died after giving birth to me.
My father made it no secret to us about how he met my mother in a brothel when her family were separated after their mysterious downfall, but he only gave us a short story about it. My mother resisted until the end from becoming a kisaeng and my father just so happened to notice her and her struggle. He was attracted by her fearlessness and kept coming back to see her before she paid her debt and married her on that very same day. Her family completely broke apart when they sold her and they didn't want her back, especially after he had married my father despite the legacy he had built for himself when he left his now noble family. The entirely of their marriage, her brother wanted nothing to do with her either, although he loved to profit on my father's name. But the story of why my mother was sold off to a gibang whilst my uncle's story had remained unknown was always a mystery to me that I could not figure out. That was until I eavesdropped into the Madame's conversation with the older kisaengs. And for the duration of my 'punishments' I slowly started getting more information about the men who frequented this gibang of all places and what kind of work they were into, I almost managed to find out that there time here was brief until they moved into other villages for now so I had to take my chance while I could.
So I had stopped causing trouble the minute I found out everything that I could and I started being obedient. I had already been here for a couple of days and I had only about half a month to come up with something so I can find the mastermind of my mother's family downfall in which she was made to pay. My father always told us how bold she was, and how she hated injustice, not unlike myself and Kim Hyeon for that matter. Everyone was a little scared of me after all this time which only worked in my favour, although it didn't stop those two witches from coming in here every single day to watch my suffering. But I would never give them the satisfaction when they did a lot of things to make my life harder. I would tell them about the wedding plans that my man had already made for us, which got Ae-Cha's sister off of my back for a while. She genuinely looked torn and a little tormented overtime she saw me so she didn't say anything at all for the entire duration of her visits here. And as for my cousin, on the other hand was something else completely. At first she provoked most of my punishments and tried to break me, but when some clients coincidentally started taking notice of me, her voice was no longer heard as I went to serving snacks, tending to customers needs until the very pair of men who I wanted to get my revenge on noticed me and they wanted me to serve them as an actual kiseng. Not that I gave them the pleasure, which put the Madame in a tight spot which she then took out on my cousin, who was already going broke in paying to keep me here with Hyeon.
The look on my cousins face was completely priceless when she heard about this; I knew that she was torn between finally putting me in my place and actual jealousy when she saw how highborn the clients were who were asking for me. Apparently some men were well-known to her family but she couldn't expose herself as noblewoman who kept visiting a gibang so she wasn't used to not getting attention from everyone that she came across.