Chung Seo-Hyeon
I was walking towards the Slave house with a large basket of dirty clothes in my arms. It hurt to carry heavy things not even a week after being punished heavily. My bruised arms weren't fully healed, but I still had to carry out my tasks to avoid other punishments.
I finally reached the muddy path that started once the cobblestone path that led towards the mansion ended. I carefully marched towards the Slave House.
Once I had reached there, I went into the washing center and placed the basket on one of the few tables in the room. I looked around and saw a couple of other slave-women staring at me with disgust. They started to whisper into each other's ears and giggled, all while looking at me.
Sometimes, I really wondered why they hated me so much. I had never held onto a proper conversation with them, but always tried to help out with whatever I could.
I sighed and turned away from them. I couldn't afford to make another mistake. I needed to go on with my tasks.
I put the clothes inside the first out of six washtubs and poured water into it. I took a bar of soap and started to wash the clothes with my hands. I washed and washed for a while, my hands aching.
A few minutes later, Madeline, a high ranking Slave Maid, came into the room to check up on everything. She had short dark hair with a pointy nose. She always wore fresh clothes and had clean hands; it had been years since she had done any hard labor required of us slaves.
She was usually indifferent to others, but for some reason, she had always bore some sort of hatred towards me.
She turned around and walked towards my station. I stayed quiet and continued washing the clothes. Was she gonna harass me again, or would she just nitpick my clothes again?
"Washing dirty laundry with even worse off clothes? What a contradicting action." She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at me.
I bowed my head and greeted her, "Miss. Madeline," I said.
"You really don't care about being clean when washing the Young Masters clothing, do you?"
I looked over her shoulder and saw the other slaves smiling maliciously. I stayed quiet.
Slaves like me were only allowed to wash their clothes when we were done with our tasks, but the Lord and Madam always had a lot of extra tasks for me to complete, so I could never wash my clothes in time.
"Please forgive me, Miss. I have too much work to worry about my clothes," I tried to explain, but she cut me off.
"Are you complaining about too much work? Do you not care about the sanity of the Young Masters clothing?" She grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the room. Her grip hurt my already bruised hand.
She dragged me all the way to my room and threw me on the floor. I collided against the wooden ground.
I looked up to see her glaring down at me with her hand on the door handle. She slammed the door and walked out.
"Ugh..," I got up but almost doubled over from the pain in my back.
"I should get back to washing the Young Masters clothing."
I limped all the way back to the washing center, cursing myself.
'I should've washed my clothes,' I thought. But at the same time, I couldn't help but wonder why I was the only one treated this way. The Lord always told me that I was just useless, that I should be grateful that I was getting such light punishment.
For a time, I had believed it to be true; that I should be grateful. But when I saw other slaves making mistakes, a light scold was all they ever got. But for me, I would get beaten for hours.
The difference was becoming more and more clear to me, and I couldn't help but start to be skeptical about my role in the Leinhart estate. It just didn't make any sense. I always had bruises over my body, but the other slaves rarely had any injuries from their punishments. I was led to believe I deserved these beatings, but deep down, I knew I had done nothing to deserve such treatment.
Even other slaves would make fun of my cap and my limping, but it never seemed to look weird for me. Until that day, the day Miss Madeline had thrown me inside my room and ordered me not to leave. I started to wonder:
Did I deserve this?