Blooming even in the mud - Chapter 33

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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33. Blooming Even in the Mud

“Is anyone there?”
“Is that you, Byeoljang Wang?”
“May I come in?”
“Pardon? Ah, yes. Please enter.”
Bowing slightly, Wang Jeong-mun entered through the door she opened.
“My Danryeongpo was torn during training, and since I heard you were working in the Sewing Room, I came to ask a favor.”
“You could have simply sent someone to summon me.”
“It was only a short walk, no trouble at all.”
“I will mend it for you right away.”
“There is no rush, so please take your time.”
There was only one chair in the room. Offering it to the declining Jeong-mun, Yoo Seo-hwa took her needlework, sat on the edge of the bed, and began to sew.
Time flowed alongside the soft rustling of the fabric.
Jeong-mun blankly watched her pale fingers holding the needle, handling and stitching his robe. Her silhouette, illuminated by the sunlight filtering through the small window, was beautiful.
Her shabby, patched-up attire did not matter in the slightest. Though she was merely sewing, an innate elegance that could not be easily mimicked drifted from her like a subtle fragrance.
‘Is it because I have never been close to a woman of such noble birth before?’
That was likely not it. Jeong-mun felt a vague certainty that no other noble or member of the imperial family possessed an grace that oozed quite like Yoo Seo-hwa’s.
Before long, Yoo Seo-hwa finished the stitching, gave the Danryeongpo a light shake, folded it neatly, and returned it to Jeong-mun. She quickly lowered her head to hide her flushing face.
“Thank you.”
“It is nothing. It is my job, after all. Please call for me if you need anything else in the future.”
Jeong-mun did not answer her words, but instead proffered a wooden box half the size of his palm from his robe.
“Please accept this. It is an ointment, so applying it to your hands will help heal your wounds.”
Yoo Seo-hwa paused and looked down at her hands. There lay the chapped and swollen hands of a slave, ruined by unaccustomed water chores.
Involuntarily swallowing hard, she rubbed the rough back of her hand with her finger.
“It is fine. I will take only the thought as a gift.”
“I brought some leftovers, so it is of no great consequence.”
Though Yoo Seo-hwa declined repeatedly, she ultimately could not defeat his persistence and gratefully accepted the wooden box. He had called it leftover medicine, but its surface was smooth and clean.
Only then did Jeong-mun relax his expression and smile.
“Qiheng Province is much colder than the Capital City, so even the common soldiers often apply ointment to their chapped and frostbitten hands.”
“Is that so? I had only heard rumors that the weather was terribly cold, but it seems to be even chillier than I thought.”
To Yoo Seo-hwa, who had rarely stepped outside the Imperial Palace and the Princess’s Residence, let alone Qiheng Province, this was an unfamiliar tale. After a moment’s hesitation, she asked cautiously.
“If you are not too busy, may I ask how young master Gyeong… no, General Gyeong fared in Qiheng Province?”
She worried that he might find it unpleasant, but Jeong-mun replied readily.
“Do you remember when General Gyeong went on an expedition to Qiheng Province to suppress the leader of the White Head Sect?”
“Yes.”
“That was when I first served General Gyeong. It is a brief memory, but he was a truly gallant and courageous man.”
Jeong-mun smiled as if lost in reminiscence for a moment.
“Through that connection, I came to serve him again five years ago when the general sought refuge at Prince Ning’s Estate. The wounds from his interrogation under torture were so horrific that it took a long time for him to regain consciousness… He suffered terribly. Both in body and mind.”
Yoo Seo-hwa’s hands, which had been resting neatly on her lap, tightly gripped her skirt.
Jeong-mun’s explanation continued calmly. He spoke of Gyeong Won-ui five years ago, who suffered so much from a severe fever that he could hardly sleep, and even when he managed to fall asleep, he would soon wake from nightmares. He spoke of Gyeong Won-ui, who desperately whetted his hatred to recover despite the Doctor’s diagnosis that he might become a cripple.
And on the day the urgent news arrived that Emperor Xuanwen, the enemy of his family, had met his demise, Gyeong Won-ui, with a body not yet fully recovered, cried out his resentment almost frantically and even vomited blood.
“I do not know well what transpired between the two of you, but the general stopped mentioning you at some point. That is why I thought he would kill you on the spot when the Ning King Army invaded the Capital City and reunited with you in the forest.”
Because the extreme hatred he could not pour out upon his enemy would have twisted and turned toward that person’s children, the Deposed Emperor and the imperial princess. His eyes were saying as much.
“I was very surprised when I learned you were bestowed to him as a slave. Since nothing has happened since then.”
“…….”
“I have served the general closely for five years, yet I still do not know his thoughts well.”
Jeong-mun shrugged his shoulders in a light manner. It was meant to ease the stiff atmosphere, but Yoo Seo-hwa looked as though his final words did not even enter her ears.
Seeing her fallen into deep thought, Jeong-mun hesitated.
‘Is it true that you betrayed General Gyeong?’
Now that he was facing her, that single-sentence question simply refused to leave his mouth. Yoo Seo-hwa’s face, which had seemed immensely shocked upon hearing from him about what happened in Ganam Province, kept weighing on his mind.
In the end, Jeong-mun could not bring up the words he kept inside.
“You must have much work to do, so I shall take my leave now.”
As Jeong-mun stood up, Yoo Seo-hwa, who had been sitting blankly for a moment, also quickly smoothed her clothes and followed him out.
“Thank you for talking with me for so long.”
“Don’t mention it. Please tell me when you use up the ointment. I can help with other supplies as much as possible.”
Feeling it to be an unmerited and excessive kindness for her current self, Yoo Seo-hwa silently gathered her hands and bowed deeply from the waist.

Gyeong Won-ui fiddled with the silk pouch containing the jade box. It was a medicine he bought after stopping by the apothecary as soon as day broke.
‘There is no need to hand it over face-to-face. I can just leave it in front of her room.’
While deliberating over this, Gyeong Won-ui paused as he approached the vicinity of Yoo Seo-hwa’s room. Low murmurs could be heard, as if someone else was inside the room.
It was a man’s voice.
“…….”
Strength suddenly surged into the hand that had been lightly holding the silk pouch.
The conversation inside the room was continuing for quite a long time. He tried to listen closely, but it was not clearly audible. Save for the fact that she was sharing an intimate conversation with a man alone inside a room.
It was a very unfamiliar and bizarre sensation.
An unpleasant emotion that, because he had never experienced it before, was excessively strange, leaving him unable to grasp or fathom it himself.
It was around then that he sensed someone rising from inside.
Reflectively, Gyeong Won-ui turned around the side of the building and hid himself. Soon, the door creaked open just like the sound he heard last night, and Yoo Seo-hwa stepped out together with the man.
‘Why is Byeoljang Wang here?’
Peeking his head out to check the man, Gyeong Won-ui’s eyes widened.
“Thank you for talking with me for so long.”
“Don’t mention it. Please tell me when you use up the ointment. I can help with other supplies as much as possible.”
Yoo Seo-hwa bowed gracefully and watched Jeong-mun depart for a long while before returning to her room.
An unfamiliar, mocking smile formed at the corners of Gyeong Won-ui’s mouth.
‘A byeoljang and a slave, it’s not bad. Before long, Byeoljang Wang might even request to be granted a slave.’
Should he just give her away then? It would be a good opportunity to rid his sight forever of a woman he could neither kill nor let live comfortably.
Yet his mood did not improve at all.
An unpleasantness was overlaid upon the discomfort that had uncomfortably seized and weighed down one side of his chest since last night. He knew the identity of that unpleasantness. It was the fierce emotion that had blazed and gathered on his blade just before he killed Park Kwon-bok.
The moment that thought occurred to him, Gyeong Won-ui felt as though he had gone mad.
Jealousy. How could that possibly be a fitting emotion to feel right now? Over a loyal subordinate and a mere slave? It was absurd. It must be an illusion wrought by fatigue.
Forcing his thoughts to scatter, Gyeong Won-ui tossed the silk pouch away carelessly and left the place. The muddily melted snow was crushed beneath his feet.

* * *

The task of embroidering pine and bamboo onto the embroidered curtain was finished. She thought it would end quickly, but urgent pieces of work came in between, and she was also drafted for menial chores where hands were short, so it took a few days longer than expected.
“Are you all done?”
As Yoo Seo-hwa tied the knot of the embroidery thread and removed it from the embroidery frame, the chimmo rejoiced.
“My, I’m so glad a girl with such good skill as you came into the Sewing Room.”
“Is my skill good?”
Yoo Seo-hwa, who was not terribly confident in needlework or embroidery, was half-doubtful, but the perspective of the chimmo’s eyes was different.
“To be honest, it’s not to the point of being exceptionally outstanding. But look here, the part where the green of this bamboo leaf overlaps with the branch of the pine tree isn’t awkward and blends beautifully. Even in the overall design, there’s an elegant spirit that nobles would likely fond of. This isn’t a sense you can easily master just by learning. Talent is talent, but one must cultivate their senses by viewing many splendid embroideries, so where did you see…”
Speaking up to that point, the chimmo realized she had made a slip of the tongue out of excitement and laughed awkwardly. Where else would she have seen them? She must have seen and used them until she was sick of it before her family suffered extermination.
“Ahem… Anyway, you really went through a lot of trouble, what’s-your-name. I’ll be asking you for embroidery in the future as well.”
“I am glad if it was of help.”
“Yes, well, then I’ll take this curtain away carefully.”
Neatly folding the embroidered curtain and putting it into the chest she brought along, the chimmo left the small room with a beaming smile.
Coming outside to see her off, Yoo Seo-hwa stretched her stiff waist thoroughly. Though it was still cold weather since it was the middle of winter, today it did not snow and was relatively clear.
It was a mild afternoon where the sunlight felt warm. Instead of returning straight to her room, Yoo Seo-hwa decided to take a short walk nearby.
‘It is my first time taking a walk like this alone.’
It was a mere few months ago when a dozen court attendants would always accompany her just from walking through the inner gardens of the princess’s residence. Yoo Seo-hwa shook off the memories of a past she could not return to, and must not return to, so as not to be caught by them.
The mansion had now mostly regained its appearance from five years ago, but the vicinity of the servants’ quarters still bore traces of a deserted house.
‘Will there be time to tidy up even the servants’ quarters only when spring arrives at the very least?’
Slowly walking along the edges of fallen leaves and dead thickets that had accumulated over five years, Yoo Seo-hwa suddenly bent her waist. Amidst the fallen leaves that were discoloring into a murky hue and rotting away, an anomalous color caught her eye.
“What is this?”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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