Blooming even in the mud - Chapter 58

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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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Chapter 58: Blooming Even in the Mud
 
 
 
“This servant would never betray you, young lady, but the slaves who have served the master for less than a year might be quite tempted.”
“Humph. Even without your sycophancy, I am not worried about you betraying me.”
Snorting, Chu Na-yeon had her bring over the mother-of-pearl box. She then took out a norigae adorned with gold and silver bells from the box and tossed it carelessly to the maid. The maid’s face lit up with joy.
“Where else would you go to receive such treatment?”
“Of course! Of course, young lady! This servant swears loyalty to you for the rest of my life!”
This was the reason why the maid desperately clung to her, enduring all sorts of hardships while putting up with Chu Na-yeon’s temper.
‘Since I receive this much compensation, I can easily tolerate matching the young lady’s fastidious temper and being lashed! Damn it, as long as I don’t die!’
Chu Na-yeon provides sufficient rewards when utilizing her subordinates. She mostly threw away pieces of jewelry she had grown tired of as if discarding them, but to a slave, they were unparalleled treasures.
“Pick a suitable fellow and test the waters.”
“Yes! I am so glad that you seem to have recovered your spirits, young lady.”
Letting the maid’s fussing pass right through her ears, Chu Na-yeon smoothed her hair.
Even though she had taken a step forward, for some reason, she did not feel entirely refreshed. The pent-up anger somehow felt as though it had settled on her chest, a layer thicker.
Frowning, she added one last thing.
“I do not wish to see father, so make sure the others think I am still ill and lacking energy.”
Lying down pulled under the covers, Chu Na-yeon chewed over Chu Se-gu’s words for a long time afterward.
 
* * *
 
His shoulders stiffened rigidly with tension. Wang Jeong-mun took a deep breath and respectfully announced himself at the room door.
“General, it is Byeoljang Wang Jeong-mun. I am sorry to disturb you when you are so busy, but I have something to tell you. Could you spare me a moment of your time?”
“……Come in.”
It was probably just his imagination that the reply from inside the door sounded subtly delayed. Wang Jeong-mun carefully opened the door.
“What do you have to say?”
Gyeong Won-ui, who was reading documents even after returning home, did not even lift his gaze. Wang Jeong-mun spoke the words he had prepared and chewed over countless times in a cautious voice.
“I came to see you because I feared that you, General, might misunderstand what happened with Her Highness on the street that day.”
“…….”
Only then did Gyeong Won-ui lift his head. Holding a brush in one hand, he stared at the man before him without a word. Wang Jeong-mun, standing in a straight posture, was clearly tense, but he was not servile.
That was the entirety of Gyeong Won-ui’s reaction, but he did not stop Wang Jeong-mun’s words or show any signs of displeasure. Therefore, Wang Jeong-mun could continue his explanation.
“We did not promise to meet separately; it was truly a coincidence. I merely lifted her burden because it seemed heavy, and absolutely nothing occurred that would tarnish Her Highness’s honor.”
“…….”
Wang Jeong-mun swallowed his dry saliva.
Since that day, for reasons unknown, Gyeong Won-ui’s workload had suddenly become so busy that it was difficult to even see his face once. There was even less time to pass the time with private conversation.
Only now that he had finally returned home did he come to explain, but Gyeong Won-ui merely stared at him with dark eyes that made it impossible to know what he was thinking.
‘The General must also know that for an explanation, this is extremely flimsy.’
There was no reason for a mere Byeoljang like Wang Jeong-mun to leisurely stroll through an area lined with the private residences of high-ranking officials.
If Gyeong Won-ui pointed that out, he intended to confess obediently. That he had secretly followed behind Yoo Seo-hwa.
‘It does not matter if the General is angry and punishes me. However, it must not harm Her Highness or cause her to be falsely accused.’
Although she was being treated as a slave, she was strictly Gyeong Won-ui’s former lover and of noble birth. He must absolutely never become a stain upon her.
If another layer of misery were added to the fragile shoulders of her who was spending such weary days, he felt he would never be able to forgive himself.
And yet, a thought that was unfamiliar but deeply rooted was that he absolutely did not regret the brief time he spent walking alongside Yoo Seo-hwa and sharing a conversation.
It is difficult to define an emotion one has never experienced before.
At the same time, a sense of crisis arose that he must not delve deeply into this and give it form.
“Whew.”
Hanging his brush on the brush rack, Gyeong Won-ui wiped his dry face with his hands.
“I understand, so you may withdraw.”
“Pardon?”
He was at the point of being prepared to hear a furious roar, so it was an unexpected reaction.
He worried that perhaps the General did not trust a single one of his excuses. As he parted his lips to add some words, Gyeong Won-ui waved his hand.
“I am tired and wish to rest.”
It wasn’t just words; he truly looked exhausted. That too, in the brief moment Wang Jeong-mun spoke a few words. There was nothing more he could do. Wang Jeong-mun quietly bowed his waist in farewell.
Click.
The sound of the door opening and closing echoed quietly. Gyeong Won-ui still could not dispel his sense of fatigue even after being left alone.
The reason was bound to be a bitter feeling of distrust.
‘……It is hard to believe.’
Gyeong Won-ui could not believe himself, who had erupted in intense jealousy toward a loyal subordinate he had trusted for a long time.
‘It wasn’t like this even when I found out she had married Park Kwon-bok.’
Was it because he had been ruled by anger, or because he had been unable to accept it?
He had turned away, attaching the reason that she was the enemy of the family that betrayed him. Now he had no choice but to admit it.
That he was envious and jealous. Of the men by Yoo Seo-hwa’s side. Both Park Kwon-bok and Wang Jeong-mun.
If he had been a man of shallow patience, he might have drawn his sword against Wang Jeong-mun right at the spot where he witnessed it. At that moment when Yoo Seo-hwa showed a smile, he had forgotten even the fact that he was a subordinate like his own limbs.
“If another man is near the woman I hold, wouldn’t it naturally turn my stomach inside out?”
He deliberately tried speaking it aloud.
Before the trailing resonance of his voice could fade, a scoff came out. The words he spat out himself did not sound plausible at all even to his own ears.
That displeased him immensely.
What made him even more uncomfortable was Yoo Seo-hwa’s eyes, breaking and flowing with despair, which he had seen for the last time on that hill where spring flowers were in full bloom that day.
 
Yoo Seo-hwa was always like that.
She spent the night alone in a detached side room that was dimly lit. Only a small amount of oil for the lamps was permitted to the slaves.
Sometimes she lit the light to finish up work she couldn’t complete during the day, and sometimes she just sat blankly in the middle of the dark room without lighting it at all.
Whichever it was, Yoo Seo-hwa sensitively watched for signs of presence outside.
Even while sewing, even while quietly buried in the darkness, she stood up from her chair if a faint sign of a person approached.
Gyeong Won-ui intentionally opened the door only when she was about ready to receive him. When he opened the door, Yoo Seo-hwa was standing beneath the pouring moonlight.
He could not define what kind of subtle yet strange sense of fulfillment he felt every time that happened.
But he knew the emotion he felt right now.
“Ah, you’ve come.”
It was an unfamiliar anxiety.
Yoo Seo-hwa, who was so engrossed in her sewing that she didn’t even know Gyeong Won-ui had arrived, tidied up the fabric. At the movement of her hands shaking out her skirt, scrap fabric and threads scattered and fell.
Her gaze, rising slowly, met Gyeong Won-ui’s.
As if nothing had happened, as if her going out a few days ago was merely Gyeong Won-ui’s troubled delusion.
“…….”
A thin wrinkle formed between Gyeong Won-ui’s brows.
It was a scratchy feeling, like fine pebbles of uneven texture rattling and rolling around.
“What were you in the middle of doing?”
He spoke up, also pretending as if nothing were wrong.
He did not realize it, but since their reunion, he had never given a glance to whatever Yoo Seo-hwa was doing until now. It was a failed question.
“It is clothes to give to my elder brother.”
“It is surprising that you knew the Deposed Emperor’s measurements.”
“I am in the middle of estimating it by eye. If the clothes do not fit, it cannot be helped. Even if he complains, it doesn’t seem like it will be conveyed to me anyway.”
Yoo Seo-hwa’s attitude, murmuring in a detached tone, was unfamiliar to his eyes.
It felt as if the image he knew was being erased. A bit of anger mixed into the scratchy feeling and flowed. Gyeong Won-ui impulsively pulled Yoo Seo-hwa into his embrace.
“Even if your elder brother does not like it—ugh!”
Swallowing Yoo Seo-hwa’s unfamiliar, detached way of speaking, he overlapped their lips. The breath he tasted after a few days is sweet.
Deeply desiring, he caressed the briefly exhaled breath, the thinly parting lips, and the body temperature nestled in his embrace. Like the memory of the nights he had held her.
“Haa…….”
A ragged sound of breathing settled low onto the floor. A silver line stretched in a curve between their barely parted lips.
Gyeong Won-ui caressed Yoo Seo-hwa’s flushed, swollen lips with his thumb. Her heated breath flowed against his fingertips.
‘Nothing has changed, nothing has transformed.’
An unfamiliar emotion is merely a fleeting moment.
There would be no second time. To Park Kwon-bok, to Wang Jeong-mun, to any other man under heaven, he would never again allow Yoo Seo-hwa’s smile.
‘Shall I confine her to the inner quarters? So that not a single strand of hair goes over the wall, into a very deep and profound shadow.’
Imagining it was quite satisfying. He would command the inner quarters to be cleared out first thing tomorrow.
Every process of her breathing and living, all the way to death, belonged solely to him. Every emotion agitated and tormented by that must not be desired or peeped at by another man—.
Gyeong Won-ui, who was caressing the small of the back of Yoo Seo-hwa whom he held in his embrace, only then realized the identity of the scratchy unfamiliarity.
He could not feel the sorrowful sound of breathing that used to painfully suppress a sorrow mixed with resignation whenever she faced him.
“……Princess.”
“Why do you call me?”
Yoo Seo-hwa’s head came up smoothly. Her transparently shining eyes directed toward him.
Not a single shred of agitation could be felt.
The detached gaze staring clearly was something she never possessed, neither in the present nor in the past.

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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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