Born As The Daughter of a Lowly Concubine - Chapter 113

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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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Born as the daughter of a lowborn concubine.
Chapter 113
‘What on earth is happening?’
I’m being kidnapped in the middle of the street right now???
I’d struggled against them, but no matter how strong I was, I couldn’t match their size.
When I’d thrashed about and begged passersby for help, the kidnappers simply made up some name and pretended to be my parents, and not a soul found it odd. The real problem was this society’s notion that parents could treat their children however they pleased.
Once someone said “My father wouldn’t like this,” no one looked twice.
The man who’d snatched me rushed into some private dwelling, gagged me so I couldn’t scream, bound my hands and feet tightly, and shoved me somewhere dark.
Since he hadn’t blindfolded me, I recognized him instantly—the same man who’d kidnapped me before.
“Never thought I’d see this damn brat again.”
Muffled sounds escaped my gagged mouth.
“After all the trouble you’ve caused us…”
You’re the one who kidnapped me—shouldn’t I be the one complaining?
Then another voice came from behind the first kidnapper. It sounded familiar, as if I’d heard it before.
“Who’s this child?”
“The same one from before, sir. I spotted her coming out of a gibang in the Dabang-gol district and followed her here.”
I couldn’t believe these fools were still lurking near the gibang. While So-i had been carrying me away, the streets were crowded and we hadn’t moved quickly, which apparently gave them enough time to catch up.
“This is the child from back then?”
“Yes, sir. She saw my face, so I couldn’t possibly let her go.”
“But haven’t there been orders lately not to harm people carelessly?”
What? Last time they’d said they’d dispose of me, but something’s changed?
I steadied my breathing and strained to listen.
“At the time, we thought she was a yangban’s daughter, but seeing her come out of a gibang, that can’t be right.”
“Hmm. Perhaps a young courtesan was wandering about secretly…”
“I suspect she may be an illegitimate daughter of some household, or perhaps the daughter of a gisaeng. I saw a woman helping her onto a horse in front of the gibang and setting her down on the road.”
The kidnapper must have seen So-i’s face before, but from the way he spoke, it seemed he hadn’t gotten a good look at her this time.
‘Now that I think about it, I haven’t heard the voice of the person who said to dispose of me. Is he somewhere else?’
The man seemed to ponder for a moment, then spoke cheerfully.
“Actually, this works out well. She’s still just a child, after all. If we sell her far enough away, who’s to know? We’ve been having trouble finding suitable girls anyway. The gibangs will be pleased with this.”
“True—folk have been complaining that girls are hard to come by near the Capital City these days because of that Siyeongwon or whatever it is. This is perfect. We can just swap in a child from another region, and no one will be the wiser.”
I hadn’t realized it would have this effect. Here I am, feeling proud of establishing Siyeongwon in such an unexpected way.
In any case, it didn’t sound like they’d kill me immediately, but this was far from good.
After their conversation ended, the kidnappers shoved me into what appeared to be a cart with a double-layered structure.
After threatening me to stay quiet, they lined my space with something resembling a chicken coop and shut the doors. Any sound I made wouldn’t carry outside.
Apparently they used this contraption to transport kidnapped children or smuggled goods, as there was plenty of space for a small child to sit.
‘…So they’re really planning to sell me to a slave merchant?’
A child can’t prove their identity easily, and even if I had a family, after a few years they likely wouldn’t remember me properly.
From the way they operated, this didn’t seem like their first crime.
Good grief, the state of this country.
The men pulled the cart quietly for a long time, occasionally chatting and laughing with someone, but soon their guard dropped and they began whispering among themselves.
Chicken sounds made it noisy, but if I listened carefully, I could catch bits of their conversation.
“Now that we’ve left the Capital City, we can relax our pace, can’t we?”
“It’s when you relax like that problems always crop up.”
At those words, the kidnapper who’d actually seized me seemed to flinch and brought me up again.
“But shouldn’t we look into this child’s background?”
“Look into it? What could such a small child possibly know?”
“Still, you never know. I’m saying this only now, but wouldn’t it be troublesome if she turned out to be a yangban’s daughter?”
“Would a yangban’s daughter be wandering around like this? At best she’d be some concubine’s illegitimate child, or maybe she was sold off to pay a debt.”
“Wouldn’t it be faster to just ask her directly?”
The two men were speculating about my origins, but this was difficult territory to navigate.
Having already committed kidnapping, if they decided I was a yangban’s daughter, there was no telling what they’d do to silence me.
If they asked me anything, it was better to leave my answer vague rather than make a definitive claim. That way I wouldn’t contradict myself.
‘Survival comes first. I can’t seem suspicious. For a child my age who’s been kidnapped, the normal reaction would be…’
With that in mind, when the cart stopped moments later and the men opened the doors, I was already sobbing and wailing with tears streaming down my face.
“Sniff, sniff…”
“…”
“Since we’ve bound her feet, you lot help her down.”
“Yes, sir.”
As I emerged into daylight, my eyes hurt at first and I couldn’t see clearly where I was, but I could tell it was a building in a fairly remote location.
And its purpose was unmistakable.
There were several people locked inside the wooden Prison.
I’d assumed I’d end up in a cell like the rest of them, but instead these men dragged me to some isolated storage room.
As if confining people to sheds was their favorite pastime.
Of course, their purpose was transparent.
The men untied my mouth and tried to extract information, but the moment I was free to speak, I burst into hiccupping sobs, and they couldn’t bear it long before giving up entirely.
“Please, please save me… hic, cough cough! Mom, Moooom!”
“Wait, I don’t think she was like this last time…”
The kidnapper doubted his own memory and looked troubled. His accomplices, in turn, doubted his memory.
“Did you maybe grab the wrong person…?”
“No, that’s not possible… is it?”
His words said one thing, but his voice grew quieter. Since there was no distinguishing feature that stood out to him, he couldn’t swear that the small child he’d glimpsed that day was the same person as the one before him now.
“We’ve brought her this far—no help for it. Listen here, little one. Stay quiet and we won’t hurt you. Understood?”
I nodded pitifully through my sobs.
“If we put her back now, the other children will start crying too and it’ll get noisy. We’ll return her later.”
“Yes, sir.”
As I continued dropping tears and could barely speak through my crying, they simply untied my wrists—perhaps thinking I should at least wipe my eyes—and both left with uncomfortable expressions on their faces.
‘Phew.’
Thank goodness my Crying Skill, honed since infancy, was still in perfect working order.
‘Though I was genuinely distraught too.’
What sin could I have possibly committed to get tangled up in something like this? Honestly.
The lingering echo of my sobs still fresh, I sniffled and wiped my tears.
Then, a moment later, I heard a sound from an unexpected direction.
Tap, tap, tap.
“…?”
I turned my head toward the sound and saw a hand reaching through the small barred window of the storage room.
When I spoke in a low voice, a voice just as quiet answered back.
“Is… is someone there…?”
“Miss, it’s me. Cheon Ho.”
“…?!”
Cheon Ho? The boy I saw at the Gibang that day?
“Are you hurt?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I saw a man taking away someone who looked like you in front of Hye Minser, so I followed them just in case.”
Given that he mentioned in front of Hye Minser, his story checked out. But how on earth did he trail us all the way here?
“…Are you absolutely sure you’re not connected to these kidnappers?”
“I swear I’m not. I went to Hye Minser to see you, and by pure chance… no, more importantly—are you truly unhurt?”
“Yes. No injuries.”
“But weren’t you crying just now?”
“That was on purpose.”
“…?”
I couldn’t be bothered to explain, so I left out the details.
But the boy said something unexpected.
“Once it gets dark, I’ll sneak in and rescue you.”
“…No, that’ll be difficult. This is an illegal Nobi trafficking operation, and they plan to sell me as a Nobi today.”
“…!”
I’d known from the start that a transaction would happen today, and I’d even pinpointed the region and had So-i pass the information along. But without knowing the exact location, the search would take time.
“However, if you can remember this location and relay it, they might be able to round them all up before it’s too late.”
“But what if something happens to you in the meantime? Wouldn’t that be far too dangerous?”
“The other people held here are in danger too. And I’m a young girl, so I have market value and no strength to resist, which means they won’t kill me easily.”
Female Nobi who could bear children typically fetched higher prices. But raising them required time, so they didn’t necessarily prefer young children.
‘Which means it’s likely they plan to sell me to a Gibang, just like I mentioned earlier.’
Gisaengs needed to learn their arts from childhood, after all.
Earlier, they’d said Siyeongwon was responsible for drying up the supply of young girls.
I’d heard something similar from Mae Hyang once. That fewer parents were bringing children to Gibangs anymore.
Rather than earn pocket money selling their child, it was easier on their conscience to abandon the child at Siyeongwon, and there was always the possibility that they could reclaim the child later once it had grown, claiming they’d lost her. So many people abandoned their children at Siyeongwon for these reasons.
It was a financial burden, but as a result, fewer children ended up suffering.
What started out as no grand intention had ultimately been producing good effects, and that was enough.
Even now, people fleeing there because of their husband’s or father’s debts weren’t uncommon.
‘Hmm, come to think of it, maybe that’s part of why the Siyeongwon children show no interest in marriage.’
I’d once heard that victims of domestic violence would rush in just before being sold as Nobi, because Siyeongwon actually protected people instead of throwing them into some government office.
It would’ve been nice if they’d come back sooner, before things got worse. But when you keep telling yourself that even the bastards selling off their own wives are family, well.
With a sigh, I hurled the one personal item I’d managed to hold onto through the window.
At least they hadn’t searched me thoroughly, probably because I was just a child.
“……?”
Cheon Ho caught what I’d thrown, looking bewildered, but there was no time to waste—I had no idea when those men would return.
“Take this to Hye Minser and tell him my situation. Do you understand…….”
I’d barely finished speaking when I heard footsteps outside, so I stopped and crouched back into the corner where I’d been sitting before.
Cheon Ho seemed to have hidden himself as well.
Creak—
“Done crying now?”
“Come out.”
I hiccupped again, swallowing hard against my dry throat.
‘I said all that brave talk, but this is terrifying. This really is.’
For all my bravado, if things went wrong, I could genuinely end up being sold into servitude.
The men watched me struggle to suppress my crying and wipe away tears with my sleeve, and they didn’t treat me too brutally because of it.
Though when they saw me try to stand only to stumble because of the bindings around my legs, the man who’d tied me up took an extra blow for his carelessness.
“Can it even walk? You carry her properly.”
“Yes.”
“Give her some water too. Her face needs to be presentable if we’re to get a fair price for her.”
The kidnappers seemed satisfied with how frightened and docile I’d become, so they didn’t mistreat me any further.
Still, wherever I ended up would be one of those wooden prison cells I’d glimpsed earlier.
‘I was right to send Cheon Ho away. This isn’t the kind of situation anyone could rescue me from by learning I’d disappeared.’
Even as I thought through these hard truths, a flood of darker thoughts overwhelmed me.
What was going to happen to me now? Would I ever make it back safely?
‘If I’d known it would come to this, I should have made peace with the Crown Prince before leaving.’
If anything happened to me, he’d torture himself with guilt over it.
Thinking through the people around me one by one, a sigh rose unbidden from my chest.
What was I going to do?
Even I could see how many people I’d taken responsibility for.

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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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