Born As The Daughter of a Lowly Concubine - Chapter 127

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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 concubine of minor rank.
Chapter 127
‘What’s this about?’
Seong-ji couldn’t understand why her uncle had suddenly taken her home.
They’d been in the middle of an important conversation about smallpox, after all.
And at the same time, there was something nagging at her—a small doubt.
On the way back to the Academy today, when she’d spoken with Se-hwa and heard about this thing called cowpox, Se-hwa had mentioned that she herself had received cowpox inoculation and bore its marks on her arm.
The moment Seong-ji heard that, she couldn’t help but recall a similar mark on her own arm.
She’d always thought she’d contracted smallpox as a child, but now she wondered if that might not have been the case.
‘I remember clearly—my uncle did something to my arm when I was little, saying it was to keep me from getting sick.’
She couldn’t recall exactly when it was, but she remembered being ill for several days afterward.
It had hurt, but she’d been happy that her uncle was so rarely by her side all day long.
When she was younger, he’d spent much time caring for her at home and teaching her her studies.
But once Seong-ji had become capable of studying medicine on her own and caring for patients, her uncle had begun spending more and more time away from home, and when he returned, he was always drunk.
She’d worried that one day he might collapse in the street and die there from his drinking.
‘And sometimes he even seemed to have nightmares.’
Surprisingly, it was a meeting with the young lady of Siyeongwon that roused her uncle from that state.
That day when he collapsed in the street upon seeing the young lady.
When her uncle woke, he showed no desire for drink and no inclination toward sleep.
When she conveyed the young lady’s wishes to him, he merely nodded vacantly and murmured.
‘If she asks, then I must do it.’
She didn’t know whether her uncle had known all along that the young lady of Siyeongwon was a princess, but from that day forward, he’d changed little by little.
No longer did he collapse drunk anywhere; instead, he’d begun poring over medical texts, wondering aloud if perhaps he might teach someone else.
Had his life at the Royal Medical Institute been so difficult?
While Seong-ji was lost in thought, she and Heo Yeon-tae had arrived at their home.
As the Academy had taken proper root, the two had moved near Siyeongwon. The house for the physicians had been provided by the young lady of Siyeongwon, so they hadn’t sold their original home but rented it out instead.
Once inside, Heo Yeon-tae went to his room and drew out a cloth-wrapped bundle from deep within a chest. Seong-ji remembered it because her uncle had held it closely even during the move.
She hadn’t bothered to check its contents, but from the outside alone she could tell it was a book and so hadn’t been particularly curious.
Rather, she’d deliberately avoided touching it, sensing it was something precious, laden with memory.
Yet her uncle, without hesitation, untied the knot and drew out the book.
“Uncle, what is this book?”
“Your mother… wrote it.”
“My mother?”
Seong-ji could only stare in shock.
Had her uncle ever spoken of her mother until now?
Though she was startled, there had to be a reason why her uncle, after all this time, had entrusted her with this secret book he’d kept hidden.
Seong-ji took the book he offered and hastily turned the pages. She immediately grasped that the contents were extraordinary.
With a trembling voice that betrayed her disbelief, Seong-ji pressed her uncle for confirmation again and again.
“Did your mother really write this book?”
“Yes.”
“But this is…”
Treatise on Smallpox.
The title was plain, if anything too plain, but it was unmistakably a book written about smallpox.
More precisely, it was a comprehensive compilation of the treatments described in medical texts on smallpox, a record of her mother’s research into those afflicted with the disease—and within it lay accounts of cowpox inoculation, the very thing she’d just heard about from Se-hwa.
It even documented instances where cowpox had been inoculated into those exposed to smallpox, and how they’d suffered only a mild case of cowpox instead of contracting the disease itself.
If what was written here were true, perhaps even those who’d come into contact with the courtesan afflicted with smallpox could avoid the disease through this method.
“Uncle, why didn’t you show me this until now?”
“Didn’t I say—your mother wrote it.”
At her uncle’s curt reply, Seong-ji’s emotions surged and she spoke back.
“You’ve never told me anything about my mother all this time.”
……
Heo Yeon-tae fell silent for a moment, swallowed, and barely managed to open his mouth.
“Your mother was a female physician.”
“My mother… was?”
It was certain she’d been a female physician if she’d written a book like this, but this was the first Seong-ji was hearing of it.
Though now that she thought about it, when learning medicine as a child, she’d heard remarks like ‘You’re certainly very like her.’ Could those have been references to her mother?
“Yes. But… you must not tell anyone this fact. Do you understand?”
“… Is it because I’m not really your blood niece?”
“… Yes.”
It was a truth she’d come to realize only recently.
Her uncle spoke to those around him of Seong-ji as the daughter of his late elder brother and his wife, yet he had never once asked her to maintain the ancestral rites for her parents. He had never told her their story.
After Seong-ji grew older, he would disappear for several days each year around the same season and return without explanation—she could only guess that he had gone to tend their graves.
But with a true daughter of his own, there was no reason he would not take Seong-ji at least once to pay her respects to the dead.
Then what was she?
“Your mother clung to finding a cure for the smallpox that claimed her parents in childhood. This is the fruit of that devotion.”
“Then why, Uncle, have you hidden this book until now?”
“Your mother completed this work and passed not long after. And I resolved to bury it with her, as it was.”
“What?”
“I did not hide it from the beginning. I showed it to many physicians. But when people already struggled to believe that cow pus could be inoculated to protect against smallpox, and when they learned a woman had written the medical text—no one would accept it. They said how could the words of a mad woman be called medicine.”
Seong-ji bit her lip.
That people recoiled from the notion of cowpox inoculation was, of course, not strange.
Moreover, the objection that a woman’s medical knowledge could not be trusted was something Seong-ji herself had heard countless times. The fact that the advocate for cowpox was a woman would only deepen their dismissal, not ease it.
Yet even so, she could not bring herself to excuse her uncle for keeping it hidden all these years.
“How can you say such things? Surely you could have persuaded them somehow, and simply followed the treatment as written in this book.”
“Yes, perhaps that was possible. But then it would have become my achievement, would it not? I could not bear that.”
“But people’s lives hung in the balance.”
“So at first I tried to look away. But I could not. So whenever a patient presented with suspected smallpox, I would pose as a wandering physician, treat them, and then insist it had been some other ailment.”
“You did?”
Now that she thought of it, she had rarely heard of smallpox breaking out within the Capital City. Could it be connected to this?
That her uncle, who seemed to do nothing but drink, had secretly been doing such work—it was almost unbelievable.
“It was only within the reach of my own hands. Yes, you could call it selfish work.”
“Then why are you suddenly giving this to me?”
“Because I am foolish. And because things have changed now, have they not?”
“Yes? Ah.”
That was true. They had changed.
Now female physicians could receive official rank just as their male counterparts could.
And more than that—
“The Princess might believe in it, might she not?”
“Uncle.”
Yes. The Princess would believe.
Even women themselves rarely trusted that a woman could accomplish as much as a male physician, but the young mistress of Siyeongwon had never once cast such doubt.
She was the one who had argued that female physicians were needed to treat women, so that more women could receive care—that just as male physicians received rank, so too should female physicians—and had made it reality.
If she deemed something necessary, she would act on it without hesitation, even when others thought it mad.
‘And she steers her endeavors in directions no one else would have imagined.’
When Siyeongwon was first established, who could have imagined it would reach its present scale?
Everyone had assumed at best it would become a poorhouse that would eventually collapse into ruin, or become the private institution of the Princess—nothing more.
That she would teach children their letters and establish a medical clinic—no one had foreseen such ambition.
“Indeed, now that Se-hwa the female physician is saying things that align almost perfectly with this book’s contents, it will lend greater credibility to it as well.”
“Yes, that is true. But Seong-ji. Above all, I do not wish to see this achievement attributed to anyone else.”
“Uncle?”
“The methods to treat smallpox, the ways to prevent it through cowpox—all of it was her discovery. If someone were to claim credit for this, if their name were to be remembered for it, it must be you. How could I allow anyone else to receive such honor when you are her daughter?”
“Uncle.”
The logic might have been forced, but this was the first time Seong-ji had heard her uncle speak with such passion in his voice.
The reasoning was absurd, and honestly she felt laughter rise—yet she could not dismiss the heart behind it.
“You may curse me for not saying this sooner. But—”
“No. You raised me, your niece without blood ties, as your own.”
“…”
“You raised me as a physician.”
“Yes.”
After a moment of silence, Seong-ji ventured carefully, “Will you tell me about my mother?”
“… No. It is better you do not know. You are simply my niece. Understand?”
At her uncle’s firm words, Seong-ji nodded obediently. She asked only one thing more.
“Would she have been glad to see me?”
“… She would have been.”
As the touching exchange between uncle and niece continued, a figure lurking in the shadows quietly slipped away from their presence.
The two unremarkable physicians had no idea that someone had been listening in secret to their rather complicated family affair.
***
“Young mistress.”
“Oh, did you rest well?”

While I was playing with the children at Siyeongwon, Seong Gyeom-sabok appeared quietly beside us, and I waved at him with a smile.
“So, satisfied?”
“I wonder… might I be permitted to look into a few things?”
“Mm. I’ve no taste for prying into others’ family affairs.”
When Seong Gyeom-sabok spoke that way, it meant there was something he wanted to know more about.
‘I thought it would be fine since he came from the Royal Medical Institute, but could there be something troublesome?’
Heo Yeon-tae and Seong-ji were both key figures in teaching medicine to the children, and if any strange problems emerged later, it would prove difficult—particularly if it concerned character.
“If something bothers you, look into it then. Cheon-ho is here now anyway, so there’s no need for you to overwork yourself, is there?”
“How could I trust that fellow enough to leave my post?”
Behind Seong Gyeom-sabok’s blunt voice, a large shadow appeared.
“Ah, why must you make the listener uncomfortable? I have a perfectly good name—Cheon-ho. Why do you keep saying ‘that fellow’ and ‘this fellow’?”
“Don’t stand behind me, boy.”
“And now it’s ‘boy’ after ‘that fellow.'”
When Cheon-ho deliberately made a playful, sullen face, Seong Gyeom-sabok seemed to have nothing to say and merely clicked his tongue.
“You are young. Never mind your size.”
“I never intended to grow this large, I assure you.”
“Does being large bother you?”
“Not bother, precisely, but when one’s body is this large, it becomes rather inconvenient. But shouldn’t we stop that over there?”
“I suppose if we let it be, it will burn itself out naturally.”
While we carried on this idle banter, the atmosphere within Siyeongwon was proving oddly less than peaceful.
“I go first!”
“No, I’m going first!”
“No! I want to go first!”
Seong Gyeom-sabok, having just arrived and knowing nothing of what had transpired, wore a somewhat exasperated expression at the children’s loud voices.

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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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