Born As The Daughter of a Lowly Concubine - Chapter 17

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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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I was born the daughter of a concubine of the lowest rank.
17
“Your brother has been watching you and Soun’s quarters. He told me to report to him at once if anything suspicious appears.”
“Mm.”
Somehow I’d been caught by Gyeongwon-gun and couldn’t escape, so I found myself sitting on his lap, listening to his explanation of what had happened that day.
‘He doesn’t think I’d know anything about this, does he.’
It was frustrating, and I wanted to confess it to someone, but since I could barely speak properly, I figured he was unburdening himself partly for that very reason.
Thanks to that, I learned that the internal collaborator on our side who’d been feeding information to Gyeongwon-gun was Soun—a childhood friend from before she became a court lady, stationed in this quarters.
“But that boy… when I saw Gyeongeon-gun carrying a dead animal’s corpse, I couldn’t help myself and just…”
“Sigh.”
I shook my head back and forth and tapped his shoulder gently.
You could say the Crown Prince had made an unreasonable request of a child, or conversely, it seemed to mean the Crown Prince himself lacked that much power.
‘Either way, he’s been looking out for me quite a bit.’
My savior, after all.
“Your brother must be disappointed in me too…”
“Quiet!”
“My, how dare you speak to your—”
The moment I stopped his mouth from sinking into self-deprecation, his eyes sharpened with ingratitude.
“…Now I see you aren’t unable to speak after all. Mother was so worried that you still couldn’t.”
“Hmph.”
Shut up.
When I turned my head away sharply, Gyeongwon-gun let out an exaggerated laugh.
“This little one dares defy her brother.”
“Ugh.”
Then, as if displeased, he began to pinch my cheek.
He seemed to enjoy the texture, soft like glutinous rice cake, and what had begun as playful pinching gradually took on a different quality, continuing without pause. So I reached out and grabbed his cheek in return.
‘Soft and squishy.’
Being young himself, his cheek had a rather similar texture to a glutinous rice cake.
We pinched each other’s cheeks in silence until soft giggles began to leak out. The small laughter soon turned into uncontrollable laughing.
Just as we were giggling away, a voice from somewhere made us both freeze at the same time.
“…Gyeongwon-gun?”
“…!!”
When I turned around, there stood Seonbin and her sister in the doorway, their faces clearly trying to suppress laughter.
Gyeongwon-gun’s expression, always composed, flushed bright red.
And Seonbin’s face, watching him, had never looked brighter.
***
After that day, Seonbin began looking after me and my sister far more openly than before.
My sister, sensing something in it, deepened her friendship with Seonbin and maintained the connection.
And whatever Yeongbin said or didn’t say, I was actually given more freedom than before, and whenever the King came to visit, she spoke with warmth unlike any before.
Naturally, the more she did this, the sharper Yeongbin’s reactions became.
“It cannot be anything other than that Soun is disrespecting me.”
“How can you speak such frightening words?”
“I shall see how long you can walk about with your head held high like that.”
The only consolation was that Gyeongeon-gun was under confinement too, so there was no chance of running into him.
As a result, nothing happened in the quarters for a while, but the situation outside was different.
Every time the court ladies from Chwiryeong-dang encountered our quarters’ court ladies, they picked quarrels and engaged in power struggles, and naturally our ladies, being of lower rank, could only endure their grievances in silence and suffer.
‘How long will this go on.’
If Yeongbin becomes the Queen Consort, things will only get worse, not better. What am I to do?
It was one of those days when I sighed beyond my years, far too much for one so young.
“It’s been a while, little sister.”
“Eek.”
I’d been taking a rather pleasant stroll when I ran into Gyeongeon-gun after so long.
His smile was uncanny, and without thinking, I recoiled with a stiff face, which seemed to displease him, for his expression hardened and he reached toward me.
“Aaah!”
I tried to hide behind the palace maids, but in an instant my collar was seized.
“You avoid your brother so much that His Majesty misunderstands this brother too.”
“Mmmmph!!”
Worse, he held me with his hand over my mouth to keep me from screaming, and the whole thing felt deeply wrong.
The court ladies of Chwiryeong-dang, sensing the dangerous atmosphere just as I did, stopped Gyeongeon-gun.
“My lord. If the Queen Mother learns of you treating the young princess this way…”
“Don’t make a fuss. Have I killed you or something?”
“N-no, my lord.”
The palace maids’ strange reaction—hesitating to retreat, their expressions hardening—was nothing short of ominous.
I thrashed with all my strength to break free from Gyeongeon-gun’s embrace.
And my desperate struggling, mercifully, bore fruit.
“Ow!”
I didn’t know what I’d struck, but the moment Gyeongeon-gun’s anguished cry burst from him, I became a free woman—and took off running without a backward glance.
When I’d put some distance between us and dared to look back, Gyeongeon-gun wasn’t coming after me at all. He was sitting there, trembling violently.
And our palace maids, who’d been pale with alarm just moments before, were biting their lips hard behind me, trembling just as hard.
“Miss, let me carry you back to your quarters.”
“All right.”
That would be faster than me running, anyway.
Cradled in a palace maid’s arms as we returned to my quarters, I brushed off my feet, unsettled by something.
‘I think I hit something. Surely not…’
The image of Gyeongeon-gun sitting there slack and broken flashed through my mind, and all I could do was sigh.
So this is how I’ll keep piling on grudges and bad blood.
The smartest thing would be to avoid that lunatic entirely, not provoke him—but it’s far too late for that now.
“Sigh.”
“Don’t worry too much about it, Miss.”
“Of course not. Who would blame a young girl for what she did? Especially when Gyeongeon-gun has been treating you so roughly. It’s only natural you were startled.”
I’m not worried about being blamed—I’m worried about what that violent mother and son might do next.
‘I wish they’d just come after me instead.’
But they mostly torment my helpless sister and the palace maids.
And I can’t just submit to it either, not knowing what he might do. It terrifies me.
Even after returning, that anxiety lingered for quite a while.
“You seem quite shaken. You’ve been listless ever since.”
“You’ve eaten, so why don’t we take you to the veranda for some air before you rest?”
“All right.”
Whether worried by how glum I’d been or afraid of catching the eye of someone above, the palace maids took me to the veranda and tried to cheer me up.
“Where did you disappear to?”
“I brought some Sikhye for the Miss. It’s sweet Sikhye, Miss.”
“Oh.”
“It’s a secret from the Lady.”
“All right.”
One of the palace maids—her face now familiar to me—came with a tray bearing a bowl of Sikhye and pressed it into my hands.
“You, really—you only brought one bowl of Sikhye? You should’ve brought some snacks for the Miss too.”
“I brought the Sikhye, so why don’t you all bring some snacks? And if you manage to sneak something for us to eat, that’d be even better.”
Soft whispers dissolved into muffled laughter.
Normally you shouldn’t behave this way in front of your mistress, but since my sister came from a line of high-ranking court ladies, the palace maids’ little moments of subtle rebellion were generally overlooked.
Perhaps because there were hostile forces pressing from outside, the bonds within our quarters grew all the stronger.
‘You’d think they’d resent me for once being a palace maid myself, but this class system society makes things smoother than I expected.’
Maybe I just haven’t seen the ones who do resent me?
“Right then. We’ll be back soon—you look after the Miss while we’re gone.”
“Miss, we’ll return with something delicious in no time.”
“All right.”
The daylight was already fading, and with no desire to move, I nodded.
‘It’s not as if there’s anything to do in the room anyway.’
How I miss my smartphone. How I long for the internet.
With a sigh, I reached for the porcelain bowl holding the Sikhye, and the palace maid who’d brought it grasped the bowl and pressed it firmly into my hands before letting go.
‘Isn’t this a bit heavy for me to hold?’
The porcelain bowl itself was heavy, but with liquid inside, it was even heavier.
Pressed into the small, still-clumsy hands of a young child, the Sikhye spilled across the tray before it ever reached my lips.
“Oh dear, what do we do.”
“Huh?”
You’re supposed to feed it to her, not shove the bowl into a child’s hands.
Rather than angry, I was simply dumbfounded, staring hard at the palace maid, who laughed awkwardly and looked away.
“I’m sorry, Miss. Your clothes aren’t wet, are they? Goodness. I’ll go fetch something to wipe it up and bring fresh Sikhye. Just wait here a moment? I’ll be right back.”
“All right.”
And she’s leaving a child alone when it’s getting this dark?
As if I know where I’d wander off to, even inside the quarters.
‘I’ve been so well-behaved all along—is that why she feels so comfortable being careless with me?’
She shouldn’t raise another child the same way.
Though truthfully, there wasn’t much childcare to be done within the Palace walls anyway.
After my original wet nurse was dismissed, no replacement was ever assigned, so everyone floundering about made sense enough.
“Sigh.”
The sticky residue of Sikhye still clung to my hands, and I let out an exasperated breath as I pushed the small table away.
Flap—
A faint rustling sound came with occasional fluttering, accompanied by soft footsteps.
‘What… is that?’
Alone in the darkness with no one else around, my spine prickled with unease.
That mysterious sound grew steadily louder, as though feeding off my anxiety.
It wasn’t difficult to realize the sound was drawing closer to where I sat.
And the shadow, as if it had always known I was there, revealed itself and spoke to me in the same moment.
“Why are you sitting alone?”
“…!”
The owner of that decidedly unwelcome voice looked down at me and broke into a sickly grin.
The one person who absolutely should not be here was standing before my eyes.
‘Security may be slack lately, but this brazenly? And at such a perfect moment, no less?’
Naturally, the face of that court lady who’d left me alone without hesitation came to mind.
How many times must I learn that there was no one in this world I could trust?
But this was not the time for such thoughts.
Normally, being small, I would have had to look up at Gyeongeon-gun, but seated as I was on the veranda, I found myself looking down at him instead—which made it all too easy to see exactly what he held in his hand, and that it was something deeply sinister.
The fluttering sound I’d heard earlier seemed to come from that thing.
A bird still twitching in Gyeongeon-gun’s grip left a long smear of blood across the floor.
A metallic stench filled the air.
“Do you know how utterly presumptuous you were earlier? Because of you, I had to call the physician, my breeches—damn it!!”
Ah, of course… he was reaping what he’d sown, though it did seem the blood had rushed to his head.
“Yes, your lowborn nature means your conduct is equally base, and how could I not see it? So shouldn’t a half-brother of mixed blood like me set about correcting that baseness of yours?”
Like a scene from a horror film, Gyeongeon-gun approached me slowly.
“It was foolish of me to intend to punish something as lowborn as you with my own hands. Soon you will pay the price for that presumption. Today, instead, I’ve brought you a gift befitting something as lowborn as you—be grateful for this elder brother’s generosity.”
“…!!”
And then he hurled what he held directly at me.
Thwack!! Flap! Flap…!
The thing in Gyeongeon-gun’s hand grazed my face, struck the paper door with a sickening sound, and then fell silent.
Seeing me frozen in shock, Gyeongeon-gun laughed quietly, a low chuckle that made his shoulders shake.
“Look at you now. So fearless a moment ago—have you finally learned to be afraid?”
By any measure, he was a madman incarnate.
Did he truly believe he could do something like this and escape unnoticed?
“You and your lowborn mother both forget your place. How dare you, born of such low blood, strut about as a princess? Surely you don’t think someone as lowborn as you could stand equal with me?”
He stopped laughing, his eyes flashing dangerously as he added this.
“Soon I shall make you just like that.”
Then he laughed again, a low cackling, and advanced toward me—a figure from a nightmare made flesh.
‘This deranged bastard—and to think I’ve heard he even throws around slurs and threats? As if he’s any different, not being born of the main wife either.’
At the sight of him, my hands clenched involuntarily.
Only then did I realize I had been gripping the porcelain bowl that held the Sikhye all this time.
I must have grabbed it in my shock.
And the moment I became aware of it, my hand—stripped of reason for an instant—moved on pure instinct.
Crack—!!
“Ahhhhh!!”
Shatter—!!

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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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