Born As The Daughter of a Lowly Concubine - 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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Born as the daughter of a low-ranking concubine.
Chapter 33
To cut to the point: I never saw my sister again.
‘Well, this ceiling is familiar.’
If I’m going to get used to something, I’d prefer a ceiling with fluorescent lights. LEDs, say.
After blinking a few times, the response came at once.
“Miss…?”
“Miss!!”
Gai and Songbi, their faces gaunt, threw themselves at me and burst into tears.
Well. So I didn’t die after all.
Bang!
“What’s happened to Miss— She’s awake!!”
The court ladies who had rushed in through the door at the sound of Gai and Songbi’s sobs locked eyes with me and immediately spun around to flee.
‘Close the door on your way out….’
Discipline’s gotten slack with these girls lately.
While I was entertaining that idle thought, the Royal Physician rushed in to examine my condition.
And shortly after, with a thudding commotion, my biological father appeared.
‘It feels like forever since I’ve seen him.’
The King, haggard-faced like my court ladies, couldn’t get up from where I lay, so he pulled me into his embrace, went silent for a long while, and then burst into anger.
“Tell me how you could torment your father’s heart like this!!”
“I’m sorry… cough.”
“Don’t speak if it hurts!”
But… you just told me to speak….
The Queen followed the King and arrived to confirm my condition, wiping tears from her eyes.
Seeing the Queen breathless from her rush, I found myself more concerned about her than myself.
It was strange to see her so flustered—it was the first time.
The King asked the Royal Physician numerous questions, confirmed I had eaten rice gruel and medicinal broth, and then returned to his duties with heavy steps.
He’d rushed away from a council at the Daejeon—I felt a little guilty about that.
“Is there any discomfort anywhere?”
“No.”
According to the physicians, my surviving intact like this was a miracle.
While hearing their vague speculations that the medicinal broths I’d been drinking regularly must have had some beneficial effect, the King grew impatient, and I stopped his irritation by saying I had a headache.
‘It’s not the physicians’ fault.’
The one who put poison in it is the culprit.
I wanted to ask what had happened afterward, but the atmosphere was too heavy for me to open my mouth.
What frightened me most, actually, was Young Prince Yongwon, who sat silently beside me even after the King and Queen left following their initial visit.
He said nothing, only stared at me, and his eyes burned so fiercely that I found it honestly a bit unnerving.
Whether he’d suffered greatly in his heart while I lay unconscious, his face had grown gaunt to the point of being eerie, yet his arms cradled a kitten—the imbalance was rather horror-like.
After the court ladies withdrew and we sat in awkward silence for a long while, Young Prince Yongwon finally opened his mouth when our eyes met.
“You.”
“What?”
“…Never mind. Sleep.”
Young Prince Yongwon, his face caught between anger and tears, held out the kitten he’d been cradling to me.
‘It’s grown so much.’
Was there a kitten that day too? I think there was. My last clear memory was of a tiny baby kitten, but now it had become quite hefty.
Lying here thinking about it now, I suppose my mind wasn’t entirely clear that day—blood had rushed to my head.
Whether because of that or because of the poison, I couldn’t quite remember what I’d said or done then.
Then, out of nowhere, Young Prince Yongwon said something.
“Apologize.”
“…What?”
“For doing something bad in front of the baby kittens.”
“Something bad?”
“Did you forget what you did when you came to my room?”
The poison? Is that what he meant?
Now that he mentioned it, had the kittens been in my arms then?
‘I’d completely forgotten.’
Something bad… well, it was bad.
“Say you’re sorry.”
“I’m sorry.”
Mew—
The cat cried out with a meow, as if answering me.
“Promise you won’t do it again.”
“I promise I won’t.”
Mew—
Not understanding what I meant, the cat mimicked my words with a meow, and despite myself, a small laugh escaped me.
“So you can smile after all.”
“Hmm?”
“You’ve been expressionless this whole time, haven’t you?”
I suppose I had been.
But there was nothing to smile about.
‘I wasn’t even happy to wake up.’
Though I was sorry, I suppose.
“…Your clothes have changed.”
These were not the robes of a prince. They were the same shade as those worn by Yi Hye, the dead Crown Prince—a Dragon Robe adorned with the Four-Clawed Dragon Emblem.
“I’ve been invested as Crown Prince.”
“Oh? Congratulations.”
“What meaning can there be in an investiture received while I’ve lost my brother and my younger sister lies at death’s door?”
“…I’m sorry.”
For the first time, emotion flickered across the face of Young Prince Yongwon.
He’d criticized me for being expressionless, yet he wore no expression himself.
“Do you know what I felt when you coughed up blood? And yet you remain so calm about it…!”
“I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
As I reached out my arms, Young Prince Yongwon, tears streaming down his face, collapsed against my shoulder and began to weep uncontrollably.
‘I’m a patient, and here…’
But I had done wrong too, so I could only comfort the weeping boy.
After a while, having barely composed himself, he suddenly said something unexpected.
“Did you know what you were eating?”
“Know what I was—what?”
At the suspicion in his eyes, I shook my head.
“Then why are you apologizing?”
Everyone else had glossed over it, but he was the most stubborn about it.
Everyone had dismissed the actions of a six-year-old child as trivial, but it was true—siblings often know each other better than their own parents did.
“You told me to apologize. You probably just ate it because you were hungry.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
Even as he sniffled, he began to interrogate me about my actions that day.
‘He usually acts foolish, so why is his perception so sharp about things like this?’
Though I had to admit, now that he was about to step into the political arena, his heightened perceptiveness was a welcome development.
“I came to my quarters alone, without the attendants who usually follow you. And those attendants, I heard, seized the maidservant who brought me the Dried Persimmons and took her to Junggungjon. On your orders.”
It seemed Gai and Songbi had followed my instructions well. Hearing this gave me some reassurance.
“There was an unfamiliar maidservant among them, and her behavior was suspicious.”
No matter how many maidservants served the palace, everyone knew the faces of the inner attendants at royal residences.
How many royals remained in the palace now? Only Daejeon, Junggungjon, Daebijeon, and the princes’ residences—the head attendants and maids at each place surely recognized each other. Everyone must be the same.
“…What happened that day?”
Neither the King nor the Queen had said anything; they’d left only Young Prince Yongwon, now the Crown Prince, behind. There was only one person I could ask.
“That day…”
With a reluctant expression, the Crown Prince finally opened his mouth.
After I entered Young Prince Yongwon’s Residence, Gai and Songbi, following my instructions faithfully, dragged those maidservants to Junggungjon.
“Not knowing the reason, but knowing that you don’t normally do such things, our mother, trusting what your attendants said, confined those maidservants to Junggungjon and sent other maids to search for you.”
“I see…”
And then she would have learned that I’d eaten the Dried Persimmons brought by those maidservants at Young Prince Yongwon’s Residence and collapsed from Poisoning.
‘Once the Queen realized those Dried Persimmons were meant for her own son, she would not have let it rest.’
The Queen must have reported the fact to the King without delay.
First the Crown Prince, then the favored concubine, then Yongjong whom she’d been carrying—and now even the only princess had eaten poison and collapsed. Except the poison had been intended to assassinate the only prince.
“That night, the palace erupted into chaos.”
The maidservants who’d brought the poison denied any knowledge, but it was useless.
There were those among Young Prince Yongwon’s attendants who remembered seeing them bring the Dried Persimmons.
At first they maintained their innocence, but after harsh interrogation, they finally confessed the name of Gyeongeogun.
Since I was at death’s door at the time, even torture had been permitted.
‘I merely placed the medicine the Lord Gyeongeogun gave me—I do not know what it was, Your Majesty!’
But no matter how they protested, the fact remained that they had put something suspicious into food meant for a prince.
The palace maid from Young Prince Yongwon’s Residence who had collaborated with him denied any connection to Gyeongeogun until the end, but she could not deny that she had received money and delivered the dried persimmons. It was possible that Gyeongeogun had promised her something else as well, but there was no time to interrogate her further on that matter.
Before that night was through, the Royal Guards stormed into Chwijungdang.
“Poison was discovered in Gyeongeogun’s quarters. We don’t know where it came from……but it appears he’d been keeping it for a very long time, not something acquired recently.”
“Ah, sometimes there were animal remains that looked halfway decent on the surface too.”
Before Gyeongeogun’s confinement, I had encountered animal remains in a way that made my skin crawl, so we both seemed to share the same thought—a small sigh escaped us.
“The Royal Guards searched Chwijungdang thoroughly, and new facts have come to light.”
“What is it?”
“They were cursing the Crown Prince……my brother in Chwijungdang.”
At those words, the sound of teeth grinding echoed.
I too was left speechless by the unexpected revelation.
‘Oh. Have they lost their minds.’
In this era, cursing like witchcraft was not merely dismissed as superstition—if caught, one actually faced punishment.
And cursing directed at the king or Crown Prince? That was treason.
Worse still, the timing of it all—the Crown Prince actually died—so there was no way out of this.
‘It’s come to this.’
An unexpected windfall made me unconsciously clench my fists.
“Hong Sugyeon denied it at first, but afterward, cursed animal remains were discovered buried in the back garden of Donggungjon, and it also came to light that animal remains had been found in my quarters as well.”
“Mm. It’s not surprising, given what they did before.”
“And…….”
The child who had been speaking so freely suddenly grew hesitant and glanced at my expression. I thought I could guess what was coming, so I spoke first.
“Does it have something to do with Yongjong?”
“……A tiger skin was found in the quarters. One of his accomplices wore it, pretended to be a tiger, left traces, and harmed a person.”
Ah, there had been something strange about calling it a tiger.
‘So it was just a skin. How anticlimactic.’
Even if I couldn’t determine who had worn that heavy tiger skin and actually committed the deed, who orchestrated it was as plain as day.
“Hong Sugyeon denied it at first as well, but who would believe such nonsense?”
For a moment, I barely stopped myself from blurting out that the attempted poisoning of Young Prince Yongwon might not have been Hong Sugyeon’s doing after all.
‘Honestly, compared to the other things, this poisoning attempt was rather clumsy.’
If Hong Sugyeon had been directing it, she wouldn’t have been caught so easily.
How fortunate that Gyeongeogun was so stupid.
“What became of the two of them?”
“Father was greatly enraged and wanted them executed at once…….”
This had all occurred during the period of mourning for the Crown Prince.
Even with such wicked schemes afoot, the royal house was beset by an unending succession of calamities.
The ministers barely managed to dissuade him, so both were ultimately spared execution and given deposition and exile instead, and those connected to the Left State Councillor’s Faction, who could hardly deny their involvement in this affair, departed into exile one after another.
‘Well. Even in the Joseon era, fathers who kill their own children were rare.’
Brothers, now—that was different.
With that thought, I gazed at Young Prince Yongwon, who had now become the Crown Prince.
Still just a child, if the king did not make a decision during his reign, that blood-soaked choice would fall to this boy.
“Each was placed under strict house confinement in separate regions, so even if they live, it will hardly be living.”
So saying, Young Prince Yongwon—no, the Crown Prince—reached over and gently stroked my head in comfort.
For a moment, I found myself thinking it would have been better if they were dead.
But perhaps my head had cooled a little, and I accepted coldly that it couldn’t be helped.
Even with confinement, a body that had lived comfortably in the palace—deposition, exile, and especially strict house confinement would be a living death.
Even those exiled for their crimes usually had some freedom to interact with local people or move within a certain area.
But strict house confinement meant the house where the criminal lived was surrounded by a fence of thorns or bitter orange trees so that no one could approach.
Sometimes they were built so high that barely any sunlight entered.
To survive there depending only on supplies sent from outside—one might go mad faster than that.
Even if it wasn’t as spectacular an ending as the original novel, this much should suffice.
“Are you well with this?”
“Yes.”
Knowing that this was the result obtained from subjecting this child to such a shock made it somewhat regrettable, though perhaps this was the crueler outcome.
‘There’s nothing more I can do at this point anyway.’
More shocking than anything was that while I had hovered at death’s door, both the Crown Prince’s and my sister’s funerals had already concluded.
Beyond the open window, a bird perched on a flowering branch sang out clearly.
Spring had come.
I had survived, leaving the dead behind.
It brought no joy.

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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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