Born As The Daughter of a Lowly Concubine - Chapter 52

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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 low rank.
Episode 52
Worried the food was so hot the children might spit it straight back out, I leaned away slightly—but fortunately they understood the value of scarce provisions well enough that nothing came tumbling back out of their mouths.
Once food made its way inside them, the children fell silent for a stretch.
Though soon enough, the noise started up again.
“Is, is there anything else? Huh? Something you need done? I’m, I’m good at finding things too!”
“Hey, why would someone who throws money around like that ask anything else of kids like us?”
The child’s remark seemed to needle Song Bi and Seong Yoon—their brows furrowed slightly—but it wasn’t wrong.
There truly wasn’t much work fit to give children this young.
“Not really anything. Oh.”
But the moment the words left my mouth, something occurred to me.
“I can’t throw money around like that, but I think I could manage something to eat if you’d do me one more favor?”
“Huh? What?”
The children stopped eating and opened their eyes wide, waiting for my words.
And the two people standing behind me were probably frowning by now.
Just by watching how the children’s eager eyes suddenly dimmed and their gazes grew uncertain, I could guess what they were thinking.
And true to form, the children who’d actually heard my request looked utterly bewildered.
“But… why would you be curious about where we live?”
“And besides, you don’t even know what’s in the Capital City?”
“Well… you don’t know much, do you?”
I’m eight years old right now. You kids…
The truth was, I knew the overall structure of the Capital City fairly well because I remembered the Seoul map from my past life well enough. I used to glance at it while waiting for the subway—and it turned out to be surprisingly useful here.
Without a map, it would have been genuinely difficult to grasp the whole layout just from hearing where things were.
‘Honestly, you don’t know much either, do you?’
Even if Hanyang was considerably smaller than modern Seoul, it was still the size of a couple of districts. It seemed unlikely that these children could grasp its entirety.
“Why are you asking something like that? Is it a game for high-born people?”
“I’m not sure if such a game exists. But people of high station—myself included—don’t really understand how hard others have it. So I thought if I saw it myself and reported back, maybe they’d believe it more.”
“I see.”
The children huddled together, whispering among themselves as if they didn’t quite follow my meaning.
‘I didn’t think this would be such a difficult decision for them.’
And unexpectedly, my words landed differently on someone else.
“Miss.”
“Oh, sorry. I won’t ask you to do anything dangerous.”
I reflexively offered an apology when Song Bi called out to me, and her voice seemed thick with emotion.
“I never realized Miss was harboring such deep thoughts.”
“Ah, well. It’s nothing much.”
Seong Yoon joined in as well.
“You’re still so young, yet you think of such things.”
“No, well. Yes.”
I turned my head away from their gleaming gazes.
I’m sorry—it’s not that I don’t have such feelings at all, but truthfully, it’s motivated by self-interest.
‘Really, it’s just part of my research project on daily life in the Joseon period.’
In fact, recording the lifestyle of the royal court was already underway.
Since I was born into the royal family anyway, I wanted to leave behind materials on royal court life.
For that reason, once I could hold a brush and write in Hangul—or rather, Hangul hasn’t been officially established yet, so I’ll just keep calling it Hangul—I’ve been recording all sorts of miscellaneous details related to palace life, disguised as a diary.
The customs for addressing the royal elders. The ways the palace ladies worked. The superstitions conducted in secret within the palace. The characteristics and colors of the clothes I and the Crown Prince wore daily.
Down to recording meticulously the types of food, their flavors, and simple preparation methods for the dishes that appeared on my table every day.
Of course, the same went for the snacks I ate with the Crown Prince.
So when Ga-i happened to glance at my diary and saw all this, she assumed I simply had a keen interest in food and smiled warmly as she moved on.
But the reason for keeping such a record is obvious, isn’t it?
‘Hehe. I’m planning to enrich the papers of students in relevant fields several hundred years from now.’
By then, the language will have changed again, so I suppose translation will be necessary.
It doesn’t matter. That’s not my job.
Make a historically accurate historical drama based on the materials I’ve left behind!
I’ll make sure no one can say there’s no source material to verify historical accuracy!
‘Of course, if war breaks out and it all burns, that’s the end of it. Even if it belongs to a princess, they won’t copy a personal diary and store it in multiple archives like the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty.’
Besides, historical accuracy changes by era, so the materials I’m leaving behind will probably only represent the early-to-middle Joseon period at best.
Most of the surviving royal cultural materials from the modern era were preserved based on testimonies of people who served as palace ladies from the late Joseon period through the Korean Empire, so there will likely be differences.
In any case, if we have materials from the middle period, even without the intermediate stages, historians will manage to research how things changed, won’t they?
At least if a historical drama is made set during this period, I’ll make sure they have to reference it.
I was planning to have painters from the Royal Painting Bureau create plenty of paintings to leave behind.
“Heh.”
The children, oblivious to my crooked thoughts, were staring at me with the look of people who’d seen every peculiar person under the sun.
As if you could ever understand what I’m thinking…….
If a real history enthusiast had been reincarnated into this instead, it would’ve been something else entirely.
Me? I’m just ordinarily fond of history, watch historical dramas, and occasionally hunt down related books—your typical casual viewer of period shows.
‘Come to think of it, there probably aren’t many historical dramas that show commoner life in such detail.’
In some ways, there seem to be even more cases dealing with slaves’ lives, but well…… let’s set that aside for now.
Separate from thinking of me as an odd person, this isn’t a difficult task or a dangerous one, and I have no intention of refusing when they’re offering food.
Though I suspect those children might have suspected and run away if I’d been an adult man smiling sinisterly.
This is a harsh world—caution is paramount.
“All right. We always go to the same places, but if it’s somewhere we know, we can show you anywhere!”
“What do you want to know?”
“Hmm.”
If these children knew how to read, I could ask them to come back with records of this and that.
‘But for that to happen, I’d have to…… teach them to read first?’
No matter how easy Hangul is supposed to be, would these kids willingly learn it?
Maybe I should teach them while giving them money instead.
I pushed the annoying task to later and for now asked them to show me around, curious about their routine. At first I asked where they lived, but they refused, saying that under the bridge where beggars live was no place for a well-raised young lady to go.
“You’re curious about everything.”
“Why don’t you try begging yourself, miss? We could get you some clothes.”
The children urged me to join their group with mischievous faces, but I shook my head.
“My face has too much of a noble air to it—it wouldn’t work.”
“……Wow.”
Some of the children grew serious at my words, while others agreed that it was a fair point, and they were stirred up for a moment before settling down. They rushed out in a crowd, saying they’d earn their keep, though they’d been going anyway regardless. So talkative for such rushed children.
“……Young lady.”
“Ah…… Father said he’d build a house for me after I marry, so I need to learn something about the outside world too. It’ll be hard for Song Bi to keep up, so wouldn’t it be better for her to wait here?”
I rattled off excuses at Song Bi’s alarmed voice and then followed after the children.
“I will look after things, so please don’t worry too much…… I think it will be best for you to wait here as the young lady suggests.”
“Sigh. I’m counting on you.”
I heard a sigh, but Song Bi didn’t particularly resist my words. Perhaps it was because she’d been forced to witness me lately thrashing about and clawing at the floor in boredom.
‘If not today, I don’t think I’ll get another chance like this. I might hear about commoner life from the palace attendants or after I marry into another family, but these children—I won’t get close to them easily unless it’s while they’re young like this.’
Most of them don’t think about recording their own lives in the first place.
Only a foreigner from another culture would find it curious enough to document.
As that thought occurred to me, an odd feeling settled over me.
‘Am I like a foreigner?’
I’m from a different time, a different world originally, so it’s not wrong.
A small laugh escaped, but I quickly put on an indifferent expression, worried the people around me might think it strange.
While the children went around begging, and I grew familiar with one of them who stuck by my side as a guide, I followed them about in a daze.
“If you go straight down this way, you’ll reach the Stream…….”
I chased after the children while comparing the geography in my memory against the layout of this Seoul.
‘Hmm. Is that Myeongdong over there?’
And on Seong Yoon’s face, trailing behind me, was written: ‘Couldn’t I just guide her myself?’
Sorry. I understand that sentiment, but…… I prefer the children to you.
Since they’ve been getting food from the tavern, they all seem a bit cleaner than before, I suppose.
Now that the children had seriously taken up their trade, they had an almost supernatural knowledge of information about kind-hearted great houses and homes hosting celebrations, seeking them out with surprising accuracy—it was quite entertaining to watch.
“How do you find out about things like that?”
“Oh, you know. Word gets around. If someone’s holding a celebration, they need to hunt meat and gather workers.”
I asked a child whose name I still didn’t know.
“Do you sometimes work at places like that?”
“As if they’d hire us. We’re lucky if we don’t break a bowl.”
The child who answered curtly glanced at me and asked:
“But why were you searching so desperately for that ring? You look like the daughter of a wealthy family.”
“My dead brother gave it to me as his last gift. I was carrying it so I wouldn’t lose it, and then I lost it anyway.”
“……That’s pathetic.”
“It is, isn’t it.”
There was no room for excuses.
The children, dragging me along while watching their surroundings, also explained where they’d searched for the Jade Ring.
“Here! This is where we crawled around looking for it!”
“It was in the mud, completely black! We washed it hard in the Stream!”
“I see. Thank you.”
“Really?”
One of the youngest children in the group brightened at my words of gratitude and began bouncing excitedly here and there. Perhaps it was because she had cried in my arms that day—she seemed to feel a peculiar closeness to me.
Anyone watching would have thought it was she who had found the lost ring, not I.
But unlike the other children who were simply delighted, the child who had handed me the ring spoke to me in a subdued tone when the others weren’t looking.
“Miss, that thing we found for you—it isn’t actually yours, is it?”
“…Ah, you caught me.”
I had checked as soon as I received it. That ring, scarred all over, was not the one I’d been looking for.
The truth was, distinguishing it by the jade’s blemishes alone was a lie. The ring could have easily accumulated new scratches rolling across the ground.
What I was actually searching for was a jade ring with faint spots that appeared to connect two rings together. I hadn’t mentioned that detail from the start precisely because I didn’t fully trust the children yet.
“Are you pitying us?”
“It could be pity. Or… simply, I’m grateful. That you searched so hard, covered in dirt the whole time.”
“…Everyone worked so hard because you’re our benefactor who saved us.”
“Yes. Thank you. Are you feeling better now?”
“Well. Getting by.”
What I had promised was, in fact, a rather meager reward. If the children had thought more carefully, they might have realized it would have been more advantageous to keep accepting food without finding the ring.
Though I couldn’t speak for the others, this child in front of me seemed sharp enough to have grasped that much.
“You didn’t really think it could be found, did you?”
“Realistically speaking, no. Considerable time had already passed. If someone had seen it, they would have taken it. If it had rolled somewhere out of sight, it would be nearly impossible to find.”
“Then why search for it at all?”
“Because it was the last thing my brother gave me before he died. It was precious to him, and if I lost it, I’d regret it. I thought the least I could do was make an effort to search for it—a matter of respect, wouldn’t you say?”
“Respect? That’s nonsense.”
“Ha ha ha.”
I’d thought it a meaningless conversation, but somehow it felt as though my thoughts were settling into place.
‘I was thinking I should search for it, yet I was giving up after all.’
It was the kind of conversation I couldn’t have easily had within the palace walls.
And the child I’d worried might grow irritated at my words had an oddly complex expression instead.
“I… had a brother too.”
“I see.”
Had a brother—not has a brother, but had.

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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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