I Became My Ex-Boyfriend’s Concubine - Chapter 7

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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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Chapter 7

Bang Pildu, the cloth merchant, sat with his legs crossed, tapping the Filial Piety Rod down onto his knee with sharp, rhythmic clicks. So this was the terrible slump everyone spoke of—not a single customer all day.
Sigh. Another blank day.
Just as he reached to lock the door, a woman’s footsteps crossed the threshold beyond the display case. He straightened at once, mouth curving into a quick smile, hands pressed together in greeting.
“Welcome, please—”
The moment their eyes met, he knew exactly who she was.
That woman. From back then. From that…!

“His Majesty is waiting for you!”

Right. The woman who’d gone into the palace.
Bang Pildu slammed the door shut and reached for the lock from inside—but the door swung wide open.
“Sir, come on. Is that how you treat customers? You just looked right at me.”
Dan Bi kept her foot wedged in the doorframe, throwing her full weight behind it, arms braced with surprising strength.
The contrast between her delicate frame and the raw force she exerted hit Bang Pildu like a shock; his face contorted in an instant. The way she drove herself through the gap was relentless.
“What have we done to deserve this?”
“I’m just here to buy clothes, I promise!”
At her words, Bang Pildu’s resistance crumbled. But his eyes still narrowed with suspicion as he studied her.
“Is that the truth?”
Instead of answering, Dan Bi smiled crookedly and pulled something from her pocket—a money pouch, stuffed so full the leather bulged.
The weight of it, even through the leather, was unmistakable. His pupils darted, wavering.
At that, Bang Pildu’s head bowed, and he began begging with both palms pressed together.
“I shall serve you with the utmost care!”

The shop was larger than she’d expected. Bolts and garments of various kinds hung throughout, each one neat as if freshly made.
Dan Bi smiled with satisfaction.
After all, this was the man who struck customers’ hands with the Filial Piety Rod the moment they reached for the fabric. He might well have been fanatical about cleanliness.
Lucky for me, that worked in my favor.
But something felt wrong. Every bolt on display had been drained of color, dull and lifeless.
White, black, and faded gray.
It felt as though she’d stepped into an old black-and-white photograph, and her brow furrowed.
“Sir, why are the fabrics like this? It’s nothing but monochrome.”
Bang Pildu’s eyes widened as if he’d just watched the sun rise in the west. It was the look of a man facing someone who’d never learned the most basic fact of the world.
“Miss, if you’re someone from the palace, how can you not know that?”
“I don’t know, so I’m asking. Don’t you have anything with color?”
Surely she’d seen bright fabrics displayed outside this very shop not long ago.
As she tilted her head in confusion, Bang Pildu let out a helpless laugh and carefully opened the warehouse door behind the counter.
There sat a single chest, layered with locks, preserved as though it were a sacred treasure.
“We have a small amount of silk smuggled in from a neighboring kingdom. Color has been gone from everywhere else for a long time now—where would one even find such a thing?”
As the lid opened, revealing bolts of colored fabric for the first time, Dan Bi’s expression went blank.
“Color has gone? What do you mean by that?”
His words made no sense to her. The palace quarters were always full of color.
It had never even occurred to her that color could vanish from the world.
But as she heard him speak, a memory suddenly surfaced.
When she’d first fallen into this place and wandered the market streets, everything around her had been nothing but faded, colorless tones.
The only color she’d seen was the hem of a skirt hanging at the cloth shop entrance and the dress she herself wore.
Even the worn clothes on passersby, the crude ornaments scattered on vendor stalls, and even the thatch covering the roofs—all had lost their original hues and faded to a washed-out, grayish pallor.
“Is it because there’s no dye?”
“Ah, with this drought afflicting the Dohwa Kingdom, all the color in the world has withered away.”
“Color has withered?”
“What good is a kingdom named Dohwa if I can barely remember the last time I saw peach blossom pink?”
Bang Pildu clicked his tongue, then lowered his voice and muttered on.
“It all comes from the corruption at the top. Since His Majesty has failed to govern properly, heaven itself has stripped all color from the land. The common folk labor until their backs break, yet His Majesty sits in the palace enjoying whatever color remains….”
He seemed to catch himself mid-sentence, glancing at Dan Bi’s reaction before shutting his mouth.
But Dan Bi paid him no mind, silently surveying the monochrome fabrics around her.
Her mind grew confused—was this bizarre phenomenon merely a setting of the game, or was there something else at work?
She turned back to Bang Pildu and asked again.
“Then I have just one more question.”
“……What?”
“You recognized my face just now and blocked the door, didn’t you? Why did you do that?”
“Oh, I…….”

***

“It’s obvious. You’re a concubine.”
“What? What’s wrong with that?”
The room overflowed with bolts of fabric in every hue—materials that had only just been painstakingly acquired from outside, what amounted to their last defensive line.
As the maid sorted the fabrics by color, she spoke freely.
“These days, there’s nothing the common people despise more than His Majesty. Since he keeps squeezing the merchants for every last coin, naturally they’ve come to hate everyone connected to the Royal Court, haven’t they?”
Dan Bi’s mind flashed unbidden to Bang Pildu’s crimson face as he cursed Hyeon.
Dan Bi gazed at the monochrome landscape of the Market streets that lay beyond, and asked quietly.
“Tell me truly—is this kingdom really losing its color?”
“Why ask, when you already know?”
To know, in this world, was common knowledge as fundamental as breathing itself.
“But why is it happening?”
“Why? Because it all began with the drought.”
The state of Dohwa Kingdom, as it spilled from the maid’s lips, was far more dire than Dan Bi had understood.
Once, true to its name meaning “Peach Blossom,” the kingdom had bloomed in flowers year-round, dazzling in its brilliance—yet that glory had been fading for nearly a decade now.
“The color disappeared first in the villages farthest from the palace.”
“The farthest villages first?”
“Yes. Once the rains ceased and the drought set in, the color began to fade and die, spreading slowly outward from those distant places.”
It had begun with nature’s hues.
When the green leaves fell away, in their place sprouted only pale, ghostly leaves the kingdom had never seen before.
The sky no longer held any shade of blue, and even the flames of fire lost their crimson heat, blackening to ash.
As if someone were forcibly draining the world of all its color.
Thus the world beyond the palace had become an achromatic hell where even a single flower was impossible to find.
Unlike the palace grounds within, which still basked in brilliant hues, the people outside—their light gone, their bellies empty—turned their fury naturally toward the king.
“Not a drop of rain has fallen in months now, and the more time passes, the more His Majesty withdraws deeper inside…….”
Even her hands, smoothing the fabric, had lost their strength. Only a long sigh scattered through the room.
Soon the maid glanced about, then lowered her voice to a whisper.
“There are already dark rumors spreading through the palace. They say there’s a mysterious assailant trying to harm His Majesty.”

“It makes perfect sense. It must be the work of the same assailant who’s been targeting His Majesty all along.”

“Though they’re trying to suppress the rumors, more and more palace servants keep witnessing such scenes, so it’s practically become accepted fact by now.”
The maid let out a long sigh.
“If only this Rain-Summoning Ritual succeeds, things might improve, one way or another.”
Dan Bi’s thoughts drifted unexpectedly to Hyeon’s face—that wretched man who had started hurling cruel words at her out of nowhere, then suddenly cast her aside without a backward glance.
“That bastard or this one—problems everywhere, it seems.”
Clap—!
She brought her palms together decisively.
“Enough of that. My head’s already full with my own troubles.”
Dan Bi began unfolding the bolts of fabric scattered on the floor, one by one.
Worrying about it now wouldn’t bring rain or restore the lost colors.
A meaningful smile crossed her face.
“One week. Just one week…….”

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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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