Surviving as Jang Hee-bin's Child Court Lady - Chapter 4

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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 4. Live Well
‘Confiscating evidence.’
I quietly picked up the crumpled spring register that lay discarded on the ground.
A spring register was a precious document, each character painstakingly written by hand by the officials of the Seungmun Office.
‘Damaging Royal Palace property—you certainly have nerve.’
But the servant girls seemed to think I was frightened, growing even more arrogant.
“Only a few palace maids and Suk-jeong can access the western side of Chwisuondang. A lowly child servant like you shouldn’t even be here!”
“That’s right. If we tell on you for sneaking around, you’ll get a beating for sure!”
….
My mouth fell open in an instant. A chill ran down my spine.
It wasn’t fear of their threats that unsettled me.
‘Did they just say Suk-jeong?’
Suk-jeong was a name that appeared without fail in every record documenting Jang Hee-bin’s death.
She was none other than the mastermind behind the ‘Queen Inhyeon Curse Incident.’
‘The shrine hasn’t been built yet, but something is definitely beginning to unfold.’
Poke—
“Hey. What are you thinking about with that stupid face?”
A finger jabbed repeatedly at my forehead as I stood lost in thought.
“Are you scared of telling Sang-gung?”
I turned my gaze toward the giggling servant girls.
Here I was, desperately trying to dodge the blade at my throat, yet they leisurely tormented a child. Irritation bubbled up inside me.
I took a deep breath and opened my eyes wide.
“You said child servants aren’t allowed in the western section, right? So why are you all here?”
“What? Well, that is….”
The servant girls’ faces flushed crimson at being caught in their own trap.
“I’ll tell on you too. You’ve been wandering around here this whole time! Then you’ll all get beaten together, won’t you?”
“How dare you talk back?”
The tall servant girl shrieked.
“But it’s strange. Children as young as you usually aren’t brought into the palace as maids.”
A smile appeared on her face—one cruel and utterly devoid of childhood innocence.
“Your parents abandoned you, didn’t they? They had no interest in you, so they dumped you in the palace. How pathetic. A child abandoned by her own parents….”
This was….
An insult to my family…?
I could tolerate many things, but not this!
“I won’t forgive you! Don’t insult my parents!”
“What will you do if I do?”
The tall servant girl shoved me hard.
I tried to regain my balance, but my tiny frame couldn’t match the strength of a ten-year-old.
As I flailed my arms, my hand grasped something.
Crack!
“Ah, aaah! Won’t you let go?!”
…I only realized later that it was hair I’d grabbed.
I swear, I didn’t do it on purpose. It was purely a desperate struggle for survival.
That was when it happened.
“What is all this commotion? You two, aren’t you going to separate?”
An authoritative voice cut through the air.
“Seol-hyang, ma’am…!”
Seol-hyang had always been rather kind to me, but it was too early to be certain she would take my side.
‘I need to keep my wits about me.’
I quickly released the handful of hair I’d been clutching and let my shoulders droop pitifully.
“What are you two doing, ganging up on a child like this?”
Her sharp voice rang out clearly.
“Well, you see, Seol-hyang ma’am, she attacked us first! Look at all the hair she pulled out!”
“That’s right! She’s not ordinary at all. She was wandering around suspiciously, so we were just trying to stop her….”
“If you know it’s suspicious for someone to wander around here, then why are you two here?”
“That, well….”
The ten-year-old servants fell silent.
‘Now’s my chance…!’
This was the moment. I quickly pulled out the crumpled official document where it could be seen.
Shk, shk.
With my head bowed and my lips trembling, I pretended to struggle desperately to smooth out the paper.
“Is that… a royal document? How did something so precious end up like this…!”
Seol-hyang’s face showed genuine shock.
In that moment, my painstaking effort finally paid off.
Plop.
A single tear fell onto the crumpled paper.
“These ma’ams, they were tormenting me and crumpled up the document…. This is something precious….”
“Sigh.”
Seol-hyang exhaled as if dumbfounded.
“And they said I was a child abandoned by my parents….”
“What did you say?”
Seol-hyang’s expression was nearly one of astonishment.
“My parents have passed away, but I’m not an abandoned child. I was raised with so much love. By my parents, and by my older brother….”
At the end, genuine emotion spilled out before I could stop it.
The young servants began making hurried excuses, but Seol-hyang silenced them with a sharp, cutting tone.
“You two…. This simply won’t do.”
“Ma’am! We’re sorry!”
“Please forgive us! Just this once!”
But Seol-hyang was merciless.
“Han Sang-gung will decide your punishment. You’ve damaged a precious item and tormented a child—you must pay the price for that.”
Seol-hyang’s cold voice cut through the air as she seized my hand.
“Bong-bong. Are you hurt anywhere?”
“No…. I fell, but I’m fine.”
“You fell? Let me see.”
Seol-hyang lifted the hem of my skirt slightly, her brow furrowing.
…I hadn’t even noticed. My knee was scraped and bleeding.
“Let’s go to your room and apply medicine.”
As I followed Seol-hyang with shuffling steps, I heard the whimpering of the young attendants behind me.
‘But…. something feels off.’
The two young attendants had already been at the western section of Chwisuondang when I arrived.
‘It’s a place where ordinary palace maids aren’t allowed to enter, yet they deliberately lingered there knowing they’d be punished?’
Nothing in this world happens without reason.
So what was their reason?
“Bong-bong.”
“Yes, Seol-hyang.”
“You can’t wander around this place alone. Do you understand?”
“Yes. I understand.”
Watching Seol-hyang’s firm lips, I became certain.
…There was definitely something in the western section of Chwisuondang.
***
“Ouch!”
“All done. Just bear with it a moment.”
“…Yes, Seol-hyang.”
After applying the salve, there came a stream of minor scolding, but my mind was elsewhere the entire time.
‘I still have far too little information.’
What state was Jang Hee-bin in now? And what was she plotting?
That ending etched into history itself—”Jang Hee-bin’s poisoned wine ending.”
I needed to determine where the present moment fell within the beginning, middle, and end of that tale.
‘I’m also curious about what kind of child Hwang Bong-bong was.’
How a young girl came to enter the Royal Palace, and what role she would play there going forward.
Perhaps even I, a mere minor character in history, could alter the course of events.
“Haa….”
…In the midst of it all, exhaustion crashed over me like a tidal wave.
It had been a half-day packed with far too many events for a small child’s body to bear.
“My goodness, you’re already sleepy? Children will be children, after all.”
Gentle hands carefully laid me down as I began nodding off where I sat.
“Hush now, sleep well, Hwang Bong-bong, sleep well….”
Seol-hyang’s voice drifted to me as if from a great distance.
As I tumbled into sleep like losing consciousness, I recalled a passage from the Joseon Royal Records that I had read long ago.
「King Sukjong’s Records, Year 27, Tenth Month.
The palace attendants of Chwisuondang—Seol-hyang, Suk-yeong, and Suk-jeong—were sentenced to execution.”
…I hoped Seol-hyang hadn’t actually died.
***
When I awoke from a dreamless sleep, the world beyond my door had turned a deep blue.
Was this really the time to be sprawled out in bed, indulging in slumber?
As I reproached myself and tried to sit up, a familiar voice reached my ears.
“…I never expected such a young child to arrive. I thought she’d be at least six or seven years old….”
I was not alone in the room.
The voice belonged to Seol-hyang.
The woman seated beside her was Han Sang-gung, whom I’d encountered during the tooth-cutting ceremony.
Since they seemed to be discussing me, I lay still and listened quietly to their conversation.
“She’s to become a royal attendant, isn’t she? Then it’s right to begin teaching her from four or five years old. Gradually have her learn her letters, and instruct her well in the ways of the palace.”
“Yes, of course. But madam, how did Bong-bong become a palace attendant?”
“When His Majesty is restored to power, she’ll serve the Queen. We couldn’t just bring anyone, so we inquired about and found an orphaned child from a noble family with nowhere else to go, and brought her here.”
“My goodness, Bong-bong is nobility?”
I was nobility?
“That’s true, but keep that fact to yourself alone.”
“Yes, of course.”
By principle, nobility could not become palace attendants. Such was the law of Joseon.
It seemed Han Sang-gung was trying to keep this secret for that very reason.
“What good is being noble when you’re a destitute orphan with no one to care for you? If not for the neighbor lady, you wouldn’t have even gotten a bowl of rice gruel. If I hadn’t brought you here, you’d have been sold off to a kisaeng house.”
At Han Sang-gung’s words, Seol-hyang asked in surprise.
“Goodness. You mean the child was living alone?”
“Until last year, there was an older brother living with her—quite a bit older—but he suddenly disappeared. Since he mostly associated with soldiers, I suspect he’s dead.”
“Oh my…. Han Sang-gung. Poor little Bong-bong….”
Tsk, tsk.
After Seol-hyang’s disapproving click of her tongue, Han Sang-gung’s soft laughter followed.
“Ha ha. What palace attendant has a fortunate fate? Our destiny is to be confined within the palace walls our whole lives, withering away.”
“That’s true. Now that I think about it, I came to the palace when I was six….”
Seol-hyang’s voice grew bitter and faded.
….
I closed my eyes again.
The life of the child called Hwang Bong-bong seemed to have been quite harsh.
Even before entering the palace, hadn’t this child already been struggling to survive?
It was a sad story.
But what truly saddened me was that single phrase: ‘her older brother had died.’
‘Hwang Bong-bong had an older brother too….’
Something deep in my chest trembled and ached.
The face of my own older brother from my past life surfaced—the one I’d tried so hard not to think about for so long.
Like Hwang Bong-bong’s older brother, my own brother had died, leaving me as an orphan behind.
‘Live well.’
The last words my brother left me.
‘You have to live well. For both of us.’
That was the final sound of my brother’s voice I ever heard.
‘The Lunar New Year will be here soon.’
Spring returns—the season when I sent my brother away.
My brother no longer exists in the modern South Korea where I once lived, nor in the Joseon Dynasty where I live now.
Plip.
Tears streamed down my cheeks without warning.
My brother’s voice, buried deep within my heart, echoed once more.
‘You have to live well. For both of us.’
‘…I will.’
I whispered to myself.
‘I’ll live well.’
No matter how brutal the difficulty of the world I’ve fallen into.
No matter how limited the things I can do with this small child’s body.
‘Brother. I’ll survive no matter what.’

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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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