My uncle's home certainly lived up to his noble expectations; it looked like a mad noble woman had it decorated, and one with taste as well. But what ever, it took me a really long time to get here and after what I had bene through for this man, I wasn't going to turn around now for anything in the world. Although I did almost do a double take when I saw an unknown woman in what looked like expensive kisaeng clothing roaming around the place with a look on her face that I did not like at all. It made me feel uneasy, but it also made me curious about her; my uncle wasn't the most sociable of people and it was even harder to gain entry into his home if you were not a part of the mysterious circle that he was a part of with his so called best friend and soon to be brother=in=law. What on earth had that girl done to be here at all if she wasn't a maid? This was something that I was going to have to take the time out to investigate since she was a really pretty girl and I knew for a fact that when it came to women at least, my uncle couldn't see any other woman apart from the one that he had grown up with. This piece of information would also come in handy when it was time for me to make my negotiations with him as I was also made homeless just this morning and I had planned on staying as close to my uncle for as long as I could for my survival….and my growth as well. How on earth was I going to prove myself to the world if I couldn't learn from the best?"
"…I would ask you what you are doing here all alone boy, but I have just come back into town and I have heard everything that you have done to my so=called clan. Step into my office and talk to me about it." "Can I visit my aunt first? I haven't seen her in so long and I miss her dearly…" "Your aunt is feeling unwell and she is resting in her new bedchambers. Leave her alone so that she can get all of the rest that she needs." "New bedchambers?" "Do not ask me questions about her and let us jus get on with this, or I can kick you out of here just as easily as my own uncle did to you!"
My uncle Nam, who always towered over everyone in terms of his height and pure muscle mass in his prime now looked like a shell of his former self in recent years ever since he managed to come back alive from escorting The Third Prince from his exile, only to fall into a trap from the palace, leading him to work a basic scholar job and not much else. But I didn't have time to get into all of that yet. I was not yet 10 years old yet, but I was clever enough to know how to stand my ground with this man to get what I wanted for the information that I would give to him in return. "Aren't you going to speak, boy?" "Without any food waiting for me, or even a warm bed in return? That does seem like a bad deal to me uncle." "Then you can swiftly make your way back to the same door that you just came from." "Are you really going to be this heartless with me, uncle? I am a lonely boy in need of my family's care and nurturing in this world to survive, grow and even prosper…" "If I didn't have that growing up, then what makes you think I can give it to anyone else?" "Because you are already doing it with the sister of your nest friend that you have been chasing around, haven't you? You gave her shelter, food, clothing, you were even responsible for her education. She isn't related to you by blood at all, so why can't you extent the same favour to me? I shouldn't have to use your own secrets against you to bribe myself a room in your illustrious home here." "Oh really? And what secret is that may I ask?" "The secret that pertains to why you avoid brothels and even when you did visit them, you wouldn't let any woman touch you at all? Because it wasn't women that you were looking for in the first place, was it?"
I expected him too shout at me, scream, turn white or have a much more horrified reaction than the one that I was seeing now from him. Something must have died in him to not even blink an eyelid at one of the most incomparable and define crimes of our era that would cause a man the death sentence without a trial. What was wrong with him? Why didn't my threat work? Did this man really fear nothing after everything he has been through? How could I be the same? I really wanted to be just like him when I grew up, although I wasn't going to show him that side of me. Yet.
"So, you want me to take you in based on some hearsay without any proof at all and no witnesses, since you single handily took down the rest of my clan and therefore eliminating any witnesses at all? You will have to do better than that to outsmart me, boy." "But…but I…." "What do you think happened to all of their servants after my uncle gave into his own wounded pride which resulted in his madness?" "What do you mean?" "Boy, everything in that household has been funded by myself since their first downfall, why do you think it took less than five years to break them to this extent? All of those maids were mine, and they gave me plenty of reports were handed over to be about you as well. I already know that you almost had him killed during a hunt when you smeared the forest with the secretions of a female horse to lure him into danger? Didn't a member of that clan break his leg severely in that case? Or how you got your cousins expelled from their own home? How you managed to direct all of that anger on his wife instead that made him give her such a public divorce? Or how about the time when you snitched on the other clan members to turn them all onto each other?" "I have no idea what you are talking about uncle." "So you yourself didn't et expelled from my uncle's place due to attempting to bribe his old allies with very rare jewellery that you stole from his concubines either? I just imagined all of that, did I?" "Well…"
"Husband, I noticed that you have been sweating a lot so I made this sour plum soup for you to relieve you of this heat. This chilled lotus soup makes the perfect suit as well, you should treat your nephew to it, now that he is here. I heard that he is quite good at horse riding now." "He needs to cultivate other skills apart from that wife; his calligraphy skills are still poorly and his swordsmanship skills are even worse than what mine were when I first started out." "He does possess good decorum skills though, and he can be somewhat an envoy for you on your behalf, isn't that so?" "Nephew, just because your aunt is complimenting you right now, it doesn't mean that you get to be arrogant about it, do you understand me?" "Yes sir, I know my lacking and I dare not to be arrogant…" "and don't even think about stealing from my place to bribe others into forming a faction and ruining all of my hard work with The Emperor, or I shall hand you over to the proper authorities myself." "What do you mean, uncle?" "All of these luxuries are hard to come by; so whatever you give out will be words of favour towards you in the future, isn't that so? And do not even think abut recruiting you aunt to reward the women of those men on your behalf, she is not open for visitors and bribery goes against her nature in the first place."
My uncle had been addressing me monotonously this entire time, until he caught a glimpse of his fiancé, who was still as beautiful and as youthful as I remembered her to be less than 2 years ago. His eyes lit up at the sight of her and his whole posture changed, he was no longer slouching like some drug addict and he shot up out of his seat as soon as he laid his eyes on her. And as for my aunt herself; she was keeping a cool distance from him and she knew what it was doing to him, but even she herself could not keep her eyes off of him and kept starring right into his soul. I now knew how I was going to secure a place for me in this home, and she was going to help me with this goal.
"Nephew? What on earth are the bruises on your arm?" "It is nothing aunt; I was severely neglected within The Nam Clan, so it is not surprising that I was given thin clothes to wear. They even kept me from getting treated by physicians whiner I got hurt, that is why I am covered in all of these untreated bruises and wounds." "Husband, his clothes are full of grease as well. He is your only surviving blood relative left, you cannot possibly leave him to fend for himself on the street!" "Are you offering yourself to raise him instead, wife?" "I have already told you long ago that I have no issue of doing so." "Very well, if it means so much to you, then I will keep him here…under the watch of my new concubine." Concubine? That other girl is his concubine? No way…unless he was only keeping her around to make his wife jealous? If that was his plan, it certainly was working and to an alarming degree. I had never once seen my aunt without a smile on her face and now here she was, looking like she was painfully trying to swallow her jealousy away, but it wasn't quite working. But I myself and starved for an entire day, I had avoided specific guards and even some suspicious men that had followed me and I had waited under a bridge for hours just to come and see my uncle, and i wasn't going to be deterred by anything at all. Now that I was going to be staying here, I had all of the time in the world to make up for lost time with my aunt, whom I hoped would desperately keep trying to fight my case for me against my uncle, who looked like he was longing to kick me out of here with any and every angle excuse that he could come up with.
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"My Lady! Please be careful!" "You should track those servants down and kill them all for not keeping The Lord Nam's nephew with him as agreed! Just how the hell am I suppose to raise this boy when we are so close in age? The Lord Nam wants nothing to do with this boy at all! It is one thing if they barely took care of him, but how is that my problem to fix now! This wasn't part of the plan, this will only keep the distance between us whilst he spends all of his time with that slut! That wasn't supposed to happen either! She wasn't supposed to be here at all! How did he manage to bring her back after all of tis time? And why? She is surely past the age of marriage and not suitable for child breeding at all! And if anything happens to that boy, I shall be blamed for it entirely!" "My Lady, his mother would already doo everything that she could to push that boy into her brother=in=law, so you cannot pull the same trick." I couldn't believe that this burden had been placed upon my shoulders. I was so angry about it that I couldn't help myself but to run out of my quarters, only to run into that woman that was placed onto his lap rather forcibly at that. But she was still on his lap, nonetheless and stroking his head that was placed directly onto her chest before she asked him about what had really happened when he did his final duty in the palace.