"My Lady Seo, thank you so much for your gift…" "Husband! Do not get ahead of yourself and remember why we have come here for goodness sake! What can your old body do with a child like that?" "But wife…" "No, she has clearly come for our nephew…" "Who has explicitly told me that in The Nam/Seo household, no man and their descendants will take in any concubines as his mother was. If you do not believe me aunt, then you can ask him yourself." "What sort of official only has one wife in the household?" "In the face of that question, there is then no reason from stopping your husband from taking in this girl himself then, isn't that right?" "Mistress Seo! Watch the tone that you take with and come to realise that a young man has no grandness without concubines." "His father had one and yet he never showed her off to the world even once…" "So you can raise this girl from the ground up to be grand for him, don't you think so? As long as she has a roof over her head, she will not be gossiped about and pointed by the people in the yangabn…" "And what about the crowd that she puled outside, aunt? The crowd is still outside to await the results of this case, she has already bought scandal upon us! Please forgive me that I cannot obey you as I cannot go against my husband's wishes at all!" I was already shouting so much that my throat was getting hoarse and my body was so sensitive that my body felt like it was going to blow away by the slightest gust of wind, but I had to keep going for my husbands sake, and the sake of The Seo Clan.
"Please forgive me that I cannot obey…" "They all say that The Seo household is an honest family; but how did they teach their daughter to be so jealous and cruel?""If I disobey my husband's rules, wouldn't I willingly be courting his displeasure? It will mean that I am incompetent and unfilial towards him if I listen to his clan members who has never even seen his face before this, so on this matter, I really do not dare to upset him. But if you want aunt, we can send him to your husband instead so that he can rethink his divorce?" "You! You dare to…you are unknown and unaccepted to us, and you dare to speak like this before your elders!" "Calm down caught! Stop screeching your head off like a vulture! Have I taught you nothing!" "Forgive me mother…" "How about this girl; you just accept her and we can nitpick about the details later on?" "Forgive me Big Madame Nam, I really do not dare to make the decision for my husband." "How exactly are you undaring? You are clearly stuffing us with your words here! Who knows if my grand nephew even said such a thing! You could just be making it all up!" "Like I said before, there is nothing stopping you from summoning him yourself to ask him, he is just a few meters away from the main home."
"I just do not understand; did your brother or his wife really not teach you anything about marriage? You should know your place in front of your in-laws…." "I have known my husband since I was 5 years old and I barley remember seeing any o you by his side at all, so who are you to barge in now and suddenly make demands? Does that sound anything like the familial piety that you are all going on about so much? Well?" "You do not pay your respects to us, you do not even sit with us to have breakfast and now you dictate my nephews life? Just who do you think you are? Do you really think that you can show your golden face anymore?" "Of course I can, because I am the only one in this entire household who can march up to The Emperor himself whilst the rest of you do not dare to show your faces to him, isn't that right?" "You eccentric and outrageous disabled orphan girl! Why don't you leave this home at once!" "Big Madame, how do you expect me to leave a home that I own in name? This girl is the one who is causing disharmony in this household, causing us to be a laughing stock to our neighbours and offending the woman that you so-called clan woman has taken in, and yet you do nothing about that at all. I can now see where your priorities lie and why my husband never bothered reaching out to you at all. But for my offences agains you all, I am willing to kneel in the ancestry hall to report my offences to my mother-in-law to seek repentance." "But…no, wait…"!
"Mistress, why are you going to these lengths in your current condition?" "Didn't you see them panicking as I left? They know I am bold enough to start kneeling in front of my husband's mother who was a concubine slave herself; I have a higher status than she ever had, but I am kneeling to her willingly? They must be unaware of my personal connections to her and they are panicking of the thought of me doing such a lowly act in conjunction with what they are trying to pull, which only proves one thing; everyone in this household is in cahoots with Hui-Jae." "My Lady, they can punish you any and everyday, but you took the lead by punishing yourself first so that they can never do it to you now?" "Absolutely; I will not let them harm me with a borrowed knife and I shall expose them all so that my poor brother can rashes family and love his wife in peace. They will not be able to salvage their gently and virtuous reputation by punishing the bride upon their first meeting and would fear nothing more than the public finding out about this…" "My Lady, fear not, I know what I need to do! Shall I also bring The Lord Nam here? You cannot kneel for too long no matter what point you are trying to prove!"
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"Mother! Look at what you have done! Are you just going to let her bully you this way! You would have made anyone else cry if you had spoken to them in that way, but she barely batted an eyelid! And you father! How could you accept such a young woman at your old age!" "Well, since nobody is claiming her, then I will just take her for myself…" "Husband, I swear to you that I will…" "What? What will you do to your husband? You cannot even make that girl take her in, but you are against me doing so for the very same reasons that you are tormenting her for? You have lost your touch wife, you must be going soft in your old age." "Are you happy now daughter! I am a old woman and now I have to contend with my husband taking in a concubine for the very first time in his life! In my life! All because you cannot stand up to an orphaned child like that! And she now rebells against me because she knows that you can never take her on directly as you would have in your youth! And where did you find such a stupid girl in the first place!" "She is a child that I have had to explain things slowly to, and she still messed up the job! I cannot believe this, I have never been defeated by another woman in my entire life until now when I am faced with the daughter of that slut! We have posed punishment on her upon our first meeting! If word gets out, then we will have truly lost any hope to regain our position in the palace in front of The Emperor himself!" "Who dares to laugh at us! It isn't our fault that seductress has inherited her mother's silver tongue! If the bride isn't obedient, then we have the right to punish her and if she wants to kneel, then she can do it all night long if she wishes to!"
"To shove a chambermaid into a married man's room is a delicate topic and one that cannot be taken lightly at all! It is an acceptable custom but also a touchy subject, but we were almost there…" "Once she is tried of kneeling , she will simply close her doors and reflect on herself." "No mother, she has truly turned the tables on us and we need to bring her back here as soon as possible." "She is already riding on your neck with her hands on your hair daughter, you cannot show such weakness in less than 5 minutes of the punishment in session!" "What other choice do I have, mother? My gentle and virtuous reputation is all I have left after my divorce and…."
"Why bother putting in so much worry for the situation wife? Our daughter clearly has us to stand and knock a nail in for her and now she wants to act like a good person in her nephew's eyes? The good reputation is on her and the bad one on us; is this the gentle nature that she wishes to maintain?" "Father! How can you speak about me so? That isn't true at all, you know that I need your help since my divorce…" " divorced woman who is trying to break up a marriage? Ha! Let us see how you will fail at this and drag us down to shame wih you!" "Why can' you jus support me in anything that I do!" "You are the first divorcee in my entire family clan, how do you expect me to act? I told you not to het involved in The Seo Family, but all of the women in that village were deadly jealous of Seo Geom's wife, just as you all are of her daughter now! Heed my words, both of you! Jealousy is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die! Constantly criticising someone else often reveals what you yourself lack in and the only thing more frustrating than slanders are those foolish enough to listen to them and even more foolish are they to have the time to come up with them at all! Us noble folk usually end up obsessing over what they don't have, they do not think if they even want it or not!" "What are yu trying to say, husband!" "I am saying let us forget The Mistress Han; I do not like this Seo Girl at all, but she was the only one who successfully pulled up our clan member to the highest rank as the man who survived The Emperor's trust for the longest time and that is all that I care about! Do not let your fragile egos and precious inferiority-complex ruin this for us! If she helped him once, she can help him again, and as for The Mistress Han? Everything she touches turns to dust whilst everything the other girl touches turns to political gold just like her mother despite their lowly statuses! You can both deal with that fact later on, just let The Lord Nam build himself up first and let us abandon the useless Mistress Han! She is not even here to see her own plan go through, so what use can she be to us in the future? It is she who needs us, not the other way around, mark my words! Seo Geom's wife and daughter share a lot of similarities, but the daughter is anything but temperate and subtle, so do not provoke a war that we cannot win wife, or I shall divorce you myself I swear it!"
