"Did you hear what that arrogant bastard said about me! How dare my brother=in=law call me a jinx when he himself is an incompetent father, son, husband and even businessman! My own nephew has taken more care of ho sown children then that bastard even did! My own nephew has paid more attention to my sister than her own husband has!" "Calm down Madame before anyone hears you! Nobody should know that you were the one who told your niece about The Prince and that you made your friends inform The Princess about your nephew!" "Who should I be afraid of! I now only have to pin the widespread gossip on The Lady Nam and get her punished for long enough that I can raise that baby of hers for myself! That should make up for the losses that I have suffered more than enough!" "My Lady, wha about her husband? Surely he would never allow you to…" "He is far too busy to pay attention to her with his new office, that must be why he has barely been home at all since my nephew's wedding." "And what if he baby that she carries turns out to be a girl after all?" "Then I will throw that baby into a well, just like her grandfather tired to do with her own mother! Or maybe I shall raise it as a servant just to spite that Seo girl and her mother for everything that they have put me through in this lifetime! And after everything that I have suffered from this grand and mysterious friendship that my husband's nephew has formed, she had better not birth a unless girl that serves no purpose to this nation at all, apart from what she can give men, just like her mother and grandmother!" "And how do you propose to do this, My Lady?" "Hasn't the girl been frequenting the Buddhist temple lately?" "My Lady now that you mention it…" "I knew that even a lowlife like my husband's nephew couldn't possibly be obsessed with a lowlife girl like her without a reason; she is almost a cunning and ambitious as her husband is. My goodness, she has even managed to undo her own mother in this regard; the two brothel girls that fell from nobility in our kingdom managed to end up with the greatest swordsman of the century and the illegitimate halfbreed who rose above his own master and father, the first to do so in our history. Whereas myself and my sister…well, it was my sister and my husband who fell for each other first, but nobody could see that I also loved him. We are sisters of nobility who never let our family down with the amount of compromises and sacrifices that we made, and still we ended up in such unhappy marriages. My husband abandoned me at the first sign of trouble whilst his nephew chased his woman across 2 brothels, not just one."
"My Lady, how do you plan to bring her down?" "She must be taking gifts from the monks since she has spent so much time and effort there, even when she was pregnant. You only need to get me a similar gift and I can take care of the rest. And as for my sister's business…the very one that she stole from Seo Geom's wife, doesn't it now belong to my husband's nephew? Just how much good luck does the girl have to acquire something that belongs to her own mother and she has no idea about it?" "My Lady, what shall we do about it?" "Wr can either take it for ourselves or we can watch and see how long The Seo girl's luck runs out." "What does that mean My Lady?" "We take it back or we expose my sisters secrets to the world and shame her family just before or after she marries her daughter off, if she can at all, it all just depends on my mood."
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"What are you doing wife? Why are you still embroidering when you…" "Husband, I shall loose my mind long before these babies of yours come into the world if I just stay in bed all day long. I have halted my own studies temporarily but I can at least make my babies some clothes with my own hands, can I not?" "As long as you are no training yourself I suppose." "Here, you can even choose the patterns that they will wear first." "Here, choose some plain material to appear husband at first, but then we will have the most extravagant…" "Calm down husband, I do not want them to enjoy luxury before they can even remember it. I understand the importance of our children to you, but I will not have you spoil them senseless either and…what? Why are you looking at me like that for?" "I know that you will not allow me to spoil them too much, that is why I chose you and invested so much time in you." "You invested so much time into me?…" "I know you will raise our children with lowborn instincts to survive, but they are and will be noble children just as your parents were. I do not mean to spoil them with this advantage, but it will give them a platform to stand on to cary out my work, the very same platform that your brother was denied after you were both orphaned. You know in you heart that if Hwi had that platform available to him, the one thing that your father denied you both, then you wouldn't both have lived such miserable lives and taken so much risk just to bring justice for you father…" "You are talking about the brothel's, aren't you?" "Wife…I have already explained that to you and I shall not revisit that part of our past again, especially after we officially become parents." "They will not know of my mother's hardships?" "They will know about their grandparents struggles when they are old enough to understand and not a moment before that." "Master's forgive me but The Lord's Aunt has called for an official meeting with a General Inspector in tow." "A General Inspector?" Husband…?" "Wife, it is time; forgive me for this but this is necessary for the survival of our children, the only and hopefully the first set of twins that will live on this land in peace and prosperity. Forgive me once again and I swear that I will find a way to make this up to you, but please remain calm and you must know that I will be with you every step of the way…" "If you abandon me even for a single second husband, I shall take my babies away from you and you shall never see me again!" "I know wife, I just need you to trust me one last time and then you are free from the schemes and the plots and everything else that we are planning, I will even expose the poison scheme myself." "This must never happen again husband; if my babies suffer from even the tiniest amount of distress because of the pressure that their mother is going through, I shall not spare anyone I mean it." "I know that you will not wife; servants! Ask the meeting to come here since my wife is put onto bedrest, or thy cannot see us at all!"
"…I have just made a visit when I heard about The Madame Nam making regular visits to The Buddhist Temple where the unfortunate events between my niece and The Prince took place." "Is that so? I only went there by my husband's recommendation as well as our physician's. I haven't made much contact with the children of this family, so I know nothing of their personal affairs." "Is that so? When why am I hearing that the rumours of her affairs have been circulated from your home?" "I have been put on bedrest for the past month, so I really am unsure of what you are talking about, but you are welcome to interrogate my servants if you wish, under my supervision though." "I hardly think that a pregnant woman needs to witness such a thing…" "It is like I have told you before; I am not a delicate noblewoman that cannot stomach such issues, my poverty=driven lifestyle would have prepared me for this." "Very well, if you insist." At the first glance, I could tell that my aunt had tried to bribe my servants, and only my wife's efforts to train the new servants would determine her fate before I stepped in as usual, to show my wife that she only needed me in this lifetime and nobody else.
"…My Lady, I can assure you that those awful rumours about The Lord Nam's cousin does not come from this yangban." "And wha proof do you have to show for this?" "Because before I was arrested on the charge of adultery with a married servant, I had only gone over to him to confront him of the rumours that he was spreading around himself." "You are accusing the maid of The Senior Scholar to spread rumours about an affair that involves a Prince? How is that possible?" "Is it possible because he got drunk and was spewing nonsense the night before our arrest, and as for proof of this, it lies with my master The Lord Nam." "My Lord?" "This is true aunt; we are practically neighbours and when I interrogated my own maid about the charges that were laid against her, she told me everything and I have even personally employed that servant myself, so that he can tell The General Inspector everything he knows and take him off of my hands if he so wishes. I even have a hand-written confession from him as an ex Inspector General myself if you wish to review it." "Very well, I shall do it here and now so that this matter does not drag on." "I want hemp rope in that servant's mouth if he is fund guilty of this crime." "Very well Lord Nam; I shall carry out that favour for you." "Is that all? You will not carry out a formal investigation at all?" "What need would there be when The Lord Nam has already done all of the work for us? He is already a veteran in our field and His Majesty still holds him to some standard, so I know that he will not cheat us in his work, he is nothing like his father at all!"
That did me some good knowing that, but I still could not look at my wife in the eyes as she kept on nervously holding onto my hands and sinking her nails into me more and more as she held onto our babies at all times even to protect them against my father's treacherous clan even before they were born. "Very well Madame Nam, you have been able to get away with this crime, but what about your frequent trips to the temples? The monks are still men after all and you have to admit that your belly is swollen twice the size that it should be at this point in time…" "What exactly are you accusing me if, aunt?" "I think it is no coincidence that only my niece came out of that temple with a man and you did not." "Excuse me?" "Even when praying in the temples, hardly anyone bothers the monk due to the social distancing we need to keep with the opposite sex under Confucius laws, but I hear that you always personally ask for some gifts for them?" "I am collecting them for my child, is that an issue?" "It is if you are personally going up to these men and bothering them like that when nobody else does, what do you think the rest of this kingdom will have to say about it? What an eager and honest habit you are building up…" "I pray aunt that you will get to the point before I unwillingly fall asleep just in time for my afternoon nap." "My point is that during the investigation of my nieces involvement with The Prince, some gossip about one of the monks that you frequently seek out has been brought to light recently." "And what would that be?" "There is talks that the monk has started to recently replace his seven treasure beads bracelet that are formed by; gold, silver, beeswax, coral, giant clam shells, pearls and red agate with carnelian replacing the very last bead." "And how does this affect me?" "We had to inerroogae the monk for he welfare of our niece and now we have discovered that there was only one of that kind of bracelet made with carnelian, and that very one happens to have ended up with you out of all the people in this kingdom. How do you suppose that will look to outsiders as a married woman with a suspicious child on the way, Madame Nam?"