The very first thing that I woke up to was my nephew's Chul and Geom in my home that my brother had worked so hard on to gift to myself and my husband, who had been far too busy to build the home himself as he promised me he would. Chul snuggld into bed with me as soon as he saw me open my eyes and little Geom followed his big brother as per usual. Geom was an exceptionally sweet little boy who was the apple of his father's eyes as the youngest; but as my brother was indeed busy in managing this village almost by himself, it was his big brother that he couldn't live without, which made Chul rather proud to be honest. "Aunty, where is uncle? You both promised me that you would both come together! I have so much to tell him!" "I have told you 100 time that we were coming here together, but then he got last minute orders that he had to go back to work in the palace…" "So he made you travel alone? I shall not do that to my wife when father marries me off!" "Chul! You are barely 6 years old, what do you know of marriage? My goodness me!" "Are you kidding me? My parents have the best marriage in the world, of course I know what I am going to do as a husband!" "Pray tell, and what is that exactly?" I asked him as I gathered up his brother in my arms and snuggled with him so closely that I made him laugh and squeal hard enough to also bring around BoGeom from her bed and straight into mine. She only lived next door to my brother, so it wasn't unusual to see her running in and out of this little gaya home of my brothers and now mine I suppose. There was no separate male and female wing in my home, there were no luxury items in my home to make our neighbours feel ill at ease with myself an my family. The noise of the busy streets outside my home where could hear everyone greeting each other and getting along with each other was already doing me a world of good and healing the parts of my inner=self that had been destroyed by the sheer amount of bullies that I have had to put up with myself and deal with them all one by one.
Waking up to the smell of freshly baked bread and the musty smell of the earth after the rainfall that helped to grow our crops that we were trying to distribute to other villages was the real luxury here in a village like this and the fact that I could rely on the help of the unmarried women here who were all too willing to tend to me every now and again helped to heal the empty hole that my mothers absence had created within me. And I was reunited with my big brother once more, which eased the holiness that I felt in my father's absence once more. He wasn't particularly happy with my antics over the years without him, but when I finally sat him down and poured my heart out for him, he finally seems to understand the reasons behind even my most controversial decisions, like staying behind in the brothel that our mother was imprisoned in mercilessly for years without a glimmer of hope until the fateful day that she met my father and he built up his famous reputation just to earn enough wealth to free her from her prison. He was angry at me at first, which I was fully prepared for, and then sad, and then angry all over again for being left out. When I explained to him that I needed him to focus on growing his own family, he finally seemed to clam down a little. But it was when I told him that my husband and his best friend was waiting for him back at our home to join him on this mission just for a single day, his eyes lit up again as it used to whenever my husband would visit him in our youths. They had been n better terms after the whole hostage situation with myself took place, but I could tell that even when my brother had his family and his place in our fathers village, he still missed his best friend & was a little upset that he wasn't around his children more. "You will both have your chance to fix your friendship once and for all as well brother; hasn't he proved himself to you enough now?" "Well…I shall consider it for the sake of your children I suppose…" "And you will equally spoil my children as I do yours, right?" "I will…I mean, I barley have time for my own children as it is and I already feel bad about that…" "Just go brother; I can take care of things here for a while with Jeong Beom at my side for reinforcements."
"…so when is my father coming back, aunt?" "He will return to us as soon as he possibly can Chul. But China is far away and…" "How did you figure out that it was China, aunt?" "I had plenty of clues around me in that man's home to tell me that the bad man was in China, Chul." "So…he's just gone to defeat the bad guy? But why couldn't he take me along with him! I am his son! I want to do good by my grandfather too!" My nephew was unfortunately quite inconsolable about the situation which then set off his younger brother to cry his little lungs out, which brought his mother out to him at long last to comfort him just when she was in tears herself due to her husband's absence. By how haggard she looked for once, I could tell that they hadn't been apart for a single day yet and she was nowhere used to it at all. "Forgive me sister, but you know everything that i have been through and I have done my best to keep him out of it so far, but this is his final duty towards our parents and it is something that he cannot avoid." "I know sister, but it still hurts! I simply do not know how to function without him!" "Sister, you are the wife of a Village Chief, and you need to finally fulfil your duties towards his people and look out for them in his absence, and I will help you with all of it, even the childcare." "Will you really sister?" "I am not planning my return back to the kingdom anytime soon, so yes, I can help you with all of it. The embroidery house is he main source of income for the village and it desperately needs some work and more accessible materials. We should not depend on the kingdom too much until we are fully functioning by ourselves and…" "And you need the elders care now more than ever since you are in your last trimester of pregnancy sister, which is something that I should have properly arranged for you upon your return." "We should also focus on the agriculture here in the absence of my brother if the villagers cannot focus on redevelopment without him. I want to walk on the sparse amount of grass that we had barefoot to cure my swollen feet instead of taking medicine after medicine that was laced with only god knows what. I wanted to treat my bitter mouth to sweet persimmons that rarely grew around us in the summer season and I long to throw a banquet to catch up with everyone here before reassigning new temporary roles here to the men and their people. My children will also grow up alongside everyone here in the village to instil a strong sense of equality and justice within them all." "And you need to give your own husband time to adapt away from the cunning nature of the nobility class that he was dragged into and he has to learn to stop being in competition with everyone else, which is already quite a hard mindset to overcome." "I know, this place has the potential to heal him even though there isn't much here yet at all."
"You should catch up on your rest sister, you look as though you are in need of it, and I shall take care of this last minute banquet for us all." "My children haven't stopped moving around since their father is no longer here to place his hands upon them and play with them when he can. But this is all still better than raising my children with him in a cunning and competitive kingdom where the roads are full of the footprints of the straw shoes of the lowborn people that were most likely breaking apart under their feet like mine and my brother's, or the scented footprints of the noble folk who either forgot the struggles that they endured to become as wealthy as they are now or they were too oblivious or arrogant to care about how the other half of this nation worked or lived at all. My late father bless him, was an open minded person with a lot of ideas that went beyond the sword that he drew that gained him the legendary reputation that he has today. He never saw the difference in social classes, he couldn't understand why the rich wanted to liberate the poor so that we could all prosper as a nation, and despite knowing the basic differences between the sexes he could not understand why women were not utilised more in society. And there are many more colours here than there are back in the kingdom." "There should be more colours now that the Mistress Han is getting married off to the Senior Scholar today as part of his debt to you for the loss of the newly acquired embroidery shop, right?" "We can definitely use those proceeds to boost this place up once all the shops are in working order and maintained with higher standards of efficiency." "We should apply those standers to all of the businesses here, including MoonBok's physicians and workplaces." "This shall be a very busy banquet indeed and we may all stay up all night if necessary to implement these changes. I shall work on this whilst you work on the banquet tonight sister." I had so many plans in mind and yet all I could think about in this moment was about the father of my children.
My poor husband who had been raised to kill or be killed by his father who was willing to abandon him for his own goals but still had enough love for myself and my brother to always hold onto us, my poor husband who helped everyone around him for simply saying in his life and no betraying him or taking advantage of him, my poor husband who I would not let destroy himself until he felt love, acceptance and company wherever he was and whatever he was facing. If only he had a safe environment to grow up in and loving parens to raise him in, he wouldn't have become an obsessive power seeking beast that everyone treated him as. He was still more feared in his office than respected as it would take him a while to wipe off the stench of The Nam Clan off of him, but if I had any hope in healing him, it needed to be away from the stench of corruption and power that masked this place and brainwashed people into believing that they had no hope in reforming themselves so they dug themselves deeper into their holes of hell that their egos, pride, greed and whatever other vices they had would not let them go. But I would fulfil my duty by waiting for him; hoping and praying that my husband and brother would return before the twins were born and our lives took an entirely new direction.