You're being foolish," I whispered to myself, shaking my head as if I could restore reason by force. "How can you feel overwhelmed by someone you do not even know?"
Suddenly the procession halted. My momjong looked at me with concern, asking if I felt unwell. Only then did I realize, with a jolt of horror, that my thoughts were no longer safely contained within me—they had begun to slip past my lips.
When we reached the threshold, the oil lamps cast elongated shadows of the men against the papered door—dark silhouettes my instincts urged me to flee from. My momjong announced our arrival to my father, the yangban of the house. The tension thickened instantly.
"Let her enter!" my father's voice rang out, warm and eager in a way that felt distant from me.
My feet felt rooted to the wooden floor, refusing to move while my mind struggled to understand the source of my agitation. Slowly, with deliberate solemnity, I approached him. The two guests stood with their backs to me, silent as walls.
I inhaled deeply and lowered myself into a keun-jeol, the great bow, silk brushing against polished wood. Time seemed suspended. When I rose, heart pounding against my ribs, I turned to offer the formal ban-jeol to the General and his subgeneral.
The world stopped.
The moment my eyes found his face, everything around me fell into silence.
It felt as though time—this force I had studied so carefully in books—had fractured, trapping me inside a single endless instant. His eyes were not merely eyes. They were constellations—unknown stars drifting across my face, a light my pupils had never been privileged to behold.
My chest expanded painfully, as though my ribs might splinter beneath the magnitude of the feeling swelling inside me. There was no flaw in him. No imbalance. No shadow of doubt. In that candlelit room, the universe narrowed to the space between his breath and mine.
In that second, I understood something terrible and wondrous: all the stars I had observed from the cliff were pale imitations of the light in his gaze.
"Let her pass," my father repeated, pride warming his tone.
I remained frozen, struggling to steady a body on the brink of collapse. My momjong's hands pressed lightly against my back—a silent anchor urging me to look away.
My father introduced me formally.
And then Kang-dae lifted his eyes.
For the first time, I saw his face without distance or shadow. Dizziness swept through me. I understood, with painful clarity, why his name echoed through palace corridors like sacred rumor.
How could a man of flesh and bone be more captivating than my celestial maps? More mesmerizing than the brush that had been my only confidant?
"Haneul, is something wrong?" my father asked, studying my face.
"I am well, Father," I answered too quickly.
Before he could question further, that firm, resonant voice cut through the air once more, asking my father how I spent my days. Again, he shielded me, rescuing me from a situation I did not fully comprehend.
I reached for my teacup to steady myself—and saw, with horror, that my fingers trembled so violently I could scarcely hold it.
Who is this man? I wondered. Who is this warrior who, without knowing me, shields me from my own humiliation?
"She is only the lady of the house," my father replied swiftly. "Attentive to my needs."
The words struck like cold iron.
To the world—and to my father—I was an ornament. Not the scholar who deciphered the heavens.
I lowered my head and drank the tea, its wildflower scent rising gently in the air.
"The hands of a woman devoted to household matters are usually soft," Kang-dae said, his voice resonating low against the wooden floor. "But your daughter's hands are different. They bear the dryness of ink. The roughness of one accustomed to holding a brush."
Panic pierced me.
The porcelain cup slipped from my fingers and shattered against the floor. Instinctively, I hid my hands within the folds of my hanbok.
Silence descended—sharp and absolute. Only the echo of broken porcelain and our strained breathing filled the room.
My father's eyes darkened with confusion—then suspicion.
The General intervened smoothly.
"Forgive my subgeneral," he said gravely. "Years of war sometimes make one forget the delicacy required in the presence of a noble young lady."
"It is nothing, nothing at all," my father insisted quickly, waving his hands with forced composure. "Let us continue."
Conversation resumed, but the harmony had fractured.
I sat submerged in humiliation and anger, hands hidden, face lowered, cheeks burning.
Beside me, the Bujang seemed transformed into a statue of regret. His once-commanding presence had dimmed; his gaze fixed on the floor as though punishing himself for the words he could not retract.
For the rest of the evening, silence became his penance.
Yet the tension between us thickened the air, heavy as the promise of a coming storm.