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Chapter : 2
The Butterfly on the Wall (2)
Anger gave her a brief surge of strength.
Jo-young hauled up the bucket with her blistered, calloused hands.
Splash.
As the bucket rose, it shattered the mirror-still surface of the water, scattering the pitiful reflection staring back at her.
She brought the bucket to her mouth and gulped down the cold water to fill her starving belly.
Gulp, gulp.
As the cold water poured into her empty stomach, instead of easing the hunger, it shocked her insides, twisting painfully.
“Haah…”
Jo-young clutched her side and endured the pain, letting out a long sigh. When the pain subsided, she straightened up and sighed once more.
If she didn’t eat something today, she really felt like she might collapse.
Passing through the crumbling stone wall covered in moss, Jo-young stepped outside and soon arrived at a barren stretch of earth.
Along the edges of the plowed field lay piles of stones she had painstakingly picked out until yesterday. Still, many stones remained embedded in the soil.
She had no time to stand around feeling overwhelmed. If she didn’t finish tilling the field and plant beans, she would starve again today—and at this rate, she might truly die.
Gripping a pitchfork, Jo-young staggered forward and began to till the land. Each time she scraped the soil, more stones than dirt caught on the tines.
The Ha household was owned by Ha Gajang, the famed leader of a major merchant guild in Yeongseong Kingdom.
His estate was renowned even in the capital, Taegyeongbu, for its size and beauty. But because the grounds were so vast, the rear garden included land this desolate.
Calling it a garden was generous. Untended for decades, the shaded ground was nothing more than a dumping place for refuse.
Ordering her to cultivate such land and plant beans was nothing short of malicious cruelty.
“When will you ever fix that filthy habit of yours? How many times are you going to disgrace the name of the Ha family? Just how long do you expect us to tolerate a thief like you?!”
Ha Jin-san, Jo-young’s half-brother, had never tolerated her.
Even as he shouted those words, he lashed out mercilessly, and Jo-young still limped slightly from the beating.
That day, she had been beaten so badly that it was a miracle nothing broke. Even so, she neither cried nor begged.
It wasn’t because she was wronged by the accusation of theft, nor because of pride.
She had been caught with the money she had secretly earned by slipping out to take odd jobs. The pain of having that money taken away—the despair and injustice—hurt far more than the dull blows raining down on her.
It was escape money she had saved for five full years.
I should’ve just stolen for real. Why did I cling to my pride and suffer to save such meager coins?
For the first time, Jo-young lunged at her brother.
She screamed that there was no proof she’d stolen anything, that the money was hers, begging him not to take it. She was slapped until her cheek swelled from the blows.
At that moment, she truly wanted to die. She didn’t want to live like this anymore. She had endured only because of her mother’s dying wish to survive—but that day, she wanted to follow her mother into death.
Fifteen years ago, when Jo-young was ten—
Her mother, Gil Su-yeon, who had entered the household as a concubine, died suddenly from an unexplained seizure.
From that day on, Jo-young never once ate her fill or slept in peace. Ha Jin-san and Ha Jin-hong, children of the first wife, tormented her relentlessly.
Her father, Ha Do-pyeong, had never been a man attentive to family. The Ha family had long run trading guilds and invested in numerous ventures, and he was consumed by business, rarely returning home.
As a result, the true head of the household was the eldest son, Ha Jin-san. Anyone who disobeyed him or defended Jo-young was driven out.
Because of that, Jo-young was always cold, hungry, and in pain. Still, life had been better when her father was alive.
Five years ago, her father returned from afar afflicted with a terrible, nameless illness. Even his vast wealth could not cure him, and after wasting away, he finally passed.
With even her largely absent father gone, Jo-young’s life became no better than that of her elder sister Ha Jin-hong’s servant.
Ha Jin-san, who inherited the household, maintained a refined facade while committing every kind of filthy deed behind the scenes.
Not only outside the home—but inside as well.
Jo-young had nearly lost her life several times after falling into his traps.
Compared to him, Ha Jin-hong’s open contempt and slander almost seemed harmless.
“So you want to own your own property that badly? Fine. I’ll grant your wish. But start with land you cultivate with your own hands. Until you clear the rear garden and plant even a single bean, you won’t be allowed to eat anything.”
Whether he intended to starve her to death, Ha Jin-san ordered her—barely able to stand after the beating—to plant beans in a field of rough gravel.
For days, Jo-young stayed in her room, drained of strength and will, thinking she might as well die.
But then she grew hungry.
She missed the sunlight.
She wanted to live.
In the dust-filled darkness, Jo-young regretted everything.
I should’ve just said I stole it.
As she scraped the earth with her pitchfork, she repeated the same regret over and over.
“Haah—!”
Having spared even her breath until now, Jo-young finally succumbed to dizziness and collapsed, letting go of the pitchfork.
I don’t know anymore. The money’s gone…
As time passed, the emptiness in her heart became more unbearable than the hunger gnawing at her stomach.
What’s the point of all this? It’s meaningless…
The future before her was pitch-black.
Even if she finished tilling the field and planted beans, could she really go on living in this house?
At least I’d escape starvation for now.
Even that might be too much to hope for.
Conflict between half-siblings was common enough—but Jo-young’s situation in the Ha household was different.
Ha Jin-san didn’t despise her merely because she was born of a concubine.
It was her ability.
He feared it, constantly suspecting and watching her, unable to drive her out—waiting instead for her to die on her own.
That was why Jo-young had long been searching for a chance to escape.
Not just to survive. She wanted revenge.
Revenge for her mother, who had been killed before her eyes when she was only ten.
Revenge for all the pain and humiliation she herself had endured.
At Biryeongsan in Namgangbu stood the main house of the clan the Ha family revered. If she could reach it, there would be a way to exact revenge. But the journey was long, and she needed travel money.
She had often been caught slipping out to earn money. Each time, she was dragged back and accused of meeting men or stealing household goods to flee.
Still, she had managed to save money without being discovered—until now. Five years of effort had vanished overnight.
Now it’ll be hard to escape empty-handed. They know I had money… they must’ve guessed I planned to run.
Once the thought ended, she no longer had the strength to lift her eyelids.
Mother… I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore.
With a gloomy, shadowed face, Ha Jo-young closed her eyes.
Spring sunlight wrapped the world in warmth—but it scarcely reached the ground where she lay collapsed.
Jo-young opened her eyes the next morning.
Barely conscious, she frowned at the unfamiliar ceiling swimming into view.
Am I dizzy?
The ramshackle hut in the rear garden where she had lived was little more than a storage shed—used for things too useless to need, yet too troublesome to discard.
After losing her mother, Jo-young herself had become just such a thing to this household, and she had been banished there over ten years ago.
In spring and summer, rain leaked in and the air smelled of rotting wood. When cold winds blew, the rusted hinges screeched, and wind howled through the rattling door cracks. Even the ceiling exposed blackened, decaying beams.
But now, it was strangely clean and polished. A high ceiling woven tightly from straight wooden beams spread above her.
Thinking she couldn’t possibly be seeing this, she strained her eyes—only for her head to throb and her dizziness to worsen.
And that wasn’t the end of the confusion.
“Have you regained consciousness?”
A maid was asking after her condition.
