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Chapter 47
When I saw my father coughing up blood, my mind went white.
It felt as if someone had scrubbed and bleached the inside of my head.
With trembling hands I grabbed my father’s wrist.
“F-Father, are you all right? Shall I go fetch my uncle?” I stammered.
“Cough, cough! I’m f-fine… guh!”
A heave.
Red blood poured from my father’s mouth again.
Why?
‘It didn’t progress this fast in my previous life.’
Even until I was fifteen my father had been fine.
So why was he suddenly coughing up blood now?
I felt like crying.
I pushed my father’s coughing aside and flung the door of the chamber wide.
Then I called out at the top of my lungs for Yeong-yeong and Gayeon.
“Yeong-yeong! Yeong-yeong! Gayeon!”
Footsteps came urgently from somewhere.
It was Yeong-yeong and Gayeon — the two who had been resting nearby and dashed over when they heard my frantic shouts.
“Ah—Miss, are you all right?” one of them asked.
“What happened… oh my!” the other cried.
“Father’s sick. Go fetch my uncle. I think we need to move him to the Medical Hall….”
I wiped my tears with my sleeve and clutched Yeong-yeong’s sleeve tightly.
Startled, Yeong-yeong nodded.
“I’ll hurry and fetch the Lord of the Hall right away!” he said.
I nodded through my streaming tears and gave him one instruction.
“Don’t tell anyone else. Not a soul.”
Only three people knew my father had been poisoned: me, Grandfather, and my uncle who ran the Medical Hall.
No one else could find out.
If word got out inside the Dang clan that my father had been poisoned and was on the brink of death, his position would be in danger.
“All right, all right! I’ll do as you say, Miss! Don’t worry—I’ll bring him right away. Gayeon! Please look after Miss Biya and the Young Master!”
“Miss, I’ll help—!”
Gayeon produced a clean cloth and held it up to my father’s mouth.
My father released his sleeve and Gayeon pressed the cloth over his mouth.
His sleeve was stained crimson.
“F-Father… sniff.”
I crawled to my father’s side on my knees, clutching the blood-stained sleeve and crying.
“Biya, Father is— gak!”
“He—he’s not okay….”
“He’s all right. Really all right. Gayeon, take Biya out for a moment.”
“Yes, Young Master….”
“No!” I pushed Gayeon’s hand away and grabbed my father’s knee.
“I’m not leaving. I’ll stay here.”
What if something happened to my father while I followed Gayeon away? What if I lost him again in that brief moment? I had already lost my father once.
I couldn’t lose him twice.
Tears and snot ran down my face until it was soaked.
Gayeon, watching awkwardly, wiped my cheek.
“Miss, Yeong-yeong has gone to fetch the Lord of the Hall, so it’ll be fine,” she said.
“Sob…”
“It’s okay, Miss. It’s okay….”
While my father doubled over and coughed up blood again, Gayeon hugged me and covered my eyes with her hands.
Her palms were already damp from my tears.
Not long after that—
“The Young Master! I brought the Lord of the Hall!”
Yeong-yeong ran in, out of breath.
Following him was the head of the Medical Hall, Dang Sayuk, as if he had been roused from sleep.
He had come so hastily that his clothes were disordered.
“Huff, huff! Are you all right?” Dang Sayuk panted, holding a wooden medicine box.
He had no time to catch his breath; still carrying the box, he strode into the room.
When my uncle gave my father the medicine, the coughing of blood stopped.
He laid my father carefully on the bed and then led me out gently.
“My, why are your hands so wet, little one?” he said.
“Sob…”
He held me in the manner of someone very used to comforting a child.
He sat me on the floorboards, then crouched down on his knees below the raised platform and took a cloth from his sleeve to wipe my face again.
The face Yeong-yeong had wiped earlier was a mess once more from fresh tears.
“You look like you were terribly frightened, Biya.”
“Is Father going to be all right?” I asked.
“For now, he’s stable.”
When my uncle glanced at Gayeon, she quickly produced a candy from her bosom.
My uncle pressed it into my lips.
“He had an outburst of the poison and lost consciousness. I managed to suppress the episode with an antidote I was making, but the antidote isn’t finished yet…,” my uncle said apologetically.
“I probably didn’t fully neutralize the poison, but I should be able to get him past the dangerous moment.”
“Should I sit up with him through the night…?” I asked.
“No. I will watch over him, so go and sleep.”
“But—”
“What can you do by staying awake? Your father will only worry more seeing you tired and dozing at his bedside.”
“Wah, why are you so cruel…”
“Don’t cry. Really. Stop. Your snacks will get soggy.”
My uncle clasped my two hands tightly.
He seemed to remember that one hand needed to hold the candy and let go of it, holding only my other hand.
“I know you’re worried,” he said, “but leave this to the adults. You’re only eight years old.”
His voice sounded more grown-up than it had any right to.
“Please trust me once. I’ll take responsibility and make the antidote for your father properly.”
“Uncle….”
He stood up after speaking.
The moonlight cast his shadow dark across my face.
When I lifted my head to look at Dang Sayuk, his face, too, looked equally darkened — the backlighting from the moon doing the trick.
“The thing is,” I thought, “the person who has returned to the past.”
‘I won’t let my uncle die this time.’
I wouldn’t let him die or be driven out.
Not simply because if he died there would be no one to finish making my father’s antidote.
Dang Sayuk was a good man.
The world needed more good people.
And our Dang clan needed at least some decent people left — not vicious ones who would unearth warlike venom techniques and kill their kin.
Snap back to reality, Dang Biya.
Don’t ever forget the moment you were being killed!
I scrubbed my tear- and snot-streaked face hard with both hands.
“My, now stop….”
My uncle wiped my face gently with a soft cloth, careful not to rub too hard lest my skin peel.
“Well?” someone whispered from the darkness.
From the other side, a matching whisper answered.
“It looks like the poison triggered an episode and he lost consciousness.”
“Indeed….”
A figure stepped out of the darkness and into the moonlight, revealing the face of the Fourth House’s eldest young master, Dang Pae-jin.
He and someone else exchanged furtive words in the shadows.
Dang Pae-jin muttered, “I didn’t intend to hurry things along like this….”
“But with the situation shifting, it wouldn’t hurt to finish this quickly,” came the other voice.
“That’s true.”
Dang Pae-jin turned his head sharply toward the dark voice.
“What about the search I ordered?” he asked.
“We’re looking into it. We should be able to find where they are soon.”
“Good.”
Dang Pae-jin’s eyes gleamed chillingly in the dark.
His wide, deep-green robe fluttered as he turned.
“We must hurry. There isn’t much time. Finish him before that damned Dang Sayuk uses the Manhyeol-sindok to complete an antidote!”
