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Chapter 48
“Young Miss, are you awake?”
“Yes.”
“Shall I bring breakfast to your room?”
“It’s all right. I want to go see Father.”
I stopped Yeong-yeong, who was about to fetch my breakfast, and jumped up from bed.
She looked at me worriedly.
“But if you skip breakfast, the young master will worry. Why don’t you eat at least a little? I’ll ask the kitchen to make a light bowl of porridge for you.”
“But…”
“Just half a bowl,” she insisted, holding up a finger. “Then you can go see the young master afterward.”
Once she spoke that firmly, there was nothing I could do but nod.
Pleased, Yeong-yeong hurried out to get the porridge.
In the meantime, I took out Manhyeolsa, my snake.
“By the way, don’t you need to eat?”
Come to think of it, ever since I had been keeping Manhyeolsa, I could hardly remember seeing it eat anything.
Sometimes it would slyly flick up a piece of meat when I was dining, but that was all.
The snake tilted its head as if puzzled, then slithered up my arm and coiled around my neck.
“If you get hungry, you have to tell me, all right?”
I stroked its chin gently as I spoke—
—when suddenly a youthful voice interrupted:
“How could a snake possibly talk?”
“Eek!”
I let out a startled cry and turned toward the sound.
Standing in the doorway was Namgung Cheong-hyeon, staring straight at me.
He looked slightly embarrassed, realizing he’d spoken through the half-open door, and stepped back.
“I was going to knock,” he explained, “but your maid rushed out without closing the door behind her.”
He tapped the door lightly, and it swung open the rest of the way.
I pressed a hand over my pounding heart and glared at him.
“You scared me! Did you come straight here after waking up?”
“Yes. I already had breakfast with my father.”
“This early?”
“Early?”
“It’s Chen hour already,” I said (the hour of the dragon—around seven in the morning).
“I usually get up at Myo hour,” he said casually—the hour of the rabbit, before dawn.
My mouth fell open.
Just then—
“Oh! Young Master!”
Yeong-yeong, who had returned with a breakfast tray, stopped short when she saw Cheong-hyeon sitting by the door.
Looking flustered, he said, “It’s fine, don’t mind me. Or if it makes you uncomfortable, I can wait outside.”
“No, but still…” Yeong-yeong hesitated awkwardly. “The young miss just woke up, and…”
“I’m fine, Yeong-yeong.”
I couldn’t very well turn away a guest who had come to see me.
And it wasn’t as though I planned to linger long—I was going to eat quickly and then go see Father.
“…”
Wait—no.
That wasn’t fine at all.
I suddenly snapped my head up to look at Cheong-hyeon.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Ah—no! You can’t!”
My father’s collapse was a closely guarded secret.
Even my grandfather might not yet have heard of it.
I couldn’t possibly take Cheong-hyeon with me to see him.
My eyes darted between the breakfast tray and Cheong-hyeon as I searched for an excuse.
“I—I can’t eat when someone’s watching me.”
“…What?”
He squinted slightly, clearly unconvinced.
“I’ll call you after I finish eating. I still have to wash up and change anyway. Go back for now—we’ll play later.”
He hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
“All right. Sorry for coming so early.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for.”
“I thought you’d already be up by Chen hour.”
“Then I’m the one who should apologize,” I said, and he chuckled softly.
“Fair enough. See you later.”
“Mm. I’ll come find you.”
“Okay.”
With that, he left.
As I watched his back disappear, Yeong-yeong set the tray before me and handed me a spoon.
“The young master must be very fond of you,” she said, smiling. “Coming to see you first thing in the morning.”
“Maybe it’s because he’s leaving for Hapbi in two days,” I murmured, blowing on a spoonful of steaming porridge.
“He said he doesn’t have any friends there.”
“No friends? In Hapbi?”
“Mm-hmm. Why?”
Yeong-yeong blinked in disbelief. “You mean that Young Master Namgung doesn’t have friends there?”
I took a bite of porridge, thinking.
Now that she mentioned it, it was strange.
Cheong-hyeon wasn’t the type to stay cooped up at home like I was. Why would he have no friends?
“And he seems to be carrying some kind of burden…”
Everyone had their stories, of course—but his felt like something deep, something painful.
I remembered the sorrowful look on his face the night before and swallowed the porridge with a sigh.
“Well, I’ll find out someday,” I told myself.
If he truly had something on his heart, then someday he would tell me.
“True friends,” Father always said, “are those you can open your heart to completely, without guilt or secrets.”
So there was no need to rush.
Right now, the urgent matter wasn’t Cheong-hyeon—it was my father.
I hurriedly finished the rest of my porridge and jumped to my feet to go see him.
Tap, tap, tap!
“Father!”
I ran straight into his arms.
He was already awake and sitting up, and he embraced me gently.
“Biya, my dear, did you sleep well?”
“I couldn’t sleep without you, Father! Were you at peace last night?”
“I couldn’t sleep either, without my beloved daughter.”
He laughed brightly and lifted me into the air.
Then he pressed his cheek to mine.
His slightly rough morning stubble brushed against my skin—it tickled, but it felt wonderfully comforting.
“You woke early just to see me, didn’t you?”
Tang Sayuk entered the room carrying a steaming bowl of herbal medicine.
I nodded.
“Yes! I wanted to see Father first thing. But the young lord woke up even earlier than I did.”
“You mean Cheong-hyeon? The Namgung clan rises earlier than ours.”
“Poor thing… he must be tired.”
“His body’s used to it by now. Don’t worry. You did eat breakfast, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Yeong-yeong brought me warm porridge.”
“Good girl.”
I nuzzled into his chest again, relishing the warmth of his embrace—then suddenly looked up.
“But Father, are you feeling better now?”
No—questions like that should be asked of the doctor, not the patient.
I turned quickly toward my uncle.
“Uncle, Father is all right, isn’t he?”
“Oh dear,” he chuckled teasingly, “if I say he isn’t, you’ll cry again, won’t you?”
At that, Father took my face between his hands and turned it back toward him.
“Eh?”
“Your eyes are still a little swollen,” he said softly, brushing my eyelid with a large, calloused finger.
I blinked hard.
“You collapsed, Father…”
“I know. I didn’t mean to worry you, but I showed you quite an unpleasant sight, didn’t I?”
“I was so scared—you suddenly coughed up blood! But, Father… did anything unusual happen yesterday?”
“Unusual?”
“Anything different from usual.”
If my memory was right, in my previous life Father had never collapsed like that before my eyes.
It was possible it had happened when I wasn’t there—but still, something about it felt wrong.
Even if I think that way, it doesn’t make sense.
Father’s body had endured until I was fifteen.
I was only eight now—there should be almost seven more years before his condition worsened that badly.
So how could it have advanced so quickly already?
If he suddenly vomited blood and collapsed, it meant his body could no longer suppress the poison.
Either that, or the poison had been triggered from within.
The latter seemed more likely.
Father’s danjeon—his energy core—was located beside a dokjeong, a “poison node.”
Grandfather had once told me:
“Not all poisons can be drawn into and purified by the poison node. Poisons that don’t match a person’s constitution remain in the body, circulating and slowly destroying it.”
The poison Tang Pae-jin used on Father was exactly that kind—one his poison node couldn’t absorb, lingering in his body and corroding him little by little.
And the nature of a slow-acting poison didn’t change overnight.
Which meant—
“If anything out of the ordinary happened yesterday, please tell me, Father. Anything at all!”
