Chapter 97: Seon-Ho

I was stunned into silence...I had so many questions for her and the woman who clung onto me but I couldn't get the words out. Yeonnie had pushed me into the room...my mothers bedroom and she shut the door behind me and wait outside so I had no choice but to face this alone.

I couldn't believe this was actually real...I hadn't really thought about her since Yeonnie mentioned her in the palace that day. I was also tormented for year because I was her son...eve though she loved me so much more than anyone...apart from Yeonnie. Her quarters in my father's mansion took up only 1/3 of this space...she must have suffered so much to come from all this wealth and splendour to be deceived by that asshole of a father of mine. I was so caught up in my own misery that I never even thought once about her pain...what she must have been through...how much she had to not only adjust to suddenly being penniless but to have me and provide for me as well. I collapsed onto the floor and I broke down for a long time until I felt like I was able to release the pain and anguish that I had felt when my father unjustly turned our lives into living nightmares.

After what seemed like hours I picked myself up and took a proper look around my mother's room. I had cried and screamed so much but I finally felt like I was making peace with her already. I went through all of her draws and boxes when the old woman finally woke up and approached me slowly with a warm but sad smile on her face "you are the spitting image of your mother. She was such a handsome lady with only the best of noble features." I had tears streaming down my face; this was the first time I had heard anyone describe her to be something more than a harlot. "What...what was she like?" I had a hard time talking for some reason, but I still wanted to know everything that I could about her...so I could bond with her...if there was anything at all. I realised then why the Seo's were so dedicated to their father even if he was dead, maybe a loved dead parent was indeed better than a corrupt living one.

She talked to me for an hour of two: she was actually the nanny that raised her! My mother was the only child to a rather famous military man in her town and her mother was a simple noblewoman, although her family greatly respected scholars and medicinal students alike. And that's how my father tricked her...that bastard who was only a slave in the Royal Stables actually conned her family by pretending to be a scholar student studying to get in the the palace. Her family even took care of his expenses! He trapped her at a young age only to have had another family all along and demoted her to slave and concubine the minute they were wed! And it turns out that she never even liked him in the first place! It was her naive mother that took pity on him and arranged their marriage once my father exposed his obvious interest in her. She was actually engaged to someone else before...who lost his life in the battlefield alongside her father...and my mother wasn't even a concubine. She...she was raped on her wedding night and then became pregnant with me.

Anger started total over me like nothing I had ever felt before. I ran outside to the courtyard as fast as I could before I hurt that nanny or Yeonnie and I started smashing things around in a complete rage. When my memories wondered back to how my father's wife treated us...how she hated us with a passion...how she was so jealous of my mother that she would randomly beat her at times and starve us almost half to death...I raged for her...and my dead grandparents that I never had the chance to know...I even raged for the man she was in love with who could have surely taken much better care of us that my own father...if only I was their son and not my father's. I raged until I had no energy left in me. I collapsed onto the ground completely numb and unable to speak until Yeonnie finally came to collect me, to hold me tight and kept repeating that no matter what happened that my mother truly loved me...other women who were pregnant after being raped would only rush to abort their babies but mine didn't...I was her whole world to her.