Part 2: Disorientation- Chapter 101: Jeong-Gyeong (Regularity)

Yeon's cold and hot moods were clearly a sign of her needing some space to digest everything that we all had been through. And even though it pained me more than I could have ever imagined, I simply had no choice but to give her space, lest it destroyed what little relationship that we had left. And since the trial of my father, I was temporarily let go in the palace as my work was put under investigation so the Emperor could really see how much my father controlled in the palace right under his nose. So I had nothing to keep me busy other than going over my old cases again and again to make sure that there were no visible mistakes on my part and clear up my guilt before I decided on my new career venture in the palace. I was not going to pay for my father's mistakes, not after the torment that I had already been subjected to. But because of notorious gossip that surrounded my family now, I couldn't leave my home at all that was already being vandalised at every opportunity soon after. But oddly enough, I had a different person keeping me company when she could. If I was taken back to the week before the military exam, I would have been rather elated to find Hui-Jee coming to visit me at all hours of the day. And night. But now...well I found myself realising that I simply could not think straight around her. And I had no idea why. But it wasn't for the same reason as...well...it was just different. Hui-Jee didn't know me well enough to guess what I was thinking when I was silent, she didn't know my hobbies to engage an interesting conversation with me, unlike Yeon who could have a political debate with me from morning to evening and she, well it turns out that she wasn't really the woman that I thought she was when I first met her. She wasn't a kisaeng so she never received the formal training to become one, so she didn't really have the grace of a noblewoman that I was under the impression that she had. Yeon always cleaned up after the both of us and always had tea and desserts ready for us soon after on the days that my father went out of town for work. Whereas Hui-Jee's domestic skills were not quite up to par. But right now she could give me the one thing that Yeon could not no matter how smart she was; her contacts through the brothel that she refused to leave. But that wasn't all that Hui-Jee suddenly had in mind and I had no idea what to do. She wouldn't leave our home for hours on end, knowing that everyone in the village had their eyes on us and she started to dislike having other people around us, including the servants. I had no idea what had changed her mind about me overnight, but now I couldn't stop thinking about Hwi's last words to me. He was prepared to give her up for his sister....but why? As far as I knew, he was still hiding his existence from her after being dragged into war and he had gone quite far to conceal any news of him so she wouldn't find out. But why? Was he simply making a swap for his sister? Or did he also chance his mind about her like I was beginning to? No, as far as I knew, Seo Hwi had changed a great deal from the moment he returned from Liadong and I was fully aware that it was my fault. He wasn't nearly as clever or witty as his sister was, but he had still managed to pull the rug from under my father's feet and that was as big as an achievement as any. I really needed to talk to him as soon as he came home...

But Yeon she still owed me a heap of explanations and she was just coming in and outside of this home as if she hadn't turned my entire world upside down. And as for our physical relationship, it was another obstacle that was stopping me from moving forward in any way whatsoever. That was the very first time that I had let my guard down with anyone, the first time that I bared my heart to anyone and Yeon just...hadn't said anything about it at all, like it never happened in the first place. I, on the other hand was going crazy to the point where I couldn't sleep at night until I watched Yeon again when she did come home from whatever it was she was doing behind my back. I wasn't in the know because Hui-Jee had started watching me like a hawk and often ordered around the servants that were still under Yeon's control. The two women refused to interact with each other and I had no idea why and I had lost my sense of discipline for a while which was unlike me at all. I was not used to loosing control like this and it was beginning to turn me into a very paranoid and aggressive person. But no-one understood that, at least not the woman who hovered over me and kept inviting me out until all hours of the morning and made my buy her whatever she wanted. I kept trying to convince myself that all of this would pay off eventually when she helped me out in the way that I was doing for her. Having her on my arm gave her security in the brothel, and it even elevated her status when she started using my money to buy better food and clothes for herself. But I was in a bad place in this moment of time and I wasn't too focused on what she was doing. On the other hand, seeing Yeon outside with her new found freedom and attention she was getting from everyone in the village who had previously turned her back on her made me absolutely sick to my stomach. Just who on earth did these people think they were? Didn't they turn their backs on my from the moment that I was born? Didn't these people laugh and jeer at her every time she had her fits in public? It was completely pathetic and downright embarrassing that these little boys who thought were men kept trying to stop her wherever she went and tried to talk to her. If Hwi was watching this, he would have personally cut off every single male hand that touched her. And I would have done far worse if Yeon hadn't suddenly forgotten exactly what took place between us before she saved her brother and turned my father in, who was still home and only got excited when Hui-Jee came over to visit.

This whole experience was starting to mess with me and make me doubt if I even wanted to keep up my mother's promise and help the people who showed their dark nature as soon as they wanted something they couldn't get or they saw someone lowlier than them that they could bully just because they could. I never even thought that I could take care of someone like I had done for Yeon. Not that I was ever given the opportunity because everyone in this city avoided me like I had the damned plague but still...the Seo's were all that I had. I know that in the past I never really paid enough attention to Yeon but still...after everything we had been put through together, how on earth could she just...leave and not even think about visiting me? Unless...unless I had done too good of a job in distancing myself from here? But I had no choice about that, may father, that bastard threatened me with her life if I got too close to her, even when she didn't recognise me from her amnesia...the amnesia that I caused. From her epileptic fit that I caused...but I didn't mean to...but would she understand? Would anyone understand that I did not mean for anything to happen at all even when it did and I was forced to feed lies to the only people in this world who ever loved me and cared about me as one of their own. So how could I rid myself of such doubt and sin and who would listen to me if I did?

No...it looked like Yeon had regained her memories a long time ago...but she still stayed with me? Despite how I was forced to treat her? Why? Why not run off to her brother when she had the chance? Why help me? Why send me away when I could have protected her? Why? Why give me everything that I wanted without coveting anything for herself? And how? How on earth was she capable of doing so? The doctor did tell me that after loosing her memories that she had no reason to back to the way she was because she could not remember her former self but...but the girl...woman that I had grown up alongside with her brother for a decade was most certainly not the woman that I housed and raised myself, she was nowhere near it. In fact, she was the complete opposed of the clumsy and awkward teenager that she was forced to be in her own circumstances. Confucius laws stated what the very essence of the two sexes were, and growing up Yeon did not fit into her category at all. She had gotten away with so much growing up under the protection of myself, her brother and the reputation of her late father who was the best swordsman of our era.

"Husband? Husband!" "Will you stop calling me that? I'm not your damned husband! We are not even married, so show a little dignity woman!" "How dare you speak to me like that! Don't you know who I am..." "Who are you? Go on? Tell me? Who are you without my money and my support! Just who the hell do you think you are! And who the hell does she think she is?" "What are you talking about? You know that I am an orphan with no support other than from you. I have lost my family, and I lost my only hope that I had of ever regaining my family honour through your father because of your one moment of weakness with that girl." "Yeah, well I lost my father as well but you don't see me crying about it do you?" "Of course not; why would you cry over your own father who housed you, fed you, clothed you when you have just inherited all of his wealth! I do not understand...she murders your father but gives you everything? She didn't take anything for herself, if not everything? And the only thing that you can do is drink yourself silly instead of declaring revenge like a real man..."

I could not stop myself from bursting out in laughter right there and then, so much so that I actually could not help spitting out my drink. "Take revenge? For who? My father? Goodness me, you chased me so shamelessly but you do not know the first thing about me, do you? Not like Yeon does."

"You...how dare you! Have you lost your damned mind? What? Since she isn't here to distract you anymore and I finally have you to myself, you get drunk instead of taking advantage of the situation! We can get married now, properly. We can do it with your father's money, we can set up a new home or even a few. But you will put them in my name of course, and you will sign over half of your wealth to me. Marrying you will regain my family honour and then we can kill that witch. Wait! Where are you going! Husband!"

As abandoned, neglected and hardened as I was, I was not violent to women; I never had been and I never thought that I would have a cause to. But I always observed my surroundings and I didn't fully trust anyone, not like I did with the Seo's. As for Hui-Jee, I was not going to trust her until she told me exactly why she was hanging around me so much and sneaking around behind my back to talk to my indisposed father when she thought that I wasn't paying any attention to her at all. I didn't know how close they were, but she was slowly becoming so much like the man who ruined my life before I was even born. All she and other noble's like her just thought about themselves, that was what made me loose myself so deeply into the Seo's, because they were so genuine despite everything that they lacked in their lives. Money couldn't buy everything and the nobles that I was forced to cohabitate with had no morals. Seo Hwi was the most gentle, genuine, soft-hearted and even naive person I had never met, and the same thing went for Yeon...the old her at least. They both didn't know how to lie, not even if they had the instructions waved in front of their faces. As for myself, I didn't have the luxury of having such good morals. Survival was the goal under my father's roof, so I had long forgotten what it left like to be...innocent, unlike Yeon who despite what did to me, for myself, her brother and everyone else around her...she still managed to maintain her innocence. She had become a mystery to me now that I was losing to fulfil...and in more ways that one I feared.

"Where are you going! How can you think of leaving me here! How...." "FOR GOD'S SAKE! I AM NOT YOUR HUSBAND! I WILL NEVER MARRY YOU! I WILL ONLY MARRY...." The words came out of my mouth before I even knew what the hell I was saying. All my life I had to change myself to suit my father's expectations of me, which included following the corrupted Confucius laws, speaking and thinking very little and I was never allowed to express myself. This was the first time I thin some being dragged into my father's mansion that I had even uttered a sentence that was not even in favour of my best, lifelong and only friend Hwi, but it was for his sister, the woman that it turned out I barely knew at all. Just what the hell was I saying? Marry? Me? To who? The biggest victim in my father's dastardly plot? Who on earth knew her struggles when she hid everything from us? What did she face? What was she hiding? Is that why she hadn't found me? Because she was hiding from me? Because if I knew her secrets then I would get angry? She was always doing that; she was the only one who managed to find small ways to cal me down from my anger that was wild enough to burn down an entire village if I wanted to.