Chapter 253: Adamant (Danhohan)

I had never seen Yeon in this light; for such a young woman she was so…wise. And it all came from her empathy, a human trait that I was raised to believe that was weak and would lead to one's downfall. And I ever realised how much she had of it until this very moment when I realised that she was the only living soul in this world who actually defended my mother and even saw her for more than that. Yeon…she had an entirely different perspective from anyone I had ever met in my entire life and it was beginning to change me. She was the complete opposite of my father and a breathe of fresh air; all of her words were truth, everything she made from her hands were pure even the food that she was making for me at this very moment and there had never been even a ounce of judgement in her eyes at all. She didn't know how to judge and scorn and belittle anyone. And she took such great care of me that nobody else could compare, not even my own mother could live up to Yeon's standards despite them coming from the same poor background. When Yeon cared about you, she made it known to everyone and the fact that she pushed herself to study from home just impressed me even more. I could do so much for her if she just let me, if she didn't constantly worry about how her association with me would look to everyone else. But even if I had the chance to fulfil all of he dreams, it would still not be nought repay her for everything that has done for me and we were not even officially courting yet. And as for her fears which were absolutely validated, I was still too deep into her to ever give her up. When I was away from her I missed her and when she was in my sight I was desperate to touch her and be by her side all of the time and even at work I found myself thinking of how Yeon would see the problems that I had and how she would handle it as she had recently started to go up against my father and manage to walk away without so much as a scratch on her face. And she had very easily adapted to my home and around my crazy father and so-called fiancé which just showed me that she had survival skills. She didn't need too much care and attention, in fact she preferred to be other own as I did, but in my case I really had no choice but to isolate myself from everyone who hated me because I was my father's son.

"So you…will never marry? Not even me?" "I can help you in your work and I can take care of you for the rest of my life because I want to. But I will not let you become the subject of ridicule because of me, especially when you are capable of doing so much." "I knew her reasons and I understood perfectly but I was still not willing to accept this, especially after she reunited with her brother who a most likely going to take her away from me. And as for the next couples of months, no, for the majority of her stay she has been the only thing to keep me sane and even make me feel like a real human being. More than that…I really felt like a man for the first time who could protect someone who needed it and it would be genuine. And as for her body and beauty that she was irritatingly unaware of…I was suffering, as in I really could not sleep for the life of me because I could not stop thinking about how she looked or smelt or what she said that day. And every time I still watched her when I could I watched everything she did including when she undressed herself and ever since then I had new parts of my body come alive. Yeon was the cause of it all, so she had to take responsibility for it. As my wife, my main wife no mater what her objections were. I was going to have her treated and I was going to give her what she deserved; which was a noble marriage with a man who could give her every advantage in life that she was stripped off from the moment that she was orphaned.

"Seon-Ho? What happened? What…" "have you really made your decision to throw away your only lifeline as a woman to marry?" "I…I have to…" "And how are you planning to support yourself?" "By working…" "are you telling me to stop aside and stop caring for you and watch you work like a goddamned servant?" The mere thought of Yeon working hard to support herself alone after everything she has already been through was completely unfathomable to me to the point where it was making me angry. So angry in fact that I completely flipped over the table and I started kicking that until it was broken to pieces. "Am I really so useless in your eyes?" "What?" "If you really think that I am ever going to let you out of my sight and let you work like a commoner?" "But I am a commoner." "You are a noblewoman whose birthright was altered when you were orphaned. You were born a noble woman and you will have a noble marriage." "No." "Yes. You will marry me and get used to thinking about it; there's no reason in the world for us to both be alone when we can be together and start a family." "Have you not listened to a word I've just said! I've just…opened up for probably the first time and you are ignoring it all…" "I haven't ignored anything, you forget that I know your issues better than anyone in this village since I have been by your side almost every single day. But I am telling you right now, you are never going to leave my sight from this day on and I am going to take care of you forever. As my wife because you deserve nothing less." "Seon-Ho, please think about this."

I knew she was going to be stubborn about this so she left me no choice but to become just as stubborn in return. The biggest disrespect to a woman was for a man to take off her blouse shirt, it was the equivalent of leaving a woman topless. I didn't want to have to pul such a measure, but I could not allow to her to walk up to my father again and ask him to kick her out. She had nowhere to go, no money to survive on, and no man to take care of her apart from me. And if she asked him to leave again, my father was going to stop holding onto her as a hostage in our home and would just end up killing the Seo's like he wanted to do if I hadn't sent Hwi to the army to save his life. And I needed her to stay by my side otherwise I was going to loose myself, so for everyone's sake, I not only tore off her blouse shirt and I relished in it for a moment, I took all of her clothes in my hands without hesitation and I waked out of her room and I left her running after me until she realised she couldn't step foot outside her room, so she had no choice but to close the door and just stay put.

Just as I thought I had found a permanent solution to end my misery, it looked like I really had no damned choice but to entertain this horrible choice that my father made for me for Yeon's sake just to keep her around. I was surprised at myself at how desperate I was getting but the mere thought of finally unburdening myself to Yeon about everything I had been hiding from her was another reason why I had such a hard time getting any sleep. The more fear I felt in Yeon hating me the harder I was holding onto her, which I knew was wrong and I owed Hwi a lot more than I originally did…but I had never had my own person before, not like this. I definitely had something special with Hwi that I would die to protect but with Yeon…it just went a lot deeper and it made more sense for some reason. I didn't even need to say anything to her or make so much effort; she understood my silences and pampered me with her care anyways no matter what mood I was in. That girl…woman carried around so much warmth with her that it was beginning to get addictive and it was hard to stay away from her. So to pay the price for hiding everything from her still even though I should have told her a long time ago, I had no choice but to keep Da-In distracted. And honestly, I real hoped that by doing this, Yeon would think twice about the decision that she apparently made all on her own, so at least there was some hope.

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That jerk already left me in complete shock when he once again crossed the line just to get what he wanted without hesitating even once, but now he was clearly trying to make me jealous by flirting with his so-called fiancé right I front of my quarters! The nerve of this man! I had no idea if I wanted to laugh, cry or march over to him and strangle him. How dare he do this to me! He was just telling me that he was going to make all the decisions for my life less than 5 minutes ago and now here he was trying to keep that witch happy? Just what on earth was he doing? But no matter how angry I wanted to be with him, I just couldn't. God only knows how much pressure he was facing from all directions; in his work, his so-called family, his new in-laws and from my own brother. So once again I had to bury my own emotions for him and just trust that he knew what he was doing. But why on earth did he bring her outside of my quarters? Wasn't this too much? And I couldn't do anything about it since he ripped my jacket apart and just walked out with the rest of my clothes but to hear every word they were saying. I couldn't believe that this was happening right now; not only did I have this obsessive Lady Min on my back but I was loosing my temper and patience everyday that I had to pretend to be my usual docile self in this hellhole when I was longing to lash out to vent my anger. I waited and I waited for Seon-Ho to return home from work since I had to help him out but for every minute that he wasn't coming home I could not help but to feel a sense of apprehension. What was taking him so long? He was the one who had confined me to my quarters today so why wasn't he coming home to release me? Hours went by and the deep hole of fear that I had inside me was just getting bigger and bigger as I could only stare at the moon and wait for him. Where was he? What was he doing now? Was he in trouble? Was my brother in trouble? Were they helping each other? Or were they fighting?

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That look in her eyes when she asked me about myself, it was clear that she had been crying although I could not bring myself to utter a single word to address it. Because I knew that she had been crying for my sake only, I knew it as soon as my eyes met her. She was always strangely emotional like that and I just wasn't accustomed to it at first, that was another reason why I always used to distanced myself from her. And the way she kept throwing herself in front of me showed me that she was finally opening up to me; she was protective of me, she cared about me and she was clearly having a hard time around Da-In. But what struck me most of all was when she held onto me for dear life. She had never done that before; she had always held herself up in my home with pride and surprisingly didn't seek me out as much as she thought she would. But there was something that was bothering me…it was Yeon's scent at the time when she hugged me that was familiar to me before I even realised it. Because I definitely knew that I had that scent lying around somewhere in my bedroom. From the moment I finally retired to my bedroom and I got changed was when I started looking at everything clearly. My bedroom at a first glance did look as normal as it always did until I started to take a closer look and indeed there had been some changes made. My sleeping robes for a start were a lot lighter than the usual material that I used and they were infused with chamomile flowers. I then instantly went to check my bed and I could smell the same thing with my pillow and even my blanket. My incense sticks had been changed as well and I had noticed that I had been given a lot more charcoal than my father allowed me to use in his home. Now that I had thought about it, I had indeed been getting a lot more sleep than I have done ever since Yeon moved in, but how did she know about my troubles? I had certainly never told her…

I almost went through every single inch of my bedroom like a madman until I came across some blue wildflowers on the edge of my desk that completely shook me to my core. Blue wildflowers were my mother's absolute favourite flower that she always hung around her quarters where Yeon was currently living. I woke up and fell asleep to that scent every singe day until she hung herself in front of my father's home the day he stole me from her. It was the only nice thing that she could afford to decorate our home with so it didn't look as poor as it did and it made her smile.

I lived under my tyrannical father's rule who only saw me as a tool to get my hands dirty instead of his. My mother loved me but she was too weak to fight for me. I betrayed my only best friend in the world unknowingly and then I kept doing it to keep him alive. I chased after his woman after I sent him away knowing that I was only going to get hurt because I always was hurt, I just didn't speak about it. And his sister who was once the subject of ridicule in our village because of her disorder was now the most precious being to me and I was beginning to loose my mind at the thought of loosing her. I still had to tell her everything about her memories but now Da-In was making it hard for us to spend any time together at all. But even if we were miles apart I could feel Yeon's love and care for me all the way into my bedroom which she must have went out of her way to alter for my sake just so I could be comfortable in my own small space in his horrible home. I was touched beyond belief, so much so that I could barely remember my own mother doing anything like this for me…

I broke down for the first time after a very long time. I even hid underneath my blanket so that nobody could hear me otherwise I knew that my father would hold it against me every single day for the rest of my life for 'acting weak like the lowborn I was always going to be.' I had so much guilt and I had so many sins to atone for and I felt like I was being punished with this sham of a marriage that I did not want. Da-In and now that I thought about it, Hui-Jee were not warm women at all, they only though about themselves and would not put in the time and effort to care for me like Yeon did. I…just simply did not know what to do, all I knew was that I wanted the ground underneath me to open up and swallow me whole. I wanted my mother to come down from the heavens where she was and take me with her; I wanted her to hold me and tell me that everything was going to be ok. I wanted these heavy burdens lifted off of my shoulders and I wanted to start a new life with a person that I could have all to myself. But Yeon, I was going to have to share her with her brother who very much hated my guts right now and who probably would for a long time.