Poison. It was poison that ruined my outlook on everything in the village after settling in here for quite some time now when there was clearly some work for me to do in the kingdom still, even if I could do it from afar. It was poison that turned me against my wife, it was poisoned that was turning the villagers against their head chief and it was poison that was bringing my enemy to me and a lot closer to home than I was comfortable with. Hwa-Wol seems to know what she was doing and we had a well-thought out plan together as she left her children with my sister-in-law who was also in charge of looking after my own wife in her delicate condition. I knew that she would soon resent me for abandoning her in her time of need, but it was exactly because she was in a delicate condition that I had to act as quickly as possible so that I could also return to her just as quickly and get along with my own familial and village plans. Despite what Hwi's decision was about the village, it was still my responsibility to find a solution, which meant finding another unmarked land and protecting it with all of my might until the day came that we all needed to move in an emergency. But on the journey to the palace; Hwa-Wol seemed to be distanced by something else entirely.
"…I do not mean to be insensitive, but I have noticed something about you that I must bring up since you are a father now and not the reckless teenager that you used to be." "Very well?" "I think that you are still suffering from the same problem that my husband diagnosed you with all of these years ago and that is why your behaviour….seems to have changed since you brought your children back here in the village." "What are you talking about?" "Either you are returning to opium dens behind our backs or someone is drugging you, and I think we both know who that person is." "What makes you so sure?" "It is your aggressive and fast-paced behaviour that leads me to believe so, especially after you let your wife go for just a single day and you drank yourself silly." "How can you be sure?" "Give me whatever liquids you have packed and I can test them right now whilst we take a rest." "Very well, but I doubt that you will find anything…and even if she did, how could she have even smuggled it in?" "It looked like The Third Prince is well aware of our little village; and if that is so then the first move that we should have made was to settle elsewhere." "I have made that point to Hwi time and time again…" "Let me cut to the chase My Lord, since we are both parents now and we have a lot of people to think about." "What is on your mind girl?" "Nobody knows Seo Hwi like you, so you are the only person who can change his mind on certain topics that other's cannot." "What are you saying?" "What if there was a way that you could change his mind about his stance on the village?" "Well?" "Can't you provoke anything to happen further?" "Do you think I haven't thought of that? I am tempted to day by day, but my wife might actually divorce me if I did anything like that." "Very well….and look, I was right. You see how my hairpin turned green? It turns black for poison and green for drugs." "That fucking bitch! She still wants to separate me from my wife when she has a Prince to herself?"
"Of course shoe doesn't have him to herself; when have you ever met a Prince that was devoted to a single woman alone? And after everything that they have been through; he will use her as he has her but never devote himself to her. He is broken after what happened to his 3 favourite concubines…." "That is true…maybe there is a way that we can put them to use once again…" "My Lord!" "Under my protection of course! When have I not taken care of everyone that I have worked with?" "What another way of saying 'exploit'. "Hwa-Wol!" "Never you mind, our supper is here and we should both get some sleep since we left pretty early in the morning." "I do not think that I can sleep without my daughter crying for me and my son scratching my face in the morning to wake me up." "So you do have some human emotion in you after all." "Only for a select few; do you really have any idea what you are going to do to your old friend once you see her." "At first, I shall show up with these Buddha transcriptions that I borrowed from your wife with paper that does not cost an entire family a year's worth of supper." "You will show her up in front of her superiors that she is tirelessly trying to win over?" "Why do you think she is trying to do that if she has a Prince on her side? Do you know of the rumours of The Emperor being on his deathbed and wanting to do a last tour? It looks like he might have to take his third son along with him and he refuses to take Hui-Jae along with him." "Did they get into a big argument about it?" "Big enough for him to lock her up in his quarters with nothing to do all day long for hours on end. I hatred from my sources that she was even willing to attend as a maid, and he still wouldn't allow her to accompany him whatsoever." "Surely you have another plan in mind?" "Well, now that we are discussing the topic…I was wondering if I have your permission to plant the idea that your wife has also been invited on this tour alongside her brother? As a show of goodwill after all the trouble that has occurred?" "Absolutely not! You know all about her delicate condition…" "Delicate condition? She is pregnant with your third child and you are here scheming by my side instead of celebrating with her, what do you know about being 'delicate' My Lord?" "She needs to be on her own for a while to realise what a precarious situation we are currently facing so that she can appreciate everything I am doing to save us…" "Instead of being angry at you like you deserve? After all of the pressure that you put her through to conceive again after her first traumatic birth?" "She knew what she was getting herself into when she married me." "Partially against her own will?" "Ok, let us discuss the rest of the plan now at the palace."
"Everything that we have experienced in the village must be returned back to her so that she knows what we are doing, only after I have leaked the fake news about your wife's arrival and she is now to powerless to do anything at all. Your wife has been bullied by her since she woke up in your father's home and it is only right that she get her own karma regarding this issue." "Very well, just cover for me please so that my wife doesn't have an excuse to throw that wench of a woman back into my face." "It is your fault for keeping her alive in the first place, and then we wouldn't be going through this." "I need her bad luck to stay within the palace walls so that she can bring them down instead and you know how she is; she will push for anything that she cannot have." "And how do you plan to bring the so-called dead concubines in?" "The whole Royal Family is superstitious enough, I only need to interfere with the Astrology Office a little to carry out that work." "And what about this tour that they will likely carry out by boat?" "I need to round up the weaker family members and turn them against The Third Prince that they all fear so much; a boat is perfect to carry out a rebellion of any sort and it is a great environment to increase fear." "Wouldn't it be easier for us to be invited on the tour ourselves? It would be almost impossible for me but not for you surely?" "I cannot be seen anywhere near The Third Prince, or it will give the whole thing away." "Then Yeon…." "Not when she is pregnant; and even if she weren't, she has made it pretty clear that is completely fed up with scheming, especially in the palace." "She has children, a husband and brother to think about; of course she would be fed up." "But it is a large part of what attracted me to her in the first place." "She had to do it her whole life out of survival and nothing more when it came to be a game to you. Honestly, she is the smartest women living in a time where smart women are either burned for being witches or they have to resort to cross-dressing. Her being an orphan with a disability probably weighed her down more than you realise, despite being a married woman now with children. Those labels will follow her for the rest of her life along with the title of being her father's daughter, she will most likely want to just melt into your home and live in obscurity for the rest of her life. Hasn't she achieved enough, anyways? Without getting seriously maimed or injured?"
"Well, I suppose that you do have a point there, but still…" "Just ask for her advice, isn't that the same thing? Ask her for plans if you really want and nothing more; isn't that what you wanted from her since the beginning?" "Yes…and then I saw how brilliant she was and…" "You still bullied her under the pretence of being in awe of her? You really are as complicated as you look, aren't you?" "Goodnight Hwa-Wol."
Educating Hwa-Wol was one of the moves I had made in may lifetime that I will never come to regret at all; she was the sort of influence that I wanted around my wife, who I was beginning to miss terribly along with my twins who were causing complete chaos in our home now that they were walking earlier than planned. Not a day went by when Hana accidentally broke something and cried in confusion before walking over to me and clinging onto me with her little hands that were about the same size of the jewellery that she liked to grasp on her mother whenever she could. And my son, he couldn't stop climbing on to pop everything and anything, which included myself when I wanted to nap which my wife found hilarious. He was in a phase where he followed me around everywhere I went, which was rather irritating in the beginning until I realised that he was already trying to copy everything I was doing when he was under 1 years old already. Having my son idolise me to this extent already gave me a new sense of confidence and a new life to look forward to with my children who would surely carry on my work as well as help their uncle manage the village when he got old enough- and stopped paying a little too much attention to his wife when the villagers needed his help more.
Climbing into an empty bed with nothing to hold onto and no small feet crawling all over me gave me a hollow feeling that I never wanted to experience again, especially when I looked at their little locks of hairs that I had attached to my sword alongside my wife's first embroidery piece for me. Hana had curls in her hair that I could not wait to see as she grew up into a tiny version of her mother and my son's was as straight as mine. And as for my wife…I will make everything up to her when I returned to our home and she realised exactly what I had done for her family as well as our own, especially now that we had new life on the way. I wasn't planning on being away from her for more than a month at most as nothing really special happened within the first trimester of her pregnancies. It was her cravings that I was excited for; I loved Hana with al of my heart and I honestly could not imagine loving any more girls than I did with Hana and Bo-Geom who was already acting like a big sister to her when she could, so I really hoped to have sons from here on out. Sons who could live lives that I never could, who had the same ambitions as I did and were even more powerful than I could be in this lifetime with my own status that had also held me back in this lifetime. Because that was the destiny that I was bound to have in this lifetime with my wife, my soulmate and my ever-youthful lover.