"Jinxes…what if we get blamed for becoming jinxes…" "Madame Nam?" "The Astrological Office…The Prefecture Office…the new home…the new servants" "Madame, your husband has arrived and he is very vexed indeed…" "a solution, that is all I need, a solution to everything at once, including this issue of my husband's nephew and this marriage…" "…I hate this fucking home, and my stupid fucking family, and that god damned woman who has ruined my entire life! I shouldn't have fallen like this so easily to have become entrapped by these lowly and backwards people! And just where the hell is my wife!" "Servant! Keep the report in my draw and withdraw all of the servants from these quarters!" "Madame! Is your life in danger! Shall I call upon to help you?" "I am not in danger, but after being addicted to opium for so long, his already bad temper is even more exaggerated by it. Just get out of here and I shall call upon you if I need any help! Or better yet, bring The Mistress Han here as quickly as you can! Hurry up!" "Wife? Where are you?" "I am simply changing my clothes husband! Have some of the lunch the servants have set out and…" "What the fuck is that awful smell! Just what the hell are these servants doing exactly! Doesn't anyone know how to function without us! This isn't even my god damned house and they have just ruined everything for me…!" "I have already asked our servant to track down who we lost…" "But this also means more work for you! You will have to train these spies all over again, just when you should be relaxing the most and my family is the one who is stressing you out the most! I should have kept you in your brother's village for a little longer and spent more time with Chul in bed than bringing you here to this mess and…" "What is done is done husband, let us lament no further. You have already spoiled him so badly that my brother doesn't want you anywhere near his son for an entire year…" "He is Seo Geom's first grandchild, what does your brother expect? Everyone treats him like royalty, so why can't I indulge the boy? I have to wait an entire year to even meet my own child…" "And you will equally favour whatever child I birth for you as you promised me? And you won't push a path in their life fanatically as your father did to you?" "I have been waiting a decade for children wife, I do not care if you give birth to all girls at this point."
"A decade? But we haven't even been together for that long, husband?" "What are you talking about? You were my father's hostage exactly a decade ago?" "But we didn't even get together until 2 years after that, maybe even 3?" "Wife…" "Husband? Let me see our marriage certificate?" "Now why would you want to see that all of a sudden?" "It is because I have every right to see such a thing, especially if my name is on it." I really didn't like his tone of voice at all, he addressed me like he did in his most eccentric days when he was high on opium and I didn't have a single clue about it all. He sounded very defensive when I asked him about this, which wasn't't like him at all since he was always very open about letting me into his private and professional life since I was his father's hostage. But I told myself that for the sake of y children, I wasn't going to always indulge him, and that was going to start now. I repeatedly rejected his instructions for me to sit down next to him and I refused to serve him even when he got irritated by my attitude and ended up surrendering to me for once. "Are you really going to just stand there in the cold with that sour look on your pretty face, wife?" "Can you explain to me why you refuse to let me see this piece of paper?" "Because I do not want you to be disturbed in any way…" It is a little too late for that." "Wife…" "I already told you that I will stop indulging you in the future as we are not little children or teenagers anymore husband. Show me, or I will walk out of here and eat with your family instead." "Well well, you will derive me of your company for those people that you yourself cannot even stand?" "I will no have to if you comply with my request." "Very well, I wasn't planning on hiding you for this long, but if you are so adamant to see it, then I will show it to you, maybe then I can have a simple meal in peace." He sounded angry but I was already used to that and he couldn't silently threaten me in the condition that I was in, so he really had no choice but to comply with my requests. But I could not help but to be suspicious of what he had said earlier; maybe I was getting paranoid in my pregnancy despite me being in my earlier stages, but with the current company that I was forced to share, it was no wonder. And I was soon proven right when I saw the legal document and I almost collapsed directly on top of my own husband.
"Husband…what on earth have you done….?" "I told you when I first had you that I was giving my body to you as a man who was willing to marry you, what on earth did you think that I meant by that?" "Is that why this marriage certificate dates back to that day? No wait, the year is different…this dates back to my first day as a hostage? Just what on earth were you thinking? What if the Emperor finds out that you deceived him and…" "and what? What can he do to me after being the person in charge of the plot to take me down? He owes me this marriage and much more."
"What does that mean husband? Are you saying that you will go against him? That you do not wish to be in the palace anymore?" I had to painfully wait for him to finish his meal before he answered me and he was infuriating me even more with every single second that had passed. In the end, he fed me my own lunch rather slowly before he pulled me into the furthest corner of our room and dismissed the servants before he finally returned back to the topic in hand. "Yeon, listen to me carefully, because I am not going to repeat myself, nor am I going to talk about this ever again with the prying eyes that we have here in this chaotic yangban. As you know about my…sexual preferences, then you must also know that since the day that we met 2 decades ago, you were always going to be my only choice of wife, despite the epileptic fits that you had back then." "But HuiJae…" "Yeon, she was an innocent crush that I had, but I was never emotionally invested in her at all. Men never are that emotionally invested in women even if they are their legal wives and so on. They only become emotionally invested…when the women in their lives bear their husband's children. HuiJae was in the peak of her prime when myself and your brother met her, but I had never even thought about her sexually because her rude manner was so off-putting to me, even when I tried to win her over. But I was only doing so to cool my bruised ego and I didn't put much effort into it at all." "Do you really mean that husband?" "You know me best wife, do you think I have ever lied to you about her at all to you?" "I just simply cannot explain her obsession with you otherwise…." "She cannot have your brother, so she is 'settling' for me instead; women always choose the rich men over the loves of their lives…" "But I have not! Your wealth has brought us comfort and I cannot deny that, but you know that I have never asked you for anything at all…!" "I know wife, this is a quality of yours that drew you to me and that I want you to pass down to my children." "Husband?" "Wife, all men take note of the women whom they want their children to take after and of course I always knew that there was a possibility of me having a daughter. I want my daughter to take after you in every single way…." "…and that is why you kept sleeping with me as much as you demanded me to? And that is also why you dated our marriage certificate back a decade?" "You were my wife the day that I discovered that I preferred the other sex more, since I still needed a wife. What I did with you was simply me indulging in my rights that I have over you, even if it was before our marriage." "So everything that I have been through since I left your father's yangban…?"
"I really did not want it to come to this wife, but as you did legally do all of those things in my absence as my wife…well I guess that I can easily hold it against you as your husband." "You wouldn't dare to…" I tried to fight him off of me amidst my shock and fear of him, but he had wrapped his huge arms around my waist and had laid his hand against my belly as gently as he possibly could, which I knew wasn't easy for him to do at all. But it stopped me in my tracks as he dug his pointy chin into the side of my neck so deeply that it was beginning to hurt me, but I more afraid of him than anything at this point. The silence was so loud between us that it was starting to drive me crazy and it took another feeble attempt of escape on my part to make him open up once again in the most resolute tone of voice that I had ever heard him use in my entire life. This man that had myself and his future child in a vice grip was not my man that I fell for all over again in his father's yangban, the man that I had waited for to return to me. This man that held me was a more manipulative, just as dangerously ambitious, more muscular man who wast still a high risk to drugs if it were around him. And the fact that he was treating me like fragile glass due to my pregnancy and couldn't have me as he wanted me was making his temper rise a lot more than it would have done in my presence in the past. "Forgive me wife, but you are my entire life and I cannot let you run rampant anymore, not now that I cannot protect you as I could back in the day. I love everything about you, I truly do and I have the perfect image of how my children will turn out. But that means that I need you to stay home with me instead of running back and forth from here to the palace and back and endangering your life at will for my sake as you did in your youth. You are my woman, my soulmate and the mother of my children and future, and you cannot even die without my permission. So you stay at home, you retrain these servants and you figure this entire mess of my family because only you can do so. I only want the justice that I deserve before I follow through with your life plan for myself and I step out of the palace when they need me the most. Then we can raise our family in peace and tranquility and you will have your freedom once again when our children are old enough to fight their own battles." "And what about your…male entertainment…?" "I am done with that side of my life from the moment that you finally bore me some fruit. I am letting all of them go and cutting ties with them all for you." "Husband…" "if you give up you're freedom for me even temporarily, then I can do this for you for the rest of my life, wife. Well, the lunch wasn't as good as your cooking, but I am full enough to take a nap, and you know that I do not like sleeping without you…" without saying another word, he just dragged me into our bed and undressed himself right in front of me to make sure that I knew what I was missing out on before he enveloped me in his arms so that I could not escape even if I wished to whilst he slept. Myself on the other hand was still rather disturbed by the recent events of today, so I was left to ponder about my own future for the very first time as I lay in the hands of both my captor and my husband whom despite everything, I was still too attracted to, to even think about leaving him was not a viable option for me at all. Where would I go with his children growing in my belly? Absolutely nowhere at all…"