The goat returned in the morning with the insolence of a minor god. It chose the back lane to test curiosities and collapsed, in one punctual act, a peace the household had kept for months. Hana swore softly while she scraped the mess into a bucket; Seo‑yeon re‑folded manifests with the calm of someone who made order of people's lives for a living; Derrigan wiped mud from his boots and pretended a heroic tale about a rope and a sausage.
Minji clutched the wooden horse at the windowsill and watched them like a small judge. Haeun counted the stitches on a handkerchief as if that could keep everything in its place.
"Good," Seo‑yeon said at last, folding her hands. "Small annoyances keep us breathing. We have a steward coming on the morrow."
Derrigan's mouth went dry enough to make him forget his joke. "You wrote to your father?"
Seo‑yeon folded another manifest, slow and precise. "I have sent a note. He will not move for sentiment, only for form. The steward will require receipts and signatures. He will take children who are presented with papers properly sealed."
Hana's needle paused mid‑stitch. "You mean…we're sending them?"
Seo‑yeon's face softened only by the margin a clerk gives to necessary grief. "For a season. To Seoul. My father will receive them under Master Kim's household. Hana will be listed as attendant."
Minji's fingers closed around the horse so hard its painted tail nearly creaked. "Will Hana go?"
Hana looked at the child and then at Seo‑yeon. "I go where they go," she said. Her voice was small, but it carried the kind of promise that does not allow bargaining. "On paper I am attendant. In practice I am the one who stitches them safe and brings them back when I can."
Derrigan swallowed the sentence he'd been saving. "We've been shadowed lately," he said. "Readers asking for lines, buyers sniffing at phrases. We can't have the girls near that noise."
Seo‑yeon nodded. "We buy them time. We keep their names out of market talk. We give Master Kim the courtesy he expects and in return he keeps them where a shout will be heard. We document everything and Hana signs as attendant. It's the safest cover we can make."
Hana palmed a small length of red thread and rolled it between her fingers like a worry‑stone. "I'll stitch a ward into their collars," she said. "Not flashy. A stitch that looks like mending but holds a listening seam. I'll write every night the children are away and send one small thing every fortnight—something for them to know they aren't being left."
Seo‑yeon made the practical gestures that shaped obligation into law: lists, schedules, and a single, curt phrase. "A weekly letter from the steward's household. Two visits by Hana a season, each no less than forty‑eight hours. We remit a modest stipend classified as educational support. I will file it in the registry as a temporary guardianship under a cousin's name, to hide direct ties."
Derrigan felt the room shrink to the size of decisions. "What does Master Kim want in return?" he asked. "Powerful men don't take favors for nothing."
Seo‑yeon already had the answer. "A public courtesy at season's end—a dinner where the family appears to acknowledge relation. It is small and visible and keeps the patriarch's honor intact. We give him the ceremony. He gives the children shelter."
Hana set the book—the dog‑eared copy Derrigan had bought the other day—on the table and tapped the gutter with a clean nail. "This margin note mentions Blackwater Quay," she said. "Riva asked about marks. Buyers are humming lines. If we send the children away, it lets us watch the market without worrying about them being in harm's way."
Derrigan folded his hands on the wood and let his voice be blunt. "I kept the line to myself because it felt like a private map. I didn't want it turned into a tool for someone else. But if buyers are being cued, this isn't just a private nostalgia. It's something that could make the kids visible."
Seo‑yeon's eyes had a clerk's steel to them. "Then we move now. We make a list of what goes with the girls—clothes, a few keepsakes, a signed inventory of comforts and a simple note about the warded collar. The steward will want receipts; we give him receipts and no more."
Haeun's small voice came from the corner. "Will you come back?"
Derrigan crouched to her height and tried for the crooked smile he used when he didn't know what else to give. "I'll bring you stew and a story that makes your teeth hurt from laughing," he said. "And I will bring the horse new paint if you like."
Hana finished the stitch she'd been working and held the needle up like a badge. "We will not abandon them," she promised. "We will hide them where someone with a name can shout if it needs to be heard. I will be the hand that stays with them."
Seo‑yeon pulled a small envelope from her satchel and slid it across the table. "I will send a formal note to the steward tonight. I name the days for visits and the stipend. We set the terms now while we can. We make the transaction visible enough to be legitimate and private enough not to invite questions."
They wrote lists—what Haeun would need for school, what Minji insisted on taking for luck, a small carved horse to replace the one Haeun loved in case it broke on the road. Derrigan packed a trunk himself and left room for the small comforts Hana insisted on: a jar of good tea, a soft cap, a string of their favorite rhymes written on a scrap.
"Who will tell Anja?" Derrigan asked.
Seo‑yeon hesitated the length of a breath. "We tell her tomorrow. Tobin keeps his mouth shut until the steward arrives. We move at sunrise. The steward will require our signature and a witness."
Hana's face, usually unreadable until a seam appeared in it, softened. "I will sign," she said. "I will be there when they hand the children over and when they are accepted at Master Kim's hall. My name will be on the papers so the world can see a hand attached to them."
They closed the plan with small, domestic gestures: Hana humming a stitch chant, Seo‑yeon folding a manifest until it sat like a neat stone, Derrigan pressing his palm to Minji's head and feeling the sass of a child under his hand.
That night, while the city turned and the market cooled, Derrigan kept the dog‑eared copy under his coat and watched the household move through the familiar motions of making safety: lists filed, money counted, promises spoken aloud like prayers. He had not wanted to let the line slip into public use. He had not wanted to give the memory away. But there were things that mattered more than possession—two small lives, the sound of a wooden horse in a child's hands—and he found himself willing to pay the price for their protection.
Outside, the market breathed its uncertain gossip. Inside, the home stitched a new seam: paperwork, a steward's coming, Hana's role as attendant. The plan was careful and not without cost, but it bought what mattered most—time and distance, a thin, valuable thing. They would send the children away in the morning, with Hana at their side on paper and in truth, and whatever the market wanted with phrases and lines could take its turn without the most vulnerable in reach.