The enemy who took my father’s head paid for the privilege of undoing my sash.

Tonight was that night. The night the beasts who slaughtered my parents and destroyed my family had finally resolved to defile me as well.

“I heard the traitor’s daughter became a government courtesan, so I came to see for myself.”

Have they no fear of heaven? I had to sit before a mirror and make myself into a plaything for men who barged in and spewed their shameless filth without a trace of remorse.

I had not yet applied the rouge, yet color had risen to my face. The face layered over with fury stared back at me from the mirror with fierce resolve. Tonight was the night the courtesan Nagyeong came of age, and the night the spirit of Han Seollyeon, daughter of a noble house, was laid to rest.

I moved my hands despite myself, and the woman in the mirror became a stranger. The skin beneath the powder was pale as a corpse, and the red rouge pressed to my lips looked like blood coughed up after swallowing poison.

Over this body, no better than a cadaver, I draped the silk that the beast who intended to devour it had personally bestowed. The crimson skirt, which looked dyed in my father’s blood, mocked me. What a vulgar burial shroud to wear on the road to the afterlife. How could I ever face my parents?

Father. Mother. Your daughter will wash away this shame in the red blood of your enemies, and then she will follow.

I steeled my resolve for vengeance and stepped out of the gisaeng house. With every step, the silver dagger I had sharpened and tied inside my stocking pressed against my ankle, and the perfume locket tucked deep within my br*ast covering turned my wildly leaping heart to ice.

Outside, the lantern procession for the fourth day of the fourth month had turned the night into a blaze of light. On a night when everyone floated lanterns down the river and prayed for lives in full bloom, the men gathered at this Pyongan Provincial Office sought to snap the lotus flower and thrust it into the mud.

They would not succeed. I would send their heads floating down the River of Three Roads first, and pray for my parents’ passage into paradise.

The moment had come to meet the companions I would bring with me to the afterlife. I climbed up to Seonhwadang, where tonight’s banquet would be held, and stood before the door, from behind which seeped the greedy laughter of men.

“I am Nagyeong. I have come at your summons.”

I had been so intent on concealing the emotions roiling beneath my throat that I must have overcorrected, for my voice came out clear and pure without a single blemish. Perhaps it sounded strange to them as well. The shadows shifting across the thin paper door stilled, and a silence fell like a dousing of cold water.

“Enter.”

Then came the voice of my enemy, so familiar it had jolted me awake trembling even in dreams. I hid the murderous intent rising within me once more behind a coquettish smile and opened the door.

A thick wave of liquor smell hit me at once, and the gazes of the men I had to kill tonight lunged at me like wild beasts.

At first they all seemed to lose their words at the sight of me, sitting with mouths agape and blank expressions. But their eyes soon revealed their true nature, filling with foul l*st as they slid slowly and stickily over every inch of me. One man seated at the lowest position even forgot his dignity and snickered under his breath.

The cold silence of the men curdled into the heat of carnal desire in an instant.

Seven men had come to loosen a woman’s sash, yet there was only one woman here to receive their hunger.

The obscene spectacle of several men attempting to claim a single courtesan’s first night all at once was something I had never heard of or witnessed before.

A sudden wave of nausea surged through me, and I had to bite down hard on my teeth as I bent forward in a show of deference.

Men who fancied themselves gentlemen, intending to pass a political enemy’s daughter around through the night like a shared cup of wine. Did it not sicken them, reciting the words of sages with their mouths while casting aside benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom like worn-out sandals?

But it was laughable to feel any surprise. From the moment they framed my father, they had already been beasts with no trace of human decency.

My father had done nothing more than fulfill his duty as a censor of the Office of the Inspector-General, investigating the corruption of officials. I had no way of knowing what crimes that group had committed, but one thing I knew with absolute clarity: they had fabricated the charge of treason against my innocent father to bury their own guilt.

Had the outcome not already been decided five years ago? My father had vanished as dew on the execution ground, while they had survived and gone on to enjoy wealth and glory.

Was that still not enough to satisfy them? That they had to trample even a daughter who had never once been grazed by the bloody winds of political strife. Their viciousness made my whole body shake with revulsion.

Yet at the same time, I thought: this was not only retribution against those who had stood against them, but a razor-sharp warning to any who might think of turning away.

Two or three of the men could not bring themselves to look directly at me and turned their heads away, fidgeting restlessly with their cups. They had surely seen their own flesh and blood in my face.

They understood it too. That if they tried to break apart that secret and shadowy alliance, their own precious daughters and granddaughters would end up on the drinking table just as I had.

Facing that gathering of men with human faces and animal hearts, my whole body trembled, and yet my chest leapt with something close to joy. Thanks to them, the enemies who had been scattered in all directions had come together in one place of their own accord.

And more than that, I had finally learned who their leader was, the one who had stayed hidden in the shadows all this time without ever revealing himself.

“What are you doing? Go and sit beside the Minister of War, His Excellency.”

When Park Wonchul, the Pyongan Provincial Governor who had arranged this banquet, urged me forward, I doubted my own ears.

Why is the Minister of War here….

I had been prostrated flat in greeting, and I lifted my head to look at the old man seated in the place of honor.

Kwon Ikseon, Minister of War. A scholar renowned for being as noble and dignified as a solitary crane, and he was in truth nothing but a rotted, corrupt scoundrel.

A sudden chill ran across my skin. He was no mere minister. He was the king’s father-in-law.

Had my father known he was pointing his blade at the very pinnacle of power? Only now did the question of why my family had to be destroyed so completely, in a single moment, finally find its answer.

“I meet Your Excellency for the first time. I am called Nagyeong.”

I swallowed the humiliation rising to the corners of my eyes and sat down beside my aged enemy. As I strained to hide my trembling hands and poured wine into an empty cup, I felt the old man’s gaze fix itself to my face.

Rather than displaying the n*ked l*st of the other men, he watched me with the eyes of a kindly grandfather. That made it all the more unsettling.

His wrinkled lips took in the wine I had poured, and a gentle voice followed.

“You are the daughter of the late Han Sangheon, I was told.”

“…Yes, I am.”

It was infuriating that he asked as though he did not know, when it was precisely because I was Han Sangheon’s daughter that he had summoned me here in the first place. His clicking tongue, feigning sympathy, was even more so.

“Tsk, tsk…. I heard you had fallen to low station through no fault of your own, born to the wrong father, and my heart went out to your wretched fate. But seeing you today, it seems I worried for nothing. You are as lovely as a peach blossom, with no sign of hardship on your face at all. What a relief.”

A relief, he called it, that a woman who had stood one day away from her wedding had become a government courtesan subjected to the mockery of countless men. The blood surged inside me at those insulting words, but I concealed my true feelings and instead showed the presence of mind to flatter the provincial governor seated beside me.

“It is thanks to His Excellency the Governor, who took pity on this girl and looked after her with such special care.”

When you have set a trap, it is only right to lower yourself and keep the quarry pleased until it walks in on its own.

The Minister of War nodded with evident satisfaction at my soft reply. Apparently finding it quite gratifying that the daughter of a man who had dared defy him was now meekly compliant, he did not stop there but continued to heap insults upon me.

“You were raised as the treasured jewel of a noble house, cherished all your life, and yet overnight you became a servant pouring drinks for men. Does that not grieve you?”

“I consider it a blessing far beyond what this lowly life deserves, that I am able to preserve it at all.”

“You know your place, how admirable. But seeing how skilled you are at attending to men, perhaps this was your true calling all along.”

“…….”

A courtesan by nature, he said. The provocation grew more and more outrageous. At that point I read the old man’s intent.

The old man wanted to watch me crumble under the weight of my own fury. Go ahead, Your Excellency, the Minister of War. Provoke me through the whole night. See if I break.

I had not the slightest intention of showing any more weakness and sharpening their appetite for drink.

“I am humbled beyond words that you think so highly of this girl’s lowly talents. Please, allow me to pour you a cup.”

I smiled with the face of a base courtesan who had forgotten all the manners of a noble house, and tilted the wine bottle without a hint of disturbance. Now even the provincial governor Park Wonchul thrust his cup toward me, and as I poured, he ran his tongue over his lips watching my face. He was the very image of a snake eyeing its prey.

“Come to think of it, the girl is the very image of her mother, who was a peerless beauty in her own right.”

The governor’s vulgar remark drew a hearty laugh from the Minister of War, who chimed in readily.

“I once saw Lady Sim in her lifetime and thought she had come back to life.”

Good heavens. How dare they bring up her mother’s name, these men who had come to claim a girl young enough to be their granddaughter?

When even my mother, as good as killed by their hands, became fodder for their table talk, I nearly dropped the wine bottle. I gripped it tighter, forcing more strength into my trembling hand, when it happened.

“Come to think of it, were you not originally meant to become the wife of Baek Seungjo, the Chief Royal Secretary?”

Crash.

The moment even my heartless husband was brought into their mouths, I dropped the wine bottle entirely.