Baek Seungjo, haunted by the ghost of a man who had died from lack of sleep, opened his eyes around the time the savory smell of cooking rice seeped through the gaps in the paper door.

Nansil, seeming to have made up her mind to show what she was capable of, brought out a lavish evening spread so generous the table legs might have buckled under the weight. The wild grape wine he had specifically requested was there, of course.

“Please accept this.”

I tilted the bottle and filled his cup with the deep red wild grape wine. Baek Seungjo watched in silence, then suddenly put on a mischievous expression and asked.

“Did you put poison in this wine as well?”

“I had no poison left, so I could not.”

My brazen answer, delivered without so much as a blink, seemed to amuse him greatly. He threw his head back and burst out laughing.

Why are you laughing? I was not joking.

He had slept the entire day away, so he would not be tired now. Which meant he might truly come for me tonight.

That was why I had planned to mix a sleeping draft into this wild grape wine. But I had spent the whole day serving as his pillow and had no chance to obtain any.

While he drank down the undoctored wild grape wine with evident pleasure, I picked up my chopsticks. Attending to a man’s meal was also part of a government courtesan’s duties.

Since it was the first bite, I piled a generous helping of the mild, appetite-rousing radish greens onto his spoon first, then moved my chopsticks toward the golden-grilled croaker.

From childhood, I had been particularly hopeless at picking the flesh off fish. I would crumble perfectly good pieces to bits more often than not, so Nansil had always done it for me. On the occasional times I shared a table with Seungjo, I had happily accepted every piece he picked out and fed me without a second thought.

“How old are you, and you still cannot handle chopsticks properly. It is embarrassing.”

“It is not that. It is just that it tastes best when you pick it out for me, Brother.”

“Tsk, all mouth and no substance…”

After I became a lowborn, I could no longer indulge in such luxuries. It was not that I had shed that pampered habit out of any desire to improve myself, for fear of punishment if I still acted like a precious young lady. The truth was simply that valuable fish never appeared on the meal tray of a government slave.

On occasion I had to sit beside men at their dining and drinking tables and provide the same service Nansil once had for me. Through that, I had grown somewhat practiced, and I had come to pride myself on being able to pick fish flesh cleanly enough.

“Ha…”

Baek Seungjo had been watching my hands in silence and let out a short, helpless laugh. My skill was still pitiful in his eyes.

“What sin could this dried croaker possibly have committed to suffer dismemberment at your hands?”

“…I am sorry.”

He must have found it thoroughly exasperating, because he reached over and took the chopsticks right out of my deflated hands and began working them himself.

…He does it so well.

I forgot my duties as a courtesan and watched the man I was meant to serve move his hands with effortless grace. He picked the thick croaker flesh clean with practiced ease, then set it on a spoonful of glossy white rice.

I assumed it would naturally go into his mouth. But the spoon moved suddenly and stopped right in front of my face.

“How can you…”

Before I could finish asking how he could give it to me, the spoon slipped through the gap between my parted lips. The fish flesh that landed on my tongue carried a rich, familiar taste I had not known in a long time.

I had been a picky eater as a child, and the only time I ever scraped my rice bowl clean was when a savory croaker appeared on the table, so the house never ran out of it. My father’s smiling face flashed through my mind, the image of him coming home with a string of dried croaker in hand.

The croaker I tasted after so long was so good my eyes stung with tears. But why was he feeding this precious thing to me?

My cheeks were too full to speak, so I simply stared at him with wide eyes. Baek Seungjo read my meaning and said flatly.

“I dislike croaker. Too fishy.”

Has he always disliked it? The man I remembered in my memory never turned away any food, gratefully clearing everything that appeared on the table.

Perhaps, living in someone else’s home, he had never felt he could say he disliked something.

I chewed and swallowed the rice and croaker in my mouth and said.

“Then I will tell them not to serve croaker from now on.”

“No. Serve it every day.”

“…Pardon?”

“I intend to drain this provincial office’s stores completely dry.”

The corners of Baek Seungjo’s eyes curved with a sly gleam. He seemed to hold no fondness for Park Wonchul either.

Could that be why he had buried my poisoning attempt without a word?

Whatever the case, he did not appear to pledge blind loyalty to the Minister of War’s faction.

“What else can I bleed that man dry of…”

He rested his chin in his hand and fell into thought. He stared at me, sitting there shamelessly monopolizing the croaker, then slapped his knee as though a fine idea had struck him.

“I should have a restorative tonic prepared.”

Only then did I remember that he had said he was staying behind because he was not in good health.

“But my lord, what ails you so that you need medicine?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, I…”

“Are you thinking of mixing something incompatible into the decoction once you know what my illness is?”

…I was no longer sure whether it was truly a good thing that he had no hold over me.

This was what they meant by the world turning upside down.

I was the one meant to serve, yet I had been the one served instead. By the time his meal was finished, I had not even sat down before my own dinner tray, yet I was already too full to eat another bite.

Baek Seungjo said he wanted to take a look around the detached quarters to aid his digestion, and he took me outside with him. We strolled through the small courtyard, which offered little to see, and were looking down at the pond gleaming like a mirror in the soft moonlight when Meoru approached and reported.

“The bathwater is ready, my lord.”

Attending to a bath was also a chamber courtesan’s duty. Reluctant as I was, I had no choice but to follow him into the bathhouse.

Creak.

I closed the door, turned around, and hesitantly approached Baek Seungjo as he began undressing. The man had just shrugged his jeogori off his shoulders when he suddenly turned to look at me, his expression startled.

“Why did you come in here?”

He reacted with alarm, treating me the way one might treat a shameless intruder who had crept in to spy on a woman bathing. I blinked, at a loss.

“I only came to do my work.”

“This… is your work?”

Did receiving help at a bath embarrass him that much? Baek Seungjo’s face grew even redder. And yet I could not understand why the warm air of the bathhouse suddenly felt so cold against my skin. I wrapped my arms around myself against the creeping chill and said.

“Yes, attending to a bath is a chamber courtesan’s duty.”

“Then… have you ever bathed a man before?”

“I have not. So I may be clumsy, but I have been taught how in words.”

“Ah…”

He let out a single, unreadable sound and turned his head sharply away from me.

“I have no need of it. Get out.”

I did not offer a second time. I stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind me. Almost immediately, the soft rustling of clothes being removed seeped through from the other side.

To think I had nearly been made to look at and touch a man’s bare body. What a tremendous relief.

I pressed a hand to my still-startled chest and tilted my head.

Had the excuse of being untrained and clumsy actually worked? But judging by the way I had practically been chased out, I suspected the reason was something else entirely.

What on earth could make that brazen, unflappable man blush like that? And why had he looked at me the way one might look at a suspicious stranger who had snuck in to steal a glimpse of something private?

In this world, no man was embarrassed to untie his sash in front of a courtesan unless he was someone who had never known a woman.

…Wait.

It was not only the bath attendance he had recoiled from. Had they not said that the courtesans of Hanyang threw themselves at him eagerly, yet the number of women he had actually been intimate with could be counted on one hand? Now that I thought about it, the strange points were not one or two.

Surely not…

A possibility suddenly came to me that would explain all of his odd behavior in one stroke.

…Could that chronic illness of his have left some mark on his body too shameful to show another person?

I had been putting myself at ease after seeing him recoil from the bath attendance. If he was that reluctant to let anyone see the marks on his body, he would have no intention of taking me to bed tonight.

“Sleep well, my lord.”

After laying out his bedding, I bowed naturally and made to retreat, nearly fleeing as I did so.

The languid voice that drifted from behind me caught me by the ankle.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

The fact that he asked that, of all things, was ominous. I pretended with perfect composure that I had no idea whatsoever what he meant by stopping me.

“I was going to retire to the servants’ quarters.”

A small servants’ quarters was attached to the entrance of the detached building. The room was only one and quite cramped, but surely sleeping there with Nansil and Meoru would be far more comfortable for my peace of mind.

Of course, this kind of feigned ignorance had no chance of working on Baek Seungjo.

“A chamber courtesan would leave her master alone?”

He invoked my duty and lifted one side of the blanket. When a master told a courtesan to come inside, she was expected, in her role, to undress and crawl in.