Baek Seungjo wrapped my hand in his large one and stroked it gently. It was the same touch that had soothed my hunched shoulders the night before. The same touch that had made me fall asleep in the arms of the man who had abandoned me, turning me into a woman with no sense at all.

“I am truly sorry. I would like you to know that it pained me as well.”

I had just been disappointed, thinking he was no different from Park Wonchul after all, and yet he told me he had found it distressing too. On top of that, I had never in my wildest dreams expected an apology.

I could not believe it, and I looked up at him with wide eyes. Baek Seungjo flushed with what appeared to be genuine shame at his own conduct, but he did not look away from me and continued his explanation.

“I had no wish to humiliate you with such vulgar words, but there was no way to deflect without letting the sparks land on you. Still, is it not better to speak ill of you and dampen their interest than to sing your praises and have those animals come after you?”

“That is true.”

Every word of it was right. What had looked like humiliation on the surface was in truth a painful stratagem, a deliberate act of playing the villain to protect me. The feeling of being trampled into the mud dissolved the moment I confirmed his sincerity, melting away like spring snow.

“Thank you, my lord.”

From the moment he had lied about sharing my bed, Baek Seungjo had been thinking of my wellbeing. I did not understand why he would shield a mere courtesan like this.

Then a suspicion slid coldly through my mind.

Could he already know that I am Seollyeon? And was he behaving this way to ease his guilty conscience?

Even as we strolled through the marketplace with its abundance of things to see, my thoughts were entirely fixed on the man walking beside me, hand in hand. I kept stealing glances at his composed face, searching for any clue.

“If you keep staring at me like that and wear my face away, you will have to answer for it for the rest of your life.”

Baek Seungjo tossed out the playful remark, then angled his gaze down and regarded me quietly.

“You have something you want to say to me.”

I drew a slow breath. To find out whether he knew my true identity, I had no choice but to probe.

“My lord, why do you show such excessive kindness to an impudent girl like me?”

Baek Seungjo stopped walking and looked down at me steadily. I stared back at his face, searching for any sign of whether he knew me or not, and he narrowed his long eyes with an expression of mild discomfort.

“Ah… surely you have not mistaken this for romantic feelings on my part. How unfortunate. As I told you before, I already have someone I love.”

“Th, that is not what I meant!”

In trying to peer into Baek Seungjo’s true feelings, I had only managed to strike my own foot with my own axe. I had gained nothing, and all I was left with was a burning face and a sense of injustice.

“It is simply that there is no man who shows kindness to a courtesan without wanting something in return, and I was curious. I did not harbor even the tiniest speck of the absurd delusion that you harbored feelings for me, my lord. I truly asked out of nothing but pure, simple curiosity.”

I rambled on without pausing for breath, and Baek Seungjo, who had been looking down at me in silence, could no longer hold back his laughter. He turned his head and raised his fan to cover his mouth. Only then did I understand.

He had only been teasing me.

From that point on, I pressed my lips together and walked looking straight ahead.

“Are you sulking?”

“I am not.”

It had been said to tease me, but the truth was he had not the slightest interest in me, let alone any feelings. He did not even know my name.

When a fortune teller sitting on the ground called out, “Come and let me read the fate written in your name!“, Baek Seungjo turned to me as though something had just occurred to him and asked.

“Come to think of it, what did you say your name was?”

“Nagyeong.”

“Nagyeong… Nagyeong…”

He tilted his head, looked up at the sky, and turned my name over on his tongue, then asked the one thing I dreaded most.

“What does it mean?”

I truly did not want to say this wretched name’s meaning aloud. Least of all in front of Baek Seungjo. But I could not leave a question unanswered, so I gave my reply with the feeling of someone forced to swallow something bitter.

“…It is written with the character for falling, and the character for flower petals.”

A flower that has fallen to the ground. A phrase writers commonly used to speak of fleeting beauty or the emptiness of life, but given to a woman as a name, it was neither beautiful nor poetic in the least.

Baek Seungjo seemed to think the same.

“Whoever gave you that name had a wretched way of naming a person.”

Park Wonchul gave it to me. To mark that he had broken me.

“Either their character is lacking, or their heart is rotten, or they are simply not right in the head.”

All three, my lord.

How ashamed and sickened I had been when I first received this courtesan name. But because of my circumstances, I had been forced to accept it without showing a single trace of displeasure. And now here he was, saying cleanly what I had always wanted to say. The resentment I had felt toward him moments ago lifted entirely, and I felt a clean, clear relief.

Then he tapped his closed fan against his lips, appearing to think something over, and announced.

“I will call you Yeong¹The name 영 (Yeong) is the second character of 낙영 (落英), meaning “flower petals.”.”

At this, I felt a pang of hurt once more.

He would call this courtesan Flower? When he had never once called his own betrothed by such a name.

My real name was Seollyeon. It was the name my father had given me, inspired by a dream of a white lotus blooming pure and modest in the cold snow.

It was a beautiful name, but the tongue had to move quickly to say it, so my parents had called me Yeon. And so others called me that as well.

Everyone except Seungjo. Without ever explaining why, he had stubbornly called me Seol.

And he had also called me plain.

Seungjo had never been one for flattery. Back then, I must have been too plain for him to bring himself to call me Flower.

So now that I had become somewhat worth looking at, he felt moved to call me Flower? Men were truly as shallow as a sheet of door paper.

In any case, it was a tremendous stroke of luck that my face had changed enough that Seungjo did not recognize me.

I told myself it was for the best and followed along behind him. Baek Seungjo seemed to have a fixed destination in mind, stopping to ask for directions as he pressed forward without hesitation.

I had assumed, since he said he would buy me a hairpin, that we were heading to a ceramics and goods shop. But his steps came to a stop in front of a shabby apothecary in a dim back alley, one that smelled of bitterness rather than fragrance.

Park Wonchul had been stingy, so he must have come to find medicinal herbs himself.

But why had he passed over the fine, well-known apothecaries on the main street and sought out this dreary little place tucked away in a back alley?

Baek Seungjo did not turn back at the sight of that gloomy exterior and stepped over the threshold without hesitation. I followed him inside to find the apothecary deserted, not a single customer in sight.

“Huh?”

The owner, who looked as though the thought of doing business had never crossed his mind, had been lying stretched out on a narrow wooden bench and scrambled to his feet in surprise at the sound of the door opening.

To my eyes, this apothecary was the suspicious one, yet the owner seemed to find the well-dressed nobleman who had appeared out of nowhere even more suspicious. He tracked Baek Seungjo with narrowed eyes and asked in a guarded tone.

“What are you looking for?”

Baek Seungjo clasped his hands behind his back and looked unhurriedly around the dust-covered medicine cabinets, then opened.

“I was told I could find rare medicinal herbs here.”

“Ah, yes…”

The owner bent and bobbed in a bow while his eyes sized Baek Seungjo up, taking his measure.

“And who told you to come here?”

“I am staying at the provincial office.”

“Ah, forgive me for not recognizing you.”

That single answer seemed to be enough, for the wariness drained from the owner’s face and he asked nothing more.

“This way, my lord.”

We followed the owner into a small room at the back, and the strange smell grew considerably stronger. The unsettling air was now something I could feel against my skin, and it raised the hairs on my arms.

“Please sit comfortably. I will bring tea.”

I had no wish to sit, but Baek Seungjo sat down without any sign of concern, so there was nothing else I could do.

A short while later, the owner brought out the tea, and my eyes went wide. White porcelain teacups, entirely out of place in this shabby apothecary. And the tea itself was ssanghwatang, the kind where even the scent alone told you it had been brewed with a generous hand of expensive herbs.

Baek Seungjo took a sip first, then closed his eyes slowly and gave a nod.

“I have come to the right place.”

The owner had shown no sign of any interest in selling, yet he must have been a man who took pride in his craft, for he curved the corner of his mouth in satisfaction at the praise. He then settled himself properly before Baek Seungjo and asked in a soft, probing voice.

“What medicinal herbs do you need?”

“I have a chronic ailment.”

“For a young and vigorous lord such as yourself to suffer illness, heaven is truly indifferent. May I ask what the illness is?”