“If a single snake has you in this state, what would you do if you came across a tiger in these mountains?”

“A ti… a tiger.”

Was this enough? If she was this frightened, surely she would not do anything so reckless as climbing the mountain alone again.

Hwido thought of the envoy journey to Qing that lay ahead. His concern was that while he was away, she might throw herself into some other dangerous errand.

It was exceedingly rare for him to concern himself with a human, but the unfamiliar sensation he had felt upon first seeing her was not unpleasant, and his gaze kept drifting back to her.

“There are plenty of servants working for Shim Hwiryeong, so why do you seek out hardship every time? Until now I have watched over you from behind, but I too must soon be away. So learn to value yourself.”

At the soft warmth of a woman’s body against his fingertips, he felt a dull ache below for reasons he could not explain. It was a reaction toward a human he had never once experienced before, and he set Bun down with a show of indifference and pressed a bundle of medicinal herbs into her hands.

“Take these. Brew them for Shim Hwiryeong. These herbs, said to be good for women, will restore her strength. And do not climb this mountain carelessly again. Do you understand.”

Only then did understanding seem to reach her, and her round eyes trembled faintly. The clear tears that had been welling up spilled over and ran down her cheeks.

“Yes, I will keep it in my heart. My lord…”

At the soft murmur of her quiet voice, Hwido bit down on his back teeth. It had begun as curiosity, but his gaze kept following that woman.

Bun, endlessly modest and without a trace of greed, yet devoted to her mistress without limit. A foolish woman who carried out her errands in silence, knowing full well that her mistress Shim Hwiryeong was deliberately sending her into danger.

A pitiable creature prepared to risk her own life on nothing more than the sense of duty to care for her ailing mother.

The memory of the first time he had ever taken a human to heart. It had become a distant past now, a memory he could not forget.

“Phew…”

Hwido turned that faded memory over in his mind, smoked a cigarette while gazing at the moon hanging in the night sky, and then shook off the remnants of the memory the way one flicks away ash, and began to walk.

***

Good grief. He had some nerve.

Seo Hwido, who had brought her into the main bedroom saying he would drive out the malevolent spirit, had not shown his face from the opposite room for a full week.

If she had known it would come to this, she would have brought Yul into this room to keep her company.

Today of all days, Yul had been clinging to her for nearly half the day, whimpering that he missed his mother, and she had not been able to get the housework done properly. And Seo Hwido’s gaze, which kept landing on her, was sharp as ever.

“Am I a housekeeper or what…”

It was exactly three days after Yul arrived that Yeon-ah was finally able to go into town and buy buckwheat jelly, pancake, and makgeolli.

Taking the bus outside with a cute child rather than Seo Hwido, whose mere presence made it hard to breathe, was quite refreshing. Thanks to the child who laughed so easily, she had laughed quite a lot herself.

‘Noona, do you have a boyfriend?’

‘A boyfriend? No, I don’t.’

‘Come on, that’s a lie. Guys would just leave someone this pretty alone? No way.’

‘Yep, sadly so. Well, I’m not that interested either.’

‘Huh? I think our uncle is very interested in noona! He’s always staring at you and pretending he’s not, it’s so obvious! Exactly like Kim Gitae in my class! He likes his desk partner but pretends he doesn’t and bothers her all the time. Typical elementary schooler behavior…!’

She had laughed for a long time at the part about his uncle being exactly at that level.

‘What next, did you develop a hobby of getting smacked around by cats?’

That was also because it reminded her of Seo Hwido, who had appeared right on cue to get under her skin when she had tried to pet a stray cat sitting on a wall and gotten a little paw to the face.

He must get thorns in his mouth if he goes even a day without picking a fight. Every night she spent in the main bedroom, he appeared in her dreams, and she could only resent him for it.

Just a short while ago she had woken up crying, unable to bear the grief. That said it all.

Whether she wanted it or not, in every dream she found herself as Hwiryeong.

And the longing for Seo Hwido within that dream, how deep and relentless it was. Every time that desperate feeling was transmitted to her, the grief that came flooding in was more than she could endure.

And there was one more thing.

Whenever Seo Hwido visited Jeongheonjae on official business, where his gaze would turn. She felt she knew, and it made her chest burn hot.

And so she had calculated carefully to ensure the two of them would never cross paths, yet somehow a gap always appeared somewhere. The thought of following him even crossed her mind.

Of course, as a strict observer of the dream, she could not intervene in any of it. But whenever she watched Seo Hwido and Bun, who were in the same space yet seemed to exist in entirely different worlds, she had no choice but to feel in full the sense of exclusion, the indignation, and the accumulating rage that emanated from Hwiryeong.

Because of that, whenever she woke from the dream, the built-up emotions burst out as tears. Almost as though she herself were Shim Hwiryeong.

“Why is the dream this vivid…”

When Hwiryeong was alone in the dream, she would tap her own chest again and again.

I was the one who fell for him first.

Why won’t he look at me?

Why on earth?

The sense of injustice piled up layer upon layer. When it became too much to contain, she would call for Bun every night and send her on errands to the valley or the mountain.

In particular, the time she had told Bun to go pick wild bellflower roots because she wanted to eat them, there had perhaps been a part of her quietly hoping Bun would lose her footing.

But no matter how many times she was handed a leaking basin, no matter how many times she was sent to gather herbs too rare to find, Bun accomplished every last task. Without ever knowing that it only provoked Hwiryeong further.

At first, Yeon-ah had felt pity for Hwiryeong, who was jealous of Bun. The man she had been pining over so desperately had become captivated by her own maidservant. How consumed with jealousy she must have been.

But from a certain point, Yeon-ah had begun to sense a murderous intent in Hwiryeong, and now she was afraid to let the dream continue any further.

Whenever that happened, Yeon-ah wanted to march over to Seo Hwido in the opposite room and slap him across the face.

This is all your fault.

Once you took Bun to heart, you should have protected her to the very end. You should have kept Hwiryeong in the dream from going any further.

But what good would any of that do?

Yeon-ah tossed and turned, and when sleep refused to come she slowly sat up. She looked up at the clock and it was one in the morning. But regardless of how tired her body was, sleep simply would not come.

She dragged herself up and tipped the kettle sitting in the corner of the room. Gulp, gulp. The cold water settled her churning insides.

She calmed her restless heart and returned to her bedding. She took a deep breath and was about to try to sleep again when it happened.

Thud, thud.

At the heavy footsteps from beyond the paper door, Yeon-ah quickly lay back down.

Who is it? Seo Hwido?

She squeezed her eyes shut. In this house, only Seo Hwido could produce a sound that heavy.

Why, at this late hour?

Thud, thud, thud, her heart pounded. The moment he entered the quiet room, she was sure he would hear this violent beating. Had he left something behind? Why on earth at this hour of the night…

At that moment, creak, the sound of the hinged door opening reached her. Yeon-ah let all the tension drain from her body, as though in deep sleep.

From the moment the other person crossed the threshold, there were no more footsteps. The faint scent drifting over told her it was certainly Seo Hwido, but what had brought him here. Her heart felt ready to leap out of her chest.

And then it happened. The man’s cool, deepening scent reached her from just inches away.

What on earth?

The silence told her he had sat down beside her and was looking down at her.

But… why had he come?

She could not stand the curiosity. She wanted to open her eyes right then and demand to know when exactly he planned to deal with the malevolent spirit.

She was debating whether to open her eyes when she held her breath at a faint stir of movement, and in that instant the man’s warm hand came to rest on her forehead.

She nearly flinched in surprise, but Yeon-ah barely managed to hold herself still.

It was not a groping touch. He had simply laid his warm hand on her forehead.

She was wondering what on earth he was doing when the anxiety that had been simmering and roiling inside her began to gradually settle.

***

She dreamed again.

A dream of running frantically toward somewhere. A dream of falling again and again, yet rising each time like a tumbler doll and running on.

What was different from usual was that instead of the silk hanbok she always wore, she had on a plain, damp jeogori and straw sandals.

Her breath came in ragged bursts. She had no way of knowing where she was running to. But she could not stop, and so she ran and ran.

At that moment, at the far end of her vision, blurred white with fog, something faint came into view. She could not be sure, but it seemed to be a man.

Large and solid. A handsome man in a pale blue dopo and a wide-brimmed gat.

From that moment her heart began to race. She did not know him, so why did it feel like her heart was about to burst.

She told herself it was probably just from all the running she had done, but that was no reason to stop.

It was the fear that if she lost sight of that person here, she would never meet them again.

She dragged her body, which felt ready to topple from running too fast, and reached out her hand. The moment her fingertips brushed the rough texture of the dopo, the man slowly turned around.