Summer
The morning sunlight slid over the wall and began laying long shadows across the ground.
A breeze brushed the ends of the roof tiles, carrying the scent of grass, and birdsong drifted beneath the eaves.
It was a summer day so clear it seemed the sky had been washed clean, but as soon as Cheongwol stepped over the threshold, she picked up the straw broom.
The courtyard was immaculate, not a leaf or speck of dust in sight; the handmaidens must have risen before dawn to sweep it clean. And yet, despite there being nothing to clean, Cheongwol’s hands had already begun to move.
“If you can’t concentrate properly, then at least sweep.”
Even after becoming a woman, she still could not gather her scattered thoughts, and So Gayul had only sighed before placing the broom in her hands. Back then, Cheongwol had assumed she was merely disappointed and had swept the yard diligently, as if accepting punishment.
But what in the world was this?
No matter how busily she moved her hands, she could not keep up with Unhak’s leisurely sweeping. She was plainly working harder than he was, and yet she could never understand why she always fell behind.
“Brother Unhak, you’re not secretly using inner energy or something, are you?”
Frustrated, she blurted out nonsense, and Unhak burst into laughter.
“If I were learned enough to use inner energy for such a thing, I wouldn’t need to be doing this in the first place. I think I understand what you’re asking, Cheongwol. Just watch carefully.”
Cheongwol nodded slowly and studied him intently.
With each sweep of the broom, only a leaf or two moved. His motions were utterly ordinary, no different from her own, and she narrowed her eyes.
Is he teasing me?
The thought barely crossed her mind before she had to widen her eyes in surprise.
“Do you understand what to do now?”
Unhak grinned and neatly gathered the leaves and dust into one corner.
“Yes, thanks to you.”
Had she focused only on sweeping quickly, she would have missed it. He was slow, but exact. His wrist bent only half a handspan, and his steps moved no wider than the breadth of a roof tile. It was almost less like sweeping and more like practicing a martial art.
“The important thing was breathing. Once my breathing stopped wavering, the sweeping stopped wavering too.”
At Cheongwol’s expression — as though she had found the answer and was waiting to be praised — Unhak gave a complicated reaction.
“Breathing is not wrong, but there’s a more fundamental answer than that. Think on it calmly for a while. It’s connected to why the sect leader had you sweeping in the first place.”
After that, she swept faithfully every morning, never missing a day.
And yet only her breathing grew a little steadier; her sweeping speed never caught up to Unhak’s, not even by the day she left Kongdong Sect.
“Haah...”
Cheongwol let out a sigh from the depths of her chest. If only she could uncover that answer, then perhaps she could sweep away the confusion in her heart just as easily as she swept the yard.
She stopped moving and stood still, calling to mind the face of the man she had hurt. Now that she had finally found him again, she was afraid of what his expression would be if she told him she had to leave.
In the first place, he had never been someone she could stay with until the end. She should have drawn a proper line between them from the beginning.
Perhaps because she had become a woman, she had tried too hard to deny the way his feelings deepened, and now it had come to this. More than that, for him, it would surely be far better to hold Dang Sohye in his arms than to cling to her. Compared with what she could offer him, she had next to nothing.
Even if I had been born an ordinary girl instead of a man. Even if I had been the child of an ordinary martial family instead of the Im clan. It would have been the same. Hwi is the young clan leader of the Seomun Clan.
So, as she was thinking that she should stop resenting her lot in life, just as Hong Chilsong had said—
“I don’t know what you’re thinking about so intensely that you don’t even notice me coming this close. Are you thinking about your betrothed that you left behind?”
Pair of feet that were unmistakably his came to a stop in front of Cheongwol.
---
Today or tomorrow.
She had intended to say her farewells, since she would be leaving with Hong Chilsong. She had never expected to be face-to-face with him like this, so abruptly.
When Cheongwol failed to lift her head, Seomun Hwi opened his arms without hesitation and drew her into them.
“...Hwi!”
Startled, she struggled belatedly, but for whatever reason he tightened his arms, refusing to let her escape.
“I want to talk for a moment.”
His low voice brushed her ear, and her heart lurched. Still, she bit lightly into her lower lip and held herself back.
She had planned to look at his face one last time, but not like this.
“If you have something to say, then come back properly and speak to me. Don’t go acting so forcefully.”
Even as she spoke coldly, it hurt, but she had no choice. If she left room for hesitation by not cutting him off clearly, then the one who would suffer would not be her, but him.
“And what is this nonsense, doing this to another man? You need to come to your senses already.”
Seomun Hwi said nothing and remained still, and just as Cheongwol thought that should be enough and tried to wriggle free, those strong arms tightened around her waist and denied her escape.
“You kissed a man, and now you want to pretend it never happened. Don’t you think it’s a little too late for that?”
As the memory of last night—one she had tried so hard not to recall—was dragged back into the light, the tips of Cheongwol’s ears turned red.
“...That was just because I felt bad for you...”
“So you kissed me out of pity? Have you done that for everyone you’ve ever felt sorry for?”
“Seomun Hwi.”
“You looked at me and took pity on me, perhaps. That would explain it.”
His hand slid through her hair and tucked it back from her left ear. It was the touch of someone handling something precious beyond measure, and perhaps because of that, her whole body grew tense instead.
Was he always like this?
The man before her was certainly Seomun Hwi, and yet he seemed utterly unlike the one she knew.
“Or perhaps you simply did it because you liked me. We can find out together.”
...!
Her heart began to pound wildly, and instinct screamed at her to get away from Seomun Hwi right now.
But it was already too late.
In the midst of her struggling, their eyes had met.
“If you hate it, then push me away.”
---
“Hah... ngh...”
Cheongwol trembled violently and dug her nails into the thick arm that was holding her close.
She had meant to leave with Hong Chilsong so that she would no longer hurt him, but by the time she came to her senses, she was kissing Seomun Hwi again.
And not some childish peck, either, but a shameless kiss where their tongues tangled together. Of course, Seomun Hwi was the more aggressive one, but Cheongwol found herself responding in tiny, involuntary ways all the same. That only seemed to drive him further, until now he was biting at her lips as though he meant to devour her whole.
“Huu...”
After a while, Seomun Hwi, perhaps sensing her panic as she struggled only to breathe through her mouth, gave her a little space.
“Haah...”
Their saliva stretched in a long, thin strand between them, but Cheongwol paid it no mind and collapsed into his arms as though she had been drained of strength. How had things come to this?
She was afraid he would be hurt if she pushed him away with inner energy, and afraid she would draw blood if she bit his tongue.
So all she could do was twist her body in resistance little by little, but the more she did, the more clearly the innate disadvantage between man and woman stood out.
Even so, to accept it so meekly until she ended up in this state...
She had managed to stay standing, but her waist had gone slack and the strength had drained from her legs; if he were not holding her up, she felt as though she might collapse at any moment. At this rate, as he had said, it would really look as if she had kissed him because she liked it.
She tried to force strength back into her body, but as though he had expected that very move, Seomun Hwi pressed down on the back of her head and kept her from lifting it.
“Once is not enough to tell. I’ll need to try a little more.”
Right now she felt strange enough to lose her soul; he wanted to keep going from here?
At last she managed to lift her head and look up at Seomun Hwi, who was smiling faintly.
“Isn’t that enough already? Let me go.”
As if he didn’t know that looking at him with such a face would only provoke a man further.
“It’s not enough.”
What in the world had changed in his heart overnight that he had become like a different person?
As her breathing gradually steadied, Cheongwol glared at him with a slight frown.
“You’re the one who’ll have a hard time if this keeps up. I will absolutely never—”
Of course, she was unable to finish her sentence.
Seomun Hwi’s lips came down on hers again, rough and unapologetic as they swept through her mouth.
“Mngh...”
The kiss from before had been rough enough, but this one carried a brutality that showed not a shred of consideration for the other person.
I can’t breathe...
Hearing the wet, sticky sounds of their saliva as her eyes slowly began to unfocus—
“Hah... haah...”
Seomun Hwi drew back just enough to let her breathe and used his fingers to wipe away the saliva from Cheongwol’s lips.
“That’s right. Your mind is probably full of nothing but your betrothed.”
His finger seemed about to leave, then lingered at her lips, teasing her with shameless familiarity.
Chomp!
He must have thought she was about to collapse from exhaustion, but instead she bit his finger.
“It’s too late to pretend none of this happened.”
Then he bent close to Cheongwol’s ear and whispered clearly, while she glared at him.
“That betrothed of yours. I want to see him at least once.”