The Bloodline Was Already Broken
"Now that's more like it!"
The scene had shifted before anyone noticed. Yeo-reum hummed a little tune as she followed Jeong-an eastward, while Seoryeong—greedy little thing that she was, wanting everything she laid eyes on—kept muttering as she gazed at shoes she had yet the money to buy.
"The moment we get to town, I'm buying shoes first. This mountain path's ruined the pair I have."
Seoryeong's gaze landed on Jeong-an's shoes, worn through to the threads. The patched, mended clothes. The walking stick whose tip had been ground down to nothing.
Nothing about the old nun pleased her, apparently—Seoryeong's eyes narrowed into slits.
"Anyway, I'm really going to the market, okay? You can't stop me?"
Half afraid of being scolded, she kept glancing at Jeong-an's face—and in that same breath scurried along at her heels with quick little steps.
Beneath her bamboo hat, Jeong-an's lips curved upward.
"Off you go, then."
Over mountains and across streams, they finally reached the ramshackle hut in the hills of Cheonmaekji. Seoryeong tossed down her pack and hopped about with joy, her whole face shouting how badly she wanted to run off and play.
"She's kind of adorable…"
IP 85.152 muttered—then immediately schooled his face back into cold neutrality. He was not a Han Yeo-reum fan. He was nothing like the gullible masses.
He was, first and foremost, one dispassionate viewer among many.
"The character's just written that way, is all."
But before he could talk himself back to his senses, Seoryeong had already gone sprinting down the mountain path and run into the Madam—a noble family's daughter-in-law who climbed up to offer prayers season after season, praying for a child she couldn't conceive.
Having pitched the woman a proposal no different from a gamble, Seoryeong now strode into a grand tiled-roof house.
"F-Father-in-law…"
For the Madam, who called out timidly with Seoryeong at her back, the answer was a bark of displeasure.
"Good grief—why do you insist on bothering me with nothing!"
The Madam flinched and shrank into herself. And behind her, Seoryeong flung the door open without so much as a knock.
The stern old man shot his gaze upward, dumbfounded.
"You—go on now. Leave us."
The uninvited guest, daring to meet the old man's eyes square-on, tossed the words carelessly at the daughter-in-law.
It was absurd enough that some brat was treating his daughter-in-law like a servant—but now the whelp was strutting right up to him without a flicker of fear.
"Hey, lowborn. How'd your heart get so filthy?"
"Wha—a lo… lo-lo-lowborn?"
He'd asked if her heart was filthy, when the filthy heart in the room was plainly his own.
A brat half his age, barging in and swearing at him in flat banmal—the old man's face went scarlet.
"Why are you acting so surprised?"
Seoryeong plopped down right across from him, utterly unbothered.
"Your father, after three days and nights of fever—when he barely clawed his way back from death's door—didn't he tell you? No? Then he must have."
"Urkh…"
With eyes that seemed to see straight through him, Seoryeong pressed on.
"You bought yourself a genealogy, paraded around calling yourself gentry, and now you're laying out rice for other people's ancestors. No wonder the fortune you had is packing its bags. Listen well. Other people's ancestors are other people's ancestors—full stop. That man ate his fill of the rice your wife ground herself to the bone preparing, and now he's hauling your family's luck off to his descendants!"
BANG! Seoryeong brought her palm crashing down on the table before the old man.
"Wake up! That's exactly how you've come to the brink of your line dying out!"
"You insolent wretch!!!"
The old man, who could barely draw breath, roared. His face burned crimson as he bellowed toward the courtyard.
"Someone drag this cursed creature out of here now!"
"Hey."
From outside came the sound of servants scrambling—Yes, honored sir!—rushing to obey.
Seoryeong rapped her small knuckles lightly on the desk before him.
"Then I suppose I'll just help myself to the fortune your father buried. Yes?"
At that, the man's face drained white.
"…"
"Your house is lowborn stock to the bone, you see~. After that deathbed will telling even you never to set foot in official service—there's something more he meant to say, but the breath left him first. Wouldn't you like to know?"
In an instant, the balance of power hanging between the two men tipped. And the one gripping the hilt was Seoryeong.
In the courtyard, the Madam paced back and forth, unable to stand still, worry written across her delicate face.
The servants who had all gone stampeding into the father-in-law's quarters had whirled around and bolted for the storeroom instead—so there was no one she could seize and question.
Then a scream tore out of the storeroom.
The Madam shuddered at the commotion.
"You there! What in the world is happening? Could they have been ordered to roll me in a straw mat and thrash me?"
"I honestly couldn't say, Madam…"
"If it comes to that, you must call for me at once. If I go and grovel properly—confess I was deceived by a madwoman—perhaps they'll let me off. Oh, whatever shall I do…"
Even grabbing the youngest boy by the arm and interrogating him produced nothing but stammering.
Then the servants in the storeroom came flying out in utter terror, screaming for the master.
"Master! MASTERRR—!"
From beneath the storeroom floor, pried open and torn apart, heavy wooden chests had been dragged out—one after another after another.
"AHAHAHAHA! Hahaha!"
The old man's laughter boomed through the house. His eyes met those of his daughter-in-law, peering through the crack of the half-open door—but he didn't so much as pause, laughing on in delight.
"A blessing! That girl is nothing short of a blessing!"
Praise—genuine praise—was something the daughter-in-law had never once received, and unease spread across her face in a heartbeat. She had no idea what was going on.
"Mere words? If not for your daughter-in-law, you'd have gone to your grave never knowing."
"No, no! Mere words indeed. Come here, child. Come inside."
The old man plunged his hand into a chest brimming with jewels and gold and scooped up a fistful. That fist arrived before the daughter-in-law.
The woman, understanding nothing, spread both hands and received the jewels he offered.
"Now go back out."
Seoryeong watched her with a proud little smile, chin lifted as if the fortune were her own. The jewels clutched in the daughter-in-law's hands might as well have been pocket money from Seoryeong herself.
"Th-thank you…?"
Drifting out of the old man's room in a daze, the daughter-in-law only truly smiled when she saw the servants gathered outside.
The servants, who had been craning their necks from the courtyard, froze at the sight of gems heaped in both her hands.
"Did you receive those from the master himself?"
"Well, whatever anyone says, the master does adore our Madam. Of course he does!"
Not a soul in that house didn't know she was treated as an eyesore. And that was exactly why they offered her their compliments—to comfort her.
The lady lifted the jewels in her hands and gave the servants a haughty little smile.
"What are you all dawdling for? Come to my room."
She swept past them at a brisk trot, both hands raised high with their glittering burden.
"And start thinking about what you've each been wanting."
Smiles bloomed across the servants' faces too. The Madam and they were alike. Like family, almost.
"This is actually… moving…"
Catching himself again, the office worker decided—as he fixed his eyes on the screen—that he'd made the right call switching over from Top Class to Strange Tales (Gimyodam). Somewhere along the line, from Pachehi all the way to Not Interested At All, he had ended up watching everything Han Yeo-reum appeared in.
With only Seoryeong and the old man left in the room, the old man finally asked in a voice thick with greed.
"So. How am I to continue the family line?"
Seoryeong's answer came low and flat.
"Your line was severed long ago! It ends with you!"
At her airy, offhand delivery, the old man doubted his own ears.
"But I still have a son. How can you say the line is broken…?"
His son—could it be…? Just as the old man began to suspect his own child—
"Because your wife is already dead, that's why."
Seoryeong rifled through the chests, picking out the jewels that caught her eye as she spoke.
"Any flower shoes besides these? Something soft for long walks. And a size bigger than my feet."
The old man's face twisted as he shouted.
"Argh—flower shoes! Ten, a hundred, I'll give you as many as you damn well please! Just give me an answer!"
At that, Seoryeong smiled—a smile with a ring glinting on every one of her ten fingers.
"That boy isn't your son."
"…?"
Before he could even ask what she meant, she served up the answer.
"Still don't get it? All these years, you've been doting on and spoiling a brat that carries none of your blood."
The old man's face froze, ashen. It was a shock beyond belief.
Reporter Wi laughed along as she read the Bulpan thread, marveling once more at Director Jjang's clever hand.
'If he hadn't been careful, every ounce of the spotlight would have swung to Yeomga.'
These days there was even a running joke that sixteen episodes was far too long—that he ought to be making eight-parters instead.
'Must be because it's adapted from a web novel—the payoffs come fast.'
A first episode would normally be spent introducing who these characters were, what incident was about to break. Instead—
'Drop a small cider payoff first, and the audience never gets bored!'
She could feel the show's instinct for yanking the story forward at speed. She was certain that Yeomga's overwhelming, chilling presence combined with the buoyant delight Seoryeong brought would hook the viewers completely.
'And once that happens, there's the week they'll spend waiting after episode two airs—and in that window…'
The viewers burning over the breadcrumbs from episodes one and two would inevitably start wondering what Seoryeong might look like out of her male disguise. That was part of the magic of a cross-dressed heroine, after all.
'Which means the audience's attention will carry straight back to the end-of-semester play!'
Reporter Wi's lips curled upward at the thought that the view count on Romeo and Juliet, the Grand Theater production uploaded last winter, was about to climb all over again. She had not a shred of doubt that the people falling for Seoryeong now would fall just as hard for that season's Juliet.
Seoryeong raised her index finger and leveled it at the old man.
"Your son has a big mole on his instep, doesn't he? Well then—so does the old gatekeeper. On his left instep. The very same mark."
"Gu—GUARDS! GUARDS, I SAY!"
The old man bellowed for the servants outside and commanded them to drag the gatekeeper in.
The gatekeeper appeared as he always did—hands folded in respectful silence—and, with no idea what was happening, was made to bare the tops of his bare feet.