The boat from the capital came in on an ordinary spring morning, which was perhaps the only fitting way for something extraordinary to arrive.
Haesong’s harbour was busy with its usual arguments: gulls scolding fishermen, wives scolding prices, merchants scolding the weather as if it had chosen to inconvenience them personally. Nets slapped wetly against decks, and the smell of salt and old fish sat heavy over everything.
No one noticed the woman at first.
She stepped off the boat with a bundle tied neat and square on her back and a slim case in her hand. Her clothes were the kind of sturdy quality that said “earned” rather than “bestowed.” Ink shadows lined the beds of her nails, faint but permanent.
Seo Dan-Mi paused a heartbeat on the pier, drawing in the smell of the sea. It was sharper than the river in Hanyang, less tamed. So, this is the wind that stole her from us, she thought.
“First time to Haesong?” the boatman asked, tightening a rope.
“First time out of the city in too long,” she replied. “Which way to the school by the stream?”
He blinked. “The… girls’ school?”
“Yes,” she said.
He pointed inland. “Follow the road towards the mill,” he said. “Listen for too many voices in one place. That will be it.”
By late morning, the schoolyard was full of those voices.
The mulberry tree had begun to put on its lush green clothes, flower petals were dancing in the air. Under its branches, practice sheets fluttered on the lines, their ink long dry but their futures still uncertain.
Inside, Ah-Rin was bent over a low table, helping Beong-i trace the curve of a new syllable. The others were working through a story about a stubborn trader and a clever widow; the room hummed with quiet concentration and the occasional, strangled sigh.
The knock on the door was brisk but not loud.
Han-Byeol, closest, scrambled to answer it. She slid the panel open and stared up at the stranger on the step.
For a moment all she saw was a travelling woman: dust on her hem, hair braided in a way that had learned to accommodate long days and short tempers. Then she saw the case, the wrap of the bundle, the way her hand rested on it as if she knew exactly how much it weighed.
“Can I help you?” Han-Byeol asked, as properly as she could manage.
“I’m looking for Kim Ah-Rin Seonsaeng-nim,” the woman said. Her voice had the city in it—edges smoothed by years of formal speech, warmed by something more familiar.
Han-Byeol straightened a little. “You’ve found her,” she said. “You’re just facing the wrong way.”
She stepped aside to reveal the classroom.
For a heartbeat, Ah-Rin did not move. Her mind registered only: stranger, bundle, case. Then the shape of the stranger snapped into someone she had once known in a younger body.
“Dan-Mi-yah,” she breathed.
The syllables crossed the room in one step. The rest of her followed.
Dan-Mi bowed, deeply. “Seonsaeng-nim,” she said. “You look exactly as I remember, only… more so.”
Ah-Rin laughed once, the sound shaking something loose in her chest.
“You look taller,” she said. “And less likely to drop a tray of drying sheets.”
“That is because there is no one here to shout at me if I do,” Dan-Mi replied, and just like that the years between them thinned.
Behind them, the girls watched with open curiosity. Han-Byeol was practically vibrating; Beong-i’s eyes had gone wide, trying to memorise this new person’s every movement.
“Girls,” Ah-Rin said, remembering herself. “This is Seo Dan-Mi. She is… an old friend, from the workshop where I worked in Hanyang.”
“From Hanyang?” Soo-Yeon whispered, as if the city were a character in a story rather than a place on a map.
Dan-Mi bowed to them all, properly, as if each small face were worth the effort.
“I’ve heard about you,” she said. “Not names, but… the shape of you. A room full of questions. It’s good to finally see that the stories weren’t exaggerated.”
Laughter loosened the room. For a moment, it felt almost like any other day with an unexpected guest.
Then Dan-Mi met Ah-Rin’s eyes again, and something more serious passed between them. A question. An answer. A later.
“For now,” Ah-Rin said, hearing the same thing. “You’ve walked far. Sit. Watch the end of the lesson. These tyrants don’t let me stop early.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Dan-Mi said, and settled near the back, setting her bundle at her side.
She watched as Ah-Rin turned back to the board, as Han-Byeol and Soo-Yeon broke into a whispered debate over a stubborn verb, as Beong-i carefully wrote 기다림 again and underlined it twice. She watched and thought, Yes. This is worth every mile.
29Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPLfttnG3PG
By the time the last girl had gone home, carrying books and stories and the lingering thrill of “someone from Hanyang”, the light had shifted towards afternoon.
Go Eun-Sook arrived with a basket then, as she often did, bringing rice cakes and a handful of gossip from the mill.
“So, this is the famous Dan-Mi,” she said, taking in the stranger’s steady gaze and ink-lined fingers. “I have heard your name as often as my own these past years.”
“Then I hope it was not always in the context of ‘she works too hard,’” Dan-Mi said.
“Sometimes it was,” Ah-Rin admitted. “She’s earned that.”
They were still exchanging those easy testing remarks when footsteps sounded outside. The door slid open again and Jin-Ho appeared; a neat stack of paper cradled in his arms.
“Imo,” he began. “We finished another batch for readers. Eomma said I should bring these before the damp sets in and—”
He stopped.
He had meant to step straight in, drop the bundle on the table, and hurry back before his father caught him dawdling. Instead, he found himself looking at a stranger who was not quite a stranger: a young woman about his age, perhaps a little older, with sleeves rolled back from capable wrists and a way of standing that said she knew how to measure weight without needing a scale.
Her gaze flickered to the paper, to his hands, to the tiny maker’s mark in the corner of the top sheet. Something like approval touched her expression, quick and unembellished.
“Jin-Ho-yah,” Ah-Rin said. “This is Seo Dan-Mi. She worked with me in Hanyang. She knows paper like you know that river.”
He bowed, more awkwardly than he would have liked. “It’s an honour,” he said, and meant it.
Dan-Mi returned the bow. “I’ve heard of the mill in Haesong,” she said. “That its paper doesn’t fall apart at the first hint of damp. Seeing these, I believe it.”
His ears warmed. “If any do fall apart,” he said, “tell me. I’d rather fix my mistakes than have them travel.”
Eun-Sook, watching from her stool, hid a smile.
“Sit a moment,” she said. “You’ve brought enough paper to earn at least one rice cake.”
Jin-Ho hesitated, then obeyed. As he sat, he found himself listening more to Dan-Mi’s voice than to the crunch of his own food: the way she asked about the river, about the quality of bark they could get here, about how many girls came through the door in a week.
She spoke to him like someone who understood the worth of a careful batch and a well-kept vat. It unsettled him in a not unpleasant way.
Bread arrived next, as if the day had decided to assemble everyone who mattered to this one patch of earth.
In-Su ducked through the doorway with a basket on his arm, the smell of fresh loaves preceding him.
“Eomma made me bring these,” he said. “She says travellers from Hanyang deserve better than our usual leftovers.”
“Mi-Young-ah’s ‘leftovers’ are better than most noble tables,” Eun-Sook sniffed.
In-Su’s gaze found Dan-Mi. He took in the case, the bundle, the way Ah-Rin stood beside her with a tension that was not quite worry.
“Our guest?” he asked.
“Seo Dan-Mi,” Ah-Rin said. “She worked with me in the capital. Dan-Mi-yah, this is Baek In-Su. He bakes the bread that keeps this town from eating its own shoes.”
Dan-Mi bowed. “I owe you thanks then,” she said. “Your bread has probably saved this school more than once.”
“Words do more of that than flour,” he replied. “I just make sure the people who carry them don’t faint on the way.”
His tone was light, but his eyes rested thoughtfully on the case at her feet, the careful knot of the bundle. A man who had spent years watching dough rise knew when something else was about to swell and break.
After a little more talk—Mi-Young’s health, the mill’s output, the state of the road—Eun-Sook began to bustle the others gently out.
“Go,” she said to Jin-Ho and In-Su. “These two need a quieter room than this one to talk in.”
“You’re throwing us out of a school?” Jin-Ho protested mildly.
“I’m returning it to its proper function,” she said. “Lessons don’t stop just because a royal-looking scroll has walked through the door.”
She nodded at Dan-Mi’s bundle. “You didn’t carry that all this way to rest it on a children’s bench.”
Ah-Rin swallowed. “Eomma’s right,” she said. “Dan-Mi-yah, come.”
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The little room at the back of the school had once been part of Eun-Jae’s workshop. Now, it held shelves of carefully stacked paper, a chest with spare slates, and a low table that doubled as a desk and a place to eat when nights ran late.
Eun-Sook closed the door behind them and sat with them rather than leaving. Whatever this was, she had earned the right to hear it. Dan-Mi set her bundle down on the floor and unwrapped it with the same care she used for valuable sheets. Inside, wrapped in a separate cloth, was a scroll bound with an unfamiliar thickness of ribbon.
“Before you open it,” she said quietly, “you should know: the Office of Censors was preparing a ban.”
Ah-Rin’s breath hitched, but she didn’t move.
“No soft words,” Dan-Mi went on. “An order to dissolve the school. They were angry. Because you dared to plant it after they warned you once.”
Ah-Rin felt her throat tighten. The room seemed to tilt, just for a heartbeat, back towards a corridor in Hanyang where a younger version of herself had stood with her hands locked together so tightly her knuckles hurt.
“And this?” she asked, looking at the scroll. “Is it that order?”
“No,” Dan-Mi said. “This is what happened when other hands reached higher.”
She placed the scroll on the table and slid it gently towards her.
“Open it, Seonsaeng-nim.”
Ah-Rin’s fingers shook as she loosened the ribbon. The paper beneath was heavier than anything she had ever worked on in the atelier, the ink dark and unmuddied. The seal at the bottom made her heart stutter.
She read aloud, because her mouth needed to move or she would forget how.
“‘By royal consideration,’” she began, stumbling only once, “‘the Crown, having taken note of loyal service previously rendered in the conservation of valued texts, does acknowledge the establishment of a modest girls’ study in Haesong, under Kim Ah-Rin, scholar.’”
Her voice wavered. She stopped, swallowed, and went on.
“‘In light of its usefulness to poor households and its limited scope, this study is, for the present, permitted to continue as a trial. Local authorities are enjoined to observe and support it within due bounds. Any future questions shall be referred to this office before judgement is rendered.’”
She trailed off at the end, the final characters blurring. For a long moment no-one spoke.
Then Eun-Sook exhaled, a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “So,” she said. “They tried to stamp you out and ended up stamping your name where the whole kingdom can see it.”
Ah-Rin pressed a hand over her mouth. The scroll blurred further. She let herself cry then, quietly, the way one does when a weight has been taken off long before one realises it was there.
Dan-Mi waited, hands loosely folded, eyes soft.
“How?” Ah-Rin managed at last. “How did this happen? They don’t do this. Not for women like me. Not for girls by a stream.”
“Choi Yeon-Seo-ssi,” Dan-Mi said simply. “And Her Highness Lady Hyeon in the Crown Prince’s court. They made it the King’s dignity to allow you, not forbid you. Once his name was on this, the censors’ teeth snapped off on their own words.”
Ah-Rin stared at her name again, written in strokes finer than any she would ever lay down herself.
“They turned us into a… trial,” she said, a bewildered half-smile tugging at her mouth. “A ‘modest study.’ A small experiment.”
“Experiments can succeed,” Eun-Sook pointed out. “And they can spread. You’ve done more dangerous things with a vat and a brush.”
Ah-Rin laughed, wet and uneven.
“Haesong won’t have to fear a ban now,” Dan-Mi said. “The magistrate will have this. If anyone questions the school, he can point to that seal and say, ‘Take it up with the King.’”
“The magistrate,” Ah-Rin repeated, straightening. “He needs to see this.”
“And soon,” Eun-Sook agreed. She wiped her eyes briskly and stood.
“Come,” she said. “If I walk with you, no one can claim this is foolishness whispered in corners. It will be Hye-Won’s sister and my daughter, taking a royal decree where it belongs.”
Ah-Rin rolled the scroll again, carefully, fingers lingering on the seal.
“I will come too,” Dan-Mi said. “In case any official wants to pretend he can’t read.”
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The magistrate’s office was a cooler, more formal space than the inn, but it still smelled faintly of sea salt and ink. Shelves along the walls held bundles of documents tied in string; the weight of other people’s decisions sat heavily in the air.
He rose when they entered. He had been expecting an answer from Hanyang eventually, but not like this: three women and a scroll.
“Seonsaeng-nim,” he said, bowing. “Go Eun-Sook-ssi. And…?”
“Seo Dan-Mi,” she supplied. “From Hanyang. I carried something here that should be in your hands.”
His gaze sharpened at that. “From the capital?”
“From the King,” Dan-Mi replied, and placed the scroll on his desk.
He untied it with hands that were suddenly not entirely steady.
As he read, his brows climbed, then drew together, then settled at a middle point of wary respect. When he reached Ah-Rin’s name, written there in royal ink, his mouth pressed into a thin line that might, in another man, have been a smile.
“This…” he said slowly, “names your school. Acknowledges it. Tells me not to trouble it without troubling the palace first.”
“Then Haesong need not fear a ban,” Ah-Rin said quietly. “At least, not from you.”
“No,” he said. “If anyone wishes to close your door now, they will have to knock much louder than before.”
He rolled the scroll halfway, then paused, looking at her over it.
“I confess something, Seonsaeng-nim,” he said. “When I wrote to Hanyang, it was partly to protect myself. I did not want to approve something they would later scold me for.”
“I know,” she said. There was no spite in it.
“But now,” he went on, tapping the edge of the scroll, “if anyone asks, I can say: ‘I did not act rashly. The King himself has spoken, and I obeyed.’”
He bowed again, deeper this time.
“In truth,” he added, “I am relieved. I have watched those girls come and go. Whatever my doubts about custom, I do not like the idea of being the man, who told them to put their books away.”
“You won’t have to,” Eun-Sook said. “You can be the man who read this aloud in front of the town.”
He considered, then nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I think I will.”
He looked at Ah-Rin once more, with something like apology in his eyes.
“I cannot promise there will be no more letters,” he said. “Systems like to remind us they still exist. But as long as this one stands”—he touched the seal—“you have more protection than most. Use it well.”
“I intend to,” she said.
As they stepped back out into the daylight, the town looked exactly as it had when they’d walked in: same dusty road, same laundry flapping, same gulls arguing over scraps.
And yet everything had changed.
Ah-Rin stood for a moment on the threshold, the rolled decree in her hands, and felt the strange, dizzy sensation of having her life written in two places at once: in the ledger of a city that would never see her face, and in the faces of girls who would be waiting tomorrow under the mulberry tree.
Eun-Sook slipped her arm through hers. “Well,” she said. “It seems Hanyang has finally done something useful with its ink.”
Dan-Mi smiled, a small, tired, satisfied curve.
“And now,” she said, “we can stop waiting and start working out how to live with royal eyes on a schoolyard.”
Ah-Rin laughed, breathless.
“I’ve lived with worse eyes on my pages,” she said. “Let them watch.”
The sea breeze swung round the corner of the magistrate’s house, lifting the edge of the scroll in her hand like a ribbon caught in the wind.
For the first time in a long while, the tug she felt in her chest was not fear.
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The day they opened the school properly, the mulberry tree looked as if it had been waiting for exactly this.
Early Summer light sifted through its leaves, turning them the colour of deep green jade. Sheets of practice paper fluttered on the lines strung between posts, because Ah-Rin could not bear a celebration without some sign of work moving in the air.
The yard by the stream filled slowly: first the girls in their best hanbok, ribbons re-tied three times by fretful hands; then mothers and aunties, smoothing sleeves and whispering reminders not to fidget; then the men, lingering at the edges as if they had merely wandered by and been trapped by coincidence.
Seol-Ha sat beneath the tree with her gayageum across her lap, fingers resting lightly on the strings. Beside her, Eun-Jae adjusted a bridge with the kind of care that made the instrument feel like a third person between them.
“Your hands are shaking,” he murmured.
“Only enough to prove I’m not a rock,” she said. “You always told me it’s better to be a little nervous. It means you have something worth doing.”
He huffed a quiet breath that might have been a laugh.
Across the yard, Eun-Sook stood with Ah-Rin, straightening the collar of her daughter’s jeogori as if she were twenty again, about to go out on an errand for the first time.
“You don’t have to look so solemn,” Eun-Sook said. “You’re not going to your execution.”
“It feels a little like I am,” Ah-Rin replied. “Only this time, the executioner has nice paper.”
Eun-Sook’s hand squeezed her arm. “The King’s seal may sit on the scroll,” she said, “but it’s these faces that will remember today.”
She nodded towards the crowd. Han-Byeol was tugging at Beong-i’s sleeve, trying to show her something on the board by the door; Beong-i’s eyes shone with the effort of catching everything at once. Soo-Yeon hovered near the front, as if ready to leap up and correct anyone who misread a word.
Near the gate, Jin-Ho stood with a stack of slim readers in his arms, their covers blank except for the neat, tiny mark at the corner of each.
“You made enough?” Hye-Won asked, coming up beside him.
“More than enough,” he said. “If we run out, we can cut the sheets in half again.”
“Always planning for hidden lessons,” she said softly.
He glanced towards the mulberry tree, where Seol-Ha was quietly plucking and muting strings, feeling for the first few notes of the piece she had written. Something in his chest eased. Whatever else changed, that sound would be theirs.
Near the doorway, Dan-Mi watched it all with an expression that was half apprentice’s assessment, half pure wonder. Her bundle lay tucked in the corner of the schoolroom, as if it had always belonged there.
“This is more crowded than I imagined,” she said under her breath, as Ah-Rin came to stand beside her.
“I promised you a room full of questions,” Ah-Rin replied. “I didn’t say they’d bring their entire families.”
“Good,” Dan-Mi said. “Questions need witnesses.”
The magistrate arrived last, in his plain blue robe, scroll case cradled in his hands like a fragile instrument. The crowd parted for him without quite meaning to; habit bowed to the sight of official paper.
He took his place under the mulberry tree and cleared his throat.
“People of Haesong,” he began, less stiffly than usual. “You know why we are here. Some of you asked for this. Some of you doubted it. I wrote to Hanyang so that my own hesitation would not harm or help it more than it should.”
He opened the case and drew out the scroll. Even rolled, it seemed to glow a little in the filtered light.
“This has come from the palace,” he said. “It bears the King’s seal.”
A ripple passed through the crowd: a collective tightening of shoulders, a few held breaths.
“I will not read all the formalities,” he said. “Only what touches us.”
He unrolled the scroll to the part where Ah-Rin’s eyes had stuck days before.
“’By royal consideration the Crown, having taken note of loyal service previously rendered in the conservation of valued text,’”, he read, voice clear, “’does acknowledge the establishment of a modest girls’ study in Haesong, under Kim Ah-Rin, scholar. In light of its usefulness to poor households and its limited scope, this study is, for the present, permitted to continue as a trial. Local authorities are enjoined to observe and support it within due bounds. Any future questions shall be referred to this office before judgement is rendered.’”
He paused, letting the words settle.
“In short,” he said more simply, “the school may stand. With the King’s knowledge, not behind his back.”
There was no cheer; Haesong did not erupt. Instead, there was a slow exhale, as if the whole town had been holding its breath underwater and finally broken the surface.
Cho Mi-Young wiped at one eye with the back of her hand, pretending there was flour in it. Master Baek’s mouth curved in what, for him, was a broad smile.
Nam Seung-Mo looked thoughtful and mildly put-upon, but even he inclined his head in a small, grudging nod. He had daughters too.
The magistrate rolled the scroll carefully.
“I will keep this here,” he said, patting its case. “Anyone who wishes to see it may. For now, I suggest we look at something more interesting.”
He stepped aside.
Ah-Rin swallowed, stepped forward.
“Thank you,” she said, bowing first to him, then to the gathered faces. “For your trust. For your complaints. Both helped bring us here.”
A modest ripple of amusement met that.
“I will not speak long,” she went on. “You already know what we do—your daughters and granddaughters have brought home ink-stained sleeves to prove it.”
She looked at the girls; each face a different shade of nervous.
“Today is not the start,” she said. “We began three years ago. Today is merely the moment we stop pretending this is a secret. From now on, when people ask what this room is, you don’t have to say ‘just lessons’. You can say ‘our school’.”
She nodded to Jin-Ho.
“Jin-Ho-yah,” she said. “You brought something for them?”
He stepped forward, the stack of readers steady in his arms despite the fact that his knees felt slightly less so.
“These are nothing grand,” he said, gaze skimming over the crowd and snagging, for a heartbeat, on Dan-Mi’s. “Just paper and ink. Stories and sums. Eomma says a good page is like a firm plank—you trust it to bear the weight of a foot. I hope these won’t splinter on you.”
A small laugh rippled through the children. The adults heard more than jokes: they heard someone young staking himself publicly to the quality of what he’d made.
He began to hand the books out, one by one: to Han-Byeol, to Soo-Yeon, to Mi-Ran and finally to the girl whose name still sat in Beong-i’s place in the ledger as “niece” and not yet anything more. His fingers brushed each cover, press-mark against thumb.
“When you open them,” he said quietly to the girls, “remember: if a page tears, you can tell me. We’ll make another. Mistakes are only finished when you stop trying.”
Near the front, Hye-Won watched, her throat tight. She would write about this later, in her ledger: First day the children held books with my son’s mark on them. I think my heart grew another rib.
When the last reader had found its way into small hands, Ah-Rin turned to Seol-Ha.
“Seol-Ha-yah,” she said. “You promised us something.”
Seol-Ha took her place properly then, sitting a little straighter, the gayageum snug against her knees.
“This isn’t a court piece,” she said, glancing up at the crowd. “It’s… a schoolyard piece. For arrivals. For people who aren’t sure yet if they’re allowed to cross the threshold.”
She looked at Beong-i, who was standing near the front with her reader held carefully against her chest, fingertips tapping its edge in the greeting rhythm they had devised: tap-tap… tap.
“I borrowed this from a friend,” Seol-Ha said. “She knows who she is.”
Then she began to play.
The first notes were simple: two close together, a pause, a third that lingered, like a knock followed by someone drawing breath before answering. Around that rhythm, she wove a line that dipped and rose, tentative at first, then stronger, like a path walked more than once.
The melody did not soar; it explored. It circled the same small space—threshold, room, yard—and found something new each time. A little stumble, a little laugh, the sound of brushes on paper, the rustle of pages turning.
At one point, the music sank into a minor turn that could have been sadness, but just when it threatened to stay there, the greeting rhythm returned—tap-tap… tap—and pulled it gently back towards light.
Those who did not know the story of waiting heard only a pretty tune. Those who had lived through letters, meetings, almost-bans heard more: the sound of stubbornness put into strings.
When she finished, the quiet held for a heartbeat before applause broke out, uneven and sincere.
Eun-Jae bowed his head, letting the sound wash over him. He had nothing to add. His daughter’s hands had said more in a few minutes than his could in a whole morning of chiselling.
Ah-Rin felt something unknot in her chest. Music, she thought, with a flash of wryness, is very efficient at giving people courage.
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The rest of the ceremony felt almost ordinary, which was perhaps the best part.
Girls showed their mothers the first pages in their new readers: names written carefully at the top, a line of characters below. Soo-Yeon proudly read the opening lines of a story aloud; her uncle, listening, looked as if someone had just handed him an extra coin he hadn’t earned.
Beong-i traced her own symbols—the ones she and Seol-Ha had made for joy and frustration and calm—on the inside cover of her book. When she looked up, she found Ah-Rin watching her, eyes bright.
“Keep doing that,” Ah-Rin said softly, knowing she wouldn’t hear the words but trusting the tone. “The world needs more ways to say what’s in your head.”
Nearby, Han-Byeol tugged Dan-Mi’s sleeve.
“You’re staying, aren’t you?” she demanded. “You didn’t walk all this way just to leave again.”
Dan-Mi looked down at her, then at Ah-Rin, then at the schoolroom behind them with its tables and inkstones and now-official existence.
“If your Seonsaeng-nim will have me,” she said, “I think I could be persuaded.”
“We will have you,” Ah-Rin said at once. “The old spare room is still sound. It was meant for tools. It has been waiting for a person.”
“You and Halmeoni?” Han-Byeol asked, looking between mother and daughter.
“Eomma will move in with me again,” Ah-Rin said. “The house is big enough for us and for a very neat assistant. We’ll argue about who boils the rice and who cleans the brushes.”
“I don’t argue,” Dan-Mi said. “I just reorganise until everyone gives up.”
“Same thing,” Eun-Sook said dryly.
Han-Byeol beamed. “Good,” she said. “Then if Appa is late at the bakery, I know exactly where to run for more rice cakes and spare paper.”
A little further off, Jin-Ho pretended to be very interested in adjusting a drying line that did not actually need adjusting, his ears turning pink at the thought of Dan-Mi living just above the room where his paper would be opened every day.
Seol-Ha caught his expression and tucked it away somewhere private, the way she did with interesting melodies.
“Careful,” she murmured as she passed him. “If you press your mark any deeper into those pages, you’ll carve all the way through.”
He made a face at her, but his hand stayed a fraction lighter.
When the crowd finally thinned and the girls had gone home clutching their readers as if they might float away, the yard grew quiet again. The mulberry tree rustled gently. A few late petals drifted down, landing on the path and the empty benches.
Inside, Ah-Rin sat at her desk in the small back room, the royal decree unrolled beside her and a fresh sheet of plain paper before her. The official words were thick and important; the ones she was about to write felt thinner, but more hers.
“I should start a ledger for the school,” she said.
“Of course you should,” Eun-Sook replied from her corner, darning a sock. “You learnt from the best.”
“I learnt from someone who cried into vats,” Ah-Rin said.
“And still made good paper,” came a voice from the door.
Hye-Won leaned on the frame, smiling.
“I thought ledgers were for mill-work and husbands’ mysterious calculations,” Ah-Rin said.
“Ledgers are for anything you don’t want the years to smudge,” Hye-Won replied. “Your work here is one of those things.”
Ah-Rin dipped her brush, hesitated only once, then wrote on the top of the page:
“Ledger of the Girls’ Study by the Stream, Haesong. Opened under the mulberry tree, in the year the King decided not to be afraid of us.”
She paused, then added a first entry:
“Today the girls came with their families. They held books with Yoon Jin-Ho’s mark, listened to music from Yoon Seol-Ha’s hands, and stood under a tree that has seen this town much longer than any of us. The King’s seal sits in a magistrate’s box. Our true protection sits in the way these girls’ eyes followed every stroke on the page.”
She blew gently to dry the ink.
“What will you write next?” Eun-Sook asked.
“Whatever they grow into,” Ah-Rin said. “Mistakes, triumphs, everything. If we’re going to teach them to read, we might as well give them an honest story.”
She set the brush down.
“Time has turned us into teachers,” she murmured.
Hye-Won, hearing again the words she had once written in her own ledger, smiled.
“And what we give away,” she said quietly, “is what remains.”
Outside, the stream went on talking to itself, as it always had. Under the mulberry tree, empty mats waited for tomorrow’s footsteps.
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and then Add to home screen.