Early autumn settled over Haesong in 1813 like a shawl that had been washed a hundred times: soft, familiar, edged with gold.
The mornings were cool now, the air crisp enough to sting the lungs if you breathed too quickly, but by midday the sun still remembered summer and warmed the stones. The peaks above the town had begun to change their clothes, green giving way to rust and amber. Out at sea, the water gleamed calm and sure, as if agreeing to behave for a while.
It was, everyone said, a good day to marry.
The mill house woke earlier than usual.
Steam from the kitchen curled under the rafters. Go Eun-Sook moved like someone half her age, sleeves already tied, clucking at pots and people with equal confidence. Han Hye-Won stood near the chest with the careful air of someone whose hands knew more than they would admit; she had pressed robes last night until the lines lay properly.
“Turn,” she said, fingers at Seol-Ha’s shoulders.
Seol-Ha turned, the pale autumn-coloured hanbok whispering against itself. She looked both too young and exactly right, eyes bright, hair pinned with more care than ornament. Music might be her craft, but today she was to be a witness, and that, Hye-Won knew, was its own kind of role.
Seo Dan-Mi stood a little to one side, adjusting the knot of her own jeogori. The colour was modest; the cut was neat. She had chosen a hairpin that was pretty but not loud. Even so, she tugged at her sleeves as if they might have opinions.
Hye-Won caught the movement. “If you pull at that any more, it will sulk and crease,” she said.
Dan-Mi huffed softly, then, without thinking, turned fully toward her. “Eomeoni, is it too much?” she asked.
The word dropped between them with no stumble this time, no accidental lurch.
Eun-Sook glanced over from the hearth, an eyebrow lifting in quiet amusement.
Hye-Won paused. The girl’s cheeks were not pink with embarrassment now; she was not trying to swallow the word back down. She had offered it like a statement of fact.
Hye-Won studied her for a heartbeat, then gave a brief nod. “It’s just enough, my child,” she said. “If you can’t work in it, we’ll call it too much tomorrow.”
Dan-Mi’s mouth softened. “I can work in it,” she said.
“Good,” Hye-Won replied. “You’ll have to. Married or not, ink doesn’t care about ribbons.”
Jin-Ho appeared at the doorway, hair smoothed more than usual, robes plain but well-fitted. For a second, he simply looked at Dan-Mi, as if seeing the same person and a new one at once.
“You look…” he began, then seemed to decide half the words that came to mind were either foolish or inadequate. “Nice,” he finished, stubbornly simple.
Dan-Mi’s eyes warmed. “You’ll do,” she answered.
Seol-Ha snorted. “Truly, a poet,” she murmured.
Hye-Won swatted lightly at her daughter’s arm. “Hush. Fetch the bundle for Master Baek and In-Su-yah.”
Seol-Ha rose obediently, though the glint in her eyes said she would not be silent for long.
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At the bakery, morning light pooled on the worn threshold.
Cho Mi-Young moved in quick, determined lines, laying out extra layers of cloth, straightening a pile of boxes that did not need straightening. Master Baek sat for once, adjusting the fit of his son’s hat with hands that still smelled faintly of flour.
“You’ve tied a thousand knots,” In-Su remarked, half amused, half grateful. “You know it will stay, Abeoji.”
“Knots can loosen,” Master Baek said. “Pride should not.”
Mi-Young clucked her tongue. “Don’t fill his head with proverbs; he has enough bread in there already.”
Han-Byeol hovered like a small, excited satellite, already dressed, hair neat for once, hands unable to decide where to live. Beong-i sat close by, hands folded in her lap, eyes flitting between faces, taking in words and patterns with that intent, hungry gaze of hers.
Mi-Young caught her looking and gave her a small, encouraging nod. “You’ll walk with us,” she told her. “Close. Between me and your Harabeoji. There will be many feet; I’d rather not lose any of them.”
Beong-i’s lips twitched in what had recently become more common: the beginning of a smile that did not immediately collapse.
Han-Byeol reached for her hand and gave it two quick taps against the floorboard. Joy.
Beong-i answered with three. Joy, and hope.
Master Baek watched the small exchange with a softness he did not comment on.
“Ready?” he asked at last.
In-Su drew a breath that felt larger than his chest and bowed once to his parents, once to the empty air where absent blessings might live.
“Ready,” he said.
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They met near the Kim family home.
The town had not turned out in full procession; this was not the capital, and no one had time for pageantry that got in the way of work. But enough people had come that the lane felt full: neighbours, pupils, Madam Hong with her quick tongue and kinder eyes, the magistrate’s clerk hovering at a polite distance with a face that said he might protest about nothing today.
Ah-Rin stood in the small yard, flanked by women: Eun-Sook, Hye-Won, Mi-Young, even Madam Hong fussing with a sleeve she claimed was unfair in its elegance. The colours she wore were subdued but finely cut, the kind of fabric that spoke not of wealth but of care.
Her hair was arranged with a dignity that made her look, for a moment, like one of the ladies whose portraits she had once mended in Hanyang. Yet her hands were those of Haesong: ink-shadowed faintly, a callus where the brush sat, knuckles slightly roughened from paper and labour.
When In-Su’s party turned the corner, the yard went quieter.
He saw her.
For a moment, all thirty-some years dropped away and he was back at sixteen, the boy with flour on his eyelashes, who had watched her argue with the world and fall down and get up again.
Then the years returned, bringing with them a wife buried, a daughter raised, a bakery kept, and a heart that had learned to be careful even when it still knew how to leap.
He stepped forward until he reached the proper distance and bowed.
“Kim Ah-Rin-ssi,” he said, voice steady. “You look…”
He stopped, as if all the words his daughter had ever collected for him had suddenly deserted their posts.
Ah-Rin’s lips curved. “Presentable?” she offered. “Fit to stand next to a baker?”
In-Su’s eyes warmed. “Far too good for a baker,” he said quietly. “Lucky for me you are stubborn.”
There were witnesses. Many ears, some pretending not to hear. So, she only answered with a small incline of her head and words that sounded dutiful but felt like something else entirely.
“I plan to remain so,” she said.
Behind her, Eun-Sook hid a smile in the fold of her sleeve.
Han-Byeol, standing near, watched In-Su’s face, then Ah-Rin’s, and relaxed, as if something that had been held tight in her had finally exhaled.
“Appa,” she whispered in Beong-i’s direction, making sure the shape of the word was clear on her lips. “Doesn’t he look brave?”
Beong-i nodded once, eyes wide, then glanced at Ah-Rin. Her fingers twitched at her side, wanting to tap out something too big for their code.
Jin-Ho and Dan-Mi were further back in the small press of people, waiting their turn, the knowledge of what they would do later sitting between them like another guest.
Dan-Mi leaned close enough that only Jin-Ho heard. “If you faint first,” she murmured, “I’m leaving you on the ground.”
“I won’t faint,” Jin-Ho replied. “You will.”
Dan-Mi sniffed. “I have too much dignity.”
He smiled, a quick, crooked thing. “No. You have too much pride to admit it.”
She would have answered, but someone called their names, and the day moved on.
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The weddings themselves unfolded as all weddings did: with more noise than poetry, more ritual than romance, and more tiny mistakes than anyone would remember later.
Bows were made, some deeper than intended. Hands shook a little when they should have been steady. Someone’s sleeve brushed against a plate at the wrong moment. A child tripped, recovered, bawled for thirty seconds, then forgot and laughed at something else.
Ah-Rin and In-Su stood at the centre of one circle, Jin-Ho and Dan-Mi at the centre of another. There were formalities, spoken lines, the presence of elders to make it legitimate and neighbours to make it real.
What people would remember, later, were the fragments.
The way In-Su’s voice did not waver when he promised to share roof and rice and worry. The way Ah-Rin’s eyes shone, not with tears of regret, but with something like fierce relief.
The fleeting astonishment on Master Baek’s face when he realised, he truly had gained another daughter, and this time without losing the son he had kept.
The look that passed between Hye-Won and Eun-Jae when Jin-Ho bowed as a married man, half boy, half steady craftsman. Something in Eun-Jae’s face eased a fraction; something in Hye-Won’s spine straightened with pride.
The small, determined way Dan-Mi set her shoulders, as if meeting an exam she had chosen.
And Seol-Ha, standing aside with her gayageum, watching it all with the quiet, hungry attention of someone storing it as material.
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The feast was held in the mill yard, where the wheel kept turning like a quiet blessing behind them. Lanterns hung from the eaves and from a rope strung between the mulberry by the path and the old post near the door, their light shaking gently each time the sea-breeze wandered this far upstream.
Tables were laid with what the town could spare and more besides: fish crisped at the edges, vegetables in sharp, clean flavours, rice steaming, sweet rice cakes glistening just enough to make children hover.
Voices rose and fell. Laughter smudged the edges of the day. That kind of contentment that sits lightly, ready to flee at the first hint of storm, lingered for once.
Seol-Ha took her place near the table of honour.
She had composed something for this day. Not a grand piece, not a brave proclamation, but a woven thing: threads of tunes she had heard over years. Snatches of the lullabies Eun-Sook had hummed without realising. A bar from the melody Eun-Jae had once played to calm a storm-terrified child. A pattern from the simple song Han-Byeol used when teaching Beong-i a new rhythm.
Her fingers settled on the strings.
When she played, the courtyard softened. People turned without meaning to, some fully, some just with a fraction of their body, as if an invisible rope had tugged at their shoulders.
Ah-Rin felt it at her back and glanced over.
In the middle of the crowd, she caught sight of her girls: Han-Byeol, Soo-Yeon, Mi-Ran, Beong-i, and the others. They stood together, half neat, half restless, faces upturned.
Han-Byeol’s eyes shone outright. Soo-Yeon tried to look properly composed and failed within three notes. Mi-Ran clasped her hands, shoulders gently swaying. Beong-i watched Seol-Ha’s fingers, then closed her eyes and let the vibrations speak through her bones.
Ah-Rin’s throat tightened.
This, she thought, listening to the music spill through a town that once doubted the worth of letters for girls, this is what I came back for.
Across the yard, Eun-Jae leaned in the shade of the doorway, his face private. The tune had lines he recognised, echoes of songs from a life that had felt smaller and larger at once. He watched his daughter’s hands and thought, not for the first time, that the best inheritance was not skills, but the freedom to use them differently.
Jin-Ho slipped away for a moment from a conversation with Master Baek and the magistrate, finding Dan-Mi at the edge of the courtyard where she had gone to breathe.
“Too loud?” he asked.
“Too everything,” she replied, though the word held no complaint.
He offered his arm. “Come stand by me. If you fall over, I’ll pretend it was the wind.”
She took his arm, not shyly now, but with the unthinking claim of someone who had already chosen.
“If I fall, you’re coming with me,” she murmured.
“That’s the idea,” he said.
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By the time the sun sank properly, lanterns had been lit, their pale bellies swaying gently in the sea-breeze. Children grew sticky with sweets and began to list sideways on benches. Voices softened, frayed by the day.
Jin-Ho had just brought another tray of bowls from the side table when Mi-Young’s voice cut through the hum.
“So,” she said, eyeing the two newlyweds across from her. “This Dan-Mi-ssi of ours. Who does she belong to now?”
Dan-Mi, mid-sip of tea, nearly swallowed the wrong way. Beside her, Jin-Ho stiffened for half a heartbeat, then steadied.
Seol-Ha’s eyes lit instantly. “Certainly not to sleep,” she said. “You’ve seen how she writes lesson plans. The lamp in the stream-house is the last one in Haesong to die each night.”
Dan-Mi felt the weight of their attention and, for once, did not reach for her old armour of flippant wit. She set her cup down, smoothed an invisible crease in her skirt, and answered plainly.
“I belong where the work is,” she said. “And where I’m loved enough to be scolded properly when I’m wrong.”
She tipped her head toward Hye-Won, completely matter-of-fact. “Eomeoni will work me harder than anyone. I’m doomed.”
A small ripple of laughter moved around the table.
Hye-Won snorted, but her eyes were bright. “Good,” she said. “Idle daughters make empty ledgers.”
Dan-Mi’s mouth tugged into a helpless smile. Next to her, Jin-Ho tried not to grin too widely and failed. The implication settled over him like a cloak that actually fit: daughters.
Seol-Ha leaned back, thoroughly satisfied. “There,” she murmured, mostly to herself. “Filed and stamped.”
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The lanterns had burned low enough that everyone’s faces looked softer, smudged with gold. One by one, people peeled away.
Madam Hong left after making three last remarks about wastefulness and then pressing extra food into Ah-Rin’s hands. The magistrate made a brief, polite speech that was more blessing than bureaucracy and then retreated, satisfied that the world would not collapse tonight.
At last, only the closest circle remained.
Eun-Sook, eyes tired but bright. Master Baek and Mi-Young, sitting a little closer than usual, as if the years had decided to be kind for an evening. Hye-Won and Eun-Jae side by side, hands touching under the table. Seol-Ha packing her instrument with care. Jin-Ho and Dan-Mi, already falling into the small domestic task of helping clear dishes. In-Su and Ah-Rin, standing close enough that their sleeves brushed.
“Go,” Mi-Young said briskly at last, shooing In-Su with one hand while holding a tray with the other. “If you hover any longer, you’ll start washing pots, and you’ll only get in the way.”
“Since when do I get in the way?” In-Su protested.
“Since you became someone else’s husband,” she replied. “Out. The house will be here tomorrow. So will the washing.”
Eun-Sook echoed the motion toward Ah-Rin. “Take him,” she said, half teasing, half command. “We’ll finish here. It’s your turn to have a full house.”
Ah-Rin bowed to her mother, to Hye-Won, to the others, gratitude filling the spaces words could not.
Han-Byeol scampered to their side, grabbing In-Su’s hand, then Ah-Rin’s, then darting back again as if she couldn’t decide whether she was a child or something else now.
“I’ll come after,” she announced. “I promised Beong-i we’d walk together.”
Ah-Rin smiled. “Don’t keep her waiting.”
As if summoned by her name, Beong-i appeared near the edge of the lantern-light. Her aunt stood a little behind her, posture cautious, eyes wary in a way that had nothing to do with the feast and everything to do with a life of limited choices.
They had accepted the invitation. They had eaten kindly enough, watched from the edges, stayed mostly quiet. Now the aunt’s hand rested on Beong-i’s shoulder with a familiar mix of habit and uncertainty.
“Time to go,” she said, not unkind.
Beong-i’s gaze swung between Ah-Rin, In-Su, Han-Byeol.
She lifted her hand, fingers twitching.
Han-Byeol hurried closer and gave a soft, careful tap against her wrist. Joy.
Beong-i answered with the three taps they had agreed meant joy and hope and more.
Her aunt did not understand the code, but she saw their faces and frowned slightly, as if trying to calculate risk she couldn’t name.
“We’ll see you tomorrow,” Ah-Rin said, every syllable measured. “Lessons as usual.”
Beong-i nodded; eyes huge in the lantern glow.
In-Su added, gentle but firm, “And bread. You know where.”
The aunt inclined her head, one polite, guarded acknowledgement.
As they turned away, Han-Byeol instinctively took a half-step after them. Her hand lifted, fingers stretching out into the evening air.
Then she stopped.
The distance between her and Beong-i was not far, but it might as well have been a border. She let her hand fall, biting at her lip, watching the two figures grow smaller against the harbour road. The lantern light catching the edge of their silhouettes before the dusk swallowed them.
Beside her, Ah-Rin felt the ache like something physical. But the little room at the harbour house waited, swept and ready. And hope, once named aloud, rarely went back to sleep.
Han-Byeol’s fingers curled and uncurled at her side.
“Eo…” she began, then stopped, swallowing hard.
Ah-Rin turned, thinking she’d bitten her tongue or caught a splinter.
Han-Byeol’s gaze was fixed somewhere near Ah-Rin’s shoulder, as if the word she wanted to say was perched there and might fly away if she looked straight at it.
“Eomma,” she whispered.
The world did a small, stunned thing.
Ah-Rin went very still.
For a heartbeat, everything she had been in the last five years collided: aunt, teacher, almost-mother, never-quite-allowed-to-claim. The word landed in her chest like something that had been thrown across a great distance and somehow arrived unbroken.
Her eyes burned.
She knelt without feeling her knees hit the packed earth and opened her arms.
Han-Byeol didn’t hesitate. She stepped into the space and folded herself against Ah-Rin’s chest, arms tight, as if afraid someone might come and snatch the word back.
Ah-Rin’s hand found the back of her daughter’s head, fingers threading into familiar hair.
“Again,” she murmured, voice shaking. “Just once more.”
Han-Byeol laughed a tiny, breathless laugh against her shoulder, half tears, half joy.
“Eomma,” she said, clearer now, like a note finally hitting its true pitch.
Ah-Rin closed her eyes. A tear escaped anyway, hot and ridiculous and perfect.
Behind them, In-Su looked away for a moment, jaw working, the muscles there tightening as if he were physically holding his own tears in place. When he looked back, his eyes were bright, and something in his face had softened into pure gratitude.
My wife, the look said. Our daughter.
Han-Byeol pulled back just far enough to see Ah-Rin’s face, checking, as if she needed proof that the word hadn’t hurt.
“It’s alright?” she asked, suddenly small. “If I call you that?”
Ah-Rin laughed, the sound ragged and full.
“It’s more than alright,” she said. “It’s the truest thing you’ve ever called me.”
She brushed a thumb under Han-Byeol’s eye, catching a tear before it fell.
Han-Byeol sniffed, steadied, and then turned her head toward the dark road where Beong-i had vanished.
“We’re not done, are we, Eomma?” she asked. “With her.”
Ah-Rin followed her gaze.
Beong-i’s shape was gone now, but the little room at the harbour house waited, swept and ready. Hope, once named, rarely went back to sleep.
“No,” Ah-Rin said, her hand still resting over her daughter’s heart. “We’re not done.”
Beside them, In-Su stepped close enough that their shoulders touched, a quiet promise without words.
The tide murmured against the shore. Lanterns swayed. Somewhere behind them, the last echoes of Seol-Ha’s melody hung in the air like a blessing that did not need anyone’s permission.
For a brief moment, as laughter rolled across the yard and the wheel creaked steadily in the dark, Hye-Won saw another evening overlaid on this one: younger faces, fewer lines at the corners of eyes, her own hands trembling as she held a bowl.
Eun-Jae’s gaze met hers now, older, steadier.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFVKeRfWKHv
“Same yard,” she murmured.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPcNC5SuSAT
“More people to feed,” he answered, and his mouth twitched. “I suppose that’s a good sign.”
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The night had thinned to its last layers by the time they left the mill.
The lanterns had been snuffed one by one; only a few still glowed, small yellow moons marking the path. The air held that particular chill that came when the day finally gave up its warmth.
Jin-Ho and Dan-Mi walked together toward the stream-house, where the school had once been and where their own life would now begin in earnest.
Dry leaves had begun to gather at the edges. Their shoes crunched softly, a sound that felt almost too loud in the hush after so much laughter.
Dan-Mi walked a few steps ahead, out of habit more than intent, the pale line of her hanbok catching what little light there was. After a short distance she realised the footsteps behind her had slowed.
She turned, half a silhouette against the slope.
Jin-Ho stood a few paces up, looking at her as if the dark itself had stepped back to make room for this one moment.8Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRtTe44coxC
“Are you going to stand there all night, saengnim,” she called softly, the old teasing title wrapped in new warmth, “or are you coming home with your wife?”
Jin-Ho felt his ears heat, but his feet moved without asking permission. He closed the distance in a few long strides, the crunch of leaves quickening under his steps.
When he reached her, he did not stop until he was close enough to see the shine in her eyes, to hear how her breath had gone the slightest bit uneven.
“Say that again,” he murmured.
Dan-Mi’s mouth curved, but the usual sharpness in her smile had softened. “What? ‘Saengnim’?”
“The other word,” he said.
She huffed out a laugh that trembled at the edges. “Greedy,” she muttered. Then, quieter, letting the syllables settle correctly this time: “Your wife.”
He swallowed, the sound loud in the quiet. For the first time that day, his composure actually wobbled.
“So,” she said quickly, trying to cover the flutter in her chest. “Are you coming, or should I tell Eomeoni you’re afraid of the dark path?”
Rather than answer, Jin-Ho reached out and took her hand; fingers closing around hers with a care that still managed to be sure.
Dan-Mi’s next joke died on her tongue.
Her fingers tightened around his almost at once, as if she had been waiting for exactly this and hadn’t known how badly. Her pulse sped, not from the slope.
“Better?” he asked.
She cleared her throat, aiming for brisk and missing by a small, honest margin. “Acceptable.”
They started walking again, this time side by side.
The path was the same as it had been every day: leaves, stones, the mutter of the stream somewhere below. But with each step, the word she had thrown ahead of them like a dare settled more firmly into the space between their joined hands.
Wife. Husband.
Nothing in the world had changed, and yet everything had.
When the stream-house came into view, crouched under its familiar roofline, Dan-Mi slowed just enough to look back up the path they had climbed.
“We really did it,” she said softly.
Jin-Ho squeezed her hand. “We did,” he said. “Now we just have to keep doing it.”
Dan-Mi exhaled, a little laugh slipping out with the breath. “Work,” she said. “Always more work.”
“You like work,” he reminded her.
She glanced at him; eyes warm in the thin light. “I love this one,” she said.
The stream-house looked almost shy in the dark, its windows breathing a thin line of lamplight. The wheel-song from the mill reached it only faintly; mostly there was the sound of the stream and a few late insects who hadn’t yet admitted summer was over.
Jin-Ho and Dan-Mi stood at the threshold, side by side, and promptly discovered that neither of them quite remembered how to walk inside as married people.
“You first,” Jin-Ho said, gesturing.
Dan-Mi shook her head at once. “You,” she countered. “It’s your home.”
“It’s our home,” he corrected. “And I’ve lived in it longer. You should go first.”
Dan-Mi folded her arms. “I have seen too many aunts argue, that whoever steps in first rules the household,” she said. “I refuse to be tricked into a lifetime of being told I did this to myself.”
Jin-Ho snorted. “If anyone rules this household, it will be the ink stains,” he said. “And perhaps Eomeoni, from a distance.”
They stared at the slightly raised sill as if it were a puzzle on an examination.
“Together?” Dan-Mi suggested at last.
“Together,” he agreed.
They counted softly— “Hana, dul, set”—and stepped at the same time.
Their shoulders bumped.
Dan-Mi’s hairpin caught lightly on the edge of his sleeve, tugging her off balance. She put a hand out to steady herself and found his chest there instead of the doorframe. For one startled heartbeat, they were very close, the world narrowed to lamplight and the sound of two people remembering they had agreed to share a life and a roof and everything that came with both.
The laughter that had been bubbling up caught in her throat and turned into something else.
Jin-Ho swallowed. “Sorry,” he murmured, though he did not move away.
“For what?” she asked, voice suddenly softer.
He thought about it for a second, then shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “Or—this.”
Before his courage could change its mind, he dipped his head and brushed his mouth against hers.
It was not expert. It was not the kind of kiss travelling performers sang about in the market. It was brief and a little awkward and entirely sincere, his hand finding the side of her face as if it had always known the way.
Dan-Mi’s breath caught.
For a heartbeat she stood very still.
Then her fingers tightened in the front of his robe, just once, as if to say yes, here, and he felt the answering trembling laugh against his lips.
When they parted, both of them were flushed in the lamplight.
“Well,” she said, trying and failing to sound unimpressed. “You certainly took your time.”
“I was being careful,” he replied. “I only get one first kiss with my wife. I didn’t want to waste it tripping over the threshold.”
Her eyes flashed. “That was not wasted,” she said. “But if you’re worried about practice, I suppose we could—”
He reached back blindly with one hand and slid the door shut before she could finish the sentence, the wooden panel whispering closed with a soft thunk.
From outside, only a warm spill of lamplight remained under the frame, and the faintest sound of two people laughing in low, disbelieving voices as they tried to decide which shelf would hold the ink, which would hold the bowls, and how on earth anyone was meant to sleep when the whole house felt like a held breath.
Haesong, having listened to storms and births and funerals, added the sound of newlyweds fumbling their way into joy to its collection and kept the secret.
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Work did not stop because two couples had married.
Three days after the feast, the mill wheel turned as usual, bread rose in the bakery, and the hall filled with the scrape of stools and the soft thunder of girls’ voices. Ink bled where it ought, and occasionally where it ought not. Life, offended at having been asked to pause for joy, resumed its usual pace with a faint sniff.
Classes ran a little shorter that day.
The air had taken on that sharper edge that brought colour to cheeks and stiffness to fingers. Ah-Rin ended the last lesson with a promise to go over longer texts tomorrow and a reminder not to let their brushes drink too deeply from the inkstone.
“Letters,” she said, tapping the corner of the board, “are not carp. They do not need to swim.”
Soo-Yeon stifled a giggle. Mi-Ran tried and failed. Han-Byeol rolled her eyes but smiled; Beong-i watched her teacher’s mouth, copying the shape of the words carefully.
One by one, the girls bowed and scattered, voices spilling out into the yard, then down toward the lanes and houses that claimed them.
Usually, Han-Byeol dawdled at the back, waiting until the room had thinned before slinging her satchel over one shoulder and attaching herself to Ah-Rin’s side, as if by habit she had forgotten how to go home any other way.
Today, as the room emptied, another figure appeared in the doorway.
“Halmeoni!” Han-Byeol blinked. “You came?”
Eun-Sook stepped in, tucking a stray hair back under her scarf. “It seems I did,” she said. “If I leave you to your Eomma every day, she will forget what it is to walk home without a child hanging off her sleeve.”
The word still lit Han-Byeol’s face from the inside.
“She likes it,” Han-Byeol said firmly. “Her sleeve. And her child.”
“I know.” Eun-Sook’s eyes softened. “Today she will like something else as well.”
She glanced past her granddaughter to Ah-Rin. A small, steady nod passed between mother and daughter: Is it still today? / Yes. It has to be.
Han-Byeol’s brow furrowed. “Aren’t you coming?” she asked Ah-Rin. “We always go together.”
“Not this time,” Ah-Rin said, keeping her tone light, though her palms were damp. “I have to write a note for the magistrate about some readers. Halmeoni will take you home. I’ll follow later.”
Han-Byeol looked unconvinced. “You hate writing notes to the magistrate,” she pointed out.
“True,” Ah-Rin said. “But sometimes we do things we dislike for the sake of the girls.” She tapped the nearest desk. “Off with you. If you hurry, Halmeoni might let you taste something before supper.”
Eun-Sook made a soft noise of indignation. “Might?” she said. “This child talks as if I starve her.”
“You don’t,” Han-Byeol muttered, already looping her satchel strap twice around her hand. “Not enough.”
Ah-Rin watched them go: Eun-Sook’s steady step, Han-Byeol’s quicker one dancing in and out of it. At the corner, her daughter turned and waved twice, as if to tack her mother to the room with the gesture.
Only when they had vanished from view did Ah-Rin let herself exhale fully.
The hall, briefly loud, settled into that peculiar quiet of recently vacated rooms, where words still seemed to hover in the air for a few moments before sinking into the floorboards. She set about straightening desks that did not need it, stacking paper, covering the inkstones.
There was a soft knock at the side entrance. She turned.
In-Su stood there, still in his work clothes, hair a little wind-tossed from the walk, flour clinging faintly to one sleeve as if it had refused to be brushed off.
“You’re late,” she said automatically, because anything else would have broken in her throat.
He stepped inside, closing the door gently behind him. “I had to make sure Abeoji understood the difference between ‘I’m going to talk to a girl’s aunt’ and ‘I’m abandoning the bakery to run away to sea’,” he said. “He prefers clarity.”
“And does he?” Ah-Rin asked. “Understand?”
“He does,” In-Su said. “He would prefer it if we came back with the same number of limbs we left with, but otherwise…”
His attempt at humour earned him a brief, grateful smile. They stood in the quiet hall, the weight of what they were about to do settling in like a third person between them.
“Still sure?” he asked.
“No,” she said honestly. “But I’m sure we have to try.”
He nodded once. “That’s enough.”
They left by the side door, taking the path that skirted the lower fields rather than the busier road through the town centre. The air had a knife-edge to it now; their breaths left pale ghosts behind them that vanished almost at once.
Beong-i’s aunt’s house crouched at the edge of Haesong, exactly as it had three days ago, and three months ago, and likely three years before that. The chrysanthemum in the cracked pot had lost some petals, but those that remained shone stubbornly bright.
“She hasn’t thrown it away,” Ah-Rin said quietly.
“She doesn’t throw things away easily,” In-Su replied. “That’s part of the problem. And part of the hope.”
He knocked. The door opened a crack, then wider.
Her aunt’s face was wary, but not unfriendly. “Seonsaeng-nim,” she said. “Baker Baek. Beong-i already came back from school alone.”
“We came to speak with you. Alone, if that’s alright,” Ah-Rin said quickly.
The aunt looked at their faces for a long moment, weighing more than she could say. Then she stepped back and gestured inward.
“Come, then,” she said. “It’s no use talking in a doorway. The neighbours’ ears grow longer when it’s cold.”
They stepped inside.
The room was as before: bare, clean, neatly ordered. The little fire in the corner tried its best against the creeping chill. That single folded blanket in the corner said more than any speech about winters past.
The aunt did not offer cushions. They sat on the floor without complaint.
“What have I done wrong?” she asked finally, chin lifting in thin defiance. “If you are here together, in my house, it must be something.”
“You’ve done much right,” Ah-Rin said. “That’s why we came.”
In-Su added, “You’ve given her a roof. Food. Clothes. You could have sent her to another relative or worse. You kept her.”
The aunt’s eyes flickered. “Her parents died under my roof,” she said, voice low. “What else was I to do? Throw a baby on the street?”
“No,” Ah-Rin said. “You did what many would not.”
Something in the aunt’s shoulders eased a fraction, but suspicion still threaded through her voice. “Then why are you here?” she asked. “If not to tell me I’ve failed, then to tell me what?”
Ah-Rin glanced at In-Su. He gave the tiniest nod: Say it as we discussed. Not as a plea, but as a proposal.
“We’re here,” Ah-Rin said slowly, “to ask if you would let us shoulder the rest of the road with her.”
The aunt stared.
Ah-Rin continued, choosing each word like a stone in a river. “You’ve brought her this far. Through fever and winter and hunger. Through being the child nobody planned for. You’ve done that. Not us.”
The aunt’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t look away.
“But now,” Ah-Rin went on, “she spends most of her days with us. At school. At the bakery. At the harbour. And” – her voice thickened a little – “in our hearts.”
In-Su’s hand rested on his knee, fingers curling briefly. “She is your brother’s child,” he said. “That will always be true. But if you allow it… she can be ours too. Officially. Under our roof. With our name on the troubles and the joys.”
The aunt swallowed, throat working.
“You have children,” she said. “He has his daughter. You have your… students. Why take on another burden?”
“Because she is not a burden to us,” In-Su replied, more sharply than he intended. He checked himself, softened his tone. “Because when she is in my bakery, the room feels right. Because when she sits between Han-Byeol and Soo-Yeon in the hall, the row feels complete. Because when she is not there, the space she leaves is too loud.”
Ah-Rin added, quietly, “And because I recognise the way she flinches away from wanting things. I used to do that too. I had people who pulled me forward anyway. We would like to do that for her now.”
The aunt looked down at her hands.
Silence settled over the three of them like dust.
At last, the aunt let out a breath that seemed to scrape its way out of her ribs. “I am not a kind woman,” she said. “People think so, because I took her in. But I did not always hold her gently. I was angry when the rice ran short and there were two mouths and then only one adult to feed them. I was afraid, and I do not hide fear well.”
“Fear rarely looks pretty,” Ah-Rin said.
“I have called her…” The aunt’s voice faltered. “Names. ‘Beong-i’ among them. A lump. Something that sits and does not move, does not speak properly. It was easier than hearing the neighbours call her worse.”
The word sat in the room, heavy and ugly and familiar.
“I know,” Ah-Rin said quietly. “At school, I hear it sometimes when people forget themselves.”
The aunt winced.
“I did not mean it as hate,” she muttered.
“I know,” Ah-Rin repeated. “But she is not a lump. She is a girl. She deserves a name that says more than what she lacks.”
The aunt’s eyes shimmered briefly, then steadied. “And you think you can give her that?” she asked. “A proper name? A proper life?”
Ah-Rin did not promise miracles. “We can give her a roof where she is wanted. Work that suits her hands. Lessons that fit her way of learning. A father who looks at her like she is a wonder and a mother who has learned how not to run away.”
“And a sister,” In-Su added. “Who has already decided the matter in her heart.”
The aunt gave a short, broken laugh. “That child,” she said. “She looks at Beong-i like she hung the moon crooked on purpose.”
“That’s about right,” In-Su said.
Another silence. This one felt different: not hostile, not quite resigned. Just… thinking.
“What do you want, exactly?” the aunt asked at last. “Say it plain.”
Plain. Ah-Rin folded her hands together.
“We would like to take her into our house,” she said. “To raise her as our daughter. To be responsible for her food, her clothes, her schooling, her future. We are not asking you to vanish. You can visit. She can visit you. She is your kin. That won’t change. But we would like to be the ones who listen for her at night.”
The aunt’s lips trembled.
“And if I say no?” she asked.
“Then we go home,” In-Su answered. “And nothing changes except that you will know we asked.”
He met her gaze steadily. “We will not take her by trick or force. That would make us unfit to have her.”
The aunt looked away, eyes caught on the small chrysanthemum nodding faintly in the draught by the door.
“I am tired,” she said, very softly. “Tired in the bones. She is getting bigger. She wants more than I know how to give. I see her looking at your school, your bakery, your… family.” The word came out strangely, as if she hadn’t expected it to. “And I think, ‘If I hold her too tight, I will twist her.’ If I let her go, maybe she will hate me. If I keep her, maybe she will anyway.”
She scrubbed a hand over her face, as if ashamed to have said so much.
“I do not want to be the wall she breaks on,” she whispered.
Ah-Rin’s eyes filled. “You won’t be,” she said. “If you open the gate instead.”
The aunt’s shoulders sagged.
“Call her,” she said abruptly. “If she does not want it, it ends here.”
Ah-Rin nodded, heart hammering.
The aunt went to the door, called once into the small yard. There was the sound of quick feet, the shuffle of sandals.
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At almost the same time, in the harbour house, Han-Byeol was pacing. She had helped lay out bowls for supper, then rearranged them three times. She had gone to the door, looked out, seen nothing but ordinary evening, and gone back in. She had tried to read a page of one of the simpler readers and found that the letters kept turning into little crooked faces.
“Sit, child,” Eun-Sook said at last, not unkindly. “You’ll wear a hole in the floor.”
Han-Byeol flopped down on the mat, then bounced back up the next moment, unable to help herself. “Why did Eomma not come with us?” she burst out. “Why did you fetch me today? You never do that when school is over on time.”
Eun-Sook regarded her steadily. There was no point in lying to this girl; she had been raised on honesty and stubbornness both.
“Because she had something else, she had to do,” Eun-Sook said. “And because it was not yet time for you to be there.”
“Where?” Suspicion flared. “She isn’t ill?”
“No,” Eun-Sook said. “She is… visiting someone. With In-Su.”
Han-Byeol’s eyes widened. “Already? I thought—” She stopped.
“You thought adults would wait until you were watching to do something important?” Eun-Sook’s mouth curved. “We’re not all that cruel.”
Han-Byeol swallowed. “They went to Ajumma’s, didn’t they?” she whispered. “To talk about Beong—”
She cut herself off as if the old name burned.
Eun-Sook’s gaze softened. “Yes,” she said. “They went to speak to her aunt. To ask. Not to demand.”
“What if she says no?” Han-Byeol’s voice wobbled. “What if she slams the door? What if she sends Eomma away?”
“Then,” Eun-Sook said calmly, “your Eomma and In-Su will come home. And they will still be your Eomma and your Appa. And we will have tried. That is more than most people ever do.”
Han-Byeol’s hands twisted in her lap.
“I told Eomma she had to tell her,” she said. “About… about wanting her. Properly. Did she?”
“She will,” Eun-Sook said. “Your Eomma is many things. She is not a coward.”
Han-Byeol bit her lip. “I should be there,” she muttered.
“No,” Eun-Sook replied. “You should be here. Waiting can be its own kind of bravery.”
She reached out and took her granddaughter’s fidgeting hands in both of hers, holding them still.
“When they come back,” she said, “you will be the first face they see. That matters.”
Han-Byeol’s eyes glistened. “If they come back with her,” she whispered, “I know exactly what I’ll say.”
“I know,” Eun-Sook said. “You’ve been saying it in your sleep.”
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Beong-i appeared in the doorway, hair slightly mussed, tunic crooked from whatever task she’d been pulled away from. She scanned the room, eyes landing first on her aunt, then on Ah-Rin, then finally on In-Su.
Her shoulders drew up at once, the familiar, wary posture of someone bracing for rebuke. She stepped inside, stopping just where the light left off and shadow began.
“Ajumma says…” Her aunt swallowed, then tried again, gesturing slowly so Beong-i could watch her mouth and hands. “They want to talk. About you. About… living somewhere else.”
Beong-i’s gaze snapped to Ah-Rin, then to In-Su, then back.
Her shoulders drew up, the way they did when she expected scolding.
Ah-Rin’s chest hurt.
She moved carefully, lowering herself to her knees so that her eyes were level with Beong-i’s. On the floorboards, she could see the faint wear of a small heel pacing over the years.
“Beong-i-yah,” she said softly.
The girl blinked.
“We have been thinking,” Ah-Rin continued. “Ajumma has carried you a long way. She has done so much. But now… your days are with us. Your mornings, your lessons, your afternoons. When you are not there, the rooms feel wrong.”
She reached out, not touching yet, just letting her hand hover.
“We would like,” Ah-Rin said, and her voice wobbled for the first time, “to be the ones you come home to as well.”
Beong-i stared, breath coming faster.
In-Su crouched beside them, his knee creaking. His voice was gentle but firm, the way it was when steadying a frightened colt. “We would like to be your Appa and Eomma, if you want that,” he said. “Not instead of your aunt. But as well as. In a house, where you have your own room and no one calls you a lump.”
At that, something in Beong-i’s face crumpled.
Her aunt flinched, guilt flashing across her features, but she did not defend herself.
“We will not force you,” Ah-Rin added quickly. “You can say no. You can say not yet. You can say nothing at all. But we needed you to know the door is here.”
For a heartbeat, no one breathed. Then Beong-i took one small step forward.
Her hands, which so often hesitated, moved with sudden certainty. She caught at Ah-Rin’s sleeves and folded herself in, burying her face against Ah-Rin’s chest as if trying to climb inside her ribs.
Her shoulders began to shake. It was not loud. Just the jerky, ragged breathing of someone who had practiced not crying for years and suddenly forgotten how to hold back.
Ah-Rin wrapped her arms around her and held on, eyes closing, tears sliding hot and unstoppable down her own cheeks.
In-Su turned his head away, clearing his throat. His hand lifted once, hesitated, then settled gently on the back of Beong-i’s head, palm warm and careful.
Behind them, her aunt watched, lower lip caught between her teeth. “She will hate me,” she whispered, mostly to herself. “She will go and forget.”
Ah-Rin shook her head immediately, still holding the girl. “No,” she said. “She will remember, that when everyone else might have turned away, you did not. And if she forgets for a while, that is alright. Children forget pain to breathe. We will remember for her.”
The aunt’s eyes shone. “You will… let her come? To visit?” she asked. “If she wants?”
“Of course,” Ah-Rin said. “You are part of her story. We’re adding pages, not tearing them out.”
The aunt barked a small, broken laugh at that. “Scholar talk,” she muttered, but there was no heat in it. She looked at the three of them for a long moment.
“Go, then,” she said hoarsely. “Before I change my mind. Take her where the world is bigger. I will… learn how to be grateful properly later.”
Beong-i lifted her head just enough to see her aunt. There was fear in her eyes, and gratitude, and something like apology. She made a small, uncertain movement with her hand—half wave, half promise.
Her aunt nodded; lips pressed tight.
“Be good,” she said. “Be stubborn. Listen. Learn. And don’t forget how to come back down a hill.”
Beong-i swallowed and nodded hard.
Ah-Rin rose slowly, bringing the girl up with her, arms still around her thin shoulders. In-Su stepped to her other side, a solid presence.
They bowed, all three of them, to the woman who had kept a baby alive in a house that had not been ready to hold her. Then they stepped out into the late afternoon.
The chrysanthemum by the door bobbed in the wind as if in agreement.
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The walk back home felt both very short and impossibly long.
Beong-i clung to Ah-Rin’s hand so tightly her fingers ached, but Ah-Rin did not mind. On her other side, In-Su walked close enough that their sleeves brushed with each step, as if forming a small wall around the girl.
They did not talk much. There would be time later for all the explanations, the jokes, the practicalities. For now, the three of them simply breathed the same air and tried to believe this was real.
When they turned into the lane by the harbour house, the door was already open.
Eun-Sook stood in the doorway, shawl still over her shoulders, as if she had been there since they left. Behind her, the faint glow of the brazier and the promise of hot soup lined the room with warmth.
And there, just past her, Han-Byeol nearly vibrated out of her skin. She had taken two steps forward already, then stopped herself, as if remembering that rushing might frighten.
Now, as the three figures came into view—Ah-Rin, In-Su, and the smaller one between them—her eyes went very wide. She walked, not ran, down the short path, hands clenched at her sides. When she was close enough to see Beong-i’s face properly, she stopped.
For a heartbeat, no one moved. Then Han-Byeol’s mouth curved, bright and sure.
“Welcome home,” she said, voice clear, as if she’d been practising the line for days. “Ye-Sol-ah.”
The name landed gently, like something that had been waiting in the air for a long time and had finally been called.
Beong-i—Ye-Sol now—blinked.
Her lips formed the syllables soundlessly. Ye. Sol. She touched them with the tip of her tongue as if tasting them.
“What is that?” she whispered, voice rough from crying and disuse.
“A name,” Han-Byeol said firmly, stepping closer. “One that means you’re not a lump or a mistake. Ye, for brightness. Sol, like the pine that stays green when everything else dies back. Eomma and Appa and I talked and… well, I talked the most.”
She glanced up at Ah-Rin and In-Su, seeking permission for what she had just claimed.
In-Su nodded; eyes wet. “It suits you,” he said.
Ah-Rin swallowed past the tightness in her throat. “If you like it,” she added quickly. “You can choose. We will not paint over you without asking.”
The girl looked from one face to the other—the man who had given her warm bread and quiet jokes, the woman who had given her letters and patience, the not-quite-sister who had given her rhythm and stubborn friendship.
“Ye-Sol,” she said again, firmer now. She nodded once, as if signing something in her own heart.
“I like it,” she said.
Han-Byeol grinned, relief breaking over her features like sun. “Good,” she said. “Because I was going to use it either way.”
Eun-Sook chuckled softly from the doorway. “Come in,” she called. “Names are all very well, but soup gets cold.”
They stepped into the house together.
Inside, the small room that had once smelled of rope and gear now held a folded blanket, a low pallet, and a shelf waiting for small treasures. Outside, the tide turned with its usual indifference.
But on that threshold, as Ye-Sol crossed into her new home with one hand in Ah-Rin’s and one in Han-Byeol’s, the journey that had started in someone else’s grief landed, finally, in chosen love.
The ledger of Haesong would not record it. Ah-Rin would.
And somewhere in the middle of that autumn page, in a hand that had mended emperors’ ink and written girls’ first letters, she would set down a single line:
“Today, a girl came home with a new name and an old, stubborn heart. We will spend the rest of our days proving to her that she was never a burden, only a gift we received late.”
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End of Volume II
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