My whole world came crashing down around my head when I saw my parent's and uncle dead, and worst of all, I couldn't find my impulsive little brother at all. My twin sisters were closest to him as he chose to stay in the village with our cousin Geom and our parents; and putting them to sleep without him was next to impossible. My mother tended to them all day whilst it was Hwan who played with them, put them to bed and read them all sorts of stories that were wildly inappropriate for their age that helped to put them to sleep. Bo-Geom couldn't do much without him and went to console her mother, who was beyond inconsolable at this point. She had more or less grown up with all of our parents including us children as well. This was the day that I was meant to make my proposal to her daughter with her blessing and now here she was, trying to manage everyone's funeral's at such an old age whilst we had to pacify the villagers and our own families...or what remained of them anyways.
"Orabeoni? Where is Hwan? Why hasn't he come home yet? Is he also leaving us? Doesn't he want to become a part of this family anymore? Did we do something to him? Does he ate us now?" My goodness, how on earth did my mother handle 2 of us at the same time? I had both girls come at me with all of these vulnerable questions and tears in their eyes and I had to admit that it was a little overwhelming for me to deal with them on my own as my sister was nowhere near ready to deal with this situation during her pregnancy. I was kept far too busy in the kingdom with my sister, my cousin as my fiancé whose double life had seemed to come to an end as a male physician in training. Only my brother and Geom knew them well enough to calm them down, and I could not believe how incredibly foolish he was to pull a stunt like this on his little sisters as soon as such a tragedy took place...
"Come one come all children! Who would like some of these tasty treats that I picked up from the kingdom, especially for my twin sisters?" He finally had the nerve to show his face just when I myself was on the verge of hunting him down myself and dragging him from our father's brothel where he had been going for 4 years now. I couldn't believe that he was putting us through all of this now, or that was what I thought until I noticed the small trail of blood that was dripping out of a bag that he had loaded onto our father's horse of all things. I looked back at him and straight into his eyes, and that is when I noticed that he has been crying himself; god only knows what this idiot had gotten himself into now, but I knew that I needed to shield my sisters away from such a sight, lest something terrible overcame them as well tonight. "Go back inside girls and start getting dressed for bed, Hwan here will give you all of the persimmons that you want tonight and he will read you a story. Go on." "But mommy always helps us..." "Sister, you are big girls now, aren't you? You can get dressed by yourself...for you will have to do it from now on." It was hard to turn away from them with precious tears welling up in their eyes once again, but as I looked on at my clingy baby brother, I could tell that my parents death had broken him more than I hoped it would have, to the point where I swore I could see my father in his paralysed face with those eyes that he shared with him, and the blood that was running on his hands...
"Hwan?" "It is Kang Han-Soo now brother, that is my new alias in the kingdom." "Kang Han-Soo? Not Baek Gwang-Hyun? The master of the Ihwaru Brothel?" "I will always be a master of that brothel hyung, I just cannot do it as a Seo, especially with the current going ons in the kingdom." "Brother, what on earth have you done?" "Done? Oh, do you mean the blood that is currently spilling from our father's horse?" "Hwan, tell me and tell me now..." "This is a gift for my poor father, who wasted a lot of time trying to lecture me into becoming something I am not in order to reconcile with him, or something like that." "Is that what I think it is?" "It is the head of The Mistress Han, after I gave her a little something special." "A little something special?" "Let us just say that I have inflicted more torment upon her within in the space of 5 minutes than she did to our mother in almost 4 decades." "And just what do you think you will do with that?" "Isn't it obvious? I shall bury her head with our parents so that she can witness their ashes being burned and laid to rest with them...and our uncle for that matter since she was his girlfriend first..." "She was only a crush, and a big mistake after that. Where are you going to hide it?" "Who says that I will? I shall impale her on a spike until aunt Hwa-Wol carries out the funeral arrangements, and in the meantime, I shall read the twins a bedtime story, but it will be for the last time for a while hyung." "And what is that supposed to mean? Hwan?" "Do you remember our father's favourite line for me? If I can argue so well, then I should just become an attorney at law? Then that is exactly what I shall become."
"An attorney at law? What on earth...what do you know about the law?" "I know everything that you know about the law since I studied all of your books after you just heartlessly abandoned me here in the village with Geom." "Oh for goodness sake brother, will you grow up already? I told you that your time would come..." "and it has now, thanks to Soo Yang." "Soo Yang? That girl who always used to chase you around?" "I have a plan for us in the kingdom that goes perfectly well with what we are all trying to achieve hyung, and if we can pull it off successfully, then I can guarantee that our little sisters will never have to face any hardships or burdens from our parent's past in their futures. They simply will need to carry on our families goals, their ambitions and even become powerful enough that they can marry husbands who will take on our family name to contribute to our lineage. And you do owe them that much, since you are practically a stranger to them." "How shall we keep in contact?" "I will be staying with you in the kingdom for the most part, but if you ever need to reach me when I am not close, then we can use Soo Yang to deliver messages to each other." "So you want us to become close to her? Why?" "I shall tell everyone as soon as we put the girls to sleep, so gather everyone around in 30 minutes, because this is the best fool-proof plan that I can come up with." "Very well brother, and if your plan is indeed as fool proof as you say, then we can all look up to you in the future. But there is one matter of yours that I will need to interfere with as your hyung..." "if you are talking about my marriage brother, then I ahem already thought out that aspect, I just need your blessings." "Brother? I ahem never heard you speak with so much confidence before today." "Do you think that our father ever let me? The only advantage that you have over me is you're seniority hyung, whereas I was stuck here in his suffocating world with him every single day." "Very well, I shall gather everyone as long as put those girls to bed as soon as possible."
I should have anticipated this change in him for when my parent's eventually passed away, but who could have ever imagined that it would come so soon? And for all of the meaningless fights that my brother provoked with my father, who knew that he would eventually become more like him than ever. They already had the same face, the same temperament and the same thin line of patience, but they just could not get along at all. I was also in the same predicament with my father, bur I never crossed the line with him, I learnt everything he wanted me to learn and I excelled in everything so that I could attain the freedom that I had when I grew up, and I even achieved a position as a notorious scholar for him. But my baby brother....god only knows that it was always my uncle who could keep him in line, and now that he was gone, what was I supposed to do now?
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"...Soo Yang will be the catalyst for our revenge in the kingdom." "Soo Yang? What can that little girl do for us?" "She can become our messenger if we keep her close to Hana and Bo-Geom." "And why is that?" "I visited her a little with that Hui-Jae slut, and do you want to know what I overheard?" "What is it Hwan? Sorry, I mean Kang Han-Soo?" "Do you know what I overheard?" "No, but I hope that you will come to the point soon cousin." "Soo Yang is to marry the second son of the Left State Councillor, the one who will do everything and anything to stop the future impending marriage of The Third Prince." "His marriage? His re-marriage? What can that do for us?" "It can help us form an alliance with enemies of The Third Prince, but we should have aliases, apart from Hana and cousin Chul." "I suppose that is a start..." "Thanks to The Mistress Han, Hana already has a place within the palace court with The Third Prince's daughter. We can tear apart The Third Prince's expected harem with her help...and mine." "Are you suggesting that you will become at attorney at law? To tear apart their families in legal cases before they can even form a harem for him? That will weaken his reign for sure..." "And you, cousin Chul get to advance in your military career that you have thanks to The Mistress Han as well. Hana will cause his harem to fall, which also means straining relationships with the ministers that support him. They will bring in astronomers and people who study astrology, so that is where Chief Park's son and Hyuk can come in. As for Geom, I know that my father gave him some special lessons and I can guess what he taught him. He needs to be stuck on our cousin Dae-Jung and bring him in at the right moment to rebel against The Third Prince just as I make my cases about the minister's families." "And the twins? What about them?" "You are still needed in the kingdom Hana and because Hyuk masks himself, it is by the grace of buddha himself that nobody has discovered that you are a twin yourself. But we cannot take that risk with my twin sisters; they will need to stay here in the village, preferably with Bo-Geom's family. Her siblings are old enough to look after them with our aunt is far too old and..."
"She will carry out the funeral as early as tomorrow...bur I have something too announce to you all." "What is that brother?" "Right before the funeral begins, I will marry Bo-Geom, in front of the bodies of our parents. She has parted from her own family for such a long time, which is unusual for an unmarried woman, so I need to give her mother and siblings reassurances that she will be taken care of. She will also not live out the rest of her life as a male either, so we need to wrap this up, preferably within a year; that will be our timeline." "Will you move into the kingdom or stay in the village, brother?" "I will stay in the village until the twins grow up and it is they're time to enter the kingdom. But that decisions will rely on our success or our failure of this mission, as they will have no business in the kingdom at all if the Seo's are hunted down by The Third Prince or anyone else in The Royal Family. And we will all regular check in on them, that is the least that we can do for them after their orphanage. That includes their cousins as well since they absolutely adore all of you." "Once my mission in the kingdom is complete, I will spend half of my time here in the village with my wife Hana and we shall take them in, I can promise you that." "Very well, let the game begin. "