"…she disobeys palace rules and acts without permission all of the time, this is the kind of wife or even concubine that needs to be deposed…" "She has hardly moved since her confinement and she refuses to see a doctor. Is she doing this just for attention?" "From whom? Her husband already pampers her as it is, so what could she possibly be after this time?" "She has caused the downfall of more than one clan now, she really is a danger to our society! This is why you show ld never educate a woman beyond her means…" "What a disrespectful and arrogant woman she is indeed…!" "She has been protected and indulged at every turn, how do you expect her to stop now? She will not admit to any wrongdoing, not even if her life depended on it." "She still holds herself in high regard and speaks with such certainty." "…her husband should take back everything he has given her, including the clothes off of her back!" "…of course, she is just as deposable as any other woman is…isn't she?" "She says that adoration and position is important, but not as important as self-respect? Is that supposed to be a joke? What value does a woman have in this life without her family? Her father or her husband?" "Well she doesn't have a father, does she? That is why everyone indulged her to where she is right now." "…she can squander her husband's affection away and rebuild herself from scratch just like she did the first time…" "He always had cheap taste to begin with, didn't he like The Mistress Han at first?" "That is right, he simply went after the only woman who would ever love him instead of whom he really wanted to be with…"
"It is rather good to see how dedicated the servants in the palace are to their master, but I find your chatter far too noisy to allow you to serve anyone else! You bunch of slaves who betray their master for glory! You are all fired! And you will all receive 40 lashes before leaving your respective work! I already have a number of servants from the market ready and willing to replace you all!" "Master, please forgive me! Forgive us all! We cannot loose out on our work, and…" "So what do you suggest? That I let you stayed employed after spreading how many rumours about my wife? Just who the hell do you think you are!"
"Husband? Is that you?" "I have brought out servants along with me to pack up everything that I have sent you, including yourself." "My children…" "The sooner you start getting ready wife, the sooner that you can be reunited with them faster." "My children…I yearn for my children…I am coming…" "My poor wife barely had the strength to collect herself as she had been kneeling on the floor the entire time despite me moving in our furnishings to accommodate her. To say that she had suffered in my absence was a complete understatement and it was only when I saw her on her own giving birth to twins with no medicine and a dead body at her feet did it really hit me. I had exploited my own woman way too much, to the point where she was now facing a lot of backlash and criticism for the first time in her life since her public epileptic fits and it was making her depressed, which was inferring with her new role in motherhood. I had to keep my son with her that I barely saw, but as for my daughter, she was screaming her tiny little lungs out for her mother anti was tearing me apart more than I could have possibly imagined. My family was torn apart and it was my fault; I should have come for my wife the moment that I abandoned The Third Prince to the hands of my brother-in-law instead of roaming around the palace to kill the useless Crown Prince myself. Never did I think that my actions would be reflected upon my wife since we had never been caught out in our schemes before. And now she was solely being blamed for killing a clan for no reason and with little evidence to attest to it all. My god, what do I do? What if she leaves me over this? She had hardly opened her mouth to say anything at all since her traumatic birth, it was almost as if she had become mute by default of my actions. I…had let my greed go beyond it's bounds, and now my innocent wife was the one paying the price for me once again. This is something that I could not forgive myself for and I couldn't even expect her to forgive me at all, even if it means…
I dare not face her, since the image of her bearing our children alone without myself at her side was permanently etched into my brain. I had my own team of servant help to bathe and dress her as I held my son in my arms. My son Hyuk and my daughter Hana, two precious pearls of mine that were born with the same milky and fair skin as my wife was luckily, with the same dark features as hers and myself. Dark eyes, dark eyebrows, dimples around the corners of their mouths, expect from the fact that my daughter was born with waves in her hair, just like her uncle Hwi. This wasn't like me, but I could only give silent prayers to my brother-in-law's family who hadn't spared to help us out. Her brother really wasn't happy with me either, but he didn't abandon me either and his sons were the only things that were keeping me going without my wife. I had so many plans for her and for the both of us; she was supposed to give birth in the safety of our home, she was supposed to be spoilt and pampered by the elders of the village and her close ones were supposed to stay by her side until she felt comfortable enough to look after the children on her own…
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Depression had hit me as hard as a rock and I couldn't even bare to look at myself, never mind my husband who had surprisingly been nothing but kind to me. I could hear and feel the remorse in his voice every time that he spoke to me, but that did not make up for the fact that I had been torn apart from my daughter since I didn't get to spend much time with her at all. I felt like I complete stranger to her which had began to trigger my own damaged emotions towards my parents who were ripped away from me at such a young age. It was such a hassle for my husband to disguise my daughter so that I could feed and change her, but she always cried far too much around me because she wasn't used to my scent or my touch at all. And this deeply angered me, more than I have ever felt in my entire life. If I wasn't currently recovering from my labour, then I would not hesitate to go back to the palace with a torch of fire in my hands and burn the place to the ground for every single moment that I was separated from her, just because this damned dynasty and the ones before us were too superstitious and saw twins as a threat instead of a blessing. I was so angry that i was even afraid of myself; the love that I had for my children had completely shed me of my innocence and gentleness, which I could not tell if this was a bad thing or not. And as for my husband; he was too frightened out of his mind to say anything to me at all, in case I told him that I wanted space or to break our relationships, which was really the furthest thing from my mind. Yes I was angry at him, but I also always knew what I was getting myself into by loving a man with so much trauma and self-conflict and competition. My reputation had been ruined now in the kingdom which served to me as a perfect time to leave this place once and for all to retreat into my father's world now. But my husband…I had no idea how much this would damage him and his plans and whatever else he was thinking of and it wasn't a priority of mine at the moment. He held onto my son as I struggled to bathe and get dressed so I could quickly bond with my daughter and then…I could get my small revenge on the one person who had been a constant thorn on my side from the day she tried to steal my man from me and ruin him so that I would leave him. I did say that there was some point in time that I could cease to indulge my husband anymore, especially if we were lucky enough to conceive any children with my health issues. So I wasn't going to even ask for his permission to get this done, I was just going act according to my will, especially to teach my husband a lesson that he would never forget.
"Are you hungry? Have you eaten? Shall I stop on the way to get you something? Forgive me, I should have thought about this earlier…" "Fret not husband, i have eaten enough to feed both of my children." "What do you mean you are feeding them? Didn't we agree that you would use a wet nurse?" "I have partied from my children and I will never deprive them of anything else. It is my milk they need, not that of strangers or any animal. I am feeding my children myself no matter how painful it is and it is not up for discussion." "Are you sure?" "I have had many physicians point of view on this, the children cannot inherit my health issues trough my milk, I would not do it if there was even the slightest chance that I could pass it onto them otherwise. I sincerely apologise to you if this goes against your wishes or it looses the attraction that you have for me…" "No, of course I didn't mean that…" "But this is the best for my children and I will never leave them in the care of others unless it is our close ones and only in emergencies." "There must be a limit to your stubbornness wife…" "I am not being stubborn, I am simply not letting you control, manipulate or exploit me anymore. I am a mother now and you are father to the children that you impregnated me with against my will and they shall be our focus. We shall rewrite our own history with our twins and give them the tools in life that they need to succeed with, but we shall never spoil them into becoming useless either, not even myself. I will never let you do to my children what you have done for me and before you accuse me of abandoning you, this is your chance to do something with the purist of your intentions for the first time in your entire life. You will give your children the life, love and support that you never had and you shall make your mother and my father proud in he fact that you can function beyond your trauma and your gauges and your ambition and your never-ending greed. You shall teach the twins as if you were the purist of scholars yourself and you shall train them both…yes even your daughter, you shall train. And you shall show the word that our mixed-breed children can live beyond the labels that this damned Confucius law shackles them to. You shall teach the children and will nurture them in a world where class and economical differences do not exist to install a strong sense of justice in them that shall prevail within them and our bloodline to continue. We shall become parents now husband and as for our marital relationship…well, we can work on it from here on out."
"Who says I am ever letting go of you, wife?" "Even if I no longer possess any use to you at all? Are you sure about that husband?" "How can I prove myself to you?" "You stay with us and you raise your family to carry out the goals that you could not, but you do it without exploiting or manipulating them." "And what about us? We are no longer just kindred childhood sweethearts are we?" "Then what do you suppose me are, husband?" "Lovers with a passion uncontrolled, so much so that we just created a family for ourselves?" "I have little left in myself wife, I only have you wholly. I am only satisfied with you, that is why I demand much of you or I shall take vengeance from you if you ever stopped loving me, even in this moment. I shall become your ruin if you ever hold back from me." "I love you also, husband, I just need some time to regain my senses for our children before I can move forward." "I shall make up for this loss, I promise you wife."
