Chapter Text
The main courtyard of the Kang estate, usually silent and disciplined, boiled with activity that afternoon. Beneath the central gallery, a group of soldiers from Lord Kang’s personal guard formed a semicircle around a man kneeling on the stone floor.
Their impeccable uniforms, adorned with golden buttons and gleaming leather belts, contrasted sharply with the battered and bloodied figure at the center.
The man, his clothes torn and his face bruised and cut, could barely hold himself up on his knees. Each breath he exhaled was a silent plea for mercy, but the soldiers remained unmoved. Every so often, one of them would land a kick to his ribs, tearing a pained groan from his throat, a sound lost amid the murmurs and orders exchanged between the men.
At a short distance, hidden behind the wide skirts of a maid, a group of children watched with curious eyes. The scene before them, though disturbing, was to them a game of adults, a mystery they longed to unravel.
“Look at how many soldiers,” Seonghwa, the eldest of the children, remarked with the enthusiasm of one watching a parade. His eyes shone as he followed the long rifles slung over the men’s shoulders.
“Are they there to stop him from running away?” asked a little girl with braided hair, identical to Seonghwa except for her white lace dress.
“Of course not, silly! They’re here to protect us from the bad guys!” retorted a younger girl, flashing a gap-toothed smile that lit up her dirt-smudged face.
“Silence!” the maid hissed, pressing her lips together and casting a stern glance at the children. “I told you, you cannot be here! This is not for your eyes!”
The children pouted but shrank back behind her, their small heads peeking out now and then to keep watching. From their position, they could not grasp the details. They did not see the open wounds on the man’s face, nor the fresh blood staining the stone beneath his knees.
“So… are they locking him up because he’s a spy who betrayed Father?” Seonghwa asked, his voice carrying the solemnity of a child who does not fully understand the weight of the word “betrayal.”
“Seonghwa!” the maid gasped, horrified.
“What is a spy?” came the softest voice of all—one made for celestial hymns rather than earthly questions.
The woman lowered her gaze and found little Kang Yeosang, the youngest son of Lord Kang. His golden hair, catching the sunlight, framed a face so delicate that one might mistake him for the painted portrait of an angel. His large brown eyes stared at the scene before him, filled with curiosity and confusion.
“It is someone who… does bad things,” the maid answered gently, unable to say more in the face of such pure innocence.
Yeosang tilted his head, trying to understand. “Bad things like disobeying Father?”
A chill ran down the woman’s spine. The child’s words were so simple, so direct, that they seemed to echo the very logic that governed the Kang household: no one, ever, was to defy Lord Kang’s will. Without answering, she scooped the boy into her arms, carefully carrying him away.
“Come inside, my little one. This is not for your eyes,” she murmured with a tenderness that masked her own unease.
As the maid carried him toward the mansion, the other children continued whispering among themselves. Their questions were innocent, but their eyes remained fixed on the kneeling man. None of them saw the moment one of the soldiers grabbed the prisoner by the hair, lifting his bloodied face to receive a final command.
The gunshot rang out like a dry thunderclap, shattering the air’s fragile stillness.
Inside the house, the children did not hear the shot, nor the heart-wrenching screams of a woman who collapsed to her knees, arms outstretched toward the lifeless body. They did not hear the sobs of a boy who ran toward the corpse, only to be dragged away by soldiers with chilling indifference.
But as Yeosang nestled into the maid’s arms, his small eyes remained open. Through the hallway window as they passed, he caught sight of the dark silhouette of a carriage retreating, flanked by soldiers.
Though he could not fully understand what had happened, an emptiness lodged itself in his chest, as if something unseen yet vital had broken in the air.
“Was he a spy?” he asked again, with the innocence of one who does not yet know that words can be knives.
The maid looked at him, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.
“Do not think of that, Yeosang. Just remember that your father always knows what is best for everyone.”
That night, when the children gathered around the piano and the soft glow of the lamps lit their smiling faces, the shadow of what had transpired was buried in the darkness.
All of them, except Yeosang, seemed to have forgotten.
But in his dreams, the sound of the carriage wheels echoed, and the eyes of that man—the man he had never seen—watched him from the shadows, burdened with a sorrow he could not yet comprehend.