[CYM] 21 – Mother's Unlove

On that day, she had received a severe scolding from her mother. She was reprimanded for wandering the market until that late hour, having her mother worry to the point of asking Yunhu, Nanhee, and Ara about her whereabouts, and was called a thoughtless girl. Her mother had also harshly struck her back over the scrapes on her face, which were messily plastered on her skin, saying, “What a stupid act you’ve done!” As punishment, she was made to skip dinner.

Lying on the bedding, she retorted while watching her mother’s back turn coldly away, “Don’t you love me, Mother?” 

Her mother dismissed it with, “Nonsense.”

She then expressed her discontent, “But you’ve never even once asked why I got hurt or if I got into a fight with someone, why is that?” 

She felt neglected, and her mother was frustrated with her daughter who seemed to be always getting into trouble. Was it just this incident? On nights like these, she would ask herself before falling asleep if her mother truly loved her, or if she was just reluctantly keeping her around because she couldn’t abandon her. That night, she realised she had never heard words that even resembled love.

“Again, no answer,” she muttered.

“Just be quiet and sleep!” her mother snapped back.

Her stomach was empty, her back and thighs ached more from her mother’s hit than from the blacksmith’s son’s. It made her wonder why she felt so sorrowful as to bring tears to her eyes. That early morning, as she forced herself to sleep while patting her hungry stomach, felt particularly long.

── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✦ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──

It was the last day of the ancestral rites. Everyone in Muritmaegol had to attend, so she was on her way to the river where the ceremony was held. At the corner of the street, she ran into Yunhu who held a wooden sword. He said he had come to deliver the wooden sword Beodeul had thrown away the day before on behalf of the man. It was of no use to her who had lost her drive, but she couldn’t go back home now, so she strapped it to her waist like baggage.

“If you change your mind, come find me,” he had said, reading the sincerity in his stance and promising to pass on the message correctly, or something to that effect. Of course, she had no intention of seeking out that man. Yunhu seemed to have much to say about yesterday’s events, but he was in a hurry and left him behind.

Her mother, a shaman, played an important role in this rite. She had left home early in the morning, and she followed with the ritual tools her mother had left behind. She had to stop by the Ki household first to retrieve some items that had been forgotten.

She paused in front of the quiet gate. The firmly closed gate was unusually ajar.

“Did they take the servants and start setting up the offerings already?”

The nobleman, and even all of his servants, had vanished, leaving the courtyard eerily quiet. The outbuilding that used to be bustling looked haunted.

Even the common servant girls who would scurry with snacks were nowhere to be seen; everywhere she looked, there was a bleak emptiness with only the heat emanating from the slightly opened wooden door, making her wonder if she had come to the wrong house.

It was unnaturally quiet. She deliberately dragged her feet, making a noticeable noise as she walked.

‘How can it be this quiet?’

Rustle.

She heard a noise. It came from the direction of a pavilion surrounded by fences, carried to her ears by the wind.

In the centre of a vibrant flower garden, she saw what looked like a withered tree but upon closer inspection, it was the nobleman. He was hunched over, hands clasped behind his back, gazing endlessly upwards with an indescribable look of horror in his eyes.

“What are you doing here, sir?” she called out, expecting him to be setting up the altar. When she raised her voice to the old man who seemed to be out of his senses and staring at the sky, she too noticed something flickering on the tree branches above - an opaque black smoke filled with malice.

The barren branches began to quiver violently. 

Crack!

The thick base of the tree made an ominous sound next. The old man, who seemed to have lost all awareness of his surroundings, was as if he had discarded his senses.

“Sir!” she shouted.

She ran over and pushed the nobleman aside. It was then that the wind, as if it had been bound somewhere, suddenly gusted.

The body of the old man was swept away by the wind, and a sturdy tree split in two as if struck by lightning. The ground caved in, and thick dust rose up.