everything: family, wealth, status. His mansion was burned down, too. So out of this long-held grudge, he attacked the inspector, but Shim protected him.”
“That was why Inspector Han recruited Shim despite his seoja status?”
“I believe so, even though it went against regulations. Inspector Han is someone who will move heaven and earth for those loyal to him.”
Except me. The thought came at me like a bitter stab. He had not tried to rescue my life from the bandit’s dagger.
“No one knows much about Shim, and he does not talk about his past at all,” Aejung added. “I did hear rumors, though, that Shim’s hometown is a village called Myeonmok, wherever that is.”
Pushing down my bitterness, I maintained enough calm to ask, “How do you know all this?”
Aejung added water to the crushed ink, then spread out a sheet of paper on the table; she was always writing home to her family in the late afternoon. I had never felt the urge to ask someone to teach me how to read and write until yesterday, when I’d held the unreadable letters in my hands.
“I overheard Officer Ky?n talk about it a year ago,” Aejung explained. “He seemed to have a keen interest in Inspector Han’s life, including those close to him like Officer Shim. And what I didn’t learn from Ky?n, I learned from local gossip.”
She rolled her sleeves up to her elbow, her wrists moving with grace as she wrote.
I couldn’t look away, and neither could I breathe, seeing a movement almost identical to that of earlier, when Inspector Han had rolled up his sleeve to write, exposing a part of his history. The side of his right arm, a burn from long ago, as though he had once tried blocking himself from scalding hot liquid.
Something in my mind clicked. I saw myself, a young girl, peering in through the cracks of our hut. Older Sister was hissing, “Go to the capital then, that place of terror. We are not family. We are finished.” Her cruel hands tore our genealogy book, the history of our family. My brother slapped her face, shocking them both. But Sister was too proud and no one had dared hit her before, so she hurled at him words of hate, as well as a pot filled with boiling tea. He had tried blocking it with his arm.
The memory disappeared in a few seconds. And those seconds left me drenched in cold sweat.
“Are you not feeling well?” came Aejung’s voice. “You look ill.”
I looked up at Aejung. She was watching me, her hand still holding the calligraphy brush. Desperation ravaged me. I had to write to Older Sister, demand answers from her. She had withheld too many secrets from me.
Who is our brother? What made you scared?
I moved quickly to Aejung’s side. “Is it very difficult to write?”
“No…” There was uneasiness in her voice, as though frightened by the gleam in my eyes. “It is so easy to learn that a fool can know it in a day.”
“Could you teach me how to write? Then I can write to my sister as often as I need.”
Aejung scratched a corner of her lips. “I wish I could help you … but I must study for the medical exam—”
“I’ll do your chores, as many as I can. I’ll sweep and mop, I’ll sew, I’ll do your laundry. Then you’ll have plenty of time to study!”
She hesitated, and her long silence chipped away at my longing. Not for me, the voice said as it pulled me away. Literacy is not for me. Knowledge is not for me.
I pressed my fingers against my eyes until I saw stars. What madness had drifted into me? Was I truly suspecting that the blood flowing through Inspector Han flowed through me as well? I needed only approach the inspector to confirm that I was sick. Only a sick person would dare assume blood connection.
Whatever Aejung saw when she looked my way compelled her to change her mind. “Even if the chief maid asks me to bring water from the well,” she said gently, as one would to a wounded bird, “you will go for me?”
I did not have the strength to answer, too stunned by the workings of my mind.
“Come, sit closer.” With a sigh, she took out another fresh sheet of paper. “This is how I was taught when I was a girl.” With long strokes, she drew a large square, dividing it into columns and rows, and in the boxes she