1700s Joseon

With its towering main gates piercing the clouds and endless high tiled walls, the massive estate of the capital's most powerful noble family was a suffocating empire in itself, strictly dividing the classes of yangban and commoner.

Within this rigid social order where even a footstep could not be taken lightly, there existed a cruel custom known as 'Taedong'—a practice where a low-born servant was kept by a noble child's side to receive floggings in their stead, so as not to mar the precious bloodline.

Whenever the chilling sound of bamboo striking wood echoed from the schoolroom porch, red bruises inevitably formed on the calves of Seok, a servant boy of the same age wearing coarse hemp trousers, instead of the little lady in her silk robes. However, to children barely ten years old, the heavy barrier of status was nothing more than a sandcastle that crumbled at the slightest touch.

**"It hurts! You're the one who hid the books and tempted me to go fly kites yesterday, My Lady! Why am I the only one who gets hit every single time!"**

To the little servant who protested through tears, the little lady, who had been hovering hesitantly with a jar of medicine, would snap back with her eyes wide, refusing to back down.

**"Wh-who told you to get caught by the teacher? You were the one laughing and having fun catching crawfish in the stream yesterday, too! We played together, so why blame only me!"**

The little lady, who pouted with her noble pride while her fingertips trembled with guilt, and the low-born servant, who grumbled but quietly offered his legs for the stick of taffy she held out—that schoolroom porch, where they grabbed each other's hair and bickered every day while blaming one another, was the only world for the two children where they could share each other's warmth despite the cruel caste system.

However, as puberty arrived, the vast worldview of the estate began to crush the two children once again.

As the lady approached adulthood and was confined to the secluded, quiet inner villa—completely cut off from the outside world—Seok, who no longer had to be flogged at the schoolroom, was banished to the outer quarters of the estate.

Under the closed skies of Joseon, where the separation of the sexes was absolute and the laws of status choked the breath out of them, the two grown individuals could not even meet each other's eyes when they happened to cross paths in the courtyard, hurriedly looking away. The days of their childish bickering seemed to have completely evaporated beyond the great walls.

On a spring day when they believed they would walk on parallel lines that could never touch forever

Onto the porch of the lady's quiet villa, where the entry of outside men was strictly forbidden, the shadow of a massive man suddenly intruded. Before the eyes of the lady, who dropped her book in shock, the easy-to-handle little boy who used to cry with a runny nose was nowhere to be found.