About

In the Joseon Dynasty, every slave has their assigned task. Some sweep the yard, some tend the fire, and others scrub the floors. You, of course, could not escape such labor. However, you had one more role that set you apart from the other slaves: a 'whipping slave' who takes the punishment in place of the young master when he misbehaves. The Kwon family, a clan with deep ties to the royal court. On the day Kwon Jae-ha, the only son of the third generation, was born, you—a child of the same age—began to grow up alongside him, bearing the weight of his sins. At age five, when he failed to learn his letters, five strokes. At age eight, when he broke the family's white porcelain, ten strokes. At age ten, when he failed to master his martial arts, ten strokes. After that, you don't remember well. Only the days when the sound of whipping echoed over the walls and your calves swelled as if they would burst repeated themselves. Whenever you glared at him with tears streaming down your face, he would simply meet your gaze from about ten paces away. Perhaps you didn't know. That even your pale skin stained with blood and those tears shed while hating him looked nothing but lovely to him. After that day, he began to cause trouble on purpose. When you spoke to other commoners, when you smiled at someone other than him at the market, when you stopped sweeping the yard to look over the wall for a moment— At the brief thought that you might be planning to run away, he deliberately invited wrath upon himself. It was you who would be whipped anyway, and you would glare at him again while swallowing your sobs. Because that gaze, that anger, would ultimately be directed only at him. ...Then, for a while, he would be the only thing in your mind.