Adagio

Mu-eun stared at nothing with a heavy, sinking gaze.

  “I’m saying this for your own good, Mu-eun. Your brother still has no children yet. I believe you will be wise in your decisions.”

That was a mother’s request to her son, who went to greet her for the first time after his marriage: to not have a child before his older brother, and respect the order of succession. 

He had always heard similar words earlier while he was growing up. 

 Your older brother is the eldest son, so he is the one who will inherit this family. 

 Only the eldest son should succeed, only then will the family prosper, so you as his younger brother must not surpass your older brother.

If he outshone his older brother, he was not praised, rather scolded. His mother would glare at him furiously and rebuke him.

 “Are you trying to sow seeds of discord in our house?! Do you harbor any wayward ideas to create an internal strife in our family?”

When he was young, he believed whatever his mother told to be right, but as he grew up, he realized she was just unreasonable, so he had given up. He was desperate for the gentle gazes and kind words his mother showed him only when he was being an incompetent little brother.

He thought he had no expectations anymore, but today he felt sick to the stomach. Sometimes he wondered whether he was just a nobody to his mother, and he was not even a lesser adored son. Thoughts like these plagued his mind. 

“Husband!”

Mu-eun wiped out his upset expression and turned around. His heart throbbed when he saw his wife smile while looking at him.

“Didn’t you go in first?”

“I was worried I would get lost.”

Mu-eun laughed when Ha-young gave him a sidelong coy glance.

“I heard Sister-in-law calling you. Nothing bad happened, right?”

“What bad could happen! She greeted me and said we should get along well.”

Ha-young passed by him and when she saw him standing there, she looked back, wondering. Mu-eun, who was looking at her with a soft gaze, said: “Wife, let’s go greet Father-in-law.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s leave now.”

“What? Now?”

“Do you need time to prepare things?”

“No, there’s nothing to prepare. But breakfast will be served soon.”

“We can have it later. Won’t my father-in-law offer us breakfast?”

Ha-young said with a smile, “There will be a grand feast served. We also have to bid farewell to Father and Mother-in-law. …” 

“Let’s just go. It’s okay. No one would say anything. I have been doing things as I please all my life.”

Ha-young saw a bitter smile on his face flash for a moment.

“Yes, my husband.”

When she left her in-laws’ house, Ha-young was preoccupied by her husband’s words and his bitter expression and wondered what they meant, but when she approached her maiden house, her face lit up with excitement. 

“Aigoo, young lady!”

“The young lady is here!”

“Have you been well, young lady?”

After hearing the news that Ha-young had come, everyone threw away what they were doing and quickly gathered around her. They had sincere looks on their faces as they greeted Ha-young with tears in their eyes.

Mu-eun took a step back and looked at them with a faint smile. There seemed to be a glow emanating from his wife, who was surrounded by her people.

The two had arrived just in time. Ha-young’s family was just about to have breakfast, so two more spoons were added to the table. Except for her third  brother Chang-young, who had gone out somewhere, all of her family sat around and ate breakfast.

The blunt Ju In-cheol, only gave a short greeting of ‘You came,’ looking at Ha-young, he then turned to Mu-eun after he finished eating and asked, “Are you good at playing Go?”

“I don’t have any talent to show off, Father. I’m just familiar with the rules.”

“Bring the Go board.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

*  *  *

While Mu-eun was occupied in playing Go with In-cheol, Ha-young hugged her nephews and drank tea with her sister-in-law. After chatting for quite a while, she got up, but In-cheol and Mu-eun were still playing Go. So she went to her room. She felt emotional as looked around her room, as it had been maintained as it was before she left.

“My lady, this is Hong-yi.”

Ha-Young replied happily, “Come in.”

Hong-yi opened the door, making a loud noise, and rushed in. When she saw Ha-young, she beamed a big smile and grabbed Ha-young’s hand, jumping up and down.

“Miss, miss, I missed you so much. I thought I was going to die.”

“Yes, yes.”

Hong-yi was a maid who waited upon her and took care of her. She was also the source of most of the rumors that Ha-young knew.

“Miss, I brought snacks to the front-room1 just a little while ago. Oh, my God, the lord is so tall and handsome. I have never seen such a dazzling person in my life.”

Ha-young smiled at Hong-yi’s rambunctious words.

“Didn’t you once say that there are no good-looking men like my brothers in the world?”

“What? Haa, miss, the lord is of a different kind.”

“What kind?”

“Our young masters are, how should I put it? They look neat and high-class, no matter what. The lord in the front-room is a manly and heroic man. He is so strong and healthy. Oh my, what am I …”

Ha-young burst into laughter when she saw Hong-yi slapping her mouth. She understood the gibberish that Hong-yi was trying to say. Even before, when she was talking to her sister-in-laws, she heard similar compliments mixed with envy. She just shrugged her shoulders then because she thought they were complimenting her husband out of courtesy. 

“The sound of your laughter can be heard across the wall. What’s so funny?”

The door opened and Chang-young came in, making Ha Young beam.

“Brother.”

Chang-young carefully examined Ha-young’s face, but his expression softened seeing her glowing face.

“If you’re going to come, you should at least send us a message in advance. I almost missed seeing you.”

Hong-yi tactfully sneaked out of the room, leaving the two siblings alone.

“Brother, where did you go early in the morning? No, you didn’t go out early in the morning, but rather stayed out all night, didn’t you? Why do you keep acting like this? I feel deeply embarrassed now to face my sister-in-law.” 

Chang-young responded bitterly, smacking his lips.

“Do you have to nag me as soon as you see me after coming back home?”

Ha-young looked at Chang-young with a frustrated look on her face. If he had been her younger brother, and not her older brother, she would have smashed his head with her knuckles.

“I’d like to ask you something. The thing you gave me the other day.”

“The other day? What did I give you?”

Ha-young lowered her voice a little more.

“On my wedding day, you gave me a jang-do2.”

“What jang-do?”

When Ha-young stared at him fiercely, he muttered an ‘Ah.’

“That …”

“Do you remember it now?”

Chang-young nodded.

“Where did you get that? Do you remember what you said when you gave it to me?”

Chang-young only coughed with an embarrassed expression.

“Did you buy it recently? Why did you buy a jang-do? It’s not something you can use. Don’t tell me you bought it to hurt someone…”

“No, it’s not that.”

Chang-young told the story of the jang-do with an expression of a criminal confessing his crime. 

As he was passing by the marketplace, he happened to see Mu-eun passing by. With only a few months left until his sister’s wedding day, he was worried about his sister. He was terribly resentful of the general’s second son, who was already unhappy with his marriage, and never came to greet them formally.

He caught sight of him and followed him on impulse. Chang-young secretly vowed that if that guy made a mishap, he would catch him on the scene and use it as an excuse to break up the engagement. On that day, the market was packed, so it was easy to follow him discreetly.

While he was following him, he saw that Mu-eun was walking in the direction of a blacksmith’s shop, so he lost interest and tried to turn around. However, Mu-eun entered the shop next to the blacksmith’s shop. The store sold a variety of metal crafts and jewellery.

Chang-young followed in. The interior of the store was quite spacious and there were several people looking around.  Pretending to be a customer, he blended in with them and examined the items on the shelves. He also kept listening to Mu-eun’s conversation with the clerk.

 “Has Baek Yajang’s jang-do arrived yet?”

  “It seems it will take another ten days.”

  “Then, I’ll be back in ten days. I’ll be buying it first, so don’t sell it to others.”

  “Yes, Lord.”

Ha-young’s expression gradually grew colder.

“So then?”

“Was it around seven days later? When I went back, I heard that the jang-do had arrived.”

“Don’t tell me, you secretly …”

“Why are you treating me like a thief? I bought it at a reasonable price.”

“Did the clerk really sell you a pre-ordered item?”

“The clerk who sold it to me wasn’t the one I saw last time, so I just told him that I was the one who ordered it. I was sweating while paying the price. It was really expensive…”

Chang-young stopped talking when he saw the livid expression on his sister’s face. 

“Why, why on earth did you do that?”

“It’s just … Ahem. I wanted to make a fool of my brother-in-law…”

“Brother!”

He averted his gaze and ran away. Ha-young glared at the back of Chang-young, and then covered her face with both hands.

“My goodness!”

Tailing behind someone, eavesdropping on someone, and then intercepting what they were trying to get with lies… 

‘How could my older brother do something like that!’

Ha-young was perplexed. She always thought her family was the most perfect and flawless in the world. In fact, she now couldn’t help but think the Ju family was not beyond criticism. The bad relationship with the Yeon family may have originated from the fault of the Ju family.

Above all, Ha-young was unbearably embarrassed that Mu-eun saw through all the lies she had told.

‘He must have known what that Jang-do was as soon as he saw it.’

How absurd he must have felt when he went to the store ten days later. What must have he thought when he heard me lie that the Jang-do was a keepsake from my mother?

However, there was something more that Chang-young did not tell his sister. The reason he acted like that was because the jang-do in question was an unusual object. 

A jang-do was a necessity for the people of the Daejin kingdom. Small blades that were not burdensome to carry around all the time were used here and there.

However, the higher one’s status, the less likely they were to use a Jang-do. It was because their subordinates could do the things which required a Jang-do. However, at some point, fancy handicraft sword cases and jewelled jang-dos began to be traded as collectibles for noble ladies.

Chang-young assumed that Mu-eun went to buy the jang-do as a gift for a woman. The woman couldn’t have been his sister because it was a rude gift to give a woman unless one had a deep-seated relationship with her.

Chang-young, who suspected Mu-eun of hiding an unknown lover, had bought the jang-do out of anger. 

He didn’t want to upset his sister, so he didn’t tell her anything, but his efforts were in vain. By the time Ha-young left her parents’ house after dinner, she began to ponder, ‘What did Husband buy that jang-do for?’

Sarang-chae (The men’s part of the house in a traditional Korean house). It was in Sarang-chae that the master of the house received male guests and conducted conversation on politics, arts, and various disciplines of learning.Jang-do (장도) is an encased ornamental knife worn mainly by the women