SNF | Chapter 1.2

The one who picked up the words Yeon-oh had casually spoken was his nanny. The eight years in Hanam had passed like a flowing river, and to Yeon-oh, it never felt like that long of a time. But perhaps it had been different for them. After all, just because eight years didn’t feel long to Yeon-oh didn’t mean it was short. The boy who had been just eight years old was now on the verge of turning sixteen, ready to perform his coming-of-age ceremony.

“They’ll get used to it in no time,” the nanny said.

“Even so, I don’t particularly enjoy being stared at like I’m some monkey in a zoo,” Yeon-oh replied sharply, his tone far from gentle.

The nanny tried to defend the people, speaking in a cautious voice, but Yeon-oh responded with a biting tone. As if on cue, the gazes that had been lingering around him slowly disappeared, and once they were no longer staring, Yeon-oh also withdrew his sharp words.

“It wasn’t something they should’ve done,” Yeon-oh added.

“….”

“You’re too distant, young master. This nanny is worried about that.”

This was advice that only the nanny could give. Yeon-oh would never have allowed such a comment from anyone else.

He glanced at the nanny, who had now become at least a hand’s breadth shorter than him. Her expression was filled with genuine concern. She had always said that, one day, Yeon-oh would have to lead the family, so he should learn to let people close and embrace them. But Yeon-oh had never followed that advice.

Everything felt so fleeting. That was why Yeon-oh, as he always did, didn’t offer a reply.

As silence fell, the nanny too closed her mouth. A heavy stillness lingered around them. Yeon-oh focused on walking behind Gu Hasung, not breaking the silence.

Gu Hasung led them to the farthest, northern part of the mansion. Perhaps it was because the sky was clouded, but the area had an unusually shadowy feeling. There was a chill in the air, different from the cold of winter, almost as if there was a lingering chill from the spirits of the dead. Yeon-oh remembered how, as a child, whenever he had to come here, such as for his mother’s memorial days, he would hold his nanny’s hand tightly in fear—or he would be carried in the arms of the Prime Minister.

“If the lady had still been alive to see how well the young master has grown…” the nanny whispered as they reached the shrine where his mother resided. It seemed as though the longing she had been holding back had finally surfaced. Behind Yeon-oh’s silence, the nanny, who had been quiet all this time, wiped her eyes with her sleeve and whispered. Yeon-oh looked at her. The depth of her longing was greater than he had expected.

Looking back, the nanny had been the one who had spent the most time with his mother, as she had been brought from his mother’s family’s home as a concubine. Most of what Yeon-oh knew about his mother came from her. “The lady was very kind. Excellency loved her so much. When the lady was with the child, she was overjoyed. The young master, you see…”

The image of the nanny telling him stories about his mother as she lay in bed at night, wiping away tears with her sleeve, overlapped with the image of the nanny now wiping her eyes. Yeon-oh pretended not to notice her red eyes.

“I must be getting old, shedding tears more often than before. Forgive me, young master, for causing you such discomfort.”

The nanny, who had been wiping away her tears behind him for a while, composed herself and regained her calm.

“When we greet her, I’ll tell her about you as well.”

“…”

“That you raised me with such care,” Yeon-oh added, though his words were far from finished.

“…Young master.”

Yeon-oh, who had barely uttered his words, gave a small smile to his nanny, who had called his name, and then walked alone toward the shrine.

Only a handful of people, those who managed the ancestral tablets and the direct descendants of Hye-ga, were allowed into the shrine, so everyone who had been following him stepped back. Once he confirmed that they had stopped following, Yeon-oh opened the shrine’s tightly closed door. The door, well-maintained, opened without resistance. With a faint sound of the hinges, he stepped inside the shrine, where the soft glow of incense illuminated the room.

“…”

Inside the large shrine, there were countless ancestral tablets. They were the markers of centuries of history, proof of the glory of the Hye-ga family. Yeon-oh took one step after another, walking past the history until he finally reached the tablet he had to face.

The tablet was inscribed with the title of Marquis of Hanam (侯) Yeongsan Hye Nanhyung’s wife, Concubine, Lee Seocheon.

These were the words referring to his biological mother, who had died while giving birth to him.

In the faint glow of the incense, the portrait of his mother appeared. On the scroll, a woman with extraordinary beauty was smiling. It was the same portrait that hung in his bedroom. Although it was his own face staring back at him, it still felt unfamiliar—no, the more he looked at it, the more foreign it seemed. Yeon-oh found himself staring at the portrait several times, trying to make sense of it.

“…I am Yeon-oh, mother.”

How much time passed? After a long silence, Yeon-oh finally spoke, though the words felt strange rolling off his tongue. He had never called her “mother” much before, so it didn’t come easily.

“I have been raised well.”

As Yeon-oh knelt down, his forehead touching the cold ground, the chill seeped into his bones. After bowing twice, he slowly rose, took incense from the incense holder, and lit it.

“I will soon be sixteen. Though my growing years haven’t been without hardship, thanks to the care of my nanny, and perhaps your watchful gaze from the other side, I’ve grown this much.”

As he inhaled the scent of the incense, Yeon-oh recalled the mother he had never truly known.

By the time his mother was carrying him, after many births and several miscarriages, her body was no longer fit to bear children. In fact, before Yeon-oh, she had lost several children, and her mind and body had been thoroughly exhausted. Her body, once a sturdy anchor, had become like a frayed rope, ready to snap at any moment.

Yeon-oh had clung to life in her womb for eight months, enduring the struggle between life and death. Born prematurely, he was weaker than most newborns. Although he had been given a life more precious than anyone else, excluding the royal family, he had also been given a life that could end at any moment. Yet, whether it was because of the deep maternal love that had tried to bring him into the world, or because Yeon-oh had an unexpectedly strong will to live, he had survived. He had lived past his third day, then his seventh, and now, at sixteen, he was standing before his mother’s tablet.

“Mother.”

Once again, the word felt foreign on his tongue, but this time he said it with more strength. Yeon-oh then pressed his lips tightly together. The smoke from the incense curled around the portrait and tablet, blurring their images.

“…Mother.”

It was harder than expected to speak in front of a tablet that couldn’t answer. Especially since there were no memories of that person to hold onto.

The only “memory” he had with her was the eight months spent in her womb. When Yeon-oh called her “mother” once more, the silence in the shrine deepened. Though he had always liked silence, this particular stillness was difficult to bear.

Eventually, Yeon-oh took a step back from the tablet.

The further he stepped back, the more it felt as if some intangible force that had been weighing on him was lifting. Biting his lip, Yeon-oh stood there for a long while, distancing himself from the tablet. Once the incense had burned out, he fled the shrine.

Once outside the shrine, Yeon-oh scanned around, looking for his nanny. He believed only the nanny, who had been by his side for so many years, could soothe the confusion he couldn’t quite make sense of.

“Yeon-oh.” However, the one who greeted Yeon-oh as he stepped out of the shrine was not his nanny.

“My son.”

The Prime Minister, whose face had become a faint memory over the years, stood there smiling at him, his arms wide open. Behind him, Yeon-oh spotted his nanny. She gave him a small nod. Yeon-oh returned the gesture with a slight nod of his own before stepping closer to his father.

“…This unworthy son, Yeon-oh, greets Father. Have you been in good health?”

Rather than stepping into the open arms, Yeon-oh chose to bow formally.

“How could a father be at peace after sending his ailing son far away? But now that you have returned safely and grown well, I can finally find peace. Come now, let me embrace you, my son.”

When Yeon-oh didn’t move, the Prime Minister stepped forward and pulled him into his arms. Still not fully grown, Yeon-oh fit easily into the towering frame of his father.

“When I sent you away, you barely reached my waist, and I worried so much. But look how you’ve grown. If not for that face that looks exactly like your mother’s, I might not have recognized you.”

“…It has been eight years. Children grow quickly,” Yeon-oh replied flatly.

“Yes, I knew children grow fast, and yet, in these eight years, I have been so preoccupied with state affairs that I never once visited you. I have been a neglectful father. Do you not resent me for that?”

No matter how busy he was with national affairs, the journey between Hanam and the capital would have taken, at most, ten days for someone of the Prime Minister’s status. Moreover, the empire was at peace—it was not a time of war. No matter how high his position, if he had truly wanted to, he could have spared at least two weeks in the span of eight years to see his son. But he hadn’t.

“Before being my father, you are first the Prime Minister of the empire, entrusted with assisting His Majesty and governing the nation. It is only natural that you prioritize state affairs over your son.”

Rather than speaking his true thoughts, Yeon-oh gave a perfectly crafted, conventional response.

The Prime Minister, seemingly pleased with the answer, let out a hearty laugh and turned to the nanny.

“Nanny, you have done an excellent job raising my son.”

The nanny bowed humbly.

“You flatter me, Excellency. The young master was born with such a nature. He is considerate of others and always upholds his dignity.”

“Is that so? Then he must take after his mother.”

With eyes full of longing, the Prime Minister took Yeon-oh’s hand and gently stroked the back of it. The lingering touch made Yeon-oh uncomfortable. Hugging had been brief, so it had been tolerable, but holding hands like this for so long felt awkward.

Even before being sent away to Hanam, the Prime Minister had always been busy, so they had barely seen each other—perhaps once every three days at most. After Yeon-oh left for Hanam, that rare contact had been completely severed. Perhaps because they had spent more than half of his life apart, Yeon-oh had never clung to the idea of familial bonds. To him, blood relations were merely that—connected by blood, but no more significant than strangers, and sometimes even less than that.

“Had she lived to see you grow into a boy who looks just like her, she would have been overjoyed.”

The deep longing in the Prime Minister’s eyes was mixed with another emotion, one that flickered to life in the depths of his gaze. Yeon-oh did not wish to glimpse that emotion, so he lowered his eyes.

“Just the fact that the young master came straight to visit Lady Mother upon arriving in the capital must have been enough to bring her joy, Excellency.”

It was the nanny who finally broke the silence that had settled between them. She intervened just enough to smooth things over, careful not to irk the Prime Minister. When Yeon-oh looked up at her, she met his gaze with a gentle smile. A subtle tickle spread in his chest.

“With that said, would it not be best to go inside now? It’s getting cold, and the sun is setting. I fear that both Excellency and the young master may catch a chill from the wind.”

“…Ah, you’re right. I wasn’t thinking. I’m fine, but Yeon-oh must be exhausted from the long journey. Even his hands are ice-cold.”

Yeon-oh, whose hand was still caught in his father’s grip, offered an awkward smile.

“I’m fine, Father.”

“How can you say that when your hands are this cold? Don’t make your father worry. Every time you fall ill, my heart feels like it’s being torn apart.”

“…Yes.”