Body & Soul 🇰🇷 Part 2

Chapter 203: Seo Yeon

I fed my husband with dish after dish as he finally managed to calm Hwan down. I hated how thin and pale he looked and I complained about it to him non-stop he pulled me in close enough for him to lay his head on my shoulder and told me to stop nagging. I enjoyed this rare moment of bliss before he started to act like the possessive demon he was and he interrogated me non-stop until I stopped him with a kiss and I led him inside to an empty room we both knew all to well. He personally dropped off a sleepy Hwan next to his siblings before he took me back to the room. We made up for lost time, even though it had only been a few days since we last saw each other. He asked me why I was taking so long to come home but I told him it was high time he brought me home himself if he missed me so much. He got angry at this, but the angry he was the more I revelled in it and used it to my advantage...I always found him so much more attractive than he already was when he got angry. He wasn't a jealous person to begin with, at least that was what we all thought but it turns out that I was very wrong...and I loved him for it. He kept pestering me about it until I asked him for a few favours before I found my way back to him in timer the royal family to return to the palace. I promised him...

I had a deadline of one week in the mansion before the King was due to return. Hana joined her father soon afterwards along with Chul and I missed my bossy bright girl so much. But I know that her presence alone would keep her father sane, she would also punish that woman on all of our behalf's just like I knew she had learnt from me. Both Hyuk and Geon were loosing their minds in this place so I called upon my brother to take Geon back home. He wanted to visit Chul as well as visit my husband and Hana quickly before one of the concubines who kept eyeing him tried to make her move. He wasn't gone for barely a few hours before he returned to me with a very exciting report about how Nam-Kyu offended the royal children, giving her father a very valid reason to for him to bring her up in font of the King himself and expose her. We all took the children outside to the front courtyard where Chul started telling us all about it; apparently her father and Nam-Kyu and been arguing non-stop when Hana had invited some of the royal children around for activities that she had set up herself. Apparently she totally lost her demeanour in front of them without realising that they were invited around. They were all appalled at her behaviour and had totally embarrassed Seon-Ho in front of everybody even though nobody blamed him. He stormed off in anger, leaving her alone to entertain the children which she obviously had no experience in at all. Apparently the princess wouldn't stop making fun of her and insulted her until she was reduced to tears. And as for the princess...well I was too polite to repeat them but apparently it made things a lot worse. In the end they all went out in the market without supervision which totally enraged Seon-Ho even more. He was only pacified by the fact that Chul kept a close eye on her as usual and it was for his sake as well that he didn't scold Hana for going with them, either way they would have taken her along. But apparently they all kicked up quite a fuss and made a mess in the village, and as my husband had a legitimate reason to leave them alone with Nam-Kyu due to work struggles, it was her responsibility to look after them but that brainless idiot didn't even posses enough common sense to run after them no matter how insulted she felt. Hana handled the situation perfectly, making sure that her father stayed out of trouble by getting Chul to find him, wherever it was he had stormed off to. I felt so proud of my baby, so much so that I didn't even realise how hard I had hugging Chul until my brother had pulled him away from me so he could breathe properly again. This was only the day after my husband ha last visited me, and things were going well already.

So I had to step things up; I had my husband send some of his eunuchs in the palace to help me sort out the Bong family once and for all as favour to Hyun-Ki's parents for all that they did to me in the past- and put and end to Hyo-Sonn once and for all. I had to admit that as taken aback as I was by her betrayals, it didn't affect me as much as she probably thought it did. From the start, the only people I could trust with my life 100% were my brother and Seon-Ho since the start, anyone else I had let into my life apart from my brother's army friends and his woman didn't really mean anything to me at all. As a woman who constantly broke society's laws and surpassed my ranking in both the palace and my marriage, I had a lot of women who really didn't like me at all. So I spent the day with my brother and all of the children before taking out some time for Hyun-Ki's parents. It was hard getting them out of their home at first but I had Hyuk with me who was well-received everywhere he went. My boy actually took them by the hand and lead them outside for an evening outside to a few of the best places to eat, take a boat out for sightseeing and so on with Hyun-Ki who had managed to tag along and hadn't stopped catering to me endlessly as if he was trying to win over my favour. He didn't even seem to take notice of his parents anymore, and tried to talk to me endlessly, but I was more grateful about spending some quality time with my son who helped me out so much today that he even let me baby him for a while whilst he helped me with Hwan as well. We honestly had a nice time out...until I started seeing Seon-Ho everywhere half way through the fun. He looked exactly like how he did right before he forced me into marriage; dark and high out of his mind. As soon as we all found somewhere to eat, he joined us of course. Just the mere sight of him had the Bong's shaking in their seats but I remained calm and decided to ignore him as Hyuk had fallen asleep and had pulled him onto his lap. He didn't say a word at all, and just gave me one of his looks that made evenly soul tremble. But I had to get past it today as I engaged with Hyun-Ki's parents whilst Hyun-Ki himself could't help piling up food on my plate. That made him angry enough to throw the plate across the room but I tried my best not to react whilst my sons miraculously slept through all the noise. When we were about to leave he tried to stop me but I managed to wrestle myself away from him. I knew he was only keeping his composure because he was carrying Hyuk in his arms, but as soon as he put him down he kept hoarding round me until he had to pick up Hana from Hui-Jee who wanted to spend the day with Chul of all people, as if they were not close enough already. And the minute he left I had Hyo-Sonn corner me; she had been locked up in her bedroom ever since I had arrived few days ago and she hand't shown her face to me since she walked in on me eating peacefully with her in-laws.

"You just can't help yourself from showing off can you, at work, in the palace and with my in-laws before and after my marriage" her anger just threw me into fits of laughter honestly, after everything she had been through she still hadn't learnt anything at all. "They all helped me a long time ago before I was even married. My husband thought that giving you the family that you always waned would help you to get out of our lives, but you're doing such a bad job as a wife and daughter-in-law. It's not my fault that they all like me so much" I turned to walk away but this girl really had the damned nerve to grab me by the hair and try to assault me. Thank goodness I had went through vigorous training and I could fight back on my own. Within seconds I had her on the floor before I started dragging her by her legs all the way to the concubine rooms. And from there I called upon the eunuchs who stripped the concubines of everything they had clearly stolen or had gotten from elsewhere. Hyo-Sonn still tried to fight me off but Hyun-Ki of all people arrived and actually held his wife down for me. I had all women detained overnight as I went over to reassure his parents. I asked them for temporary authority over the mansion for the rest of the week, promising to straighten up their home again before I returned to my husband. They were not pleased at all when hey heard that I had plans to leave so soon but they not only understood my position as a wife but they praised me for staying so faithful to him despite their son's delusional behaviour towards me.

For the next 3 days I had the all women huddled up in one room together, stripped to their under garments and had food regularly sent to them, leaving Hyo-Sonn with them to tear her to pieces. As I had been staying with this family I had to constantly put up with their snide remarks, their continuous disrespect and their rude behaviour both inside and outside the mansion that constantly put this family to shame. I had employed Moon-Bok for a strenuous task and rewarded him handsomely, as I had all the children go through paternity tests which involved the father's and child's blood mixing together in a special fluid in front of everyone, which caused a real uproar and took hours to settle down amongst the concubines. And as I had suspected, more than half of them did not match. I especially kept the doors of the mansion open to the other villagers who were starting to crowd around so at least the elders could manage to regain their dignity and pride. As they all saw what was going on, everybody started cursing Hyo-Sonn who had miserably fall din her duties to take care of this matter; instead she foolishly opened the doors to any woman who announced herself pregnant from her husband. No wonder he had over 10 concubines roaming in the home with their children running completely smoke. In truth there were only 2-3 women who ha truly birthed Bong children, and as for the rest of the concubines with their unknown fathers, we ha distributed some money to them to find shelter and buy food for a while. In truth, they were very lucky that we didn't throw them right back into the brothel's for the children's sake, no matter how unruly they were. I had Hyun-Ki by my side who helped me out with the children; I was sully aware of the little scrapes he had gotten into with some who died to bully himself and Geon but there was nothing I could do about that. They were all chased out in full view of the villagers and my husband who was watching over us like a hawk while he took Hwan from my arms as soon as I started to interrogate the concubines. In the end, Hyo-Sonn was so mortified that she couldn't utter a single word in her defence as I had personally seen to the concubines myself. I gave them a good dressing down in front of the growing crowd, before taking the initiative to send the children away to school to give them a chance to survive only a few hours later. The concubines were naturally caught up in a panic but I made myself clear on behalf of the elders that this was the only way to keep the family's name and honour. As for Hyo-Sonn's parents, I had no choice but to charge them with serve theft and fraud, leading them to be hanged to death as the law dictated their punishment. And just when I thought that I had helped the Bong family, my aggressive husband came out with the death penalty for Hyun-Ki also, as he apparently had witnesses from the restaurant on his behaviour towards a married woman. This broke Hyo-Sonn into pieces as she tried to fight everyone off who came anywhere near him. But in the end, Seon-Ho grabbed Hyun-Ki and dragged him to the town square where he was beheaded buy his sword...and his wife got trampled to death by a horse carriage trying to reach out to the man who despised her very existence.