The Love They Never Had: The Nam Mansion

Chapter 27: Saeloun (New)

When Yeon got offended, she usually got emotional which usually lead up to one of her epileptic fits that sometimes honestly frightened myself at times. Yeon was the apple of he brother's eye and it was so hard to watch someone you grew up with in as much pain as she was always in, but also unable to do anything about it. But she had managed to walk away in that situation with her head held high and delicious food in her hands. I do not for the life of me understood where she got the strength to walk away from such heavy prejudices without a single worry whereas I still got very dangerously angry at anyone who mentioned my illegitimate birth status. And the fact that Yeon defended that for the very first time under my own damned roof was making me look at her in an entirely new light. She was the hostage in our home that I was keeping to let her brother keep his life for as long as he could and I was in love with his woman but...I couldn't deny that this Yeon was entirely fascinating to me.

As soon as Yeon was out of sight I instantly made my presence known to all in the kitchen just as the maid had crawled into the kitchen and started mouthing off about Yeon again. She clearly hadn't learnt her lesson so I made it known that because of her, I was going to punish everyone by replacing all of the maid's servants since they were so useless at their jobs anyways. Normally, my father would be micromanaging every living soul under his roof but he had been long preoccupied with work. And i was never going to allow anyone to mistreat Yeon, not after what I was putting her through and she didn't even know it. "Master! Master, please forgive us!" "Tell me, who on earth gave you all such confidence to bully our guest like that? Who was it! And how dare you bring up such vile acts to an unmarried woman! Have you all lost your minds!" I was just about done with my first ever rant to the servants and honestly, I felt good about it. I had no idea why I hadn't done that sooner because I went through the exact same treatment when I was made to live here...but I didn't have anyone looking out for me. I had to endure all the abuse, insult and neglect on my own for being 'the bastard child who drowned his legitimate brother so he could take his place.' I tried not to think about my older brother Min-Ho and relieve everything that I went through, so I tried to make my way outside to train in my spare time. But I had almost forgotten about the food that she made that I quickly took some myself into a bowl and I hurriedly stormed off into my bedroom before anyone could see me.

My father had surprisingly approved of me selling all of the servants and re-hiring new ones, just as I had planned and I would let Yeon proceed with that. So there was nothing else for me to do apart from secretly sneak in mouthfuls of the sweet lotus porridge that Yeon made with a smile on my face that would just not go away. My memories wondered back to the times when Hwi would almost ravage the packed food that his sister would give him whenever he was with me, he was almost animalistic about it. I, on the other hand, had to eat the undercooked food that the servants gave me 'as part of my diet'. It was a bittersweet moment that I didn't know whether to laugh or cry over.

This made me think about Hwi again when Yeon entered my room to serve me tea quietly as usual. I always tried to busy myself when she came into my bedroom in case my father happened to walk by. "Did you enjoy your dinner brother?" "Yes I did." "Was it sweet enough?" "It really was, thank you Yeonnie...I..." before I realised it, I had given myself away and I could feel my face heat up in embarrassment. I could hear her laugh softly and all I wanted to do was hang my head until she left. Nobody laughed in this home, nobody smiled here, nobody was considerate of other people. She was taking a long time to leave my bedroom today and for some reason I could not stop taking small peeks of her today. The fact that I ate some of her food seemed to have made her happy to the point where she also couldn't stop smiling, although she was tactful enough not to say anything more. Yeon had these cute moments before I messed up her life, even I could not deny it. Even when she would childishly flirt with me in front of her brother who would always act up, it did always bring me a genuine smile on my face. And I had no idea why since I still liked somebody else. I think. I have no idea why I was still trying to win Hui-Jee over...apart from the fact that even entertaining the idea of Yeon was too complicated to even think about. She was my victim, my father's hostage, the reason why Hui-Jee hated me and the only reason for her brother's survival and why he was working for my father like a dog. It would be entirely selfish of me to take her now for myself, but even I in that point in time completely underestimated how hard it would be to distance myself from her again. I tried to do it and be cold to Yeon, but I felt as if I was being forced to kick away a puppy that only wanted the minimal amount of affection and company that she knew that she was allowed. There were a lot of people that deserved worse treatment, and god knows that I had made my opinion known to the criminals that I arrested, but Yeon was far from that sort of person.