Moon's Whisper, Heart's Echo

2.The matchmaker

"My lady, if you don't sit down, you'll wear a hole through those expensive floorboards."

Nandi barely heard Ji-soo's admonishment as she rifled through another stack of carefully preserved letters.

Light streaming through the paper screens illuminated the organized chaos of her office – scrolls detailing family lineages, charts mapping compatible birth dates, and most importantly, the correspondence network she'd built over seven years of careful work.

"There's more requests for another match?" She pressed her fingertips against her temples, where a headache was beginning to bloom. "But the negotiations for his niece were just finalized last month. Unless—" She reached for another document, her sleeve catching on the edge of an inkstone.

Ji-soo lunged forward, saving the precious stone before it could topple. "My lady, when did you last eat? And don't tell me about the rice cake I brought at dawn. I saw you feed it to that mangey cat that haunts the garden."

"I'm not hungry." Nandi pushed aside a stack of horoscopes, their delicate paper rustling like autumn leaves. "The Kim family's second son – his birth year conflicts with—"

Kwon Ji-soo, who had been arranging tea cups with deliberate calm, shot her mistress a pointed look.

"Lady Nandi, perhaps we should take a moment to—"

"Found it!" Nandi triumphantly held up a yellowed document, then immediately frowned. "No, this is from last spring. Where did I put the current records?"

"Breathe," Ji-soo instructed, abandoning the tea to grasp Nandi's shoulders firmly.

"Lord Yu's niece came yesterday," Nandi muttered, switching to her mother tongue as she often did when distracted. "But I can't find the lunar calculations for her prospective match—"

"Which you already memorized," Ji-soo interrupted smoothly, setting down a cup of tea with just enough force to make Nandi look up. "Along with his family history back five generations, his mother's favorite color, and probably what he had for breakfast six months ago."

Nandi couldn't help but smile. Trust Ji-soo to pierce through her anxiety with well-aimed sarcasm. The former court lady had been a gift from the crown princess three years ago – officially as an assistant, unofficially as a friend who understood what it meant to rebuild a life from ashes.

"Min-joon!" Ji-soo's voice turned sharp. "Young master, if you climb any higher on those shelves, your mother will have both our heads."

A small face peered down at them from atop the document shelves, all innocence despite the precarious perch. "But Aunt Ji-soo, I can see the whole market from here! There's a man selling puppies, and—"

"Min-joon." Nandi didn't raise her voice, but her son immediately recognized the tone. He scrambled down with the agility of a child who frequently tested his mother's patience. His hanbok was slightly askew, and she automatically reached to straighten it.

"Sorry." He submitted to her fussing with the patience of long practice. "But may we visit the market later? Please? You promised to help me choose a gift for the crown princess."

Nandi's hands stilled on his collar. "That's right, we did promise." She glanced at the scattered documents, then back at her son's hopeful face.

"He grows more like you every day," Ji-soo observed. "That same determination you have."

"Stubbornness, you mean," Nandi replied absently, then paused.

A knock at the outer door interrupted her thoughts. One of her housemaids entered and bowed. "My lady, the royal palanquin has been sighted entering the district."