In the middle of the night, Jong Kook opened his eyes as he smelled the burning ashes. He propped from the spot he was sitting at and runs to the kitchen.

Ji Hyo coughed and pulls her hands back as she dropped the burned pot of rice in the water barrel. The pot sizzled with hot steam.

Jong Kook ran to her as Ji Hyo blew on her red fingers. He grabbed her hand, noticing the burn.

He worriedly looks back at her before pinching her cheek. “I told you to sleep.”

Ji Hyo pouted at him as she cringe her fingers. He sat her down and applied ointment on her fingertips.

“See what you’ve done to yourself?” he had been nagging nonstop for the last few moments. Ji Hyo rolled her eyes before flinching.

“I have to learn how to cook rice, father will be training me again tomorrow.”

“But you could have still waited until to tomorrow,” he looks back at her. “You burned the pot of rice and your fingers. What if you had burned down the kitchen instead huh?”

She raised her brows, “Then would you have cooked it for me?”

He stares back at her before flicking her forehead, “Of course not.”

“Ouch~” she rubbed her forehead with her other hand.

He held her hand and noticed another burn on her elbow. He sighs and blows it, then applies medication.

Ji Hyo gulps as she stares at him. He looks back up at her to see her unchanging gaze.

“You’re mine.”

Jong Kook looks at Ji Hyo, almost asking himself if he heard wrong.

She stares into his eyes. “Kim Jong Kook, you are my servant.”

“W-what?” he stuttered.

She pinched his cheek lightly. “That man told me, a servant is someone who serves me. You are serving me now, aren’t you?”

Jong Kook chuckles. Aish Gong Yoo, telling her all kinds of things.

“No, that is only someone who is under you.”

Ji Hyo scratches her head, “Then did I say it wrongly?”

He nods and she hides her face in embarrassment. Ji Hyo turns around and shyly looks up at him then gets up, walking away. He chuckles to himself, seeing her cower nervously.

~ Sunlight struck and the training begins again.

Ji Hyo fails to shoot again, her fingertips hurting from last night’s burn. The more she pulled the bow string, it brushed against her fingers, cutting at the skin.

“Again.” her father ordered. She bit her lips as she put another arrow on there and pulled the string back. But she ached back as it cut her skin.

“Ouch,” she stops and holds her fingers. Blood trickled on the bow string as she grasps her hand.

Her father sighed and walks away. Ji Hyo turns and sees him walk away, making her guilty. Jong Kook arrives at the platform to see her standing by herself. He walks up to her, seeing her look at the empty air.

But then he noticed her bow was stained with blood, he quickly looks around.

“Are you alright?” he asked and sees the cut on her fingers dripping on the ground.

Ji Hyo, still looking at the empty air, spoke, “Does my father hate me?” she turns to him. His gaze lock with hers.

“You said he loved me…” her eyes start to well with tears, “But why does it seem like he hates me so much?”

“It’s not like that,” he holds her shoulders. “He loves you very much. It’s just-“

“Just what?” She interrupted him. She sniffs, “If I have a father, I should have a mother too. But he never said anything about her. It can only mean that I did something…” she pushed him away and walked away.

He was going to go after her but let her walk away this time.

Maybe he… is just upset and disappointed…at me. Maybe your father is upset he lost his ‘daughter’. Jong Kook finished. He looks down at the bow on the ground and the blood that stained on it.

***

It was time to learn tea serving. Ji Hyo had countlessly tried pouring the tea after bandaging her fingers. She didn’t even bother changing her clothes to a proper hanbok. But her father had only sat down, reading his book as she served tea.

“Pour it higher and correctly, coordinate your hand to the left. Keep your head low, straighten your back,” her father ordered.

Ji Hyo and her father stood in front of each other as Ji Hyo finally ran out of patience.

“I can’t do it anymore.”

“Take the things and do it again.” her father ordered.

Ji Hyo sees the anger in his eyes but slowly shook her head as she felt a burning sensation. “No.”

Her father hit the tray of tea and it all crash on the ground. Ji Hyo jumped as the sound of the etiquette clay smashing on the ground echoed in her head.

She looks up at him, with fear and doubt. Could this man really be her father?

Jong Kook was about to step in but her father raised his hand as a signal to halt.

“Are you really my daughter?” he asked her… Ji Hyo’s eyes widen as fear crept in her mind. Is it really true? It scares her to think that this kind of person would be her father but it was scarier, hoping that he is her father.

“My daughter is a strong and capable woman. Not a weakling like you,” he spoke louder.

Ji Hyo felt her whole body trembling as her eyes burn with tears, a hint of disappointment suffocated her.

“I don’t have a daughter like you.” he then walk pass her, leaving her to the mess.

Jong Kook didn’t know who to console first as he stood by the door. Ji Hyo closed her fist as those words hit deep.

Jong Kook decided to follow Minister Song. He tried to think positively.

Who can take it, right? Your full grown daughter got married and suddenly forgets everything and her own identity, you would falter with denial and confusion. But judging from his actions toward his daughter, it was much different from his last visit to the Kim Mansion.

Jong Kook nodded to himself. Minister Song must be upset for his own daughter to lose all her own skills as a normal person.

He stops at the room in the hall way as he sees Minister Song standing in front of an inscription for family burial.

That must be his wife, Ji Hyo’s mother.

He didn’t know if he should step in. After fighting with himself, he decided to walk in.

Her father stood silently as he touched the burial certificate.

“I apologize about earlier father-in-law.” Jong Kook bowed. Her father still stay silent as he reaches for the certificate and caressed it.

“But I think you went overboard earlier.”

Her father stops and turns back to face Jong Kook as they stood face to face. He stares at Jong Kook in a hateful manner.

“You think so?”

Jong Kook kept their gaze lock, eye to eye. “Yes,” making her father squint at him in suspicion.

“She is suffering from memory loss, not knowing her own identity, or who we all are. She must be very confused now.”

Her father looks down, takes a deep breath then back up at Jong Kook whose expression stayed serious.

“How would you know?”

He gulps, “She told me something about her childhood… before the incident.”

“And what is it?” her father questions in a rather cold tone.

“That she witness you getting hurt.”

Her father was almost taken off guard.

Jong Kook felt better now, he stood more broadly. “Someone had shot you with an arrow… and being the child she was, she couldn’t help you.”

Her father turns back to his wife’s burial certificate, looking conflicted and guilty.

Jong Kook steps up. “I saw it in her eyes. The fear and anxiety she had while trying archery. She was afraid.”

“Father-in-law, please give Ji Hyo another chance. She’s still struggling.”

He waited for an answer, maybe for her father to yell at him about his own struggles to see his daughter like that.

But Minister Song turned around and he could see it, a smile.

“You are a general for his majesty’s army,” his father –in-law stated, “and my struggle is all that you’ve seen?”

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlLHiVXTOyc - "My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark" - Fall Out Boy (4 CELLO COVER by Scott McCreary)

“Minister…” Jong Kook was confused.

“Tell me General. What do soldiers do when they have lost their way in a war?”

Jong Kook hesitated before answering as her father nodded to assure him of his answer.

“Look for help… and,” he tried to think carefully before answering, “and retrace his path… to his people.” he looks up at Minister Song who smiles.

“Do you not see what has already been done?”

Jong Kook finally got it.

Minister Song turns to his side and looks out the door. “You led her home. I put her through the labor that she had been through before. All that is left is for her to fight for it.”

*Cuts to scene outside*

Ji Hyo was stepped on the stairs of the small stage. Each step at a time until she reached the platform.

*Cuts back to room*

He turns back to Jong Kook. “She needs an extra push. Soldiers aren’t babied from boys to men. They don’t escape their misery with others. They have to want it.”

*Cuts scene to Ji Hyo*

Ji Hyo grips the bow in her hand as rain starts to sprinkle over her, wetting her.

She takes an arrow from the pack behind her, drawing it up as she stares at the board. She pulls the bow strong back, arching her stance.

*Cuts scene to room*

“They have to want it so badly that they push themselves instead of others. She has to fight her own battles with her own will.”

*Cuts scene to Ji Hyo*

Ji Hyo pins at the board as the rain dripped by the side of her face.

*Cuts scene to room*

“That’s what Ji Hyo has always done. That’s what my daughter has always done.”

*Cuts scene to Ji Hyo*

Ji Hyo stares intently at the bull’s eye before she finally let go of the string, making the arrow fly through the rain.

-Whoosh

-pluck!

Ji Hyo steps back and blinks as she saw it.

The arrow had hit the bull’s eye.

*Cuts scene to room

Jong Kook looks at Minister Song as he registered all this info.

How could he not know this? He is a general after all and he couldn’t even see what Minister Song had set for his daughter.

“Father-in-law,” Jong Kook breaks into a smile of relief.

The two men smiles back at each other.

Ji Hyo draws another arrow and set it back on the bow before shooting. She had hit the bull’s eye on all of the boards.

“Thank you father-in-law.” Jong Kook thank him and quickly ran out to find Ji Hyo.

Her father stood there as Jong Kook set out of the hall.

He smiles to himself then glance back at his wife’s burial certificate. “You believe in me right, Ji Hua?”

檵花, 의 죽은 아내 광

 (Chen Ji Hua, deceased wife of Song Gwang Hyo)

***

Ji Hyo pulled back the last arrow in her hand and glared at the board as she stares intently at the board. She lets it go this time as the arrow flew and hit the previous arrow, aiming right through it, deep into the board as the previous arrow splits.

Jong Kook stood in the rain as he sees it with his very own eyes.

Determination of one’s self.

Ji Hyo turns to the side as she sees him. He sees her too, but it was strange.

Her gaze was deadly and cold. The rain had drenched her completely while the long dress that she wore had stuck onto her body, accentuating her curves.

He could see the image collide. It was the same gaze from when they went hunting and he had first seen her with the archery and when she shot the bird behind him.

He steps forward, closing the distance, reaching closer.

But there was something darker. The very same image when she shot down the assassin that was about to strike him and Ara.

Ji Hyo glares at him with her cold demeanor until Jong Kook stood at the bottom of the stairs.

Something about her was off.

“Ji Hyo,” he called her name in a low whisper.

She kept her gaze on him until she realizes he was calling her. She was pulled back as she suddenly look at her hand that held the bow. Then her eyes trail back to the boards, her eyes widen.

Every single board was hit with arrows in the bull’s eye. The middle one had another arrow going through it.

She stumbles, turning back to Jong Kook who kept his gaze on her.

“…I…” she panics to speak. Ji Hyo felt her world spinning before she collapsed.

Jong Kook caught her in his arms as she had dropped the weapons and fell down the stairs.

Was it fear or astonishment?

He held her close as the rain continued to pour on them. However, as he looks back to the boards, a thin smile crept to his lips.

You did it Ji Hyo-ah. You did it.

************************************************************************