Daesung was never the type to hold anger in his heart.

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Daesung was happy to stay in the junior student dormitory with the new students for an entire month. It was a month of helping the younger students adjust to their new daily routine, correcting any of their bad living habits (which included teaching them about personal hygiene and the overall cleanliness within the school and their dorms), and building a rapport with them as their senior, even if he was only a few years older than the oldest of the new students. Though he loved being the facilitator of the transition from normal life to student life, he couldn’t help but look forward to sleeping in his own room again within the private part of the academy that served as his family’s personal living quarters. Sharing a room with up to five young students was far from ideal, especially in those first few weeks when many of the students were home sick and sometimes cried in their sleep for their parents. Those rough nights gradually became less and less frequent until they were gone almost entirely after the students became more familiar with the school and eventually were too tired to do anything else but sleep after a strenuous day of classes.

Today was the last day of his one month stay in the new student dorms. Many of his juniors were reluctant to see him go.

“I’m not leaving the school, I’m just changing where I sleep is all,” he reassured them as a small group of his juniors surrounded his bedside. They watched as he neatly folded up his bedding and packed his clothing away in a cloth bag. The servants always offered to do this for him, but Daesung didn’t want to be seen as some princely boy. He wanted the students to see that he was just like them, despite a blood relation to their headmaster.

“But who’s going to help me put up my hair in the morning?” a young student named Gwanghee asked with a pout. He was one of the younger students at seven years of age. He still required help doing the basic routine of getting ready in the morning.

Daesung smiled and ruffled the young one’s head.

“Nonesense. I can’t do it for you every day. It’s time for you to do it on your own. Practice makes perfect.”

“But the headmaster will scold me if I don’t get it right!” the young child whined.

“All the more reason for you to learn how to do it properly now. The headmaster will only punish you more harshly when you’re an older student,” Daesung warned. “Besides, you still have the help of your other classmates.”

Some of the other children nodded in agreement and Gwanghee seemed placated somewhat by their reassurance.

“I’ll miss your stories!” one voice interjected.

“And Jihoon-sunbaenim’s pranks!” added another.

Jihoon had a penchant to conspire with children from the other end of the dorm to plant bugs and things around Daesung’s room to startle him. Apparently, their juniors found scaring him half to death amusing, so Jihoon often did it once or twice a week to cheer everyone up and help them get through the school week. Daesung wasn’t particularly fond of being startled, but he relented to the pranks since it brought his juniors some joy. Besides, it gave him the opportunity to prank Jihoon in retaliation, though the older boy wasn’t as easy to startle as he was.

As if summoned by their conversation, Jihoon stuck his head into the room and showed off a mischievous smile. A chorus of “Jihoon sunbae-nim!” greeted him as he fully entered the room with his hands clasped behind his back and Daesung was immediately on edge.

“You’re moving out too?” Daesung asked nonchalantly as he willed his hands to move faster and finish packing up his belongings. Jihoon was one of the handful of older students that, like Daesung, often volunteered their time to help the younger students settle in for the first month or so. The older students were housed in a different building where many of the students, Jihoon included, had private rooms to themselves.

“Of course.” Jihoon half turned to show the brown rucksack he had hanging from one shoulder. “There’s only so much of these little rascals that I can put up with.

When Daesung finished his packing, he threw the bag over one shoulder and wearily approached the awaiting Jihoon.

“I can see your hands, you know,” Daesung said carefully. Jihoon’s hands were casually placed behind his back, though upon close inspection, Daesung could tell that they were balled up into fists, as if he was holding something. He’s faking, Daesung thought to himself. He has to be. Even with his self reassurance, he could not suppress his startled scream as Jihoon rushed towards him as if he was about to throw something at him. Daesung sword that Jihoon threw a handful of grasshoppers at him. He saw little thin bits of green and yellow and backed out of the room in shock. Jihoon’s laughter mocked him as he brushed what he belatedly recognized as blades of grass off of his clothing. The students burst out into laughter at Jihoon’s childish prank.

Daesung turned back to see the children and Jihoon waving him off and he couldn’t help but smile and shake his head at them. He felt annoyed and bemused, though never angry because Daesung was never the type to hold any anger in his heart.

He walked past the dormitories and the classrooms of the academy and the central courtyard that acted as the heart of the campus. Fellow students greeted him as they ran about doing their chores. It was Sunday, an off day when classes weren’t held, but it was a chore day for the students to clean up the campus and their personal living quarters.

On the far end of campus, separated from the school by a stone wall with a heavy wooden gate, was the Kang family manor. The moment he stepped through the stone threshold and into the gardens, Daesung immediately felt at ease. Even though he had lived his entire life within academy grounds, it felt different when he actually spent time at the manor. It was by no means a luxurious place, though they did have a rather comfortable receiving room for important guests and it was far more comfortable than the sparse student dormitories. It felt a little silly to feel homesick since he was never far from home, but he couldn’t help but feel that way.

“Daesung-ah!”

Daesung’s head snapped up at the sound of a voice he hadn’t heard in a long while. He almost dropped his rucksack, he was so shocked, but he quickly got ahold of himself as a wide grin settled upon his face.

He ran through the garden, past an inner courtyard and into the receiving room that opened out to a private entrance with a path that lead back to the main road. He saw her there, standing in the middle of the room with her arms held wide open.

“Bora-noona!” he cried as he rushed into her arms to give his older sister an embrace. Kang Bora was eight years older than her brother and the eldest child of the family. Unlike her brother, who fell in love with the arts that their father was so passionate about, Bora found that her passions and skills resided elsewhere. With her parent’s blessing, she became a military officer and has been voluntarily serving for two years now.

When Daesung pulled away, he was quick to notice that his sister was in civilian clothes.

“I was given permission to spend time with my family since our battalion is currently based so close to the capital, remember?” she explained after seeing his inquisitive look. “Many soldiers are taking the next week or so to relax and visit family while we await our new assignment.”

Bora took a moment to scan Daesung from head to toe with a critical eye. In one swift movement, she feigned a strike with her right arm. Daesung immediately reacted with a block, but while he was distracted, she attacked his unguarded side with her left hand. He was too slow to defend and seconds later, she had him pressed against a nearby pillar with his arm twisted behind his back.

“You haven’t been practicing, have you?”she asked, though it wasn’t really a question.

Daesung groaned and his sister released him. His arms and side were already aching and he could easily imagine that the aching would grow worse with time. Bora always hit him hard enough to hurt for she claimed it would motivate him to do better next time.

“We just received a new class of students. I didn’t really have the time to practice. Besides, I’m not as good as you or mom.” The last part was muttered a bit begrudgingly and under his breath.

Bora was quick to banish that thought. “Nonsense. You have the potential to be better, if only you were a bit more passionate about it. You have a strong build and an excellent bone structure for martial arts. You just need more practice.”

Daesung wasn’t so sure, but he nodded anyways. His mother was a famed martial artist, a trait that she had passed on to his older sister, but Daesung was more inclined to the performance arts that his father so loved. That didn’t mean that his mother didn’t force him to learn at least the basics and practice his stances as a child though. His mother was the daughter of two renown martial artists who were killed long before Daesung and Bora were born so she felt the need to at least arm her children with the knowledge and skills to protect themselves and each other.

“The world is not always kind,” his mother liked to remind him, a sentiment that his older sister often parroted to him when she would test him as she did today.

The eleven year old suddenly realized that his sister had been here for a long while and his parents had yet to even make an appearance. Usually, they’d be all over her when she had the opportunity to visit them.

“Where is mother and father? Have they seen you yet?”

Bora shook her head. “I haven’t seen them. The servants told me that they had left the academy Friday evening and would be back before classes on Monday. Today is Sunday, so I expect to see them coming home soon.”

That was odd, Daesung thought. He didn’t recall his parents having any business that they needed to leave the academy for. Knowing that it was useless to needlessly worry about their parents, Daesung instead turned to his sister and gestured for her to sit down in one of the chairs.

“Tell me all about the adventures you had and don’t even deny that you had any!”

The siblings shared identical grins with each other before Bora started regaling her younger brother with tales of her life during military training. Daesung knew that parts of her story was highly embellished, (like the part about her breaking from the battalion to capture a group of bandits that were harrassing travelers along the road) but that was just part of Bora’s personality. In her own words, she dreamed of being a “defender of justice”, though Daesung suspected that even she doesn’t know exactly what that meant, but it spurred her ambitions to join the army and she seems content with that. He knew that Bora would never be satisfied with the repetitive and predictable days of the academy, even though her father once told him that Bora had a talent for playing the haegeum.

“She was quite terrible at all other aspects of art, but her ear for sorrow was well attuned to the haegeum,” his father told him one day. Students of their school were really only required to have one specialty, but Bora felt the pressure to excel in all aspects, as most people found that befitting of the headmaster’s daughter. Their parents never pushed her to continue her schooling, but she held out until she was fifteen years old before quitting. It was only natural that she decided to find fulfillment elsewhere, even if it meant being away from the family that she so loved.

Daesung himself didn’t realize how much he had missed his sister until she was sitting in front of him, animatedly recounting every bit of excitement that he had missed since they had last seen each other a year ago.

“Enough about me. Tell me, how have things been going at the academy?” she finally asked.

Daesung gave her the basic rundown: he talked about the students that dropped out for various reasons and the new students that replaced them. He told her about the upper class men that he admired and how hard everyone has been working in preparation for next month’s performance, which happens to coincide with chuseok.

“Speaking of the monthly performance, have you been chosen yet?” Bora asked.

Daesung seemed to falter a bit after her question.

“No, not yet,” he answered, the disappointment evident in his voice. The older students of the Kang School of Classical Arts held a performance once a month at the capital to showcase their skills and bring attention to their school. The younger students would study whatever play the senior students would be performing and at the end of the month, they would all travel to the capital to watch the older students perform in front of a paying audience.

For each performance, the headmaster would select a handful of students that weren’t participating in the play as opening acts and to perform during intermissions. These students were usually teens that have shown great potential in their area of study, whether it be singing, dancing, acting, or instrument playing. It was a great honor to be chosen to perform on the same stage as the senior students, many of whom were in their early or mid twenties and have spent more than a decade as a student within the academy.

Daesung, too, aspired to be one of the chosen, but his father had yet to pick him for any of the monthly performances.

“It will happen one day, you’ll see,” Bora whispered. “Father thinks you’re too young yet, probably. You’ll be picked the day you turn thirteen, I bet! The youngest ever chosen to perform!” She placed her arm around his shoulders and pulled him in for a reassuring embrace.

Daesung smiled faintly at her reassurances, but he still couldn’t help but feel a bit sullen about it.

“The headmaster and the mistress have returned!” a servant announced and the siblings parted and shared a look of excitement with each other. They followed the servants to the private entrance into their manor and eagerly stood in front of the gates for their parent’s arrival. It wasn’t long before a servant unlatched the gate and pulled open the heavy wooden doors to let in two figures riding in on horseback.

Daesung immediately made his way over to his parents to welcome them home, but the words died on his lips as he came closer and realized that the two were not alone.

His mother dismounted her steed and to Daesung’s own shock, revealed a smaller, younger figure that had been hidden from view. The boy looked a bit bashful as he dismounted the horse with the mistress’s help. He looked around nervously as he felt everyone’s curious gazes focused on him.

The headmaster and mistress approached their children with the boy following along not far behind them, his curious eyes taking in the courtyard, the servants, and the siblings that were looking at him with an even greater curiosity than his own.

Bora broke the silence first. “Welcome back, mother! Father!”

Daesung parroted the greeting shortly after his sister did.

“Bora!” their parents exclaimed with glee.

Their faces immediately lit up upon seeing their eldest and only daughter there in the flesh.

There was a quick exchange of embraces between parent and child before Bora pulled away and turned to the young boy by her mother’s side.

“And welcome as well to our young guest here.”

The boy clearly did not know what to say, but shared a smile with her nonetheless. Her parents finally took this moment as their  cue to jump back into the conversation.

“That’s right! Introductions are to be made!” their father exclaimed. “Daesung, Bora, this is Dong Youngbae. Youngbae here is going to be the newest addition to our academy.”

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Haegeum: a  traditional Korean stringed instrument played with a bow. Similar to Chinese ehru.