Soojun was tidying Yixing’s belongings; drying and folding papers he'd worked on before putting them away, and placing books back into his personal library where there sat an assortment of books waiting to be sat onto shelves. The man was one of the messiest people she knew but liked his. She was sure he went to great lengths in order to spite her.


He was a devil disguised as a person, if Soojun didn’t know better she’d call him a vengeful spirit out to terrorize its victim. No prestigious scholar in their right mind would have spilt ink on the floor and failed to wipe it down. Had he notified her before it crusted between the grooves of the wooden floor, Soojun might have been faster at cleaning.

This was a deliberate attempt to test her patience.

She scrubbed the floor with an old rag using as much strength as she could muster. The stain only blurred and spread further, increasing her work load and make her utter a cry of disbelief. She slapped the cloth against the floor and glared wanting it to melt and dissolve into the wooden planks never to be seen again.

It was a useless feat to expect the abominable ink to be any different to its owner. They both tormented her in various ways. She was still determined not to quit. There was much to learn, whenever Yixing decided it was time to actually teach something.

After she was done with her chores she felt exhausted. The dwelling was eerily quiet in Yixing’s absence. Soojun presumed he’d gone to drink or whatever else budding future socialites did. The man was eccentric starting from his choice of lavishly, printed silk robes to the pairs of custom made, leather shoes that he exclusively owned. If Soojun didn’t know any better she’d say Yixing was more stylish than the Prince himself. However, he was not a nobleman so the money went to waste. Soojun concluded Yixing was most likely out looking to borrow cash to keep up his luxurious lifestyle.

She shrugged not bothered if he were to be stripped of his clothing and hung from a bridge by loan sharks. What she wanted was to be rid of the itchy bandages and indulge in a long, hot bath.

On her way to the bath house she could have sworn she’d caught sight of a shadow. It had been a momentary illusion that’d dispersed the minute she’d blinked her eyes. She recognized that silhouette because it looked suspiciously like Zitao. However she’d been the one to curse ink to its grave earlier and so dismissed the hallucination as something conjured by her fantasy. After all, why would Zitao scale the walls of Yixing’s house? The latter was not important enough for the former, at least not in Soojun’s opinion.

She shrugged, accepting that she was tired and snuck into the room where she’d earlier set a tub of steaming water. She locked the door before she unraveled her clothing, last but not least she undid the bandages around her chest. Doing so made it easier for her to breathe.

It was a pity. Girls her age did not sneak through a scholar’s books in hopes of learning something new. Neither did they pretend to be male, but that was another story because for Jung Soojung it had been sheer coincidence.

She shook her head and stared down at her chest. Flattening it was painful but she could hardly reveal herself. Forget being Yixing’s servant, she would be in a much worse position as a female if she were to get caught impersonating. The only solution was to eat less and keep her shapely figure from being so shapely. She didn’t mind the hungry nights.

Soojung climbed into the bath and exhaled. The temperature of the water had cooled and was just right. It made her forget her dislike for Yixing and left her feeling positive. Despite his uselessness, he did keep a great deal of books and even though Soojung was illiterate she was able to read the drawings.

Of course she hadn’t known what all those were but she’d sensed they were important and so went on to memorize and did her best to learn about them. It was hard to comprehend that there was so much to a person other than their soul. There were bits and pieces of puzzling odd shapes kept safe inside bones. She’d always known about the heart, brain and the stomach, and was able to locate them instinctively, but there were other things too such as the cushion like thing near the heart that contained branches. Then there were the twin bean shaped organs whose name and purpose she didn't know but whose dissection she could draw. All these things were all interconnected by tubes that traveled through the body, which seemed odd to her. She’d never understood why they were colored differently.

Each night before going to bed she tried to uncover a new mystery. Most things were difficult to understand and frustrated her. She needed someone to guide her, but Yixing refused to humored her, and so she had no choice but to wait for him to accept her as a real student.

Soojung gathered air into her lungs and held her breath as she sank underwater, feeling exasperated. Seconds later she broke the surface and exhaled. She then proceeded to wash her body using the remaining morsel of soap that Yixing had thrown out. From her recollection two fleshy skeletons appeared, one more straight and lean whilst the others waist was pincered resulting in an ample chest and wider hips. She was the latter, a woman. However they knew her to be Soojun, the former.

Soojung lathered the soap into her hair and reminisced the past. While bits of her remembrance were flaky she recalled loan sharks barging in, her home being overturned and her parents on their knees, rubbing their palms, crying.

She remembered being dragged away from them along with her siblings whose faces were a blur. They’d been separated from one another. She’d been yanked by her hair and asked her name, but her tongue had left her. Her stutter had made the aggressor furious. He’d beaten her to ask for cooperation.

She recalled being scared. So scared that she could only grab a brush and trace letters. Perhaps he’d mistook her as literate because he’d laughed at the idea of a slave who could read. She didn’t fully grasp the situation