Minjae found herself in a desolate ditch, the cold, damp earth seeping through her clothes. Seung was standing on the edge, his hand outstretched, soothingly cajoling her to hold it. But before she could reach out, a force struck him from behind, the impact reverberating through her body. A dense mist engulfed her, its cold tendrils suffocating her, and she was adrift in a crimson sea, the metallic scent of blood filling her nostrils. Minjae awoke, her body drenched in a cold sweat, her heart pounding in her chest.

The nightmares had returned, this time with the macabre twist.

How long would it be before her secret was blown apart?

When she had travelled to Hanyang to study medicine, Minjae was consumed by a constant fear, a fear that someone would recognise her. However, being part of an outcast group of women, she was invisible. No one paid attention to the mousy, thin, sickly-looking girl who kept her eyes down and studied around the clock. She rejoiced when she returned to her sanctuary after training and receiving her license. One of the main reasons she had stayed in Ganghwa was because she was sure Choi's family would never come to the island. Lord Choi had many properties around the country, and the family would be sent to the South to hide in case of war. Even though none of her father's male acquaintances had ever seen her face, Minjae would still run a check on each Yangban house she had visited over the past five years in case they had a woman who might by chance recognise her or see the resemblance with her mother and wonder, just like Lady Ryu had. Families from Hanyang rarely visited Ganghwa; still, Kim Seo Jun and Kim Da Bom ensured Minjae never encountered anyone who could remotely identify her.

In short, she had secured her anonymity in no uncertain terms.

Seung's arrival on the island was a twist she had never anticipated, disrupting the carefully constructed life she had built. Not only was her heart shattered and her life pieces of broken glass, but she now had the burden not just to stay alive herself but also to ensure her adopted family, Kang Do, Woo Sari and Seung's family, and Seung were not put in danger.

She wondered about the charlatan who called herself Choi Jina. It was evident she was coerced into playing the role. If what the woman said was true, Minjae shivered at the ordeal she must have suffered. The woman was stunningly beautiful and had obviously been trained to impersonate Jina but was so far removed from her as a person that Minjae wondered what forced Choi Siwan to devise such a plan. For him to risk planting an imposter as his daughter, something significant had to be at stake, something much more than a simple desire not to have a divorce in his family.

It was likely connected to the murder of Seung's father. It made little sense for Lord Choi to let Seung and his family live and even wed his daughter to Seung. When he realised Minjae could be an impediment in his path, Lord Choi simply killed her and replaced her with someone else.

Why? None of it made sense.

However, she did have an advantage over Lord Choi—she now knew the depth of his depravity. It made her feel ashamed to call him her father.

Even so, a part of her ached deeply. Had she been so utterly insignificant, so easily disposable?

Was her brother in it, too?

Minjae shook her head to clear it. She had to stop thinking. Otherwise, she would go crazy with conjectures that only brought her numbing pain.

The men carrying her palanquin came to a stop and lowered it to the ground.

Minjae detested visiting the Kiesang house at this time of night. Exquisitely crafted lanterns blazed around the entrance, flooding the area with blinding light, cloyingly enticing men who wandered in for a night of excess. From the confines of her closed palanquin, she could hear a variety of soft music drifting down, blending with the tinkling laughter of the coy courtesans and occasional guffaws of bawdy, drunk men, whose sheer number spilled over from the insides of the enchanting building and lazed around the stairs and the hanok in their expensive hanboks, the buzz of the conversation humming in the air like a hive of busy bees on a quest for nectar.

Minjae sat for a moment to collect herself, then grabbed her medicine bag, slid open the door and climbed out of the closed carriage. Two large, buff men sprang forward and immediately fell by her side, shielding her from the sea of people. Minjae dragged the hem of her jangot closer to her face to avoid curious gazes. Her appearance often created a stir, and she wanted to avoid it at all costs. Thankfully, few paid her any mind.

Mounting the worn but immaculately maintained steps to the opulent Kiesang house, Minjae wondered what sort of trouble So Ye had gotten herself into this time. She rarely called for Minjae in the dead of night unless it was a dire emergency. Unscrupulous customers could inflict serious harm on a kiesang, and the thought made her heart ache. She could only hope that the women were safe.

The men escorted her to the private parlour at the back of the massive building, accessible only to the highest-ranked kisaengs and officials. The intricately woven latticed door slid open immediately. Minjae stepped into the dim room, lit only by two lanterns, a few scented candles, and alluring incense. Her eyes took a few moments to adjust to the muted light. Han Soye walked to her, looking perfectly fine, though her smooth forehead wore a few worried folds.

"Kim Minjae, please know I would have never agreed to this if it wasn't for Kim Da Bom," Han So Ye said in a clipped voice.

It was then she noticed the tall frame of her sister to the left of Soye.

"What are you doing here at this time of the night?" Minjae asked, and suddenly, a queasy feeling flipped her stomach. She whirled to her left.

Lee Seung lounged against a pillar, arms folded across his chest, his shoulder resting against a wooden pillar nonchalantly, his lazy stance belying the coiled tension in his muscular frame. Even from a distance, she could see the burning intensity of his eyes on her.

Furious, Minjae turned on Kim da Bom. "I told you not to interfere!"

Kim Da Bom stepped closer. "This is Ganghwa, dear sister. Haven't you learned that putting our noses in other people's business is the secret to our longevity?"

"It also is the main cause of putting most of those noses out of their joints," Minjae returned angrily. As she made a move to leave, Da Bom grabbed her wrist. "You owe him an explanation," she said quietly, "My Lady," she added in an undertone, giving her a telling look.

Minjae paled. Acutely aware of intense mahogany eyes watching her every move intently and feeling the impact on every pore of her body, Minjae raged, "It's none of your business."

"The day I called you my sister, everything in your life became my business," Kim Da Bom said so quietly that Minjae knew only she could hear it. "I am not forcing you to go with him, but no one deserves to be cut off and left hanging like that without explanation. Running from it will not make it go away."

Kim Da Bom's gentle rebuke, spoken without rancour, hit Minjae like a whiplash. She was consumed by a deep sense of shame at her cowardice, so powerful that it threatened to double her over. Yet, digging herself out of the emotional avalanche she had been buried under in the past month was too painful to bear.

Her father's betrayal had cut deep and ripped open her wounds. She was not ready to do what she had to do. Not now. Not yet.

And wasn't this what she was really good at? Running away?

"Have I become so unbearable that you can't even spend a few minutes with me, Kim Minjae?" Seung's husky voice pierced the tense air.

Minjae closed her eyes, taking a deep breath to steady herself.

"Kisaeng Han, please leave us alone," Seung ordered.

Han So Ye's gaze snapped to Seung. She gave him a deep bow. "My Lord, with due respect and at the risk of your anger, I want to let you know any disrespect towards Physician Kim Minjae will not be tolerated. My men are ready to act if needed," she declared sternly, leaving no room for doubt. "Minjae, I'll be just outside if you need me. A single ring of the bell, and I'll be by your side."

Seung barely registered her words, his gaze fixed on the woman before him. Minjae's clutch on the hem of her garment tightened, the fabric constricting her throat. Even in the dimness of the room, the pallor of her face was starkly evident.

"So Ye, stop being the mother hen," Da Bom placed her hands on Soye's back and pushed her gently towards the doorway. "Minjae is more than capable of looking after herself and, if given a chance, everyone else as well. Trust me, she has got it all under control. She always has things figured out, don't you, sister?" Da Bom threw over her shoulders sarcastically. Minjae threw daggers at her retreating back.

The door closed softly, leaving the two of them alone.

"Why do you still have Woo Sari with you? Don't you know how dangerous it is, just not for you but everyone else?" Seung broke the silence, his voice filled with concern.

"She might not have made it if I had left her behind," Minjae firmly defended her decision.

"My house is teeming with people who might recognise her," Seung argued.

"There is no chance of them ever seeing her," Minjae said confidently. Or recognising her, she thought to herself, because the mistress of that house was an imposter, surrounded by servants who had never laid eyes on either Woo Sari or the real Choi Jina. The irony of the situation would have been comical if it wasn't so hurtful.

"Must you be so obstinate about everything, Minjae?" The frustration in his voice was palpable. "I am trying to help you, keep you safe."

"Help me?" Minjae scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest. "Is that what you call it? Tricking me into seeing you in the middle of the night? Undermining my decisions by going behind my back to my sister and making me suffer through snide comments? If that's your idea of help, I'd rather you didn't."

Seung unfurled himself and moved to the centre of the room. A large round table, polished to a mirror-like shine, held a tall, elegant pitcher of alcohol and beautiful, colourful porcelain cups. He went down on his hunches, upended the snout into a cup, filled it to the brim, and brought it to her.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Minjae accepted the cup he handed her.

"I am not the one making snide comments here, Minjae. I know you feel angry I went behind your back. You left me little choice," Seung said calmly, unapologetically. There was a moment of tense silence before Seung spoke again, his tone softer but no less serious. "I asked for your hand from your father."

Numb fingers clutched the cup as Minjae turned her head slightly sideways to take a sip, trying to quell the tremor in her hand. She could feel the intensity of Seung's gaze on her, and it took all her strength to not spill the alcohol.

"But you already know it. You were there all along," Seung remarked, the gentle accusation more piercing than any expletives he could have employed to express his frustration, the sense of betrayal palpable in his voice.

She desperately blinked the moisture that had gathered in her eyes. Her heart was aching, the weight of her secret threatening to crush her.

"You never asked me before going to Aboji," She replied, stubbornly refusing to reveal the reality of her tattered heart.

"To ask you, I would need to meet you, don't you think so?" A mocking smile played on his lips.

Minjae's throat tightened, and she felt a wave of indignation and sorrow. "You don't understand," she began, hardening her voice and her heart against him.

"Why are you punishing us, Minjae?" He interrupted softly.

His gentle tone was almost her undoing.

She walked to the large chest by the wall to her right and rested her cup on it. "I need some time away to clear my head," she said, her voice betraying none of the storm raging up inside her.

"So your idea is to simply vanish without a word?" A flicker of irritation crossed his face.

"Maybe I want more space than you are ready to give me, Dari. Maybe I am too weak to withstand all this unnecessary pressure," Minjae said, appalled at how shrewd and cold she sounded.

Seung took a step closer, his expression hardening. "Maybe you need someone to push you to be stronger, to know how to accept love."

Minjae met his gaze, unflinching. "And maybe you need to learn the difference between loving someone and pushing them away by suffocating them. And it's not like people in your home have been exactly welcoming," Minjae said untruthfully.

"I did not know Lady Choi spoke with you. I am sorry; I should have foreseen it. I would have forbidden it had I known," his regret and apology came from somewhere deep within.

"Anyone in her place would have done the same thing," Minjae constructed her words carefully, her voice echoing around the opulent chamber brushed in hues of pastels and reds.

"The world does not operate on the whims of Choi Jina," Seung said, his voice laced with a firm, unyielding tone. "I have no sympathy for her."

"She could be under duress. Her father might have forced her," Minjae said.

"Is that the bull she fed you?" Seung said derisively, his eyes narrowing and lips curling into a sneer. "Lord Choi is busy running a country and has turned a blind eye to his daughter's caprices for half a decade. She hasn't changed, still blaming others for her weakness. She probably realised she can't survive on entitlements alone."

"How can you be so naive, Dari?" Minjae said, frustrated at Seung's selective blindness to Lord Choi. "My family and I could be in danger if Lord Choi finds out you prefer me over her," Minjae said, knowing very well Seung had no idea how scarily close she was to the truth. "Lord Choi is a ruthless man."

"She has frightened you, has she not? She is lying. Even if we were to assume Lord Choi forced her, he is far from someone who will harm you." Seung was losing his patience. "The man even offered a dowry for you!"

"What?" Minjae's eyes widened in shock.

Seung chuckled, but there was no humour in it. "I'm not here to discuss Jina. I want to discuss us," he said, his tone sharp.

"You think I'm overreacting, don't you?" Minjae could not suppress the bitterness in her voice.

"I'm not dismissing your worry, Minjae. But your fear is misplaced. You're choosing to believe a woman who has never hesitated to drag her family through the mud to achieve her ends over someone who has watched her manipulate everyone around her without a care for anyone else."

"What will it take for you to believe she could be a victim?" Minjae asked hotly.

"You are being stubbornly intransigent about it, Minaje! I can't believe you are taking her side," Seung's voice rose, the tension between them palpable.

"I am not taking any sides!"

Seung's tone softened, his desperation seeping through. "I understand you've endured much, and you're inclined to believe a woman in distress. But trust me, Choi Jina is not one of them. Please, Minjae, don't drag us through this, don't let her come between us," he implored, his voice a blend of desperation and foreboding.

"I'm sorry, but I don't believe there's an 'us' anymore, Dari," Minjae declared, her voice firm, her gaze unwavering.

It hit him like a punch in the gut, the blood draining from his face at her stark words.

"How can you say that like it means nothing to you?" Seung's voice thundered in disbelief, his fury and hurt raw and exposed. "Did I mean so little to you? You can't do this. I won't allow it."

His face was a deep shade of red, the muscles of his chest defined against the stretch of his uniform, his furious eyes boring into her.

For a moment, Minjae faltered, then closed her eyes against the temptation of giving in. "When I agreed to be with you, circumstances were different," Minjae said, and then she went for the cut. She knew it would wound him and make him turn away from her. "And anyway, who is to tell you would not get bored of me once the thrill of your physical attraction fades?" Her voice dripped with a nastiness she hadn't known she was capable of. "Who knows, maybe I'll get tired of you too."

Seung caught her by the shoulders and turned her towards him, his grip not so gentle anymore. "Say that again?" he said, his eyes narrowing dangerously, momentarily making her wonder if she was going too far.

"Isn't that all this is about? Physical attraction. I should have never let it progress this far. This dalliance was foolhardiness," Minjae said derisively.

Seung's hands fell to his side.

"Is that what you think, Kim Minjae?" His voice, barely a whisper, hung in an air so thick with tension that it could blunt a butcher's knife.

She shrugged, her voice a barren wasteland of emotion. "You're not the first to lust after me, and," she met his gaze unflinchingly, "you won't be the last. Just as I've desired men before you and will likely desire them after you. It's the novelty you crave, nothing that a few tumbles between the sheets would not take care of" she declared, hating herself for the crude words. "We should have gotten it out of the way right at the start."

Seung went white around his mouth.

"Then what is stopping you from 'getting it out of the way' now, as you so lucidly put it?" He pressed coldly, his eyes locked with hers.

Even a fool could sense the danger of provoking a man to the brink of madness. But Minjae, in her clouded judgement, was oblivious to the peril.

"Complete disinterest," she lied.

"Did your kisaeng friend not apprise you of how interesting I can be in a tumble between the sheets?" Seung growled crudely.

Minjae flinched.

"I assure you, Physician Kim, once we 'get it out of the way,' disinterest won't be a word you would associate with us, ever. Shall I demonstrate it to you?" His voice was ominously low and deliberately disrespectful. He pointed to the luxurious bed behind him, his gaze lingering on the satin-covered mattress on the floor across the room, his eyes ablaze with fury and an indiscernible emotion.

And a promise.

As his words sank in, alarm flapped in her belly, making her go weak in the knees. But she dug in, raising her chin defiantly. "You are only proving my point, Dari!" She scoffed. "If this is a game you are playing, I am winning," she said, forcing as much scorn as she could muster into her voice.

He took measured steps, closing the gap with deliberate laziness that belied his rage at her words.

"Now that's a game I am happy to let you win," He said roughly.

Her heart plummeted to the pit of her stomach, then pounded with the ferocity of a trapped bird threatening to break free of its cage. She had never felt so vulnerable, so utterly exposed, as she did in this moment of dismissiveness. Losing her nerve, she backed away but abruptly stopped as the cold, hard edge of the ornate wooden chest dug into her back.

Seung placed his hands on the top of the polished wood of the armoire behind her, entrapping her between his arms. His body was so close that she could feel the manic heat emanating from it, the muted lights of the room magnifying his potent male form.

"You don't seem as interested in winning anymore," he mockingly observed, his furious eyes taking in her flushed face, parted lips and rounded eyes, nervousness written all over the delicate lines on her lovely forehead.

"Just because I love you, you think I am easy?" He snarled. "How dare you?" Seung's voice rose, his jaw clenched so tight it felt it would snap.

Panic bubbled inside Minjae's chest. "You are frightening me," she blurted involuntarily, her voice trembling with apprehension. She ran her tongue over her dry lips. She had gone too far. "I am sorry, Dari," she whispered.

Seung closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. When he opened them, they were brimming with despair.

"I would never hurt you. Not in a million years. What do I do to make you believe I love you, Minjae?" His voice cracked under the weight of his emotions, his eyes filled with raw desperation and love.

Miserable, helpless, and determined to push him away, she did the only thing that occurred to her.

She lashed out.

"Love? What do you know about love?" Her voice trembled with raw anguish, eyes blazing with tears held back for too long. "You see a woman one day and think you love her. You don't even know her!"

His brows snapped together. "We are back there? Again? You feel what you feel!" He was incredulous. "I am not going to engage in that vague argument with you. I don't care to dissect what I feel, nor do I need to explain myself to you," Seung said, glaring at her. "And I know you love me too. I can feel it here," he held his fist on his heart and then transferred it to her chest, pressing against the soft swell of her breast, right over her hammering heart. "Deceive yourself all you want, but you can't deceive me, so don't even attempt it," he warned her huskily, dropping his hands and turning away. He strode to the table and poured himself a cup, draining it. He poured another.

"Everything is a deception," Minjae said, her eyes boring unseeingly into his back. Seung stiffened and turned once more to face her. Minjae raised her face.

A tear fell. Followed by another, and then another.

"Minjae!" Seung's brows furrowed, and he closed the distance in a flash. He cupped her face so gently as if she would break. "Don't cry..."

"Everything you know about me is a lie, is a deception. I led you on, and I was a fool to do that because I, too, wanted to have some of the fun everyone spoke about. But I can't do it anymore."

"What do you mean?" Seung watched her, alert, a muscle ticking in his jaw.

"I lied to you. I never intended to become your concubine," Minjae choked between her sobs.

The drink in his hand sloshed, then shattered on the floor as he stepped closer, his eyes wide with disbelief. Seung stepped closer, his eyes dilated in shock.

"Stop with your lies right now!" he managed to get the words out of his choked throat.

"Did I ever tell you that I love you?" she asked, derisively laughing through her tears. "No. I never intended to be your concubine because I—" she swallowed—"because I am still married."

Seung was rooted in his spot, staring at her uncomprehendingly, his mind struggling to process the magnitude of what he had just heard. "What are you saying?" He grasped her shoulders and shook her, repeating himself, "What are you saying!"

"There was no divorce. And there will be no divorce. He is the only man I love, the only one I have ever loved. I would do anything for him but never divorce him. I love him."

Seung was white as a sheet.

"Do you hear me?" she bunched his collar with her fists and yelled in his face, pausing for a trembling breath, her tears spilling over like a swollen river breaking its dams, "I love my husband so much that sometimes I feel I will suffocate. It hurts. It hurts so much that I feel someone carving out my heart every time I breathe while knowing that I cannot even touch him," she said brokenly, her tiny fists hitting him through the hiccups of her sorrow.

Seung stood frozen, his soul disintegrating in the frosty gales of his heart's wintry expanse while she slumped against him, weeping. The shattered cup lay forgotten at their feet, the alcohol leaving stains on every part of the fabrics it sloshed on.