← The North Wind Blows at the Treetops
Chapter 2
At first, the old man’s usual acts of arousing me continued. Somehow, after doing it, all the strength would drain from my body and I could not muster any energy at all. “Is this what it means to share my vitality with him?” The thought frightened me a little, but when I slept and woke, there was no great problem in moving my body, so I thought it did not matter.
When about a fortnight had passed like that, the old maid Hyang said, “The master is quite fond of you. If you move yourself, he will like it even more.” I did not know exactly what it was, but I understood at least that making the old man happy was the “work” given to me, so I did as she said. At first there was no particular reaction. But the old man, pleased with what I did for him, stroked my head as if I were a clever child and asked for this and that.
The “miracle” happened about a month after I did “that act.” The old man’s body, which had only ever been limp, suddenly responded to me one day. He was truly delighted that his body had been rejuvenated. And, unlike the acts before, he took my little body into his arms.
At least it was fortunate that the old man’s shrunken body was not so threatening to me.
A strange sensation, and a pain like my insides twisting at the terrible feeling of something foreign, washed over me, but perhaps because the old man touched me with such care, or perhaps because I had a talent for it, my body quickly grew accustomed to his acts. Until I lost consciousness after being tormented by him all night long.
When I opened my eyes the next day, I was lying in a room I had never seen. It was a wide inner room, brightly decorated like my mother’s room once was, completely different from the small back room I had been in before.
“You did very well. They say it’s been about three years since the Master last properly did his night’s work. He gave you the room right next to his own, calling you a lucky bundle who rejuvenated him.”
My head rang and I could not make out what was being said. I could only barely understand that instead of the gloomy little back room I had been in, the old man had given me one of the large rooms in the main house where he lived. Was that a good thing? As I tilted my head, a table was brought in, laden with food to the point of bending under its weight, more than a child could manage. Only then did I realize that the act the old man had performed the night before, putting something into my bottom, had brought all this luxury.
After that it was simple. The old man’s member, which had not stood for three years, now responded to me faithfully two or three times a month. The act that had at first been utterly overwhelming grew familiar as my body grew, and later I would even climb on top of him first and arouse his member. That was all I had to do in this house, and I thought that if the old man kept cherishing me, this life was not so bad. No, compared to my former life at home, full of indifference and abuse, this was better for me.
“Do you like reading books?”
It was one day, not yet three months since I had come here, that the Master pressed a large key into my hand.
“It’s the key to the library, so go there when the days feel dull.” He seemed quite surprised that I could haltingly read the poems lying by my pillow. He had thought me illiterate, a child sold as a slave and still young, but my skill with letters was rather far beyond that of children my age.
“It’s a military family, so there’s no one who reads books. If you read them, the books piled in the library will be grateful.” As I bowed again and again until my head touched the floor, thanking the old man who laughed heartily, I lived in the library all day from the next day on. No one beat me for going into the library. There were even maids who brought me snacks and stroked my head, saying how clever I was.
It was one day, more than two years after I had come to live in the library, that I met “him.”
***
I was twelve. Other children might have been an age to be held in their parents’ arms and act spoiled, but I had no one to act spoiled with. Instead, I learned how to get what I wanted. First, I would act coy to make the old man’s body languid, then whisper what I wanted in a whining voice. A rare book, beautiful clothes, a trinket, whatever it was, I could have it in my hands. His member now rose faithfully two or three times a fortnight, and whenever his friends came to the house, the old man would openly boast of me, saying he had been rejuvenated thanks to our house’s page boy.
I also came to know vaguely about the spaces other than the places I frequented, the old man’s room, my room attached to it, and the library. The mansion was large. The old man had a son, also a military man, and I saw that son had a grandson and a granddaughter. Both were much older than me, and they came every morning to pay their respects, so it was said. The reason I only learned of their existence much later was that I was fast asleep whenever they came.
But they knew me. They had seen me sleeping soundly, pillowed on the old man’s knee, whenever they came to pay respects. Of course, that each of us knew of the other’s existence was something I realized much later.
The servants sang endless praises of the “granddaughter,” but they did not seem to like the “grandson.” They said he had a violent temper and would seize a book and beat servants for the smallest mistake.
Whenever they had a free moment, they would lower their voices among themselves and criticize him, saying, “How can a girl like a fairy have such an older brother?”
And so when I first met that “grandson,” I could not help but shrink back reflexively. He was the “Young Master” of violent temper I had only heard about in words.
The Young Master was said to have joined the palace guard at the age of eighteen. Dark skin, a face with strong features, thick eyebrows and wide-open eyes. Because his build was so much more massive than other people’s, his frame looked especially huge to my smaller-than-average eyes. The moment the Young Master spotted me, he came stomping over so hard the floor shook, seized me by the collar without a word, and hoisted me up. Helpless to do anything, I dangled in midair, my eyes squeezed shut, coughing out harsh breaths.
“Aren’t you Grandfather’s page boy? Why is a lowly thing like you in the library!” My breath caught. I struggled, clutching his wrist with both hands. As if even the touch of a “lowly thing’s” hand disgusted him, he threw me to the floor. I rubbed the tears gathering at the corners of my eyes with my sleeve and took the key out from inside my clothes.
“The Master said I may come in!”
And I shouted it out as if in protest. The Young Master, about to give the lowly thing a scolding for daring to talk back, suddenly stopped his hand. His face twisted strangely all at once.
“A lowly thing reads that? Do you even understand what you’re reading?” Only then did I look where his gaze had landed. A book lying on the floor. It was the one I had just been reading.
“If I didn’t understand it, why would I read it!” The Young Master then let go of the collar he had been holding. He bent down, picked up the book, and still glared at me with displeased eyes. Inside the dark library, only the sound of ragged breathing filled the air.
“Who taught you to read?”
“I learned it in the library at home.”
“There was a library?”
“Are there houses without libraries?”
At the time, the only houses I knew were the one where I was born and raised and this one, so I thought every house had a library and a well-tended back garden. Amused that such words, like those of a fresh young nobleman, should come from the mouth of a lowly bed-slave, the Young Master stared back and forth between the book and my face for a long while, then began asking me several things about the book’s contents.
It must have been a kind of test. I obediently answered his questions one by one. Only after that did the Young Master seem convinced that I truly understood the book, and he returned the book he had taken from me. And soon he closed his eyes and seemed to sink into thought for a while.
Probably he was guessing the circumstances: a precious child of a house with a library who had received a proper education, and how such a child had come to be sold as a bed-slave.
But the limits of imagination were obvious. Something like a house fallen into ruin, unable to bear its growing debts, losing its child, or being kidnapped by a band of robbers on the road. That would have been about it. Indeed, who could imagine the story of parents who handed their other children over to a brothel for the wealth and glory of their firstborn son?
It must have been pity.
That was the reason the Young Master’s attitude changed so noticeably.
Somehow, after that, I often ran into him in the library. It began with him taking down books from high places for me or recommending books he had read, and sometimes he would even bring me news from outside. What had happened in the palace, politics and history I had only known through print, and…
“You smell good.”
“It must be the fragrant oil.”
“Others use fragrant oil too, but they don’t smell like this. This is more…” Something like my heart pounding… even feelings like that.
That day, one kiss was different from all the ones before. It was not merely the enjoyment of the soft sensation of a tongue, but something like a more fundamental joy filling me.
***
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