Flower Dream Chapter 7

“Uugh…”

Soon arriving at the valley stream, Dan Yuha routinely took out the herbs, chestnuts, and other items and washed them. Over the past few days, the weather had grown chilly and the water had become much colder. Even as his face scrunched up, he did not stop his hands.

A few minutes later, having finished washing, Yuha stood up, rubbing his reddened hands together. Then he wiped the chestnuts, wild grapes, and other things with a clean cloth. Next, he laid the herbs out neatly on a broad, flat rock. If he put them into the bag while still damp, the herbs could get crushed, so it was best to let them dry a little before heading home.

“Done.”

Having even turned his bag inside out and shaken it clean, Dan Yuha wiped his sweat with his sleeve and leaned his weary body against the rock. Today, various parts of his body throbbed and felt stiff and heavy. Over the past five days, he had climbed the mountain without a single day’s rest to gather necessary herbs and flowers, and had repeated making fragrances and incense sticks until he fell asleep, so fatigue seemed to have built up.

“Haaam…”

Letting out a small yawn, Dan Yuha sat on the rock and stretched his arms out long. Though it was hard, the preparations to receive the Crown Prince were now more or less finished.

How has he changed?

Dan Yuha groped through his memories and tried to imagine what Shin Ryuwon must look like now. The last time he had seen him was around the age he himself was now, and since several years had passed, he must have matured further. His jade-like countenance would be even more handsome, and his height would be tall and imposing.

Thump, thump.

Dan Yuha pressed his hand firmly over his violently beating heart. This was a symptom that had appeared ever since he received orders from Hong Haehwa to attend the Third Prince. From that moment, whenever he thought of the Crown Prince, his heart would pound harder than usual and his insides would churn.

“…Will he remember me?”

A murmur bearing an irrepressible wish slipped softly through Yuha’s slightly parted lips. Though he told himself he shouldn’t hope, an irrepressible flutter of excitement was unmistakably present.

‘I shall look forward to the day we meet again.’

On the day he had his first and last proper conversation with the Crown Prince, Shin Ryuwon had told Dan Yuha to become a fine perfumer like his father. It might have been a mere courteous formality, but to him, those words were as good as salvation.

From that day onward, Dan Yuha had desperately striven to walk the path the Crown Prince had shown him. During the three-year mourning period, he tended his parents’ graves, prayed for their souls, and each day studied pharmacology, perfumery, and methods of fragrance manufacture.

He also used the flowers, trees, and herbs he gathered from the mountains to personally make pills and fragrances. Because for an artisan, experience mattered above all.

Fortunately, he had learned much while helping Jeok Hyangrim with his work since childhood, so self-study was not difficult. Still, he often grew anxious, wondering if he was truly heading in the right direction. Above all, he did not have the leisure to study in peace. Having become an orphan, he had to make a living on his own.

So Dan Yuha asked Ju Cheongwoo for help and, whenever he found time, sold the things he gathered from the mountains to the merchant companies that visited the enclave. At other times, he would avoid people’s eyes, cross over the mountains, and do business at the five-day markets of neighboring villages.

At first, the fragrances and incense sticks Dan Yuha made were not very popular, but as his skill improved, word of mouth eventually spread. Then, about a year ago, the owner of an incense shop in the provincial capital who had come to the five-day market took an interest in Yuha’s goods and signed a supply contract.

Thus coming to travel to and from the provincial capital, Dan Yuha actively approached the merchants around the incense shop and built connections. On top of that, he visited one by one those who had done business with his father in the past and paid his respects. As a result, he was able to seal deals with various places besides the incense shop, such as a pharmacy, a tea house, and an herbal medicine merchant.

It was only then that his livelihood found some breathing room. He was able to save the money to take the perfumer and pharmacist examinations and to purchase medicinal ingredients and flowers that were hard to obtain in the enclave.

Having spent a busy year, Dan Yuha went to the imperial capital to take the examinations, partly to confirm his own skill. He then achieved the splendid feat of placing first in both examinations. It was a result far better than he had expected.

As he recalled the eventful past days, a faint smile played at the corners of Dan Yuha’s lips. To be honest, it would be a lie to say it had not been hard. Over the past few years, the number of nights he had soaked his pillow with tears vastly outnumbered those he had not. On nights when living felt overwhelming and painful, the impulse would come to him to follow his parents in death.

Each time, Dan Yuha would think of Shin Ryuwon and steady his heart. On days he missed his parents, on infinitely lonely nights, even in moments of anxiety over a bleak future—when he replayed that day’s conversation, his agitated heart would calm. Memories that he might perhaps be the only one remembering were Dan Yuha’s sole pillar of support.

And so, his gratitude toward Shin Ryuwon grew day by day. All the more because that time was not the only time he had been saved by him.

For that reason, Yuha wanted to pass the examinations and become a perfumer for Ryuwon. However, having parents branded with the “mark of a sinner,” becoming a perfumer for the Crown Prince’s palace was an impossible dream.

Unless it was an ordinary government office, the conditions for working in the imperial palace were extremely stringent. They looked at everything—outstanding ability, of course, but also character, appearance, family, and even one’s surrounding environment. That meant there must be no blemish whatsoever on either one’s parents or oneself.

Though the state strictly forbade guilt-by-association punishment except in cases of treason, in reality, a sinner’s child working in the imperial palace was as good as catching a star from the sky. There was no reason to deliberately hire someone with a flaw when people to hire were overflowing.

Mmph.

Dan Yuha bit his lips and drew up both knees, wrapping his arms around them. The first memory of his life was of terrifying-faced people coming to his house and running wild.

‘You damn bastards! Just drop dead!’

‘How do you have the face to stay alive when you’re sinners who nearly ruined the tribe? Shameless wretches!’

In his childhood, tribespeople tormented Dan Yuha’s family daily. Whenever his parents, unable to endure any longer, protested, the people would come to their house, curse them, and break their household goods.

On such days, his father would be beaten by the enclave residents and left bruised and bleeding, and his mother would take Yuha and hide inside the wardrobe. All the young Dan Yuha could do was hold on in her embrace and desperately fight back his tears.

‘I’m sorry, my baby… You are suffering only because you were unlucky with your parents.’

His mother, Dan Yeongha, made a habit of apologizing to her son. To her son, who wondered why they were tormented by the tribespeople, she told him what wrong they had committed. The story of how, to avoid a marriage unilaterally pushed by the Tribal Chief and a collateral imperial kinsman, she and his father had fled for love but were caught.

‘When we failed in our elopement and were captured and brought back, the Tribal Chief intended to offer up my neck and your father’s to appease the anger of the collateral imperial kinsman. But because I was pregnant with you, that became impossible.’

‘Why?’

‘Because punishing a pregnant woman is an act strictly forbidden by national law. So the punishment was suspended until I gave birth to you. Just then, an investigator was dispatched from the imperial court as well.’

‘Ah…’

‘The investigator, acting on His Majesty the Emperor’s orders, discovered the circumstances in which I had been coerced into an unwanted marriage and submitted a report. And the Empire’s Divine Dragon took our side, not that of the collateral imperial kinsman.’

‘Woah…! Oh, but why do people call us sinners?’

Hearing his mother’s explanation, Dan Yuha tilted his head.

‘That is… Well, the act of refusing the marriage with the collateral imperial kinsman itself went unpunished, but it is true that the tribe suffered great damage. The elders of the enclave decided to brand Hyangrim and me with the mark of sinners.’

‘You mean those ugly letters branded over Mother and Father’s tattoos?’

‘Yes. Enclaves where Flower People like us live are special… Even if one goes unpunished by national law, they can impose their own punishment. Branding us like this and banishing us to the outskirts, that is.’

‘Then, are all the people living here sinners?’

‘No, that’s not it. Though they are people alienated from the tribe for various reasons… cough. Anyway, I am sorry. Because of your good-for-nothing parents, you are suffering for no reason.’

Having finished the story of the past, Dan Yeongha hugged Yuha and apologized, choking up. Until the moment of her death, she was always sorry toward her son.

‘My poor son. How can I leave you behind and go…’

Perhaps because of severe mental anguish, Dan Yuha’s mother passed away the year he turned six. After she left the world, the tribespeople’s harassment grew even worse.

‘A sinner, daring to hold a memorial rite!’

‘Stop it! What is this…!’

‘Shut up! Why don’t you just follow your wife? And take your child with you.’

On the first anniversary of Dan Yeongha’s death, on the day of her memorial rite, intruders came and overturned the food his father had carefully prepared and broke the ancestral tablet. Not content with that, they beat the father and son who tried to hold them back.

Amid the merciless violence, Dan Yuha was gripped by the terror that this time he really might die. If not for a voice that stopped them, it might truly have happened.

‘What do you think you’re doing!’

‘Ugh! Who, who are you?’

The man who suddenly appeared pushed through the tribespeople and approached the two.

‘…Chief Eunuch Baek?’

While the people faltered at the appearance of the unfamiliar intruder, the Tribal Chief, Hong Haehwa, revealed herself. She had probably been watching the situation from afar.

‘Tribal Chief, what in the world is this? Did you intend to kill this man? The child as well?’

The man called Chief Eunuch Baek by Hong Haehwa interrogated her with a rigidly hardened face.

‘No. It is a quarrel that happens often.’

‘To my eyes, it looks not like a simple fight, but one-sided harassment by a mob?’

‘I was just about to stop them. It is an internal matter of the tribe, so please pretend you did not see and let it pass. At any rate, what business brings you all the way here?’

Feigning innocence, Hong Haehwa smiled cheerfully and asked Chief Eunuch Baek his purpose.

‘I am sorry… but I cannot simply let this pass. I am here on His Highness the Crown Prince’s orders to see the master of this house.’

‘What?’

‘Is this not the house of Master Perfumer Jeok Hyangrim?’