Chapter 4
“…Then does that mean the servant job at the Xiao Family Manor is out of the question now? They might have already found someone by this time…”
“I don’t know about that. Isn’t Hwang, the man who manages the servants there, rather particular? We’d have to go and ask him directly to know for sure, but if you ask me, there’s a good chance they still haven’t found anyone…”
Only belatedly did I catch what the Pyo couple was saying and come to my senses.
Right. This wasn’t the time for this.
If I wanted to pass on this precious information, I needed to get close to Xiao Yanli, and to do that, didn’t I absolutely have to get into the Xiao Family Manor?
And now, by coincidence, a servant position at the Xiao Family Manor had come up. It couldn’t have worked out better!
“Um…”
Having made up my mind, I opened my mouth.
“About the servant job. Could you perhaps ask them about it again?”
“What?”
Uncle Pyo looked surprised by my words.
“You went through all that trouble to find me a job, so it feels like such a waste to let the opportunity slip away. If they haven’t found anyone yet, I’d like to do it…”
“But are you sure you can? Your body hasn’t recovered yet, and your memory isn’t completely intact either.”
“I’m fine! My body is a little sore, but it’s not like I can’t move. As for my memory… won’t it naturally come back with time? Actually, even if I’m not fine…”
Given my situation, what choice did I have but to do it?
When I gave him a bitter smile, the pity in Uncle Pyo’s eyes deepened even further.
Don’t look at me like that. This is all part of my grand plan to turn my life around.
But perhaps my pitiful act had worked, because Uncle Pyo soon nodded and said,
“……All right! Since you’ve already made up your mind, what can I say? I’ll ask them first thing tomorrow.”
“Thank you!”
“In the meantime, eat well, sleep well, and get plenty of rest. If your condition gets worse, how am I supposed to face Mrs. Sa? Understand?”
“Yes!”
Even afterward, the Pyo couple continued to shower me with worried scoldings. I diligently kept the couple happy while secretly thinking to myself.
‘This should do it, right?’
Well, you could say it was only half successful. There were two things I’d overlooked.
The first was that I hadn’t told the Pyo couple that I was a girl and clearly asked them to let me do a ‘maid’s job,’ and the second was that I had no idea what this ‘servant job’ actually entailed.
Fortunately, or rather unfortunately, Uncle Pyo really did find me a job.
More precisely, it was because they still hadn’t found anyone.
‘What kind of job could it possibly be?’
With a faint sense of unease, I went to the Xiao Family Manor. And when I met the ‘Hwang’ Uncle Pyo had mentioned…
“W-what kind of work did you say we’re going to do?”
“What? Why are you so slow on the uptake?”
Uncle Hwang shouted angrily.
“We’re going to clean up shit, shit!”
And that’s how I became a servant of the Xiao Family Manor.
More precisely, I became the Xiao Family Manor’s shit carrier.
Damn it.
***
Six months later.
I was washing out a shit bucket by a stream.
The sight of a round wooden bucket covered here and there with remnants of feces would have made anyone else gag, but I scrubbed the bucket vigorously with a perfectly calm expression.
It had already been six months since I’d somehow ended up working as a shit carrier.
If I had to summarize my life during that time…
‘It was hardship and adversity itself.’
Of course, the work wasn’t difficult.
I’d worked like a slave in my previous life too, so what could possibly be difficult about it?
If anything, the problem was the nature of the work itself.
“Cleaning up shit isn’t exactly easy, but it’s still a job done by people, so you’ll get used to it once you do it for a while. I’ll teach you properly.”
Actually, the work wasn’t particularly difficult. In a way, it was just simple repetitive labor.
When it was time, we’d go collect the shit, transfer all the shit we’d gathered into one place, and once we’d accumulated a certain amount, we’d deliver it to the farmers.
Of course, the Xiao Family Manor was so enormous that a normal shit carrier’s shoulder pole wasn’t enough to handle the job, so we had to haul around a shit cart instead…
But that wasn’t a problem. The problem was something else.
“Urp!”
The smell.
How could the stench possibly be ordinary when we were collecting more than a dozen buckets of shit?
Especially when we opened the buckets we’d gathered and dumped all the excrement into one place, the scene that unfolded was truly…
“Ugh, uuugh…!”
“Hang in there, hang in there. Just think of it as mud!”
“Where the hell is there mud that smells like this… Uweeeggh!”
I really did vomit like crazy at first. Later, there was nothing left to throw up, so I could only vomit stomach acid, and it was absolutely miserable.
Seeing me looking haggard after only half a day, Uncle Hwang laughed in satisfaction.
“See? It’s surprisingly manageable, isn’t it? Eventually, you’ll even be able to eat your meals right beside it.”
At the time, I cursed him inwardly, thinking, ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
But Uncle Hwang had been right. In fact, there were times when I ate my afternoon snack right beside the shit buckets…
“Done!”
Only after washing the last shit bucket did I stretch and yawn.
Just then, the reflection of a boy’s face appeared on the surface of the water… unfamiliar yet somehow familiar.
A broad, flat face with rough, freewheeling features, darkly tanned skin, an upturned nose, and a scattering of freckles densely dotted across it. A country bumpkin straight out of the countryside…
That was me.
Realizing that fact, my sense of injustice came rushing back again.
‘This is me?’
No, other people transmigrated and marveled at their cute and adorable new appearances, going, ‘This is me?’
So why did I have to look at my ugly face and lament, ‘This is me?’
Still, if there was one fortunate thing, perhaps it was that I hadn’t been caught disguising myself as a boy because of this half-finished-looking appearance.
“You’ll never get yourself a proper wife.”
Uncle Hwang had laughed so hard while watching me covered in shit here and there and stuffing food into my mouth.
I’d been worried that someone might quickly discover I was a girl while I was working, but that had really been a completely pointless concern.
With an ugly face and the smell of shit wafting off me wherever I went, no one suspected for even a moment that I was a girl.
‘Damn it. Pretty girls disguised as boys only exist in novels, after all.’
Should I be happy about this or not?
Still, once I hit puberty, it’d become obvious. What was I supposed to do then…?
As I worried about this and that while cleaning up, the sun was already beginning to set.
I had to hurry.
Unlike the other servants who stayed in the servants’ quarters, I commuted from home.
I quickly made my way along while pulling a cart loaded with empty buckets, and just then, I spotted Uncle Hwang approaching from over there.
“Oh, you’re finished now?”
“Yes! Are you heading home after finishing work too, Uncle?”
“I was just looking around here and there. Let’s see…”
Uncle Hwang casually replied as he lifted one of the buckets loaded onto the cart.
His eyes were as sharp as a hawk’s as he inspected the bucket. After a brief silence, he nodded in satisfaction.
“As expected, you’re really meticulous with your hands. You’ve worked hard.”
“Aw, it’s nothing. You’re flattering me.”
“At first, the kid was so skinny that I wondered if you could even do the work properly, but it turns out I’d been worried for nothing. There aren’t many people who work as diligently as you do. Good kid…”
As he said that, he placed something in my hand, and I looked down at it in confusion.
Several copper-colored coins had been placed in my hand.
My mouth opened into a huge grin.
“U-Uncle…!”
“Make sure you eat properly, you brat. It’s not like your wages are low, so why aren’t you putting on any weight? It’s good that you’re being filial, but you need to take care of yourself too.”
“Uncle…”
I looked at him with moved eyes.
Perhaps embarrassed by the attention, Uncle Hwang waved his hand dismissively and said,
“Aw, how much could it possibly be? Why are you looking at me like that? Don’t just stand there. Hurry up and go. It’ll be dark soon.”
“Uncle, thank you so much. I’ll work even harder!”
“Good grief, you’re already working hard enough. How much harder are you planning to work… Hurry up, go!”
And despite telling me to ‘go,’ he turned around first and hurried away.
I gazed intently at Uncle Hwang’s retreating back, then raised my voice.
“Uncle, thank you so much!”
“I said hurry up and go!”
I quietly giggled at Uncle Hwang’s shout. My chest felt warmly stirred.
‘Should I buy some meat for once? Mother will be happy too.’
***
I entered through the gate, clutching the hefty bundle in my arms. Just then, my eyes met those of a woman who was coming outside.
“Danna, you’re home?”
The woman’s name was Sa Yeong-jeong.
She was Seo Dan’s sick, widowed mother, the very person who had grabbed me and cried on my first day. Fortunately, Seo Dan’s mother had regained consciousness not long after fainting.
However, after hearing from Auntie Pyo that I had lost my memory, she had gone pale as though she were about to faint again.
“Y-you can’t remember? Anything? You, you don’t even remember who I am? Who I am……”
I hesitated, but eventually shook my head.
I didn’t know enough to pretend otherwise, and I felt that lying to her face would be wrong.
The woman looked at me again as though she couldn’t believe it. But eventually, perhaps realizing that I truly knew nothing, she began shedding tears once more.
“It’s because of me. Because of me, our Danna…”
I could do nothing but silently watch my mother sob bitterly.
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