By Zephyria 
“……”
Ho-eun, who would normally have rushed into his mother’s arms, stood still today as if rooted to the ground. Everything he saw was strange.
His father, nonchalantly lying and standing with his hands behind his back.
His mother, her beautiful face filled with worry for him.
Deok-woo, carrying and moving medicinal herbs as if he had swept up the entire herbal medicine shop.
Himself, his body hot with fever but his head cold.
And even the shadow of the fence bars cast over all of us.
Ho-eun took a step back. He looked around for a moment, then turned the car halfway around. After that, he met eyes with the plum blossom attached to the front of the car.
This car, this plum blossom, was what his father had received for distributing grain to the starving people and becoming a model for the nobles.
Model.
Ho-eun thought about the word ‘model’ for a moment. Then he shook his head. No, he was not a model.
He grabbed the plum blossom-shaped iron mass and began to tear it off. But it was not as delicate as a real flower, and it did not budge no matter how much force he used. Ho-eun’s already pale hands turned even whiter. They trembled. The round shape of the plum blossom bluntly pricked his palm.
It hurt so much for what it was. His palm felt torn, and his joints felt like they were being pulled apart, but Ho-eun still tried to pull out the plum blossom with his eyes wide open. Later, he even pushed the car with one foot. Dirt got on the glossy car.
“Ho-eun, what are you doing?”
His mother asked with a puzzled face. At those words, his father turned to look at Ho-eun. Soon, he discovered Ho-eun’s bizarre behavior and jumped up and down on the spot.
“What are you doing! How dare you touch what His Majesty gave you!”
“Our family! Doesn’t deserve to have something like this!”
Ho-eun shouted, continuing his fight with the plum blossom. His father, his eyes wide enough to make his eye corners taut, approached Ho-eun threateningly.
“Can’t you stop right now?”
At that moment, his mother, noticing the unusual atmosphere, stood in front of his father.
“Deserve? Why is our Ho-eun saying such things, Daegam?”
“……”
His father could not easily continue speaking. His lower lip trembled slightly. It was an appearance that did not suit his always resolute and upright father. The moment his mother’s eyes narrowed as she saw it.
“Ah!”
Ho-eun let out a short scream. The hand gripping the plum blossom slipped, and he was pushed back by his own force.
Thud.
The large silk Durumagi fluttered, making a noisy sound. He reflexively braced himself on the ground, but his wrist was bent and his palm was scraped roughly on the rough dirt floor.
“Ugh…”
Ho-eun groaned in the stinging pain.
“Ho-eun!”
His horrified mother rushed to Ho-eun as if flying. Her beautiful skirt spread haphazardly on the dirt floor. But his mother did not care at all. She only held and examined Ho-eun’s palm with trembling hands.
“It’s scraped. It almost bled. Why did you do that? Huh? Does it hurt? Oh, what should I do… Daegam. Our Ho-eun’s hand has turned bright red.”
His mother, squatting and wiggling her hips, turned to look at his father. But his father just stood there blankly. One foot came forward, but no one noticed.
His father looked down at Ho-eun with a coldly hardened face. It was a gaze as if he were looking down on him. A father looking down on his son. It was a father who could exist for someone, but had never existed in this house, at least.
“Does it hurt? You’re in pain from just that, and you insisted on going to the battlefield?”
“……”
“What are you going to do with that? What can you do!”
Ho-eun bit his lip. Insisting? Does his father see his struggle as just insistence? He grabbed a handful of dirt that was not easily grasped.
His mother, with a frustrated face at the two people only exchanging incomprehensible words, looked at his father.
“Battlefield? What on earth are you talking about?”
“……”
His father closed his mouth.
“……”
So did Ho-eun. Even if he was weak, he was a man, and he could not cling to his mother and complain about his injustice. No, in fact, more than that, his mother too…
“Someone, please say something!”
His mother shouted. She was not one to raise her voice easily, so the servants around her, as well as his father, flinched and trembled. His father, pacing back and forth a few times, finally moved the thunderbolt brought from the hospital to the yard of the house.
“Ho-eun has become a Bondmate. That’s why he’s sick.”
“……What?”
“A Bondmate, I said.”
“A, a Bondmate?”
As expected, his mother’s face also turned as if struck by lightning.
“Are you talking about the Bondmate I know?”
“Yes, madam. Ho-eun has become that Bondmate.”
“……”
His mother looked down at the ground. Then, as if she had made a decision, she swallowed hard and slowly released Ho-eun’s hand.
“Ho-eun. Whatever it is, your father is right. Listen to your father.”
She said in a calm voice. After that, as if nothing had happened, she nonchalantly dusted off the dirt on her skirt with a blank face. When a servant nearby quickly came and held the end of her skirt, his mother said with a gentle face that she would do it herself.
To such a mother, and to his father, Ho-eun felt as if all the blood in his body was draining to the floor. He looked at the plum blossom on the car. By sitting sprawled on the floor, he was closer to the plum blossom.
Ho-eun, staring at it silently, said in a dry voice.
“Don’t you think about our eldest brother?”
It was a short sentence. But with that short sentence, everyone in the space lost their words. Everyone did not blink or breathe.
At that time. Chop, chop, chop, small footsteps echoed from the corner of the yard. It was the Hwanggu dog raised in the house. It seemed that it had been wandering outside all along and had come home when it was time for a meal.
Ho-eun stared at the Hwanggu dog, wagging its tail and crossing between the people, with incomprehensible eyes.
The silence continued for a long time. Long enough for the Hwanggu dog to find its food and go to the backyard. Then, the first to speak was his mother.
“……What? Ho-eun, what are you saying now……”
She muttered with an incredulous expression. At that, Ho-eun staggered up from the floor and said dryly.
“My brother, my eldest brother. The brother who passed away 10 years ago.”
At the name mentioned again, this time his father’s face turned red and blue. He made a strange groan, raised his hand high, and approached Ho-eun.
“You rascal!”
The voice like an angry tiger shook the biggest house in Hanyang.
“……”
Ho-eun was just watching his approaching father. It was the first time he had been beaten since he was born, but he was not afraid. Because it was a word he had prepared for. He knew how disrespectful and outrageous the words he had uttered were.
It was when Ho-eun closed his eyes tightly at his approaching father. Deok-woo, who appeared among the servants, fell flat in front of Ho-eun.
“Daegam! No! Hit this one instead. Not the young master!”
Starting with him, the other servants stopped the Daegam. Daegam, please calm down. Daegam, please restrain yourself. Daegam, Daegam! But his father could not easily control his anger. His raised hand trembled, and his gaze glaring at Ho-eun was like fire.
“How could you, how could you mention your brother here, how dare you in front of me, in front of us……”
As his father staggered without being able to gather his words, Deok-woo, who was lying flat, quickly supported him. On the other hand, Ho-eun was staring at his father with eyes that had turned black.
“Father, you know why our eldest brother became like that.”
“Young master, please stop.”
Deok-woo, who could not bear to watch, stopped him. But Ho-eun did not back down. Rather, he even took a step towards his father.
“If our eldest brother had only found a Bondmate, if he had only found his partner, he wouldn’t have died like that.”
Ho-eun had three older brothers. Although there are only two now.
The brother Ho-eun called ‘eldest brother’ was the eldest son of the Choi family and also the God of War. News of how many Devouring Ghouls he had killed on the battlefield, how many people he had saved, and how many towns he had rescued came into the capital almost every day.
Whenever that happened, his father and mother smiled with strange expressions. While stroking their shrunken chests with one hand.
But his eldest brother’s fame did not last long. Because he could not find his partner, the Bondmate.
Here, a partner meant the most effective Bondmate who could help the God of War when he reached his limit. It was often referred to as a connection made by heaven, fate, etc.
In fact, even if they were not a partner, he could receive help from a Bondmate, but his eldest brother was such a strong God of War that he did not get any effect from any Bondmate.
His father and mother searched not only the capital but the entire country to find his brother’s Bondmate, but they never found him. As time went by, his eldest brother spent more days sick than going to the battlefield.
Then one day, his eldest brother died, vomiting blood from every hole in his body. The blood pooled between the floorboards was so thick and plentiful. All the servants in the house scrubbed day and night for ten days, but blood kept seeping out endlessly.
It was when Ho-eun was just ten years old.
Ho-eun did not really remember what kind of expressions his parents had when they stood in front of his eldest brother’s grave at that time. Maybe that’s why he can put such disrespectful words into his mouth.