28. A Conspiracy of Women
Part Three: Lady Min
The Education of Sumire Min is a previously unpublished novel by S. Jae-Jones. Chapters will be emailed to paying subscribers every Friday at 5PM EST. If you are not yet a subscriber and would like to read the rest of the book, as well as receive all sorts of behind-the-scenes access—including a Discord server—why not give it a try?
🚨 content warning: pregnancy, giving birth, infanticide, infant death 🚨
It was surprisingly easy to kill an infant.
When the appointed time came, Little Snow went to the House of Genkai Blossoms and asked for the cuckoo’s child. She brought the child back to the Sumire’s apartments in Heian, scrawny, ugly, mottled purple and white, feeble, and weak. It would be a mercy to kill it, or so Sumire tried to convince herself. Its mother did not want it, nor did anyone else. And its death would serve a noble purpose; it would save the life of another. But staring at this underfed, underdeveloped thing, Sumire couldn’t help but wonder who on earth had given her the right to judge which child lived, and which did not.
Still, there was nothing to be done for it; it must die in order for her own child to live. Sumire watched dispassionately as it flailed and flopped about helplessly, crying thinly for its mother, for food, for comfort. It had been dead before it had ever been born, the poor thing.
“How shall we do it?” Little Snow whispered.
Sumire did not know. How did one go about murdering a child?