The Education of Sumire Min is a previously unpublished novel by S. Jae-Jones. Chapters will be emailed every Friday at 5PM EST. If you do not wish to receive the next chapter, but want to remain subscribed for other updates, you may unsubscribe from the book here.
🚨 content warning: sexualization of a child, the threat of sex trafficking
In a future she could not yet see, the love of her life would stroke the hair from her face and speak of family, of a house and children and dogs (of all strange things). His voice was wistful and soft, and she could pretend enough to believe that she wanted those things too. Perhaps she did. Perhaps he was the only man in whose eyes she could see her future. She wanted to want them. She wanted to want them because he wanted them, and because she wanted him. But it wasn’t enough. She wanted to want him badly enough to be a better woman than she was, to live up to the hope he cherished in his heart. But in the end she was nothing more than a coward and those heartbroken eyes would haunt her for the rest of her life.
Because in his eyes she could see the truth.
She had no filial piety.
And that was the truth.
In the months Soon-Yee had been stealing away to the Giraffes’ school, her younger brother Tae-Hyun had been growing weaker and more wan. While her brother perished, she flourished: her cheeks rosy, her eyes bright. Challenged by new things to learn, new ideas to contemplate, her skin glowed, her eyes shone, and her beauty was never more sharp or keen or noticeable. Looking back, she would always wonder if this was another part of the Nipponese ghost’s curse; her mind growing more fertile as her brother’s grew more feeble, her body growing stronger while her brother’s wasted away, it was the demon who reaped the benefits in the end.
When Tae-Hyun’s spirit left his body with his last exhale, Mother, Father, and Grandmother began to wail, their mournful cries alerting the entire village that a life had passed. Soon-Yee found herself mute and voiceless. Grandmother pounded at her chest, Father tore out his hair by the handfuls, and even Mother’s placid facade cracked under the weight of such grief. But Soon-Yee felt nothing. She looked at her brother’s still body, and saw no difference in his death than she had in his life. The face was slack and the eyes were empty, just as they always had been.
She should have felt sorrow, she should have felt loss, but she felt nothing, not even an empty hollowness that would have signified her connection to him. Soon-Yee glanced at his brushes, his scrolls, and his inkstone by his bedroll, and a small niggle of resentment wormed itself in her chest. She did not envy her brother his learning, only that he had been too dull to appreciate it, that such opportunity had been wasted on a flawed child.
“Oh my grandson, my grandson,” Grandmother wailed, rocking back and forth. “You were so young! It should be me in your stead.”
Soon-Yee wrinkled her nose at the histrionic display, finding it distasteful. She knew it was expected of her, to show her respect for her deceased brother, but she could not bring herself to cry. To lie. She noticed Mother glancing at her sidelong, tears on that craggy face. Soon-Yee hunched her shoulders and turned away. She was good at finding shame in all corners of her life.
It was her brother’s death which ruined her.
During the mourning period which followed, Father could not pull his wages from the sea, nor could they open their shik-dang while their house stank of death. It was Soon-Yee, small, shameful Soon-Yee, who went round the village collecting others’ soiled laundry to wash. Her hands grew wrinkled from the abuse, the skin thin and papery, the pads of her palms hardened and unfeeling. She wore a broad-brimmed hat to signify her loss, but it was more to hide her eyes from their judging gaze. Here was the girl who did not cry. Here was the girl who lacked filial piety. Here was the girl who was worth less than nothing.
In many ways, she preferred taking in the laundry for the rich Nipponese residents in her village, for they judged her differently. Instead of a failed daughter, they saw just another Choseonese mouse who scurried and simpered and did their bidding. She still had the capacity to impress them, her facility with their tongue a notable accomplishment they remarked upon often. But the house she was still reluctant to enter was Kaneshiro’s, the friend of the Nipponese ghost. It had been months since she had last seen the demon cross his threshold, but the memory of what-might-have-been still laid heavy upon her soul. She could still feel his hands on her arm, his meaty fingers wrenching her chin upwards to meet his wandering eyes.
But funeral rites cost money—more money than they were earning with Father at home and Mother unable to cook—so she gathered her courage and stood before the lintel, daring herself to cross.
“What are you doing here, nezumi-chan, little mouse?”
Soon-Yee turned around to see Kaneshiro with a beautiful young woman on his arm. Unlike Kaneshiro, who was dressed in a foreign manner, she was draped in a gorgeously printed robe, her silk kimono bright and colorful in the waning light. Her face was painted a strange, stark white, and her lips a frightening slash of red in that blank canvas. Soon-Yee was so startled by her appearance she forgot to speak.
“Well?” he pressed, his expression irritable.
“I…I…”
“Leave the poor child alone,” said the woman. “Can’t you see she is in mourning, Kaneshiro-san?” She spoke Nipponese strangely, the syllables oddly stressed, the consonants twisted. Soon-Yee frowned; the cadences were familiar.
She was Choseonese.
So shocked by this revelation, Soon-Yee dropped the bundles of clothing she was carrying, and stared boldly at the pair of them, her eyes flitting from one face to another. Kaneshiro looked down upon her with an expression of distaste, as though he had found vermin droppings in his rice. But the woman was looking at her kindly, her features soft and pitying.
“So let the little mouse go grieve somewhere else. Get out of the way, child, and let us pass.” He made a move to step around Soon-Yee, but she dropped to her hands and knees in the most abject bow she could muster, stopping him in his tracks.
“Please, honored sir,” Soon-Yee said, “I was wondering if you had any dirty clothing this unworthy girl could wash for you.”
“No, now move before I have you removed from my presence.”
“She speaks Nipponese quite well, Kaneshiro-san,” said the woman thoughtfully.
“I don’t care if she could sing out of her ass; I just want her out of the way.”
“Please,” Soon-Yee said, her voice trembling. “Yamete. I beg of you. We have lost my younger brother and funeral rites are expensive. If you would simply allow this worthless creature to work for you in exchange for a few coins––“
“No, I don’t have any money for dirty little beggars like you. Now go away.”
“Don’t be so cruel,” said the woman playfully. She hit Kaneshiro lightly on the shoulder with her fan, and to Soon-Yee’s amazement, he did not slap her for her disrespect. “I’m sure we can find a use for her. Look at the poor thing, no shoes on her feet, her mourning clothes practically rags.” The woman knelt before Soon-Yee, but it was awkward, her legs constricted by the tight wrapping of silk about them. Soon-Yee thought she must not be entirely comfortable in her Nipponese robes. “What is your name, little one?”
“Min Soon-Yee, mistress,” she whispered. Up close, the woman smelled of perfume, heavy and cloying and a little like sweet vinegar. The white face paint disguised the fact that she was no longer young, and not particularly beautiful either.
“You are a pretty girl, Min Soon-Yee,” she said gently. “And very intelligent too.”
Soon-Yee held her tongue.
“Kaneshiro-san,” the woman called. “I think I could use a little helper, a girl to look after my robes. What do you think? These kimono are so awkward and heavy.”
“That’s because you are no real geisha,” Kaneshiro snorted. The word was unfamiliar to Soon-Yee’s ears.
“But I am the best you have.” The woman lifted her head. “In fact, I am your only here in Choseon.”
A scowl crossed Kaneshiro’s face, and for a moment, Soon-Yee was afraid he would strike them both. But the woman stood her ground, and Soon-Yee couldn’t help but admire her nerve.
“Have it your way,” he barked. He stepped over Soon-Yee’s prostrate figure, leaving the two of them in the street alone.
“Get up,” said the woman, switching to Choseonese. She pulled Soon-Yee to her feet and helped her pick up the scattered laundry.
“Thank you,” said Soon-Yee, bowing over and over again. “Thank you. Thank you.” She kept stumbling and dropping articles in her gratitude, but the woman silenced her.
“Would you bow to a woman with no honor, child?” she asked.
Soon-Yee was taken aback. “Pardon?”
“I asked would you do honor to a woman with no shame?”
“I don’t understand, mistress.”
The woman gave Soon-Yee wry smile. “Mistress, indeed. A mistress am I, but no mistress to a person of worth.” She chuckled at Soon-Yee’s bemused expression. “Never mind, child. You’re sharp; you will understand soon enough.”
She dumped the last of the clothing into Soon-Yee’s arms.
“I’m afraid I don’t have anything for you tonight, but come by tomorrow on your rounds and I will make sure you are well-paid. Ask for Bright Moon. They will know of whom you speak.”
And with that the woman swept over the threshold, leaving behind the slightly acrid scent of sweet vinegar and what Soon-Yee would later come to recognize as the aftermath of disgrace.
Her name was Bright Moon, and it wasn’t until Soon-Yee learned the truth of who she was that she understood why her name was so simple and plain. Unlike the lofty syllables of a respectable citizen’s address, Bright Moon was more of a moniker, a sobriquet she had chosen for her profession.
When Soon-Yee went by Kaneshiro’s estate and asked for Bright Moon at the gate, to her surprise, she was led around to the servants’ entrance. It should have been the first hint that Bright Moon was not the grand lady Soon-Yee had supposed her to be, but she was too anxious to pay attention. She felt the prickle of the Nipponese ghost’s presence at her back, raising the fine hairs on her neck. She pushed the brim of her mourning hat low over her face and hunched her shoulders to make herself small and insignificant. She could hardly be called beautiful in her present state, but she did not trust the en that bound her fate with that of the Nipponese ghost. He would find her if he were near.
Soon-Yee was brought to the kitchens by the maid, who bade her in Choseonese-accented Nipponese to wait. Soon-Yee stood in the cool stone room as the cooks bustled about, preparing food for Kaneshiro and his family. She watched with fascination out of the corner of her eye, recognizing almost none of the dishes they prepared. Piles of fresh fish—the day’s first catch—lay on the cutting boards, and with a bitter pang of resentment, Soon-Yee thought of her father, laying on the floor of their two-room room house in his society-ordained grief, letting fish and money slip through his inactive fingers.
Presently, the maid returned and asked Soon-Yee to follow her to Bright Moon’s room. Soon-Yee was surprised; she did not expect to be entering the house proper. She had no shoes to leave on the steps outside, and her dirt-stained feet seemed an affront to the gleaming wood floors inside. Soon-Yee followed the little maid down the corridors, striving to make her footfalls as light and unobtrusive as possible, to leave as little trace of herself behind for the Nipponese ghost to find and the servants to clean. They stopped outside a pair of sliding doors, and the maid announced Soon-Yee’s presence before leaving with a bow.
The doors slid open to show Bright Moon, dressed in a plain cotton robe, her face scrubbed free of the white face paint, her hair loosely pulled back away from her face. She looked startlingly different from when Soon-Yee first saw her, a bright ornament on Kaneshiro’s arm, that she would not have recognized her if she had not known who she was.
“Come in,” said Bright Moon. When Soon-Yee hesitated, the woman harrumphed. “I won’t hurt you. Come.”
The room was simple, with none of the luxurious trappings Soon-Yee expected in a grand lady’s apartments. An unmade futon with a plain silk coverlet was pushed off to one side, an unadorned silk screen besides, and the low cupboards surrounding the room were finished with clear lacquer––no ornaments, no designs, no patterns. There was nothing decorative or pretty about the space, and the only concession to richness or luxury were the plethora of brightly coloured silks piled in a haphazard heap in the corner.
“Not what you were expecting is it?” Bright Moon said. Soon-Yee looked up; the wry smile was back on the woman’s face. “Don’t look so scared, child; I can guess what you’re thinking. Go on, ask.”
“I do not understand, mistress.”
“Now don’t be thick; I am no fool. You are curious about me. Who I am. What I do. So I am commanding you: ask.”
Soon-Yee removed the mourning hat from her head to give herself a better look. She glanced at the brightly coloured robes heaped with abandon in the corner, but what caught her eye was the open cupboard door near it. All the other doors were shut, and leaving this particular cupboard open seemed deliberate. Bright Moon’s cosmetics were neatly laid out on the low table by the futon, her robes for the pressed and folded beside it, and this one carelessly open cupboard door felt significant, as though Bright Moon had intended for her to observe its contents. Soon-Yee glanced at the woman, but her face was as blank and still as that of a bodhisattva statue. Soon-Yee knelt before the cupboard and reached inside.
She gasped at the first touch of rolled up paper. Soon-Yee looked over her shoulder at Bright Moon, but the woman made no move to stop her. One by one, one after another, Soon-Yee drew out scroll after scroll after scroll. Hands trembling, she unrolled them, knowing what it was she would find.
Lines of poetry, written in a feminine hand, all in the classical language of scholars. Soon-Yee drank in the words, unable to read them, but wanting nothing more than to swallow them, to absorb them through her hands into her soul. Her fingers curled in on themselves, itching to crush the scrolls to her chest, but she restrained herself. She rolled them back up, and carefully returned them to their place in the cupboard.
“Have you nothing to ask me?” said Bright Moon. “Or have you solved my riddle?”
“Yes,” Soon-Yee whispered. “You are a kisaeng. A courtesan.”
“A geisha, Kaneshiro says. Or I would be, he claims, were I younger, more beautiful, and more cultured. In truth, I am nothing more than a common prostitute. I am paid to paint my face and spread my legs.”
Soon-Yee stiffened. Bright Moon laughed, a coarse, vulgar sound.
“The mind of an aristocrat and the body of a slave, isn’t that what the respectable citizens say? I may have the mind of an educated noble, but this––“ Bright Moon undid her robe, sweeping her arm in a long, languid arc and exposing the pale, fleshy nakedness of her body. “—belongs to anyone and everyone.”
Soon-Yee shrank away from Bright Moon, but was unable to tear her eyes away from the unabashed display. She had seen naked bodies before—bathing in the river, bare chests toiling in the rice paddies—but never one quite so bold and entire. She was both repulsed and attracted by it, and caught between two opposing desires, Soon-Yee remained kneeling before the prostitute.
Seeing the stricken expression on Soon-Yee’s face, Bright Moon took pity on her, and rearranged the robes about herself.
“What you have seen,” said Bright Moon in a quiet voice, “is a woman without shame.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Soon-Yee asked.
“So that you may know the truth of the money you are earning.”
“Money is money.”
Bright Moon leered. “And so I said once.”
The second half of the sentence went unuttered, but Soon-Yee could hear the caution in things left unsaid, as well as the dare.
“Why are you telling me this?” she repeated.
The kisaeng’s leer resolved itself into a trembling smile. “I might say it is to be kind. But that is a lie, and you would know it anyway. No,” she said, kneeling so her face was level with Soon-Yee’s, “I say it because you are so much better than this.”
“Than what?”
“Than this life you are living. You are so much smarter. So much better. You deserve so much more.”
Soon-Yee was quiet. “And you believe the profession you have chosen would afford me a better life?”
Bright Moon fixed a beady eye on the girl. “I say no such thing. But I want you to walk through this world with your eyes open.” Soon-Yee felt a start in her chest at her words. “To examine each and every path and consider them all carefully.”
In a fleeting moment, Soon-Yee could see her paths diverge before her. To the right, the path of honor and toil and hard work, where she buried her brother with integrity, where her father went out to sea and never returned, where her mother slowly calcified into a unfeeling stone, where she and Grandmother worked their hands into leather laboring for rich families, where her beauty and vivacity faded under drudgery until some fat farmer took pity on her, where she spent the remainder of her life with no shoes, hunched over rice paddies like a brood mare with a child at her skirts and another at her breast.
To the left lay the path of shame, but oh what glorious shame it was. A path of glamour and words and luxury, it stretched before Soon-Yee like an abyss, and she stared down the void, wondering if she had the courage to fall into it. To let go of honor, to embrace being fallen, to revel in the unknown. Was it freedom? For one breathless, exhilarating moment, she thought it would be Heaven.
But fear overtook her, and she scrambled away from the precipice, scrabbling and scrambling for whatever semblance of her previous life she could hold.
“Are you some brothel madam to entice me thus?” she asked Bright Moon angrily. “Do you take a percentage on the price of my disgrace?” Soon-Yee rose to her feet and ran out of the prostitute’s apartments, heedless of the muddy tracks she left on the shining wood floors, fleeing the temptation to succumb that clutched at not only her heart, but her mind.
It wasn’t until she had reached the gate outside that someone caught up with her. “Wait!”
Soon-Yee paused. She wanted more than anything to turn around, to be convinced of returning, but she was too afraid. What would she do if she saw Bright Moon standing there, vulgar and coarse and crass, the embodiment of everything she wanted but should be ashamed to take? Could she refuse the offer a second time?
But it was only the little maid.
“For you,” she said, dropping a silk purse into Soon-Yee’s hand. “For your services.”
“But I haven’t—”
But the little maid was uninterested in what services Soon-Yee had or had not rendered. Having dispatched of her errand, she returned to the house; there were floors to polish now, after all.
With a trembling hand, Soon-Yee opened the purse. Inside was a hefty measure of copper yang, along with a note on a piece of torn paper.
It is I who will pay the price of your disgrace, it said. For your family.
Soon-Yee glanced back at the house, but the courtyards and windows were empty, the only movement a pair of dancing leaves in the morning breeze. She weighed the purse in her hand before pocketing it, wondering which was heavier: the purse, or her heart.
“Why Kaneshiro?”
Soon-Yee knelt on the floor of Bright Moon’s room, taking tea with the courtesan. The tea service was simple; for all Kaneshiro’s wealth, he wasn’t prone to ostentatious extravagance. In his house, Soon-Yee had come to discern the difference between wealth and taste.
“Hmm?” Bright Moon asked as she slurped her tea. Soon-Yee frowned. The courtesan set down her cup quickly, having burned her tongue. She let her tongue hang out as she fanned it cool before leaning down to blow the steam away from her tea. For all her fine clothes and fancy airs, Bright Moon was still a peasant’s daughter, rude and uncultured. Soon-Yee was determined to be more, to rise above her accident of birth.
“I asked why Kaneshiro?” Soon-Yee repeated. “Why did you choose him to be your patron?”
“I didn’t,” answered Bright Moon, picking up her tea once it was cool enough to drink.
“Then why you?”
The prostitute laughed. “Can’t you guess?”
Soon-Yee shook her head.
“I see the way you look at me, child, the way you judge my coarse manners, my inelegant habits, my age, my looks. Oh don’t look so surprised,” Bright Moon admonished. “I may be rude, but I’m no fool.” She gave Soon-Yee her wry smile. “I may be low, uncultured, and not very pretty, but I have one skill the other kisaengs did not.”
“And what is that?”
“I can suck a cock like none other.” At Soon-Yee’s horrified expression, Bright Moon let loose her vulgar laugh. “What did you expect, girl? I was born in the gutter,” she continued, “the youngest daughter of a cheonmin labourer. I was sold to the brothel house before I could speak my first words. It was there I learned how to please a man from the bottom up.”
Bright Moon set down her cup and poured them both some more tea. Soon-Yee had let hers lie untouched, waiting for the brew to cool before bringing it to her lips, and now she must wait a while longer before taking her first sip.
“For a man to find you, you must connect to his basest desires,” said Bright Moon. “A man thinks with his wandering penis, and any convenient port will do. But a man falls in love with his mind, and for you to keep him, you must engage his higher instincts.”
“Is that what you did?”
Bright Moon looked smug. “It was obvious from a young age that I was brighter than my peers. I sold myself to the gyobang when I was 12.”
“You sold yourself to the kisaeng house?” Soon-Yee was flabbergasted.
“Yes,” said Bright Moon simply. “I walked through this world with my eyes open and saw the paths that lay before me. If I stayed at the brothel, in a few years I would be back in the gutter, drunk and pox-ridden, with a dead child at my feet and a mewling one at my chest. With intelligence comes vision, and I saw there were others like me, selling their bodies, but keeping their souls. I saw they were perfumed and beautiful and clean, and that the men who slept between their thighs returned, to pay them again and again.”
The cups of tea rested between them, cold and forgotten.
“So I stole into their gardens and watched as they entertained their clients with song and poetry and dance. I spied and I listened, but importantly, I remembered. As the dogs who crawled their way to the brothels after a night of drinking pounded away at me, I recited all the lines of poetry I could remember in my head when I wasn’t cursing their dicks into shriveled worms. When I had 100 lines memorized, I packed my things, walked to the gyobang, and begged an audience with the madam.”
“Is that when you began training?”
“Ha!” Bright Moon barked, and in that hoarse laugh Soon-Yee could hear the echoes of drunken shouts. “No. My brothel mother had discovered I had run away, and brought me back with a beating.”
The prostitute fell silent, but Soon-Yee waited. She was beginning to learn that listening was a far greater virtue than speaking.
“She beat me with a bamboo switch,” Bright Moon said quietly, her eyes distant and dull. “Honed fine like a blade, and it split my skin until I bled. ‘See there,’ said my brothel mother, ‘that blood belongs to me. You belong to me. I am your mother and your father, and you will do me honor as society bids.”
“But blood has a price.” Bright Moon straightened, the memory of her beating fading like the scars on her skin. “And my parents reaped the benefits when I was but a baby. So the next morning I walked over to the gyobang again, and recited my 100 lines of poetry until my voice was gone.”
“Did anyone listen?”
Bright Moon smiled. “Yes. The gods must have heard my prayers, for a young kisaeng named Elegance in Spring took pity on me. She brought me to her mistress, who gave me 300 yang to begin my training. I took that purse of money and returned to the brothel. I laid it on my pillow and turned my back to it, never returning. My price had been paid.”
“I wasn’t a very good kisaeng,” she admitted. “I had come to that life later than the other girls, and I lacked their natural grace, their effortless beauty. I had a broad peasant’s face and the clumsy hands and feet to go with it. If I couldn’t dance, if I couldn’t sing, I was at least quick with the brush and quick with the tongue. In more ways than one,” Bright Moon said with a wicked grin, demonstrating with that organ just how flexible and varied its talents were. Soon-Yee couldn’t help the spasm of disgust that crossed her face.
“Look at you, squirming like a worm on the hook,” teased Bright Moon. “If you are contemplating following me into my trade, you must learn to conceal your emotions.”
“No one said anything of the sort,” Soon-Yee retorted.
“No, but I have watched you consider the paths before you. I am merely painting a portrait entire.”
“So what happened then?” Soon-Yee asked, steering the conversation from herself and back to Bright Moon. “How did you come into the service of Kaneshiro?”
“Do you remember the end of the war?” Soon-Yee shook her head. “Of course not. You were still suckling your mother’s teat if you had even been born, and even if you were an extraordinarily precocious child, the greater world outside would have made no impression on the rude rustics. The Hermit Kingdom, we are,” said Bright Moon sardonically. “Well, the rude rustics may have been in the dark, but not the most gifted writer in the gyobang. I passed messages from noble to bureaucrat and back again, reading their correspondences aloud over cups of soju. In those letters I understood that change was coming to Choseon.”
Bright Moon grinned, but it was hard and never quite reached her eyes.
“You’ve never known life without our Nipponese overlords stomping throughout the land, have you?” she asked Soon-Yee. “Never known there was once a time when Nipponese was never heard in these streets?”
Soon-Yee said nothing.
“I envy you,” said Bright Moon. “Not because you don’t know better—life was not better then—but because their language comes to you without thought. I, I had to toil for weeks, bedding sailors from across the Yellow Sea before I could wrangle my tongue into submission.”
“Why did you bother?” Soon-Yee asked, switching to Nipponese. Bright Moon made a face.
“Because I knew where the power lay,” she replied in kind, although she was not so fluid or easy with the language as Soon-Yee. Soon-Yee smiled a little to herself, reveling in her cleverness. Bright Moon shot her a beady look. “I saw that the Nipponese were buying out the businesses in town, and that they had more coin to spend.”
“I also saw,” Bright Moon said, continuing in Choseonese, “that my prospects at the gyobang were limited. I would never reach the pinnacle of success that other girls who were more beautiful, more graceful, and more elegant than me would achieve. I knew what I was: plain, rough, and intelligent, so I took my opportunities as they presented themselves to me.”
“And Kaneshiro was one?”
“Kaneshiro was the latest in a string of ones.” Bright Moon bared her teeth in a vulgar laugh. “In time, it became clear that our clientele was changing, that more Nipponese men were joining their number. More and more they asked for me, for if I wasn’t pretty or alluring, I could at least carry a conversation.”
“Kaneshiro was different to the others though.” Bright Moon held her teacup between her fingers, slowly turning it on the table. She stared at the pot of tea between them, but Soon-Yee could see that looking beyond it, into a memory. “He wasn’t there for a romp between the sheets; he wanted something else. Something more. He wanted a mistress.”
“Why a mistress?”
Bright Moon shrugged. “Perhaps it has to do with status. Perhaps he had one back in Nippon. But whatever his reasons for wanting a mistress, I at least know why that mistress is me.” She looked from the cup in her hands directly into Soon-Yee’s eyes.
“Because you are smart,” Soon-Yee finished.
“Yes, and because I saw my opportunity and seized it. I always take the path that affords me greater comfort, greater luxuries, greater things.” The prostitute narrowed her eyes. “And I always shove off the path obstacles that would get in my way.”
Soon-Yee heard the warning in her voice and heeded it. She had no interest in usurping Bright Moon’s place in Kaneshiro’s bedchamber, but she wanted the opportunities the other woman had had. She wanted the other’s destiny. She wanted to hold the price of her freedom in her hands, to place it on her futon—just as Bright Moon had as a child—and walk away from her life, all obligations resolved. But where would she go? What would she do? How could she abandon her family thus?
But Soon-Yee had come to terms with her lack of filial piety. What she had not yet come to terms with was her lack of courage. It took courage, she decided, to cast off responsibility, honor, and modesty. But when the time came, would she be brave enough to sell herself to the kisaeng house? She did not think so. That was not a path she would trod.
“Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee,” she whispered. She had heard the pastor and his wife speak those words again and again, drawing strength from the platitudes in their Good Book. Their god was meaningless to Soon-Yee, but their faith was bracing.
She looked up to find Bright Moon staring at her. “What is it?”
“Do you speak the tongue of the waeguk-in?”
Soon-Yee was surprised; Ænglish had long since become as a comfortable as a well-worn shirt that she had ceased to remember it was ever incomprehensible. “Yes,” she said. “I was taught by the Giraffes.”
Bright Moon laughed. “A likely tale as I’ve ever heard, but somehow I don’t doubt you. If any girl were touched by beneficence, it would be you.”
It was a moment before Soon-Yee realized that Bright Moon had not known she was speaking of the pastor and his wife; Soon-Yee had referred to them by their epithets, which belonged to the fairytale creatures of her childhood, and of Bright Moon’s.
“What do you mean?”
A corner of Bright Moon’s mouth quirked upwards in a crooked smile. “I have told you I’ve watched you consider the paths before you, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And I see in your eyes that the path of righteousness is clear and bright, but also grim and full of despair.”
Soon-Yee thought of the vision she had had of herself laboring in the fields. “Yes.”
“But the other…that one lies shrouded in darkness. You long to take it, but do not know the way, or even what lies at its end.”
“Yes.” Something was stirring in Soon-Yee’s breast, some tangle of threads that fate had wound about her. Something was pulling upon them, and Soon-Yee could begin to guess who was manipulating the strings on the other side. She was afraid. She was afraid, yet hopeful, and it was the hope that was killing her.
“You would never sell yourself to the gyobang as I did,” said Bright Moon. “You were born with something I was not: a sense of shame. You could never sing and dance before men who had seen your beauty before, a jewel on your mother’s hip. That would not be freedom; that would be a prison.”
“Yes.” Soon-Yee’s voice was almost gone.
That crooked smile on Bright Moon’s face had grown more twisted as she spoke. Yet Soon-Yee did not fear it, and indeed, she drew comfort from it. If she had learned nothing else, it was that the prostitute was honest, and Soon-Yee knew she could face truth; it was pretty self-delusions she could not abide.
“Then I will illuminate that dark path for you.” Bright Moon pushed the tea set away from them and rose to her feet, signaling their time was over. Soon-Yee’s heart fell. Bright Moon’s room was another world entire, and within it Soon-Yee could believe that she was not the shameful sister of a dead brother, or the groveling beggar who took in the laundry. In the courtesan’s presence, Soon-Yee could imagine she was someone else, someone better, someone greater. She understood at last why so many men had paid for her company; with Bright Moon, everything was possible.
“Must I go?”
Bright Moon chuckled. “Unless you want your family to starve and lose the roof over their heads, I think you must. Or even if you do.” Soon-Yee flushed. “Come back in two weeks, child, and I will give you the lamp to set you on your path.”
The courtesan tossed Soon-Yee another purse of money. “For your services.”
Soon-Yee frowned. “But I haven’t washed anything for you yet.”
“No, but I have spent an enjoyable hour in your company.” There was a hard look in Bright Moon’s eyes. “You will soon learn, I think, that your time is worth money. Now go.”
Of all the lessons Soon-Yee got from Bright Moon, this was the one she took to heart—not that her time was costly, but that she had worth. But what Bright Moon did not know and that Soon-Yee would later discover, was that there was value beyond money, and the currency in which those powers dealt had nothing to do with trade and everything to do with human lives.
author’s note ✍🏻
Oof, this chapter and the next might be some of the most cringe to reread—both for the content and for the treatment of it.
The character of Bright Moon is named for Hwang Jin-i, one of the most famous courtesans in Korean history. Her gisaeng name was Myeongwol, comprising of the Hanja characters 明月, or “bright moon.” Hwang Jin-i was known not only for her beauty, but for her wit and her poetry, so I suppose it was a bit harsh to name my Bright Moon after her.
I think this is where you start to see just how “unlikeable” Soon-Yee is; she is judgmental, she is petty, she is cruel, and she cares for no one but herself. All the qualities we value in feminine characters—kindness, loyalty, empathy, compassion—are absent. But she does grow up to be the villain, after all.
The first nine chapters will be available for free, after which the content will go behind a paywall. I am currently running a birthday promotion on yearly subscriptions, so grab it while you can!