"As if I do not have enough to deal with today; I have to deal with your nonsense and all." "I heard that you were forced to spend the night in the palace as punishment, so I thought to treat you…" "To music? You think that music is going to make my life easier right now?" "Well you hardly open up to me like you used to, so how can I know you're solutions if I do not know your problems?" "My clan is my problem, but I doubt that you even have the ability to pull us all together again." "Do you even want to reunite with them?" "In the palace everyone needs a wholesome family image, so I need them even if I cannot admit it." "Wait! Where are you going? I practised this song all week long just to get your approval! Can't you just listen to it once?" "After staying up all night long due to your incompetence? Has everyone in this yangban lost their common sense?" "Yes we have! We all indulge in our greed so we are all corrupt and of no use to you, apart from your lowborn wife, isn' that right? You probably refused to let go of her due to her humble nature that keeps you grounded because you no longer want anything to do with your father's world anymore, even though you want a high status in the palace?" "You make me out to be a hypocrite? And what of my wife?" "Her parents come from nobility, only to turn their backs on it as well as their children, only for them themselves to walk on a rich path that filled up their poverty quite quickly! And as for us who were born into wealth? Everything that you possess has been unwillingly handed down to you by your father and I have lost everything due to my paths crossing with one of the lowborn siblings!" "You should be ashamed of disturbing me without a cause, and yet you complain of my family non=stop? You are more than welcome to leave if you feel that way." "My Lord! Please stop being so irrational! What has happened to you! To your sharp wit and ever growing ambition!" "The people that I wanted to help turned their backs on me once again, that is why I no longer have anything to give to my country at all."
"You cannot give up your life's work so easily despite all of these setbacks! That is a normal occurrence, so why are you so weak that you cannot overcome it?" "I am weak? You are right, maybe I am weak or I rely on my wife far too much to give me inner=peace whilst I hold hers hostage in my hands so that she cannot leave me no matter what I do to her. I have finally become her inner=peace and the man that she cannot live without, so I may as well get my money's worth from her, after everything that I have done for her as well." "Yeon…she is your investment? That is why you cannot let her go?" "She is my investment, my person, my project and now my wife and the hostess of my true home. And the results have been overwhelming with her, to the point where I can overlook her flaws and her stubbornness. Leaving her in the brothel on her own for a while has surely cured her of that, and now she cannot go against my word." "And your addiction?" "My addiction was never that serious in the first place, but I enjoyed the attention that she showered upon me because of it." "What is wrong with you! Who are you! And what do you want! If you are treating her as if she is some sort of pet, then why do you treat me as if I have an incurable plague!" "She is not my damned pet! She is my…oh forget it, you wouldn't understand even if the answer wrote itself on your forehead. Just work on pulling my family together so that I can raise my status in the palace and then I shall figure out the smaller details later on." "Will you not have mercy upon me before then? You won't take out some time just for me?" "My precious time goes to whoever gets me the fastest results, you should know that by now." "You are just like your father; all you care is about what others do for you and nothing else. You will even go as far to sell your body to a woman who can give you what you want? I can even sacrifice my life for you, but you just won't accept me no matter what I do, isn't that right?" "You were able to stand out in the brothel of 30 or so women, but your beauty only carried you so far. You were bold and intelligent just like Yeon was once upon a time ago, but that all went away when you lost Seo Hwi and yet you continue to cling onto me as if that part of your life didn't occur at all? Are you that shameless and desperate to change your destiny?"
"Men do it all of the time, but women cannot? Expect Yeon that is? Because she isn't fully a woman due to her disability?" I truly didn't mean t slap her as hard as I did, specially since I had been twirling on restraining myself when it come to violence against women, but my body had a separate mind of its own when anyone mentioned that woman….my woman.
"I bear solitude and loneliness for you, and you hit me for her! She is using you to simply crawl out of poverty and you just do not care at all, do you?" "I cannot see past my own solitude, what makes you think that I can bear the burden of carrying anyone else's? You are no different form her in that sense then, you all want something from me that only she can give me….enough of this! Go to bed, it is late now." "What do you need me to do t fix the mess that I have placed us in?" "Reunite with your secret lover so that I can reagin my reputation, then I will give you a path to survive on." "Just a path? And not a warm bed to sleep in at night?" "Haven't you grown tired of that yet? You have had your taste of fame and fortune, you have also had affection from wealthy men, what more can you possibly want?" "I want what she has! I want a child, my own child who will love me unconditionally, unlike this cruel world that I grew up in alone." "Then I will find you a suitable man for the job, but it will never be me. Human desires are never ending, and my pockets are not deep enough to fund anyone else's ambitions apart from my own. And if you do not restrain yourself as I do, then you will end up loosing what you have even now. And by the way, didn't anyone tell you that for your meat marinated in fragrant wine, the plums have to be exactly ripe and the tartness removed before fermenting it?" "Marinating food is one of the methods of great delicacies, so how could anyone teach me…" "Yeon was a complete orphan unlike us and she taught herself in her spare time, so why couldn't you do the same thing? Oh wipe your tears away, I do despair when women become emotional." "I sacrifice for you just as much as she does! I practised this piece of music for you until my fingers bled! I cooked for the first time but it still didn't move you at all!" "You can play the victim well, but that is all that you are capable of doing. For my love and acceptance, Yeon can move the heavens and earth for me; bringing down men in power is nothing to her, and I need that more than anything. A woman who cries sincerity but is too obsessed with her own vanity is completely useless to me, how can someone like me take you seriously at all?" "I am a joke to you and a whore to the entire village, I might as well have just stayed as a kisaeng and waited for lady luck to bless me as must as it did to that lowborn girl who managed to walkout of 3 brothels without harming her reputation or virtue at all." "Her virtue was only headed in my direction and nobody else's, that is how she got away with it." "Why are you helping her so much if you do not truly love her? Can you love anyone for that matter?" "You know I always have to pay my debts and that is why I cannot let her go, I owe her a life debt that I cannot waste." "And that is all?" "My relationship with that girl is far beyond your business and anyone else's. Just do the job I am giving you or get lost!" "I am your person but you never think or care to ask about me at all." "That is because I simply do not care; I have many people that can replace you, such as your subordinate." "Ok ok, I shall do it, but promise me one thing in return; that you will never move away from this yangban, even if you have to keep her in it. Just stay for my sake, please I am begging you." "Hw subservient and desperate you have become HuiJae, if only you were like this in the beginning, then we would have gotten along more nicely…" "No you wouldn't have, because even back then when you had me, you still couldn't stop staring at her even if your very life depended on it!" "I have no idea what you are saying…" "You watched her every chance you got even if that meant spending less time with me. I saw you doing…what men do when they are exited when…"
"Shut your fucking mouth before I drag you out of here and…" "No you cannot, you can never harm me…because harming me would ensure that there are no violent barriers for you if you ever lost your temper with your wife and the mother of your children. You can kill anyone and everyone, expect for women because of how highly you regard her more even than your own mother, isn't that right?" "If you keep talking about her, I will send you to your own mother without a shroud to cover your own body." "I am just not human enough for you, am I?" "You were my enemies mistress, how am I supposed to treat you? But even then we both know that you will never leave my side, so what is the point of even talking to you at all?" Between all of the women who were driving me crazy in my own home, I had to take a walk around the yangban to cool myself down and distract me from my bruised ego from HuiJae's indirect talk and my growing pains from being denied by by wife during her pregnancy, even though we both agreed that for the safety of the child that I could not touch her for 9 months straight. I thought that I could handle it since I knew where my priorities lay with Yeon ever since I was forced to abandon her in the brothel's, but I could no longer control my emotions once again from the moment that I heard of her pregnancy. I knew I was holding myself back because of the pain that I had already experienced in my life, but the fact that I had no other plan or even wish to climb back my place in the palace scared me a lot to the point where I had endless doubts about myself. My…fondness for that woman and my ambitions had finally come to a head and surpassingly enough, it looked as thought I had already come to a decision without pondering it to much as it was always there within my reach, but it would change the course of our lives and futures together, and I needed more time to this adjust and come up with a apple that would rescue us all and give us all our peace of mind and justice back to us.