Born As The Daughter Of A Lowly Concubine [EN]: Chapter 137

“N-No, it is not.”

“But if you heed my words, you can save not only the person you cherish but also others.”

“What do you mean by that…”

As she spoke, Royal Concubine Yeongbin gently stroked her belly, visible beyond the bamboo screen.

The meaning of the gesture was unmistakable.

“If you don’t save the Princess, another child can live. What do you think? As a doctor, which would you choose?”

“Such… such a choice…”

“If this child is born safely, it will be thanks to you. How could I not reward you? So, don’t forget my words.”

“How could you even suggest such a thing…”

Yeongbin replied in a pitiful voice to his barely audible protest.

“If the Queen’s attention is focused elsewhere, she won’t realize I’m pregnant. You know that many in the harem have already been forced to… let children go, several times.”

And she muttered in a subdued voice.

“The Queen prevented the children of other concubines from being born for the sake of the baby she bore, so someone has to pay the price…”

It was a chilling statement.

Didn’t that sound like someone had been deliberately killing the children of the harem?

Could it be that the children who had never seen the light of day were not accidents or natural miscarriages…

All along, he had been taking care of the Princess, not the Crown Prince, and he had been relieved that he would not be involved in such power struggles, but how naive that was.

And Royal Concubine Yeongbin warned him one last time.

“You know what will happen if you leak what you heard here. Even if I am dragged away tomorrow, how difficult would it be to deal with a weak woman and a young girl?”

Huh Yeon-tae, unable to refuse and terrified, left Chwiyoung Hall [a hall within the palace], utterly helpless.

He could neither treat the Princess, nor tell anyone what he had heard that day.

As Huh Yeon-tae did nothing, the Princess eventually passed away.

He had, in effect, killed the young Princess.

He was scared.

That he might lose everything.

Protecting Geumbi and Seongji might have been just an excuse.

How could he not be afraid of being branded a traitor himself?

If he made a mistake, everything he had built up until now might collapse.

So he stood by and watched the young Princess suffer.

After the Princess died, he was overwhelmed with fear, relief, and guilt, and he was paralyzed, unable to do anything.

Those around him comforted Huh Yeon-tae, saying it was unavoidable.

Even His Majesty and the Queen did not blame him.

No one suspected him, as he had been diligently caring for the Princess.

Huh Yeon-tae couldn’t bear it and resigned.

He left the palace, but Royal Concubine Yeongbin’s venomous voice did not leave his mind.

The face of the dead Princess haunted him.

Paralyzed by fear and guilt, he began to live in a drunken stupor from that day on.

Geumbi knew that Huh Yeon-tae was acting strangely, but she didn’t say anything, thinking that he was just shocked by the death of the Princess.

She had been staying in the palace to care for the Princess’s smallpox, so she couldn’t take care of them, which was understandable.

And as he was in a drunken stupor, Geumbi’s health also deteriorated.

She had survived smallpox through inoculation, but the aftereffects she experienced after childbirth before her body had fully recovered were significant.

In the meantime, she continued to raise her child and research smallpox, but she never revealed how difficult it was.

By the time Huh Yeon-tae realized Geumbi’s condition, it was already too late.

Even if he had known earlier, there might have been nothing he could do, but Huh Yeon-tae regretted it again.

“If I were to pick the best thing I ever did in my life, it would be helping Doctor Huh that day.”

“Did you only realize that now?”

He wanted to laugh it off, but he couldn’t hold back the tears.

But Geumbi was already blind.

Yet she was smiling, as if she had no regrets.

“Thank you, thank you. I’m still shameless to the end, but Seongji… please take care of her.”

“Seongji is already like my own daughter, so don’t say such things.”

“The time I spent with Seongji and Doctor Huh… was the happiest time of my life.”

That was the last of it.

Huh Yeon-tae had to start working as a doctor again, which he had stopped after the Princess died, in order to raise the still young Seongji alone.

He felt he was not qualified to be a doctor, but he didn’t know any other way to raise a young child.

The young Seongji followed Huh Yeon-tae around and naturally showed interest in medicine.

A child who was bright and interested in medicine, just like her mother.

Perhaps this child would carry on Geumbi’s wishes.

All he could do as someone unqualified to be a doctor was to raise this child to be a doctor.

Huh Yeon-tae did his best to raise Seongji to be a doctor, and the child, like her mother, sparkled as she learned medicine.

But Huh Yeon-tae knew the limitations of being a woman in that era.

No matter how skilled Geumbi was in medicine, people didn’t trust her skills. No one believed the medical book Geumbi wrote either.

Was he doing something unnecessary? He should have just raised her well and married her off to a good family.

But it was a waste to let her medical skills rot. If she became someone’s wife, wouldn’t her medical skills also stagnate in the women’s quarters?

At the same time as worrying about Seongji, the fear that Seongji would be disillusioned with him if she ever found out that Huh Yeon-tae had killed the young Princess always haunted him.

One day, while suffering and falling back into a drunken stupor, he heard the news that Royal Concubine Yeongbin and her son, Grand Prince Gyeongeon, had been deposed. And then came the news that Grand Prince Gyeongeon had been given poison [forced to commit suicide].

There was joy and emptiness at the same time. At that time, the child in Royal Concubine Yeongbin’s belly had also died like that, so his actions were truly meaningless.

Bad rumors about Grand Prince Gyeongeon were heard even at drinking parties, so he couldn’t get out of alcohol.

Seongji was all grown up now, so wouldn’t it be okay for him to disappear like this?

Thinking that, he was returning home drunk one day when he ran into the dead Princess on the street.

Years had passed, but Huh Yeon-tae could not forget the face of the Princess.

Her face smiling at him when she saw him, her face smiling weakly even while suffering from a high fever, saying, ‘Doctor Huh is here, so he will make me feel better, right?’, and her face crying, saying, ‘I miss my mother,’ all came to mind as if it were yesterday.

If he didn’t drink, the Princess would appear in his dreams, looking at him resentfully.

But the Princess, who seemed a little older than the Princess he knew, suddenly appeared before his eyes.

At the same time as thinking that she had finally come to take him, he seemed to scream.

He thought he wanted to die, he thought he had to die, but he seemed to want to live.

When he came to his senses, Seongji was looking down at him with a pathetic look.

And she said.

“Lady Siyoungwon visited.”

“Lady Siyoungwon?”

“Uncle, you’ve heard the rumors, right? The ageless Princess. I saw her briefly a few years ago, and she really hasn’t grown at all.”

“The Princess, came?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“She wants to train doctors.”

“Doctors?”

“Yes. So I asked you if you would teach the students, but you even fainted in front of the Princess…”

Seongji scolded him, saying that she couldn’t hold her head up in shame.

“The Princess…”

So, was the child he saw the Princess?

It felt like some kind of revelation.

After that day, he no longer went around drunk like before.

If there was still something he had to do, he thought he had to follow it.

***

“So, I have decided to follow the Princess’s wishes. I am by no means harboring any suspicious thoughts.”

Rather, he was grateful.

The Princess was doing things he had never even thought of.

Seongji made a name for herself as a doctor, and it was also revealed that the medical book left by Geumbi was correct.

But the royal guard following the Princess didn’t seem to hear those words and asked something else.

“Exactly alike?”

“Yes?”

“Are you saying that the Princess looks exactly like the deceased Princess?”

“Yes. She looks exactly like her. I know that the Princess looked exactly like Queen Seonghyeon, so she looks like her too. So I thought that maybe the Princess’s birth mother, Royal Consort Yun, resembled the Queen… Queen Seonghyeon.”

“!”

The eyes of the royal guard shook at those words.

“Seonghyeon… Queen?”

“Yes. I’m talking about His Majesty’s first Queen, who is also the mother of Crown Prince Seongwon.”

“Have you ever seen her in person?”

“I saw her when I was taking care of the Princess. Of course, it’s not that I dared to see the Queen’s face directly. But I heard from the palace maids that the Princess looked a lot like the Queen.”

“……”

The Queen, who passed away a long time ago, and her biological daughter, the dead Princess, are said to have resembled each other as mother and daughter.

Such a Princess resembled the Princess, whom they had never met, and the Princess was very similar to her birth mother, Royal Consort Yun.

This also means that the dead Queen Seonghyeon and Royal Consort Yun resembled each other.

Huh Yeon-tae didn’t notice that Royal Guard Seong was lost in thought and continued to speak.

“I heard that Queen Seonghyeon and His Majesty had a very good relationship since she was still the Crown Princess. I thought it was surprising that His Majesty, who had no interest in women, suddenly brought a palace maid into the harem, but after seeing the Princess, I felt like the question was somehow resolved.”

“……”

“Perhaps His Majesty also received a lot of comfort from the existence of the Princess.”

Huh Yeon-tae, who had taken a moment to sort out his thoughts, asked Royal Guard Seong, who was still silent, with a determined face.

“You can do whatever you want with me. But Seongji, that child, doesn’t know anything. She shouldn’t know. If you have to ask for guilt, wouldn’t it be okay to ask only me? Seongji is just now starting to be recognized.”

“……I know that Doctor Seongji is not guilty.”

Huh Yeon-tae’s face brightened at those words. And he asked again seriously.

“Will you report me?”

“……It’s okay.”

Royal Guard Seong shook his head weakly.

What he said was no different from the facts he had investigated about him so far.

Even the parts that he didn’t understand matched if he followed the story he had just heard.

It was obvious that if he investigated the medical woman named Geumbi, it would be revealed.

She had even submitted the medical book that the medical woman had written to the court, and she had never hidden the author.

So the medical office would be able to immediately confirm the truth about the medical woman.

She was involved with a traitor, but the medical woman was already dead.

‘If only he had denied the medical woman.’