[The Healing Touch] - A SKKS Fanfic

Author’s Note:

So I was reading up on Korean history yesterday, and I came to a section in the book on uinyeo, which is really fascinating stuff. Uinyeo (medicine women) were female doctors during the Joseon period. They were the natural solution to the social taboos of women being treated by male physicians, but despite the crucial role they played in society, being women, they never gained the same social status as their male counterparts and were regarded as little better than gisaeng.

Anyway, this new bit of historical trivia suddenly inspired a new [10 Moments] story, so we’re taking a slight detour from what’s on the menu and jumping to #5, before returning back to #3 and #4. This little ditty is a divergent-timeline piece – a ‘what if Jae Shin had medical help that night before the Dae Sae Rae?’. It’s light on the romance, but it’s heavy on the sarcasm, so hope you enjoy!

***

#5 in the [10 Moments] series:

Ten different scenarios, ten different women --- ten different ways for Jae Shin to love again. Told in ten self-standing short stories.

Title: The Healing Touch
Genre: General (Divergent timeline)
Characters: Jae Shin, OFC (Original Female Character)
Words: 1893
Summary: Her voice is deadpan. “You’re bleeding all over the floor.”

o.o0o.o

It is on an ordinary summer night that the extraordinary happens to Nam Yung Il, unwitting uinyeo and resident midwife to the Noble House of Yong.

With the young Mistress of the house pregnant again, Yung Il is busy grinding ginseng root by candlelight when she hears a loud rustle in the bushes in the garden outside her room, followed by a loud thud of something heavy hitting the ground. Yung Il freezes, her hand automatically tightening on the heavy handle of the stone pestle. It is much too late an hour for the other inhabitants of the house to be out and about, and the sound had been too noisy to be one of the guards making their rounds.

Yung Il purses her lips in annoyance. Was it another feral cat getting into her carefully-tended garden yet again?

Brows furrowed, she soundlessly slides the door open and, after a moment’s hesitation, steps out to investigate.

Her slippered feet make no noise on the ground as she heads towards the direction of the bushes. From here she can hear the sounds of the national police force racing through the streets outside, but she pays them little heed. Frankly, her herbs are more important to Yung Il than whatever poor soul had found himself on the wrong side of the law tonight.

In one sudden movement, she pushes aside the bushes, determined to catch that dratted cat.

...But instead, the moonlight reveals the dark figure of a tall, masked man lying on the damp ground, a bow and half-filled quiver of arrows slung over his back.

Upraised pestle falls from nerveless fingers as Yung Il stares into the horrified eyes of one Hong Byuk Seo.

o.o0o.o

For several seconds the two can only gape wordlessly at each other, before the infamous rogue scrambles to cover his face with the tattered fabric of his mask, several seconds too late. A large arrow protrudes from his side, but Yung Il is too shocked to do little else but stare.

“…Hong… Hong Byuk Seo?” she murmurs incredulously, even as the said man heaves himself to his feet to make a run for it. But the wound at his side proves to be too much for him and he can only collapse back to the ground, groaning with pain.

“Wha-?!” he begins, when Yung Il makes a sudden grab for his arm, almost single-handedly heaving him into her room.

“If you don’t want to be caught, be quiet!” she hisses in reply, before quickly sliding the bedroom door shut, and not a moment too soon.

“…Doctor?” a gruff voice queries.

“Captain,” she returns, turning to the man who was turning the corner with an indifferent glance.

“Is something the matter for you to be out at so late an hour?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” she replies smoothly. “…Just chasing an unwelcome intruder out of my garden, is all.”

The captain of the Yong guard smiles sympathetically. “Another cat?”

Yung Il nods. “Irritating animals,” she says, before returning the man’s smile with a perfunctory one of her own. “Well then, good night, captain.”

He bows again. “Sleep well.”

Yung Il waits until she is certain the courtyard is empty before stepping back into her room.

o.o0o.o

Her unexpected visitor is tense against the wall, looking ready to take flight out of the nearest window when Yung Il re-enters. She’s surprised he actually stayed put, but it was probably far more dangerous for him to go anywhere else, given the circumstances.

“Why are you doing this?” he pants through gritted teeth, staring at her with wary, pain-glazed eyes. The walls are too thin for him not to have overheard her entire conversation with the captain outside.

“Doing what?” she replies absent-mindedly, as she rummages through her immaculately organised chests for the herbs and medicines – the tools of her trade – that she keeps on hand as a matter of habit.

“Lying to the guard. Hiding me.” Blood oozes in a steady stream from the wound on his side, and he quickly presses another hand there to stunt the flow. “Aren’t you going to hand me over to the War Minister’s yapping dogs?”

Yung Il raises a brow. “Would you rather I did?”

“…I want to know why you aren’t,” he replies bluntly.

With calm professionalism, Yung Il arranges the necessary herbs on a meticulously scrubbed wooden platter. “I am a physician, and you are injured,” she replies matter-of-factly. “I should think it’s obvious.”

“—Obvious?” the man repeats, looking at her in utter disbelief. “I’m also a wanted criminal and an enemy of the state, or have you, good doctor, forgotten that?”

Yung Il doesn’t even flinch. Tray in hand, she soundlessly gets to her feet, turning to the direction of the injured man in one smooth movement.

“Have you murdered anyone? Thieved? Looted?” she asks archly. “…No? Well then, if you are an enemy of Joseon, then you are a danger to none but those whose power you threaten – and as a simple doctor, what care I if the Noron rise or fall? My duty is to save lives, not to meddle in national politics.”

“And truthfully…” she continues blandly, “What you’re doing – trying to change the world, one little red note at a time… well, either it’s the mark of a great fool, or a great man. The country ought to look after its idiots, and noble men don’t deserve to die.”    

Whatever retort he had to this coolly disparaging comment dies in Hong Byuk Seo’s throat when Yung Il sinks to her knees beside him.

“Wh-what are you doing?!” he stammers in alarm, recoiling instantly from her outstretched hands.

Yung Il sighs, half-exasperated. “Pulling out the arrow from your side,” she explains flatly. “…You’re bleeding all over the floor.”

He bats her hands away. “I’ll—I’ll do it myself.”

Yung Il shrugs. Whatever gets the job done. “…As you like.”

In response, the man grits his teeth, grasps onto the wooden shaft and yanks the arrowhead out. The bloodied weapon doesn’t even have time to hit the floor before the wave of pain hits him like the king’s prize racehorse, and he promptly blacks out.

o.o0o.o

Jae Shin awakes to the gentle but persistent shakes of his shoulder and the sound of a low, feminine voice calling his name. He snaps to awareness, momentarily disorientated by the foreign surroundings, but a cool hand – the roughened hand of a woman who worked for her living – clamps over his mouth before he can cry out in surprise.

“Quiet! You’re safe!” the same voice whispers urgently. “Do you want to wake the whole house?”

Mahogany meets amber as he locks gazes with the woman who unexpectedly saved him. Her eyes are sharp, but tired, as if she had slept very little the night before. “Do you remember what happened?”

Jae Shin can only nod in response, suppressing the urge to hiccup at her proximity.

“Good,” she says. Removing her hand from his lips, she stands and moves a little further away, much to his relief. She is bent over a low table, her back briefly turned to him, and Jae Shin quickly uses this opportunity to check the wound on his side. The pain has faded to a dull, throbbing ache, and when his hand moves tentatively to the injured area beneath the soft quilt that covers him, to his shock, it brushes against tightly bound fabric instead of bare skin.

“Since you were… indisposed at the time, I dressed your injury. I hope you’ll forgive me for taking the liberty.” As if on cue, the woman’s voice carries lightly over the small room in nonchalant explanation, as if tending to arrow wounds on strange men was something she did on a daily basis.

Sitting up as quickly as he could manage with his injury, a wide-eyed Jae Shin can only stare at the mass of white cotton wound around his stomach. “How—“

“Don’t worry. I cleaned and disinfected it, and sealed it with a cattail pollen compress. It didn’t look deep enough to require stitches, but my limited surgical knowledge extends only so far. This will have to do temporarily, until you can see a proper physician who won’t ask questions. But at least you won’t die from blood loss in the meantime.” She smiles a little at the black humour, and settles back by his side, handing him a delicate porcelain cup of some foreign steaming liquid. It is a dark brown in colour, smelling heavily of herbs and sweet honey. “Here, drink this.”

Jae Shin takes the cup but hesitates for a moment, eyeing the contents.

“It won’t kill you, you know,” the doctor says drily. “It’s green tea seeped in white peony and liquorice root to dull the pain and replenish the blood. If I wanted to poison you, I wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble.”

Dutifully, Jae Shin takes a cautious sip. “…You’re very young to be a doctor.”

The woman shoots him another blasé look. Even in the flickering candlelight, Jae Shin could see the keen intelligence in her cool, unruffled eyes. “And you’re very young to be suicidal,” she returns.

Jae Shin glares. She couldn't be much older than him, and yet she treated him as if he were an unruly child --- or the village idiot. “Look, I’m not doing this for fun, alright?”

His companion only brushes his heated words aside like lint from her immaculate sleeve. “What you want to do with your life is your business,” she says indifferently. “Have you finished the tea?”

Jae Shin nods, the fire immediately leaving him in the face of such cool apathy. Handing over the empty cup, he comments, “…Seems like you’ve done this before.”

“What, treating arrow wounds?” she asks. She shakes her head, smiling wryly. “...In principle, not in practice. Women don’t tend to get themselves into situations where they can get hit by stray projectiles, as a general rule.”

There is silence for a moment as her eyes flick to the flickering candle at the far end of the room. “I would have left you to your sleep, but it’s two hours before dawn. The servants will be up soon. Unlike me, the Master and Mistress of the house will have no qualms about handing you to the police and throwing me out onto the street if they find you here, and I’d rather keep my job – at least until the Mistress’ baby is born – if it’s all the same.”

Jae Shin nods, handing her back the empty cup as he gets to his feet, wincing. At the door he pauses. “…Thank you,” he mutters, clearly uncomfortable at being in a stranger’s debt.

The woman waves it off. “Consider it my good deed for the day. Besides, how many physicians can claim that they’ve treated a national hero in the course of their career?” she replies wryly. Her voice calls him back before he can leave. “…Oh, and Hong Byuk Seo?”

He turns, catching the small package wrapped in delicate brown paper that this enigmatic young doctor tosses at him.

“Medicine,” she explains simply.

Jae Shin nods. His eyes briefly meet hers again, before he disappears into the cool twilight of morning.

Briefly, he wonders if he’ll ever see her again.

o.o0o.o

This piece is dedicated to my formidable, forever-practical mother, on whom the no-nonsense character of Yung Il is based. (Frankly, I got sick of writing in the POV of a lovesick, moony – no pun intended –traditional heroine and needed to write about someone stronger before the raging feminist in me started attacking me with a mallet. XD) Back when my parents were younger, Dad would write Mum the most beautiful, poignant classical Chinese poetry (…I know, because I’ve read them =P) and she’d reply with a “Stop wasting time writing poetry and help me with the dinner.”

*faceplant* …A die-hard idealist and a die-hard pragmatist happily married for over twenty years… I guess opposites really do attract. T__T;