The road through the mountain was rough and unmarked, hidden by mist and treetops. Hae-won had never walked so far in her life. Her silks were traded for wool and sandals; her hair was loose, damp with rain and sweat. But for the first time, she breathed.
Not behind a wall.
Not through duty.
But freely.
Jin-seo led her gently through winding paths and across streams, always a step ahead, always looking back to check on her. When she stumbled, he offered his hand. When she cried—quiet, overwhelmed tears—he didn't speak. He simply stayed.
They found shelter in a village tucked behind the hills, where no one knew the Yun name.
An old couple took them in, mistaking them for wandering lovers fleeing war.
Perhaps they weren't wrong.
Hae-won scrubbed floors. Jin-seo chopped wood. Their hands grew calloused. Their food was simple—rice, broth, herbs—but she had never tasted anything more nourishing.
One morning, as birds called softly through the forest fog, Hae-won found Jin-seo at a riverbank, sketching a house in the dirt with a stick.
"A school," he said, smiling. "For girls and boys. Even nobles, if they dare."
She knelt beside him, drawing plum blossoms beside the rooftop.
And he looked at her like she was the future.
But the past was never far.
A traveler brought news weeks later: Lord Kang had called off the wedding out of shame, and the Yun family had declared their daughter *gone with illness*. Her name, struck from family records.
Gone.
Forgotten.
"I have no name anymore," she whispered that night.
Jin-seo held her close beneath a blanket of stars. "Then we build a new one."
"Together?"
"Always."
And beneath that sky, they lit a lantern not for prayer, but for beginning.
It rose, trembling, into the night.
Not for mourning.
But for dawn.
—