The Fire of Spring Is Foxfire

Nami had been sold for money. The only thing she had going for her was an embarrassingly auspicious fortune that said she would cling to a man and never let him go. So, rather than allowing this family’s precious only son—the sole heir of three generations—to keep spilling blood instead of planting his seed and producing an heir, his parents had taken Nami in and treated her as a precious woman whose sole purpose was to bear him a son as sturdy as a toad. But Hyeok, the man who had become her husband, had only agreed to the marriage after his parents pleaded with him, promising that once the wedding was over, he could go off to the battlefield and do whatever he pleased, even if it meant dying there. He had gone through with the ceremony and then fled under cover of darkness to the battlefield without even spending their first night together. And so, having failed to fulfill the very purpose for which she had been brought into the household, Nami became nothing more than a despised burden. Even so, she had seen her husband only once, on their wedding day, but that was enough for her to honor him in her heart as her husband. Blushing in secret, she had quietly nurtured her innocent, budding love for him. Yet when the man finally returned after three years, not only did he fail to remember her, but… “Oh, aren’t you that broodmare?” Nami had always laughed off her hardships and mistreatment, telling herself that they were simply her lot in life. Even when the servants called her every vile name under the sun, her expression had remained placid, never once crumpling. But that day, for the first time, her face cracked.