About this story
You learn faster than your tutors can explain and lift a stone weight two servants carry, but the law still names your place. Then your father's wife brings in a diviner from the east gate, who says the boy will surpass a king and kill his kin. The strong-room door is barred from outside. At midnight a crow calls three times, and the window opens.
Who you’ll meet
Lord Hong, the minister who loves you and locks the door anyway, with the East Gate diviner who read your face for money and Lady Hong, who paid for the reading, watching from the paper screen.
How it opens
From childhood, you learned books and martial skills faster than the household could explain them.
Your father watched with pride restrained by laws governing the son of a lowborn concubine.
House TutorGildong has completed the passage and corrected the commentary beneath it.
Learning remains honorable even when rank does not follow it.
ChunseomA locked gate does not become generous because the path toward it is beautiful.
Choose
If rank is closed, what duty does all this study prepare me for?
Can skill earn what birth refuses to recognize?