IV. Nightmares

The house is completely silent, and so is the outside, if not for the calm breeze of the night. All animals are asleep, and you have told your maid to go to sleep first while you finish your work.

Sullyoon lies curled on the narrow bed, her thin frame trembling beneath a threadbare blanket. The chill in the air does nothing to quiet the storm raging inside her mind. The pupils under her eyelids spin and flutter, her limbs are tensed, and sweat pours down her forehead.

She remembers the cold floor of the basement, the smell of the moldy walls, and the sound of dripping water. The cane is raised high, a looming shadow falling over her small body. Orders, insults, screams—they all come back. The pain sears her skin, but worse is the silence. The suffocating, unbearable silence. She has not been allowed to cry, or to speak, or to exist in any way that is truly her own.

Suddenly, a strangled scream tears from her lips—raw, involuntary, and desperate. It shatters the stillness of the night like porcelain on stone.

You immediately stand up from your desk and listen carefully. It is definitely from inside your mansion. Robbers?

You move swiftly through the hallway, guided by the flicker of candlelight and the urgency in your steps. At her door, you knock once and open it.

“Are you awake?” you ask, trying to be as gentle as possible but still worried.

Inside, Sullyoon sits upright, heart pounding, breath coming in short, ragged bursts. Shadows dance at the edges of her vision, and her fingers clutch at the blanket. She turns around, and when she sees you, relief washes over her. She takes deep breaths.

“I… I cannot sleep,” she whispers, barely audible.

The door opens slowly.

You step in, candle in hand, its warm glow softening the harsh edges of the room. “May I come in?”

She nods, unable to find her voice again.

You cross the room carefully and sit at the edge of the bed, leaving space between you. “Did you have a nightmare, Sullyoon? Was it… a past memory?”

“Yeah, it was,” she says apologetically. She has been working on herself these past weeks to not bother you again, yet here you are, awake, having to tend to her again. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. It could have happened to anyone. Especially you, after what you had been through.”

“I tried to forget, like you told me, but I don’t know why, tonight…”

“It’s okay, we’ll just have to give you more happy memories to remember instead,” you say. You sit down beside her on the bed. You figure it could make her more comfortable. Sullyoon scoots herself closer to you and sheepishly looks at you.

“Thank you for being here,” she says. “You have always been so kind to me.”

“You’re safe here,” you say. “No one will hurt you.”

Her throat tightens, and for a moment, she can’t speak. “The nightmares…” she whispers finally, “They come when the house is quiet. I always try to keep myself busy because of that.”

You nod. “Would it help to talk about them?”

She doesn’t speak right away. Her eyes are distant, unfocused, as though looking past the walls of the cottage into a place far colder and darker. Her hands, which have been trembling on her lap, grip the edge of her nightgown.

You can see the hesitation in her shoulders and the stiffness in her posture. Her breath hitches. She is trying to push it down but can’t anymore.

Then she lets the words spill, halting and rough. Her voice comes in fragments, not full words at first but broken letters. The way her lips curl slightly in disgust at the memory, the way her eyes blink hard as everything flashes before her pupils—you understand.

“They beat me for looking wrong. Speaking wrong. For breathing wrong. I wasn’t allowed to cry or rest. I had to be what they wanted. A shadow. Not a person. And sometimes… it was worse.”

Your heart aches, but your expression doesn’t shift. Only your hand moves, slowly, until it rests lightly over hers. Sullyoon takes it and holds it tight. It gives her courage.

There has been pain. Not the kind that bruises the skin alone, but the kind that creeps into the deepest parts of a person—their dignity, their voice, their sense of worth. There has been punishment for things so small, so human, that to remember them now makes her seem ashamed of having once hoped to be treated kindly.

And there has been silence. Long silences. She has no one to talk to, not a pen to write it down, not a hand to hold. She is trained to stay silent and obey. She shrinks herself smaller and smaller until even her thoughts feel too loud.

“I have to confess, sir,” she starts again, after a long pause. “When I learned that they were going to send me to a new master, I was fearing for my life. If my previous master was this cruel, who knew what my next master would have been like?”

“John brought you here, didn’t he?” you ask.

“Yes. My old master died, and afterward, I was sold along with the other slaves. You call me your maid—which feels like a very noble title to me—but where I came from, we didn’t have such names. And yes, John bought me and brought me here.”

Sullyoon takes another pause and this time her grip lightens. “You surprised me, master. You gave me nicer food on my first night than I’ve ever received during my whole life. And you gave me a room, a bed to sleep in, clothes… I couldn’t believe what was happening.”

“Those were the bare minimums,” you say.

“That’s what you believe in because your heart was so pure,” she points out, “but for me, they were a miracle.” She leans closer to you. “I know I was tense the first few days, but I thought punishment was just waiting for me.”

Sullyoon now looks you directly in the eyes. “And when I broke that cup, I was terrified. Breaking something is the worst thing a slave can do and instead, you hugged… me. That was the first time in my life someone had ever hugged me and it happened when I broke something. I don’t even remember my parents hugging me…”

You smile and turn to face her directly, holding her shoulders with your hands. You hug her. Because she needs it now more than ever. She melts right into your arms, a quiet sob leaving her lips. You pat her head and try to make her feel as safe as possible. She does.

“It feels unreal every time,” she says.

“I will be here every time you need it,” you tell her. “Don’t even ask.”

In the days after the nightmare, something shifted between them. It wasn’t sudden, it was a feeling. Silence no longer felt strained. She no longer flinched when you entered a room. Her shoulders, once tense, began to soften in your presence. When you spoke, she met your eyes more often. Briefly at first, then loner.

You didn’t force her to do anything. You didn’t pry. Instead, you showed her day by day that you cared about her. You’d leave a thicker blanket by her door on colder days, a sprig of dried lavender tucked into her cupboard, books by her nightstand. 

When she dropped something, you’d help her pick it up without comment. At first, she still felt fear when it happened but slowly, she started to smile.

Sometimes, she would sit near you as you sketched plants or wrote notes. She said little, but her presence was steady, and one day, she fell asleep in the chair beside you. It wouldn’t have meant much if it was anyone else but for you, it was huge. You didn’t wake her, you just adjusted the blanket so her shoulders wouldn’t chill. When she stirred and her eyes met yours, she panicked. 

“Sorry! I’m so sorry! I fell asleep,” she would say and bow over and over.

You just chuckled and told her it wasn’t a big deal. It just showed that she felt comfortable around you and she needed that rest anyways.

It wasn’t long before her steps took her to your room on the quiet nights when the dreams came back. She would stand in the doorway with the pillow in her hands, making her small in the shadow of the door. She didn’t ask but she hoped you’d take her. You would always move aside and make room for her. She never spoke much on those nights but sometimes she would hold your hand until sleep returned to her. Other times, she would rest her head against your shoulder so that your breaths would guide her back to calm.

Then Sullyoon became more needy.

On a late morning, she stood in the doorway of the study, hands clasped in front of her apron. She had just finished tidying the herb jars, lined them up perfectly by species and potency, just as you liked them. She lingered there, hesitant, watchin you work. She was fidgeting around with the hem and only looked down.

When you noticed her, you smiled, “They look perfect, Sullyoon, thank you.”

Her fingers tightened slightly. She opened her mouth, then closed it again.

You tilted your head. “Is something wrong?”