# Chapter 9: The Taste of Sorrow, the Weight of Mercy
Hello everyone, it's me again! How are you all doing? Today I will continue to walk with you and review Chapter 9 of "Honey in The Wound free digital audiobook". This is the chapter where sweetness becomes a blade, where kindness and silence collide, and where a child with two names learns that survival often costs more than she can say. So settle in, because this chapter is beautiful, painful, and impossible to forget.
The chapter begins with Uchida Masaharu and his wife, Seiko, a retired textile merchant and his loyal companion, who left for Chōsen three days before the Kantō earthquake destroyed everyone they knew. They believed their escape was a blessing from God. They arrived on the peninsula and settled in the small town of Cheonan, where they had bought cheap land. The area was not known for its agriculture, but with three tenant families working the rice paddies, the Uchidas believed they would never have to labor again in their old age. They were determined to put their losses behind them and savor their remaining years in relative ease.
Both of them, but especially Seiko, believed there was honor in benevolence. Although the Chōsenjin were mostly uneducated and unrefined in their eyes, the couple made an effort to show charity to their tenant farmers. They took less of the harvest for rent than their younger neighbors did, and Seiko would even gift the farmers’ children little sweets she picked up at the market. Masaharu thought attending to the children was going too far, but he allowed his lonely wife her indulgence.
Masaharu and Seiko had issues conceiving. They were unable to bring life into the world. The Uchida family was quick to place blame on Seiko, believing her weak constitution and narrow hips were the cause of Masaharu’s misfortune. Seiko bore the humiliation in silence, for she did not think she could leave. No other man would accept what a low-level merchant had discarded as barren. But even as Masaharu bedded the mistresses his family arranged for him, no children came. The Uchida couple were left childless into their old age. By then, Masaharu and Seiko had long become accustomed to each other in all the banalities of familiarity. While love never took root between them, time forged their proximity into habit, until one could not imagine life without the other.
For nearly eight years, Masaharu and Seiko took their daily morning stroll in Cheonan, following the creek on their property line at the foot of the mountain. One morning, they spotted a corpse half sunk in the creek. Masaharu tried to steer his gasping wife away from the sight, but upon closer inspection, they saw that the corpse was a girl with shallow breath and grave injuries. Seiko implored her husband to do something. The girl was not so little that the elderly couple could carry her back to their home on their own, so they called for one of their tenant farmers to pluck her out of the creek and take her inside.
The girl slept for four nights, running a fever and fighting off infections from the gashes on her feet and legs. Seiko bathed her and sat by her side, whispering to the girl as she floated in and out of consciousness in paroxysms of mumbles and screams. She named her Kiyoko—pure child—for her round, naive face. When Kiyoko woke, she trembled and cried, refusing to speak or eat. Seiko continued to tend to her nonetheless, viewing her as a stray kitten that could be tamed with steady enticements of food, shelter, and patience. Kiyoko, at least, would not run for the time being. Wet scabs were still clotting on the bottoms of her tender feet and confined her to a modest radius beyond her futon.
After a month of tearful bedrest, Kiyoko shuffled into the kitchen where Seiko was preparing breakfast. Seiko ran to brace the girl at her elbows and steady her still frail balance. “Is there anything you want?” she asked Kiyoko. “Tell me what you need.” The girl looked up, eyes brimming wet with uncertainty. Seiko tried to usher her toward a chair in the corner when the girl said something in a soft, hesitant voice. She bent down to hear what the child was muttering and caught a single word. “… cha …”
“Tea? You want tea?” Seiko repeated the word back to the girl, who nodded and gave Seiko the first sign of understanding she had been trying to coax out for the last month. Encouraged by the interaction, Seiko assembled all the necessary materials—a pot, several boxes of tea leaves, cups. When she filled the pot with water and set it on the fire, Kiyoko tugged at her sleeve and gently pushed her away. She gestured from Seiko to the chair, and the old woman understood that the girl meant to prepare the tea herself. Delighted by her initiative, Seiko sat and watched the serious child sniff at the tea leaves to make her choice of brew. Her movements were deliberate and learned. There was a knowing confidence to how long she waited for the boiling water to simmer down before steeping the tea, then again before serving it.
Seiko received the cup into her cold hands. She smiled at Kiyoko and lifted the tea to her lips. Its woody aroma was richer than any she had been able to induce from the leaves before. As the liquid heated her tongue and flowed down her throat, grief spilled into her and displaced the breath from her lungs. She wept. She cried for the children she did not have. She cried for the love she never found. She cried for the family she lost to the maw of the shaking earth in her homeland. She cried for little Kiyoko, her pitiful state, her aloneness. In receiving this tea, Seiko unknowingly drank from the well of the girl’s unspeakable sorrow and shed it as her own. The old woman’s life, unfulfilled, stood as a ready vessel for the burdens of another life lived too quickly, of another life so fractured it could no longer sustain itself. Unable to take another sip, Seiko set the cup down and took Kiyoko into her arms. She breathed in the warm scent of the child’s head and let her tears soak into her long black hair. The child, too, unfurled in the safety of the embrace, her wet sorrow staining Seiko’s kimono.
When the old woman calmed, she walked to Masaharu reading a newspaper in the drawing room and declared that Kiyoko would be staying with them as their child. He grunted in assent.
But the girl had another name. To the Korean tenant farmers, she was Young-Ja. Her knuckles reddened from kneading the yeot taffy she made of fermented rice and barley malt. She pulled at the warm batter, continually stretching and folding to keep it from hardening. This toil burned the muscles in her forearms and fingers, but the rhythmic physicality helped to quiet her racing mind. When the yeot had been sufficiently worked, she rolled it into narrow cylinders over the walnuts she had harvested and chopped earlier that morning. Her mind flickered to Young-Ho and the time he lost a loose tooth to one of the sticky yeot candies their mother had brought home from the market. He had cried, clutching the wet yeot piece that held his tooth, his mouth a large oval of blood and foamy sugar. Young-Sook ran over to hug him and praise his courage with a voice nearly as assuring as their mother’s. Young-Ja let the memory leave through her fingertips as quickly as it had come, trying not to dwell on the unachievable desire to share this fresh batch of sweets with her lost siblings.
With her yeot candies in a basket, Young-Ja followed Mr. and Mrs. Gil to the market. The Gils were mild-mannered tenant farmers on what was now Uchida land. Their family had tended to the rice paddies there for generations on behalf of an absent landlord before the Japanese came and stripped the former Joseon yangban of their property. Since the morning Mr. Gil was ordered to carry Young-Ja into the Uchida home three years ago, they had taken pity on the girl. As they watched the Uchidas dress her in kimono, give her a Japanese name, and speak to her in their tongue, the Gils made a habit of calling on her so that she might have opportunities to hear her own language. Young-Ja was reserved at first, devoid of the playfulness they would have expected of a child her age. But over time, she eased around them, eventually taking interest in accompanying them to the market where they sold their rice. The Gils let Young-Ja roam around the nearby stalls while they tended to their sales, watching her brighten as she perused the market’s offerings. Young-Ja came by their choga house a few days later with a small package of yeot she had made to thank them for taking her to the market. Stunned by the exquisite taste of the candies, they encouraged her to make more and sell it, imploring the Uchidas to chaperone the child whenever she wanted to go into town.
Young-Ja’s yeot had become famous across the Cheonan central market in the last three years. Everyone came to the Gils’ rice stand to look for the yeot girl who sometimes made an appearance with new flavors of candy at a good price. People clamored for the taste, lauding her as an angel who had descended from above with a sample of a heavenly banquet. Very few seemed to notice that these confections were the cause of their intense pangs of nostalgia. The first woman to try Young-Ja’s new ginger yeot became so awash with thoughts of her mother that she closed up her busy restaurant and traveled two days on foot to visit her. An old scholar wept when a yeot piece melted on his tongue, lost in the acute longing to see his childhood home in Daegu—everyone who saw him believed he was simply compelled to tears by the delicious flavor. The yeot moved children to stop squabbling with their siblings and even the stoniest of men to express their gratitude to their families in unusual fits of inspiration.
With walnuts in season for the fall, Young-Ja looked forward to selling her new yeot creation. She had grown to enjoy the praise lavished on her by her customers. Anticipation of this flattery drove her to experiment with new flavors that could rouse delight and keep the townspeople coming back for more. This demand for something only she could provide made Young-Ja feel needed. There was safety in being needed, a safety in serving. With each piece of yeot that sold, she assured herself she would not so easily lose the footing she had found in Cheonan.
Several people had already started to gather near the Gils’ stand hoping for Young-Ja’s appearance. Among them was a striking man in a dark, Western-style suit. Mrs. Gil blushed as she showed him their rice, offering to sell it at a fair price. The man smiled, revealing straight white teeth. The tan complexion around his large brown eyes was smooth, and his thick black hair was swept back in a stylish cut. Young-Ja had never seen anyone who looked like him before. He regarded the Gils’ rice for a moment before turning to the pile of yeot in Young-Ja’s basket. He curled his lips and bent down to address the twelve-year-old girl.
“How are you today, little lady? I’ve heard about your sweets and would like to try some.” He rubbed a few coins together between his fingers and flashed his teeth.
Young-Ja lowered her gaze from the bold stranger’s and handed him a few pieces of yeot wrapped in paper.
“Nothing to say?” He continued to examine her face with a knowing smile.
Young-Ja looked away and squeaked out a no, accepting his coins in her hand. He popped a candy into his mouth and contemplated her in silence a little while longer before walking away, turning curious heads in his wake.
A flurry of gossip possessed the vendors as they tried to uncover the identity of the dapper newcomer. After a day of widespread inquiry, people knew of him as Baek Yong-Woo, a merchant who had become rich through his connections in China and Japan. Those drawn to scandal even ventured to say Baek Yong-Woo was visiting Joseon now to oversee his opium poppy farms and their shipments to Manchuria. Whatever his reason for coming to Cheonan, the ladies of the market paid extra mind to combing their hair and straightening out their skirts should he decide to stop by their stalls.
Every time Baek Yong-Woo came to the market, he would check to see if he could acquire more of the famous Cheonan yeot. He would linger and try to talk to the young vendor, asking her whether she had help making it, where she had learned her recipes, what inspired her craft. The market women noticed this interest and would also cluster around the Gils’ rice stand in bids to catch the man’s eye. And while Young-Ja did not need help to sell all her sweets before the day’s end, Baek Yong-Woo’s easy smiles and winks guaranteed an audience that was just as eager to consume all her offerings within the morning.
When Young-Ja returned home from the market, she placed her earnings into Masaharu Oji-san’s money box and set about her chores. She tied back the sleeves of her kimono and took the laundry out to the creek to wash. On her way back to the house, she saw Oji-san watching her through the window. She smiled and bowed, eager to show him that she was hard at work hanging laundry in the yard. After picking out some greens from the garden to dress up for dinner, she returned inside to tidy up and cook. Heartened by the quick yeot sales that day, Young-Ja was relieved to be in the proper state of mind for meal preparation. Neither Oji-san nor Obaa-san would be troubled with any unwelcome heaviness she shed into her cooking that night. They might even enjoy their meal so much that they would request the same dishes again.
At dinner, Young-Ja spoke to her grandparents about her day at the market. She made an effort to animate her speech and add flourishes that made the stories more interesting, knowing that this little performance would amuse the kind couple who had taken her in when she thought all was lost. Seiko Obaa-san praised her improving Japanese while Masaharu Oji-san corrected her grammatical mistakes. When it was time for bed, Young-Ja brewed the root tea her father taught her to make and served it with a smile to the old couple before she retired into her own room.
Young-Ja took a deep breath as she changed into her sleeping garments, grateful for another day without incident. No one had wept as soon as her tea touched their lips. No one had recoiled from the taste of food she had accidentally steeped in thoughts of her family’s violent demise. No truly bad spells had occurred in over a year—at age twelve, she had become much more careful to contain herself, or to stay clear of the kitchen when she could not. Above all, she had learned to keep busy enough so her mind simply could not make space for despair. Young-Ja was starting to allow herself the belief that she was, in fact, not a burden to the Uchidas. That as long as she masked her sorrow and stopped it from disturbing others, Oji-san and Obaa-san would not throw her out. She would not have to be alone again.
Despite all the cheer Young-Ja could muster for her grandparents during waking hours, she still dreaded the night. Without the rest of the world to keep her centered on the immediate present, her mind would drift to that final day. Young-Sook was letting Young-Ho braid her hair while their father tended to the bellflowers in the garden. Her mother was humming inside the house getting dressed for town. If the images ever shifted from that sunny morning to the devastation of the soldiers’ arrival, Young-Ja would cry out and shake her head as if the movement could prevent the terrible thoughts from dropping anchor in her mind.
Young-Ja did not understand why her family had been taken from her, one by one. Why she had run and ended up the only one to survive. Would it have been better to stay and let the tiger or the soldiers kill her? To die alongside her loved ones? That day had been so inexplicably monstrous she wondered at times if it had happened at all, if it were all just a nightmare of a family that had never existed. Perhaps she had fabricated memories of her mother’s courage, her father’s tenderness, her sister’s patience, her brother’s affection. It was less painful to think she had imagined her family than to know she had lost them. To know she had fled as they lay dying at her feet. With each night that passed, the contours of their faces started to blur in her mind. Young-Ja would squeeze her eyes shut trying to remember her father’s crooked nose, the spiderweb of her mother’s scar. Some nights she could not summon her siblings’ faces or voices in her mind and she would cry herself to exhausted sleep.
That night, her howling thoughts had started to fade into slumber when the door opened and someone entered her room. Obaa-san would sometimes hear her crying and check on her, but this was not Obaa-san’s soft tread. Oji-san sat down beside her. He ran his fingertips down her hair and crept under the covers. A firmness pressed against Young-Ja’s back as his bony fingers gripped her shoulder. She tried to get up and ask what he was doing. He placed his hand over her mouth.
“Shh, be quiet,” he whispered.
Young-Ja froze as Oji-san stirred, grunting softly and tapping the back of her sleeping garment until his motions came to a halt. He lay in silence for some time and crept out as quickly as he had crept in.
Young-Ja did not sleep. When sunlight misted into her room, she rose to put away the covers. A wet stain marked where the old man had lain. She bunched up the bedding and rushed toward the creek to launder away the evidence. While walking, she felt an unfamiliar sensation between her legs and crouched by the creek to discover a red-brown paste smeared on her thighs. Startled, she plunged her body into the creek with her arms full of the soiled bedding. When she emerged drenched from the cold water, Young-Ja could not tell where the creek started and her tears ended. When Seiko stepped out to see what was causing the early morning splashing, she saw Kiyoko crying and wiping between her legs—she knew to run inside and retrieve a cotton cloth for her beloved child to wrap around her maturing body.
That night, Young-Ja lay in her covers terrified that Oji-san would return. She held her blanket tight and kept her eyes open until she could no longer fight off her fatigue. He did not appear. In the following days, Masaharu Oji-san behaved as his usual self—reticent yet gentle, and mostly uninterested in her until all three in the household sat down for their dinner conversation. When Young-Ja finally started to think that she had perhaps imagined the dreadful nighttime visit, Oji-san showed up in her bedroom again.
Seiko was always the first to fall asleep and the first to wake. Her sleep had become shallow in her old age—she learned that it was best to keep still in the night so as not to chase away her slumber with a restless body. The newfound sense of purpose that came with Kiyoko’s arrival had helped Seiko find peace through more of her nights, but the falling autumn temperatures were stoking a chill in her bones that brought back the disruptions to her rest. When she first noticed Masaharu’s midnight absence from bed, she did not think much of it. After it persisted over several nights, however, her curiosity overrode her instinct to keep still and she followed him out of the bedroom. Her breath caught when she saw him slip into Kiyoko’s room. She stood, facing the door in the dark, knowing what she must do.
When Kiyoko came into the kitchen to start breakfast, Seiko was already tending to the fire.
“Don’t worry about breakfast, little one. I’ll be serving you today.”
Seiko grilled some mackerel she had picked up at the market—Kiyoko’s favorite—and served it with freshly made rice and miso soup. The two ate in the kitchen, sharing gentle smiles in between bites. Kiyoko started to wash the dishes after they finished eating, but Seiko stopped her, explaining that they could clean up together after coming back from the market. Holding hands, the pair walked to the tailor and bought a new coat for the girl. Kiyoko tried to stop Seiko from her extravagant purchase, but the old woman insisted that its warm wool would be useful for the coming winter. Kiyoko smiled and donned her new navy-blue coat with its shiny black buttons.
They strolled around the market after leaving the tailor. Seiko was not partial to sweets, but anytime a sugary treat caught Kiyoko’s eye, she pulled out a few coins to gift her a sample. Once they finished a lap around the stalls, Seiko walked Kiyoko to a small office at the edge of the main market strip. Inside was a man looking for young girls to work at factories—with Japan engaged in numerous war efforts against China and the Soviet Union, the need for manufacturing labor was high. The recruiter glanced at Kiyoko’s short figure.
“Not what we’re looking for. Too young, too inexperienced.”
“She’s a quick learner,” said Seiko, “and she works very hard.”
“No, too runty. Give her at least another year.”
As Seiko continued to argue, Kiyoko lowered her head, her chin tucked into her chest as tears streamed down her pink cheeks. Unable to convince the man, Seiko stepped out of the office and reached for Kiyoko’s hand. The girl had her hands tucked into her new coat and made no show to take them out. Seiko knelt down and cupped her palms on Kiyoko’s drooped shoulders. She sighed and moved to explain herself when a clean-cut young man in a black suit approached. By his familiar greeting, he seemed to know Kiyoko already, but he addressed the older woman in polite, unaccented Japanese.
“Madam, if you’re looking to put the girl to work, I could take her. My business is in need of someone who can cook and clean.”
Seiko stood to regard the man’s genial, monied appearance. She searched his eyes for deceit and found none; whether due to its true absence or the limits of her perception, she would never know, though she would spend the remainder of her life convincing herself of the former. She pulled Kiyoko into a tight embrace and pressed her nose into the child’s warm scalp a final time. She then nodded at the man before hurrying away without another word.
“Obaa-san,” Kiyoko cried out. “Don’t go! I’m sorry, I’ll work harder! I’ll be a good girl!”
Seiko’s chest tightened at her beautiful child’s wails, grateful that the man held the girl in place. She did not know how to live without Masaharu after so many decades, but she would not let Kiyoko come to harm under their roof. She did not know what else to do, so she continued home, knowing she would not be able to keep walking if she looked back.
The chapter then cuts to a train shaking as it clacked forward. Railway from Chōsen to Manchukuo, Empire of Japan, 1934. Young-Ja sat with her feet up on the seat, her hands clasped at her shins, forehead against her knees. Nausea tickled her throat. She blinked away her tears and tried not to look at the blur of passing landscape through the window. Her mind dashed through all the things she should have done not to upset Obaa-san. If she had worked harder to complete her chores or prepare food untainted by her distress, if she had brought in more money from her yeot sales. If she had barricaded her door at night, or fought Oji-san off like she wanted to. Then Obaa-san would not have blamed her and thrown her away. She would not be alone again.
Baek Yong-Woo presented Young-Ja with a yakgwa cookie and some water from his canteen. She did not budge. She had not spoken a word since she came into his charge, and barely seemed to register where she was going. He did not know what compelled the old Japanese woman to give her up, or how the girl had come to be under her care in the first place, but he recalled the woman’s reluctant shaking as she released Young-Ja from her embrace, the pleading in her eyes.
“You know, I also grew up without my parents,” said Yong-Woo. “But I learned how to make money and take care of myself. Life works out.” He paused, waiting for the girl to react. She did not, so he continued. “You’re quite a gifted young woman. We’re going to a place where your talents will help many people in Joseon.”
Young-Ja lifted her head and examined the man sitting across from her. He bit into the yakgwa she had not taken and flashed his straight teeth. She fidgeted with the hem of her coat and let her eyes lose focus on the grainy wood of the train floor. Yong-Woo continued to talk at her. He asked whether she could read, and the chapter leaves us there, suspended between the life she lost and the one she is being carried toward.
This chapter is devastating in the quietest way. It does not scream its tragedy; it lets it seep in through tea leaves, yeot candy, and the soft click of a train on tracks. The contrast between Young-Ja’s gift for creating sweets that make people remember love and the violation she suffers in the Uchida home is almost unbearable. Seiko’s choice to give her away is not written as villainy, but as the desperate act of a woman trapped between a husband she cannot leave and a child she cannot save. That moral ambiguity is what makes the chapter linger.
Reader’s Impressions & Star Rating
As a reader, I felt the weight of every scene. The tea ceremony between Seiko and Kiyoko is one of the most moving moments in the story so far—a simple cup of tea becomes a vessel for generations of grief. Then, just as the story offers a fragile hope, it turns into a nightmare of silence and complicity. Young-Ja’s yeot, which brings nostalgia and joy to the market, becomes a symbol of everything she cannot say aloud. The writing is tender, sharp, and deeply human. My heart ached for Young-Ja, for Seiko, and even for the impossible choices that leave no one clean. I rate this chapter:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4.9 / 5 Stars
Next Chapter Prediction
The next chapter will likely follow Young-Ja and Baek Yong-Woo on their journey to Manchukuo. I suspect Yong-Woo will test Young-Ja’s talents, perhaps asking her to cook or make yeot for his business associates, and we will learn more about his opium trade and his true intentions. Young-Ja may begin to find a new kind of survival in his world, but she will also be forced to confront whether she is a guest, an employee, or a captive. Meanwhile, Seiko’s decision may haunt her in Cheonan, and Masaharu’s crimes may not stay buried forever. The cliffhanger about whether Young-Ja can read suggests that her education—or lack of it—will become important, maybe even a tool of power or resistance in the chapters ahead.
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