The Oath of Eight Summers
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 3: What the Seasons Teach
Summer thinned toward autumn the way it always did on the mountain — gradually, then all at once. One morning So Yeon woke to find her breath visible and the chickens reluctant and a quality of light in the yard that was different from the day before in ways she was only beginning to have words for.
Jo Soo was already outside.
She was always already outside. This was a fact of Jo Soo the way the grinding stone was a fact, the way the well was a fact — simply present and functional and not interested in being remarked upon.
“The pears are ready,” Jo Soo said, without looking up from whatever she was doing to a piece of rope.
So Yeon looked at the pear tree at the edge of the yard. She had been looking at it for two months. Watching the hard green fruit slowly become something else.
“How do you know?” she said.
Jo Soo held up the piece of rope, assessed it, went back to work. “You know,” she said, in the tone that meant the knowing was obvious and available to anyone paying attention.
So Yeon went to the pear tree and looked at the fruit for a long moment. She reached up and pressed one gently with her thumb the way she had seen Jo Soo press things — fruit, earth, the surface of bread dough to see if it had risen enough. There was a give to it that hadn’t been there last week.
She picked it.
Jo Soo appeared at her shoulder, looked at the pear, picked one herself, bit into it. Handed the rest to So Yeon without comment.
So Yeon bit into hers.
It was the best thing she had eaten in two months, which was already saying something, because Park Myung Hee fed people the way she did everything — thoroughly, without drama, without expecting to be thanked for it.
“Good,” So Yeon said.
“We’ll do the rest tomorrow,” Jo Soo said. Already moving on. “Before the birds get them.”
They did the rest the next morning.
Jo Soo climbed. So Yeon caught and carried. This was the division of labor that had established itself over the summer with the natural authority of things that made sense — Jo Soo was fearless about height and had the arms for it, So Yeon had learned to carry without dropping, which had taken longer to master than it should have.
The basket filled slowly.
“Hold it steady,” Jo Soo said from above her, not unkindly. Just the way she said most things — as information.
“I am holding it steady.”
“Steadier.”
So Yeon held it steadier. The pear came down without incident.
They worked in the particular silence that had developed between them over the summer — not the silence of people who had nothing to say but the silence of people who had said enough things that silence was also available to them. So Yeon had not known this kind of silence existed before Jo Soo. In the palace everyone was always saying something or managing the appearance of saying something or carefully not saying something in ways that required as much attention as speech.
Jo Soo was quiet when she had nothing to say.
It turned out So Yeon could do that too.
Park Dohun came back from Hanyang on a grey afternoon in the ninth month.
She knew he’d gone. He had told her he would be gone for several days, in the direct way he told her things — not softening them, not explaining more than she needed, trusting her to receive information and hold it without requiring management.
She heard the gate.
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