The Oath of Eight Summers
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 8: The Lesser Gate
Park Dohun rode in on a Thursday morning with two horses.
He said nothing about it. He dismounted, tied both animals to the post, and came to the door and knocked with the patient deliberateness of a man who had made a decision and was done discussing it.
So Yeon opened the door.
He looked at her. Looked past her at Jo Soo standing in the middle of the room with her hands folded. Looked back at So Yeon.
“Be ready by dawn tomorrow,” he said.
Then he went to speak with Park Myung Hee.
Jo Soo stood at the window and looked at the second horse for a long time.
So Yeon stood beside her and said nothing. There was nothing that needed saying. The second horse said everything.
Jo Soo turned from the window. Her face doing several things simultaneously that she was not entirely managing.
“I need to pack,” she said.
“Yes,” So Yeon said.
Jo Soo went to pack.
That evening Park Myung Hee made the meal So Yeon had requested three days ago when she understood the letter meant what it said. Tteokguk — rice cake soup, the food of new beginnings, the food you ate when something was ending and starting simultaneously. She made it the way she made everything, with the focused attention of a woman who understood that how you did a thing was as important as doing it.
They ate without much talking. The four of them — Park Dohun included, seated at the low table with the family as he had been many times over eight years — working through the meal with the particular quiet of people who had things to say and had decided to save them.
Park Myung Hee ate with her back straight and her face composed in the way So Yeon recognized. The composure that meant something large was being held in careful hands.
After the meal Park Dohun went to see to the horses.
Jo Soo helped her mother clear the table.
So Yeon sat on the step outside and listened to the farm settle into its nighttime sounds. The chickens quiet. The pear tree bare against the dark sky. The grinding stone pale in the moonlight. The wall of Park Jisoon’s garden visible at the property edge, the persimmon tree stripped for winter, the branches bare and particular against the stars.
Eight years.
She had arrived here at five years old in the dark with wilted flowers in her hands not knowing where she was or what had happened or when she would go home.
She had stayed long enough to forget which home she meant.
Jo Soo came and sat beside her. They didn’t speak for a while. The silence between them had always been comfortable — the silence of two people who had been in enough situations together that quiet didn’t require filling.
“Are you frightened?” Jo Soo said finally.
So Yeon thought about it honestly. “Yes,” she said.
“Of what specifically.”
“Everything after the road,” So Yeon said.
Jo Soo nodded. Taking inventory the way she always took inventory. “We’ll manage,” she said. “We managed the donkey.”
So Yeon looked at her.
Jo Soo looked back with the frank expression that was simply how her face worked.
“The donkey was considerably meaner than a palace,” So Yeon said.
“You don’t know that yet,” Jo Soo said.
So Yeon looked at the pear tree. At the chicken yard. At the grinding stone.
“No,” she said. “I suppose I don’t.”
They sat until the cold drove them inside.
Dawn came grey and still.
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