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Except that she did.  The next day.

She passed him this time on her way to school.  He was sitting in front of the hwarang compound.  Leaning up against the wall.  His face upturned towards the sky.  His eyes closed.  His skin pale.  His face drawn.  Puffy circles under his eyes.  He appeared as if he’d passed a sleepless night. 

Was he truly heartbroken over the queen dowager’s passing?

Jung Sook stopped walking as her eyes landed on his sorrowful face.  She pondered the notion of approaching him to see if he was all right.  Only, he clearly wasn’t feeling well.  Besides, boys still made her intensely uncomfortable.  And she wasn’t sure how to lend him even the slightest modicum of comfort. 

No one whom she loved had ever died.  Her mother and her sisters were all still living.  The only ones whom she’d buried were the two men who had made her life a living hell.  She couldn’t be sorry – even on her best day – that they were gone.

So she released a helpless sigh and turned towards the school.

But Soo Ho chose that moment to open his eyes, and his gaze immediately landed upon her.  He’d heard that sigh and wondered at it.

“Hey!” he called.

And she turned back with a question.  “Yes?”

He glanced around then.  “What are you doing here?”

“I’m on my way to school.”

He scoffed then.  “School?  Aren’t you a little…old…for school?”

She gaped at him.  Was the boy an absolute dunce?

“How is it possible that you don’t know that I’m the teacher at the girls’ school down the road?”

She had caused no little stir when she’d opened the school.  It had taken her several months to prove herself.  But once a few of the poorer girls in the area had exited her doors able to read, write, calculate, and reason brilliantly, more students had begun to seek her out.  And several older women had come to her privately for tutoring in the evenings.

“You’re the teacher?” he queried, clearly stupefied.  “Teacher of what?”

“Reading, writing, arithmetic, among other things.”

He quirked a dark eyebrow.  “Other things?” he questioned, clearly intrigued.  “I think I’d like to learn about these other things.”  He leered at her.

And she speared him with a sharp glance.  “I bet you would,” she mumbled, further intriguing him.

He stood up.  “May I follow you?  May I come see how you educate your girls?”

She wasn’t entirely sure what he was thinking, but she suspected that it wasn’t exactly wholesome.  She was going to put a damper on his suspicions.  Immediately.

“I can assure you that there is nothing remotely interesting – or lewd – about the way that I educate my students,” she retorted sharply.

His eyebrows threatened a flock of seagulls passing overhead.  “What on earth makes you think that I believe you to be lewd?”

“Let’s just say that your, er, reputation precedes you,” she murmured as she turned away.

“Just what exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“That you enjoy using girls for your own entertainment before tossing them to the four winds,” she asserted as she began to walk away from him.

He frowned at her.  He couldn’t really deny that claim.  But he had never hurt any of them.  Just dallied with them.  That was all.  Finally, discarding one for the next charming creature with whom he would spend a very short season frolicking.  Although, that wasn’t strictly true.  Sometimes, he had dangled two fish on one line.  Kissing one girl one moment and her best friend the next while leading them both on.

At least, that used to be true.  But…he wasn’t so sure that it was anymore.  Now he was finding that he had little use for the innocent maids with whom he’d messed around before. 

Now, a more mature woman, an experienced woman – like this one here – that might be a different story altogether.  But, unfortunately for him, she was walking away.

His lips tugged upwards into a smile.  That merely meant that she was presenting him with a challenge.  And that was just the distraction that he needed right now.  He really didn’t want to think about the queen or her death anymore.  He found it far too disturbing.

Maybe this snotty widow was just the distraction for which his broken heart was searching.