Kensei Jon's Arc

Chapter 27 of 49

The midwife taught them how to feed and change Ha-ni. A week passed. Ha-ni slept better now. But one morning Kensei sat with the coin box open and saw a new problem. Ha-ni had no papers. No name written anywhere but on their tongues. If they took her to a market clerk, or a school someday, she was no one. A child born to two men, one with a made name, in a city that did not know them. "She needs a record," Kensei said. "Same as we did. A name that a clerk will honor." Jeon-min looked up from his needle. "We have no rank. No family book. Clerks want a family book." He set the thread down. "I asked, in the last city. They turned me away." Kensei knew where a record could be made. His father had made one before, with a seal that no clerk could refuse. But his father had ordered them to leave and never return to the palace. "I can go to him," Kensei said. "He told you never to come back." "He signed our marriage. He gave me a name." Kensei closed the box. "He can give her one too. A clerk here can't argue with the royal seal." Jeon-min did not soften it. "He could turn you away. He could call the guards. You'd walk three days for nothing." "Then I walk three days for nothing." Kensei stood. "But she gets a name. A citizenship. A paper that says she belongs somewhere." He went. The journey took the days it took. The palace rose gold and blue as it always had. Kensei did not enter as a prince. He stood at a side door in his hanbok and asked a servant to carry a message inside. His father came, older, quiet. He did not shout. He looked at Kensei a long time. "A daughter," Kensei said. "She has no record. I need a name for her. A citizenship. Something a clerk will honor." His father took him to a scribe. He wrote Ha-ni's name himself. He named her a citizen of the fifth city, daughter of Kensei Jon and Jeon-min. He pressed the royal seal into the wax. He added a second paper, a trade license, so their mending work could carry a stamp no merchant could refuse. "Now go," his father said. But he pressed the papers into Kensei's hands with both of his own. "She is the last one I will name. Tell her nothing of me." Kensei walked the three days home. He laid the sealed papers on the table beside the wound thread. Jeon-min read them twice. "A license," Jeon-min said. "We can sell openly now. Under our own stamp." "And she has a name that holds," Kensei said. Jeon-min lifted Ha-ni from the crib. "You're a citizen," he told her. "You have papers." Ha-ni watched his face, working out the sounds. She did not know yet what she had. But it was hers, and no clerk could take it.