I read this yesterday in korean so just wanted to clarify two things cause they don't really translate well. The thing Yeon says to Ryucheong about being the same with the bully boy after Ryucheong says he is his mom's 9th cousin doesn't mean that the Ryucheong's mom's has a bunch of immediate cousins of which he is the 9th in age. In Korea they count familial relations by 1 step between parent and child. So siblings would be 2 steps since they are connected through their parents. All that to say 9 steps is pretty dang far so pretty much strangers. That's what Yeon was getting at by saying that Ryucheong's relationship with the boy is the same as her and Ryucheong, that they are strangers/unrelated to each other. 'Nam' can also mean 'strangers' in korean. The other thing is when Yeon says 'geunmookjaheuk' (근묵자흑), it's a korean idiom that has the literal translation that Yeon says but the figurative meaning is that people can change or be influenced by the people that they have around them, meaning Yeon is warning Hwaryeong to stay away from those boys cause she could be influenced by them. But when Yeon says the literal meaning of the idiom the word for 'stained' is '검어진다' and the first character reads 'geom' phonetically which also happens to be the same way the korean word for sword is read. So all this to say the whole thing went over Hwaryeong's head and she just hears 'geom' (검) and that's why she just says "I like swords"
I read this yesterday in korean so just wanted to clarify two things cause they don't really translate well. The thing Yeon says to Ryucheong about being the same with the bully boy after Ryucheong says he is his mom's 9th cousin doesn't mean that the Ryucheong's mom's has a bunch of immediate cousins of which he is the 9th in age. In Korea they count familial relations by 1 step between parent and child. So siblings would be 2 steps since they are connected through their parents. All that to say 9 steps is pretty dang far so pretty much strangers. That's what Yeon was getting at by saying that Ryucheong's relationship with the boy is the same as her and Ryucheong, that they are strangers/unrelated to each other. 'Nam' can also mean 'strangers' in korean.
The other thing is when Yeon says 'geunmookjaheuk' (근묵자흑), it's a korean idiom that has the literal translation that Yeon says but the figurative meaning is that people can change or be influenced by the people that they have around them, meaning Yeon is warning Hwaryeong to stay away from those boys cause she could be influenced by them. But when Yeon says the literal meaning of the idiom the word for 'stained' is '검어진다' and the first character reads 'geom' phonetically which also happens to be the same way the korean word for sword is read. So all this to say the whole thing went over Hwaryeong's head and she just hears 'geom' (검) and that's why she just says "I like swords"