The Dragon King Has Fallen
Rumble—rumble—
Twelve nautical miles south of Jeju Island.
At the very bottom of the South Sea’s boundary, where humans had arrogantly claimed the water as their own without ever bothering to hear the sea’s opinion, the once-still depths shuddered with an ominous groan.
On a bed woven from soft seaweed, a black-haired merfolk prince who had been sleeping with his face half-buried in the tangled fronds started awake in alarm.
He was Neoul, the second prince, who lived in the eastern annex of the Dragon Palace.
The trembling stopped quickly enough, but Neoul had been jolted awake far too early. He rubbed his sleep-heavy face and blinked at the murky water in a daze.
Today, the low temperature of the deep sea that he had always found so familiar felt strangely cold against his skin.
Is that because I had such a strange dream?
Last night, in his dream, his father, the South Sea Dragon King, had suddenly let out a pitiful cry and collapsed in bed.
When Neoul called for the royal physician and asked for a cure, the doctor had said that they would have to go to land to treat the Dragon King’s illness.
So Neoul had begged his father to turn him into a human so he could go there himself.
“Father. Please give me a pair of legs. I shall go straight to the shore and bring back the cure.”
The Dragon King had patted Neoul’s hand with a look of pride.
“I appreciate your heart, my child. But I do not possess the power to give a merfolk human legs.”
Deeply hurt by his filial devotion being so cruelly rejected, Neoul had answered with great offense.
“Hmph. And you call yourself the Dragon King if you can’t even do that?”
“What did you say, you rascal?”
“My head hurts! My head hurts!
Come now, you little wretch! My illness is all because of you!”
The furious Dragon King had hurled a pillow at him and chased him out. That had been the end of the dream, with Neoul fleeing the room while the pillow struck him squarely in the face.
It must have been a crab dream.
The Dragon King was a dragon who had lived for four thousand years, yet he was far more vigorous than Neoul, who was barely twenty.
He was the strong, unshakable guardian of the sea.
He had never once shown a moment of weakness.
And that was precisely why the Dragon King’s pallid face from the dream kept flickering before Neoul’s eyes.
Neoul brushed the seaweed off his tail fin and was about to leave the bed to check on his father’s condition when someone approached him first from far away.
“Your Highness! Your Highness!”
It was Hong, the chamber attendant, and his frantic gestures made it obvious that something terrible had happened.
“It’s dire! The Dragon King—!”
“……!”
Neoul did not wait to hear the rest. He shot straight toward the Dragon King’s chamber.
Why were bad omens always right?
Hong, who had been disguised as a human, reverted to his true form—a tiny red jellyfish—and hurried after Neoul.
His small, translucent body fluttered desperately as he chased him, but the gap between them only widened.
* * *
“Father!”
Neoul yanked the chamber door open and shouted.
He had expected to be scolded—You little brat, are you trying to break down the door?—just as in the dream.
But instead—
“Fa…ther….”
The Dragon King’s massive dragon body lay stretched on the floor, his eyes tightly shut. At the sight, Neoul’s heart dropped so violently it felt as if it had fallen through the bottom of the sea.
Do-seungji, the leatherback turtle chancellor, had been standing guard beside the Dragon King. The moment he spotted Neoul, his eyes grew red with tears.
Neoul pressed a hand first to the Dragon King’s great nostrils, then to the thick skin at his nape.
Fortunately, he was still breathing, and though the pulse was weak, it was unmistakably there.
“Where is the royal physician? Where is he?”
The Dragon King had collapsed, and yet that supposed physician was still dawdling somewhere?
Neoul looked around anxiously as he asked, and Do-seungji answered in a hollow voice.
“It is... he fled, Your Highness. The Gyeomsa guard captain is chasing him as we speak.”
“What...?”
Neoul’s eyes flew wide at the thunderclap of an answer.
“What in the world do you mean, fled? Why would the royal physician suddenly run off?”
Do-seungji swallowed hard, as though finding the words painful to speak.
“Hoo.... His Majesty ordered us not to tell the princes, but... there is no longer any reason to hide it.”
Then he fixed Neoul with a steady, resolute gaze.
“Your Highness. The truth is, His Majesty did not suddenly collapse.”
“What do you mean...?”
“The Dragon King has been suffering from an unknown illness for a very long time. Even before Your Highness came to the Dragon Palace, he was already afflicted. Many physicians have passed through the palace, striving to cure him, but none of them found a proper solution.”
Do-seungji lowered his head apologetically. Neoul’s gaze wavered as he looked down at the old turtle’s glossy crown.
“I... knew nothing....”
Not until it had become this serious.
How could I have been so dim, so hopelessly blind, and never noticed?
If someone had only told me earlier, my mind wouldn’t have gone completely blank like this. But no one had said a word.
He wanted to ask why no one had warned him, but now was not the time.
He had to find a way to treat Father’s illness somehow. Yet with no preparation at all, it was hardly strange that his thoughts refused to work properly.
Neoul looked first at the Dragon King, then at Do-seungji, his eyes sorrowful.
Do-seungji endured Neoul’s gaze in silence before continuing.
“The physician who came this time was a timid fellow. The moment he saw that the Dragon King had collapsed, he fled in fear of being punished.”
“…….”
Neoul stared at the face of the Dragon King—who had been perfectly fine yesterday, or rather, who had merely pretended to be fine.
Just like in the dream, his complexion was ghastly pale and the skin beneath his eyes was dark, making him look every inch the sick man. Even the scales that covered his body had lost their luster.
The longer Neoul looked, the darker his own expression grew.
Then Do-seungji spoke carefully.
“There is no cure beyond hope, but the task is so difficult that His Majesty would not permit it.”
“...!”
Neoul’s bowed head shot up.
Permit it or not—what did that matter now?
Neoul had always been a spoiled prince who never listened to his father worth a damn.
Decrees and orders and whatnot—breaking them had never been anything new.
“What is it? Don’t beat around the bush—say it already!”
Because Neoul was glaring at him and pressing him like a thunderbolt, Do-seungji had no choice but to spill everything.
“According to the old tales, the liver of a land creature called a rabbit is a miraculous cure. Long ago, there was once a brave warrior named Byeoljubu who went to land and brought back a rabbit.”
“A rabbit...?”
“Yes. Nearly fourteen hundred years ago.”
Neoul remembered his dream from the night before. In it, some unfamiliar physician had said that the Dragon King would have to go to land to be cured.
He had thought it an odd dream, but apparently it meant to go catch a rabbit.
“So if he ate the rabbit’s liver, did he recover a little?”
“Unfortunately, he did not get to eat it. The rabbit had taken its liver out and left it on land, so Byeoljubu and the rabbit set out from the Dragon Palace to go retrieve it.”
“You can just take your liver out and walk around with it?”
He had no idea what sort of creature it was, but that was remarkable.
Then again, even sharks could pull their stomachs out through their mouths, clean them thoroughly, and swallow them back into place.
The world was vast, and there were many places Neoul had never been. On land, that otherworldly place, there might well be animals that removed their internal organs and carried them around.
“Yes. So it would seem. His Majesty promised the rabbit rank and wealth if it brought him the liver. But after the rabbit and Byeoljubu left, they never returned. It is likely they met with misfortune on the road....”
“Has no one gone searching for the rabbit and Byeoljubu after that? You just waited around with your hands tied?”
“No, not at first. At the beginning, His Majesty sent his retainers to search. But every retainer who went out was either caught in human nets or fell victim to accidents.... After that, the Dragon King gave up the search and forbade the palace retainers from going to land at all.”
When he finished, Do-seungji wore a grave expression.
Neoul did not know much about land, but he knew a little about humans.
Humans could not even breathe in water, and yet they constantly coveted the sea. They launched boats, cast nets, and strung strange machines all over themselves to explore the waters below.
No living human could enter the Dragon Palace, which was hidden under the Dragon King’s protection.
Only the ghosts of those who had drowned at sea sometimes lost their way and drifted into the palace.
When that happened, the Dragon King would offer them a place to rest, and when the Grim Reapers came to collect them, he would put them aboard a great lotus boat and send them back above the surface.
The ghosts who stayed in the Dragon Palace always found me fascinating and tried to talk to me...
But Neoul could not understand human language. And humans could not understand the language of the Dragon Palace, either, so they had to communicate with ridiculous hand gestures and body movements.
All Neoul had managed to learn was that waving one’s hand side to side and bowing one’s head were the human ways of greeting.
Thinking of the human ghosts who had never seemed especially threatening, Neoul blurted out, “I shall go.”
“What?”
“I will go to land and find the rabbit and bring back its liver.”
It was a reckless, hopeless idea, but...
Once he got to land, wouldn’t he find some way somehow?
He intended to meet the rabbit, bribe it, beg it, persuade it—anything, anything at all.
But Do-seungji shook his head violently.
“If His Majesty wakes and learns that Your Highness went to land, he will be furious! And besides, how is a prince without legs supposed to travel on land? I should go instead! I have four legs!”
Neoul glanced down at the old chancellor’s short, pudgy four legs and his big shell.
“You’d probably be caught by humans before you even reached the beach.”
The retainers of the Dragon Palace could take human form only while inside the palace. The moment they left it, they were merely sea creatures.
Only the Dragon King and his bloodline could freely change their appearance even outside the palace.
Though he was the Dragon King’s son, Neoul was not of his blood, so he could not transform even within the Dragon Palace.
Neoul felt miserable.
“Father, my elder brother, my elder sisters, and my younger brother can all imitate humans. Why can’t I?”
“Because His Majesty, the first prince, and the princesses are dragons. The youngest prince is a sea serpent who will become a dragon in a thousand years. You, Prince Neoul, are a merfolk.”
Different species. Different species indeed.
Do-seungji had stabbed right through Neoul’s heart with the truth, but Neoul paid him no mind. He clenched both fists and strode out of the chamber.
“There must be a way! Adopted or not, a child is a child. What’s impossible about that?”
“That’s like saying I, a sea turtle, could give birth to a starfish or a shark.”
Neoul looked at him as though he had said something absurd.
“But you’re male, Do-seungji. Of course you can’t give birth.”
“No, I... well...”
For a moment, Do-seungji found himself speechless. He didn’t even want to answer anymore, so he shut his mouth.
He could not shake the disloyal thought that the Dragon King’s condition had surely been worsened in no small part by Prince Neoul’s free-spirited mouth.
And yet he was still a treasured prince they had watched grow from infancy.
All the retainers, including Do-seungji, followed close behind Neoul, insisting in one voice that land was dangerous.
But Neoul’s resolve did not waver.
“A brilliant idea has come to me! Don’t worry, and go back to your posts.”
“The fact that you say that makes me even more uneasy. Could you please refrain from coming up with any ideas at all and just stay put? Land is dangerous.”
“That is right, Your Highness. According to the records, humans once slaughtered merfolk in order to obtain merfolk oil. We will somehow find another way among ourselves, so perhaps Your Highness should return to your quarters for now...?”
Good heavens.
Neoul narrowed his eyes, looked at the retainers, and gave a hollow laugh.
“What nonsense is that, at a time like this?”
Don’t come up with any ideas?
Go back to his quarters?
They were telling the Dragon King’s son to stand by and watch his father die with his hands folded.
He knew they meant well, but that was an outrageously overstepping bit of advice.
The retainers, finally realizing their mistake, fell silent in a panic.
“N-no... that is not what we meant...”
One of them hurriedly tried to recover, but Neoul merely turned away with a huff.
He had no time to waste listening to pointless excuses.
The Dragon King had taken in a merfolk child who had been left alone after losing his parents. He had named him Neoul, adopted him, and raised him with the same affection he gave his own flesh and blood.
From the days when he had paddled about with a short little tail to the present, when he had grown so tall, how warmly had his father treated him—always with our baby, our Neoul, as though he were precious jade and gold?
Though he often scolded Neoul and punished him, the moment he turned away he would fret as if his beloved child might already be wilting from the reproach. He was the sort of father who could never help being soft-hearted for his own son.
If Father hadn’t taken me in, I’d have been caught and eaten by something long ago anyway.
It was time to repay that boundless kindness.
Neoul waited for the Gyeomsa guard captain to seize the physician while he packed a bundle.
He did not need much. He was in a hurry, and there would be no chance to fish along the way, so he took a bundle of shrimp as emergency food. And for the possibility of attack, he packed a blade—nothing more.
Unlike the soldiers of the Dragon Palace, who trained with spears, Neoul had never learned how to wield one, so he chose a small dagger that fit neatly in one hand. At this size, if he tied it at his waist, it would not get in the way when he swam quickly.
“Your Highness! The Gyeomsa guard captain has brought the physician!”
Neoul slung his bundle over his shoulder at once and went outside.
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