The Coin Always Lands Heads Up
The moment I opened my eyes, I was underwater, in a river black as ink.
Ah. I died again.
A long sigh bubbled up in a froth of foam, and I drifted after it, paddling lazily toward the surface.
"Pwah."
I poked my head above the water, gulped down a breath, and cast a quick glance around. No boats today, huh?
Usually at least one or two ferryboats were bobbing about, but every now and then there'd be none at all. Nothing for it, then. I'd have to swim to the bank.
I somehow hauled myself out of the river and flopped straight down onto the sand.
"Haaaah…… Even this is getting exhausting."
Lying flat on my back, I looked up at the crimson sky and caught my breath. Should be about time.
"Your Highness! Princess! Are You safe and sound?!"
That one was never destined for anything better than a servant's lot. I'd barely finished the thought before she came swooping in, and I waved a lazy hand at the riotously colorful bird flying straight at me.
"Princess!"
The small bird, having spotted me and dropped like an arrow, pulled off a midair somersault just before her feet touched the ground — and the instant she landed, the bird became a girl with golden hair in a braided ribbon, wrapped in a rainbow-striped jacket.
My maid-and-bodyguard, Ansi.
A young phoenix, roughly a hundred and fifty years old.
"Ansi, what did I die of this time? In my sleep? I can't remember."
"'Died'? How many times must I beg You not to speak such dreadful words! You did NOT die, Your Highness!"
"I open my eyes and I'm floating in Samdocheon. What would you call that but dying?"
At my offhand reply, Ansi pressed her lips into a stubborn pout.
"You were wandering the very edge of death, not passing beyond it! Absolutely not!"
"Same thing, really."
"It is NOT the same! King Yama is surely dropping everything and rushing here as we speak, and then Your Highness will open Her eyes back at the palace in no time at all."
"Right, and that's exactly the point — I only ever come back from Samdocheon because Dad is King Yama. Anyone else would've been as good as dead."
"Crossing the Samdocheon does not mean one is dead! Sometimes people return by the grace of their ancestors, do they not!"
With that piercing shriek, Ansi — as though she couldn't bear to hear another word — draped a blanket over me. Only then did I notice her eyes, swollen red from crying.
"……This is hardly a once-in-a-while thing. What did you cry about this time?"
"It is PRECISELY because it is not a once-in-a-while thing that I am crying! Hmph."
Sniffling hard, Ansi gathered me up in her arms, blanket and all. She was a child who looked about fourteen or fifteen in human years, and I was even smaller than she was, so I disappeared entirely into her embrace.
"Are You cold? I shall warm You up right away."
"I'm fine. Not that cold."
"Your lips have gone quite blue, yet You assure me all is well. How very reassuring."
Grumbling, Ansi hugged me tight and murmured,
"In truth, I was not the only one weeping. The Jade Emperor wept as well."
"Mom did? Why?"
Dad crying I could believe, but Mom crying was a genuinely rare occurrence.
"She's used to it by now. Why cry over it now……?"
"Your Highness, what parent in all creation could grow accustomed to their one and only child forever hovering at death's door?"
"……"
"……The Empress was afraid, You see — afraid that one day, even King Yama would fail to bring Your Highness back. That is why She wept."
"……"
Mom had always been so composed that I'd assumed nothing could rattle her. She'd simply been hiding it all this time.
A quiet sadness settled over me, and there in Ansi's arms, all I could do was wiggle my fingers. Ansi bundled my hand firmly in the blanket and went on grumbling through her tears.
"Other gods, if they should pass on, might meet again someday — but not Your Highness. If You go, it could be forever, and, hic, and…… waaah……"
And with that, my phoenix finally burst into full sobs. I had nothing to say, so I stayed quiet.
My name is Sang Rahi-yo, and my sacred title is Princess Cheonmyeong.
My mother is the Jade Emperor, supreme deity of the Heavenly Realm.
My father is King Yama, supreme deity of the Netherworld.
Roughly a thousand years ago, two of the most exalted gods in all creation fell in love, and their union turned both Heaven and the world beneath it upside down — a marriage without precedent. For a few hundred blissful years they enjoyed their newlywed life, until some eight hundred years ago they began to worry that no child had come. From then until the day I was born, they spared no effort in trying.
Even conceiving me was an ordeal, I'm told, and the birth itself was harder still.
In other words, I am the precious, only, long-awaited daughter that two supreme gods barely managed to have after herculean effort — the only being in existence ever to be crowned a princess of both Heaven and the Netherworld at once.
And because I was such a treasure, I have been drowned in staggering amounts of love since the moment I drew breath. Everyone doted on me; everyone bowed before me. I never wanted for anything, and whatever I wished for was mine.
Except for one single thing: my health.
I am two hundred and nine years old, and of those years, not all that many were spent awake and in my right mind.
I often had to sleep for long, long stretches — because with every breath I took, my body broke down a little more. I would endure and endure until I reached my limit, and then I had to sleep away for ages, mending what had broken.
Sometimes, when the limit came, I didn't fall asleep at all. I simply stopped breathing.
Each time, Dad saved my soul and Mom healed my body, and I revived as good as new — but if it weren't for them, I'd have been dead and gone ages ago.
Because of all this, my body never managed to grow properly. I am smaller even than Ansi, an underdeveloped phoenix.
When we first met, she was far tinier than me. She overtook me in the blink of an eye.
Because I was like this, Mom and Dad, for all their long-awaited joy, never truly got to be happy.
Their one and only daughter kept stopping breathing, kept having her soul carried off to Samdocheon.
Maybe they were happier before I was born.
Often — no, constantly — the guilt creeps in.
My parents have never stopped searching for a cure. I've swallowed every medicine the world calls good, endured every treatment anyone could devise. And still, nothing has changed.
Though we did find out what causes it.
The root of my illness was that Mom and Dad were simply too powerful.
I was born inheriting far too much strength — the full divine power of the Jade Emperor and King Yama, packed into a body no infant could possibly bear.
Imagine a newborn with slabs of iron chained over every inch of her, iron that would weigh down even a grown adult. That's what breathing was for me.
Only a sturdy, fully grown body could hold that weight. But crushed beneath the divine power day after day, I couldn't grow — and the frailer I became, the less I could withstand it. An endless spiral.
Truthfully, that was also why no child had come to my parents for so long. Any child conceived would simply die in the womb — so, or so the story goes, the me who didn't yet exist refused to be assigned a birth at all.
It's not something I can remember, but according to Samsin Halmi, that's how it was.
She said my being born at all — not stillborn — was already a miracle.
Just as the marriage of the Jade Emperor and King Yama was an unprecedented union, my birth was an unprecedented event. No one knew what to expect — not even Samsin Halmi, who only grasped how dire my condition was after I had already been conceived.
So my parents hadn't knowingly brought me into this suffering — and yet they blame themselves for it all the same.
Being supreme gods isn't a fault. Wanting a child isn't a fault.
And yet, whenever I fall ill, they tell me it's their doing — that I'm free to resent them as much as I like. Like criminals, though they've committed no crime.
Really — wouldn't they have been happier if I'd never been born?
And if I had to be born, some control would have been nice. Inherit only as much divine power as I could carry, at least.
Why was I born such a mess?
I sighed only on the inside. An audible one would worry Ansi, who was still sniffling away.
She was crying far too much. Her eyes were going to swell shut.
"Ansi, don't cry, okay?"
I burrowed into her arms and nuzzled my cheek against hers.
"Your Highness, hoo-hooo, hic……"
Far from stopping, my phoenix only sobbed harder and squeezed me tighter.
I hate it when anyone cries because of me. I wish no one would cry. I wish no one would be made unhappy on my account.
But that's the hard part, isn't it.
Why is it so easy to be a good child, and so impossibly hard to be a healthy one?
Still wrapped in Ansi's arms, I gazed at the slow dark line of Samdocheon in the distance. It would be a while yet before Dad arrived. Even King Yama couldn't simply force a resurrection when life and death hung on a knife's edge — it was like flipping a coin and having it land heads every single time.
At first he was quick about it, but he takes longer and longer these days……
And now that I thought of it, even Mom had cried.
……Maybe next time, the coin lands tails, and not even Mom and Dad can stop it.
Perhaps that would even be a relief.
Down the river I watched the underworld escort ferry the dead across in droves, their boats jammed together — a traffic jam at the gates of the Netherworld, it seemed. And among the crowd of souls, one caught my eye.
"Ansi, look over there."
I tugged on her rainbow-striped sleeve, and she lifted her glistening, teary face.
"Stop crying and look."
I pointed to a ferry drawing steadily closer to our bank. A gaunt little girl of five or six was holding the escort's hand, her face blank and dazed.
Her hair was a striking silver — that was what made her stand out. Ansi spotted her right away.
"You mean that silver-haired child, Your Highness?"
"Yeah. Way younger than me, right?"
"She looks about Your Highness's age to me."
"That's just because I never grew properly. By actual years she's got to be far younger. She's a real baby."
"……"
"Even a child that little dies and comes down here. You watch the river long enough and you see so, so many of them — younger than me, worse off than me."
"……"
"And me? I've lived an incredibly happy life. And I'm not dying right this second, either."
Objectively speaking, I'm not some pitiful child. I am Princess Cheonmyeong, Sang Rahi-yo.
"So quit crying already—"
"That child may be reborn, or reach paradise, or become an immortal! But Your Highness cannot! Not ever!"
With that final shriek, Ansi broke down harder than before.
"Waaah! Don't die, Your Highness! You mustn't pass on! Waaaah! If you die, then Ansi will just go and die too — gwak!!"
Shouldn't have tried to console her. Just made everything worse.
Maybe everyone should just accept it sooner rather than later.
I was born the most treasured being in the world. I was loved, doted on, showered with every luxury existence could offer. That's already more than a life's worth of blessings.
So being short one thing — my health — is fine. Even if I died this very day, two hundred and nine years is hardly a life cut short.
Isn't that a good, full life, by any measure? I wish Mom and Dad…… would see it that way too.
No. They won't. They love me too much.
But what if the coin comes up tails next time? What if I truly die? What would become of them then?
Just imagining it turned my mood leaden.
……Maybe I should start keeping some distance from Mom and Dad. If they got used to being apart from me, maybe it wouldn't hurt so much, in the end.