Unknown
The fingertips of the Crown Prince, still clasped in my hand, flinched. So I could finally feel a response from him.
"...I'm listening, my lady."
"Then answer me properly. It's driving me mad, seeing nothing at all."
"Does it only make you frustrated? Or do you feel frightened, or horrified...?"
"I keep telling you, I'm not scared. If I were, I would have run away long ago."
Are we really back to that question again?
Puffed up with pique, I let my cheeks balloon for a moment before hastily smoothing my expression. That was far too childish of me.
Because I couldn't see anything, the Crown Prince kept trying to forget the fact that he could see me.
"It seems Your Highness is still afraid. The darkness hasn't lifted, after all."
"...Yes, I am afraid."
"Of what?"
"I'm afraid because I can't tell whether this is a dream or reality."
"I'm sorry—what?"
"You... because you only ever say such wonderful things."
"So you can't quite believe it?"
"...Yes."
After that slow reply, the Crown Prince added in a deflated voice, "I'm sorry, my lady."
"What are you apologizing for all of a sudden?"
"For being unable to believe what you tell me."
Like his voice, the hand I had been gripping went slack and limp in my hold.
I let out an empty laugh.
"Ahaha."
"Why are you laughing?"
"We've only known each other for two days, Your Highness. Of course you can't believe me yet—so why feel sorry about it?"
And this, from a boy who had just been betrayed by the eunuch he had trusted for years—to think he'd apologize for being slow to trust someone he'd met two days ago.
Really, he's honest to a fault, but with a heart this soft, how does he intend to survive this cruel world?
I suppose I'll just have to protect him.
"Your Highness, you don't need to apologize. You can believe me after you've seen the results."
"What results?"
"Her Majesty the Queen waking up."
"..."
"Once you've seen that, won't you try doing this properly, together with me?"
"A-all right. But, um... my lady?"
"Yes?"
"C-could you let go of my hand now?"
"Oh."
I'd been clutching it without even thinking.
The Crown Prince's hand was burning hot with fever. Instead of letting go, I squeezed it tighter and answered mischievously.
"No."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I can't see a single thing, so I have to hold onto something. Just bear with it."
"..."
"Or else do something about this wretched darkness."
When I added that with a pout, the Crown Prince let out a low laugh.
"Haha, you really are quite..."
Before his words could finish, the darkness around us began to drain away like water.
Once it started to thin, it shrank in an instant, gathering itself back into the Crown Prince's shadow.
Only now could I see him, sitting right beside me.
The face of an exquisitely handsome boy, his brows tilted down, wearing a gentle smile that made it impossible to tell whether he was troubled or glad.
Before I knew it, I was staring at him blankly.
At that, the Crown Prince hurriedly covered his face. I protested on reflex.
"Don't hide your face."
"Pardon?"
"Why would you hide your best feature?"
"My best feature, you say?"
"Never mind these days—but as a child, surely you were told you were cute and handsome? There's no way you weren't. Your ears must have been worn thin from hearing it."
The more I spoke, the redder the Crown Prince's ears grew. He shot back as if in rebuttal, "If anyone's ears were worn thin from being called cute, it would be you, my lady."
"Exactly, which is why I've long since learned to put my adorable face to good use. So from now on, you should put that handsome face of yours to good use too. Understood?"
"What sort of logic is that..."
"Anyway, it seems you're not afraid anymore."
At my words, the Crown Prince, who had been looking utterly exasperated, fell silent and glanced around.
The sun had set completely by now, but a dim glow seeped through the windows, lending the room a faint brightness.
It may simply have been that my eyes, adjusted to the darkness, perceived even that small light as brighter than it was.
I released the Crown Prince's hand and lit the lamp.
As warm orange light filled the room, the boy gazed at the flame with newly enchanted eyes.
Holding the lamp out to him, I smiled.
"I look forward to working with you, Your Highness."
Sangra Palace, in the Heavens.
"What on earth is wrong with our daughter?!"
King Yama's voice thundered through the chamber.
"Never once, in all her slumbers, has she vomited blood like this! Could something be wrong with her medicine?"
Slender fingers settled softly upon the heaving shoulders of the furious Queen of the Underworld.
"Calm yourself, Hyeon."
"...Suryeo."
King Yama called her wife's name, her fury breaking like a wave against rock, then pressed on anxiously, "Huiyo keeps vomiting blood in her sleep. If this goes on, she may stop breathing again, and then—"
"I heard the report."
"If Huiyo dies again this time, the interval between her deaths will be far too short. Damn it all, this is truly dangerous. Our daughter—!"
"I know. All the more reason we must stay calm."
As the Jade Emperor soothed the heaving chest of the Queen of the Underworld, she took a seat in the chair beside the bed.
Upon an enormous, lavish bed draped in layer upon layer of gossamer-thin silks, like the wings of a butterfly, a small girl lay with her eyes closed as though asleep.
The girl, who looked no more than seven or eight years old, coughed intermittently and retched up blood.
The celestial maiden keeping watch caught the blood in white silk as it spilled from her lips, while another gently dabbed the fine beads of sweat from the girl's brow.
Princess Cheonmyeong, Sangra Huiyo.
Her name combined the character for joy with the character for radiance—a child meant to make the whole world shine with happiness.
True to her name, the girl had become their joy and a light that brightened all around her. But like a star, that light was burning itself away, flickering toward darkness.
Did we name her wrongly? Should we have wished simply for her health, rather than for her to shine? If we had, perhaps you would not have suffered so.
Lost in useless regrets, the Jade Emperor gazed down at her only daughter, drained of every trace of color.
"...When did Huiyo begin like this?"
"Since before dawn this morning, Your Majesty."
One of the celestial maidens answered, bowing despite being drenched in sweat.
"She fell asleep barely half a day after waking, and within two days she had begun coughing up blood."
The Jade Emperor murmured low.
King Yama knew all too well how her wife's heart was crumbling beneath that seemingly detached calm.
Sitting down beside her, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders.
"Suryeo... a hundred times over, you are right that these are the moments when we must keep our heads. But do not hold everything inside, I beg you. I fear that you, too, will fall ill."
"...When Huiyo woke this time, she told me to go, now that she no longer hurt. She even worried for me, asking whether I wasn't too busy."
The Jade Emperor raised a hand and covered her eyes.
"When I think that it may have been the last time..."
"No. It will not be, Suryeo."
King Yama shook his head and refused, her voice hard.
"Suryeo, do you not know who I am? I am Yeomra Hyeon. Would the ruler of the Underworld fail to save her own single child? Even if I must dam the River of Three Crossings itself, I will bring Huiyo back. So worry for nothing."
"I'm sorry, Hyeon. Here I am telling you to stay calm, while I'm the one coming apart."
The Jade Emperor rose, laid her hand upon the forehead of blood-spitting Huiyo, and closed her eyes.
A soft jade light flowed from the child into the Emperor, and Huiyo's complexion improved a little.
"...Haah."
After a long while, the Jade Emperor breathed out a heavy sigh and opened her eyes. In those jade eyes—the same color as Huiyo's—a keen light flared, then slowly settled.
Princess Cheonmyeong, bedridden because her divine power overflowed her frail body, could only improve if that power were drawn out of her.
But ripping the divine power out all at once would only shock her body further, so it required an intricate process: guiding the power—whose nature resembled the princess's own—out in minute threads, all the while healing her in tandem.
It was an emergency treatment much like bloodletting, and of her two parents, only the Jade Emperor could perform it.
King Yama's divine power sat far closer to death than to healing, and it was too fierce and violent to suit Huiyo's fragile body.
As the Emperor gathered and shaped the power drawn from Huiyo, something like a pearl, mingled of jade green and black, rose up above her palm.
The divine power forming the pearl churned and bubbled like molten lava. At the sight of it, the Emperor's eyes narrowed.
"Look, Hyeon. Huiyo's divine power is seething abnormally."
King Yama bent close over the pearl her wife held out, her thick brows drawing together.
"This... this only ever appears when Huiyo draws on her own power directly. What in the world could—"
"Your Highness the Princess!"
Someone came rushing unbidden into the inner chamber, then froze stiff at the sight of the Emperor and the Queen.
"H-His Majesty the Jade Emperor and Her Excellency King Yama. I greet you."
The figure bowing deeply was Hyangdan, head celestial maiden of Sangra Palace.
"Your mistress lies in such a state, and where have you been until now?"
The Jade Emperor's question cut cold. Hyangdan answered, sweat pouring down her face.
"There was a child entrusted to Her Highness's care... I have been arranging a dwelling for her and tending to her, and came straight from there."
"A child Huiyo entrusted to her care?"
"First, please see this."
Hyangdan drew an envelope from her robes.
"It is a letter Her Highness the Princess wrote to you both, with her own hand."
"What did you say?"
King Yama snatched the letter from Hyangdan, who was approaching on her knees to offer it up.
Hyangdan spoke.
"In truth, Her Highness commanded that I deliver it only after several years at the least had passed—should the two of you grow worried over how long she slept—however..."
The maiden checked the state of Huiyo, buried in the great bed, then squeezed her eyes shut and continued.
"...It seemed this letter bore some connection to Her Highness's present condition, and so I dared to disobey her command and present it early. I beg your merciful forgiveness."
"It is understood. Should the Princess blame you for this, tell her that I gave you pardon."
While the Jade Emperor spoke with Hyangdan, King Yama, absorbed in the letter, grew paler and paler.
"Hyeon?"
"..."
"Hyeon, what could be in it that would drain your face so? Let me see it."
Alarmed, the Jade Emperor all but tore the letter from her wife's hands and read. Before long, her own face had gone white.
"Merciful heavens."
King Yama whirled on the head celestial maiden and demanded, nearly shouting, "Hyangdan! This child you've been tending—she rose to divinity through the Princess, though she was born human, did she not?"
"Th-that is correct."
"That silver-haired human child we brought from the River of Three Crossings?"
"Yes, that is the one."
"Go at once and find out who she was in the mortal realm, and of what station! No—I shall go and question her myself. Guide the way!"