Unknown
"So it really does come down to this—when Your Highness is happy, the darkness doesn't spread? You're smiling, and the shadow is staying perfectly calm."
"...I see. I think I understand a little now."
A fresh smile bloomed across the Crown Prince's face as he gazed at me from a distance.
"Then it was truly a matter of my own heart all along. And if that is the case, then depending on what I set my mind to..."
The Crown Prince lowered his eyes and extended a hand.
The boy's soft, relaxed face froze over in an instant. Between his long, delicate lashes, his black eyes turned as cold as a winter night.
When those eyes fixed on the shadow pooled beneath his palm, it rippled once, then swelled all at once.
The darkness spread like ink dropped onto paper, flooding the floor in a heartbeat before crawling up the walls and swallowing the ceiling whole.
In no time at all, the room had been plunged into total darkness.
Everywhere except around me.
"Whoa!"
In that pitch-black void without a single point of light, only the spot where I sat glowed bright.
Even for me—someone who rarely startled at anything—it was quite a wondrous sight.
I reached out into the darkness churning at my side. Where my hand touched, it drew back by exactly that much.
"Wow!"
As I moved this way and that, the darkness wriggled out of my path, and brightness followed in my wake.
It felt as though I had become the moon.
Every place I touched grew bright, like moonlight spilling into a night where not a single star had risen.
I rose to my feet and turned slowly about, surveying the darkened room.
It was mysterious how each footstep swept the darkness away and lit the floor beneath it.
Like this, it isn't dreary at all. That strange sense of dread barely registers anymore, either.
Darkness touched by light wasn't frightening—just as a night sky is beautiful when studded with stars.
When I lifted a finger and drew it through the air, the darkness receded along the trail and guttered out, like a falling star.
"It's beautiful...."
The admiration slipped out of me on its own. Giddy, I turned to the Crown Prince.
"Your Highness, this is incredible! How did you do it?"
"I didn't know it would turn out this way, either. I simply let my feelings flow as they were...."
The Crown Prince trailed off, his answer carrying a faintly breathless edge, as though even he were surprised.
"Your feelings? Ahh, so you're not afraid of the darkness anymore, now that you're with me?"
"...That isn't entirely wrong. But rather than simply no longer being afraid—it is that you, my lady, are to me like the moon within the night...."
His voice grew quieter, sinking low.
I was too absorbed in stirring my hands through the darkness, raising light wherever I touched, and I never caught the words he had murmured away.
"Pardon? What did you say?"
"Nothing. By the way—would you care to help me a little?"
"With what?"
"I am now trying to gather the darkness back in, but it does not go well."
"Shall I hold your hand?"
Ever since the day I had stripped off his gloves, we had mostly clasped hands whenever we practiced together. It seemed to steady the boy's nerves.
"...Yes. Please do."
As if only now remembering to be embarrassed, the Crown Prince hesitated before answering.
Parting the darkness, I made my way to where he sat. Since everything I touched grew bright, finding him within the black was no longer much of a challenge.
I settled in close beside the Crown Prince and spoke.
"If we keep practicing like this, we'll be able to show Her Majesty the Queen once she wakes."
"Pardon? That is... His Majesty will not look kindly upon it."
"Still, you must show them that you've recovered, Your Highness. And offer your apology, too."
"...What I did is not something an apology can smooth over."
"But it wasn't something you did on purpose, Your Highness. It was an accident."
"......."
The Crown Prince's expression darkened.
Then again—whatever the Queen might think, the King, as things stood, would refuse the Crown Prince an audience, apology or no.
I have to find out the cure from the Flower God somehow.
Truthfully, it would be far quicker to use the Paljuryeong to go to the flower fields of the Western Heaven and ask outright—but that would give away the fact that I had run off from the palace.
I should send Ansi to circle around the subject and fish it out.
Clasping the Crown Prince's hand in both of mine, I spoke as though making a vow.
"I'll speak to them first and get their permission. Once they say yes, let's pay our respects together!"
"You need not strain yourself on my account, my lady."
"It's no strain. Once Your Highness is accepted again, things will be easier for me, too."
"But because of me—"
"Nope. This is all for my own sake, so don't get any ideas, Your Highness."
When I lifted my chin and said it with playful haughtiness, the Crown Prince let out a laugh. The darkness rippled and shrank, following the sound.
The candles caught flame once more.
The boy's smile, lit by the firelight, was a lovely sight indeed.
...I might actually grow attached to him like this.
If this was how it was already, then after years more spent together...
I'd better be careful.
Because the more attached I became, the harder it would be when the time came to part.
Seok-ran appeared exactly on the two weeks she had promised.
Even after realizing partway through that the Crown Prince's side had almost no people to speak of—and adjusting the direction of her investigation accordingly—she had still kept her deadline, which showed she hadn't earned her thousand years as a Maegu for nothing.
"Long time no see, Princess, meow!"
A white fox with striped markings around her eyes and mouth, dressed to the nines and sitting primly on a cushion like a person, made for a strangely comical sight.
All the more so with an even larger fox sitting stiffly at attention behind her.
This one only has a black tail-tip, huh.
"Is this the younger sibling you mentioned before?"
"That's right, meow! His name is Seok-juk, meow."
"Doesn't seem like... a Maegu."
"He's not a thousand years old yet, meow! Kehehe—and he's an aspiring Cheonho, meow!"
"Ahh, so he's still polishing his Dao."
"Exactly, meow! Unlike me, he's a proper scholar of a fox. Seok-juk, pay your respects, meow."
At Seok-ran's words, the fox yokai behind her bowed his head with perfect decorum.
"I have the honor of beholding Her Highness the Princess... urk. My name is Seok-juk... urk."
Hm? What was with that speech?
While I tilted my head, Seok-ran smacked the back of Seok-juk's head with her front paw.
"Kyahaha, look at you, shaking the very nine heavens with your bellyaching, meow! Just speak comfortably, meow. The Princess is merciful, so she won't hold it against you, meow."
Ahh, so he tried to force out sounds his muzzle couldn't make and ended up like that.
Seok-juk, freshly smacked, flared up at once and growled.
"Grrr—do you take me for a thundering brute like you, sister?! One must mind one's manners if one is to become a Cheonho!"
"What does that have to do with becoming a Cheonho, meow? Aren't you just supposed to polish your Dao, meow?"
"Polishing the Dao is merely the basics! One must pass the final interview to ascend to the immortal registry! If I'm struck down in the interview for being rude to Her Highness, will you take responsibility, sister?!"
"That's exactly why I keep telling you the Princess doesn't care about that sort of thing! Am I wrong, meow?"
Seok-ran looked back at me, seeking agreement. I was just about to nod when Seok-juk jolted, leapt into the air, and pressed his front paws down hard on his sister's head.
"You airheaded sister of mine! Is Her Highness your drinking buddy?! Behave with proper courtesy!"
"Kyaa! The Princess said she doesn't mind, so why are you the one fussing, meow!"
"Even if she says she doesn't mind, there are lines that must be kept! I swear I'll burst a gut and die before my thousand years at this rate, all because of you!"
Watching the fox siblings snarl at each other, Ansi whispered to me.
"Perhaps because this fox aspires to be a Cheonho, he does seem a cut above a Maegu, Your Highness."
"I think they're both fine."
I gave a shrug and beckoned to the squabbling siblings.
"That's enough—speak however you like. That forced pronunciation is more grating to listen to."
"See, meow!"
Seok-ran preened triumphantly, while Seok-juk clamped his mouth shut, watching my face for a reaction.
I smiled at the enormous fox whose whole body had shrunk in on itself.
"And this won't affect the final interview for your Cheonho exam, so relax. In fact, if you help me with my business, you might even earn extra points for good deeds."
"...! My deepest thanks, Your Highness!"
Seok-juk, who had been wilting, revived in an instant at the mention of good-deed points, his eyes gleaming bright.
Still smiling, I added,
"Of course, if you fail to do the work properly, I might be so disappointed that I go complain to the Cheonho Lord about this fox running loose down in the mortal realm."
"....!"
Seok-juk bristled from head to tail, shuddered, and buried his head at lightning speed.
"I shall serve Her Highness with every fiber of my being, Your Highness! Command me as you please!"
He'll be easier to handle than his sister, then.
Still, as an aspiring Cheonho, he managed passable formal speech even in fox form. His pronunciation was just a little off.
Seok-ran shot her brother a look of pure disgust, then drew out a bound book and offered it to me.
"Kyaa, this is the result of me and my brother investigating what you asked for, Princess, meow."
"Good work."
I opened the book and leafed through it.
"I did most of the legwork, but Seok-juk here did the organizing, meow, keh. Seok-juk, give her the rundown, meow."
"...In order: the list of the dead from the Black Curse incident, the list of patients suffering fits at the time, the list of Eodukseoni victims over the following two years, the current state of the factions supporting the Crown Prince, and last, the results of the additional survey of palace factions that you ordered, Your Highness. A table of contents has been attached at the front."
Even at a glance, the investigation was more detailed and thorough than I had expected. The organization was clean, too—done the heavenly way.
He hasn't eaten his thousand years for nothing. His side has clearly studied hard for the Cheonho exam.
A Cheonho was a fox who, yokai-born though she was, had been acknowledged by Heaven and entered into the immortal registry.
Since that required Heaven's recognition, they naturally had to be well-versed in the ways and the law of the sky.
Which meant that aspiring Cheonho were, in the end, much the same breed as humans preparing for the old civil service examinations.
It's nice that the format is familiar—easy to read.
Putting off a closer look for later, I skimmed through to check the state of the material, and something caught my eye.
"There are people marked with red dots on these lists. What's this?"
"Ah, those are the fake victims, meow."
"Fake? What do you mean?"
"Word spread that the Crown Prince got them, but keh, really they were killed by someone else who pinned the deaths on him. There are quite a few, meow."
"What? Is that actually true?"
Incredulity sharpened my voice without my meaning it to. Seok-ran flinched, flattened her ears, and explained in a rush.
"I-I wrung this information out of every single yokai and stray spirit living in and around the palace, meow! I even hunted down the earth spirits and asked them, meow! They saw it with their own eyes, meow! It'll be accurate, meow, kyaa!"
Seok-juk added his own explanation.
"Each entry records who testified and what they said, Your Highness. We have completed cross-verification as well, so it should be nearly exact."
With a strange, hollow feeling, I flipped through the book. Even at a glance, the names marked in red far outnumbered the unmarked ones.
...Come to think of it, it had never made sense that so many people had died around a Crown Prince who, ever since the Black Curse, had been shut away in Jamryongdang like a prisoner.
There could not be that many people willing to crawl into a place rumored to mean certain death.
So most of these were them killing off their own rivals and enemies and quietly dumping the bodies in Jamryongdang?
Frankly, until now I had assumed that eunuch had simply inflated a baseless rumor—but they had actually killed people and pinned the blame on him.
"Humans really are something else...."
I snapped the book shut in irritation. As I pressed a hand to my forehead, the fox siblings went rigid with nerves, so I waved a hand.
"You two did well. Now—what shall I give you as a reward?"
"Kyaa! A-a reward? You're going to give us something, Princess, meow?"
"Did you think I'd work you for free? Tell me what you want. As long as it's within my power, I'll grant it."