A Lawful Runaway and a Mother's Blessing
At some point I had fallen asleep, and the moment I woke up, I nearly shrieked in horror.
How could I doze off again when Seol Deunghwa was waiting for me in the mortal realm!
And I still haven't found the Queen!
It was my parents who stopped me as I tried to rush back.
"As for the mortal queen's life cord, your father found it ahead of time. It's here in Yeomra Palace."
"You did, Father?"
"While watching over you in the lower realm, I figured you'd come to the Netherworld looking for that cord sooner or later."
So they really had been watching all along. Thinking back over my recent conduct on the assumption that Mom and Dad had seen everything, I felt my face flush with embarrassment.
I looked up at Father and asked in a shrinking voice, "You truly saw everything...?"
"Oh, my little princess."
Father pinched my cheek gently, not hard enough to hurt, and beamed at me. "Remember when you used to gaze down at the mortals from the Heavens? I only watched as much as that. There's nothing to be embarrassed about."
...
Anywhere the sky is visible, the eyes of the Heavens cannot be escaped. Anywhere above the ground, the eyes of the Netherworld cannot be escaped.
In other words, everything that happens outdoors is seen in its entirety, but whatever takes place indoors—beneath a roof that blocks the sky and on floors that cover the earth—is mostly beyond their sight.
Of course, if Mom or Dad exerted a bit of power, even that much could be pierced through entirely.
I've never felt anyone's gaze on me in particular, so I suppose they didn't watch beyond that.
That was a small mercy.
Mother, who had been watching Father and me, spoke up. "Huiyo, I know what you're worried about, but dawn has not yet come. You have time, so share a meal with your mother and father before you go."
If it was still before dawn, I hadn't slept nearly as long as I'd feared. There was time to spare, and I couldn't refuse my mother's offer.
And so I ended up dining with my parents.
It was a feast of a hundred and twenty courses, the first I'd seen in ages.
I used to eat these dishes all the time, but they taste so much better with a healthy body.
I kept lifting my spoon as though bewitched, and when I finally came to my senses, both my parents had stopped eating and were simply staring at me.
Is something on my face?
The memory of what had happened in front of the Crown Prince surfaced, and I quickly rubbed my cheek with my hand.
Nothing was smeared on it at all?
As I tilted my head in confusion, Father scooped me up in a crushing hug.
"Oh, my adorable little princess!"
"F-Father?"
"This is the first time I've ever seen you eat this well! My remarkable daughter! Even with a changed body, our girl is still our girl! I could keep you inside my eye and feel no pain—"
"Sun, don't disrupt Huiyo's meal."
Mother cut off Father's relentless barrage of doting nonsense with a stern voice. "Our Huiyo, our dear Huiyo who was indifferent to whatever feast we laid before her, is eating so deliciously right now—and instead of cheering her on, you would interfere? How could you, as her father!"
"I-I'm sorry, I just couldn't contain myself..."
"Huiyo, pay us no mind and eat up quickly. There's a good girl."
Released from Father's arms, I found myself staring blankly at the object Mother held in her hand.
A small mirror with a jade frame, densely engraved with script.
"Mother, that's... a Recording Mirror, isn't it? The treasure that captures whatever it reflects and plays it back endlessly, right?"
...
...You were recording me eat?"
"...It's just that I've never seen you eat this well before... ahem."
Mother trailed off awkwardly and cleared her throat. And yet the hand holding the Recording Mirror never wavered. She showed no sign of putting it away.
I started to protest, but swallowed the complaint and picked up my spoon again. After all, I was a runaway now, even if a sanctioned one. This much was nothing.
I never imagined they'd actually grant me permission to run away.
Mom and Dad had apparently finished their discussion with each other already—the proof being that they both told me I could continue living as a human.
Naturally, a few conditions were attached.
First... no divine power, obviously, and I'm to avoid using the Eyes of Providence whenever possible.
In other words, nothing that would strain my original body.
Since I couldn't control divine punishment myself, they had bent the law slightly so that it would be triggered based not on my soul, but on my true body residing in Sangra Palace.
Which meant that harming me while I was "Seruhwa" would no longer invoke divine punishment.
It had been a rather useful ability, but apparently every instance of punishment had burdened my original body—so there was nothing to be done about it.
And second, I'm to continue receiving treatment.
While I stayed in the mortal realm, my parents planned to attempt on my body all the treatments they had avoided—methods too painful, or ones that risked knocking me unconscious from shock.
With my soul currently separated, such treatments couldn't hurt or kill me.
Which also means my body is in bad enough shape to warrant trying methods like these.
At best, my lifespan might stretch a little longer... though I didn't hold out much hope.
Still, I didn't object. It was my body in the Heavens that they'd be treating, so there was nothing I actually needed to do myself.
Trying to re-seal my divine power will affect the mortal-realm me a bit too, I suppose.
Since my illness was caused by an excess of divine power, attempts to seal it had been made very early on, by every method imaginable.
Not a single attempt had gone well, though. The first time my Lifespan Cord was severed completely, the divine power sealing had been a major contributing factor.
The reason was simple: it was my own divine power that kept this body—which should have collapsed long ago—functioning at all. Seal it, and I would die on the spot.
My divine power eats away at my body, and yet it's also what keeps me breathing... how paradoxical.
In any case, the approach of curing my illness by sealing my divine power had been abandoned entirely afterward—but now, seizing on the fact that I had possessed a human body, my parents seemed intent on trying the seal again.
And finally... to live all the more like a human.
They told me that without the kind of impenetrable guard Sangra Palace provided, word spreading that I was Princess Cheonmyeong would draw monsters and lesser spirits to me, putting me in danger.
Seol Deunghwa and the fox-spirit siblings, who already knew the truth, couldn't be helped—but while Mom and Dad would do their utmost to keep the wicked things from noticing my absence, I was not to make any new acquaintances from now on.
Well, they did say I could actively use my identity whenever it was necessary.
Immortals and transcendent beings were mostly under my parents' influence anyway, so if I ever needed to, I was to reveal myself and work them to the bone. But with monsters and mortals, I was to keep my secret as much as possible.
So I won't be able to tell the Crown Prince either.
Once he was a little older, once the Crown Prince trusted me enough—I had wanted to tell him everything, truthfully.
An immense guilt weighed on me, but I understood my parents' worry, so there was nothing I could do.
There had been far more attempted assaults than I'd realized—attacks filtered out by Sangra Palace's guard and wards before I was ever aware of them.
As Seruhwa, I was already likely to be targeted because of my circumstances; if monsters took their swings at me day after day on top of that, I doubted I'd get to enjoy my hard-won life as a human at all.
Let me live as much like the real Seruhwa as I can. In exchange, I'll just have to be even kinder to the Crown Prince.
By the time the meal ended, Ansi had arrived with the Queen's life cord. The Queen's life cord was in a sleeping state.
"I've made her dream, deliberately."
Father floated the life cord in midair as he explained. "Like most life cords, she'll retain almost no memory of the Netherworld once she wakes. It's better that she never realize who you are, so I've kept her asleep."
"Thank you, Father."
Mother handed me a carved jade tea caddy. "This is the soul-binding flower tea of the Seocheon Flower Garden, made by Hallakgungi of the Gwalgam Pavilion. Fed to mortals driven mad by Eodukseoni, it brings visible improvement at once. It will work on this mortal queen as well."
"You prepared this in advance?"
"I did. I had a feeling you'd need it. You wanted to heal the mortals, didn't you?"
"...Yes. Thank you."
They had been so busy, and yet they had watched over me so carefully—attentive enough to anticipate what I would need and prepare it beforehand.
With a slightly lumpen feeling in my chest, I accepted the pouch.
Ansi, who had been watching, sniffled loudly, declared she would head to the mortal realm first, and flew off out of sight.
"We'll carry you there ourselves, Huiyo."
Father scooped me up in one smooth motion.
My parents and I left Sangrabyeolgung together and made our way to Samdocheon.
At the riverbank, we boarded the great vessel reserved for King Yama alone, and traveled to the spot where the gate to the Underworld—the one I had opened—still stood.
The boat stopped where the Queen's Lifespan Cord stretched down into the black water.
Father entered Samdocheon himself and sent the Queen's life cord through the gate to the Underworld first.
Meanwhile, Mother stroked my head gently and smiled. "Huiyo."
"Yes, Mother?"
"Do you understand what it means, when I tell you to live all the more like a human?"
"It means I should be careful not to have my identity discovered, and not use my divine power or the Eyes of Providence."
"Half right."
"Is there another meaning?"
"Haven't you watched a great deal of how humans live?"
"I've seen plenty, but... I'm not sure I understand."
I couldn't tell what Mother was getting at. As I tilted my head, she bent her knees and planted kisses all over my cheeks—mwah, mwah.
"M-Mother?"
Father's dizzying baptism of kisses I was used to, but when Mother—who so rarely did this—started in on it, I couldn't help but squirm. "I'm already two hundred and nine years old! Even by the standards of the Heavens, two hundred makes me a fully grown adult..."
As I mumbled on, cheeks burning red, Mother let out a laugh. "However old you grow, you'll be a baby in your mother's and father's eyes for the rest of your life?"
"Uuu..."
"Huiyo."
Mother went on, still stroking my hair. "Humans live fiercely. They live barely a hundred years, and yet within that short life they endure countless changes, feel searing emotions, and make astonishing leaps. Ten years of a human's life will feel far longer than a hundred years of an immortal's."
...
"Live ten years that feel like a hundred. Try everything you wish to try, gather experience upon experience... and be happy."
Only then did I understand what Mother meant.
Because in the single month I had spent as a human, I had lived through far more than in any month spent inside Sangra Palace.
"Yes, Mother."
I answered as I hugged her tight. "That's exactly how I'll live. Like a human."
Mother said nothing, and simply held me close in return.