The Seol Clan's Secret Tea
And then, at some point, Dad's voice rose up from the Samdocheon and cut in.
"Huiyo, and make sure you enjoy every last one of humanity's privileges, too."
"Privileges?"
"Praying to the gods and spirits of heaven and earth."
Dad smiled and added, "You know what they say—sincerity moves Heaven. Well, your mother and I are already prepared to be moved by whatever you do, so pray to us any time you need something."
"Isn't that a little dangerous, though? You and Mom meddling in the affairs of the lower world like that……"
"If you pray as a human, and we answer that prayer, it's not 'meddling,' is it? There's proper justification for it."
"It works just like that? Just glossing over it like that?"
"It does, yes. And if it ever feels like a big deal, you just set out an offering table and pray, that's all. That's exactly how humans have always prayed and received their blessings, isn't it? You'd simply be a human who happens to get answers a little more often than most."
"A little?"
"Right. Just a little—a lot. That way, not even that blasted law of providence gets broken."
Dad flashed a sly, foxlike grin.
……Now that I thought about it, it didn't sound wrong, exactly. But could we really do that?
Something told me that my parents' version of "a little—a lot" would not be a little at all.
When I frowned in dissatisfaction, Mom piled on as well.
"And if you ever need something beyond us, pray to whichever god or immortal you please. Who would dare ignore your prayers?"
All at once, my parents' long history of utter, shameless doting flashed before my eyes like a lantern parade.
Like the time I said I wanted to see where Dad worked, and they built an entire annex palace—Sangrabyeolgung—in the Netherworld.
Like the time Zhuque came bearing the Jujeoui as a gift and I said I wanted to meet the other divine beasts too, and they convened a grand summit of every sacred beast in the celestial realm.
Like the time I called the baby White Tiger cute, and every divine beast cub in the neighborhood came trotting over to live in Sangra Palace's gardens.
Like the time I watched a typhoon raging in the lower world and asked why typhoons never happened in Heaven, and the Wind Master, Rain Master, and Cloud Master all collapsed from overwork.
'I'd marveled, "Oh, so we get typhoons in Heaven now!"—and only found out later that the three of them had worked themselves half to death trying to make one. I nearly had a heart attack……'
And on and on it went. The time I said I loved reading, and a personal library of eight hundred eighty-eight rooms was built for me. The time I marveled at clams making pearls, and they piled up a mountain as tall as Mount Taebaek out of every species of pearl oyster imaginable. The time I said rainbows lifted my spirits, and they kept a rainbow suspended above Sangra Palace all year round. The time I asked who the strongest warrior in Heaven was, and a full martial arts tournament was held to find out.
The single flaw in my otherwise perfect parents was that…… they loved me just a tiny bit too much, and so these things had truly happened too many times to count.
'……Praying to my parents should be reserved strictly as a last resort.'
Wiping cold sweat on the inside, I nodded.
"Yes. I'll pray if I ever need to."
"Well then."
Dad scooped me up again and dove into the Samdocheon. Mom followed close behind.
Since the Queen's spirit had been sent back on its way, the Lifespan Cord that had guided us was no longer visible.
Even so, Dad found the gate to the Underworld I had left open in the pitch-black water at a single glance, and lowered me down through it.
At the gate, I turned back to look at Mom and Dad one last time.
My dad, with hair as black as mine, thick bold brows, and eyes as dark as the Samdocheon itself—fierce as a wild beast to look at, yet endlessly gentle with me.
My mom, with jade-pale hair falling loose, the very same eyes as mine and the very same jade-green irises—stern and cold-seeming, yet loving me more deeply than anyone.
My beloved mom and dad.
I smiled bright and wide, and waved.
"I'm off!"
It wasn't a lie, either—because when the end came, I would come back to their side for certain.
Crossing back through the gate to the Underworld, I found Seol Deunghwa looking pale as a ghost.
She'd gone white as a sheet overnight. Had she been that nervous?
"You've returned, Your Highness!"
"Sorry it took so long."
I shed the Jujeoui and looked around the room.
Even though she'd screened off the windows layer upon layer with folding screens, sunlight was still seeping faintly into the chamber.
"Everything all right while I was gone?"
"……Once, in the middle of the night, His Majesty the King came looking for you."
"The King? What happened?"
At my startled question, Seol Deunghwa answered with a slight tremor in her voice.
"Just as Your Highness instructed…… I warned him that if he disturbed Her Majesty the Queen now, she might never wake again, and he withdrew."
"Well done. That couldn't have been easy."
The fury of an enraged king could not have been gentle to withstand, but Seol Deunghwa seemed to have handled it calmly and well.
As I began tidying up the traces of the Underworld gate I'd opened, she helped at my side and asked carefully,
"Was Your Highness successful? Her Majesty the Queen is still asleep, so I……"
"Yes, it worked. She'll wake before long."
She'd been unconscious for a long while, so she wouldn't spring awake right away. Her soul had wandered far and must be terribly worn out.
I tucked everything away into the Eight-Pouch Charm, glancing over the Queen's condition as I did.
'Hmm…… it might take her a few days to recover. Her body has changed so visibly that there'll be no mistaking it, but will that King be able to wait those few days quietly?'
As I pondered, my eyes landed on the caddy of Honssarigot flowers Mom had packed for me.
'Oh, that'll do perfectly.'
After clearing away even the golden cord I'd strung for the barrier, I turned to Seol Deunghwa.
"Can you brew tea?"
"Tea, Your Highness? I'm not skilled at it, but the basic method, I could manage……"
"Do you think you could brew this, then?"
When I showed her the caddy, Seol Deunghwa went pale with alarm.
"Is this…… tea leaf? It looks like a jewel carved into the shape of a flower petal and gilded with gold…… I've never seen tea leaves like these."
All the flower teas made in the Seocheon Flower Garden looked like this—unfamiliar shapes to humans, as I'd expected.
"It's a tea from the Heavens. So I'll do the brewing, and you can just stand by and make up some story about it being a traditional Seol tribe tea."
"Y-your Highness?"
"The Seol tribe is descended from the divine bloodline. Calling a tea that gods drink your traditional tea isn't exactly a stretch, is it?"
"I-is that……"
Seol Deunghwa's face twisted into an anguished grimace, but I wasn't particularly worried—once push came to shove, she always performed.
Both what I'd witnessed through Seruhwa's past-life memories and everything I'd observed since said the same thing: beneath her gentle exterior, Seol Deunghwa was iron to the core.
'Aside from her ability to tell truth from lie, she has no powers at all and her body is frail—yet on the flight to the Kingdom of Un, she attempted escape with Ruhwa in her arms, alone, again and again.'
Taking up the tea caddy, I told her,
"Go out and ask them to bring us a tea set."
The tea set arrived in no time at all. And as a bonus, in came the King, the royal physician, the Senior Lady of the Inner Chambers, and a whole crowd of eunuchs including the Head Chamberlain.
The bedchamber, now stripped entirely of its folding screens, was spacious enough that even with all of them crowded in, there was room to spare.
The King glared at the Queen with bloodshot eyes and growled like a beast.
"You claimed you could wake the Queen. In the end, it was nothing but bluster!"
"It is not bluster. Please, wait a little longer."
Though she shook like a leaf, Seol Deunghwa answered him without a moment's hesitation. The core of her truly was solid steel.
"We waited until the last day of the month, then waited another night—and now you ask me to wait even further? For what?"
"As the final step, Her Highness the Crown Princess will personally brew the medicinal tea handed down within our clan."
"Medicinal tea?"
The King frowned and turned to look at me.
The royal physician standing at his side asked, sounding puzzled,
"If it is a tea of your clan, why would Her Highness the young Crown Princess brew it, rather than Noble Consort Seol?"
"Because handling that tea is possible only for a rare few among the clan who are born with the gift. I lacked the talent and was never taught, but I know the method—and so I taught it to Her Highness the Crown Princess, who has the gift."
"Then you mean no one else can brew it?"
"No, Your Grace. Anyone else could use the very same leaves and the very same implements, and the result would be nothing but water with no virtue in it whatsoever."
While Seol Deunghwa spun her tale smooth and seamless, I was already at work brewing the tea.
Ordinary tea means steeping leaves in a teapot and pouring the result into cups—but the flower teas of the Seocheon Flower Garden are a little different.
'Ah, right—the medicinal herbs get steeped the ordinary way.'
True to her word that this was a tea blended for healing, there was a very small pouch of herbs bundled together with the petals. I dropped the whole pouch into the teapot, and while it steeped, I began gently peeling the gold leaf clinging to the outside of the crystal-like petals and laying the flakes into an empty cup.
'This is actually not gold leaf but a kind of shell, but still.'
At the sight, the King's face twisted violently.
"You said it was tea—what in the world is that? Are you not scraping molten stuff off a gemstone? Head Chamberlain! Seize that at once—"
Before the King's command could even land, Seol Deunghwa hurriedly cut in.
"That is not a gemstone—it is a flower petal!"
"A petal? How does that look like a petal to anyone?"
"Th-that extraordinary thing is a secret art of the Seol tribe—it will become tea shortly! I beg your gracious patience, just a moment longer to observe!"
To speak so well, bowing to no one even while trembling like that—remarkable, truly.
I left the King in Seol Deunghwa's capable hands and busied my own hands with the work.
'I've watched the celestial maidens do this plenty of times, but this is my first attempt myself.'
The maidens peeled the shells off with such ease, but being my first try, it was anything but easy for me.
Straining and groaning, I finally managed to peel them all and get them into the cup, then dropped the gem-like cores—the peeled petals themselves—into another empty cup beside it.
With a soft little clink of stone against porcelain, I could feel every eye in the room fixed on me in sheer disbelief at whatever bizarre spectacle this was supposed to be.
Ignoring them, I carefully lifted the teapot and poured the smallest trickle of herb-steeped water into the cup holding the petal cores.
'Just a drop or two should— hyaah!'
The teapot was heavier than I'd expected, and the water came gushing out. I yanked the pot away at once, but too late.
The petals, doused in the hot water, melted clean away and turned to liquid, filling the cup in an instant and then brimming over the rim.
"……!"
"Is that……?"
"That was nowhere near enough water to overflow a cup?"