Unknown
His mother had awoken.
At those words, it was as though something detonated behind Cheon Gyeol-woo's eyes, and his mind went blindingly white.
Out of that blank white, the last memory he had of his mother surfaced.
Two years ago. Early summer. A late afternoon. Her birthday banquet.
The venue was Unjeungnu, the pavilion raised on the artificial pond within the palace grounds. Behind the pond lay a man-made garden, and an eunuch had once told him that the Dianthus flowers his mother so loved bloomed there in profusion.
He had already presented a birthday gift, of course, but that one had been prepared by the servants. The boy wanted to give his mother something made with his own two hands.
And so, in the middle of the banquet, he slipped away and climbed into the garden.
The Dianthus were in full bloom, and the whole world around him was a deep, saturated pink. The young Crown Prince hurried back and forth through the flower field, breaking off the biggest, prettiest blooms and gathering them into his arms.
By the time he had gathered a full armful, something cold suddenly touched the crown of his head.
Like invisible water, the sensation trickled from his crown down his nape, spilled along his spine, and soaked him through to the skin.
When he came back to himself, the boy was lying face-down in the flower bed.
He had no idea what had happened. Hardly any time had passed at all—too little for him to have fainted. Cheon Gyeol-woo decided he must simply have tripped and fallen for a moment.
The flowers he had gathered were crushed beneath him, mangled into a ruin. The boy was disappointed, but he soon began picking new ones.
He wrapped the fresh bouquet carefully in a silk cloth and tied it with a knot of colored cord. Cheeks flushed high with excitement, the young Crown Prince carried it back to the banquet hall.
"Mother."
"Oh, my prince. Whatever is that?"
"A gift this son has prepared for you, Mother."
"You gathered and made this yourself? Goodness me."
The Queen took the bouquet, her cheeks flushing with emotion. The King chortled and called him a clever lad, and the other guests seated around the hall were smiling warmly as well.
"Come here, my prince."
Cradling the bouquet, the Queen opened her arms toward her son. She was smiling like a flower in bloom.
The boy nestled into his mother's embrace, his face radiant with happiness, and the Queen pressed a kiss to her beloved son's cheek.
Contact.
His shadow burst outward like ink spilled across paper, spreading in an instant in every direction, and swallowed the banquet hall whole.
The sun had not even begun to set, yet Unjeungnu sank into a darkness deeper than night.
In that daytime turned pitch-black, terrified screams began to ring out.
Right beside the Crown Prince's ear, someone was shrieking in agony. The boy clapped his hands over his ears by reflex.
Only after covering them did he realize that the muffled scream was his mother's voice.
"Mother?"
The young Crown Prince looked up at the Queen in shock.
She shoved him away, her face contorted as though she were looking upon the most horrifying thing in creation, and crumpled to the floor.
Eyes wild with terror. Screams that threatened to split his eardrums.
The King caught the Queen as she fell. Then he, too, collapsed.
The sound of dishes shattering and wine spilling. The sound of people tripping over one another, tangling and thrashing. Wailing. Hoarse cries begging for mercy.
The boy turned around.
Even in that darkness blacker than night, everything was perfectly clear to the Crown Prince.
Those who fled, and those they trampled beneath their feet. One man strangling himself, another tearing at his own flesh.
And above it all, the darkness that blanketed and devoured them.
It was a hellish tableau of agony. And alone amid it, the young Crown Prince stood untouched.
That was proof, irrefutable, that he was the one who had made this hell.
Cheon Gyeol-woo dreamed that nightmare hundreds of times more.
And every time, he asked himself the same questions. What did I do wrong back then? What could I have done to escape that tragedy?
Was there a way out, and I simply didn't know it?
Or was there no way out at all?
Had I committed some sin? Was that why I was cursed?
If I sinned, then why punish others because of me? Why not punish me instead? Punish me, then! Kill me, if that's what it takes!
"If it were me, I'd have known shame enough to hang myself with my own hands... and yet Your Highness..."
Prince Waneon's words came back to him.
The boy had wanted to die by his own hand too. But he could not.
Because his parents were still alive. He had already committed an unforgivable offense against them—he could not pile the crime of dying before his own parents on top of it.
Because permission to die was never granted to him.
So when the decree came down that he was to be wed, he obediently set about preparing for his marriage.
And then that wedding. That child bride, bound to him against her will.
She took his hand in the darkness and led him forward, and at last—his mother, of all people—
"Your Highness? Are you quite well?"
At the maid's voice, thick with worry, Cheon Gyeol-woo returned to himself.
Then he bolted from the room.
There was no time even to put on his shoes. No time to think. The Crown Prince ran in his socked feet toward Junggungjeon, the Queen's Palace.
The courtyard was packed with Inner Guard officers. Confronted with the prince who had come charging in out of nowhere, they reflexively leveled their spears at him.
"Who goes there!"
"It's—Your Highness?"
Even after recognizing the Crown Prince, they did not lower their spears. His entry into the Queen's Palace had been forbidden ever since the Heukju incident.
"S-stand aside—"
The officers held their weapons, driven by terror or by duty, or both.
And the boy prince slipped between those blades like water flowing. He passed through the men barring his way as though he were a shadow.
"Wh—huh?"
An Inner Guard officer needed real martial skill to earn his post.
And it wasn't just one or two of them—it was dozens, and not one of them could lay hands on a single boy of eleven.
It was enough to make a ghost weep.
While everyone stared in stunned disbelief, the Crown Prince moved past them, himself entirely unaware that anything strange had just happened.
Once he was inside the palace proper, startled cries rang out from eunuchs and maids with every step he took. Some collapsed where they stood; a few threw themselves in his path with their very lives at stake.
Cheon Gyeol-woo flowed past them too, without effort.
People were murmuring in the inner reaches of the residence. He pushed open the door and stepped into the Queen's chamber.
"Y-Your Highness?"
"Aaagh!"
"Kyaagh!"
Those inside recoiled in horror, fleeing or sinking to the floor. Cheon Gyeol-woo did not see them at all.
He saw only the Queen, seated upright on her bedding, leaning against a cushioned armrest.
Then everything blurred before his eyes, and even she vanished from his sight.
"M-Mother..."
He stopped dead in the center of the chamber, tears streaming down his face, and then collapsed to his knees as though his legs had simply given out.
"Mother, this son—I, I..."
He stammered out the words between great, wrenching sobs.
Everyone was too frightened to approach him, or to try to stop him.
Then the Queen caught sight of her weeping son, and stretched out an arm that moved only with difficulty.
"My prince."
"......"
"Come here."
Smiling like a flower, just as she had two years ago, just before she fell asleep.
The nightmare and the present folded over one another in the Queen's face.
"Ah."
Terror seized Cheon Gyeol-woo. His breath would hardly come.
He was afraid enough to forget, entirely, the fact that when fear took hold of him, the darkness within him went berserk.
It was precisely then that a small hand touched his frozen, rigid back.
"Your Highness."
A young voice fell gently at his ear. It was Seruhwa. His child bride.
"It's all right."
He could not, with his head, understand what was supposed to be all right. And yet, astonishingly, his heart—wringed and crushed by fear—understood those words.
"It's all right, Your Highness."
Seruhwa whispered again and pressed lightly against his back.
Propelled by that tiny strength, Cheon Gyeol-woo moved forward. Swaying, stumbling, half crawling, he came to sit before his mother.
Only then did the Crown Prince realize that the Queen was weeping as well.
"My prince."
She called to him and reached out her hand.
If she touches me—if she touches me, something terrible will happen.
The screams. The screams that split his eardrums. His mother, collapsing. The picture of hell.
The fear came flooding back, and Cheon Gyeol-woo looked behind him by reflex.
He saw shining silver hair and jade-green eyes. Seruhwa, watching him, smiled faintly. Her small lips moved. He could read their shape.
It's all right.
The prince turned to face forward again. The Queen was waiting with her arms open.
The boy fell into his mother's embrace.
Her lips touched his cheek. Just as they had that day, two years ago.
Cheon Gyeol-woo squeezed his eyes shut—then opened them.
It was bright. It was not dark.
In the light, his mother was smiling. With eyes drenched through with tears.
Instead of screams, a soft voice reached him.
"It has been so hard on you, hasn't it?"
The boy could not answer. Instead, the tears he had held in for so long broke loose at last.
Leaving the Crown Prince and the Queen to their reunion, I sat facing the King in the next room.
Unlike me—I had caught some sleep in the Netherworld—Seol Deunghwa had stayed awake the entire night and was swaying on her feet, so I sent her off to rest while the King wept.
Seated before the side table, the King was holding an empty teacup in his reddened hands.
He really does look different now.
"That's herbal tea Hallakgung brewed with his own hands, after all. It never fails."
For someone who had lain abed for so long, the Queen was in remarkably good condition.
Just as Father had said, she had no memory of the Netherworld; her last recollection was of collapsing—of the very moment the Heukju occurred.
I had worried she might resent the Crown Prince, or shrink from him in revulsion, but thankfully that was not the case.
Quite the opposite: the instant she woke, the first thing she asked for was her son.
"Well, the Queen can hardly be blamed—she doesn't remember the past two years. But what about the King?"
In the first moments after she woke, the King had been too overcome with joy to think straight. The real test was only beginning now.
The King, who had been silent for a long while, spoke abruptly.
"I feel as though I've woken from a very long dream."