The Dawn of a New Life
Unknown
I decided to put the plan I had just improvised into action immediately.
"Ruhwa, dawn is almost here."
"D-Do I have to go already? C-Can't we stay just a little longer?"
The child's face crumpled as if she were about to cry. I asked her, seriously,
"Do you still not want to go back to the living world?"
"No, I don't!"
"Then there's something I'd like to offer you."
As my words continued, the child's eyes grew wider and wider.
"Your remaining l-life, you'd give it to me, Your Highness?"
"Yes. In return, I'll have your name entered in the Register of Immortals, so you can keep living in my palace."
I explained to Ruhwa, step by step, what it meant to be entered into that register.
"So... if I become a seondong, I can keep living here, and if I study hard, I can become a fairy who serves you when I'm bigger, and if I become a fairy, I might even get to go see my m-mama?"
"That's right."
"Then I want to! P-Please let me do it, please!"
Ruhwa clutched urgently at my sleeve.
I glanced up at the sky. I wanted to tell her more, but there wasn't much time left before the first rooster's crow.
"Then let's do it right now."
I went into my room with Ruhwa first.
I wrote one letter to leave for my mother and father, another letter giving Ansi all sorts of instructions, and a third for Hyangdan, the fairy who oversaw all of Sangra Palace.
That takes care of running-away preparations.
Ansi would handle the rest on her own, surely.
Since only my soul would slip away and my body would remain behind, no one would discover my absence for a while anyway.
They'll all just assume I've pushed myself too hard and fallen asleep again.
Next, I took out the Register of Immortals, where all the celestials of Sangra Palace were recorded.
"Oh, right. Ruhwa, what would you like to do about your name?"
"What do you mean?"
"If you keep using the name you had as a human, lingering attachment will make your training take that much longer. And the good deeds I go on to build under your name from now on might affect you, too."
"I-I'm not sure I follow... but you're saying it's b-better to make a new name?"
"Yes. It's a new life, so a new name is cleaner all around."
"Then... I'll go with 'Sohwa.'"
The child smiled brightly.
"My mama thought she was going to give birth to a tear-flower, but when I was born I turned out to be a laughing-flower instead, and she said she'd n-named me wrong, that she regretted it."
"...I like it. It has meaning, and it's a lovely name."
I wrote the name Sohwa in the Register of Immortals and recited the invocation.
"Princess Cheonmyeong, Sangra Huiyo, declares before all the gods and spirits of heaven and earth."
Light poured out from the letters I had written in the register and rose into the air, floating like a butterfly.
"The human Seruhwa has entered the Register of Immortals as a servant of Princess Cheonmyeong."
At my gesture, that light seeped into Ruhwa's forehead.
"From this moment, she is reborn as the seondong Sohwa."
The light wrapped around the child's whole body, then slowly faded away.
No longer Ruhwa but now Sohwa, the child touched her own forehead wonderingly.
"Is it over?"
"It is. The fairies of Sangra Palace will teach you what to do from here."
"It feels like my head has gone all clear."
"Feeling refreshed?"
"Yes. My body feels sturdier somehow... and the words come out easier, too."
"That's because you gained immortal bones when you became a seondong."
"What are immortal bones?"
"The bodies of celestials. They may look similar, but they're quite different from a human's."
"Wow..."
Sohwa, who had been turning this way and that to examine her own body in amazement, suddenly caught sight of her Lifespan Cord and gasped.
"Your Highness, my Lifespan Cord is fading! Has the first rooster already crowed?"
"No—it's because you're no longer human, so your tie to the living world is being cut. I should go before it's too late."
I quickly took hold of Ruhwa's Lifespan Cord. From the faintly glowing line came a warm, soft, pillowy sensation.
"Are you leaving right away?"
"Yes."
A look crossed Sohwa's face as though she wanted to hold me back. She must be frightened, being left here alone.
I crouched down and stroked the child's head.
"Grow up big and strong, and become a wonderful fairy one day."
"Your Highness..."
"Oh, and if you set out a bowl of clear water at dawn and pray while calling my name, I'll hear every word of it."
"Really? Truly?"
"Truly. So if anyone ever gives you trouble, come tattle to me. I'll make sure to scold them properly."
At my words, Sohwa laughed a short laugh, then whispered with a face on the verge of tears,
"Thank you so much, Your Highness."
"I'm grateful to you, too."
"...My life was nothing worth keeping, and so hard to bear. But I hope yours, Your Highness, becomes a joyful one."
Swallowing her tears, Sohwa smiled and waved her hand.
I smiled back and pulled the Lifespan Cord taut.
It felt like being sucked through a straw, and my surroundings blurred. My eyes closed on their own and my body tipped sideways.
Sohea's voice fading into the darkness stayed with me, ringing in my ears.
"...Tell my mama... that I'm sorry..."
It was the only lingering attachment Sohwa had left behind.
When I opened my eyes, the crow of a rooster announcing the dawn reached my ears.
It was an unfamiliar room.
Am I too late? Did everything go as planned?
I sprang up at once and went looking for a mirror first.
And before I even saw it, I already knew.
It worked.
My body felt light.
A slight dizziness had washed over me as I rose, but even so, this was a freshness my body had never known in all its life. Breathing came easy. My limbs weren't heavy. No headache. No ringing in my ears. I was walking barefoot, and the soles of my feet didn't hurt at all.
So this is how it feels.
So this was how everyone else walked around all the time.
In the few steps it took to reach the mirror, I was already giddy with excitement.
What do I do? I love it already!
Thrilled, I looked into the mirror—and there was a small girl with a pale face staring back at me.
The tiny silver-haired bundle, rabbit-like, whom I had been facing only moments before.
Seruhwa.
Nine years old.
Compared even to the seondong children of Heaven, among whom there was not a single ugly one, Ruhwa had been fairly cute—but she was far too small and thin.
When I first saw her, I thought she was six or seven, not nine.
This child wasn't sickly the way I had been. She was like this because she had been bullied and denied proper food and sleep while she grew.
Which meant that if she ate well and slept well, she would grow healthier than she was now.
After all, she had the constitution to live to a hundred.
I already feel good—but to think I could become even healthier than this.
A life where I wouldn't collapse no matter how much I moved, wouldn't vomit no matter what I ate, wouldn't grow dizzy just from standing, wouldn't struggle for breath from nosebleeds.
What would that feel like?
Just imagining it brought a smile to my lips on its own.
Let's get healthier, and fast! Grow up quickly, do everything this body could never do, travel everywhere...
My heart pounded with anticipation.
I had felt exactly like this the night before my first picnic with Mother and Father.
That picnic had never happened—I collapsed before we could go—but the life I was beginning now as Seruhwa would be one where I did not fall. One I would live through, and live well.
Right. But first, I'll have to untangle the troublesome knots wound around this child.
For a fate so cruelly twisted, when she now had a body that could actually live—well, I could straighten out that much, easily.
I looked over Ruhwa's face once more, slowly this time.
My original hair had been night-black like my father's. This body's hair, though, glittered silver.
Inherited from Ruhwa's mother, wasn't it?
Silver hair as lovely as a hem of snowflakes gathered and draped down.
The same hair as Ruhwa's mother, Seol Deunghwa—and the defining trait of the Seol tribe, a minority people forced into subjugation by the Empire.
Ruhwa was born of mixed blood, after the Emperor of the Empire violated Seol Deunghwa, daughter of the Seol chieftain.
That was why the child had been given a name steeped in sorrow, like a flower of tears.
Ruhwa herself had known little of the story of her birth—but she had known very well that she was everyone's punching bag.
When even the servants below her bullied her and couldn't be bothered to feed her properly, how could she not know?
It was the Emperor who invaded the land where the Seol people had lived well among themselves and slaughtered them. The Emperor who dragged Seol Deunghwa away by force. The Emperor who made Seruhwa come into being.
Yet the ones cursed as lowly and filthy, bullied and abused, were not the Emperor but the innocent mother and daughter.
That's all karma accruing to them—they'll regret it the moment they reach the underworld... humans, honestly.
I clicked my tongue, then froze mid-glance at the mirror.
Hold on. These eyes—these are my eyes.
The eyes reflected in the mirror, Ruhwa's eyes, were shimmering with an uncanny jade light.
The color that symbolized the Jade Emperor—and the jade-green I had inherited from my mother.
Ruhwa's eyes were originally black.
It seemed my possession of this body had changed their color.
Is it my Cheonmyeong eyes?
But then again, a color like this would never appear among humans.
Wasn't it too conspicuous? Would I be found out?
I debated with myself, gripping the mirror, before soon lowering my head.
No one will notice the change except Ruhwa's mother, anyway.
Who would remember the eye color of a neglected, tormented imperial princess?
Only Seol Deunghwa, who had adored Seruhwa with all her heart despite her being her enemy's daughter, would ever notice.
And besides, everyone here will be seeing Ruhwa for the first time.
Seruhwa was the eleventh princess of the Pyeong Empire, born in the imperial palace of Pyeong and raised within its walls all her life.
But the place where Ruhwa had died—and the place where I had been reborn in her stead—was not the palace of Pyeong.
"Just slap something together, whatever."
"Are you sure this is really okay?"
"She'll be dead by the Crown Prince's hand tomorrow anyway, so who cares."
"I still don't understand why only the likes of us were assigned to a princess who's about to become Crown Princess."
Just then, the shadows of maids gathering outside the paper doors were cast into the room.
Soon, without so much as a greeting, the doors burst open and a chill autumn wind swept in—along with a voice colder than that wind.
"Wake up, my lady! You must hurry and prepare—"
"Oh my. She's already up, I see."
This was the royal palace of Un, one of the Pyeong Empire's vassal states.
"Princess, we've come to help you prepare for the wedding ceremony."
And today was the day of Seruhwa and the Crown Prince of Un's wedding.