The Play That Comes to Me
Unknown.
Now I understood why Seol Deunghwa, Ansi, and Court Lady Kim hadn't breathed a single word to me about the state of the palace.
They kept their mouths shut because going back there left them like this. Because they were afraid I'd worry, or that I'd be frightened.
I heaved another sigh and beckoned to Seok-ran.
"That's enough for now. If anything new turns up, come tell me again."
"Got it, nyang! Thankies for the peach, nyang! Princess is the best of all, nyang! Kehehehek!"
The white fox took the heavenly peach gingerly in her jaws and vanished over the windowsill, trailing that bizarre laughing sound behind her.
Ansi glared after her with evident displeasure and muttered, "Your Highness, it seems some defilement has latched itself onto the window. Shall I sprinkle salt upon it?"
"Salt, really? Seok-ran is a useful yokai, so try to be a little generous with her."
"You are far too merciful, Your Highness. Yokai are things whose necks ought to be wrung the very moment one lays eyes on them...."
While Ansi grumbled and went about fastening the door, I drew the box holding the Three-Watch Bug out of my eight-beaded bell once more.
"Jungsi, come out here and show me what Sangsi is seeing, won't you?"
A translucent butterfly fluttered up, alighted on the tip of my nose, and spread its wings.
Through those wings wavering before my eyes, the scene that Sangsi — lodged in the Left State Councilor's mind — was witnessing began to unfold as if reflected in a mirror.
"Left Councilor — are you saying you mean to raise a rebellion, here and now?"
The lamplit room. One of the men seated around it had gone white to the lips as he asked.
Oh — so the Prince Waneon faction is gathered in council right now.
It seems I drew the Three-Watch Bug out at an utterly perfect moment.
"Rebellion, you say? This is no rebellion. This is a righteous restoration of the throne."
It was the Left State Councilor's voice. He cleared his throat with a low harrumph and looked around the room before continuing.
"The whole country already knows the King has gone mad and that the Crown Prince is cursed. The hearts of the people are with us."
"But when Her Majesty the Queen awoke, His Royal Highness also—"
"Even if the King has come to his senses now, who would believe it? Does madness heal so easily? Madness born of a cursed Crown Prince, no less!"
"That may well be so, but the Commander of the Inner Guard and the Minister of War are both unshakable loyalists. Our forces—"
"Tsk! Why do you all think only of fighting? We must persuade them and win them over! Is the just cause not ours? Would even they be glad to go on serving a madman?"
At the Councilor's outburst, several of the men nodded and murmured their assent.
"Have you not seen with your own eyes these past few days? The King is a madman no longer. That medicine tea offered by that barbarian Crown Princess truly did cure his madness."
"Word is already spreading of what happened at the Queen's Palace. One spoonful of tea raised by the young Crown Princess, and Her Majesty opened her eyes — and His Majesty recovered his wits...."
"Councilor, once the contents of that secret ledger come fully to light, even those who sat on the fence will all turn away from us."
"Is the loyalist camp so solid in the first place not because of the foundation the present King spent ten long years laying since his enthronement? With that King back in his right mind and holding the reins of the throne besides, now—"
When the rebuttals came one after another, the Left State Councilor cut them off with a furious voice.
"Ha! Then what — shall we all sit here like stones and wait politely for our heads to come off? If my head falls, do you imagine the rest of you will walk away unscathed?"
…
"Our only path to survival is to prove the corruption of the royal house to the world. Think back to the Black Ritual. When was that ever an ordinary affair? The Crown Prince, and the King who fathered such a thing — they are all of them wicked creatures steeped in defilement!"
Roaring with rage, the Left State Councilor ground his teeth and pressed on.
"Have you all forgotten that my own grandson fainted dead away and had to be carried home, all from so much as passing the Crown Prince in the Eastern Palace? That boy is a monster! Are we to go on keeping such a twisted, defiled thing as our Crown Prince?"
…
"It seems everyone has already forgotten that hideous tragedy of two years ago. Then we shall simply have to remind them."
"I beg your pardon?"
"…Are we not told that the Crown Prince is to preside over the memorial rite for the dead before long?"
"The rite they said would be held together at the Heavenly Altar during the Unryongje?"
The Unryongje — the Rite of the Cloud Dragon. I remember seeing it in the royal protocols.
A rite of heaven-worship observed by the Kingdom of Un, held every December, in which the sovereign personally offered sacrifice to Heaven in gratitude for a year passed without calamity and in prayer for blessings upon the year to come.
It was the grandest official rite in all of Un. It was meant to be presided over by the King himself, but for the past two years someone else had stood in his place, apparently.
While the King had been out of his mind, the Left State Councilor's faction had tried to install Prince Waneon as the officiant of the Unryongje; the loyalists had opposed it to the last man, and in the end Princess Onseol — the King's own cousin, a royal who had left the world to become an ordained monk — had taken up the office in their stead.
A monk of the Lotus Sect offering sacrifice not to the Lotus Buddha of the Pure Land, but to the gods of Heaven and Earth — strange, certainly.... Though then again, the Pure Land is, at bottom, part of the Heavenly Realm too, so well, nothing too strange about it.
The rite bore the name Unryongje because it was, at its root, a sacrifice to the Cloud Dragon — the guardian deity revered as the founding ancestor of Un itself.
They make offerings to their own ancestor, and while they're at it, take care of the gods of Heaven and Earth as well. Two birds, one stone.
Less than a month remained until December.
Which was no doubt why the King had judged it better to hold the memorial rite together with the approaching Unryongje than to prepare one separately.
A plan, surely, to show the people gathering for the Unryongje, all at once, both that the King is well again and that the Crown Prince is a cursed thing no longer.
While I was still turning the Unryongje over in my mind, the Left State Councilor — who had been wrangling back and forth with the Waneon faction — suddenly spoke in a hushed, covert tone.
"One tragedy may be passed over as misfortune. But if it happens twice, is that not inevitability?"
"…!"
"And if, in the midst of that second tragedy, the Cloud Dragon itself should choose a true kingly talent to quell the chaos… what do you suppose would become of the people's hearts?"
The Left State Councilor gave a low, sinister chuckle and began to lay out his plan in detail.
Thanks to that, I now understood perfectly how the man intended to wriggle out of this crisis.
They'll stir up an uproar at the Unryongje, just like the Black Ritual… then secretly perform a possession rite, use the spirit they summon to resolve the chaos, and pin the whole feat on Prince Waneon as his merit? And under that pretext, commit outright treason?
In other words — summon a god and stage an entire theatrical production.
In front of me?
Before me, Cheonmyeong — the one and only daughter of the Jade Emperor, supreme deity of the Heavenly Realm, and of King Yama, supreme deity of the Netherworld — some spirit that has already devoured its offerings intends to puff out its chest and declare, 'AHEM, you lowly mortals!'
Come to think of it… I don't even need to stop this.
Things were turning out delightfully. A hollow laugh escaped me before I could help it, and Ansi looked at me, puzzled.
"Your Highness?"
"I wonder which one will come down and put on a play."
Peeling the translucent butterfly away from over my eyes like a mask, I murmured, "I find myself curious how they'll react, should they spot me sitting in the audience."
"I beg your pardon? You mean to go watch a play, Your Highness?"
"Not go to it — it seems the play is coming to me."
Watching Ansi tilt her head in bewilderment, I smiled a mischievous little smile.
"I can hardly wait."
The next day, I saw the Crown Prince for the first time in an age.
Or, to put it precisely, I ambushed him.
Court Lady Kim had brewed a pot of medicinal tonic, and I was lying in bed with it in me when I caught the sound of low voices murmuring outside my door.
"Huk — a human cr— n-no, Ea— Your Highness of the East Palace!"
"Shh. Is my lady resting?"
Ansi's strangled voice was followed by the calm voice of a boy. I sat bolt upright and went to the door.
"His— His Lady is resting most peacefully! What business brings you—"
"If she rests safe and well, that is enough. I shall take my leave—"
Ansi, why on earth are you so wary of him? And this ridiculous little brat — he comes all this way, and now he means to turn around and go back?
I flung the door open before the Crown Prince could finish his sentence.
"I'm not sleeping."
"…!"
There he stood, eyes gone perfectly round with shock.
Now that I look at him after so long… has he gotten a little taller?
In truth it had been only a handful of days, but I had seen him every single day before that, so it felt like an eternity.
I narrowed my eyes and looked up at him.
"Your Highness — if you weren't even going to see me, why come all the way to Unyeondang at all?"
"I was worried… worried whether you were safe and well…."
"Then you should have come to pay me a visit. You haven't come once in all this time — and now this."
My lips pushed out into a pout all on their own.
I'm an adult. He's been busy, I know that. I shouldn't be showing I'm hurt like this.
No — I shouldn't be hurt in the first place! Not if I'm an adult!
But my mouth moved without asking my mind's permission.
"When you were struggling, Your Highness, I stayed beside you and even held your hand… so why weren't you at mine when I was ill?"
Is it because my body is young?
Or is it that I still haven't grown up — that even after two hundred and nine years I'm a child who never learned a thing?
The hurt I'd been trying to swallow like a grown woman came welling up all at once.
Do you have any idea how many days I've been sick?
I came down to the mortal world so I wouldn't be sick, and I was sick again, just like in Heaven.
Bedridden in the sky, unable to move so much as a finger.
Honestly, I was scared. Scared this body would go on breaking down like this forever. I know it won't. I know that. Still — I was scared.
I hate taking medicine. I hate convalescing. I truly, truly hate having to keep sleeping.
I lived over two hundred years like that. I didn't want to be like that here, and here I am again — and that's why I'm frightened.
This body is sturdy, isn't it? It'll heal quickly, won't it? If I exercise and build up my strength, I won't collapse again, right?
It isn't as if lying here resting quietly day after day could make me weak again… could it?
See? This is what happens when you lie down sick — nothing but terrible thoughts keep creeping in.
Stay beside me. Tell me it'll be all right.
Tell me a little ache is nothing serious. Tell me it's an ordinary chill that will pass in no time, and that we'll go shoot arrows together again.
…What is wrong with me?
The emotions kept surging up on their own, wave after wave.
I had suddenly begun to want to whine like a real child. The moment I met the Crown Prince's face.