A Dragon's Panicked Confession
The dragon, who had been preening and posturing at full flourish, froze in fright. Its walnut-sized eyes went wide and locked onto a single point.
Toward the sender of the heart-voice. Toward me, in other words.
I looked up at the dragon with my jade-green eyes—the mark of the Jade Emperor's bloodline—and gave it a bright, guileless smile.
[Who exactly did you call an Unryong?]
The dragon, frozen stiff in its majestic pose, could only gape its mouth open and shut.
"H-his, his High, Highness……"
Rotten or not, a tuna is still a fish—and however demoted Gwangcheol-i might be as a mere imugi, he was still the son of the Dragon God. That much was obvious from how instantly he'd seen through my true nature beneath this human body.
[Don't act like you know me.]
"Pardon?"
[Don't reveal my identity. Just carry on with whatever it was you were doing. Who are you again?]
"……"
Gwangcheol-i rolled his golden, tray-like eyes around and around as cold sweat began trickling down in rivulets.
When the dragon suddenly froze and said nothing, the crowd of terrified onlookers sensed something was off and began to murmur among themselves.
Prince Waneon, flustered, turned to glance at his maternal grandfather. When the Left State Councilor frowned and gave a curt jerk of his chin, the prince stuttered out to the dragon, trembling like a leaf.
"Y-you, you there, Unryong……"
"SILENCE, HUMAN!"
Gwangcheol-i barked desperately at the human who had dared address him as Unryong—then shot a furtive glance in my direction.
When I said nothing and simply kept smiling up at him, the dragon swallowed hard down its enormous throat and sent me a heart-voice.
[U-um, Excuse me… but why is Princess Cheonmyeong here in the mortal realm in a human body?]
He's been cooped up in a well, so I suppose news of my descent never reached him.
I felt no need to go into detail, so I gave him a vague answer.
[There were circumstances. Good enough ones.]
[D-don't tell me the Princess ran away from home too?]
Gwangcheol-i brightened as though he'd glimpsed a single ray of hope, and pressed on.
[I won't tell a single soul that the Princess ran away! So in return, please pretend you never heard that I escaped from the Dragon Well!]
He's looking at me the way one looks at a fellow delinquent who got caught in the same scheme. I snorted.
[Who ran away?]
[Y-you didn't run away? Surely Her Majesty the Supreme Ruler and His Highness the Underworld King would never send their precious jewel of a daughter down to the mortal realm……?]
[I didn't run away. I'm here with proper, official permission.]
Fine, it was flee-first, ask-permission-later—but I had gotten permission, and that's what counted, wasn't it?
After rebutting him with perfect confidence, I added, meaningfully:
[And yet you, apparently, came down to the mortal realm all on your own without any permission whatsoever. While impersonating Divine Envoy Unryong, no less.]
[I-imp-imp-impersonating? No! Never! It's a misunderstanding!]
[Didn't you just say, 'This great one is the mighty Unryong!'?]
I even mimicked his puffed-up tone when I sent it, and Gwangcheol-i went white as a corpse.
So pale that even beneath those thick dragon scales, the blood had visibly drained away.
Terrified out of his wits, Gwangcheol-i abruptly bowed his head to the ground before me.
[Spare me just this once, Your Highness!]
[Ugh, hold on—]
[If it gets out that I snuck down to the mortal realm again before even three hundred years have passed, I-I might be flayed alive! By my own father!]
[Then why on earth did you pull a stunt like this if you knew that?]
[I think being shut up in that well for so long drove me a little mad! I'll do anything, please, just this once, look the other way! Your Highness, I'll truly die! Consider it sparing one poor dragon—no, one poor imugi—and close your eyes just this once! I'll never do it again!]
As Gwangcheol-i bowed his head over and over, then gathered his short forelegs together and began groveling abjectly, I floundered and glanced around.
What am I supposed to do if this blasted imugi starts begging like this out of nowhere, right here?!
Sure enough, every pair of human eyes in the vicinity was riveted on us.
I'll admit it was a little satisfying to see the Left State Councilor's eyes bulging so hard I worried they might pop out of his skull.
How do I spin my way out of this one?
Thankfully, with the Crown Prince shielding me, the crowd probably couldn't tell whether Gwangcheol-i was prostrating himself before me or before the Crown Prince.
Good. Then let's put this mess to work instead.
I burrowed deeper into the Crown Prince's back like a frightened child. And in the same instant, I shot off a heart-voice.
[Sahae-Gangcheol. If you want me to turn a blind eye to your desertion, then from this moment on, you will do exactly as I command.]
When I spoke, reciting even his true name, the blue-green dragon bowed his head low, tears streaming down.
[Thank you, Your Highness!]
[Save the thanks for later. For now, repeat after me. First……]
And Gwangcheol-i followed the heart-voice that came next without a moment's hesitation.
"HEAR ME, MORTALS!"
The dragon, which had been sprawled flat on the ground, suddenly reared up and bellowed in a voice that shook the very air.
At the same time, several bolts of lightning ripped through the misty clouds shrouding them on all sides, thunder rolling beneath it all like a soundtrack.
"This great one is not, in truth, Unryong—but a shinseon under Divine Envoy Unryong's command, a dragon who governs the Well of Heaven: Sahae-Gangcheol!"
Switching from tearful groveling to a display of majesty like that—it only made me want to snicker. But to the humans, it was evidently something else entirely. The ones who had been dazed now shrank back in fresh terror or tensed up sharply, and that told me everything.
"I have come to TEST you! Whether you can tell truth from falsehood! Whether you can distinguish the mighty Divine Envoy Unryong from a dragon who dares impersonate him! Whether you can recognize the true heir of Unryong from the impostor who claims his name!"
"……!"
"Mortals! In your ignorance and foolishness, you could not yet tell truth from falsehood! You have FAILED the trial! But in accordance with the merciful will of Heaven, I shall grant you one final chance!"
I only gave him the bare bones to work with, and look at him—he's spun it into something surprisingly convincing.
Gwangcheol-i stretched his neck taut and roared, every syllable dripping with grandeur.
"Now behold! Who among you is truly acknowledged by the dragon of Heaven—and who is the blasphemous wretch who sought to counterfeit the will of the skies!"
Having bellowed loudly enough to ring across the far bank of the river, Gwangcheol-i slowly lowered his body toward the Crown Prince and me, and bowed his head with grave courtesy.
However much he was being punished and demoted to the status of a mere imugi, Gwangcheol-i was hardly of a rank to bow his head carelessly before a human.
But before me—Princess Cheonmyeong, who receives prostrations even from Divine Envoy Unryong—Gwangcheol-i could bow his head to the ground as much as he pleased.
In other words, this bow was not truly for the Crown Prince, but for me standing behind him.
But to the humans, it will look like the little Crown Prince just received a bow from a dragon.
That's it. That's exactly it.
With this, I can brush off just about any whispering for the foreseeable future, can't I?
Maybe things will finally get a little easier now.
I buried my face against the Crown Prince's sleeve and smiled to myself, unseen.
In the meantime, Gwangcheol-i finished his bow, plucked a single scale from his own body as a sacred token, and laid it down.
Then he whirled around at once and turned toward the dumbstruck Prince Waneon, shouting in a voice brimming with fury.
"You there! You have scorned the solemn majesty of Heaven and the dragon—so receive your punishment!"
The moment the words left his mouth, the clear sky split open with a great rending sound, and foul-smelling, pitch-black filth-water cascaded down over Prince Waneon and the Left State Councilor like a waterfall.
"GAAAAH!"
"……!"
Prince Waneon shrieked in horror and collapsed on the spot, fainting dead away.
The Left State Councilor stood rooted in place, soul departed, staring blankly at his own drenched and dripping self. The ministers nearby instinctively clapped their hands over their noses and edged away from him.
Isn't that the sludge he dredged up while cleaning the Dragon Well? For his part, that's about the best vengeance he could manage.
As long as Gwangcheol-i was under punishment, he could not wantonly harm mortals of the lower realm—not unless he himself had been attacked, or a greater deity took the karmic burden upon himself and gave the order.
So for the Gwangcheol-i of today, dumping out the filth-water accumulated from scrubbing his well was the very limit of his revenge.
Gwangcheol-i looked down at the fainted Prince Waneon and the Left State Councilor—now looking for all the world like a soaked dead tree—and snorted out a long, deeply satisfied breath. Then he coiled himself into the clouds and rose into the air.
"Divine Envoy Unryong looks upon your offerings with favor! Be not swayed by cunning deceit, children of Unryong!"
Having milked his grand exit for all it was worth right up to the final line, Gwangcheol-i shot skyward and vanished into the clouds.
And then the misty clouds blanketing the surroundings, along with those veiling the heavens, drifted apart as naturally as breath—and the clear, blue winter afternoon returned.
[Ansi, go after Gwangcheol-i and tail him. Make sure he doesn't cause trouble again just because he's come down to the mortal realm.]
[You command Your handmaiden to leave the Princess all alone?]
[Why would I be alone? I've got the—the little Crown Prince right here beside me.]
[Pardon? What help could that human child possibly be?]
[…Well, you know, I've got my warding charm, and, um, Seok-ran is here too, so don't worry—just hurry back. Go confirm he's made it back up to the heavens.]
Ansi didn't trust Seok-ran one bit, but she did trust Cheoyong's warding effigies. Before long, I watched a small rainbow-colored bird flutter off in a flurry of wings toward the stretch of sky where the dragon had disappeared.
As the sky returned to normal, the people on Jecheondo began to come to their senses one by one.
"What in the world just happened……"
"The dragon bowed to His Highness the Crown Prince?"
"They say His Highness is the true heir of Unryong?"
"Why did the Left State Councilor get drenched in filth……"
"A real dragon descended upon the Unryong Festival itself!"
As the murmurs rippled outward, the Crown Prince, who had been standing blankly before me, bent down and picked up the scale Gwangcheol-i had left behind.
The blue-green scale, no bigger than a palm, caught the sunlight and gleamed.
Every gaze in the crowd turned toward it.
The fragments of light refracting off the scale scattered across the Crown Prince's face like a halo—or like the scales of a dragon woven from sunlight itself.
It was a scene that felt utterly sacred.
This one's going to pass into legend among the humans someday, I can tell.