Growing, One Finger's Width at a Time
“……The plum blossoms have already bloomed in the garden?”
“Yes, it's on the Jamryongdang side, so I doubt you've had a chance to see them yet. Would you like to go and look?”
There was still time left before Princess Onseol was due to arrive. I nodded, both hands curled around the flowering branch I held.
“I want to go see them.”
At that, the long shadow stretching out beneath the Crown Prince's feet crept up along the railing, scooped me up, and carried me straight into his arms.
“Kyaaah!”
Even for me, who had grown accustomed to all manner of wondrous things, being carried through the air by a shadow was a first, and a cry escaped me before I could stop it.
Down by the pond, I could see Ansi—midway through squashing Gwangcheol-i—fluff up her feathers and rise at my scream. I hastily sent a message her way.
[It's nothing!]
Having set me down from the shadow beside him, the Crown Prince fussed over me with hurried concern.
“Did I startle you? I'm sorry.”
“No, no, I'm fine……. Though, my lord, you've gotten even better at wielding your shadow arts, haven't you?”
“I've merely begun to get a feel for how it should be handled. It also works better when you're beside me, my lady.”
The Crown Prince answered with a bashful face, then held out his hand to me. I took it reflexively, and he set off ahead of me with a smile as if drawn in ink.
“Do you remember the courtyard wall behind Jamryongdang, where we marked our heights?”
I remembered the moment I heard it.
Before we went to wake the Queen Consort, the Crown Prince and I had each held our coming-of-age ceremony, and we had made a wager over who would be taller.
Once we're fully grown, he'll surely be taller than me, but…… the fairies used to say that girls shoot up faster, while boys grow late but keep growing for longer.
So if we compared our heights at eighteen—the age when humans held their rite of passage—wouldn't I be taller by far? The Crown Prince would still grow after that, but by then I would already be done growing!
That's why we bet that the winner's wish would be granted.
And afterwards, so that we could measure and compare precisely, we had marked each other's heights on the wall in the corner of Jamryongdang's backyard.
Was that really already several months ago?
“Of course I remember.”
“The tree planted beside that wall was a plum tree. When I looked today, it had bloomed.”
Turning the corner of Jamryongdang's wing together with the Crown Prince, there it was—that very tree.
“Wow.”
It was still days before March, but something had clearly been impatient, for red plum blossoms dangled in clusters along every branch.
Blossoms of a deep pink verging on red filled the leafless branches like paint scattered over an ink-outline brushstroke.
“They've bloomed so much already!”
Delighted, I ran over and circled the tree once. They weren't yet in full riotous bloom, but against the vivid blue sky the blossoms looked fiercely, strikingly bright all the same.
It was an utterly ordinary plum tree I wouldn't have spared a single glance if it had stood in the gardens of Sangra Palace, but seen from here, it was truly lovely.
I was enjoying the view when the Crown Prince suddenly called to me.
“My lady.”
“Yes?”
“You seem to have grown a little taller.”
“Really?”
Startled, I followed his gaze—and there beside the plum tree I saw the lines we had marked.
11th Day, 11th Month, 13th Year of Seogwang
Cheon Gyeol-woo ￣ Seoruhwa ＿
The neat inscription the young Crown Prince had carved, as precise as though written with a sword's tip or a brush.
I pressed the red plum branch I was holding against the line that recorded my height, and stood beside it.
“……!”
The branch wasn't above my head—it hovered beside my hair, a single finger-joint's width below it!
My eyes went round all on their own.
I really did grow taller.
My body—Sangra Huiyo—had not grown so much as a hair's breadth in a hundred years. No, in more than two hundred.
However the days flowed past, I was always exactly the same.
Tomorrow would come after today and nothing would change; I would ache just the same, as though a future in which I became an adult would never, ever arrive. That was how utterly I had failed to grow.
My height…… it grew.
Of course I had known it in my head.
I had known that Seoruhwa, unlike Sangra Huiyo, was meant to grow. That she could grow.
That with each passing day—from today to tomorrow, tomorrow to the day after—she would grow little by little, and that this was a body that could become an adult.
Unlike gods who lived for thousands of years, she was human, barely able to live out even a hundred, and so she grew far more quickly.
But knowing it vaguely in my head and actually feeling that my height had increased were two entirely different things.
I grew. I really grew!
I truly had. After two hundred years, I had grown taller.
A tomorrow that changed had finally come, instead of the yesterday that was always identical.
My heart pounded and the corners of my eyes grew hot. An emotion I couldn't put into words spread through my entire body.
If I keep growing like this…… then I really can become an adult, can't I?
I was a child who couldn't grow even past two hundred years of age, and so I had always longed to become an adult.
If I can grow, then I don't mind if I don't live long.
Perhaps I could live longer if I lay in bed forever in Sangra Palace in the Celestial Realm.
But even if my life would be far shorter than that, I had wanted to live healthily, to grow, to become an adult.
So my choice—to become Seruhwa—had been the right one.
My mother's words had been right, too.
“Ten years as a human will feel far longer than a hundred years as an immortal.”
“Live ten years that feel like a hundred. Try everything you wish to do, experience so much…… and be happy.”
That my height had grown by just a single finger-joint's width made me this happy. That the world around me shifted because I involved myself made me happy. That rewards came in return for my efforts made me happy. That the humans I had helped were doing well made me happy. That that once-shadowed little boy had learned to smile so beautifully made me happy.
If I'm already this happy, then I can look forward to the days that remain.
Here, I could look forward to tomorrow's arrival.
Before I knew it, I felt the tears that had pooled at the rims of my eyes begin to fall.
“My lady, why are you crying all of a sudden?”
The Crown Prince hurried to me in alarm. I answered brightly.
“Because I'm happy!”
“……Pardon?”
“I grew taller, that's why!”
“……Is that something that would move you to tears, my lady?”
“Of course!”
I nodded, then ran to the Crown Prince, still gripping my red plum branch, and flung my arms around him.
Because right now, I wanted to hug anyone at all!
“M-my lady?”
The Crown Prince wore a baffled expression, but even so, he held me in return.
It was warm, and it made my heart flutter.
From within the young boy's arms, I beamed.
“I'm so glad I came here. I love it so much, my lord!”
“……!”
Somehow the Crown Prince's face had flushed as red as the plum blossoms, but right now that wasn't what mattered to me.
I released him, bounced over to the wall on light feet, and beckoned.
“My lord, could you carve my height here again? Please?”
My heart was racing, but the young Crown Prince simply stood there in a daze, strangely covering his mouth with his hand.
“Quickly, come on, quickly.”
Only when I came over, tugged at his sleeve, and urged him did the Crown Prince finally move. He left a new mark where I stood pressed against the wall.
Seoruhwa 二
A new line had been drawn. Proof of growth.
I gazed at that mark for quite a long while.
Princess Onseol came to the Eastern Palace alone, without attendants or guards of any kind. The Crown Prince and I welcomed her in the garden pavilion, with a table of tea and sweets set out.
She looked somewhat different from an ordinary monk of the Lotus Cult.
A red kasaya robe draped over a white jangsam garment, a white gokkal cap upon her head—at first glance it seemed identical to the clerical vestments of monks, but looking closer, several differences caught the eye.
The most striking was her long hair. Princess Onseol had not shaved her head; she had braided it long and let it hang down behind the gokkal.
Stuck into the cap were pheasant feathers, like the jurip headgear shamans wore; along with the kasaya she wore sashes of three colors—yellow, blue, and black; and in place of prayer beads, she had paper flowers fastened at her chest, the kind one might see on a funeral bier.
It's like monk's clothes with a shaman's clothes mixed in.
Before Princess Onseol's visit, I had done a bit of preliminary reading on Hoguk Temple where she resided, and it turned out that Hoguk Temple was a Lotus Cult temple in appearance only—in truth, it was practically a shaman's house.
Families sent their daughters there to be ordained specifically to avoid them becoming shamans, yet the moment they entered Hoguk Temple, they didn't become monks at all—they received spirit possession and became shamans anyway.
So the monks of Hoguk Temple are actually shamans who merely call themselves monks on the surface.
I wondered if the Lotus Cult wouldn't take offense at that…… but apparently, since Hoguk Temple worshipped the Lotus Buddha alongside other gods and diligently performed Buddhist offerings and all manner of Lotus Cult ceremonies, they were tolerated as something roughly like half-and-half monks.
Is the reputation of shamans really so poor that they have to pretend not to be shamans this badly? And they're shamans in all but name—so it's fine as long as the status itself isn't called 'shaman'?
And yet it didn't seem that shamans were persecuted or forced to live in hiding, either.
Thinking back to how the Left State Councilor's faction had spoken of shamans while plotting spirit-summoning schemes at the Unryong Festival…… it was really no different from how one might talk about any ordinary Gwoeryeoknansin. There was no particular sense of them being looked down upon as lowly.
They avoid becoming shamans to the point of pretending to be monks, and yet shamans themselves aren't treated badly? What on earth is going on?
I had wondered before, too—it was a custom I truly couldn't make sense of.
Just then, Princess Onseol set down her teacup and spoke.
“There are, in fact, two kinds of spirit possession.”