The Unknown
"Two kinds?"
"One is a sickness that befalls those chosen by a god, afflicting them until they accept the deity. The other strikes those born with a constitution so well-suited to hosting a god that spirits, coveting their empty vessel, torment them until they take to their beds."
"……"
"The latter is a matter of innate constitution, so it can be anticipated, and since the illness comes with that expectation, it usually passes before long. But the former is a bolt from the blue—and because one cannot even tell whether it is a divine sickness or not, it often turns into a grave matter."
Princess Onseol turned her gaze to the Crown Prince and continued.
"Just as it was for Your Highness."
"……There were cases like mine among divine sicknesses?"
the Crown Prince asked carefully, a faint glimmer of hope in his voice that he might learn something about the Eodukseoni.
But Princess Onseol shook her head with an apologetic look.
"No, there were no such cases. After all, what Your Highness suffered was not a divine sickness to begin with."
"How can you be so certain, Aunt? In the end, I fell ill as though with a divine sickness, and after that ordeal I came to receive and be steadied by a power, did I not?"
"At first, I too believed Your Highness had suffered a kind of unusual divine sickness. That was the rumor as well—though there was the rather significant difference that you became a Taoist master instead of a shaman."
She smiled with a touch of awkwardness, then went on.
"But when I was granted an audience with you in person during the Cloud Dragon Festival, I found there was something fundamentally different about you."
"Different in what way?"
"You were not a 'vessel,' Your Highness."
"Pardon?"
She gestured toward a teacup.
"For instance, let us call this cup a human with the aptitude to be a shaman—a 'vessel.'"
Then she lifted the teapot.
"And let us say this pot is the 'god.' The tea inside it is 'divine power'—the strength of a god, if you will."
Princess Onseol drew the tray toward herself and set the teacup upside down upon it.
"This is the state of divine sickness in one 'chosen by a god.'"
She tilted the pot. The tea, unable to gather in the overturned cup, streamed away down its sides.
Then she flipped the sodden cup right side up and set it down properly.
"This act of setting the cup upright is what we call the descent of the god."
The pot tilted again. This time the tea pooled neatly inside the standing cup.
"And this is a shaman—a vessel filled with divine power."
"I understand."
"Yes. Now, in the case of Your Highness—"
Setting down the teapot, Princess Onseol reached this time for the plate of confections and picked up a glutinous rice cake filled with sweet red bean paste.
"You are closer to this."
"……The rice cake?"
"Originally, Your Highness would have been like one of these plain tteok—empty inside, with nothing held within at all. But then, one day, suddenly—"
She set the red bean cake down, picked up an injeolmi instead, and slit it open with a silver knife. Then she scooped up some grain syrup beside it and pushed it into the cut.
"—you came to possess a strange and tremendous power. Not divine power stemming from a god, but something else entirely—a bizarre, uncanny thing. So the ordeal Your Highness endured must have felt something like…… this."
Princess Onseol pressed the syrup-stuffed injeolmi down firmly on the plate.
Through the gaping slit and the portions squeezed paper-thin, the syrup spurted out wildly, leaving the plate an utter mess.
She spread her fingers, slick with syrup here and there.
"The people around you being harmed, I imagine, was because they were struck by power spilling out like this. Would that be right?"
"……Almost exactly."
"I am glad it was close. Then your present state, Your Highness…… would be like this red bean cake—one that has learned to keep its filling from bursting out at will, that no longer spills power wildly, that holds the paste within it in perfect stability."
Princess Onseol pointed at the neatly arranged red bean cake beside it and smiled faintly.
"Into a place that is not a vessel, no one pours tea to begin with—and even if someone tried, it could not be held and would simply run off. In that sense, I mean that Your Highness was never a 'shaman's vessel.'"
"……"
"What you went through did not happen because tea was suddenly poured into you, so it is far removed from divine sickness. It is only natural that no similar case exists among shamans."
"I see……"
"I am sorry I could not be of more help, Your Highness."
"Not at all. Simply understanding how my condition differs from divine sickness or a god's descent has been of great help to me."
Though his manner in answering was impeccably courteous, the Crown Prince looked a little glum. Probably because he had gained no new information about the Eodukseoni.
Watching Princess Onseol's demonstration, I marveled inwardly.
'Her analogy is a bit odd, but that woman understands almost exactly what happened to the Prince, doesn't she?'
She must be quite a skilled shaman, to grasp something like that at a glance.
Having eaten the syrup-smeared injeolmi and taken a sip of tea from the drenched cup, she spoke again.
"Still, on the chance it might be of some use, let me tell you in detail about the divine sickness I suffered myself."
What followed was not greatly different from what I had guessed.
Around the age of fifteen, a fever took hold of her, and no medicine under heaven could bring it down. All the while, she heard voices calling to her, and was even scolded by that voice.
Which, as she later learned, had been the call of Jeoseung Halmang—the very goddess who would one day descend upon her.
'Ah, so that's why her aura felt so strangely familiar—that Netherworld energy. Princess Onseol was a shaman who served Jeoseung Halmang.'
As the fever worsened, she began to wander like a sleepwalker, seeing visions and hearing phantoms, plagued by strange dreams—until at last she began raving in delirium.
The moment it became certain that hers was a divine sickness, the late King's decree ordered her to prepare for ordination at once.
Her full younger brother—Seongon Daegun, the current King—opposed her ordination, but custom could not be defied, and so at sixteen she entered Hyeonguksa Temple.
She mentioned, too, that a wedding had already been arranged for her at the time, which naturally came to nothing.
"……That said, I have not lived an unhappy life. I lived far more freely than I ever had in the palace, and serving my head-god, keeping company with others of similar circumstance, and putting my gifts to use where they were needed—all of it satisfied me."
Princess Onseol said this with a warm smile, then wet her throat with tea once more. The little Crown Prince bowed his head to her with perfect courtesy.
"Thank you for speaking of such difficult things."
"Think nothing of it. We are aunt and nephew, after all. If anything, I am the one who should apologize for failing to visit while you were enduring such hardship, Your Highness."
She apologized with a look of sincere regret, then hesitated a moment. At length, as if resolving on something, she spoke.
"As I said, only certain people can become shamans—those born with a constitution like a 'vessel,' able to hold a god. And a vessel exists in order to hold something, so if it is left empty, calamity follows. That, in fact, is the reason I have come to see you both today."
"Your reason?"
"Crown Princess."
Princess Onseol called on me all of a sudden.
I, who had been watching the two of them like a bystander gawking at a fire across the river, jolted and answered.
"Yes?"
"Crown Princess, you are a 'vessel.'"
"……I beg your pardon?"
"The greatest vessel, in fact, that I have ever seen."
"Me?"
Out of nowhere—what on earth was this about?
"At first I took you for a young shaman already hosting a great god—such a large vessel as yours, and yet not a single stray spirit hovering around you. But there was no trace whatsoever of a descent ritual having been performed, so……"
Princess Onseol let her words trail off, clicked her tongue softly, and looked at me with worry in her eyes.
"You remember the two kinds of divine sickness I described earlier?"
"Yes……"
"Left as you are, Crown Princess, you will become an empty vessel—a body perfectly suited to holding a god, with no god in it—and the stray spirits will hound you until you fall ill with a divine sickness. That is what worries me. It is why I came."
Even with my soul half-scattered by her words, a lightning bolt flashed through my mind.
Ah. Now I understood exactly what was happening here.
'That woman has faintly sensed that my body here is connected to my body up in the Celestial Realm!'
I had possessed this body and become Seruhwa.
And yet my soul remained Princess Cheonmyeong—Sangra Huiyo—unchanged, which meant I was still linked to my true form in Heaven, that body brimming with an immense reservoir of divine power.
In other words, it was something like the state of a mortal shaman serving a great god as her head-god—except that the mortal shaman was the great god herself. A bizarre situation, to say the least.
The stray spirits kept their distance because this flesh was no empty vessel but a body already holding 'Princess Cheonmyeong.' And Ansi's glaring, ever-vigilant guard duty deserved some of the credit too.
'I'm serving myself, so of course to Princess Onseol it must look like an empty vessel with no one home at all.'
While I was piecing the situation together, the Crown Prince, flustered, was pushing back against her.
"Are you saying the Crown Princess must receive a god's descent?"
"Yes. Carrying such a vessel and never receiving a descent, she will in time suffer a grave divine sickness—or worse, her body may be stolen outright by a stray spirit."
"Good heavens."
The Crown Prince's face darkened. Meanwhile, my thoughts had wandered somewhere entirely unexpected.
'Hold on…… what happens if I—mortal Seruhwa—receive Princess Cheonmyeong's descent and become a shaman who serves Princess Cheonmyeong?'
Then just as mortal shamans borrow a god's power and wield it, would I too be able to use Princess Cheonmyeong's power—that is, my own divine power?
'It's mine anyway, so I wouldn't even need the formality of borrowing it. I could just take it and use it as I pleased, couldn't I? Me, as Sangra Huiyo, simply granting permission to me, as Seruhwa, to use it freely?'