The Princess's Trial (1)
Bright lanterns soared up into the night sky.
Once we passed through the massive imperial palace walls, an endless carpet of red silk unfurled down the central avenue.
"Show us mercy!"
Crowds of commoners stood packed shoulder to shoulder on both sides of the silk road.
Somewhere along the way, the court singers' song had given way to the lamentations of the people.
"What is all this, Jisan? Do they normally roll this stuff out in Chinese palaces? It's like some fantasy movie."
Guards stood in ranks along the road, holding back the crowds from intruding onto the silk.
When she set foot on the silk, every commoner lining the road turned to look at us.
That's... a lot of pressure.
"To begin with, Turandot is an Eastern world built entirely out of old Westerners' imagination."
"A hodgepodge landscape, then. Makes sense."
Jang Siwoon glanced around and nodded. After all, this was a Western reinterpretation of a tale from the Arabian Nights, spun into an opera.
China was the setting, but the details of the world lacked any real authenticity.
"Have mercy upon these men!"
"Take pity on them, we beg you!"
The commoners gazed at us with exaggerated grief painted across their faces.
The sudden shift to what was clearly our cue made Jang Siwoon's brow crease.
"Wait—they're talking about us?"
"Looks that way."
We walked the silk road under the weight of everyone's oppressive stares.
Then, just as we reached the foot of a towering staircase at the end of the flat stretch of road—
"Suitors who would woo the Princess! Ascend!"
A court official standing atop the high stairs barked the command down at us.
Boom— boom—
Jang Siwoon and I moved to the rhythm of the drums and began to climb.
The closer we drew to the thundering drums, the faster my heart pounded.
"Strangers from afar."
"Whoa."
The moment we reached the top of the stairs, a woman addressed us directly.
Jang Siwoon let out an involuntary gasp of admiration at the sight of her.
She was beautiful enough that even another woman couldn't help but be stunned.
An opera princess brought to life—she really is something.
The princess, robed in traditional Chinese dress, cast us a sidelong glance.
Exquisite features, and a frigid gaze that made that beauty shine all the brighter.
It went beyond her appearance. Her very presence seemed to crush us flat.
"Are you my new suitors, then?"
No plans on becoming one, thanks.
Jang Siwoon and I exchanged flat, unenthusiastic looks.
Pretty or not, marriage inside the tower was where we drew the line.
"We kind of have to play along as suitors for the quest to progress, right?"
"Not that I'm thrilled about it, but fine. Let's just do it."
"...You're going to court her too, Siwoon?"
Jang Siwoon blinked as if the answer were obvious.
"I've got a quest to clear, don't I?"
"True... How admirable of you."
Honestly, if we were being strict about it, Jang Siwoon probably fit the image of a prince better than I did.
I burst out laughing, then turned back toward the princess.
"Yes. We are suitors who have come seeking the Princess's love."
It was a line I'd more or less improvised, and Jang Siwoon's jaw dropped beside me.
"Love?"
"It's how the Turandot story goes. Every suitor who laid eyes on her beauty fell head over heels."
"Honestly."
Did she think falling in love from a single glance at someone's face made no sense?
Jang Siwoon clicked her tongue and gave an awkward laugh.
"From what lands do you princes hail? Answer in detail."
What country's prince...?
We were broke commoners without a penny to our names. What, were you not even allowed to court her unless you were royalty?
Well, the male lead Calaf was the prince of a fallen kingdom—but still, he was a prince.
"You there! Why do you fail to answer the Princess's question?!"
As we stood there with our mouths shut, rolling our eyes at each other, the official shouted from across the platform.
"Declare your station!"
Our station, huh.
"I'm an employee at a research company in Korea."
"...I'm a university student in Korea's boxing club."
"What peculiar princes."
It was an awkward introduction at best, but the commoners and the princess reacted with such gravity that I couldn't even manage an embarrassed laugh.
A prince? I'm corporate livestock, plain and simple.
The princess swept her gaze over the two of us with disdain and gave a contemptuous snort.
"I may not be beautiful as my mother was, but I am every bit as merciful."
"Your mother...?"
"Do you not know Her Imperial Majesty, Empress Turandot?"
At my careless question, the princess glared at me as if she could kill me where I stood.
Turandot was her mother. Which meant this woman was Turandot's daughter.
"Ignorant foreigners! Have you no courtesy for Princess Tunan?!"
The official kindly supplied the explanation on my behalf, sensing my confusion.
Princess Tunan, daughter of Turandot.
Jang Siwoon dipped her head and murmured in a whisper pitched for my ears alone.
"This is different from the Turandot you know, isn't it?"
"Yes. In the opera I know, Turandot is only ever engaged—there's never been any mention of a daughter."
Had some creative sequel come out without my knowledge? Or...
"The tower may have partially rewritten the story just to keep us from coasting through."
"God... I'd been feeling pretty reassured thanks to you, Jisan."
Jang Siwoon pressed a hand to her forehead and shook her head, clearly at a loss.
She'd probably assumed that since I roughly knew the plot of Turandot, the quest would be a little easier going forward. But...
There's no way this tower makes it that easy to send us up to the next floor.
Just then, Princess Tunan raised her arm and pointed her long nails down at either side of the staircase.
"Look below."
"?"
When we'd climbed, darkness had shrouded everything, hiding the ground on both sides of the stairs.
But now the lanterns floating up into the sky converged their light, illuminating the shapes that had been concealed.
"Hk—!!"
That was when I finally understood why the surging crowd on the flat plain had broken off so abruptly at the edges of the staircase.
The ground beside the stairs was strewn with the heads of countless suitors.
Their bodies were nowhere to be seen—only severed heads, piled up like hills.
Ugh—
Only after staring at the mounded heads did the stench of blood finally sting my nose.
Perhaps because it was all staged inside the tower, no revolting maggots or swarms of flies had gathered. Still...
Not that the visuals alone aren't repulsive enough.
"Unlike my mother, I pose only a single riddle. Yet these foolish princes could not answer it, and so they offered me their heads."
"......"
"I shall grant you one final chance. Will you solve the riddle?"
Tunan extended her last measure of grace, gesturing elegantly toward the heads below the stairs.
Jang Siwoon narrowed her wide eyes into slits and looked up at me.
"Jisan. After seeing all that, we still have to solve the riddle? God, I hate this."
"Me too. But the tower wants us to take the path we hate, doesn't it?"
Story or not, the male lead who tried the riddle even after seeing the princes' severed heads really is...
I lived a life where leaping into marriage over someone's looks was more than a little beyond me, so I found it hard to empathize with Calaf.
That said, empathy or not, I knew perfectly well the tower was steering us toward solving the riddle.
But still... the silk road below those stairs still stretched long behind us. We could always go back the way we came.
"What happens if we decline and turn back?"
"Your heads will not fly from your shoulders. That much is permitted."
In response to my question, Tunan offered a surprisingly merciful answer.
Huh. Going back and looking for another route might not be a bad idea, then.
Maybe the tower really had given us multiple choices this time—
"But your fate of ascending to the 22nd floor shall fly from you all the same."
"Oh, come on. So in the end we're meant to solve it with our necks on the line."
Jang Siwoon's face hardened, looking ready to spit curses on the spot.
But this was the presence of a princess who'd beheaded people without so much as blinking—so she kept the profanity bottled up in her mouth.
"Let's do it."
"Yeah. Sorry, but when it comes to the riddle, I'm putting my faith in you, Jisan. If we get it wrong, I'll handle it the hard way myself."
As if planning to pummel the entire court into paste, Jang Siwoon smiled and clenched her fist.
Praying with all my heart it never came to that, I turned to Tunan.
Accepting our decision, the princess lowered her long lashes.
"Then I pose my riddle!"
...Was I imagining it, or was there the faintest trace of desperation in that cry?
"The Princess's riddle!"
"Take pity on them, we beg you!"
"Show them mercy, we pray!"
At this rate the ominousness is just building up. Could they please stop singing already?
The crowd's pleas for mercy wove together with the thunder of drums and became song once more.
At this point, listening to raw screaming might have been preferable to that gloomy chorus...
"This woman—"
As Tunan began, Jang Siwoon and I swallowed hard and strained our ears toward her words.
The crowd too fell silent in an instant, cowed into stillness.
"This woman dwells in a far more distant land than you. In the same land as the one who created my mother's music."
Creator of Turandot's music—that would point to Puccini.
Giacomo Puccini, the Italian opera composer.
But she'd called this person a woman, so Puccini himself couldn't be the answer.
"She does not move, yet she follows you. Even if you turn your head away, her gaze still reaches you."
"Her valley grows dimmer the farther back you go, yet even as you draw near, she recedes."
Tunan smiled, her artificially painted red lips splitting into a long curve.
That smile, arcing like a curve on a graph, was so contrived it looked like nothing more than a mask.
"Is the woman's smile happiness? Mockery? Or sorrow?"
The woman's smile...
"What is the name of this woman, whose smile is as beautiful as my own visage?"
Not a beautiful smile—her beauty. Sloppy of her, trying to fudge it like that.
"Jisan, do you have any idea? I've got absolutely nothing. This is driving me crazy."
"Well, there's only one right answer, and the riddle's fairly generous with hints. If we think it through, it's doable."
At the glimmer of hope in my eyes, Tunan's expression turned murderous again.
Just meeting that face face-to-face seemed to freeze me solid.
The chill of her was a dead ringer for her mother.
"First off, the composer who wrote Turandot's music is Giacomo Puccini. He's Italian."
"Then the woman is probably Italian too."
"Right. But beyond that, I'm drawing a blank."
Having narrowed it down to Italian nationality, now I had to pluck the keywords out of the rest.
"Gaze. Valley. Smile."
As if she'd read my mind, Jang Siwoon murmured to herself.
Gaze, valley, smile...
She'd said she was leaving it to me, but she apparently had no intention of simply leaning on me—Jang Siwoon closed her eyes and focused on the deduction.
Nothing obvious came to her, though, and soon she was groaning in frustration.
"But none of it sounds ordinary, does it? With descriptions hanging off it like that, she's got to be some really unusual woman."
Ah.
Gaze. Valley. Smile.
Nothing ordinary about them.
And if she's unusual—she'd be a woman famous for exactly those peculiarities.
I found the answer buried in the scattered fragments of Jang Siwoon's offhand muttering.
I'd finally caught the tail end of that distant, tangled thread of thought—the one that had felt just barely within reach.
"I've got it."
"Really? That's our Jisan for you!"
Not even a flicker of thought that she herself had supplied the hint—Jang Siwoon simply stared at me in admiration.
"Your comment is what gave me the hint, Siwoon."
"Mine?"
Still utterly lost, she tilted her head in confusion.
"There is no time to explain to a fellow prince. Prince of pallid blood—speak your answer, and quickly."
Pallid—that'd be me, then.
After all, Jang Siwoon's body was hardened by conditioning, sturdy where mine was not.
She seemed to be wearing something like a smirk at that.
But she still nodded as if she trusted me, no explanation required.
"The answer is—"
Barely managing to steady my pounding heart, I opened my mouth.