The Princess's Trial (5)
The sorcerer? He never actually disappeared? No, that can't be it. His appearance is just too... different.
He looked healthier than when we'd seen him earlier—flesh on his bones, hair on his head—so it was a wonder we recognized him at all.
"Elder! How on earth—?"
"This is a self from my past. There is no time for idle talk. Come, quickly—this way!"
Barely pausing to catch our breath, we followed the sorcerer out through the door.
The space we entered was so lavish it was hard to believe we were still inside the ruined castle.
"You need not hide. Only do not make a sound."
With that grave warning, the sorcerer came to a stop in the corner of the room like a wooden post. Siwoon and I stood quietly behind him.
"*Sob...* *Sob...* You may withdraw."
"Your Highness—"
"At once!"
A young girl entered the chamber.
Wait—that's the girl from earlier, isn't it?
It was the same child we'd seen in the second room, on the valley path by the Mona Lisa. The suspicious little brat who'd bolted away to keep us from finding our way.
"Tunan, Tunan."
So this girl was Tunan, young.
Then the door opened again, and a man with a kind, honest face stepped inside. Little Tunan broke into an innocent, gap-toothed grin at the sight of him.
"Papa...!"
"There you are. Come here. Father has brought something for our Tunan."
Calaf—father of Tunan and husband of Turandot—sat the girl on his knee, then pulled the painting from under his arm and showed it to her.
A worldview collision.
The painting was the Mona Lisa, and Tunan let out a cry of delight at the sight of it.
"Wow!"
"When we slipped away to the market together last time, you took a fancy to this picture a Western merchant was selling, did you not?"
"Yes! I loved it so much!"
Perhaps because he'd lived through hardship as a prince of a fallen kingdom, there was a humble streak in him you'd never expect from an emperor. Taking his daughter out to mingle among the common folk at a street market, in secret, no less.
"Why do you love that portrait so?"
"It looks so mysterious—so hard to reach, yet beautiful. Unknowable, yet there to be seen..."
Little Tunan fidgeted with her fingers, taking her sweet time before answering. Calaf waited with endless patience, the very picture of a loving father.
"It's like Mama."
"...I see. If our Tunan likes it, that is enough for Father."
With an expression caught somewhere between joy and melancholy, Calaf stroked her hair.
?!
Father and daughter, mid-laugh, dissolved like mist and were gone.
"Stay still and watch."
The sorcerer murmured this to us, then moved to the center of the room. Siwoon nearly answered him, clapping a hand over her mouth just in time.
"Sorcerer! Where is that wretch!!"
A woman swept violently into the room. Her enraged face was beautiful, but it radiated pure killing intent.
That temper... that must be Turandot.
The sorcerer folded his arms and bowed with perfect composure.
"Your Majesty the Empress."
"If you have arrived, you should say so!"
Compared to the Calaf we'd just seen with young Tunan, she looked noticeably older.
"Tunan, come in as well."
"Yes, Mother."
She's grown?
At Turandot's command, Tunan entered the room with a courteous bow. The girl who hadn't looked ten years old a moment ago now bore the appearance of a young lady on the verge of womanhood.
Time has jumped forward. We're inside Tunan's memories.
Where had the child who used to smile so purely gone? Tunan's face was utterly motionless, as though she'd put on a mask.
"Quickly—we must save Calaf. You were sworn to protect the Emperor of this realm!!"
CRASH—
Unable to contain her fury, Turandot slammed her fist down onto the table.
The cold ruthlessness of Turandot in the original story was nowhere to be seen—only a middle-aged woman unable to hide the storm of her own emotions.
"There is a way."
"Truly?"
Color bloomed at once in the faces of both Turandot and Tunan. But the sorcerer, as if to warn them against relief, pressed on without pause.
"However, it requires the sacrifice of Her Highness the Princess."
"Tunan's...?"
"That is not all. I can prevent His Majesty from fading away—but sorrow will follow."
Turandot lowered her eyes for a moment, sinking into thought. The situation was evidently so dire that she couldn't afford to pry deeper into the sorcerer's cryptic words.
So Calaf's illness is grave.
"Sorrow is an emotion one can endure. And Tunan—"
Turandot cast a brief glance down at her daughter, then swiftly turned her head away, cold as stone.
She never once considered her daughter's wishes, clinging only to her own desire.
"For Calaf's sake."
"......"
"Sorcerer, I can read your thoughts as plain as day. You find it incomprehensible, don't you—that I would sacrifice the daughter I bore from my own body for the sake of a man I wed after a single night of courtship."
Turandot clicked her tongue and let out a bitter, self-mocking laugh.
"There are many kinds of love. There are women who need it desperately as mothers, and there are women who do not. I am the latter."
Perhaps Turandot's capacity for love had been filled to the brim by Calaf alone. Tunan, clearly long accustomed to this, wore an expression of perfect calm.
"I am the same, Your Majesty."
Her voice, matching her face, was as cold and still as a frozen lake.
"No parent's love is divided equally among their children. At least, mine is not."
Mother and daughter are exactly alike.
Both of their loves had pooled entirely around Calaf.
No, wait. Tunan might have been different, once.
Little Tunan had gazed at the Mona Lisa with loving eyes, saying it was like her mother. But growing up, she may have finally given up on her mother's love and poured what remained of her heart into her father instead.
...Some people crave the love they're starved of even more, and some simply learn to let it go.
"Understood."
The sorcerer made no further attempt to dissuade them. He seemed to have already foreseen that no warning would bend their resolve.
"Her Highness must draw hot blood from the suitors."
"?!"
"Each time a throat is severed, the blood of that sacrifice will be carried to His Majesty."
The method was so shocking that even the composed Tunan could only recoil in horror. But Turandot—the one who had already carried out those murders in the original story—was barely fazed, and simply pressed the sorcerer for more.
"Then I—what am I to do?"
"Your Majesty the Empress."
"...?"
"Even if His Majesty's body is left incomplete—if it remains—will you be able to keep watching it and bear the grief?"
What on earth did he intend to do to keep Calaf alive? The phrase incomplete sent a chill down my spine, and I was nothing but a bystander.
"...Yes. Tears can be wiped away. So long as Calaf can remain in my arms."
But Turandot's position never wavered. The sorcerer met her steady, unflinching gaze and let out a faint sigh.
"As you wish."
Then Tunan, Turandot, and finally the sorcerer scattered into mist, vanishing without a trace.
The memory has ended.
No more of Tunan's memories played before us. And yet we were still standing in that same chamber the sorcerer had led us to.
"Jisan, are we still inside Tunan's memory?"
"The sorcerer vanished too, so I don't think so."
"I thank you for coming this far."
Calaf's voice cut between Siwoon and me. Then the lights in the chamber brightened, and the darkness that had shrouded the chair was swept away.
"?!"
That's... Calaf?
The skin of the Calaf seated in the chair was corpse-pale. His whole body was so deathly white I might have thought it painted.
He'd thrown clothes over himself to hide it, but he couldn't conceal everything. The seams where chunks of flesh had been joined together were plain to see—threads stitching skin to skin, visible in the gaps.
"......"
"It may frighten you. There is no need to come closer."
Calaf's hollow pupils were like the eyes of a dead fish. He couldn't even look at us properly, managing only to force out his voice.
"This is the most hidden place in the imperial palace. The sorcerer and I linked our paths to guide you here."
"Where is the Empress... Turandot?"
"Turandot has finished her life."
I barely managed to steady my trembling throat long enough to ask, and Calaf answered without hesitation.
"She held me in her arms until the very end. The woman who locked me in a prison of eternity, then met death herself."
He was a puppet who could not lift the corners of his mouth, could not blink. And even so, love poured out of him as he spoke of Turandot.
To love his wife and daughter even in this state.
"My story has dragged on long enough."
Rancid, water-like drool leaked from the cracked gap of his mouth.
"It is time to erase the wish of Turandot and Tunan."
"Please do."
Calaf asked us, flatly, to erase him.
I simply could not understand him. There was no anger in him—nothing but love.
"You don't resent them?"
"Jisan...?"
At my question—one that had nothing to do with the quest—Siwoon turned to look at me, puzzlement written across her face.
Honestly, I didn't understand why I'd asked it myself. He was a figure built by the tower in the first place; digging into his psyche was only ever going to yield unsatisfying answers.
"My own frail body took me from the Empress and the Princess before my time. That is my fault."
"The sorcery extended your life without your consent, though?"
"Even so, the root of this catastrophe is me."
"......"
"I am selfish in my own way, so I have no choice but to lay every reason at my own feet."
Selfish?
Calling it selfish to shoulder all the blame yourself—this was enlightenment on the level of a monk who'd transcended the world.
Is love without resentment toward the one who broke you... real love?
"I believe you two can do it."
While I stood there in confusion, Calaf asked us once more, through cracked, dry lips, for deliverance.
"...If the wish is erased, Your Majesty will disappear."
"What meaning is there in continuing an existence like this?"
Looking at him, I couldn't find an easy answer. He gazed up at our faces and managed, with trembling effort, to twitch the corners of his mouth into something like a smile.
"Being reduced to a stitched-together puppet—that does not trouble me. My appearance is not what matters."
"......"
"It is only that a life force-fed against nature has no meaning. I wish to go to her side now."
Just then, from somewhere beyond this hidden chamber, we heard footsteps racing toward it.
"Papa!"
Tunan. She'd noticed that we'd found Calaf.
"Hurry—grant my wish before my daughter arrives."
"How do we erase it?"
"It is simple."
Perhaps because she wanted to see the Calaf she'd been kept from—she'd brushed aside even her own servants to run here. Only a single set of footsteps was drawing closer.
"My name, the one I was locked away and hidden through the whole night of her trial, until dawn. Call that name three times."
"That's all it takes?"
"For someone to call my name means I still live in their memory. That is enough."
"......"
Calaf took in our faces with his lightless eyes. Until now, I'd pictured him as little more than a male lead who'd burned with love after falling for Turandot's beauty.
Inside this tower, with its fully-formed world... it seems Calaf became a fairly decent emperor.
Siwoon looked at me and blinked—a silent signal asking whether it was all right to try. I nodded, giving her my answer. She drew one long breath, then finally opened the mouth she'd been holding shut.
"Calaf."
SLAM—!
The moment Siwoon called his name, the door burst open with a deafening crash. Tunan had squeezed every ounce of her strength into shoving the heavy door open as if to break it down.
She looked between me, Siwoon, and Calaf—and grasped the situation in an instant, her eyes flashing with fury.
"No! You can't, you bastards!!!"
"Calaf."
As Tunan sprinted toward us, half out of her mind, Siwoon hurriedly called his name a second time.
Twice spoken. One more, and Calaf would be gone.
"Papa...!"
Calaf's skin began to split apart, slowly turning into fragments of data. They floated up into the air one by one and vanished—fragments of data, no. Of Calaf's body. Tunan screamed.
"No!! Please—"
The daughter wailed as her father faded before her eyes.
Siwoon watched the wretched scene unfold, hesitation rooting her in place. But at last she made up her mind, clenched her teeth, and called his name one final time.
"Calaf."