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Chapter: 01
Prologue
When I opened my eyes, I found myself submerged in a river as black as ink.
“Ah… I died again.”
I let out a deep sigh, and bubbles rose toward the surface.
Watching them drift upward, I lazily swam after them.
“Pwah!”
Breaking through the surface, I took a deep breath and glanced around.
“No boats today.”
Usually there would be at least one or two ferries around, but every now and then there wasn’t a single one in sight.
Well, no helping it.
I’d just have to swim to the shore.
After struggling my way to the riverbank, I hauled myself onto land and immediately collapsed onto the sandy ground.
“Haaah…”
“Even this is starting to wear me out.”
Lying on my back, I stared at the crimson sky and caught my breath.
They should be here soon…
“Your Highness! Princess! Are you safe?!”
That girl was never destined to be refined.
The moment I thought of her, she appeared.
I lazily waved at the brilliantly multicolored bird flying toward me in a panic.
“Your Highness!”
The tiny bird spotted me and shot toward the ground like an arrow. Just before her feet touched down, she flipped through the air, and the instant she landed, the bird transformed into a blonde girl wearing a colorful hanbok with her hair tied in a traditional ribbon.
This was Ansi, my attendant and bodyguard—a young phoenix about a hundred and fifty years old.
“Ansi, what was I doing when I died this time? Did I die in my sleep? I can’t remember.”
“D-Die? Your Highness, I told you not to say such frightening things! You did not die!”
“Then what do you call waking up in the River of the Three Crossings?”
I answered flatly, and Ansi bit her lip.
“Your Highness is merely hovering between life and death. You have not passed away. Absolutely not!”
“Isn’t that basically the same thing?”
“It is not! His Majesty the King of the Underworld has surely dropped everything and is rushing here even now. Once he arrives, you’ll wake up again in the palace before long.”
“Exactly. I only keep coming back because my father is the King of the Underworld. If it were anyone else, they’d already be dead.”
“Not everyone who crosses the River of the Three Crossings dies! Sometimes people are sent back thanks to the blessings of their ancestors!”
Ansi shouted at the top of her lungs, then threw a blanket over me as though she’d had enough of listening.
Only then did I notice that her eyelids were swollen red.
“…This isn’t exactly the first time. Why were you crying again?”
“It’s because this isn’t the first time. Sniff…”
She sniffled and hugged me tightly, blanket and all.
Although Ansi looked like a human girl of about thirteen or fourteen, I was even smaller than she was, so I disappeared completely into her embrace.
“You’re cold, aren’t you? I’ll warm you up right away.”
“It’s fine. I’m not that cold.”
“Says the person whose lips are turning blue.”
Grumbling, Ansi hugged me even tighter before muttering,
“…Actually… I wasn’t the only one crying. The Jade Emperor cried too.”
“Mom? Why?”
Dad crying was one thing, but Mom?
That was incredibly rare.
“Mom’s used to this too. Why would she suddenly cry now…?”
“Your Highness, what parent could ever become accustomed to their only child constantly hovering on the brink of death?”
“…”
“Her Majesty said… she fears that one day even His Majesty the King of the Underworld may no longer be able to save you.”
“…”
I had always thought Mother was fine because she never lost her composure.
It turned out she had simply been hiding it.
A wave of sadness washed over me.
Still nestled in Ansi’s arms, I silently fidgeted with my fingers.
She wrapped them carefully inside the blanket as she continued her lament.
“Your Highness is different from the other gods. Sniff… If you truly die… we may never meet again.”
At last, my little phoenix burst into tears.
I couldn’t think of anything to say.
My name is Sang Ra-Huiyo.
My title is Princess Cheonmyeong.
My mother is the Jade Emperor, the supreme deity of the Heavenly Realm.
My father is the King of the Underworld, ruler of the Realm of the Dead.
About a thousand years ago, these two highest gods somehow fell in love and held an unprecedented marriage that united heaven and the underworld.
For the first couple of centuries, they enjoyed a blissful married life.
Then, around eight hundred years ago, they began worrying because they couldn’t have a child.
From that point until I was finally born, they never stopped trying.
Conceiving me was difficult.
Giving birth to me was even harder.
In other words, I was the precious only daughter whom the two greatest gods obtained only after countless hardships.
I was also the only being ever to be recognized simultaneously as a princess of both Heaven and the Underworld.
Because of that, I had been showered with unimaginable love from the very moment I was born.
Everyone treasured me.
Everyone bowed before me.
I never lacked for anything.
Anything except good health.
I am two hundred and nine years old.
But during those two centuries, I haven’t actually spent very much time awake and healthy.
I have to sleep for long periods.
Even breathing causes my body to steadily break down.
Whenever I reached my limit, I had no choice but to fall into a long sleep while my body repaired itself.
Sometimes I didn’t even get the chance to fall asleep.
Sometimes my heart simply stopped.
Whenever that happened, Father would retrieve my soul, while Mother healed my body, and I would soon come back to life.
“If they weren’t my parents, I’d have died a long, long time ago.”
Because of my condition, my body had never grown properly.
I was still smaller than Ansi, who herself hadn’t fully matured as a phoenix.
“When we first met, Ansi was much smaller than I was. She overtook me in no time.”
Because I was like this, Mother and Father never truly found happiness even after finally having the child they’d longed for.
Their only daughter kept stopping breathing and wandering off to the River of the Three Crossings.
“Maybe they’re even unhappier now than they were before I was born.”
I often—
No.
Very often—
felt guilty.
My parents never stopped searching for a cure.
I’d taken every medicine said to exist under heaven.
We’d tried every treatment imaginable.
Yet none of it had worked.
“At least they figured out the cause.”
The source of my illness was simply that my parents were too powerful.
I had inherited far too much divine power from birth.
The combined power of both the Jade Emperor and the King of the Underworld had passed into me.
It was far more than an infant’s body could possibly endure.
It was like hanging enormous iron weights over every inch of a newborn baby’s body.
Naturally, even breathing damaged me.
If only I could grow into a strong adult, I’d finally be able to withstand it.
But the overwhelming divine power constantly crushed me, preventing my body from growing.
And the weaker my body remained, the less it could bear that power.
It was an endless vicious cycle.
In fact, that was also why my parents had been unable to have children for so long.
Any child they conceived would die before birth.
Apparently, even before I existed, I kept refusing to be born because I knew I’d die in Mother’s womb.
I don’t remember any of that, of course.
But according to the Birth Goddess, that’s what happened.
“She said the fact that I was born alive instead of stillborn was already a miracle…”
Just as the marriage between the Jade Emperor and the King of the Underworld had no precedent, neither did my birth.
No one had known what would happen.
Even the Birth Goddess only realized how serious my condition was after Mother became pregnant.
So my parents hadn’t knowingly chosen to bring me into the world despite all this.
Yet they blamed themselves every single day.
“Being the supreme gods wasn’t their fault. Neither was wanting a child.”
Even so, whenever I fell ill, they would tell me that everything was their fault and that I had every right to resent them.
As though they were criminals.
“Honestly… wouldn’t they have been happier if I’d never been born?”
If I had to be born at all, couldn’t I at least have inherited only as much divine power as I could handle?
“Why was I born so… broken?”
I sighed inwardly.
If I sighed out loud, Ansi—who was still sniffling—would only worry more.
She’s crying so much. Her eyes are going to swell.
“Ansi… don’t cry, okay?”
I rubbed my cheek against her while burrowing deeper into her embrace.
“Princess… waaah… sob…”
Instead of calming down, my phoenix hugged me even tighter and cried harder.
I hated making people cry.
I wished no one would ever cry because of me.
I wished no one would become unhappy because of me.
“But that’s so hard.”
Being a good child was easy.
Why was being a healthy child so impossibly difficult?
Still wrapped in Ansi’s arms, I gazed blankly at the flowing River of the Three Crossings.
It would take Father a little while to arrive.
Even for the King of the Underworld, reviving someone whose life hung in the balance wasn’t easy.
It was like making a coin land on heads every single time you flipped it.
“The first few times he came almost immediately… but lately it’s been taking longer and longer…”
Now that I thought about it, Mother had cried too.
…Maybe one day the coin will land on tails, and not even Mother and Father’s power will be enough to stop it.
Perhaps that would even be a relief.
In the distance, ferrymen of the underworld were steering crowded boats full of the dead across the river.
There must have been a traffic jam at the entrance to the Underworld, because they were arriving all at once.
One soul among them caught my eye.
“Ansi. Look over there.”
I tugged on her colorful sleeve, and she lifted her tear-filled eyes.
“Stop crying for a second. Look.”
I pointed toward one of the approaching ferries.
A skinny little girl, perhaps six or seven years old, stood blankly holding the hand of an underworld guide.
Her silver hair made her stand out immediately.
Ansi spotted her as well.
“Do you mean that silver-haired child?”
“Yeah. She’s much younger than I am, isn’t she?”
“…She looks about the same age as Your Highness.”
“That’s only because I never grew properly. She’s actually much younger than me. She’s a real little kid.”
“…”
“Children that young die and come here too. If you spend enough time watching this river, you’ll see plenty of kids younger and more unfortunate than I am.”
“…”
“Compared to them, I’ve lived an incredibly happy life. And I’m not even dying today.”
Objectively speaking, I wasn’t a particularly pitiful child.
I was Princess Cheonmyeong, Sang Ra-Huiyo.
“So… stop crying…”
“That child may be reborn! She may enter paradise! She may even become an immortal! But Your Highness can’t!”
Ansi suddenly shouted at the top of her lungs before breaking down into even louder sobs.
“Waaah! Please don’t die, Your Highness! You mustn’t! If you die… Ansi will die too! Waaaaah!”
Well…
Trying to comfort her only made things worse.
“Everyone would be better off accepting it sooner.”
I had been born into the highest position imaginable.
I had been loved beyond measure.
I’d lived surrounded by every luxury.
Wasn’t that already a life overflowing with blessings?
So what if I lacked good health?
Even if I died today, I was already two hundred and nine years old.
That wasn’t exactly an early death.
“Wouldn’t you call that a good, long life? I wish Mom and Dad could think that way too.”
But they couldn’t.
They loved me too much.
If, the next time the coin was flipped, it landed on tails…
If I truly died…
What would happen to my parents then?
The thought filled me with sadness.
…Maybe I should put some distance between us. If they get used to being apart from me, perhaps it’ll be easier for them to move on when the time finally comes.
