COTP 12

Chapter 12

Aimless footsteps led this wretched body to the temple.

The royal guards stationed outside the temple bowed their heads upon seeing me.

I returned a light nod and opened the door with familiar ease.

The cold, sunken air unique to the temple greeted me.

An empty, hollow auditorium with not a soul in sight. The scent of emptiness lingering in the air.

I walked past the long benches lined up in rows.

At the end, a white statue gazed down at me.

And beneath that statue, as if it belonged there by default, sat a piano made of crystal.

This crystal piano had been a wedding gift from him when I married into this house.

Perhaps that’s why…

This cold glass, standing alone to guard the temple, felt strangely like myself. Sitting in front of it, I ran my fingertips over the keys.

The familiar feel of wood beneath my fingers. Firmly, I pressed a white key.

Do, do, do…

The heavy yet clear notes rang out, echoing softly. The empty auditorium filled with just this single scale.

The language only I could see began, as always, to fill my insides tightly. Pleading, begging to be born here, in this place.

With only a hollow laugh added on top, I think… I completed the final song of my life.

The rich and beautifully blooming melody seemed to bless the last steps of my journey.

Even if I could see another divine language again, I would never bring it to the world now.

Looking up at the statue staring down at me after my final performance, I murmured:

“O God, if there was even a hair’s breadth of meaning in my life…”

The day I return to Your embrace.

When You meet me face-to-face, I beg You, please tell me my song of praise was pleasing to Your ears.

Tell me the path I walked was not vile, and please… comfort me.

“…Goodbye.”

Muttering that small farewell, I stood up.

I grabbed the hammer that was always kept in the temple.

Then, without hesitation, I swung it at the piano.

Instead of soft notes, a loud crash rang out.

The fragile crystal shattered into countless pieces.

As I watched the transparent shards scatter midair, I thought:

What were you, really?

You, who gave me the whole world, who defined me, and at the same time, made it impossible for me to simply exist as myself.

Again, I swung the hammer. Another loud crash followed.

To me… what were you?

Something… yet nothing. You gave me everything, only to take it all away.

And yet, at the same time, you were a piece of my heart, a shard of my soul.

The finest hymn to God. A message from God to humanity.

Ultimately, something born from my fingertips—my own creation.

The shattered crystal slowly began to lose its shape.

What would my life have been like had I never met you? Would I still be wandering some filthy slum, barely surviving?

Never having met the king who hurt me most, nor him, who couldn’t even be defined.

Crash.

Finally, with a roaring noise, the instrument collapsed completely.

Scattered glass shards, broken crystal, tangled wires, keys, hammers, and pedals were strewn all over.

Staring at the wreckage, I felt a strange sensation.

How should I describe it…? The thrill of committing my first act of rebellion in my entire life?

Just as a small smile started to form on my lips, the firmly closed door burst open.

“Vi!”

You screamed briefly and ran into the temple.

You stared at me holding the hammer, and at the pathetic fragments that had once been the crystal piano.

Your endlessly red gaze trembled.

Confusion, shock, anger, disbelief.

All sorts of emotions shot toward me.

“What… what have you done?!”

Hearing that, I opened my mouth as if nothing had happened.

“You’ve arrived, Your Highness.”

“……”

My attitude must have felt like a slap to the back of his head.

With an expression I’d never seen before, my husband just stared at me for a long while.

“Vi has finally…”

After quite a long silence, his lips trembled.

The words he finally chose came out with great difficulty:

“You’ve finally lost your mind.”

“I’m perfectly sane.”

I replied shortly and gazed at the beautiful yet miserable remains.

It was the truth.

Since learning of the prophecy, today was the clearest, most peaceful day of my life.

Even the way I looked up at him, my eyes must have resembled a sky without a single cloud.

A hollow laugh escaped me.

“There’s no one left to play it anymore… I just wanted to send it off with my own hands.”

Even down to the smallest shard.

I wanted to sink them quietly into a crystal-clear lake.

Suddenly, his rough hands grabbed my shoulder.

“Vi!”

At your shout, the hammer slipped from my hands.

Bang! The heavy hammer crashed into the marble floor, its echo rattling the empty auditorium.

“I told you already… I’ll never send you back to the kingdom.”

…Was it inevitable he would misunderstand my words that way?

Well… I suppose so. It was something I only knew because of the prophecy… because I could read him.

There was no way my husband could imagine… that my life was coming to an end.

His sharply sunken eyes glared at me as if to devour me.

“Vi, you will live here… and you will die here.”

“…Yes.”

Blinking once at our locked gazes, I responded softly between my teeth.

“I will follow Your Highness’s will.”

He seemed taken aback at my emotionless reply.

I looked straight at him and continued:

“I will die… by Your Highness’s side.”

After all, I had only 120 days left.

Your fleeting time… and my eternity were crossing paths.

If this was the choice you made, for this brief moment where I existed tangled within your universe…

If you wouldn’t let me go now… If I had no way of escaping you… Then I thought, it was right to follow your will.

I would spend the remaining time I had like this… doing what I could, one thing at a time… until I finally closed my eyes beside you.

That too… was another wish of mine.

D-119

“…His Highness the Grand Prince seemed very shocked…”

In the morning, as my maid combed my hair, she cautiously spoke.

I immediately understood what she meant.

“…Sorry?”

“Did you really… break it? The temple’s piano?”

I neither said yes nor no and sank into deep thought.

Why would she ask something she already knew?

Perhaps rumors had already spread among the maids… that the Crown Princess had lost her mind.

I knew it wasn’t something a sane person would do.

What would happen when this rumor reached the kingdom?

Would the king be raging, furious that I had disgraced his name?

I could easily picture the pale, furious face of the king in my mind.

At the same time, doubt crept inside me.

Was I expecting too much from the king?

The king, who didn’t even consider me his child, might scoff at my strange rumors and say it had nothing to do with him.

Or… maybe not.

The truth was… I didn’t know.

Just as the king hated me… I didn’t know anything about him either.

“…Before your wedding, His Highness the Grand Prince went through a lot to get that piano.”

Her words sounded like she was defending him.

“It was personally crafted by the previous ‘Seer.’ The temple almost never agreed to part with it… I heard His Highness struggled a lot.”

“….”

Ah… how ironic.

The previous generation had created it… and the next generation that appeared after so long… failed to inherit its meaning and shattered it instead.

“They only agreed after much persuasion, saying it was for the newly appeared Seer. Honestly… if I may say, I think His Highness went through all that trouble because it was worth it. It was so beautiful… I don’t think I’ll ever see something like it again.”

The maid murmured regretfully.

I wasn’t sure if “beautiful” was a fitting word for an instrument… but even to my eyes, that crystal piano had been beautiful.

Especially when the morning sunlight poured in… I would search for every word in the world to describe its brilliance.

The dazzling radiance cast by clear glass facing the white sun.

The movements that created sound… the moments when my music echoed endlessly from the dark… and met me again.

Recalling all of that, I finally, truly realized the gravity of what I’d done.

I was the one who erased all the splendor known only to me.

But there was no regret. If anything… my heart felt light.

Remembering the true cause of all this, I looked at the maid reflected in the mirror.

It felt like the maid’s gaze met mine in the reflection, so I gently curved my eyes.

“Yeowan.”

“Yes, Your Highness?”