Since I’m a Time-Limited Princess Who Has No Tomorrow - Chapter 117

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 117
The veil obscured her expression, making it impossible to read.
‘Still, I can tell she’s absolutely shocked.’
Her body had gone rigid, and she was staring at me with an intensity that felt piercing.
‘I’m wearing a veil too, but she must have recognized me from my voice.’
Thanks to An-si amplifying my cry, all eyes in the gathering turned toward me.
“Please make way! I must deliver a fan to my teacher!”
Speaking loudly, the people blocking the path gradually stepped aside. I slipped through the crowd with ease and stood in the clearing before the Shamanic Ritual Ground. The Shaman in Navy Robes watched me, her eyebrows twitching slightly.
“Teacher…? Little one, who are you?”
“I am a disciple of the Divine Maiden. I’ve come to deliver a fan my teacher left behind.”
After responding confidently, I approached the frozen Baek Tam-sol. Drawing close, I lifted my veil slightly and looked up at her.
“Teacher.”
“…Good heavens. Your Highness, how did you come to be in such a place…?”
“I came to see you, Teacher. You said you’d study for just a few months and return, but you never sent word.”
Speaking with feigned petulance, I held out the fan I’d been carrying.
“Please accept this.”
“…”
“I’m lending it to you because I want to see your sacred dance.”
Baek Tam-sol’s shoulders flinched. I whispered softly.
“You promised to show me your sacred dance first.”
“…Your Highness.”
“Since you haven’t sent any word, I’ve come here myself—you absolutely must show me today!”
I spoke with deliberate sullenness. Baek Tam-sol simply stared at me in a daze. I thrust the fan into her hands and stepped back.
“I’ll be watching from here.”
I plopped down at the very front of the mat where the audience sat, at the edge of the clearing. Straightening my posture and gazing at Baek Tam-sol, I smiled broadly.
“I’ll be watching from right here. So please show me your sacred dance, Teacher.”
“…”
If the gazes of others still frighten you, then dance for me. Imagine that only I exist here.
With such thoughts in my heart, I held Baek Tam-sol’s gaze.
Did my intention reach her? I couldn’t be certain, but I saw Baek Tam-sol grip the fan I’d given her tightly. She still seemed hesitant—her veil trembled subtly and her shoulders tensed.
Yet unmistakably, she took a step forward. With a crisp, pleasant sound, the fan unfurled. A large white fan now obscured her veiled face.
As Baek Tam-sol moved to the center of the Shamanic Ritual Ground, people began to murmur. To drown out their voices and properly set the stage, I turned to the Nongak Troupe members sitting nearby.
“Won’t you play music?”
“Huh?”
“My teacher is about to dance. You should provide the accompaniment. That’s why you came, isn’t it?”
“Ah, ah, yes, yes, that’s right.”
The dazed musician reflexively grabbed his janggu beaters.
Thump, thud-thud, boom, rat-a-tat-tat. The janggu began to establish the rhythm. As if these musicians had coordinated for years, the others soon joined in one by one, following the beat.
Boom, boom-boom—the drum entered the rhythm first. Then the gong joined in, and the lead percussionist took command of the flow. The enriched rhythm naturally wove together the hand drums and the wind pipes.
At some point, the sound of bells mixed into the beat. They came from the bells Baek Tam-sol held—as she gripped the open fan and extended her other arm, bells chimed from her fingertips.
To the sound of the gong, she spun in place, her crimson skirts billowing in layers like a blooming flower. Ribbons of varied colors attached to the bells streamed long and graceful.
The Shaman had surrendered to the rhythm.
Following her flowing steps, long white sleeves danced like wind itself, undulating gently. As the gong sounded, her footsteps halted, her entire form contracting as if hiding behind the fan, then expanding anew with the crash of the gong.
Her arms extended like opening petals. Her hands fluttered through the air like wings. The pristine white fan unfurled like a wisp of cloud, obscuring her face, then lay horizontally to the drum’s beat, rippling like ocean foam.
Intoxicated by the dance’s flow, the Nongak Troupe’s rhythm accelerated and crescendoed. In contrast, the crowd fell silent.
Baek Tam-sol’s movements grew increasingly elaborate, matching the intensifying beat. Her garments swirled and wrapped around her body in fluid, intricate lines. They soared in circles toward the heavens, then collapsed downward as if extinguishing. She lay precariously, then rose again. She awakened and spun like a blooming flower or a stirring bird.
The fan cut through the air. It descended like a blade. With a sharp snap, the folded crimson fan revealed a veiled face gazing directly at me.
At me?
Through the thick, dark veil, Baek Tam-sol’s gaze seemed to reach me. I stood frozen, mouth agape, meeting that invisible stare.
Reading something in my expression, Baek Tam-sol’s shoulders trembled as if she had resolved something. Then, with a flourish, the unfolded white fan concealed the veil once more.
The Shaman hidden behind the fan spun in circles. The drum thundered. As the gong rose to a crescendo and struck like a wedge, the fan snapped shut.
The veil vanished. A flawless, pristine face emerged. In that ordinary, composed countenance, only her eyes blazed with brilliant intensity.
‘My master has revealed her face!’
Without even pulling her bangs down to hide it!
‘The scars have all disappeared!’
I marveled to myself.
The moment I tried to look more closely, the white fan unfurled again with a flourish, obscuring her face once more.
Behind the fan, the Shaman danced. The delicate tinkling of bells harmonized with the long, flowing melody of the taepyeongso.
The taepyeongso’s sound ceased, and to the sharp crack of the janggu stick, the fan closed again. There stood Baek Tam-sol, smiling.
She was smiling. With overwhelming emotion, overflowing confidence, as if drawn, burning fiercely, passionately. The light that had brightened her eyes spread along her curved gaze and smiling lips, illuminating her entire face with radiance.
The face that moments before had seemed ordinary transformed into something captivating with that single expression. The impression was so profound and intense that I could scarcely believe this was the same Baek Tam-sol who had seemed so dull.
I gasped and held my breath in shock. I was not alone—I heard sharp intakes of breath from various corners of the crowd.
Baek Tam-sol laughed with joy and spun rapidly. Faster, faster still, as if racing ahead of the rhythm itself. With such ferocity that she seemed willing to die in that very moment.
Beads of sweat scattered like pearls. Her crimson-painted lips captured the gaze more intensely than her scarlet garments.
Yet what was now striking about that face was not rouge or cosmetics….
‘…passion.’
The complete devotion to giving one’s all, so thoroughly immersed that death would bring no regret. The concentration that would burn an entire lifetime in a fleeting moment. The wholehearted dedication of one’s entire being.
Understanding struck me like a blow to the head. The reason humans sometimes sacrifice their very lives for art, the fervent emotion that tempers existence, the spark that no amount of concealment can suppress—
‘So this is what passion looks like.’
It was vividly rendered before my eyes. Not a metaphor, but truly being painted there.
“Wh, what? That….”
“What is that….”
Even among those entranced by the dance, a few began to notice the anomaly.
Upon Baek Tam-sol’s white fan, opening and closing, a pattern of flames was taking shape. Golden and crimson flames danced across the white silk. The pattern filled the fan completely, then blazed like roaring fire.
Then, along the fan’s edges, embers blossomed like butterflies. Crimson divine power shimmered softly, suffusing the Shaman’s entire form.
I understood instinctively. A new concept had taken root in my divine power that I had divided and placed within the fan.
‘That is not fortune. That is passion.’
The deity whom Baek Tam-sol serves is Ja-cheong-bi, the goddess of grain and agriculture dwelling in the Heavenly Realm.
Her divine power is abundant and intimate. While her deity’s nature could be hearty, it stands far removed from such fierce and violent flames.
Which means the divine power now suffusing Baek Tam-sol’s body, the power contained within the vessel that is Baek Tam-sol, is my divine power infused with the concept of ‘passion.’
‘Passion and fire. Manifested exactly as I felt it just moments ago.’
I gazed, entranced, at the human who danced while channeling my divine power.
Flames suddenly blossomed from the fan’s edge, yet Baek Tam-sol showed no alarm. Instead, she began to weave them into her performance as adornment. The flames transformed with each movement of the fan, dancing in perfect harmony with her.
‘To apply those flames so seamlessly as if they were part of the dance itself. My teacher truly is a genius….’
Beautiful. Now I began to understand—why shamans serve the divine through dance, and why the gods bestow their power upon such shamans.
‘The first candidate for the Straw God… has been decided.’
As I stood mesmerized, watching the sparks scatter like flower petals, I belatedly noticed that the embers scattering around us were beginning to spread into a fire.
I hastily sent a message through the connection.
[An-si, there’s fire starting over here. Could you extinguish it with wind?]
[Why is this human suddenly scattering sparks everywhere? It’s not as if she’s playing with field fire!]
An-si grumbled in displeasure but quickly summoned wind to snuff out the embers. Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—the other humans were so captivated by the dance that they failed to notice the danger of a major fire.
‘Baek Tam-sol remains composed.’
Or rather, it seemed less like composure and more like she was in a trance. She was literally possessed by the divine.
‘When she regains her senses later, she’ll handle it carefully.’
And perhaps someday, instead of merely lending her that fan, I could give it to her completely.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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