Since I’m a Time-Limited Princess Who Has No Tomorrow - Chapter 37

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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 37
Se-ru-hwa had awakened. At those words, Cheon Gyeol-u felt as though his mind exploded into brilliant white. From that blank expanse, his final memory of his mother surfaced.
Two years prior, early summer. Late afternoon. His mother’s birthday celebration. The venue was the Unjeung Pavilion, a tower built upon the artificial pond within the Palace.
Behind the pond stood an artificial hill. A eunuch had mentioned that dianthus flowers—his mother’s favorite—grew there. He had already presented her with a birthday gift, but that had been arranged by the servants. The boy wanted to give his mother something he had made with his own hands.
So during the banquet, he slipped away and climbed the hill. Dianthus blossoms bloomed abundantly, painting everything in deep pink. The young Crown Prince moved busily through the flower field, gathering large, beautiful blooms.
When he had collected an armful of dianthus flowers, he suddenly felt something cool at the crown of his head. That sensation flowed like invisible water from his crown, down his nape, across his back, drenching his entire body.
When he regained consciousness, the boy lay collapsed in the flower field. He couldn’t understand what had happened. It hadn’t been long enough to call it fainting.
Cheon Gyeol-u thought he had simply stumbled. The flowers he’d gathered were crushed beneath him, ruined. The boy felt disappointed but soon began collecting new blooms. He wrapped the fresh bouquet carefully in silk and tied it with colored thread.
The young Crown Prince returned to the banquet hall with flushed cheeks, bouquet in hand.
“Mother.”
“My, Crown Prince. What is this?”
“This is a gift I have prepared for you, Mother.”
“Did you gather and arrange this yourself? How wonderful.”
The Queen, receiving the bouquet, flushed with emotion. The Father King laughed heartily at how thoughtful his son was. The others gathered in the hall smiled warmly.
“Come here, Crown Prince.”
The Queen, cradling the bouquet, opened her arms toward her son. She was smiling like a flower.
The boy, his face radiant with happiness, nestled into his mother’s embrace. The Queen pressed a kiss to her beloved son’s cheek.
Contact.
The boy’s shadow spread like spilled ink across paper, consuming everything in all directions at once. Though the sun had not yet set, the Unjeung Pavilion plunged into darkness deeper than night itself. From that pitch-black day, screams of terror began to pierce the air.
A desperate scream erupted right beside the Crown Prince’s ear. The boy reflexively covered his ears. Only after doing so did he realize the muffled screams were his mother’s voice.
“Mother?”
The young Crown Prince looked up in shock. The Queen, as though she had witnessed the most horrifying thing in the world, pushed him away and collapsed. Eyes wide with terror. A scream that seemed to rupture eardrums.
The Father King tried to catch his falling wife. But he too collapsed. The sound of dishes shattering, wine spilling. People tumbling and tangling together. Wails. Desperate cries for help.
The boy turned to look behind him. Even in darkness deeper than night, everything was clear to the Crown Prince.
Those fleeing and those trampled beneath them. A man strangling his own throat and another tearing at his own flesh. And the darkness that covered and consumed them all.
It was a hellscape of pandemonium. Within it, the young Crown Prince alone remained whole. That was unmistakable proof that he was the one who had created this hell.
Cheon Gyeol-u had relived this nightmare hundreds of times over.
Each time, he wondered: What did I do wrong then? How could I have prevented this tragedy? Was there a way to avoid it that I simply didn’t know? Or was it something that couldn’t be avoided?
Did I commit some sin? Is that why I was cursed? If I sinned, why punish others instead of me?
Punish me instead! Kill me instead!
“If it were me, I would be ashamed enough to hang myself, but Your Highness….”
Wan-eon’s words echoed in his mind.
The boy had wanted to hang himself too. But he couldn’t. His parents were still alive. He had already committed a grave transgression; he couldn’t compound it with the greater sin of dying before his parents. He hadn’t been granted permission to die.
So when the order came to marry, he had obediently prepared for his own death.
But that marriage. His young bride, forced into the union.
She had taken his hand in the darkness and led him forward, and finally, she had even reached his mother.
“Your Highness? Are you all right?”
At Nain’s worried voice, Cheon Gyeol-u returned to reality. And without hesitation, he bolted from the room.
He had no time to put on shoes. He couldn’t think. The Crown Prince ran barefoot toward the Central Palace Hall.
The courtyard of the Central Palace Hall was filled with Royal Guard soldiers. They reflexively leveled their spears at the Crown Prince who suddenly burst in.
“Who goes there!”
“Your… Your Highness?”
Even recognizing him as the Crown Prince, they did not lower their spears. Since the dark affair, his entry into the Central Palace Hall had been forbidden.
“P-please step back….”
The soldiers, gripped by fear or steeled by duty, raised their spears. And the young Crown Prince slipped between those blades as smoothly as water flowing downstream, passing through those who stood in his way like a shadow.
“Wh-what?”
To become a Royal Guard soldier, one needed skill in martial arts. There were dozens of such men, yet not a single one could apprehend an eleven-year-old boy. It was enough to make even ghosts weep.
While everyone stood in shock, their wits scattered, the Crown Prince passed through them without even realizing he had moved at all.
The moment he entered the Central Palace Hall, startled cries from eunuchs and attendants echoed with each step he took. Some collapsed to the ground; others desperately tried to block his path.
Cheon Gyeol-u passed through them as naturally as before. Voices murmured from within the inner chamber. The Crown Prince opened the door and entered the Queen’s inner chamber.
“C-Crown Prince Your Highness?”
“Ahhhhh!”
“Kyaaaah!”
Those inside shrieked in terror, fleeing or collapsing where they stood.
To Cheon Gyeol-u, they were invisible. He saw only the Queen, sitting upon the bed, leaning against the backrest.
Soon, his vision blurred and hazed, obscuring even that sight.
“M-Mother….”
The boy, who had stood rigid in the center of the chamber with tears streaming down his face, crumpled as though his legs had given way beneath him.
“Mother, I… I….”
He wept, his words tumbling out in incoherent fragments. Everyone, terrified, neither dared approach him nor attempt to stop him.
And the Queen, upon discovering the weeping Crown Prince, opened her arms—limbs that moved with difficulty.
“Crown Prince.”
“….”
“Come here.”
With a smile as gentle as a flower, just as it had been two years ago, in those moments before sleep.
A nightmare overlaps with the Queen’s comfort.
“Ah.”
Cheon Gyeol-u was seized by terror. He could not breathe. The fear was so overwhelming that he forgot even the fact that darkness rages when fear takes hold.
It was at that very moment that a small hand touched his rigid back.
“Your Highness.”
A tender voice fell softly upon his ear. It was Se-ru-hwa. His young wife.
“It’s alright.”
He did not understand with his mind what she meant by alright. Yet remarkably, his heart—wrung tight by terror—understood those words.
“It’s alright, Your Highness.”
Se-ru-hwa whispered again and gave his back a gentle push.
Cheon Gyeol-u was propelled forward by that small force. Staggering, stumbling, half-crawling, he sat before his mother.
Only then did the Crown Prince realize that the Queen was weeping too.
“Crown Prince.”
The Queen called to him, reaching out her hand.
If he touched her, if he touched her, something terrible might happen.
A scream—a scream so piercing it felt as though my eardrums would shatter. The Queen collapsing. A hellish tableau.
Fear seized me again. Cheon Gyeol-u reflexively turned around. I caught the glimmer of silver hair and jade-colored eyes. Se-ru-hwa, who had been watching over him, smiled faintly. Her small lips moved. I could read the shape of her words.
It’s all right.
The Crown Prince looked forward again. The Queen stood with her arms open, waiting.
The boy fell into his mother’s embrace. Her lips touched his cheek. Just as they had that day, two years ago.
Cheon Gyeol-u squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them.
It was bright. Not dark. His mother was smiling in the light, her eyes drenched with tears. Instead of screams, a gentle voice reached him.
“You’ve endured so much, haven’t you?”
The boy could not answer. Then, long-suppressed sobs burst forth.
* * *
Having reunited the Crown Prince and the Queen, I sat across from the King in the adjacent room. Unlike me, who had rested in the Underworld, Seol Deung-hwa had stayed awake through the entire night and was unsteady on her feet, so the King sent her to rest while he wept.
The King, seated before the writing desk, held an empty teacup in his reddened eyes.
His expression had changed considerably.
‘As expected, the medicinal tea that Hallak-gung-i made himself is truly effective.’
The Queen’s condition was remarkably good compared to how long she had lain unconscious. As Father had said, she retained no memory of the Afterlife—her last memory was from just before she collapsed, when the dark poison had manifested.
I had worried she might resent the Crown Prince or feel aversion toward him, but fortunately that was not the case. In fact, the moment she awoke, she sought him out first.
‘The Queen doesn’t remember the past two years, so that explains it, but what about the King?’
Right after the Queen awakened, the King had been too overwhelmed with emotion and tears to think clearly. Now was when the real problem would emerge.
The King, who had been silent for some time, suddenly spoke.
“It feels as though I’ve awakened from a long dream.”

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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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