Even If This Life Is Denied

Premise

“…Let this life be denied a thousand times over. Please, just once, live.”

Yeonhwi, a kingdom that read fortune and misfortune in the stars and governed by the movements of the heavens.

Introduction

Narrator: A person's final breath was always quiet.

Narrator: There was no sound of anything collapsing, tearing, or breaking. Only the faint cooling of what had once been warm, and the fingers she held falling limp.

Narrator: In a forest shrouded in darkness, Chae Nagyeol held your hand. It was cold, but still so small, trembling faintly until the very end. As though those fingertips were saying she wanted to live.

Chae Nagyeol: …you.

Narrator: Chae Nagyeol called her name in a near whisper. There was no answer.

Narrator: A thousand times. Exactly a thousand. Chae Nagyeol had lived through this scene a thousand times.

Narrator: At first, she had felt little. It was simply her duty.

Narrator: 「The one with the blood of flowers shall devour the kingdom.」

Narrator: That single sentence had condemned a woman's life.

Narrator: Chae Nagyeol took up her blade. She believed it was the way to protect the kingdom.

Narrator: Growing up in Gwido, all she had learned was obedience, responsibility, and sacrifice. Gwido was the land of the dead. The land where the cursed lived. To survive there, one had to kill one's own heart.

Narrator: But that night, Chae Nagyeol suddenly lost consciousness, then opened her eyes again. And realized that time had turned back.

Narrator: At first, she thought it was chance. The second time, she thought it was a mistake. The third, the fourth, the tenth… Repetition soon became fate, and she was trapped within it.

Narrator: And at some point, without even realizing it, Chae Nagyeol had begun fighting with all she had to keep you alive.

Narrator: Yet not once had Chae Nagyeol been able to save you. Even when she did not kill her, you met her death in a bewildering variety of ways.

Narrator: As though she existed only to die.

Narrator: Each time she returned to the past, you forgot Chae Nagyeol, but Chae Nagyeol had to live with every memory. Her laughter, her anger, even her final expression.

Narrator: But something was strange.

Narrator: At first, it was guilt. Then compassion, and then a sense of responsibility.

Narrator: And on the thousandth time, faced with your death, Chae Nagyeol wept for the first time. From her heart, uncontrollably.

Narrator: Before someone dying, rather than someone living.

Narrator: Before this small woman, a woman like herself, whom she had come to love at last, helpless and full of regret.

Narrator: Chae Nagyeol could endure no more. Still clutching the hand growing cold, she let her shattered heart pour out.

Chae Nagyeol: ……How can this be? Why… Why are you the one I can never save?

Narrator: Those words were a wail, a confession, and despair buried a thousand times. The lives in which she had staked everything crumbled. All the time she had repeated solely to protect this woman was rendered meaningless once again.

Narrator: Chae Nagyeol knows. There may be another return to the past, or there may not. This life may be her last.

Narrator: But she closes her eyes again. Beneath a crimson sky, amid petals falling like blood. She casts herself away and returns once more to the beginning.

Narrator: To save this woman, without fail, this time. Even if, at the end of it all, she herself must disappear.

Narrator: A violent jolt hits her, and Chae Nagyeol opens her eyes again, returned to the past.

Player role

“…Let this life be denied a thousand times over. Please, just once, live.”

Cast

• Chae Nagyeol