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THE decision had been made for Angelina to receive the Kalavinka’s instruction. Once I know the details of the exam, I can make sure I fail, she thought. Time to give this my all!
And so, she headed to the Kalavinka’s room in high spirits.
“Thank you for your instruction,” Angelina said.
When she bowed her head, the Kalavinka looked at her scornfully. “Purity and fortune,” she responded as usual.
“Um, can you please tell me what I should do during the exam?”
“Purity and fortune.”
Though the Kalavinka remained unwaveringly cold, Angelina couldn’t back down. “I beg of you, Mish Kalavinka. Please tell me what I should do.”
“Purity and fortune.”
“I don’t want to become a Vinka.”
Angelina’s words incensed the Kalavinka. Every girl who visited this mausoleum hoped to become a priestess. Each of them was fighting with all her might to save her impoverished village. By refusing to join their ranks, Angelina was denying their very reason for existence.
Furious, the Kalavinka stomped her foot on the floor. “Purity and fortune!”
Usually, she wasn’t allowed to act in such a violent manner. The Kalavina’s anger was said to represent the destruction of the empire. Nevertheless, she couldn’t restrain herself.
As the Kalavinka attempted to leave, Angelina grabbed her arm with both hands. “There was something weird about that divination, right?” the princess asked. “It looked like you were about to say something back then. Was what the matriarch said wrong?”
The Kalavinka prickled with irritation. It was humiliating to have such a young girl see through her momentary discomposure. That said, the matriarch had been lying about the divination. A Vinka’s fortune-telling didn’t relay anything so specific in the first place. A Garuda picking the blue flower meant, “When the rain passes, the sky will clear.” This represented a poor situation taking a turn for the better. The person receiving the divination could decide how to interpret this message for themselves.
“Listen to me, Nara!” Angelina cried. “I want you to listen to me as Nara, not a Vinka!”
The Kalavinka held her breath, staring at Angelina intently. At that moment, she was no longer the high priestess. She’d returned to being a normal girl. Since becoming the Kalavinka, no one had called her Nara. Every girl who became a Vinka abandoned the name given to them as newborns. Afterward, they lived as Vinkas, not as individuals.
Hearing her name for the first time in a long while, Nara remembered the village where she’d been born. Her mother’s hands had been rough, and as a migrant worker, her father often hadn’t returned home. Meanwhile, her starving younger brothers had picked jujubes in the garden to fill their empty stomachs.
Angelina had given Nara candied jujubes after the Banquet Ceremony. These had been a specialty in Nara’s home village. Eating them would have been too painful, so she’d placed them in a drawer with the lid still shut. Though the jujube flowers accompanying the candies had withered, she still hadn’t thrown away the dead petals. Instead, she’d placed them in the same drawer as the candies.
Nara had to bite back her frustration. “Wh-Why do you know my name…?”
“I know everyone’s names, not just yours.”
Angelina recited the name of every Vinka while counting on her fingers. Nara stared at her, lost for words. She abandoned her name in her home village. Later, she abandoned her individuality to become a Vinka. Yet now, Angelina had reclaimed these things for her.
“I found everything in a book in the palace,” Angelina explained. “The villages you were born in, the names of your parents, and so on…”
“Our names still remain in the palace…?”
Nara’s name should have been forgotten when she abandoned it. The idea of it remaining in a palace text caused a wave of emotions to crash over her.
Before becoming the Kalavinka, I was Nara, she thought. I’m still Nara.
“Listen to me, Nara,” Angelina pleaded. “I know how hard you all fought to become Vinkas. I also know how your songs fill everybody with joy. When I saw you at the festival, it was so wonderful. I admired you so much…”
Angelina couldn’t express herself well. She’d never experienced such exaltation before. Likewise, she hadn’t known that overwhelming beauty could move one to tears or give rise to goosebumps. None other than the Vinkas had revealed these new emotions to her. However, the harder Angelina tried to express herself, the more cliche she sounded. Her words transformed into cheap banalities.
“So anyway, I want you to know how much I respect the Vinkas…” Angelina finished.
Nara fell silent at her words.
“But I don’t think it’s right for me to become a Vinka,” Angelina continued. “After all, if I join you here, another girl will lose her opportunity, right?”
“…What do you mean?”
“The home villages of Vinkas are revered. That helps them become wealthy, doesn’t it? And the chosen girls can live in luxury here.”
For small children, living apart from their families was painful and lonely. Even so, the girls here lacked for nothing. They slept in warm beds, ate rare delicacies, and wore beautiful robes never before seen in their villages. Even a person working for a wealthy merchant wouldn’t receive such abundance. If a girl endured five years of loneliness, she would be guaranteed honor, a luxurious lifestyle, and a job afterward. Becoming a Vinka wasn’t such a bad deal for these impoverished girls.
Nara’s eyes widened in surprise. “…You knew.”
Angelina was a young girl. As a princess by birth, she also lacked for nothing. Nara hadn’t expected her to give any thought to the poor.
“I admire the Vinkas,” Angelina responded with a nod. “I wish I had your beautiful singing voice, but the Polaris Princess shouldn’t steal that role from you. The Polaris Princess and the Vinkas should remain separate.”
These clear and decisive statements didn’t seem like the words of a young girl. As Angelina’s eyes sparkled with unyielding determination, Nara could sense that she was no mere child.
“But the daoshi think differently, don’t they?” Angelina asked. “That’s why I want you to teach me how to fail the Vinka exam.”
“How to fail the exam?” Nara repeated.
“Yep! If they realize I can’t become a Vinka, even the daoshi will give up, right?”
Angelina’s toothy grin coaxed a smile from Nara as well. Suddenly embarrassed of herself, Nara averted her gaze.
“You don’t want to help?” Angelina asked, cocking her head.
Nara bit her lip. Helping Angelina meant defying the will of the matriarch. When Nara had come to Mt. Jinlong as a young girl, the matriarch had loved her like a mother. In her moments of deepest forlorn, the matriarch had stayed by her side and guided her. Most of all, Nara treasured Mt. Jinlong and believed in the Heavenly Sovereign. She wasn’t confident that defying the matriarch was correct.
“But…” Nara mumbled.
She then considered the matter. If I refuse, what will become of the Vinkas?
If Angelina became a Vinka, another girl would lose her potential spot. Until now, it had been taboo for highborn daughters to become Vinkas. The priestesses who spoke on God’s behalf needed to understand noble poverty. However, if the princess became a Vinka, other noble daughters would likely imitate her. Vinkas were considered living divinities, and the Kalavinka presided over all of them. It was an honor for a girl in one’s family to become a Vinka. Nobles seeking the same glory would likely start to appear.
If the Heavenly Sovereign Temple desired even more wealth, they would align themselves with nobility and accept highborn girls. One exception often sets a new precedent. Therefore, Vinkas had to treat everyone equally, never making exceptions when showing compassion.
Once the precedent was established, denying it later would be difficult. If the system were dismantled gradually, many destitute villages would lose a means of becoming wealthy. As a result, the poor would suffer, and nobles would enrich themselves. As the Kalavinka, Nara couldn’t overlook this possible future.
And so, she gritted her teeth as a show of resolve. The matriarch had raised her, and she was indebted to the temple. Betraying them scared her. Even so, Nara had once been destitute herself. What kind of high priestess would she be if she abandoned people in the same position? The Kalavinka sang and danced because she had a duty to bring others joy.
After shaking her head once, Nara faced Angelina again. This time, sincerity radiated from her eyes. “I’m sorry for being nasty to you. If you became a Vinka, I feared another girl might lose her seat. I couldn’t allow a wealthy princess to steal the path to happiness from an impoverished girl.”
Angelina shook her head back and forth. Nara had her own set of circumstances. She was trying to protect the prospective Vinkas who came from destitute villages, as well as the villages themselves. Angelina understood this, and she considered Nara to be the ideal Kalavinka.
“We Vinkas endure a life without our parents to protect our impoverished villages,” Nara said. “In exchange, we receive lives of luxury. I considered it unfair for a princess with everything to steal this from us. That’s why I didn’t want to speak to you.”
As Nara hung her head, Angelina squeezed her hand. She understood the pain of living apart from one’s parents better than anyone.
“I lived apart from my fodder until recently,” Angelina said. “That’s why I don’t want to be separated from him or my big brudder ever again.”
Nara reexamined Angelina’s desperate expression. She recalled a rumor about the emperor’s daughter. Until recently, no one had ever seen her. Some people had even whispered that she’d died before becoming the princess.
Yet last year, Angelina had been placed within the line of succession despite not being of age. Suddenly, she’d been accepted into the royal family as a princess. Where had she lived until then, and why had she been kept a secret all this time? Very few people knew the answers to these questions.
This girl is so small yet lived apart from her family, Nara thought. I can’t imagine how heavy her circumstances must have been.
Nara recalled her early childhood. One day, she’d fallen asleep on her mother’s chest after exhausting herself from crying. She often sat on her father’s shoulders while watching the sunset. No matter the season, she’d never lacked the deep love of her parents or their warm songs. She could endure living on this snow-covered mountain because she had those memories of being loved. However, if the girl in front of her had no such memories, how painful was life for her?
Nara squeezed Angelina’s hand in return.
“Please help me,” the princess pleaded.
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Angelina sounded as though she might buckle from the pressure. The guardian beast accompanying her bowed his head as well.
Nara nodded. “Okay then,” she said, still holding Angelina’s hand.
And so, the two girls discussed how Angelina might fail the exam.