The seventh year after I died.
They wept, regretted everything, and suffered unbearable grief. They opened the ice coffin and kissed my pale head.
They made offerings, slit their own throats, and let all their blood run out.
They struck a bargain with a witch, no matter the cost.
They reattached my hands and feet, stitched my severed neck back together, placed a mermaid's pearl in my empty eye socket, dyed my white hair with pine soot ink, and hid my scars beneath splendid robes. They exhausted the strength of the entire nation to make a delicate, fragile, clumsy puppet, then knelt in the raging snow and begged with all their might, bowing their heads again and again.
Please, return to me.
→→→ Probably still a story about people begging for death: the puppet emperor after his soul returns x his grief-stricken traitors, with a beloved-by-all kind of feel.
Theme: Sincerity deserves to be cherished.
