I'm an Infinite Regressor, But I've Got Stories to Tell-Chapter 390

WeTried Translations

The Suicidal VIII

「Undertaker.」

「If at all possible, do not tell the next-run me that you are a regressor.」

「I’m greedy and a devout follower of the God of Impulse-Buying―」

「So the idea of ‘I’ll throw away this run for the sake of the next one’ simply won’t take root in me.」

「If I find out I still have hundreds of years of lifespan left, I’ll definitely burn it all on the present run.」

「Only at the very end.」

「Until the truly final crisis arrives, guide me so my lifespan keeps accruing interest.」

And so it was.

The conference room, moments ago ablaze with the heat of world-ending fury.

One would have thought someone’s lovely neck would soon be decorating a gallows, yet, astonishingly, it was all settled in a single “Silence!” from the great author Oh Dok-seo.

Even this regressor’s eyes had not foreseen that development.

“True… even when she’d gone rogue, Dok-seo threw out Heavenly Demon Lord Footwork, so in a way she’s the textbook ‘hidden powerhouse.’”

“No. I think she’s actually the proof of ‘the quiet ones are the scariest when they snap.’”

Tower of Babel. Terrace.

There the Saintess and I were getting a breath of air alone for a moment. Oh Dok-seo had adjourned the meeting for about thirty minutes.

“Dok-seo, quiet…? Search the whole peninsula, and I bet even old man Jo Yeong-su would give up finding anyone more uncontrollable than her.”

“She only lets all her defenses down in front of Undertaker-ssi.”

The Saintess spoke.

“When Dok-seo deals with other people she usually volunteers to be the one who gets pushed around. I think that’s the posture she learned for interacting with others.”

“Then why is she always making trouble for me?”

“…”

The Saintess didn’t answer.

Instead, she cast a glance down to the plaza ten floors below the Tower of Babel.

Packed solid.

Hundreds of Baekhwa Girls’ High guild members, Samcheon World guild members and even the Eastern Holy State’s holy knights were crammed shoulder to shoulder.

– Undertaker, awaken! Awaken! Awaken!

– Drag that bastard out! Drag him out right now!

– Everyone! Our northern Saintess! How noble and pure she is! To mock! To harass! Huh! Such a shameless unbeliever is hiding inside that Babel Tower!

– Unbelief! Hell! Unbelief! Hell!

– Why the Tower of Babel, you ask? The very name the Lord used to punish human arrogance! Do you think it was attached by chance? For the sake of the Saintess, who has risked her life for us until now, we must repay this grace and tear the tower down!

– Oooooooo-!

– Divine wrath! Divine wrath! Divine wrath!

“…”

Honestly, it was a little frightening.

Ah-ryeon, just how much propaganda did you pump out in the Eastern Holy State?

Samcheon World and Baekhwa weren’t groups to lose out in the madness department, but even they had quietly edged back to the outskirts of the plaza, cowed by the State’s fanaticism.

“This time… it looks like Dok-seo didn’t tell anyone and went ahead alone.”

Against the riotous roar below, the Saintess’s voice drifted across the quiet rhythm of the terrace.

“Eh?”

“I actually suspected, when Mr. Undertaker whisked Ms. Dok-seo and a few others off the roof of Babel Tower a while ago, that it had all been arranged in advance.”

She was referring to the crystal gravestone bearing the trace of the [Time Seal]. No one but me could see it.

“But seeing your reaction today, it really does feel as if Ms. Dok-seo rammed ahead on her own.”

“Why? At least talk it over with Ah-ryeon or Ha-yul, why do it alone…?” 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

“I’m sorry. Offering a guess with my own lips might be disrespectful to Dok-seo-ssi.”

The Saintess gave a wry smile.

“That’s also why I didn’t dare approach you these past few days. I was busy checking with the members of the Regressor Alliance one by one, trying to understand what on earth was happening.”

“Ah…”

“But now I understand. I think Ms. Dok-seo wanted not only you, Mr. Undertaker, but also me, to face reality and reflect on ourselves.”

Reality? Reflection?

“To discover just how impatient I am. How people can be so oblivious and indifferent not only to others’ feelings but to their own.”

The Saintess still kept her gaze hanging in mid-air.

Because she spent most of each day using [Clairvoyance], her sense of ‘sight’ had to be different from ordinary people’s.

For her, ‘direct gaze’, looking someone straight in the eye, was an angle that actually required practice.

“When I saw Undertaker-ssi dating Noh Do-hwa… my heart shook. I was startled by how strong the feeling was, not realizing I had it.”

“…”

“Obviously it had to be a disguise set up by someone’s scheme. Even if I considered the worst case, it was the work of an anomaly. So there was no need to react emotionally; the thing to do was determine if it was a human disguise or an anomaly’s phenomenon. …I judged that way and I acted that way.”

A mutter.

“I thought I understood everything, and yet it turns out I still didn’t understand myself. And…”

The Saintess turned her head. The water-colored light of her eyes looked straight at my face.

“…”

Suddenly.

As I met that gaze, this thought rose in me.

True orientation. The correct direction. In a house, for instance, good orientation is a south-facing room that sunshine pours into.

Then what is the true orientation of a person’s gaze?

Perhaps it is the direction where the one who lets the brightest light seep into your life and your time is standing.

“To learn about the parts of me I still don’t understand, I think the way isn’t digging deeper into myself, but overlapping the direction of trying to understand someone else.”

“…”

“I like you, Mr. Undertaker.”

The Saintess smiled softly.

“I’ll wait until the day I can hear your answer.”

On the way back to the conference room.

“Ah. Mr. Matiz.”

I ran into Yu Ji-won in the corridor.

The usual expressionless face. She was carrying a silver tray piled with paper cups of instant coffee.

“Have you finished speaking with the Saintess?”

“Yeah. Ji-won, you’re doing coffee delivery?”

“Yes. Normally I would have ordered a subordinate, but given today’s illustrious attendees I decided to do it myself.”

Yu Ji-won said without so much as a blink.

“If I’d asked Mr. Seo Gyu he would gladly have obliged, but I volunteered on purpose.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Mr. Seo Gyu is the type who’s touched by small considerations like this. When I serve the coffee cup by cup in the conference room he’ll surely exclaim, ‘No, you should have told me to do that!’ and I’ll reply, ‘You finally made it up from the dungeon, so please just relax for once.’”

“…”

“Seo Gyu’s favorability toward me will rise without fail. With a single coffee errand I dramatically increase the chance of recruiting the Warden of Anomalies to my side in an emergency. Nothing but profit.”

Honestly, I had never met, and probably never would meet, another human as strangely diligent as Yu Ji-won…

“Let’s walk.”

“Yes.”

Step. Click.

Our two sets of footsteps echoed together on the corridor leading back to the conference room.

They never fell out of sync. The speed and stride were perfectly identical. Not a centimeter ahead or behind.

“…”

It was something she had learned.

One summer in middle school, after meeting a man who introduced himself as ‘Matiz,’ she had analyzed his walking speed and stride and grafted it onto herself.

To Yu Ji-won, the person Matiz had never once been physically absent, even in all the years she hadn’t seen his face.

“A lot of people kicked up a fuss in this incident.”

“Yes.”

“But you stayed quiet from start to finish.”

“That is only natural.”

Her voice came from about forty centimeters to my left shoulder.

“Natural? What do you mean?”

“First. Director Noh Do-hwa would never start openly dating Mr. Matiz unless she had completely lost her mind.”

“…”

“From what I have observed, the Director’s likelihood of entering a romantic relationship is exceedingly low, and even if she did, the probability she would flaunt it before others converges at absolute zero.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

“Second.”

Yu Ji-won spoke as usual.

“Mr. Matiz would never decide to date someone without consulting me first. That probability is likewise zero.”

“…”

“A single event might pierce extreme odds, but for two events to coexist requires truly astronomical probability. Believing the romance to be real is the irrational position.”

Though her tone was calm, I felt a strange embarrassment, so I changed the subject.

“Ah-ryeon said if I started dating someone who wouldn’t accept her, she’d kill the partner.”

“As expected of Sim Ah-ryeon.”

“What about you, in a similar situation?”

“You keep positing highly improbable scenarios, Mr. Matiz.”

Yu Ji-won tilted her head.

“There is no way Mr. Matiz would love someone who won’t accept my existence.”

“…”

“Of course, human beings are creatures of emotion. Even if Mr. Matiz’s reason rejects it, his feelings could resonate.”

But, a whisper flowed,

“Comparing the time spent in such a love with the time spent with me, the latter has far greater value to Mr. Matiz.”

“All correct, so I can’t refute.”

Step. Click.

“Others seem to interpret your avoidance of romance as the regressor’s pain—the inevitable farewell—”

“Hmm?”

“My view is a little different.”

Yu Ji-won said.

“Mr. Matiz simply feels that the way of life we are sharing now is the happiest, and thus had no need to choose romance.”

“…”

“In your mind, even now, are the people being sacrificed by anomalies. Starvation. Thirst. Necrosis. You remember countless deaths.”

Step. Click.

“To you those deaths are past, present, and future all at once. Colors that will never fade. Therefore, you comprehend more clearly than anyone how precious, how joyful, this brief peace with the people around you is—the scant twenty-odd years granted each run.”

“…”

“I trust your judgment. If you are living like this, it means this is the optimal state. And I am not the kind of person who, while in the optimal state, bewails her lot as unfortunate.”

“I see.”

“Yes.”

Step. Click.

For a while the corridor echoed with two sets of footsteps and a single rhythm.

Yu Ji-won retrieved the pause she had placed in her words and opened her lips.

“Some may call this the ‘normal ending,’ claiming there exists a happier one beyond. But for me, this moment alone—as a normal ending—is enough.”

Suddenly.

「Vice Guild Leader, Your Excellency.」

A memory of the past overlaid the present.

「If the me of run five was happier than the me of run six, isn’t there a fair chance the me of run seven will be a little happier still?」

「Please leave a will telling the next-run me to try her utmost to live a happier time before holding the funeral…」

「Mm. Won’t I be a bit happier next run?」

For someone like me with Complete Memory, the past was always equal to the present.

「I think I can be a little happier next time.」

The ‘Yu Ji-won’ of the past and of the present wore the exact same face and the exact same expression.

So I ended up asking the exact same question without thinking.

“Ji-won.”

“Yes?”

“Are you a bit happier now?”

Our steps stopped.

When I turned my head, she too had turned hers. When two sides meet, it seems to become a front.

And then—

“――‘Happiness’ is a strange word.”

A different answer came from Yu Ji-won’s lips.

The overlap of past and present began to crack in my regressor’s vision.

Little by little.

“Everyone uses that word as if the concept were fixed, yet for one person it means affection, for another, lust. Power. Shade in midsummer. A glass of good liquor.”

“…”

“People sign the concept of happiness in their own handwriting, so happiness looks less like a word and more like a blank space.”

Little by little,

the ‘current’ Yu Ji-won drew closer to me.

“If that is so, then even someone like me, setting aside all other words, must have the freedom to sign the blank called ‘happiness’ however I wish.”

At some point the silver tray in her hands had been passed to me, and at some point I had accepted it without a word.

Thus lightened, she rose on tiptoe and leaned her face near the nape of my neck.

A breath.

It was not a gesture of affection or desire.

“…”

Confirmation.

Authentication.

Proof.

A quiet breath confirmed the scent clinging to my skin.

In this world humanity was not a single species; each person was a different race, and this was a rite permitted only to the race called Yu Ji-won.

Satisfied that the perfume of seven hues still lingered unchanged, she slowly withdrew.

“I too have filled that blank with the name ‘Matiz.’”

“…”

“And I know my name is written on your page, in your own script.”

Yu Ji-won smiled.

“So, yes.”

An artificial yet more beautiful than nature, human smile.

“I am happy now, Mr. Matiz.”

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