I'm an Infinite Regressor, But I've Got Stories to Tell-Chapter 411

――I don’t remember my first life.

My memory isn’t as good as yours, Doctor.

Ah, of course, there was a chance for it to become better.

But naturally, I refused.

Perfect recall ability? Ahaha. Who in the world would want such a curse?

…If anything, faintly.

There are two scenes that I remember, even just a little.

There was a playground in my neighborhood. A playground covered with sand. Yes, an old one.

There, I’d gather with children whose faces and names I didn’t even know during the day, and we’d part at night.

Then the Void descended.

When civilization was on the verge of collapse, I suddenly thought this:

『The kids who used to play with me at the playground in my childhood village… they must all be dead by now.』

But, actually, that wasn’t the case.

I joined the Resistance in Busan.

Of course, not as a combatant, but as a non-combatant.

Ah, for reference, at that time, obviously there was no such massive organization as the “National Road Management Corps.”

There weren’t even “awakeners” yet. No established strategies like we have now…… and no one had yet been discovered with strange abilities.

Anyway, a man who was leading part of the Resistance happened to pass by me—then suddenly stopped.

He outranked me by far.

I was a non-combatant, and he was a fighter—specifically, part of the most dangerous reconnaissance unit.

The man said:

『Hey, you… aren’t you from □□□ Village?』

I don’t remember the exact line.

As I said earlier—my memory is terribly poor compared to yours, Doctor.

But I probably answered something like this:

『Yes, that’s right. How did you know…?』

『Oh. I knew it. Don’t you remember me? It’s me. Back when it snowed, we’d run around every apartment complex having snowball fights.』

『Ah……』

Honestly, I was dumbfounded.

Who remembers things like that from childhood?

I can guarantee you—before the age of twelve, people have far more friends than after.

It’s just that you play together once at a playground and part ways.

Kick a soccer ball once on the field and part ways.

Throw snow in the winter and part ways.

So you can’t recall faces or names.

『Your name?』

『Su-yeon.』

I just smiled vaguely and said:

『Su-yeon. Sir Recon Captain.』

『Captain, my ass. Just call me comfortably.』

『Ahaha……』

It wasn’t an era where comfort existed.

Finally, the army of abominations—though back then, we just called them “monsters.” Anyway, when the stains of the Void reached Busan, and everyone fought desperately to the death—

That man didn’t give up till the very end. He gathered every last fighter and non-combatant and fought.

I lost an arm.

Or was it a leg? Maybe both.

When my eyes grew heavy and were about to close, in the distance, in the middle of the horde of countless monsters—

That man, who’d once recognized me as someone from his village, was bleeding from his whole body as he fought.

As I closed my eyes, I wondered—

『We’re doomed anyway.』

『The world’s going to perish anyway.』

『Then why is he still fighting like that?』

That was my first life.

A scenery I no longer remember.

And then—

――“That man,” Go Yuri said softly, “was you, Doctor.”

I was momentarily speechless.

“What?”

Go Yuri smiled faintly.

“So in a way, we were childhood friends. Ahaha. Isn’t that amusing?”

“……”

“My second life came a little later. When I was born and realized it, goodness, the Void had already descended, and my parents had evacuated to Busan, hadn’t they?”

Despite my questioning tone, Go Yuri continued quietly—like she didn’t blame a child who couldn’t keep up with her steps, speaking slowly.

“My parents ran a bakery.”

Busan. A bakery.

“But in such a ruined world? No one could afford to leisurely run a bakery. Just like my previous life, my father became a fighter, my mother an assistant… both died in the war.”

Go Yuri’s expression changed constantly.

She sighed, smiled, rested her cheek on her hand.

The gallery of night.

A one-woman play quietly flowing through the endless exhibition of hundreds of regressions.

“I too, as a child, just like all the children of Busan, went out as a boy soldier.”

“…Jung Seo-ah.”

I blurted the name.

“The baker couple gave birth to different children each round. One of them was…”

“Yes, me.”

A bright smile.

“There wasn’t much meaning to it. Even if I was reborn, as I said, the timing was far too late.”

“……”

A world born too late.

An age where even salvation was impossible.

“I showed no better combat ability than my first life, and I was eliminated. Haa. Shameful, isn’t it…? I was disqualified as a reincarnator.”

It must have been her first sortie.

Go Yuri—or rather, Jung Seo-ah—died in battle.

Just before her eyes closed, she saw again—

There, on the distant final defense line, amidst the hail of bullets, a man fighting in the heart of the battlefield.

The man who’d been a “childhood friend” in her previous life, now her distant “superior,” was impaled through the chest by a tentacle and died.

She thought to herself—

Why am I living a life like this?

What is life?

――From the third life onward, her memories began to grow indistinct.

“I didn’t want to forget the first and second, so I took notes diligently. But from the third… hmm, I just couldn’t feel the meaning anymore.”

That’s what Go Yuri said.

“I kept being born as different parents’ child, as a different person.”

Reincarnation.

Born in Japan.

Born in Germany.

Reincarnation ignored nationality.

But the era was relatively fixed—about twenty years before the descent of the Void, at the earliest.

Go Yuri didn’t know why she kept reincarnating endlessly.

To treat herself like a Buddha or Dalai Lama? No, she had never experienced any enlightenment.

She simply kept living.

“Anyway, shouldn’t I at least try to stop the end of the world?”

So she vaguely decided her purpose in life.

“I mean… ‘Jung Seo-ah’ died, yes. But when I was reincarnated again and went to Busan, my parents were alive and well.”

Of course, Jung Seo-ah’s parents didn’t recognize her.

Where she once existed, another child—another “Jung Seo-ah”—had taken her place.

Even so, they were still her parents.

“With every reincarnation, the people who were my parents, my family, my friends—they just kept increasing.”

Different nationalities. Different identities.

Different degrees and shades of love.

“But they were all… so precious.”

“……”

“Did you know, Doctor? I was even born once as Noh Doha’s younger sister.”

“What?!”

Go Yuri covered her lips with her hand. Hehe. A cheerful laugh escaped.

“That was your biggest surprise yet.”

“Ah, no—but… I’ve never heard that Commander Noh Doha had a younger sister—”

“Of course not, Doctor.”

Her head tilted slightly.

“When one reincarnates—when one is reborn—the ‘me’ of the previous life disappears.”

“……”

“Noh Doha was truly kind. She was cold to everyone else—but to me, her little sister who’d been born with a leg disability, she became a prosthetics engineer.”

“What…?”

“When I was born as the child of Adele and Emmett…”

Shock collided with shock—like waves.

“I felt a little sorry.”

“You mean, Old Sho’s child? Those two never had a—”

“I was adopted, technically. But they poured an overwhelming amount of love into me. Yet during that time, I was obsessed with stopping the world’s end at any cost.”

“……”

“I was confident.”

After hundreds of reincarnations, Go Yuri had mastered countless languages, reached the realm of knowledge and experience that normal humans could never touch.

“Gathering funds was easy. So was obtaining power. I poured every resource I could command into preparing for destruction.”

“……”

“My parents… Emmett and Adele, they worried for me. Still, I persuaded them, went alone to the Korean Peninsula… and died trying to prevent the descent of the Outer God ‘Taegeuk.’”

Go Yuri lifted her blank gaze toward the painting titled 『Ten Tribes』.

“In later lives, I checked. Emmett and Adele never adopted another child.”

“……”

“And somehow, every time the time of Taegeuk’s descent returned, those two would come to Korea on business trips.”

A quiet murmur.

“As if their lost daughter were there.”

“……”

“Strange, isn’t it? Neither of them could possibly retain past-life memories.”

Go Yuri spoke softly.

“The Schopenhauer couple began visiting Korea. Noh Doha lost her little sister, had no reason to remain a prosthetics engineer—yet in every next life, she became one again.”

“……”

“Each time, under different circumstances, different genders, even—still, the baker couple always named their child Jung Seo-ah.”

Go Yuri turned toward me.

“Why do you think that is, Doctor?”

“A hole… in the heart.”

I managed to speak.

“The Void.”

“Yes.”

Go Yuri nodded.

“I was someone’s most precious child. Someone’s most precious little sister.”

“……”

“When I lived, when I existed as an irreplaceable companion and family member to others, those people were happy because of me. Including that woman lying on your lap, Shim Ah-ryun.”

A smile curved across Go Yuri’s lips.

“I was born with cerebral palsy quite a few times, you know. In that life, Shim Ah-ryun was my older sister.”

“……”

“My younger self couldn’t talk well, couldn’t express herself, couldn’t move. So Shim Ah-ryun would always draw in her sketchbook and show it to me to play together.”

She was happy.

The fact that, in a past life, she’d been the secret mastermind pulling immense power behind the government didn’t matter. There’d always be another life anyway.

“Ta-da~! Look, ta-da~!”

In front of her, her sister—

Though, if one measured the length of actual lived time, the “sister” was vastly younger—

Still, in that life, she was her older sister.

She spread open the sketchbook and smiled brightly.

“How is it?”

It was lovely.

She couldn’t speak, but—

“Uh—u—uhh,” she made noises closer to cries than words.

Shim Ah-ryun smiled awkwardly, troubled.

Her eyes grew watery.

“D-do you… like it? If only… if only you could understand me without words…”

You had talent.

Hundreds—no, thousands of lives later, she could swear it.

That sister’s talent was extraordinary.

It wasn’t flattery. She’d never met anyone who could draw like her. Among all surviving artists or aspiring ones, she was the best.

But even such people die.

Not as a proverb that everyone dies someday—

But literally, monsters no one could yet imagine appeared, wielding unreasonable violence impossible to resist, and killed everyone.

“Ahh… if only I could be the one in pain instead… I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m the only one fine…”

That shining talent before her—

A painter who could have become greater than anyone—

…was the sister who spent her whole life visiting her bedridden, friendless, dying little sister after school to show her drawings.

And she died.

And so did Go Yuri.

“……!” 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

From far away, she heard a voice.

Her sister was crying.

Severe cerebral palsy, plus the worsening complications.

Even surviving those few years was only possible through the superhuman willpower of a reincarnator.

“D-doctor! My sister, my little sister—please, please…!!”

A life that barely lasted any time.

As that life was cut short, while faintly hearing her sister’s sobs, she thought to herself:

Ah…

I wanted to save children like you.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry, sister.

I couldn’t save you.

I’m sorry I was born like this.

――

“Doctor.”

“……”

“Have you ever thought about it? Why some people, though they lived normal lives, suddenly feel the urge to draw?”

Still, Go Yuri was gazing up at the painting.

“Or those who, despite having astonishing talents—like the ability to organize citizens and run vast governments in an apocalyptic world—choose instead to become prosthetics engineers?”

“……”

“Why do some people, living ordinary lives, feel like they’ve lost something? Why, even with precious people by their side, do they feel an emptiness? Why, even though they have life as a treasure, do they feel they’ve lost it?”

“……”

“Why do some awaken to powers that let them feel others’ emotions even without words?”

Go Yuri turned around.

Our eyes met.

“Doctor, according to some myths, a person’s profession in life is guided by fate. Whatever you do in this life, what you become ‘entranced’ by is already predetermined.”

“…Karma.”

“Yes.”

Go Yuri smiled.

“Karma. Cause and effect. Usually it’s said your present life is determined by what you did wrong or right in a past one—but I think the opposite.”

In your past life—

What did you lose?

What hole was torn in your heart?

□

“I am the only reincarnator.”

She was someone’s loss.

“I am the life before lives—the source from which people decide what they love and what they hate. The starting point of every route.”

She was someone’s precious person.

“I am,” she said,

“I am the cause that awakened the Awakeners.”

She was the first Awakened