I'm an Infinite Regressor, But I've Got Stories to Tell-Chapter 430

Fourth Station.

“Ah.”

That place was a kind of gallery.

“G-Guildmaster……. Hehe.”

Once, in the square of the Tower of Babel, a place hastily built from whatever scraps could be found — humanity’s final art museum.

But there was a difference.

Unlike the exhibitions of the distant past reality, the one unfolding before my eyes was far more immense in scale.

“Did you wait long?”

“N-No, not at all.”

Sim Ah-ryun, covered head to toe in paint, grinned widely.

“In my sense of time, o-only about sixteen days have passed. Everyone else already left to lower ‘floors’ than here……. I got bored. So I was just painting!”

“I see.”

“Hehe.”

Sim Ah-ryun came closer and wrapped her arms tightly around my waist.

Her paint-smeared face rubbed against my coat.

The girl born into a colorless world seemed to be trying to transfer to me the one equation of color she’d ever permitted herself.

“N-no one else is here. I really like that.”

“……”

“I heard from Dok Seo. He said that I’m actually the same in essence as Udumbara. Mm. It’s an objective fact that I’m as beautiful as a flower. But he said I’m fundamentally the same as a plant. Weird, isn’t it…….”

I smiled.

Whenever Ah-ryun hugged me like this, trying to infect me with her colors, I’d always pat her head.

But, unfortunately, my Great-Sim-Ah-ryun-Repelling Device was missing today.

So instead, I wiped the paint off her face with my coat.

Ah—hahat—Ah-ryun flapped her arms frantically.

“B-but. Being here, I keep remembering all the things that happened in the past……. And, I think I understand a little better now.”

“What do you mean?”

“To a flower, the world is nothing but a few drops of water and a few rays of sunlight. Honestly, I think that’s all I want from the world, too. In that sense, I resemble a plant…….”

“That’s a lie.”

“Eh?”

“You don’t just crave water and light — you crave sweet nectar and the most pleasant sunlight, you greedy little thing. The most gluttonous flower in the world.”

“Ah—ah—ahh—!”

My squishy-cheeks-pinching attack left Sim Ah-ryun helpless.

“Mmm…….”

A silly sound escaped her lips.

“As expected, I like it…….”

She nestled deeper into my arms, as if trying to inject a syringe straight into my chest.

“What do you mean?”

“I finally understand why the old me — why they — knelt before you, pretending to be the Saintess, doing something that was practically suicide.”

“……”

“I wanted to know.”

Drip—

From the countless paintings hanging across the gallery—

paintings Sim Ah-ryun had made across all her lives—

the colors began to drip down, like paint that had been layered wrong.

“When I die—when I know I’m dying, yet still struggle to the end—what kind of emotion would you feel as you watched, Guildmaster?”

“……”

“I wanted to know. I wanted to feel it. I was too curious what color that emotion would be. Honestly, it was hard to hold back.”

“I’ve always admired how you treat me like some sort of omakase course meal, Ah-ryun.”

“I can’t help it! You’re my raindrop and my sunlight.”

“……”

Gurgle, slosh—gurgle.

The viscous colors along the gallery corridors began to gather around us.

“I don’t think most people would understand. For a flower, raindrops and sunlight are prey. Food……. But they’re also the entire world. They’re God.”

Can a flower love sunlight?

“People might call a worshipper who eats their god’s flesh blasphemous……. But aren’t we all the same? We all chew on the world’s juices, every day.”

Can one understand the love of a flower?

“And yet……. Everyone lives without even realizing how or why they love what they love. Hehe. Strange people…….”

“Your thorns are too sharp.”

“Hehe…….”

Sim Ah-ryun bit the side of my neck—not out of lust, nor hunger.

A sunflower turning its head toward its sun.

“I won’t die anymore.”

Waves rippled from within my shadow.

“Because I know now.”

All the paint dripping down from the gallery gathered into my shadow, forming black.

Not black from absence of color—but black from all colors overlapping.

Sim Ah-ryun’s voice sent ripples toward my heart.

“Every day, without missing a single one……. you watered me. You dropped the sun upon my shade…….”

She looked up at me.

A smile—

the smallest, most radiant ripple a person could scatter into the air.

If laughter did not exist within it, the color of the sky would never have been so infinite.

“I was happy! G-Guildmaster.”

Time limit:

21 seconds.

‘And I was happy because of you, too.’

Leaving those words to someone who needed no reply, I—

—dived.

To the next stage.

Hình dạng

“……”

That place was an underwater temple.

It might once have been an old house in Dongbinggo-dong, Yongsan, Seoul—

but before me now, it was a mixture of that house and the undersea café of the Inunaki Tunnel.

“Welcome, Undertaker.”

The Saintess sat neatly, wearing the same comfortable clothes she always did in every cycle.

“My assigned zone is the fifth layer of the Deep Mind.

Since you’ve made it this far safely, you should now be relatively free from the time limit outside.”

She began talking about the mission as soon as we met.

I nearly laughed.

Even though her memories from previous cycles must have flowed back to her, she was still—

so perfectly herself. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

“The others have each taken one layer. Was that Dok Seo’s arrangement?”

“Yes, partly. But also to prepare for the possibility of a monster blocking the passage, we stationed watchers in advance.”

—Kyahaha.

Before the Saintess could even finish her words,

a young girl darted playfully through the vast hall of the underwater temple.

—Woof! Woof!

A great dog, existing only as shadow, chased her around, weaving back and forth.

The vengeful spirit of the Inunaki Tunnel.

“As you can see,”

the Saintess cleared her throat,

“the closer we get to the domain of the dream within dreams, the more the shape of the place warps. Time is being distorted too.”

“That’s natural. Go Yuri has relived the lives of hundreds of millions. Unlike ordinary people, for her, time is endlessly layered.”

“……Just like you, Undertaker.”

“Yes.”

“……”

“……”

The Saintess fell silent.

People are each a ferryman before a vast, chaotic sea.

The tongue is the first oar that cuts through those waves.

When the wordless wind cannot push one forward, one must row one’s own way.

“Um… about the Silver Bell……”

But the course this seasoned ferryman chose—

was something even I could not have predicted easily.

“Shouldn’t I return it?”

“Pardon?”

The Saintess averted her gaze slightly.

“T-that. It’s proof of the promise I made with Go Yuri, isn’t it?”

“……”

“I just think it’s wrong for me to still have such a precious artifact.”

Then she lowered her sleeve—

and sure enough, the silver bell gleamed faintly, dangling from her wrist.

‘Good grief.’

In other words, even though the Saintess remembered how she had sacrificed herself to seal the exiled goddess Nut in the 267th cycle—

her first reaction wasn’t gratitude or sorrow,

but ‘Shouldn’t this item go back to its rightful owner?’

Truly astounding.

No matter how vast the universe, you’d rarely find a capital-T “T” this large.

“Please, take it back, Undertaker.”

“……”

Starting with emotions here would be the mark of an amateur.

As someone who’d graduated from Saintess Studies with an A+ in the advanced course,

I knew to trap her instead with logical chaos.

“Understood.”

I nodded.

“But did you confirm that decision with the Saintess of the 267th cycle?”

“……Pardon?”

“No matter if memories are returning from the dream, they’re still incomplete fragments. That Silver Bell was a gift I gave to the Saintess of the 267th cycle, and the right to decide what happens to it belongs entirely to her.”

“……”

“Can you truly say that the current Saintess perfectly represents the one from the 267th cycle? Hmm. I worry only that you might be treating a gift that doesn’t belong to you as your own to dispose of.”

The Saintess blinked, dazed.

“B-but… wouldn’t it be disrespectful to Go Yuri?”

“Go Yuri used every means possible to awaken you as a powerful ascendant.”

The Saintess froze.

Outside the underwater tunnel surrounding the temple,

the shadows of sleeping people drifted like fish.

“When she became your sister and died before your eyes, she deliberately arranged it so no one could contact her—just to make sure you saw her die.”

“……”

“When she became your childhood friend, your only best friend, your single link to the outside world—she painstakingly pried your fingers one by one from the cliff edge of the world.”

I paused.

Let the fish-shadows drift past our faces a few times.

“Do you really need to be courteous to that?”

“……”

“When neither of you owe anything to each other anymore, there’s only one question left to ask: what do you want to do?”

I smiled.

“What do you wish to do?”

The Saintess closed her lips.

The fish-shadows seemed to mouth words in her stead.

“……I accepted it without knowing.”

“And I handed it to you without knowing.”

“I think… it was wrong.”

“A mistake made in ignorance is still unforgivable, even to yourself, huh? Saintess.”

“Yes.”

“Your sister, your childhood friend, your best friend—

they all sinned knowingly.”

“……”

“Can you forgive them?”

A small silence.

“……Yes. I can forgive.”

“Why?”

“Because in the end, they did it for someone.

Not in words but in actions.

They devoted not just one life, but all their lives to the path they believed was best.”

“I see.”

I nodded.

“Then now, forgive yourself a little too—for the mistakes you made out of not knowing.”

“……”

“If Go Yuri can be forgiven, there’s no reason you cannot.”

I lifted the Silver Bell from her wrist and hung it back where it belonged.

“Ah.”

“I hope you can show yourself the same lenience you give others.”

“……To myself.”

“Yes. There will be people who never forgive you.

There will be moments when even you can’t forgive yourself.

But even then, I’ll be the first—before anyone else—to forgive you.”

“……”

“Just as you once forgave me.”

Jingle.

I covered the Silver Bell on her wrist with my right hand and looked into her eyes.

“Will you accept it?”

“……”

Hesitation.

Then, softly.

“Yes.”

Like a flower blooming, the Saintess smiled.

“Thinking back over all those cycles…… I realized something.”

“What is it?”

“What I’ve been lacking all along—was courage.”

The sea roared silently.

Waves endlessly broke along the path laid over the unreachable ocean floor.

If you knew how to cross,

those waves were no longer drifting currents—just water resting in place.

“Waiting for something to come to you means nothing. You have to move first.

That courage—you gave it to me, Undertaker.”

“Ah, I’m glad to hea――”

The water rippled faintly.

The fish-shadows no longer swam between me and the Saintess.

Our distance had grown too close for that.

At that moment, she pulled my wrist—

—and kissed me.

“……”

My eyes widened in shock.

Those widened pupils reflected hers clearly.

The Saintess did not withdraw her lips.

[Just as you advised, Undertaker.]

She spoke only through the path she’d opened by her own wound.

The shadows of the undersea currents enveloped my consciousness.

[Yes. I did what I wanted to do.]

Time limit:

20 seconds.

[Now, I’ll wait for Go Yuri’s answer.]

Dive.

[But this time, I won’t wait as long as before.]

[See you soon.]

And then—

—to the next stage.