The Inviter II
'Undertaker.'
'Hey, can I ask one favor?'
'Don't die before I do.'
'No matter what happens, okay? If at all possible.'
'Don't die before me.'
'You can promise me that, right?'
Summer.
June 24, midday, when the sky had slathered on far too much white-cloud foundation, right in the middle of a diagonal crosswalk in Centum City, Busan.
There you were standing all alone, looking up at the sky.
"Excuse me, are you all right?"
You did not turn your head at the first call. You had already temporarily entrusted your lost address to the sky—it was still too early for you to anchor your heart here on the ground. Only ten days had passed since you buried your parents, three siblings, two relatives, and four friends in the earth.
Funerals come in two layers: the one where you bury them in the ground and the one where you bury them in your heart. The ground always lost its heat sooner than the heart, despite the worry it caused people.
Under the summer soil lay countless cicadas not yet fully born.
Standing in the center of that crosswalk marked by white X's, you quietly speculated as to why the temperature of the earth below could not keep pace with the warmth of your heart.
On the surface of a heart that had just finished its mourning, a faint film of steam lingered.
That was why a single call was not enough to reach you.
"Hey, you over there. Are you all right?"
At last, you turned this way.
A single thread of a cicada's cry clung to the tilt of your head. The cry of a being left to emerge before all others.
You were Dang Seo-rin.
"Standing there is dangerous! But don't move either! Stay put for now!"
That was no lie. All of the traffic lights at the crosswalk where Dang Seo-rin stood were blinking red, where normally, at least one side of the four-way intersection should have been green. When looking closer, the red lights were dripping with some kind of liquid.
Blood.
Palm prints, stained with blood, trickled down from the traffic lights.
Slosh. Splat. Squish.
Those bloody handprints crawled eagerly over the crosswalk, pressing down here and there on the white stripes, almost as if they were massaging a human spinal column.
No one else was stopped at that intersection. No one else was alive there but Dang Seo-rin.
Her empty pupils stared this way.
"Please, just wait. Don't make any sudden moves."
I pulled a dagger from the pocket of my barista apron. Then with a gaping slice, I carefully cut across the center of my right palm. Bright red blood oozed from the wound I had opened.
For the first time, something like emotion flickered across her eyes. But it was neither shock nor horror. In the past few weeks, the world had seen far too much happen for mere human blood to be surprising.
What sparked to life there was merely mild curiosity.
I breathed out, spreading the dripping blood evenly over both my palms in a pat-pat motion. Then, holding one hand high, I began crossing the crosswalk.
One step. Two steps. Three steps.
Dang Seo-rin's face came closer. The curiosity reflected in her eyes grew as her expression drew nearer.
"When red handprints start pouring out from a red signal like this, you have to coat your hands with the same color blood and hold them up as you cross. If you don't do that, they consider it a rules violation, and the handprints strangle the pedestrian."
"...What happens if the signal's yellow or green instead of red?"
Her first words to me were polite, as anyone's would be.
June 24. At that point, I was simply a stranger meeting her for the first time.
"You just have to stand still without budging," I answered.
"And if you do move?"
"The green or yellow handprints will start digging into our bodies, trying to find something the same color as themselves... Maybe if your irises happen to match their color, you'd just end up blind and that'd be the end of it."
I extended my other hand to her. It too was soaked in my blood.
"Anyway, we have to get out of here before the light changes. Come. Hurry."
"...Ah."
Dang Seo-rin pressed her palm against mine—firmly, like a stamp. Her hand was also stained with my blood.
We walked side by side, hands raised high, across the crosswalk.
Slosh. Splat, splat. Slosh.
The crosswalk was wide, far wider than the "original" that had once existed in this spot. The crosswalk thirty meters across and one hundred twenty meters long was lined on both sides by countless palm prints scurrying about.
"My condolences."
A blink. Then she turned back to me at my abrupt words. "Pardon?"
"This crosswalk isn't a place just anyone can come to," I answered, expressionless.
"Not a place just anyone..."
"Yes. Only people who have lost their entire family are invited here... How did it happen for you?"
"...I was at home. I closed my eyes for just a moment, and when I opened them, I was standing there. I thought I was dreaming."
I gave her a faint smile. "Is that so? Well, there's not much meaning left in distinguishing reality from dreams, these days."
"...Indeed."
"Almost there. Until we're completely past the crosswalk, please do not lower your hand for any reason. These little things will take it as you 'belonging to their kind' the moment your hand drops toward the ground."
"Ah."
Finally, the edge of the crosswalk. Our feet stepped up onto the sidewalk, and as we turned around—
Beeeep! Beeep! Hooonk! BEEEP!
"Hey! Move it! Aren't you gonna move your car?!"
"Get outta the car, you jerk! Hey, I said get out!"
The sight of a street in the real world unveiled before our eyes as if it had been there all along.
It was still too early back then to say for certain that civilization had collapsed. In Busan, there were still families on the move somewhere with the last bit of remaining fuel, and from the looks of those people quarreling over there, some pedestrians standing by as witnesses were dialing the police on their smartphones.
Within another week, though, all of it—every bit of this fleeting season's landscape—would vanish.
Dang Seo-rin gazed blankly at that scene.
"...That place. There. What exactly is it?"
"Not sure."
What is emptiness?
There are far too many theories about and answers to that question. Just as one cannot call a person to you with a single summons, a single answer cannot solve such a mystery.
"I interpret it as the spot where people who've lost their way end up being placed. Do you know where people most often come to a stop?" I asked, pulling bandages and a handkerchief from my apron. "In the doorway of their own home and at crosswalks."
I wrapped my own hand first, then handed the handkerchief to Dang Seo-rin, who thanked me politely before accepting it.
"So, for those who have lost the home they used to return to, the only stop remaining is the crosswalk... Perhaps the view of that crosswalk isn't much different from the image in our minds, in a way. There's no point separating dreams from reality, so maybe those things simply 'invited' us to the place we belong."
"It's a bit... literary, huh?" Dang Seo-rin blinked. "This is the first time I've heard someone describe these Anomalies, these monsters, like that."
"It's merely my own interpretation."
"Earlier, when I was suddenly summoned—invited—onto that crosswalk..."
Summer. The cicadas cried.
"Right at my feet, there was a warning painted there: Do not move under any circumstances. By any chance—"
"Yes, I wrote that. There are so many people who lose their way."
She hesitated, looking at the bloodied handkerchief in her grasp, uncertain whether she should return it now or wash it first and give it back.
Like the half-red, half-green pedestrian signal, her heart was split in two. Likewise, half of her gaze was silently asking for my address.
For people, a "road" can exist not only for the feet but for the eyes as well.
I smiled. "Shall we grab some coffee?"
"..."
"What do you think?"
"..."
"I looked through a bunch of books because our dear guild leader told me to try making some. Oh, the beans may be a bit old, but at least we managed to get them from a nearby store."
"..."
"Since I'm already wearing a barista uniform, I agreed it'd be nice to get more familiar to coffee in some way, just as you suggested."
"..."
"So, how's your very first taste of my coffee?"
"...It's friggin'—"
"Friggin'?"
"Friggin' awful!"
"What?"
"Good grief! How can you call this coffee?! This... This is an insult to coffee itself, you know! Are you sure it's even safe for people to drink? Huh? Didn't this stuff expire?"
"But I worked hard to brew it for you..."
"I just said find me any random packet of mix coffee and fix it up! Who on earth would ask you to fetch beans in this apocalyptic world and brew them like that?!"
"That's a luxury only someone like the Great Witch of the Samcheon World is worthy of enjoying."
"It tastes terrible... so terrible... unbelievably hellish. It's more horrific than the mud cookies I used to eat when we were starving. I can't believe coffee could taste worse than those sugarless mud cookies... How...?"
"Hm. That bad, huh?"
"Yeah, you taste it! You idiot!"
"Guild Leader."
"Huh, h-huh?"
"To make up for my last failure, I've brought my trump card coffee this time. Please give it a try."
"Eeek! Poison! Poisoning attempt! Everyone, the vice guild leader is trying to poison me! Save me!"
"If I succeed to the leader seat, the first thing I'll do is standardize our uniform, so I imagine they'll actually side with me."
"Bah! So I raised a dog, not a tiger cub...?!"
"Isn't that usually the other way around?"
"..."
"Well?"
"This is... surprisingly drinkable."
"Isn't it?"
"Yeah. But Vice Guild Leader, I'm not sure this is coffee so much as coffee-flavored liquid poured over vanilla ice cream."
"In professional terms, that's called an affogato, Guild Leader. And it's definitely in the coffee family."
"Right, sure. Except for the fact I think it would've tasted better without the coffee, it's a perfectly decent affogato."
"Well, still."
"This is the best coffee you've made for me so far. Yup."
So it happened.
"Here you are. Your affogato."
Dang Seo-rin looked noticeably flustered as she faced the coffee cup set with a clink before her.
Which is to say, she was deliberately showing me that she was flustered. Displaying her feelings. The most basic kind of joke.
"...I can't say I expected you to brew the coffee yourself. I just assumed you meant going to some café for a cup."
"Mm. There were two difficulties with that."
"What are they?"
"First, recently, the number of cafés still in business has dropped drastically. No one's left in this area at least."
"Ahhh," she mused with a nod. "Well, that's pretty much how it is nowadays."
"But honestly, even if there were a café open, I wouldn't have taken you there."
"Huh? Why not?"
"Because nobody brews coffee better than I do. I am the man who makes the best coffee in the world."
Dang Seo-rin burst into laughter then. It was a small laugh, but it was also her first laugh since we met at the crosswalk.
"I should've realized it from the moment I saw you in the barista uniform. Were you originally a café owner?"
"I'm just that kind of person."
I smoothly produced a business card I'd prepared in advance. Dang Seo-rin took it in her hands. On that pearl-paper card, written in an archaic brushstroke (my penmanship surpasses any printing press), were these words:
Café Azit
~Undertaker the Barista~
World's Best · Earth's Strongest · Universe's Greatest Coffee Master
"Pfft." Her smile deepened. "Wh-what is this?"
"As you can see, my business card."
"Seriously? You mean you wrote it in earnest, not as a gag?"
I cleared my throat dramatically. "A true master lets the flavor do the talking. What more need be said? Please, savor it at your leisure."
Her laughter trailed off into a bemused chuckle as she lifted the spoon in her hand.
A porcelain cup, but in an East Asian style instead of European, focusing on shape rather than pattern.
The affogato within. One spoonful, ice cream soaked in coffee.
A taste upon her lips.
Dang Seo-rin's eyes lit up like traffic signals. "This is delicious!"
"Isn't it?"
"Yes! Wow, really... this is amazing! Hey, how is coffee this good?"
One spoonful, another, and another.
Chocolate stripes were drawn across the ice cream. Of course, I had a hand in making that chocolate too. And the main ingredient as well. It was real vanilla bean ice cream, not just flavored with "vanilla essence."
No wonder it was delicious.
"Waaah! Really, your business card wasn't lying—this is the real deal. At least among all the coffee I've tasted, this is absolutely the best!"
"World's Best?"
"Earth's Strongest!"
"Universe's Greatest Coffee Master, indeed. Thank you."
Her laughter was bright as she said it next.
"By the way, I'm Dang Seo-rin."
"Miss Dang Seo-rin."
"Yes. My name's a bit unusual, right?"
"I'm not that different, if you think about it. I lost my real name when I encountered these Anomalies, so I've been living under the alias Undertaker."
"Ah."
I already knew. This was her first time meeting this strange barista—and also the first time she had smiled since burying her family ten days ago.
"Forgive me for asking, but how old are you?"
"I forgot that too. All that remains in my heart, in these careful hands, is the fact that I'm the greatest coffee craftsman in the world."
A huff of laughter.
She gave me a playful once-over with her eyes. "Still, I bet we're not that far apart in age..."
"I feel the same way."
"Huh. Well then." She propped her chin up on her hand. "Shall we—"
"Yes."
"—drop the honorifics?"
That was how we first met.
-x-X-x-
The Inviter III
"I can't walk along the same rails with you, but at least for as long as I live, my lifespan will follow you at the same pace."
"We can't walk together in life, but in death, we do. We are companions, you and I."
"From now on, I'm counting on you, my companion in time."
In the 10th cycle, Dang Seo-rin died.
Even now, when I close my eyes, it all comes back to me vividly as if it happened only moments ago.
She lay in a white bed and passed away as lightly as if she'd just nodded off for a moment.
"My condolences."
"It must have been devastating for you. My deepest sympathies."
Mourners gathered in crowds.
At the time, Dang Seo-rin was the great hero who led the subjugation of the Ten Legs. She was the leader of the Korean Awakener Alliance. The event was practically on the scale of a national funeral—countless people came to pay their respects.
"M-my— My deepest condolences..."
Sim Ah-ryeon was among them.
Since even Ah-ryeon herself had not yet realized her true ability at that point, I saw her as just a run-of-the-mill healer.
"Thank you for coming."
There was no particular sense of connection between us either. A superficial connection, sure, in that we had both cleared the same tutorial dungeon, but nothing more than that.
Ah-ryeon fidgeted, trying her hardest to muster social grace that was foreign to her, and managed an awkward bow.
"N-No, it's just... I... truly offer my condolences."
"Thank you."
On that day in the 10th cycle, I decided to remember each and every one of the thousands of people who came to pay their respects at Seo-rin's funeral.
Later, even all the way in the 50th cycle when the so-called OldManGoryeo Villain was causing chaos in every which way, I was willing to hear out Ah-ryeon's excuses after learning she was that villain. That was the reason why.
By now, no one else remembers, but those who braved the roads of the apocalypse, risking their lives on the treacherous path just to make it to the funeral hall, met with threats in every direction—I never once forgot their faces or their names.
Because Seo-rin had no family, I served as the chief mourner. Oddly enough, not one member of the Samcheon World Guild under her command objected. They merely clung to my sleeves and sobbed.
"M-Mr. Undertaker, what are we supposed to do now? Our guild leader, Dang Seo-rin... What do we do...?"
I looked after them.
No matter which cycle it was, there were always only two possible ends for Dang Seo-rin:
Dying in battle. Meeting a foe too powerful for humanity to face at that time and throwing herself against it before anyone else on the front lines.
Or dying together. Because I refused to leave you like that, I'd drag you all the way to the farthest rear line so we could perish at the same instant.
"Undertaker."
In either case, I kept my promise to you.
"There's just one favor I want to ask, if that's okay?"
"No matter what happens, okay? If you can."
"Don't die before me."
She had personally buried her parents and siblings in the cycle, so the thought of me showing up to her as a corpse terrified her.
"You can promise me that, right?"
That was our promise.
As with most encounters, mine and Dang Seo-rin's first meeting happened at an intersection. It was more an "encounter" than a formal introduction, though.
"Ah. Hello... Wait, that's right. We decided to drop the formality last time, didn't we?"
"No, see, I'm the type who's super shy around new people, so dropping formal speech is kinda tough for me."
"Eh?"
"Ms. Dang Seo-rin, my heart's pounding out of my chest. Could we put the casual speech off a little longer?"
"Pfft. Oh, whatever."
The second meeting was different.
That was a proper get-together.
You and I, after drinking coffee on June 24, agreed to meet again four days later at noon under a willow tree. So on the afternoon of June 28, there we were.
Seo-rin laughed. "You're not even surprised by this?"
"No, believe me, I'm pretty shocked."
The so-called "startle point" she was referring to was her outfit. When she'd lost her way on the crosswalk, she'd been wearing everyday clothes, but now she was decked out in the well-known "witch's attire."
Even in those early days, Seo-rin was running Samcheon World. The guild's numbers hadn't even hit double digits yet.
"So, I may or may not be questioning if I'm dealing with someone who's totally off their rocker."
"Lies. You don't look shocked at all."
"My mental minus is canceled out by your external plus. You're proof that the finishing touch to fashion is the face."
Amused by my brazen remark, Seo-rin burst out laughing. Then with narrowed eyes, she looked me up and down.
"Hey, Undertaker. Let's be honest. You... must've dated a ton, right?"
"No comment."
"Aww, come on. Tell me, I love hearing about romance stories."
"Hmm."
Here's a little regressor tip:
Q: They keep asking if you've had a lot of relationships. How should you respond?
Answering "No, this is my first time" is the worst move. It's tough to keep the conversation going, and there's no guarantee they'll believe you. Not to mention, there's also a good chance the same subject will come up again. Plus, you risk seeming overly serious. No good.
Answering "Just the usual amount, same as anyone else" is mediocre. Not terrible but not great. It's okay if you're ready to change the subject quickly. A good way is to shift attention to something the other person has dressed up for or cares about.
So what's the best move? According to Sun Tzu's Art of War: "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."
In other words, winning without fighting is ideal.
"Okay. In that case, I'll give you two choices."
"Two choices?"
A true strategist expects in advance that such a question might arise—and comes prepared.
"Choice One: I'll answer the question you just asked. Then we'll head off to one of the few still-open restaurants in Busan for a nice lunch."
"Huh. That sounds good. What's Choice Two?"
I held up a picnic basket. "Instead of answering, we skip straight to these homemade sandwiches I prepared this morning and eat them together over on that bench. Paired with Earl Grey milk bubble tea I brought in this thermos."
You can probably guess which option she chose when faced with this visual-novel-style decision.
Shortly thereafter, Seo-rin put the thermos down with a deeply philosophical expression.
"What on earth were the sandwiches I've eaten all my life until now...?"
"I'm glad it suits your taste."
"The word 'delicious' doesn't cut it. It was sheer bliss... I mean, seriously. What's with the bacon? How does bacon even taste like that?"
"Mm."
Now, now! You too can achieve it!
☆The strongest chef in the human world☆
Just casually regress for a few thousand years starting now!
Note: Regression ability is non-refundable.
I swallowed that unspoken joke, giving her a soft smile.
"Shall we walk a bit, now that we're full?"
"Oh, sure. Sounds good!"
It was summer, but the clouds visited frequently and the breeze kept knocking, as if we were in the windy corridors of New York. Busan's wind was pleasant that day.
Perhaps eight-tenths of what fosters a poet is the wind, and likewise, eight-tenths of what swells the conversation while strolling is also the wind.
"So, I was thinking there should be a specialized board on Constellation Net for guides or tip posts that everyone, not just our guild, can reference."
"That's a good idea. What did the Constellation say?"
"Nothing yet. I'm going to talk more with you about it today and then suggest it to the Constellation in earnest."
We never ran out of topics. After all, from that crosswalk meeting onward, Seo-rin saw me as someone with "extraordinarily unique yet extensive knowledge" about Anomalies.
We shared an interest in Anomalies. We also shared an anger toward Anomalies.
From Seo-rin's perspective, I must have seemed to her a fellow traveler in "losing one's family." That was the condition for being summoned to that crosswalk, after all.
"Ohh, that's a really great idea!"
"I'm glad to hear it."
"Heh heh. You're pretty smart, Undertaker. Why don't you and I go around wiping out these Anomalies together?"
She seemed all lively on the surface, but at the time, her soul was still shredded by the grief of losing her family.
In a certain past cycle, the Saintess had told me something in private.
[When you aren't around, she never laughs, Mr. Undertaker. Not even once.]
[She treats me, a Constellation, with this stiff, businesslike attitude.]
Right now, Seo-rin was desperate. If she were left alone, at any moment, she might feel the urge to kill herself or else the urge to wipe every one of those damn Anomalies off the face of the earth.
She battled that double-edged deluge, suicidal despair on one side, murderous rage on the other, fighting tooth and nail to maintain her original nature.
To remain the person who had once loved to laugh.
Who had once loved people.
She fought desperately for herself.
Under those circumstances, the arrival of "Undertaker" was an urgently needed refuge.
She wasn't sure why, but being around this man, she could briefly forget her loss.
She could laugh naturally.
She could stay human.
"So what do you say?"
"Wanna join my guild?"
Just as you did when you gave me that invitation, I silently promised that in this June summer, I would always stay by your side.
I never forgot it, not even once.
We simply needed each other to remain human and survive.
"Let's stop by there for a second."
"Huh? Where...?"
She froze.
We were strolling through a park when I pointed it out, and Seo-rin's shoulders flinched.
The botanical garden. A pathway leading to a village of trees and flowers, both outdoors and indoors.
"...Ah. Ah— Aha! So that's a greenhouse."
For the first time, Seo-rin stammered. Though I knew perfectly well why, I cocked my head.
"Hmm? You don't like flowers?"
"No... that's not it. I do like flowers."
She had no choice but to like them.
Her family used to run a flower shop. It had been big enough to be called a full-on nursery. They had three large greenhouses, growing all sorts of flowers and trees. Locals who loved flowers always purchased from the Dang family business, and there was always a truck out front delivering heavy pots and fertilizer.
Seo-rin and her younger siblings also helped out with their parents' work. Seo-rin was particularly quick at math and good at greeting customers with a smile, so she was a great asset to her family's business.
Until the greenhouse plants turned monstrous and slaughtered her family, Dang Seo-rin loved flowers.
"Then great. Let's take a look."
"...Ah."
But our relationship was not deep enough for her to confess to her trauma yet.
A swirl of emotions kept her from wanting to appear weak: her family's screams, confusion about how to talk about it, the images of her siblings' corpses entwined in vines, plus the wish not to break the pleasant mood of this breezy day, the nausea, the self-reproach for being so shaken by mere flowers, and so on.
All those feelings overlapped as she followed me.
She didn't even realize I was holding her hand, guiding her along. Too many colors of emotion, more than a human heart could handle at once, had taken over.
"...Ah..."
As we neared the flower garden, the trembling in her hand grew stronger, her breathing shallow.
I could have asked if she was okay, but I didn't. I knew all too well she wasn't.
Rather than ask if she was all right, I wanted to help her feel all right.
"Dang Seo-rin. Look carefully."
She'd been hanging her head, but now she slowly lifted it. She blinked, then seeing the scene before her, her eyes went wide.
"This is..."
"Amazingly strange, right?"
I felt her trembling hand and labored breaths ease all at once.
It was no wonder, really. Here in this greenhouse, all the trees and flowers were "withered." Anemones that had once been red were now shriveled petals of rotting-wine hue. Campanulas with closed buds resembled dark tea leaves, like pu'er tea.
Not a single petal was in bloom. Only debris lay scattered on the ground like trash.
The scent of them remained only in traces.
"I personally call this place the 'Garden of Fallen Flowers.'"
"The Garden of Fallen Flowers..."
"Guess it's under the influence of some Anomaly. In other gardens, you still see flowers in bloom, but here... they only ever wilt."
And right now, it was the only garden in this world that you could bear to love.
-x-X-x-
The Inviter IV
A flower bloomed.
"Aaaaaaaah!"
Once, in some spring of the past, screams rang out in a train that had forgotten how to run.
It was the train Samcheon World had made their base of operations. And in the VIP car where the guild leader resided, screams resounded.
"Dang Seo-rin?! What happened?"
"I—I... Undertaker, I...!"
I checked on Seo-rin's condition and shouted immediately, "Nobody come in!"
They froze. The Samcheon World guild members who'd rushed in behind me came to a startled stop.
"Until I say otherwise, nobody enters! Nobody!"
"Y-yes, understood."
I drew the curtains over the windows, making sure no sound leaked out. All the while, Seo-rin kept trembling violently, on her knees on the floor strewn with shattered mirror shards.
"Dang Seo-rin!"
"I-I'm different now. My flesh, yeah. I felt this itch, and look... Ahaha. Look, Undertaker, I...!"
Buds and vines.
Plants were sprouting from her body.
"Ah, aaah. Aaah... ah...!"
Crunch!
Seo-rin tore the leaf emerging from her forearm with a shaking hand.
Yet it was so bizarre. Each time a leaf was ripped away, there was the sound of fingernails cracking. Each time a flower stem broke, red droplets of blood spattered. Even more unsettling was how her lacerated skin instantly regenerated within seconds, leaving smooth as if it had never been touched in the first place.
The more she tore at it, the thicker the leaves grew. The more she tried to rip them off, the tougher the stems became.
"No! Don't tear at it! Dang Seo-rin, get ahold of yourself! The more you rip it out, the deeper it'll breed inside you!"
"Ah, ugh..."
Udumbara. The New Buddha virus.
"But it's... look at this, Undertaker. It's all prickling. See, this is just what's on the surface! My blood, my veins, my bones, they're all flowers already. All of them... Ah, with every breath, ugh, something falls inside my throat. Leaves. There must be leaves in there. Every time my heart beats, something's stuck. Undertaker, please. Help me. Breathing—"
Seo-rin was quarantined.
She'd always found the New Buddha Church extremely ominous to begin with. Though the Udumbara virus nullified Awakened abilities—definitely a drawback—ordinary folks considered it no disadvantage because they gained a body that was practically invincible.
Despite that, Seo-rin despised the New Buddha virus and took an extreme dislike to members of that faith, calling them "flower freaks"—unlike her usual self, who always cared about civilians while ruling over Busan.
"Seo-rin, I brought sandwiches again. Eat even just a little. If you stop eating altogether, you'll really become someone who only needs sunlight for nourishment."
Dang Seo-rin could not love flowers.
More specifically, she had an extreme aversion to living flowers—fresh, blooming ones.
Even after she'd done her best to move on from the tragedy with her family, the same remained true. She didn't have a panic attack at the sight of fresh flowers, but she avoided them, not wanting to be around them herself.
Then came Udumbara's outbreak.
The phenomenon of flowers blooming inside her own body struck directly at Seo-rin's trauma.
"Your Excellency."
Ji-won, who had taken on the management of Samcheon World in Seo-rin's stead, spoke to me in the train corridor.
"How is the Great Witch faring?"
"She's not there yet... She's not in a state to converse normally. I need your help a bit longer, Ji-won."
"It's no trouble, Your Excellency the Undertaker. I'll take good care of the guild here."
"...Thank you. Truly."
"Hmm." Ji-won peered into my eyes. "Yes. Leave it to me."
After we finished discussing various matters, I returned to the VIP room—now effectively a sick room. Seo-rin didn't even look this way where she lay slumped on the bed.
Black violets.
From the neckline of her clothes up along her throat crawled a vine, its tip bearing a flower bud so black it looked as though it might burst at any moment. Red blotches of blood bloomed across her bed, her blankets, even growing in dark stains along her clothes.
No doubt she'd exhausted herself overnight, harming her own body and then collapsing.
For several days, I too had noticed the beginnings of Udumbara infection, shoots sprouting from the back of my hand. When an Awakener was infected with the virus, their body would normally fully bloom in about two weeks. Once it reached full bloom, that was the end. The Awakener would lose their abilities.
In my case, I'd likely lose my regression power too.
"...Seo-rin."
I sat in a chair to match Seo-rin eye-to-eye, but she still wouldn't turn to look at me. Right now, for her, only the relentless growth of those plants pulsating inside her body must have felt real.
"While I was making today's lunch, I thought of something. How I want to kill them all... All those cultists who worship mere flowers as gods. And the people who believe in and rave about it. I started thinking it would solve everything if I wiped them all out."
"..."
"Yesterday, I actually tracked down the New Buddha Church monk responsible for Busan and secretly buried him. No matter how strong his regeneration is, at a hundred meters underground he'll suffer in pain forever, don't you think so?"
"..."
"I'm sorry."
I gently embraced Dang Seo-rin's body.
"Next time, I promise... Never again."
Aura wrapped around me.
There was a pop and a splattering of red.
On the pointed hat she loved. On her cloak. On her broom. On her hardcover books. On her giant globe. On her retro camera. On the artificial flowers I'd given her.
As the world reddened in my final sight, it no longer mattered what color it stained, so long as we were colored together.
That happened.
Early summer, in June.
We strolled together through the Garden of Fallen Flowers.
"How is it? Has a certain vibe, right?"
"Yeah, I guess."
Seo-rin nodded absently. Her breathing, which had been as ragged as if she'd run an intense cardio workout, was now fully calm.
Although she'd finally regained her composure, Seo-rin suddenly paused.
I noticed. "Ah... What's wrong?"
"...No, um. I just— It's strange."
She turned her head slightly, pretending to look around at the surroundings.
It was likely only then that she realized I had been holding her hand.
We silently agreed not to mention the sensation of our fingers interlaced. Nor the flow of our heartbeats passing through our palms.
"All these flowers... they've really all wilted. Hmm, why is it only this place? Is this an Anomaly too?"
A graceful change of subject, smoothly done.
As expected of Seo-rin. Considering she'd been briefly exposed to her trauma in a disconcerting situation, it was quite skillful.
"I don't know. I can't say the cause for sure."
"Huh..."
I waited a short seven seconds.
It was on purpose. In conversations, silence can be advantageous or disadvantageous. Clearly, in this case, it was the former.
People only feel uncomfortable with silence when they're unsure of the other person's goodwill.
Yes, that was enough.
Around the time her trauma's aftershocks had all but cleared, I approached a flower remnant nearby.
"Dang Seo-rin, I've got a confession to make."
"Huh?"
"I brought you here, but I'm actually nearly clueless about flowers."
"Oh. Right."
"Do you know what this flower is?"
"That? Um..."
Seo-rin bent down and gazed quietly at the dried-up flower, or rather, the fallen bloom.
Determining the species of a dead flower, with its color entirely faded and its petals shriveled, wouldn't be easy. However, Seo-rin had worked at her family's flower shop for many years, as both mascot and clerk, and so she swiftly recognized the identity of the fallen bloom.
"I'm not entirely sure if it's ranunculus or peony... but looking at the leaves, I'd say it's peony. It's been dead a while, though."
"Peony. I've heard of it."
"Yeah. People who're a bit older like them. They often grow them."
Her voice picked up some life.
"Sometimes you get customers who are sick of rose bouquets, right? When I recommended them peonies, they loved it."
"Yeah? What color do they come in?"
"Everything from white to wine-red. They go well with roses too. Their flower meaning is 'shyness,' so it's cute. But if you bundle only white ones, it can feel too solemn, so in our shop, we'd mix in pale pink and pink."
"This flower."
"Huh?"
"What color do you think it was?"
A blink. "This one? You mean this exact one?"
"Yeah."
"Ehh, no way to know color. They're all dried-out brown. Just look at them."
"Still, guess for fun."
"Huh..." Seo-rin's gaze turned serious. "Then I should look at which flowers were planted nearby. Since it's near the entrance, they probably wouldn't start off with something too flashy... so maybe white?"
"White."
"Yes, people often confuse peonies with garden peonies because the names are so similar." Seo-rin cleared her throat for a bit of silly, smug fun. "If it were me, I'd plant white peonies right at the garden entrance to greet visitors with a broad 'flower smile.' Otherwise, I don't see much reason to start with peonies at the entrance."
"Excellent."
I let go of Seo-rin's hand. She let out a tiny sound in response, but I acted as if it was nothing, placing my two palms gently around the fallen bloom she'd identified.
"White peony. Are you sure?"
"Um... Undertaker? What are you doing—?"
"Let's check."
"Huh?"
Dark Aura trickled out from between my fingers. I needed to save my Aura usage to avoid Awakening Leviathan, but—
This much was okay.
Sssrrrk.
That jet-black Aura spread along the flower's dead stem into the soil. Moments later, that which had surely been dead turned a shade of light green.
Next to me, Seo-rin drew a breath.
"...Ah."
Light green crept upward, gradually reaching the bud of the once-wilted flower, hidden in my cupped hands. We still didn't know what color it was.
"I'll count to three, then let go. One, two... three."
When I released it, there it was.
A snow-white peony.
Seo-rin's lips parted. From them came a breath, but it was nothing like her earlier ragged panting. It was somehow more delicate.
"Oh. So it really is white..." I mused. "Guess a flower shop clerk knows her stuff. How about this here? Ah, I think I can guess it too. A rose, right?"
"...Yeah, a chameleon rose. A wild variant."
"What? That's a thing? So what color?"
"...Peach."
A flower bloomed.
"How about this?"
"...Moran, a tree peony. Pale pink."
A flower bloomed.
"...It's a patterned orchid, purple."
A flower bloomed.
"Lipstick dodan, bell heather... White, but at the edges it's tinted red like balsam dye."
A flower bloomed.
"Campanula... A bluish color with a faint purple mix."
"Moran."
"Angel's trumpet."
A flower bloomed.
A flower bloomed.
A flower bloomed.
We walked quite far.
Looking back after we'd gone all around, the garden lay in full bloom beneath the early-summer sun.
Seo-rin stood and looked at the newly flourishing garden wordlessly, as if her feet were rooted to the ground.
"Ah."
Could a flower that had already withered ever bloom again?
"Agh... A-ahhh..."
Could a scorched ruin ever again yield a song?
"...Ah..."
Dang Seo-rin shed tears.
She wiped at them with her long witch's sleeve, but they overflowed no matter how hard she tried.
At last, the temperature of the soil had caught up with the heart.
"I— I... My little siblings."
"Yeah."
"My siblings kept begging me to just abandon the shop and run away with Mom and Dad, but I told them... I told them to trust their big sister, that you can definitely keep the shop open and still survive... But then, I... I... I had this thing about guilds and kept chasing after this dream of forming one... By the time I came back, no one was home. I went to the shop, and—"
"It's not your fault."
"If I just hadn't, then—"
"It's not because of you."
"Why...?"
She took a long breath.
"Why, even though everything ended up like this... even though the whole world is like this... why are flowers still so beautiful...?"
That was the cry of a human voice.
-x-X-x-
The Inviter V
On the night when a meteor shower rained uncountable falling stars, each piece of starlight was the corpse of an Anomaly. Seven hundred Awakeners in a suicide squad clung to those handfuls of starlight, one by one plummeting to their deaths.
"Aaaaah!"
"Eleven o'clock! Another squad is covering Anomalies at eleven o'clock! This bastard, it's getting wider and wider! We have to destroy it before it spreads!"
"Squad 12, annihilated."
"Die! Die, die! Just die already!"
"Great Witch, thank you! We love you! Long live Samcheon World!"
"Squad 10, cleared two o'clock."
If "humanity" is not something you are born with but something you prove by living, then without a doubt that final band of seven hundred was the last of true humanity left in this ruined world.
That day, humanity was clearly going extinct.
"Three o'clock cleared. Squad 10, decimated. Six people remain. Moving on to four o'clock. Good luck."
"Squad 7, annihilated. But at least eleven o'clock is clear. Heading for ten o'clock... Oh. Found one remaining corpse. Can't join you."
The stars fell like blossoms.
I suddenly hated the night sky.
If the world's logic decreed that the most beautiful flowers must be trampled the most cruelly, I couldn't fathom what that logic served.
"I'll go on ahead, Undertaker hyung. I haven't forgotten what happened in Sejong. Thank you, always."
"Squad 4, annihilated."
I hated every single weed growing on the fields. I loathed their red and purple, the raindrops that fell on their petals, the voices that called it beautiful—and the muffled breaths of those too dulled by dawn's tremors to feel anything.
Falling blossoms.
The night sky was filled with starlight.
Descent.
My heart blazed like a flame.
If this season existed solely to kill humans, especially those who were most human, then how could I not hate every season first?
Undertaker!
―――.
I love humankind!
―, ――?
And I'd like if you could refrain from hating people too much.
――――.
Do you hate me too, Undertaker?
―――, ――.
...I know. So, however much you like me... just that much, please love humanity more.
'Ahhh.'
I looked up at the night sky.
'Truly, truly. Such a beautiful sky.'
A contract.
Even if the day comes when one hates everything, someone will still find this world beautiful.
An imprint.
The night sky is not beautiful on its own. Samcheon World. All things in creation. None of these are inherently beautiful.
It is beautiful because it's reflected in someone's eyes.
Magic.
No matter how many times, how many tens or hundreds of summers pass, the night sky of that day will remain scorched into my heart like soot.
I was always under your spell.
Hic!
"Ugh..."
It took exactly twelve minutes and thirty-one seconds, plus four handkerchiefs, for Seo-rin to calm her tears.
She sniffled on a bench. "Ugh."
"You can blow your nose, you know. Don't worry about me."
"No, come on, that's a bit much... We're basically flirting, aren't we? Who on earth blows their nose on the second date? Are you crazy?"
She said that, but she couldn't mask her ragged breathing.
Seo-rin definitely seemed more at ease when she was with me. Before entering the Garden of Fallen Flowers, she'd been carefully controlling her image.
"Haah. This feels weird."
Now it was different. Her eyes were all red from crying, and she sat on the bench swinging her legs.
"Even at my family's funeral, I didn't cry. Then here I am bawling in front of someone I basically just met... it's weird."
"That's because I'm weird."
"Who, you?"
"Both of us are. After all, anyone who shows up in a barista outfit or a witch's robe can't be normal."
Seo-rin laughed softly. Then, she said, "Undertaker. Let's be honest."
"About what?"
"You've got some mind-reading power or something, don't you? Some kind of ability connected to people's psyches? This makes no sense otherwise. I never told you how my family died, never mentioned working at a flower shop, yet you somehow picked the perfect date route for me?"
"Hm."
"If that's not due to an Awakened ability, then you're just an insane Casanova. Which is it? Why go so far to seduce me?"
Well...
Normally, I'd deflect the conversation easily, but I couldn't let that stand.
"Dang Seo-rin, that's all well and good, but let's straighten out the order of events."
"Huh?"
"I'm not the one who seduced you."
I made a solemn declaration:
"You seduced me."
Confusion.
"I was just minding my own business. I didn't even know you existed. It's you who approached me first, saying my alias was cool or whatever, openly flirting."
Bewilderment.
"Not to mention you wore clothes and did your hair all tailored to your personal... Dear heavens, O ye Seven Outer Gods. Driving a psychologically cornered person to rely on you? A monstrous level of manipulative gaslighting."
"...Uh, what the hell are you going on about?"
"Karma. You reap what you sow. Everything returning to you is just the consequence you must accept."
"Ah, right. A cult. Makes sense... A good-looking sweet-talker who's too kind must be some kind of cult fanatic."
She tilted her head to the sky, half playfully, half in earnest. By now it was dusk. The purple sky bled like a droplet of spilled paint in a dim palette.
"This world won't last long... Probably 20 years. 25 at most. No matter how we struggle, preventing destruction is tough. But I intend to gather people who still won't give up and fight to live with everything we have."
"...Huh."
"I've already assembled many to my side. I've prepared an organization called the National Road Management Corps to function in place of a government. Dang Seo-rin, I need your help too."
"You're serious, aren't you?"
"When you're facing death, you become that way."
I gazed back at the Garden of Fallen Flowers.
The life I'd restored with Aura was fleeting. Before the sun could creep below the horizon line, those bright petals had already begun to fade again.
Yet at the very least, those petals were no longer drab browns. They fell in reds, oranges, yellows, and greens. Then they could bloom again, albeit for just one more season's respite.
Seo-rin stood silently beside me, looking out at the Garden. A few inches sunken below the horizon later, her gaze turned to me.
"Sorry for calling you weird. I guess if I had to actually put it to words... I'm fascinated. I've never met anyone like you."
"Thanks for saying so, but no need to apologize to me."
"Mm... Yeah, that is the feeling, huh? This is weird too. I feel like with you, I don't have to explain everything or think about how I word things. It's like... like you're family—"
Her head jerked.
"Mmph."
Then she rose from the bench.
A short walk away lay a crosswalk. Not as huge as the one where we first met, but the white paint was still intact, and the black asphalt wasn't broken.
No cars roamed here.
Only a few days had passed, yet this city had already grown accustomed to silence.
"Seo-rin?"
She didn't respond, only stepped into the middle of the crosswalk and closed her eyes, raising her hand toward the sky.
A wind blew.
A strange sensation came over me.
The breeze drifting between her fingers, through her hair. It felt as though Dang Seo-rin might scatter into the wind at any moment.
I stood up.
One step, two steps, I trod the black asphalt. Each step snagged me on images of the many times I had witnessed her die.
Three, four, I crossed the white stripes. Each step pulled me into the June summer in which we'd crossed paths.
Past countless black and white surfaces, I came close to one person. Then, Dang Seo-rin opened her eyes.
A breath lingered on her lips.
"I have a confession."
When I only gave her a puzzled look, she continued, "When we first met, I was interested in you right away. Do you know why?"
"Well..."
Because I dressed meticulously to suit her tastes. I hadn't stopped at just my appearance either. My mannerisms, my attitude—I'd shaped it all to fit her sensibilities.
But seeing my expression, she shook her head.
"Actually, I heard a song."
"A song?"
"Yeah. A song, or maybe a sound. Usually it's just noise. But whenever I approach certain people or places... I hear a particular 'sound' they have."
I blinked.
Not an act. I was genuinely startled.
In these hundreds of timelines, never once had Dang Seo-rin said such a thing to me before.
"Wait," I said, "I'm not sure I follow."
"Ah, well. As an example... look at the sunset overhead. You see red, right?"
"Yeah."
"I don't just see red. I hear the sunset's distinct sound in my ears. It's kinda like the sound of waves. But the sensation is shallower than real waves—broader than a stream, but thinner than an ocean tide."
I'd never heard of this before.
'Why...?'
It baffled me.
'We've gone to that crosswalk. We've walked the Garden of Fallen Flowers. Sometimes we visited Udumbara instead. But never... not once did she mention this.'
Something had changed.
Now it was the 999th cycle.
To the casual eye, that number might seem special, but I hadn't noticed any extraordinary differences from previous rounds. Yet the fact that "she hid it for 998 rounds, then confessed on the 999th" was bizarre in itself.
'But why would she hide something like this? Was there a reason to hide it from me at all?'
Seo-rin giggled at my confusion.
"So earlier, I got a bit startled. When you took my hand and led me to the flower garden, all I could hear was screaming. Over and over... But when you cradled that peony and let it bloom, suddenly the flower's screams stopped. And instead, a really pretty... it's like piano keys being played, that kind of sound."
She clasped her hands behind her back.
"I can hear a song from you, too... It's very sad, but also very clear. It's been continuous from the start, connecting seamlessly. Sometimes the key changes, but the melody never does. Like footprints. Really faint... but really strong."
Gently, Seo-rin took my hand. Behind her, broken traffic lights flashed slowly, blinking as if half-asleep.
"None of the sounds I hear have ever lied to me. So I want to trust you too. Thank you... for giving me a reason to still like this world."
She smiled, likely listening to a tune I could not hear—part sunset to the west, part night sky to the east, half upon this place, half upon her heart.
"If you ever need my help... whenever it is, just say so, Undertaker. Even if we have to set the whole world on fire, I'll do it. I'll help you no matter what."
There is an epilogue.
Let me briefly mention another story.
When Ji-won and I decided to seal Leviathan, I'd already grown exceedingly cautious about using Aura. We needed to limit Aura usage drastically, like living with blackouts or water rationing.
'If I use Aura right away, I can easily defeat Ten Legs or a Meteor Shower.'
But that was a poor solution. We had to learn to fight without relying on Aura at all.
'That's the only way to completely put Leviathan to rest.'
It was a harsh path.
After the 777th cycle when I first pioneered this route, I spent hundreds more refining the approach step by step.
'We can't jump straight from 100% usage to 0%. That's too ambitious.'
'We'll do it gradually. If we used 100% before, we'll try 95%, 90%, 85%... steadily reducing bit by bit.'
It wasn't just Aura either. Ultimately, we had to rely less on other Awakened abilities as well.
'And somehow... until the 20th year, when the Monster Wave fully hits... we must endure.'
Easier said than done.
The less we relied on Aura, the more we depended on other Awakened powers. And naturally so, since humanity needed weapons to fight Anomalies that could destroy the world at any moment.
"Guild Leader."
In one cycle, Ah-ryeon fell to Corruption and blanketed the world in flowers.
Because we'd reduced our Aura mastery, to minimize casualties we leaned on Ah-ryeon's abilities... and she was Corrupted.
- Dad.
In another cycle, Ha-yul fell to Corruption, turning all living things into puppet dolls.
We'd woven puppet strings across continents to strengthen communication lines among Awakeners... which led to her Corruption.
In yet another, Yo-hwa created an entire NPC army, or Dok-seo enlarged the protective barrier too far, or Ji-won once again relied on Aura in the end.
'This...'
I bit my lip.
'This is basically just shuffling cards around.'
A deadlock.
To stop these Anomalies, we must rely on Awakened powers. But that only leads the Awakeners to become stronger, to be Corrupted, to approach the Outer Gods.
'Is there a way...?'
An ability that doesn't grow stronger the more you use it.
An ability that, the more you use it, the weaker it gets.
A power that—no matter how much you wield it—will never risk Corruption, instead returning you closer to an ordinary human.
Such a miraculous ability, if it existed...
'Is there a way to...?'
There wasn't.
"Undertaker."
But there was magic.
"Do you need my help?"
Dang Seo-rin.
Her ability, Cursed Song Incantation, was simple.
She uses up her own lifespan to cast spells.
Exactly.
Only Seo-rin did not grow stronger with the use of her power. In fact, the opposite was true. The more lifespan she saved up by not using it, the stronger she became. The more she used it, the weaker she got—completely inverse to every other Awakener's ruleset.
Burn your lifespan, and your death draws near.
She would die.
As a human.
That, indeed, was Seo-rin's magic.
She was just like me.
Like my role as a regressor, who must erase the very Aura-levels I'd built up to save the world... so too did Dang Seo-rin abandon herself.
My companion.
There existed a song to strengthen humans without Aura, a song to heal without crushing Ah-ryeon, a song to reach Ha-yul without cornering her.
Everything fit together like a miracle.
This path was destined for someone to walk with me.
"All right. Sorry. It appears I do need your magic."
"Mm. There's no need to apologize."
Thus, after that day in the 777th cycle, it became the story of how I and another gradually died.
Our string of failures.
A singular route.
Escaping the cursed formula of Awakener Corruption and the Anomalies' mockery.
A grand magic of Equivalent Exchange, balancing humanity's decline with our own demise.
From here on, the tale will fast forward.
-x-X-x-
The Missing I
For a moment, it might sound strange. And for now, it may look like nothing but drifting clouds.
But let us consider a single, rare piece of imagination here.
'...'
There once was a certain girl.
No. She wasn't a girl but an adult.
An old woman. A calculator. A planner. An explorer. A gambler. A schemer. A loser. A winner.
One who wandered. One who pursued. One who remembered. One who was forgotten.
It didn't matter what name she was given because she could become anything. All that mattered was keeping in mind that she was solving a very difficult, extremely complicated puzzle right in the middle of the night sky.
'...'
The puzzle was four-dimensional.
It demanded not only spatial assembly but also temporal intersections and overlaps. In other words, it wasn't the kind of problem you could solve by simply hitting the pause button.
None of the puzzle pieces had any color.
Colorless, like a mirror.
These mirror-like fragments were scattered about, and she had no choice but to fit them together herself.
Each attempt at fitting them together cost her decades of time. There was no such thing as a skip button, nor was an auto-hunt option available to her.
The difficulty could only be described as unfathomable.
She had to endure the flow of time without beginning or end.
'...'
You might want to lament how outdated and unplayable this game was, but at some point, she no longer gave up.
She simply calculated. Plotted. Explored. Schemed. Gambled. Repeated loss and victory.
Even as she wandered, she never stopped pursuing.
She lived by dying. She died by living.
Time flowed on.
'...'
Finally, the pieces came together.
She picked up a single shard and attached yet another mirror to the night sky, where only a dizzying emptiness stretched beyond.
The Void turned into starlight.
From her perspective, it was beautiful.
The first shard of starlight.
「Oh Dok-seo is a writer.」
Surprisingly, this sentence was true.
She had more days not writing than actually writing, and she was less of a genius who delighted her readers and much more like a genius who enraged them. Nonetheless, by some miraculous principle, Oh Dok-seo was still a writer.
A fine testament to how thoroughly this world deserved to be destroyed.
「Oh Dok-seo writes historical fiction.」
Surprisingly, this was also true.
If you wonder why we'd say "historical fiction writer" instead of "fantasy writer," well—
It's probably faster to see for yourself how Dok-seo actually worked.
"Phew."
The great literary master. The once-in-a-lifetime genius who mocked not only humanity but even Anomalies. Oh Dok-seo...
...woke up at 2 PM.
With a resounding burst of motivation, she resolved to begin work at 5 PM, then spent the next three hours busying herself checking the latest trends on SG Net. After that, she devoured a hearty dinner to restore her creative stamina, lounged on the sofa for some philosophical meditation until her blood sugar returned to normal, and then, at last, at 10 PM, she murmured with the pensive eyes of a true author:
"All right, the time has come. I shall try writing something."
[You're a total bum.]
Ha-yul, who had been working hard all day and was now off duty, flipped through her sketchbook with an expressionless look.
Ever since finding out about the existence known as Oh Dok-seo, Ha-yul had acquired the skill called Quiet, Contemptuous Stare. This was also part of Dok-seo's gracious influence.
[Trash. Shut-in loser. The disgrace of the Regressor Alliance.]
"So, let's see. Yesterday, I heard a story about the 173rd run from the old man. Whoa—he said Dang Seo-rin falls into Corruption, so I was kind of expecting a romance scene, but apparently, there's no memory of anything past the kiss!"
Dok-seo's eyes gleamed.
That wasn't just some figurative literary phrase. Her eyes literally sparkled—because she had infused them with Aura. Even regressors usually saved their Aura for the gravest of situations, but every now and then, Dok-seo used hers as proof of her "sincerity."
"Skipping a naive romance scene... Even if Anomalies might forgive it, and regressors might accept it, I, the free-spirited author Oh Dok-seo, cannot allow it!"
[?]
"I'm certain that in the 173rd cycle, the old man definitely went beyond just a kiss with Dang Seo-rin."
[Are you nuts?]
Ha-yul's contempt grew sharper.
If you ignore for a moment that she once killed her father and turned her mother into a doll—yes, aside from that tiny bit of history—she was actually pretty reasonable. And if you take issue with the question of whether that's really "reasonable," well, take a look at who's living in the guild dorm: Oh Dok-seo, Sim Ah-ryeon, and Yu Ji-won. Three mountains that loom overhead.
"Restoration means sincerity."
[?]
"And creation means... freedom!" Dok-seo whispered gravely. "I made a vow: never to replace the word 'fuck' with 'f—k.' Because fuck is fuck and damn is damn. If the truth is so obvious, then why would I fail to call love by its true name?"
[Wait. So right now, you want to spy on dad's love life? Are you actually insane?]
"Of course! If I have to be insane to tell the truth—!"
By the way, let me just say that in my own stories, I've always filtered out anything that wasn't agreed upon by the people involved. Naturally, there was no consent regarding "anything beyond a kiss." In fact, having explicit consent would have been problematic.
But fuck is fuck, and likewise, Oh Dok-seo is Oh Dok-seo.
"The readers have a right to know...!"
[The most urgent right for your readers is actually for you to write regularly, you know.]
"It's not only about Dang Seo-rin! Cheon Yo-hwa the student council president, Commander Noh Do-hwa, all the others! Think about it! How could hundreds—no—thousands of repeated runs go by without a single love affair between a man and a woman happening even once?!"
[You're crazy.]
"This is a trick. A lie! It's all a ruse by the Infinite Metagame! I refuse to be deceived by this fake world any longer! I will witness the truth with my own eyes! I swear it's not personal. My foolish heart beats only for the readers...!"
[I'll go get your brother.]
"Hey, hey, hey." Dok-seo's arm stretched waaaayout and clung to Ha-yul's shoulder, who flinched in alarm.
What in the world? Was this an Anomaly? It was almost identical to a monkey from some joke comic! The intelligence level might not be too different either.
"Okay, okay, you are so uptight. In that case, I won't insert an R-rated chapter in The Regressor's Epiloguethat I'm serializing."
[...]
"But let's just keep it to ourselves."
[...?]
"I'm going to possess 173rd-run Seorin."
They called it possession, though the official name was slightly different:
Side Story Creation.
A power that allowed Oh Dok-seo—both writer and V-tuber—to pick some far-distant run from the past and "summon" a character from it.
It took the usual writer's tool, empathy, to the extreme. She didn't just sympathize with the character's feelings—she fully recreated everything that character had felt and thought.
"So while I'm playing the part of your sister from the 173rd cycle... you, Ha-yul, can ask me all sorts of questions."
[Questions? About what?]
"Ah, geez! Don't try to act innocent like you're some pampered noble from a politically gifted, traitorous family background or something!"
[Should I actually kill you?] Ha-yul asked, barely suppressing her murderous intent. It took extraordinary effort to hold back.
"Ha-yul. Huh? Lady Lee Ha-yul. You're curious too, right... what sort of romantic escapades the old man has?"
It was a whisper from the fiend who wore an author's mask.
"And it's not even about what he's up to now! It's about what Mister was doing hundreds, no, thousands of years ago. That's basically a 'historical' fact, so it's not even a privacy issue! Who's going to criticize a romance from thousands of years ago?!"
[...]
"You can handle the rating. Just lightly—very lightly—ask about it, okay?"
[...]
"Was the kiss... sweet?!"
[...]
"And if it was sweet, did they go even further?!"
[...]
Ha-yul grabbed her half-curly hair with both hands.
She agonized. She wrestled with her desires.
[Just a little. Just a little bit, okay?]
"Deal!"
No point in hiding it.
The aristocratic lady from a traitorous political dynasty was somewhat weak to temptation.
Under normal circumstances—meaning before the 998th cycle of the scenario—this is the point at which the STOP! button would usually activate.
The reason was simple: the Saintess.
In other words, if you compared the world to a classroom, she was always the class president. Our model student.
But now it was the 999th run.
Just as she tried to put a stop to Dok-seo's chaotic behavior (which, if we're honest, was far beyond mere chaos from the start), the Saintess hesitated for a moment.
She pressed her own power, Time Stop, pausing the flow of time, and held her chin in thought.
"This... does make sense," the Saintess murmured.
In a Time Stop, it was easy to lose one's sense of self, so she intentionally spoke out loud this way to avoid forgetting her position.
It was a habit reminiscent of a certain regressor.
"Mr. Undertaker just got finished telling me about it... That Dang Seo-rin's behavior was something we'd never seen before, in all cycles combined."
That stuck in the Saintess's mind.
"I discussed it with Mr. Undertaker at length, but in the end, we couldn't find any peculiar changes in the 998th cycle. Nor in this 999th cycle. So..."
Maybe the best idea was to ask the "past" Dang Seo-rin about it—about that unknown potential even Dang Seo-rin herself didn't realize.
Of course, if Dok-seo's Side Story Creation were truly capable of summoning the full power of the Fallen Witch from her prime, it would be dangerous. But Side Story Creation wasn't omnipotent. Sure, the Infinite Metagame obviously wanted its Miko to eventually reach such heights, but in accordance with that eternal law of an Outer God and its Miko, she was thwarted.
"From what I gather, it merely 'summons' the personality and memories that Dang Seo-rin had back in the 173rd cycle."
Who was to say it truly originated with the Infinite Metagame, though? It was still an extremely game-like power, the Regressor's timeless clear method was likewise inclined: forcibly dressing that ability up in a name like Side Story Creation.
"In that case... it should be safe, I think."
It wasn't perfectly harmless. After all, it would inevitably violate some of the personal privacy of both the Regressor and the Great Witch.
Yet what a coincidence! The Saintess, flawless model student that she was, had precisely one moral principle she did not uphold: "respecting personal privacy." She single-handedly operated a 24-hour, round-the-clock CCTV that monitored every single Awakener across the Korean Peninsula and all without a single staffer to give her a break. A system so sweeping that even George Orwell would have been appalled.
If she'd cared about the words "personal privacy," she'd never have set that operation up.
Hence...
"...Yes. Looks like there's nothing wrong with letting this happen."
The one and only conscience of the Regressor Alliance lowered her hand that was about to declare STOP! Instead, after releasing Time Stop, she quietly transmitted a message to Dok-seo by Telepathy.
"Ah—"
For some reason, upon receiving the Saintess's voice, Dok-seo smiled slyly, as if she'd been expecting this all along.
"Ahhh. Sorry, Saintess unnie! Once again, I neglected your feelings."
?
"Of course you'd be super interested in Mister's romance scenes too! Gosh, I almost left you out. Don't worry. Just watch it all you like through Ha-yul's eyes! I'll keep it a secret from the old man till the day I die!"
...
A single flower bloomed in the Saintess's heart.
'Huh. Why is my heart pounding so fast?'
The petals, however, were quite murky.
'Could this feeling be... murderous intent?'
It was an evil flower.
Unbeknownst to anyone, Dok-seo had just given the Saintess a little shove toward the brink of Corruption. If the Saintess fell, the end of the world was certain—thus in that context, Dok-seo had unwittingly become the hidden mastermind of ruin.
In any case, the Saintess did not stop her. On the contrary, this was like a model student who stumbled into a gang of delinquents secretly playing with fire and ended up joining them for this runaway joyride.
After 998 normal runs, now on the 999th: derailment.
Thus was the second shard of starlight.
"Ahem? What are you all talking about here?"
"Ah."
Dok-seo and Ha-yul were in the cafe hideout lobby, a public space that everyone in the Regressor Alliance used freely. That was its purpose, after all.
"J-Ji-won."
"A good evening to you, Dok-seo."
Among them was, of course, that pale-haired psychopath who called herself the Regressor's one and only right hand.
Ordinarily, this specter of authority preferred the dormitory at National Road Management Corps headquarters over the guild's quarters. After all, she was bound to the Regressor by a solid contract. No matter what sins she might commit, her final testament would always reach some future iteration of Yu Ji-won. In other words, from her perspective, the Undertaker's favor was pinned at a certain threshold.
However, it was a different story when it came to Noh Do-hwa. Commander Noh's favor rating had a maximum of 20, and reaching that 20 was unbelievably tough.
For Yu Ji-won, doing mild upkeep with the Regressor was enough for him. The rest of her time she devoted to "conquering" the commander. Efficiency at its finest.
Until the 777th cycle, that is.
When the aurora spread across the night sky, the Regressor's favor rating limit of 60 jumped straight to 100, and a seasoned gamer knows to grind faster than anyone else after a major server update.
Since the 777th cycle, Ji-won had been coiled up in the guild hideout, and she started by buddying up to Ha-yul. It was all to build a thoroughly rational formula:
Lee Ha-yul = Someone the regressor cherishes like a daughter
Yu Ji-won = Takes good care of Lee Ha-yul
Undertaker = "Ah, so my Yu Ji-won is kind after all!"
Flawless, was it not? To capture a general, you first take out his horse.
This silver-haired psychopath even had the steps down pat.
"Well, it's, like... basically, we're trying to study what happened when Dang Seo-rin turned 'Corrupt.' So, you know, my ability, Side Story Creation? We'll see what went on with her and Mister when they, you know. It's just curiosity, totally a trivial thing!"
"Aha." Ji-won made a show of marveling with a nod. "How interesting. Please allow me to join in on this academically minded observation as well."
"O-oh, sure! Of— Of course."
Dok-seo felt a bit nervous. From reading the Regressor's tale in "novel" form, she knew how gifted at murder this pale-haired beauty was.
She also had the worse end of the matchup, fundamentally. Even though Dok-seo herself was a Miko, the Infinite Metagame had now become a Outer God mostly by name (lol). Meanwhile, Leviathan was still in its "secretly powerful" stage. The Regressor and the psychopath were simply restraining themselves for the moment, but if they wanted, they could unleash their Aura anytime.
But that was not the end of it.
"Hey, what's going on? Let me in too!"
"Ergh, Student Council President..."
Eternal High Schooler Cheon Yo-hwa, reporting in.
"'Ergh'? That's harsh. Come on, Dok-seo!"
"...But you, well, you don't like me... r–right?"
"Eh? Why would I dislike you, Dok-seo? I don't hate you at all."
She wasn't lying.
When nobody else was watching, Yo-hwa had bullied Dok-seo countless times. Again, if we imagine the world as a classroom, Yo-hwa was the vice president, center of the social circle, and the main culprit behind ostracizing Dok-seo. Like the difference between Poison-type and Psychic-type in Pokémon matchups.
"So you're saying we're gonna dig up Teacher's past, right? Hehehe, I wanna join! I'm curious too!"
"Ugh..."
Why did Yo-hwa bully our dear, innocent Dok-seo?
It's not like this author took more days off from writing than writing itself, or wrote mocking 3,000-word announcements whenever she went on hiatus, or physically hit fans at a fan meet-and-greet, or constantly used Aura for her own self-indulgent whims when even regressors saved it for emergencies. It's not like she stole the sacred "Mister" title that Yo-hwa used to address her teacher before switching to "Teacher," is it?
From the viewpoint of the great literary master Oh Dok-seo, it was pure nonsense.
And that still wasn't the end!
"Wh-what is everyone doing here...?" A greenish-haired woman who embodied the very concept of absurdity poked her head in for a peek, and Dok-seo's face went sour in record time.
"Ah, shit! Sure! Ms. Ah-ryeon, come on! Let's just gather the whole neighborhood, why don't we? Sheesh... Just don't tell Mister, okay?! Got it?!"
"I-I'm not sure why you're u-upset with me, but... okay, I'll keep it s-secret..."
Ah-ryeon thought, But does keeping a secret as "Sim Ah-ryeon" differ from keeping a secret as "Old Man Goryeo"...?
For reference, in Pokémon terms, Sim Ah-ryeon was like a Digimon. Meaning matchups were meaningless.
"Oh, my head hurts. All right, everyone take a seat on the sofa! We're about to do the Side Story Creation! Hey!"
Oh Dok-seo, Miko of the Admin of Infinite Metagame. Prime era: 888th cycle. Corruption.
[...]
The Saintess, Miko of Nut. Prime era: presumably 107th cycle and 267th cycle. Corruption.
"Hm. I've only heard about it before, but this is my first time seeing an actual Side Story Creation in progress."
Yu Ji-won, Miko of Leviathan. Prime era: after the summer when she encountered "Mr. Matiz" at age 14, in every run starting from 777th. No record of Corruption so far.
"Um. Huh, Ms. Ah-ryeon?"
"Yes?"
"Sorry, but do you use some kind of perfume? There's a really unusual smell here..."
Cheon Yo-hwa, Miko of the Infinite Void. Prime era: after the 688th cycle in which her "split personality"—the persona of the Infinite Void—vanished. Multiple histories of world destruction. Multiple Corruptions.
"I don't, no?"
"Huh?"
"We're Awakeners, right? Perfume seems pointless, plus it's expensive, and kind of a hassle. Ehehe. So I just go around comfortably!"
Sim Ah-ryeon, undecided. No recorded world destruction so far. Multiple Corruptions.
"All right, everyone pay attention! We're starting now!"
From the 107th run, the 173rd run, the 267th run, the 688th run, the 777th run, the 888th run, and on to the 999th run.
Upon treading again on the sand of the Ganges, calling out those numbers and names, climbing the hill of nayuta, and crossing the boundless sea.
So that coincidence may become inevitability, the third shard of starlight sparkled.
-x-X-x-