The Exhibitor IV
Wouldn't it be fair to call this a confession already?
"…"
I took a short breath as I combed Sim Ah-ryeon's hair from behind.
This was the reason why.
How in the world could I ever leave a child like this and go somewhere else?
In a world contaminated by Infinite Metagame and turned to dots, in other words, during the destruction of the 135th cycle, Sim Ah-ryeon hadn't abandoned me, even though I was nothing more than a mere 'NPC'.
"Ah-ryeon, the Guild Leader is―"
And so, I opened my lips, intending to give an equally sincere answer to this child's most genuine confession. I opened them, but…
Sim Ah-ryeon, who was sitting with her back to me, had her head tilted like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
"Ah-ryeon?"
I held her shoulders to check on her.
"Zzz..."
This kid, she was dozing off.
She was even drooling waterfalls to boot.
"Ha."
A disbelieving laugh escaped me.
No way. It's not like she's some hard-of-hearing protagonist. How can she just say her piece during a heartfelt exchange like this and then immediately fall asleep?
Even the gentle Guild Leader was getting angry now.
"You little rascal. You really just live however you want, don't you. You little troublemaker."
"Ube-eb, bee… uhehe..."
I poked her cheeks over and over, but Sim Ah-ryeon's sleep phase wouldn't budge from the 'deep sleep' stage.
The reason was easy enough to guess. For a whole week, she hadn't rested, painting endlessly without a care for her clothes getting dirty. How could her mental state possibly hold up?
She could maintain her physical vitality by casting self-heals. Thanks to that, she had completed a quest that would make anyone in the art world faint just hearing about it, 'Preparing for Two Consecutive Exhibitions'.
But the vitality of her mind was another matter entirely.
Sim Ah-ryeon had been running on the high of her healing abilities, painting nonstop for a week without sleep. It wasn't normal.
She probably held on through sheer grit and willpower until I came to see her exhibition, and the moment she thought, 'Ah, the Guild Leader has seen everything now,' the rubber band in her head must have snapped.
"Uhehe, Giiild Leeder..."
"Yes, yes. The Guild Leader is right here."
Pat, pat.
I set the comb down and stroked Sim Ah-ryeon's hair with my hand. I had cleared my schedule anyway, so I planned to stay by her side until the OldManGoryeo herself woke up.
――Thump.
Just then, I heard footsteps coming from the gallery entrance. It was a little strange.
I had hung a 'No Entry' sign at the entrance. The time had already passed midnight. There shouldn't be any citizen audacious enough to attempt a theft right under the nose of the Tower of Babel.
'Did a drunk from near the casino wander in by mistake?'
Step. Step. Step.
The footsteps grew closer. Soon, they would round the corner and I would be able to see who it was, so I prepared to give them a warning in advance.
"I don't know who you are, but this is a restricted area for the general public. I'd appreciate it if you would head back out..."
"Oh my."
Thump.
One of the person's feet peeked out from around the corner. Then their lower body, hidden by a long skirt. Their neat upper body.
And their pink hair, which cascaded down like a weeping willow.
"I'm sorry. I heard this exhibition was a nighttime exclusive, so I was under the impression the closing time was at dawn. Did I get the information wrong?"
"..."
My whole body froze.
Go Yuri.
The scent of apples, so rich it felt like it would sweetly pickle my very brainstem, was approaching from the gallery corner like a shadow.
Step. Step.
Go Yuri moved to stand before the massive canvas of 『Title: Ten Legs』.
"This one has had its frame torn off. Because there was no intention of preserving or managing the work later, because the plan was to use it for a single exhibition and then discard it. To not frame it and expose its bare face entirely... How wonderful."
"..."
"An exhibition that contemplates how much a single frame can interfere with immersion. Of course, the perfume of Miss Ji-won might be seen as a distraction. The artist thought only of the Guild Leader for a whole week while painting, so they must have thought, 'I wish the Guild Leader would also set aside their thoughts of someone else for a moment and look only at my work.'"
"..."
"It's an entirely reasonable transaction."
I carefully shifted Sim Ah-ryeon, holding her tightly in my arms.
Of course, I never took my eyes off Go Yuri. I watched with maximum vigilance, so as not to miss a single movement, no matter how subtle the sign.
On the other hand…
"Aha, this one is Miss Seo-rin. And this one… could it be the death of Miss Yo-hwa? My. She was always a good painter, but for her skill to improve this much. Mmm. It's magnificent... As expected of love and death. No matter how the history of human art changes, these two themes remain endlessly potent."
She strolled nonchalantly through the midnight gallery, stopping at each piece in turn as if they were bus stops.
90 minutes passed.
In the end, I had no choice but to open my lips.
"Why did you come here?"
"Because I heard a wonderful exhibition was being held."
"Is that really the only reason?"
"For now, yes. To not only love someone's life, but to love even their death. To see their very existence as beautiful. Sincerely, sincerely, sincerely... Opportunities to witness the works of a master painter like that don't come around often, you know."
"..."
"I enjoyed them very much."
Bow.
Go Yuri bowed deeply before me, or rather, towards the both of us with Sim Ah-ryeon.
"If this world were a single work of art, and only beauty existed within it, then one could say that all the time a certain regressor has repeated over and over existed solely for this one moment."
"..."
"They were masterpieces that would not be an exaggeration to praise as such."
It was high praise.
But there was no way those words of acclaim would reach Sim Ah-ryeon's ears.
It wasn't because Ah-ryeon was asleep.
It's just that Go Yuri's voice never reached anyone in the first place.
Not curses, not praises, not even a simple everyday greeting.
She was an existence that simply returned an optimized response according to what the person facing her 'wished' for.
That was Go Yuri.
"But you and I both know, Doc. That the world cannot be described as simply beautiful."
However.
I alone was the exception.
"Yes."
For some reason, since the 1,000th cycle, I had become able to hear the anomaly's voice. I had also figured out the strategy that Go Yuri's words change to match her conversation partner.
That's why a trick like this was possible.
"..."
I looked around.
The gallery at night. Here, a monument of corpses built from my deaths from the 1st cycle to around the 1,000th was on display.
Without rushing, slowly, I connected 'myself' to the deaths expressed in all the paintings. I immersed myself.
Starting from the 1,083rd cycle and going in reverse order―― to the 5th. To the 4th. And finally, to the 1st cycle I had seen in Cheon-hwa's dream.
[Complete Memory].
This ability, which for me was both a lifelong curse and a blessing, became the teeth of over 1,000 keys.
Click.
The enigma named Go Yuri. I slowly aligned the tumblers on that single lock.
"Go Yuri."
"Yes."
"Why did you erase your own existence and fall into being an anomaly?"
"..."
The next moment.
Screeeech.As if a key and lock were grinding against each other, 'voices' ricocheted from the canvases scattered in every direction of the exhibition hall.
"What are you talking about?" "I have never fallen into being an anomaly" "Mr. Undertaker" "My" "Yes? Miss Cheon-hwa?" "Of course, it's for the sake of humanity" "That's sad…" "Your Excellency Undertaker" "Ahaha, I've finally been caught!" "There is none" "Don't you actually already know?" "I am human, just as you see" "That's interesting" "I have never mentioned the next teacher to the young lady" "With me" "Guild Leader" "Voice" "Being able to forget can sometimes be a blessing" "This was the only way" "The fact that distinguishing between anomalies and humans is extremely ambiguous" "That is your ego" "Let's become one" "Doc" "Can you hear me?"
The voices echoed endlessly.
They rained down like bullets on a battlefield.
But I didn't lose my concentration.
On a normal day, I might have, but here, with just a glance, the records of my deaths spanning 1,000 cycles were on display.
A child was asleep in my arms.
This was the temple that Sim Ah-ryeon had built for me.
Here, it was possible for me to maintain myself, continuously, without a single skip.
Therefore, I wove all the hopes and wishes of every cycle into a single thread, a single timeline, a single key, and reached it.
"What are you talking about?" "I have never fallen into being an anomaly" "Mr. Undertaker" "My" "Yes? Miss Cheon-hwa?" "Of course, it's for the sake of humanity" "That's sad…" "Undertaker-nim" "Ahaha, I've finally been caught!" "There is none" "Don't you actually already know?" "I am human, just as you see" "That's interesting" I have never mentioned the next teacher to the young lady" "With me" "Guild Leader" "Voice" "Being able to forget can sometimes be a blessing" "This was the only way" "The fact that distinguishing between anomalies and humans is extremely ambiguous" "That is your ego" "Let's become one" "Doc" "Can you hear me?"
I edited them.
"My" "voice" "Can you hear me?"
I answered.
"Yes."
I broke the curse.
"I can hear you. Clearly."
Go Yuri's lips closed.
"..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..."
The countless paintings, the countless Go Yuris, all fell silent at once.
Screak. The grinding noise subsided. The key had been inserted all the way to the end of the lock. And all that remained was a single result.
"..."
Unlock.
The tinnitus faded.
The shadows that had been wailing in the abyss of pandemonium, crying for me to look at them first, to understand them, also disappeared.
I looked at the one person.
I was wishing for an answer.
And Go Yuri could not refuse my wish.
She was that kind of being from the very beginning.
She was.
"…It's taken a long time."
She smiled.
"Humans aren't beautiful. Not even you, Undertaker. You throw everything away and go on a vacation just to wipe away the stains on your heart."
I drew in a breath.
"When I go on a vacation cycle, Ha-yul kills herself. Yo-hwa becomes a mad necromancer. Seo-rin becomes a lonely dictator. My other companions also end up in unhappy lives. I leave, knowing all of this."
"But, that is a temporary measure for you to remain human, Doc."
"…The moment I think that the lives of those children are all my responsibility, I would try to take responsibility for all of humanity, and I am not a god. I would surely break and shatter someday."
"And yet, some would call your method cowardly."
"What's important is victory. Having come this far, I have no choice but to win. For that, I changed the way I live, and I even threw away the way I think."
"Indeed, those are correct words."
A fine line appeared on Go Yuri's lips.
"To know how to abandon oneself. That is the minimum requirement to walk the lonely path of this world stained with emptiness."
"..."
"It's not enough to simply be prepared to abandon yourself. If it were a problem that could be solved with such resolve, no one would have suffered."
"After devising the best possible way to abandon yourself, can you truly go through with it?"
Step.
Go Yuri walked past me with her hands behind her back.
Slowly.
"You asked why I abandoned myself. The answer to that question is very simple."
"..."
"It is, of course, because my goal is to save people, not to give birth to a one-of-a-kind Outer God named 'Go Yuri.'"
Surely the Doc, if no one else, would understand my heart, is what she seemed to say.
The sweet whisper dug into my ear.
"Ah. It would have been nice if I were a slightly more perfect being. God Go Yuri! Hiyah! I will take responsibility for all of you―like this. Ahaha."
"..."
"But I am not a god."
Thump.
Go Yuri's footsteps stopped behind me.
"I don't ask for much. It's just that I was born as this kind of person in this kind of world, and things just happened to turn out this way. Just like you, Doc."
"You are."
Go Yuri had said.
That if this world were only beautiful, then thousands of cycles would have been worth it for the sole reason of holding Sim Ah-ryeon's exhibition.
The world was not beautiful. This world hated humans. There were only humans who were born of that hatred.
That is why, if I could reach the single question and answer I was about to speak, then those thousands of cycles would have been worth it.
"Who are you?"
Go Yuri leaned in and whispered.
"I am a reincarnator."
It was a revelation like a lightning strike.
"A human who is always born again."
-x-X-x-
The Reincarnator I
――I don't remember my first life.
That's because I don't have a good memory like you do, Doc. Ah, of course, I did have a chance to improve it, but I naturally refused.
A Complete Memory Ability, you ask. Ahaha. What kind of curse is that, who in the world would want to receive such a thing?
…It's faint, at best.
There are two scenes that I can barely recall.
There was a playground in my neighborhood. A playground covered in sand. Yes, it was an old one.
I would meet with children whose faces and names I didn't know there during the day, and we would part ways in the evening.
Then the void arrived. And around the time civilization was ending, a thought suddenly occurred to me.
『The children I used to play with at the village playground in my youth. They must all be dead by now.』
But, that wasn't actually true.
I had joined the resistance in Busan. Of course, I was a non-combatant, not a combatant.
Ah. For your reference, a massive organization like the 'National Road Management Corps' obviously didn't exist back then.
There was no such thing as an 'awakener' either. Strategy guides hadn't been discovered like they have been now… and people with strange abilities hadn't been found yet.
But then, a man who was leading a part of the resistance at the time was about to pass by me when he suddenly stopped.
The man's rank was much higher than mine. I was a non-combatant, while he was a combatant, and on top of that, he was in charge of the most dangerous reconnaissance team.
The man spoke.
『By any chance, aren't you from □□□ village?』
I don't remember his exact words.
As I've told you, my memory is terrible compared to yours, Doc.
But I probably said something like this.
『Yes, that's right. How did you know…?』
『Oh. I knew it. Don't you remember me? It's me. Whenever it snowed, we used to run all over the apartment complexes having snowball fights.』
『Ah…』
Honestly, it was absurd.
Who would remember a childhood like that?
I can guarantee you that a person makes far more friends before the age of 12 than they do after the age of 12.
It's just that we parted after playing just once at the playground. We parted after kicking a soccer ball on the field. We parted after throwing the winter snow.
You just can't recall their faces or names.
『What's your name?』
『Su-yeon.』
I just ended up smiling vaguely.
『It's Su-yeon, Reconnaissance Team Leader.』
『What's with the Team Leader. Just speak comfortably.』
『Ahaha…』
It was an era where you couldn't be comfortable.
The day the hordes of aberrations, though back then we just called them monsters, finally arrived. Anyway, on the day the stain of the Void reached Busan and everyone fought a desperate battle.
That man fought without giving up until the very end, gathering everyone, combatants and non-combatants alike.
I lost an arm too.
Or was it a leg? Perhaps both.
Just as my eyes were getting so heavy they were about to close, in the distance, in the middle of a swarm of countless monsters.
The man who had acted like he knew me, saying we were from the same village, was fighting while bleeding from his entire body.
As I closed my eyes, I wondered.
『We're going to be defeated anyway.』
『The world is going to end anyway.』
『Why is that person fighting so hard?』
That was my first life.
A scene I no longer remember.
And…
"――And that man, was you, Doc."
I was at a loss for words for a moment.
"What?"
Go Yuri smiled faintly.
"So, in a way, we were actually 'childhood friends'. Ahaha. Isn't that funny?"
"…"
"My second life was a little later. When I was born, oh my. The Void had already arrived and my parents had already fled to Busan, you see."
Despite my question, Go Yuri quietly continued her story. Slowly, as if not blaming a child who couldn't keep up with her footsteps.
"My parents ran a bakery."
Busan. A bakery.
"But the world was so broken. You can't afford to leisurely run something like a bakery. Just like me in my past life, my father went to war as a combatant and my mother as an assistant... and both of them passed away."
Go Yuri's expressions were varied.
She would sigh, then she would smile, and then she would rest her cheek on her hand.
The night gallery.
A one-person play flowing softly in an exhibition hall where hundreds of regressions were displayed.
"At a young age, just as all the children in Busan did, I went to war as a child soldier."
"…Jeong Seo-ah."
I said, as if spitting it out.
"The bakery owners have a different child in each cycle. One of them..."
"Yes, that was me."
A bright smile.
"It didn't have any special meaning. Even if it was the body I was reborn into, as I said, the timing was far too late."
"..."
A world she was born into too late.
An era where there was no longer even a chance for salvation.
"I showed combat power that was no different from my first life, and so I was eliminated. Hah. It's embarrassing... Someone like me is disqualified from being a Reincarnator."
Was it her first battle?
Go Yuri, no. 'Jeong Seo-ah' was killed in action.
Just before her eyes closed. She saw it then, too.
Far away, at the final defense line, she saw the figure of one person fighting in the middle of a battlefield where bullets rained down.
The man who was a 'childhood friend' in her previous life and a distant 'superior officer' in this life was being pierced through the chest by a tentacle, breathing his last.
She suddenly thought.
Why was she living a life like this?
What is life?
From her third life onwards, her memories truly started to become vague.
"I didn't want to forget the 1st and 2nd lives, so I diligently took notes and such. But from the 3rd, how should I put it? Ummm. It became hard to feel any meaning,"
Go Yuri said.
"I was continuously born as the child of different parents, as a different person."
Reincarnation.
She was born in Japan. She was born in Germany.
Reincarnation didn't care about nationality. However, the era was relatively fixed.
Based on the point when the Void arrived, the earliest she could reincarnate was 20 years prior.
Go Yuri couldn't understand why she was repeating this reincarnation so many times.
To consider herself a Buddha or the Dalai Lama, she had never received any sort of enlightenment or anything of the sort.
She just kept on living.
"In any case, we have to stop the end of the world, don't we?"
She vaguely set a purpose for her life.
"I… that is, 'Jeong Seo-ah' died. But when I went back to Busan after reincarnating again, my parents were perfectly fine."
Of course, Jeong Seo-ah's parents didn't recognize her.
In the place she should have occupied, another child, a new 'Jeong Seo-ah', existed.
Nevertheless, to her, those two were still her parents.
"With each reincarnation I repeated, the number of people who were my parents, my family, and my friends gradually increased."
Their nationalities were different. Their statuses were different too.
The degree and color of the love she received were also different.
"Still, they were all very precious people."
"..."
"Did you know? I was even born as Ms. Noh Do-hwa's younger sister once."
"What?!"
Go Yuri covered her mouth with her hand.
Ooh-hoo-hoo.
A delighted laugh escaped.
"That surprised you the most."
"N-no. But still. I've never heard that National Road Management Corps Director Noh Do-hwa had a younger sister..."
"Of course not, Doc."
Go Yuri's head tilted slightly.
"When you are born again, when you reincarnate. The 'me' of the past life disappears."
"..."
"Miss Noh Do-hwa. She was really kind. She was very cold to other people, but, at least to me, her younger sister. She became a prosthetist for me, who had suffered from a disability in my legs since birth."
"What…?"
"When I became the child of Ms. Adele and Mr. Emit."
Shock followed shock.
Like a wave.
"I felt a little sorry."
"Old Man Scho's, child? The two of them didn't have any children..."
"Even so, I was an adopted child. Both of them poured out more love than I deserved on young me. However, during that time, I was desperate to stop the end of the world one way or another."
"..."
"I was confident, too."
She had already experienced hundreds of reincarnations.
Go Yuri was fluent in numerous languages. She had reached a level of knowledge and a realm of experience that an ordinary human would find difficult to achieve.
"Gathering funds was easy. So was gaining power. I poured all the resources I could possibly use to prepare for the destruction."
"..."
"My parents…, Mr. Emit and Ms. Adele worried about me. Still, I persuaded them and headed to the Korean Peninsula by myself... and died trying to block the advent of the Outer God 'Taegeuk'."
Go Yuri looked up with a blank gaze.
At the painting titled, 『Title: Ten Legs』.
"When I looked for them in my next lives, Mr. Emit and Ms. Adele. They never adopted a child again."
"..."
"And for some reason, whenever the time for Taegeuk's advent came around, the number of times the two of them came to Korea on business trips increased."
A small murmur.
"As if their lost daughter was there."
"..."
"Isn't it strange? Neither of them should have any memories of a past life."
Go Yuri said.
"The Schopenhauer couple started coming to Korea. Noh Do-hwa-ssi's younger sister was gone, and the reason she wanted to become a prosthetist was gone too. But from the next life on, she always became a prosthetist."
"..."
"If a child was born under different conditions at a different time, with a different gender, the name would likely change. But the bakery owners always named their child Jeong Seo-ah."
Go Yuri turned to look at me.
"Why, do you think? Doc."
"A hole… in the heart."
I barely managed to say.
"The Void."
"Yes."
Go Yuri nodded.
"I was someone's most precious child. Someone's most precious younger sister."
"..."
"When I was alive, when I was people's irreplaceable confidante and family. Those people were happy because of me. Even Miss Sim Ah-ryeon, who is lying on your lap there."
A smile formed on Go Yuri's lips.
"You see, I've been born as a child with cerebral palsy quite a few times. At that time, Miss Ah-ryeon was my unni."
"..."
"Her younger sister couldn't speak well. Couldn't express herself. Couldn't move her body. So Ms. Ah-ryeon, she would always draw various pictures in a sketchbook, and she would show them to me and play with me."
She was happy.
The fact that in a past life she had been a mastermind wielding great power behind the scenes of the government wasn't very important. There would be a next life anyway.
"Ta-da, ta, ta-daaaa..."
In front of her eyes, her unni.
No, if you considered the actual length of time she had lived, she was just a kid who was overwhelmingly younger than 'her'.
In any case, the person who was her unni in this life spread open a sketchbook and, ehehe, she laughed.
"H-how is it?"
It was good.
Though she couldn't speak.
As she conveyed a sound closer to a cry than a voice, uh-oo-uh, Shim Ah-ryeon smiled as if troubled.
A slightly tearful face.
"I-is it good? I, if you could just... even without words. It would be really nice if I could understand you..."
You had a talent.
Hundreds, no. Thousands. She, who had now lived a number of lives where counting them had become meaningless, could say for certain.
This unni's talent was enormous.
It wasn't an empty compliment. She had no memory of seeing someone who could draw as well as she did. At least among the currently living painters and aspiring painters, she was the best.
However, even a person like this dies.
It wasn't the fate and lesson of humanity that everyone dies someday.
Monsters that no one at the current point in time could even imagine would appear, wield an unreasonably absurd violence that made it impossible to resist, and kill everyone.
"Haaah. I, it would be nice if I could be sick for you instead... S-sorry. That unni is the only one who's okay…"
This… shining talent before her eyes.
This painter who could become greater than anyone.
…This unni who, for the sake of one younger sister who was lying on a sickbed for her entire life and dying lonely without a single friend, would run to the hospital as soon as school was over to show her pictures.
She will die.
And, herself too.
"…!"
From a distance, a voice was heard.
Her unni was crying.
Severe cerebral palsy. On top of that, stained with complications. The fact that she had endured for years up to this point was because of the 'Reincarnator's' superhuman mental strength.
"…T-Teacher! My sister… i-is. My sister. Please, please...!!"
A life that did not last long.
As she felt the sensation of it being cut off, as she eavesdropped on her unni's faintly audible cries, she thought of something.
Ah.
I wanted to save children like you.
Sorry.
I'm sorry, unni.
For not being able to save you.
I'm sorry for being born like this.
"Doc."
"..."
"Have you ever thought about it? Why would someone who lived an ordinary life suddenly want to draw?"
Still.
Go Yuri was looking up at the painting.
"Despite having other amazing talents. The ability to organize citizens in an apocalyptic world and operate a wide-ranging government, why would she choose the route of a prosthetist of all things?"
"..."
"Why do people often feel like they've lost something even when living an ordinary life. Why isn't there a precious someone by their side? Why do they feel like they've lost their life, when they possess the treasure that is life?"
"..."
"Why did she awaken an ability to feel other people's emotions without words?"
Go Yuri turned around.
Our gazes met.
"Doc. According to a certain myth, the guidance of destiny plays a part when a person chooses a profession. It's a theory that says regardless of what you did in this life. What you will be 'possessed' by is already decided."
"…Karma."
"Correct."
Go Yuri smiled.
"Karma. Cause and effect. Usually, it's the concept that this life is decided by what you did wrong, or what you did right, in your past life... But I… I think the complete opposite."
In your past life.
What did you lose?
What kind of hole was bored into your heart?
□.
"I am the one and only reincarnator."
She was someone's loss.
"I am the life before the life that decides what people like, and what they dislike. I am the starting point of all routes."
She was someone's precious person.
"I am..."
She was.
"The cause that awakened the awakeners."
She was the first awakener.
-x-X-x-
The Reincarnator II
'What is life?'
I had lived thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives.
Or maybe even millions.
I repeated more lives than anyone else. I was born as a child with full-body paralysis, and I was born as the descendant of royalty.
And yet, life always remained a riddle to me, a reincarnator.
'Why am I... constantly suffering in a world where destruction is already a certainty?'
'Perhaps.'
'Maybe this place isn't reality, but my own personal hell from the very beginning.'
My own existence. The self that was a precious family member to someone would inflict a scar upon that family of a past life each time I was reincarnated.
A void would open up.
A □ was pierced through them.
'...Perhaps… is my existence something that only hurts other people.'
And so.
I even tried running away until the very end on purpose.
At this point, I had already reached a stage that an ordinary human could not dare to fathom.
With all my knowledge, experience, power, and wealth, it wasn't difficult to take care of 'my family' even after the apocalypse.
Whether the world was ending or not.
I built a shelter or a bunker in the safest area in the world, and disregarding the survival of humanity, we lived together as a family for decades.
"Thank you. My child. Thanks to you…."
"Dad will always love you."
Certainly.
When I chose to live like this, my family wasn't hurt all that much.
No □ was formed either.
This was because, in most cases, I outlived my family, so rather than inflicting a loss upon them, I was the one who inherited that loss.
It wasn't a happy ending.
It was a normal ending.
Just achieving a normal ending in this world, so terribly stained with the void's poison, was a tremendous accomplishment in itself.
For a while, the reincarnator pursued only normal endings.
It couldn't be helped. Living for an impossible goal was just too difficult and exhausting.
'Ah.'
There was a side effect.
'They don't... awaken.'
It was a natural principle.
The reincarnator bit their lip firmly.
'The people who lost me in a past life live with a void in their hearts in the next. But, thanks to that, they awaken.'
'On the other hand, those who didn't experience any particular sense of loss... are just ordinary people in their next life. And continue to be ordinary people.'
In other words.
'When the void arrives and monsters swarm, they are just ordinary people, people who will die much, much more easily than awakeners.'
'Just... ordinary humans. The kind who will die without being able to utter a single word or scream.'
That was the price of a normal ending.
It was the result of a wish to simply spend time with my precious people, casting aside both the world's destruction and humanity's salvation.
People were brutally murdered by monsters. Unable to even resist. My families from past lives, from tens of thousands of lives, who had bid me farewell with gentle smiles.
"..."
In the ruins of a certain collapsed city.
I had arrived as quickly as possible, but the person who was my father in a past life was already dead, crushed by a building.
The reincarnator gently held the corpse's hand and quietly closed their eyes.
'This is cruel. Truly.'
This world hated humans.
And among them, it particularly hated me.
'...I have to raise awakeners.'
The reincarnator opened their eyes.
'As much love as possible. I have to become an irreplaceable, precious existence to them.'
'That way, when they lose me. And the more horribly I die...'
'The probability that the person will awaken a powerful ability in their next life increases.'
The hesitation was brief.
Even in the time I spent hesitating, people were dying.
'The power to fight back against the monsters.'
'A hope for survival in a world like this.'
It was simple. The more powerful awakeners that appeared, the greater the chance humanity had of winning.
Even now, humanity held an unbelievably advantageous position compared to the 'first life.'
Although it was merely like the score of a soccer match, that was once a crushing defeat of [100:0], had only just changed to [100:1].
'Everything is statistics.'
'I must become a precious person to people. So precious that they can never lose me, an existence more fatal than their own death.'
'And then...'
'I must die as miserably as possible.'
I put it into practice immediately.
It felt like imagining a small button inside my head, then lightly pressing it.
Time passed.
"Aaaaaaaah! Ah! Aaaack!"
Someone was wailing before my eyes.
It was my 'older brother' in this life.
"So-someone... Somebody please! Please help me! My sister, ugh, my little sister! Please help me!"
His name was Lee Baek.
He had strayed a bit when he was young, but he became more and more diligent as he grew up.
In place of our parents who passed away early, he took on all sorts of part-time jobs to support me, his younger sister.
That sister. The one and only family member he had left was now dying, crushed by the debris of a collapsed building in Seoul.
"Oppa...."
"D-don't talk! You, don't talk! Hey! Over here! Is anyone there?! Please come here! Help me! There's someone here!"
What is a person?
With my entire lower body crushed by a block of concrete and my shoulder pierced by a rebar, was I, now more red than flesh-toned, still a person.
"I'm sorry... oppa...."
"No! So-ah! No! Aaaaaaaargh! No, no! Don't close your eyes! You can't close your eyes! H-hey... Over here! Ah, here! Help me! Someone, someone!"
I'm sorry.
I died. I was born into a new life. And so, after settling down to some extent in my next life, I went to visit the outskirts of Seoul.
I checked Lee Baek's ability.
'An ability to make his voice louder?'
The so-called Lion's Roar.
'Ahh, I see. Did he think he couldn't save his sister because his voice didn't reach anyone? That can't be the reason.'
Lee Baek's life was ruined.
A life that had already gone astray. After his parents died, he began to get involved in crime, spreading the germs that had infested his own life to others.
He didn't ask for anyone's understanding.
Because when his own life was being ruined, no one had asked for his.
'It's not a very useful ability... Hmm. No. It could be relatively useful for commanding a large number of allies on a battlefield.'
'Next.'
It was like a lottery game. Like gacha.
'Next.'
The reincarnator, like a scientist with the entire Earth as their laboratory, carefully bestowed □ upon people.
Naturally, high-rank awakeners and low-rank awakeners were sorted out. The latter were not worth a second thought.
'Next.'
High-rank awakeners.
These ones required special management.
'Next.'
Come to think of it, there were countless ways to become a precious person to someone. It didn't necessarily have to be as family.
A friend. An understanding soul. A companion.
'Next.'
Jeong Ye-ji, who would later be called by the title [Saintess], was special in that sense.
After becoming her family member and dying, I checked on her later, and what do you know? Jeong Ye-ji had mastered [Telepathy].
The reincarnator clenched a fist in their mind at that moment. My goodness! Telepathy.
It was a jackpot. Dopamine rushed through me like someone who had just poured hundreds of thousands or millions of won into gacha and got an S-rank for the first time.
My dear unni was so foolish.
It wouldn't have been Ye-ji unni's fault that her smartphone had disappeared somewhere right when her family member was dying, so she couldn't send an SOS signal to anyone.
'Next.'
In the next life, the reincarnator moved near Jeong Ye-ji and purposely became her childhood friend.
Gaining her affection was easy. People with a □ pierced in their hearts felt a very easy pull toward the reincarnator whenever they saw me.
It was natural. It was a reunion with a family they had lost to death.
'Next.'
Jeong Ye-ji's childhood friend died. The friend from the same school with whom Jeong Ye-ji read books and shared her heart died. The friend Jeong Ye-ji met up with occasionally to chat and laugh with died. Jeong Ye-ji's, Jeong Ye-ji's, Jeong Ye-ji's....
The results were astonishing.
'Excellent.'
Telepathy. Clairvoyance. Time Stop.
'A desire to be able to report to someone without any tools when a family member is dying.'
'A wish to watch over everyone, because a friend was kidnapped and tortured to death without my knowledge.'
'A hope that it would be better if all of this just stopped.'
SSS-class, confirmed.
'The more a person aches.'
'The more they cherish someone.'
'The more talented a person is at the pain of loss.'
A powerful awakener was forged.
'Interesting.'
However, there was a limit to awakening as well.
For example, in Jeong Ye-ji's case. She no longer knew any other way to fight against the wound in her heart beyond 'stopping time.'
This was a result verified over dozens more attempts.
'If so, couldn't I create a reincarnator like myself someday?'
A faint flutter in my heart.
The emotion named hope, which I had let go of long ago when I discarded my human heart, lit up like a candle.
'If one can stop time, they might be able to repeat time. Yes, I'm sure of it.'
'I want to turn back the past. I want to start over. Isn't this kind of wish a pretty universal desire for humanity?'
'There must be someone out there who will reach that point. Yes, it would be strange if there weren't.'
Next.
'Where might you be—?'
Next.
'Is there anyone who will swim with me through this shattered world of destruction? Anyone?'
Next.
'No, no! It's troublesome if you try to overcome the scar so easily. Why are you trying to somehow stand up on the scar that is me? You have no talent.'
Next.
'No... Hmm. But it's also troublesome if you crumble under the loss and your heart dies completely. That's a problem.'
Next.
'Please feel the pain.'
Next.
'But please do not break.'
Next.
'Painfully. So painful that you want to die, you want to curse the world right now for losing someone precious.'
'But I still want you to live more earnestly than anyone else. I still hope you will decide to save the world.'
Next.
'It's troublesome if you are satisfied with saving just one precious person. Is there no one who will think of the world? Of humanity?'
Next.
'Is there really no one? Someone like that.'
Next.
'Why?'
Next.
'When even I can do it...'
Next.
'Ahaha.'
Next.
"..."
Your wish.
I made your wish… come true.
You all said it.
Please let me be rich in my next life, or… Let my voice reach everyone around me in the next life, or… I wish time would just stop in the next life, or…
I made your wishes—come true! I did!
Yes. Scars remained. A stain in your heart that could never be washed away no matter how you lived this life. The poison of the void remained, I admit it.
But, how can a wish be granted without anything in return?
It's only natural that there's a price. Besides, you don't even remember the price you paid. You remain ignorant of what happened in your past life, of how much pain you were in.
I, in fact, granted your wishes.
I didn't leave a scar.
I said I didn't!
"…"
It was a natural principle.
"Mmm.... Every time I leave a small void in someone, one forms in my heart too. A tomb of the exact same size."
I lost my parents.
I lost my family. They were precious people. They were childhood friends. They were friends. They were all truly precious people.
□. □. □. □. □. □.
□. □. □. □. □. □.
□. □. □. □. □. □.
□. □. □. □. □. □.
Now, if I look inside my heart.
"There are only holes everywhere."
The result of hundreds of millions of tombs, dug by hundreds of millions of people, all piled up inside my heart.
"This can hardly be called human anymore."
What is life?
"…"
What is a human?
"Am I… a human?"
Probably not.
"Then it would be necessary to separate the two. Acknowledge the void in my heart, and isolate it completely."
"Oh my. It's a kind of Wirianchihyeong[1], isn't it?"
"Even if I isolate it, how do I do it? This is my heart. If it were an arm, I could at least cut it off, but I can't cut out my heart."
"Because the moment I cut out my heart—"
"I would truly become a monster."
"Ahaha. You're already a monster!"
"Knowing full well that people will suffer."
"Approaching them for that very suffering."
"Dying."
"And killing them."
"Now, just walking down the street, everyone is family from a past life, you know? The whole world is my graveyard."
"Congratulations."
"This is the scenery you wished for, isn't it?"
"You reap what you sow."
"Hey."
"Just a moment. This kind of conversation has been repeated for too long, too familiarly. It's a meaningless flow."
"It's the trace of a being who has come to regard digging into their own wounds as the only proof of their humanity. How pitiful."
"Feeling pity is part of the template."
"What wonderful self-awareness. And so—"
"I have a brilliant idea."
"Ah." "Ah." "Ah." "Ah."
"Not all minds are the same. Without even going as far as Freud, isn't the concept of the 'unconscious' very familiar to people?"
"Consciousness." "Unconsciousness."
"The me of the conscious." "The me of the unconscious."
"There is a possibility."
"Um, excuse me."
"Carl Jung advocated for the concept of the collective unconscious."
"The idea that humans do not exist as individuals but always as a group, and that 'memory,' which is formed using the human brain, can in fact be accumulated collectively."
"Like DNA."
"Existing within the individual, but the individual is merely one of many nodes—"
"Interesting."
"Excuse me?"
"The voids piled up in my heart have certainly reached a level that can be classified as humanity's collective unconscious. After all, my wounds are the wounds of humanity, aren't they?"
"How interesting."
"In that case, if I reincarnate more, much more from here on, leaving scars in the hearts of all humanity and accumulating them as voids in my own heart?"
"Wow. It's a cemetery for all of humanity!"
"Let's make it."
"Shall we make it?"
"Let's just make it."
"Let's isolate it."
"Hey. I-it hurts."
"…" "…" "…" "…"
"I don't want to do this anymore."
"How is this... saving the world? It's strange. Originally, even if they died at the hands of monsters. Everyone... Mom, too. Dad, too. Father, too. Mother, too. All of them. They died as humans."
"What is an awakener? What is a superhuman? An ascendant, or whatever they're called..."
"They're monsters."
"While claiming to fight against monsters, I'm creating them. I am. The monsters."
"By bewitching people. By speaking out as if I'm a precious person, just as I please."
"Like a changgwi[2] joining a procession of corpses."
"I want to die."
"…" "..." "…" "..."
"Everyone has come to hate the world."
"Everyone, they hate it, because—"
"It was taken from them. Their precious existence. Me. There's no way they would love a world that took me away."
"It's not that the world hates humans."
"It's that humans hate the world."
"Because of me."
"..." "…" "..." "…"
"Someone like me should not have been born. As soon as I was born, I should have died."
"A miscarriage. Of course they would be sad if they miscarried, but that sadness would have been better than the wound I would inflict."
"I'm tired."
"I don't want to. I-I don't want to do it anymore."
"I don't want to be born."
"Please save me. I'm sorry, oppa. I'm sorry. Mom. Dad. I'm sorry... Sorry. Forgive me."
"Please. Someone."
"Please kill me."
"..." "..." "..." "..."
"There seems to be no particular problem."
"Yes. It's a flow that has always existed."
"Humans have a nature akin to that of a carnivore. It is the instinct to feel as though they are absorbing life when they dig into flesh dripping with juices."
"However, in the modern era where hunting has decreased, and violence and murder are forbidden, people's opportunities to dig into the flesh of other beings have been extremely reduced. So as an alternative."
"They eat their own flesh."
"The contradiction of regarding self-slaughter as one's own life."
"Interesting."
"The civilization of cannibalism."
"Whether you are human or not is not important at all."
"The billions who have died so far."
"No. I have to multiply it by the number of times I've reincarnated. Billions multiplied by billions, that's the weight of the lives that have been lost until now."
"Can those people be saved?"
"Can they be rescued?"
"That is the only thing that matters."
"Because—"
"What humans desire is not a human, but a god."
"A god does not cry."
"A god does not regret."
"A god is not human."
"Therefore."
"The next life."
"Yes."
"The next life."
"Next." "Next." "Next." "Next."
The reincarnator was born.
The reincarnator was always born.
"Ah."
And every time I was born, I witnessed the sight of someone looking down at me.
The first memory.
The person looking at me this time was a man.
"Aboob aboobooboo bueeeh."
"…"
The boy scrunched up his face foolishly. It seemed he was trying to make me, a newborn baby, laugh.
The gesture was familiar.
His face was also familiar.
'Reconnaissance Team Leader.'
Because no matter how many reincarnations I repeated, he was the one who always fought at the final defensive line until the very last moment, despite having no abilities whatsoever.
Beaming.
"Huh? Oh, oh, they smiled! They smiled!"
The boy chattered excitedly. It had been a long time since the reincarnator had equipped a smile that could evoke affection from anyone. It was only natural for the other party to be excited.
'It's this person this time.'
I think he was my childhood friend in my first life.
'What kind of wound will you receive?'
And…
What kind of wound will I receive?
Again, I live.
A life destined for death.
Footnotes:
[1] This refers to a specific type of exile punishment from Korea's Joseon Dynasty. A political offender was confined to a designated location, and their house was surrounded by thorny bushes to prevent escape or contact with the outside world.
[2] In Korean folklore, a Changgwi is the ghost of a person who was killed by a tiger. This ghost becomes enslaved to the tiger and is forced to lure other humans to their death to serve its master.
-x-X-x-
The Reincarnator III
Snap.
The Reincarnator's Arabian Nights came to an end right there.
The midnight exhibition hall, which had a thousand deaths on display, was once again wrapped in silence, much like a portable radio that had suddenly powered down after its batteries ran out.
"Go Yuri? Why did you suddenly stop talking?"
"..."
Go Yuri lifted her head.
A gentle smile was drawn upon her lips.
"No reason. It's just that Ms. Ah-ryeon, nestled in your arms, Doc, seems to be starting to have a nightmare."
"Ah."
"This place is a temple built for you, Doc. Thanks to it, you succeeded in receiving my voice. But now that you've heard 'this much' of my story, the reception should be clear even when you are outside."
"Reception."
"Yes. You could call it the way to tune into the radio channel that is me."
The hem of her purple skirt flowed down.
Go Yuri stood up, letting the night air spill off her like a diver who had just broken the surface, shedding water droplets.
"This is the end of the prologue."
She was looking down at me.
"Doc, please take Ms. Ah-ryeon to her lodgings. After she opened such a wonderful art exhibition for us, it would be sad to let her sleep on this hard floor, wouldn't it."
"And you are..."
"I will be waiting."
Shhh.
Go Yuri's finger crossed her lips. She winked playfully with one eye.
"Please don't ask where. We will be reunited when we are meant to meet, in the place we are meant to be."
"…After hearing a story like that, you expect me to just wait quietly?"
"Yes. I'm sorry. Hmm, I don't particularly intend to torment you, Doc. It's just that in order to continue what comes next, you will need a resolve of your own."
Resolve.
I had always considered my own resolve to be stronger than anyone's. But the person before me was a reincarnator who had lived through billions of lives.
I couldn't help but pause at the sheer weight that word must carry.
"The next time we meet, we will no longer be able to stop. We won't be able to go back, nor can we take a single step backward."
"..."
"Therefore, Doc. Please, take a long 'vacation'. Enjoy it until you have no regrets left."
"What is going to happen to me?"
"My salvation."
Go Yuri's smiling eyes widened.
"The promise will be fulfilled."
"Promise…?"
"Please enjoy your last vacation. Ah, and please don't worry about me. I'm used to waiting. Very much so."
"How can I possibly do that after hearing all this—"
"Ahaha. Please, trust me. Hmm, although if we only consider the absolute numbers, you've only just passed 1,000 regressions, Doc, so you can't be compared to me. Still, I believe you are the only one on this earth who can understand my familiarity with waiting."
"..."
"Well then, goodbye. Until we meet again."
Tap.
Go Yuri took a couple of steps back, then elegantly gathered the hem of her skirt and bowed like the daughter of a nobleman.
And without adding another single word, she left the exhibition hall alone.
Tap, tap, tap... Tap.
I immediately followed Go Yuri, holding Sim Ah-ryeon in my arms. Truly, immediately.
Therefore, when I turned the corner of the gallery, I should have seen the back of Go Yuri, who could not have gotten far.
But she was not there.
Not in the exhibition hall's corridor. Not at the exit. No matter how much I scanned the city under the dark night sky, Go Yuri was nowhere to be seen.
There was only the chirping of insects like crickets.
"..."
"Uuumm. Guild Leaderrrr..."
The sleepy mumble of a frail, young child snuggled into my arms, digging into my chest as if there was a burrow, a □, carved out just for her.
By my side, there were many children whose four seasons were always winter.
I stroked the child's head.
Go Yuri had disappeared.
Even when I inquired with the Saintess, she could not trace any sign of the disappearance.
[I'm sorry. As per your instructions, Mr. Undertaker, I had been deliberately averting my gaze from her, to ensure I wouldn't pry, not even by chance.]
[It seems she has vanished from the soup kitchen that was operating in Daejeon as well. There are no witnesses. I have no excuse.]
"No, it's alright. I was the one who ordered you to never monitor Go Yuri until now. I'm the one who should be sorry for the sudden confusion."
Where could she have disappeared to?
If I searched the entire world, could I find her somewhere?
'No. That would be impossible.'
Go Yuri was a reincarnator. I was a regressor.
For the two of us, 'disappearance' was not merely a spatial concept.
A temporal disappearance was also entirely possible.
'The next cycle.'
I will be waiting, she had said.
Until when?
'Until I myself am satisfied. Until I have enjoyed this world without a single regret and can let it all go.'
It would be fine if it took a hundred years. It likely wouldn't matter if it took a thousand.
'Because Go Yuri had already waited until I could receive her voice.'
Could my entire life have been a period of waiting for someone else?
"..."
"Huh? What is it, Mister. Why are you staring at me with that face?"
"It's nothing."
"Aha. You've fallen for my deadly charms, haven't you? My, my. I suppose it can't be helped to fantasize about a great author. But don't get too close, okay? You might just melt like the wings of Icarus."
It was a strange feeling.
Until now, I had always waited for others, but I had never been the one waited for.
Because I was a regressor.
I knew who they were and what their futures held, with a semi-omniscient point of view.
That's why I knew all too well.
"Dok-seo."
"Ung?"
"How is it? Is the writing going well?"
Dodododo, Oh Dok-seo covered her ears with both hands and ran off somewhere. The moment I had pronounced the 'wri' in writing, she was already in a cheetah's stance.
I let out a bitter smile.
'I can wait. As long as it takes.'
Still.
'I would be happy if you could catch up as soon as possible.'
Of course, I was strong.
I could wait forever. I had built up the fortitude to endure that waiting.
But even the best-made structures eventually rust.
Even if one were to befriend that rust and call it a form of elegance, one could not deny the fact that the steel bars within were silently corroding away.
'Go Yuri was waiting for me.'
Her words were certainly right.
The only person on this earth who could understand the heart-wrenching nature of a reincarnator's wait was, regrettably, a single regressor.
"Now, now. Dok-seo."
"Aaargh! I can't hear you! I can't hear anything! Guarantee the author's human rights! Guarantee them! Guarantee them! An author is not public property but a privately existing human being! A human! A human!"
Normally, I would have retorted with something like, 'Well, aren't readers private human beings too?'.
But this time, I simply stroked the back of Oh Dok-seo's head.
"...?"
Oh Dok-seo, who had been protesting with a 'grrr' in a hedgehog's stance, cautiously lifted her head.
"Uh, Mister?"
"Mm."
"What's wrong?"
Looking up at my face, Oh Dok-seo's expression grew even more anxious. Her red eyes trembled, unable to find a place to rest.
"Are you… going somewhere?"
As expected. She was a sharp kid.
I crouched down to meet her gaze at eye level. And then I smiled.
"Mister doesn't really know either."
"..."
"Even though I've lived for so very long. There are still so many things in the world that even Mister doesn't know. But you know that Mister cares for you a lot, our Dok-seo, right?"
"Don't go."
"I'm leaving Ha-yul in your care."
"..."
"Ah-ryeon too. And Yo-hwa. The other children as well. If Mister isn't around, you have to be the center for everyone, Dok-seo. Can you do that?"
"Why, why are you saying things like that? You're not really disappearing, are you? Right?"
She was just a child.
Children this young had died over 1,000 times. Perhaps billions of times. Perhaps billions of times that.
I had to save the children.
It wasn't some grand feat. There are more people than one might think who would disregard their own lives to save a child in danger right before their eyes.
'Let these children have a continuation of their epilogue.'
My work was not fundamentally different.
'I don't care if it's a world full of sorrow. That is something to think about when the time comes. But to die for such absurd reasons. Something like the void, or aberrations.'
'They cannot be allowed to die for such things.'
The world was sickeningly full of such occurrences.
'If that's the case, then it's the world that's wrong.'
People called such a world nature, reason, the Dao, the path.
In other words, a Route.
Now, I could fully understand the words Go Yuri had left me with.
– What reason is there that a single human cannot change that path?
I agreed.
Therefore, in the next cycle. The 1,085th cycle.
Go Yuri was not at Busan Station.
As soon as I broke through the tutorial dungeon, I cast aside my contact with the Saintess and headed for Onyang, Asan, in South Chungcheong Province.
Go Yuri was standing in an old inn in Onyang, in room 202 on the second floor, a place where the murky, cream-colored paint was peeling off in patches like dead skin.
"..."
Seeing me enter through the open door, Go Yuri's eyes widened as if in surprise.
An inn room. In that place where a nameless mother and son had withered and died like old trees, Go Yuri had been looking up at a red flower just moments before.
"Oh my."
Her voice was one of genuine surprise.
"How did you do it in just one cycle?"
"It was a simple problem to solve if one thought about you and me. You, the reincarnator, chose me, and my title just so happened to be the Undertaker."
"..."
"In the end, you were thinking of a way to die yourself. But for beings like us, death is not a simple end. To truly reach the end, to see the end of the Route, the ability itself needs to be eradicated."
"Brilliant."
Go Yuri smiled.
"Yes. That's right. Therefore, Udumbara. I need a 'reset button' that can erase all of an awakener's abilities."
"So you deliberately aimed for the time when Ah-ryeon held her art exhibition. That girl, Ah-ryeon, possesses the same ability as Udumbara. Your very visit to the exhibition was a hint in itself."
"Ah, that's wonderful."
Her smile deepened.
"I thought it would take you three regressions at the very least. Honestly, I thought you would miss it for about ten regressions. To think you reached the correct answer in a single regression. You truly are something else, Doc."
Go Yuri crouched down on the floor.
She then reached out and caressed the wrist of the child who had starved to death. A string of prayer beads, a little too large for a newborn's wrist, was wrapped around it.
Clatter. Clatter.
"We were originally twins."
"..."
"One of them was me."
On the bodies of the mother and child, crimson flowers bloomed here and there, like red spider lilies.
Like the banks of the river in the underworld.
"My mother, of course, tried to feed both of us children equally. But I, even as a newborn, was sentient. So I steadfastly refused."
"..."
"Then she had to feed the other child, right? She had no choice. She kept fussing, hoping I would eat at least a little, but the child acted as if the two of them could only live if she sacrificed herself, and in the end… she was the first to die."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. As you can see, it was a fate they would have met all the same, even if I wasn't there."
Hup, Go Yuri pushed herself up from her knees.
"Isn't it strange? I wish she had eaten something. If she didn't like porridge, if she didn't like milk, if she didn't like tap water, then I wish she could have eaten my thoughts as her mother instead. My love and my worry."
"..."
"And from that, a tree that could eat even life and abilities was born. As for why it had to be a tree, well, hmm. I suppose I was envious of a life that could survive on just sunlight and water."
Having said that, Go Yuri wore a smile that was both bitter and satisfied, like a theater owner who had just revealed the entire backstage of a play.
She was like an examiner giving a perfect score to a candidate who had reached their destination without a single error, like a professor who had just read a flawless graduation thesis.
However…
"For a long time."
"...?"
"There was a point I always found strange."
My part of the answer was not yet finished.
"I don't know if you remember, but when I first met Oh Dok-seo, you were also in our party."
"Oh my, yes, I remember. It wasn't that long ago, was it? Although I can't recall it as perfectly as you can, Doc."
"At that time, I barely managed to persuade Oh Dok-seo and had you expelled from the party."
Go Yuri let out a small laugh.
"Expelled from the party, you say. That's a good cliché. Now it's your turn to regret chasing me out and become obsessed, Doc."
"It was on a sloping road."
"Pardon?"
"After being expelled from the party, you walked down a sloping road. It was a single path. So if I had waited a little longer, I should have seen you walking up the next hill, but you never appeared."
"..."
"After going down the hill, you vanished. There was nowhere else to go. Like a mirage."
It was the same this last time.
Sim Ah-ryeon's exhibition hall was located in the very center of downtown Busan, in the Tower of Babel Plaza. There was no way I wouldn't know the geography of that place.
And yet, just by turning a single corner in the gallery, Go Yuri had evaporated without a trace.
How?
Was it because Go Yuri was a being who walked through dreams? Because she was an aberration? Because she could brainwash humans into not perceiving her?
But Go Yuri was not a brainwasher. According to the revealed truth, she was merely the one who had lost all of humanity.
Go Yuri was human.
In that case, the conclusion became simple.
"You were the one… you were the teleporter all along. Go Yuri."
"..."
"That's why you disappeared on the sloping road, and why you vanished from the exhibition hall. The reason you sometimes don't get caught by the Saintess's Clairvoyance is simple too. You just teleported beyond the range of her vision."
The inn grew quiet.
"I rushed here as soon as I cleared the Busan Station tutorial dungeon. And yet, you were already here before me."
"..."
"There is only one answer. The ability user that Old Man Scho had been so desperately searching for. The person who can teleport is you."
Silence.
"Perfect."
Go Yuri's lips slowly parted.
"Yes, Doc. I am the very awakener of teleportation that you have all been looking for."
-x-X-x-
The Reincarnator IV
The Teleportation ability user.
Go Yuri.
"…"
As I processed the business card that had been summarized into two lines in my head, a myriad of emotions washed over me.
Of course, it was clear that she had countless other abilities hidden beyond [Teleportation].
If an Awakening was the howling sound of wind rising from the □, the bottomless abyss, bored into a person's memory—
Then the billions of holes drilled into Go Yuri's heart would be a cluster of Awakenings in and of themselves.
But among them, [Teleportation] was an ability that I, that Old Man Scho, that we had longed for so desperately.
We searched and searched and ultimately couldn't find it, so wasn't the Inunaki Tunnel what we secured, thinking we should at least prepare a passage for swift movement?
The very reason I had made the Inunaki Tunnel my base as a regressor.
It was partly for convenience, but it was also a show of my own resolve to never forget Old Man Schopenhauer's 'wish'.
"…This might sound like a complaint. But may I say something?"
"Oh, please do, Doc."
Go Yuri smiled brightly.
"In the first place, just having a proper 'conversation' like this is a joy for me. Ohoho. I don't know if you can read my expression but… Believe it or not, I am very happy right now, you see?"
"…Why didn't you save Old Man Schopenhauer?"
Those words slipped out of my mouth.
"You could have saved him. Yes. Old Man Scho probably wouldn't have been able to tell who you were, or even if you were human. But you could have silently moved Madam Adele and placed her beside the old man. Wasn't something like that simple for you?"
"…"
The smile on Go Yuri's face slowly settled, calm like matcha powder.
"Why didn't I save him when I could have? That is what you're asking, I see."
"Yes."
"Hmm."
After pondering for a moment as if she were in a bit of a bind, Go Yuri did something completely unexpected.
She suddenly began to take off her top.
"…?!"
I reacted faster than thunder, immediately turning my head away.
For the record, I felt no lust whatsoever.
As I have confessed to you all, I, the Undertaker, always sensually perceived the 'state of the other person in the regression where they met their death'.
In other words, Go Yuri's head, which I had cleanly sliced off in the 89th cycle, was also being broadcast 24/7 on the Undertaker's special broadcast channel.
To add to that, it wasn't just the visuals that were reproduced. The audio was also implemented in ultra-high quality. This meant that Go Yuri's head, severed by my blade, was cheerfully smiling and saying 'Let's become one'.
It would have been more surprising if I had felt any lust.
"Hey, what are you suddenly—"
"It's okay."
What? What is okay?
I'm not? Not okay at all?
"You can look now, Doc."
"…"
The moment I opened my tightly shut eyes.
I was once again met with a completely unexpected sight and was at a loss for words for some time.
Normally, Go Yuri never exposed any bare skin.
Even when she was handing out food at the soup kitchen wearing a green apron that said 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms', her entire body was meticulously covered in cloth.
Therefore, it would be fair to say that this was the first time in my eons-long life as a regressor that I had witnessed Go Yuri's bare skin, but there was no bare skin to be seen.
Her back, with a pronounced spine.
Black markings, packed so densely that no skin was visible.
[Lee So-young/6/17/13:59]
A name.
[Kim Ha-neul/11/2/22:45]
[Mateusz Kowalski/5/20/23:56]
[Park Jin-woo/3/12/08:21]
Names.
Like epitaphs.
[Jeong Da-yeon/1/6/10:18]
[Han Yu-jin/12/14/15:27]
[李秀文/8/22/11:11]
[Shin Ye-rim/8/8/19:12]
[Kang Tae-hyun/5/20/23:56]
[आयशा ख़ान/7/19/14:44]
[Choi Min-seok/9/25/17:03]
[Люсия Ромеро/11/3/18:18]
[田中 優希/12/27/06:40]
[Yoo Seo-yeon/7/3/06:35]
[ماركوبيانكي/2/28/12:00]
[Moon Chae-won/10/10/09:09]
[Nguyễn Thị Sophia/8/16/20:25]
[Jo Eun-bi/12/21/16:45]
[Омар Эль-Саид/6/5/00:02]
[Jang Eun-seo/7/27/20:40]
[נואהסמית/9/1/14:11]
[Noh Hyun-woo/5/13/05:25]
[Анастасия Волкова/10/31/03:03]
[Yoon Ha-rin/10/31/03:03]
Names and dates.
Words written in the smallest possible size that a person could discern with the naked eye.
On her back. On her arms. On her waist. Over her entire body.
"My memory isn't as good as yours, Doc."
Go Yuri said, her back still turned to me.
"I just wrote down as much as I could remember."
"…The anniversary of their deaths."
"Yes. It's the time when my precious people die. Though it doesn't mean much if the butterfly effect is too strong."
Rustle, rustle.
Go Yuri pulled her clothes back on. I silently watched as the cemetery composed solely of letters was covered up.
"It's a kind of ritual. They are all precious to me, but for the ones who are especially, especially precious, I try to recall that life again each time I write their name."
"…"
"Then, sometimes when I'm looking in the mirror. Oh. Why did I write this person's name?"
Go Yuri tilted her head.
"—and. There are times I can't quite remember. It happens more often than you'd think."
"…"
"When that happens, I stop writing that person's name and the anniversary of their death from the next life onward. It's like tossing a memo file into the trash can, poof."
My lips would not part easily.
Regarding the method to escape from that cemetery of oblivion, even if no one else in the world knew, I, of all people, could speak of it with certainty.
I was also more aware of that method's side effects than anyone.
"Complete Memory."
"Yes."
"…But the Complete Memory ability requires one to bury their own senses in a tomb as the price for mourning others."
"Yes."
"The two of us reflect the end of the Route that each of us can reach."
Go Yuri turned around and looked at me.
A smile still lingered on her face.
"Every ability is a blessing and a curse at the same time. But the human heart is a bit sly. It always envies what it doesn't have."
"…"
"I also thought about it a lot. Hmm, for example. Miss Lee Ha-yul is a very precious person to you, isn't she, Doc? But after hundreds of regressions, what if you could no longer remember Ha-yul-ssi."
"…"
"I think you would be sad."
That's right.
"So, Doc. Please, I hope you won't consider the ability you have a curse."
In that moment, I realized.
"You chose not to obtain the Complete Memory ability on purpose, just so you could say those words to me now."
"…"
A slightly surprised expression.
And then, a smile once more.
Her gentle gaze lingered on my face. It was the look of someone who understood that the other person had grasped her intention, and who, in turn, fully understood that they had understood.
After taking back the breath I had exhaled into the air, Go Yuri murmured quietly.
"Mr. Schopenhauer only awakens his regression ability upon losing his wife."
"…"
"I tried various methods. At one point, I even tried to pioneer a Route by selecting Mr. Schopenhauer as the 'protagonist' instead of you, Doc. But he is, crucially, mentally weak."
A regressor's greatest weakness.
"He only awakens as a regressor upon losing his wife. But once he loses his wife, he can no longer become happy enough to continue living as a regressor."
"…A dilemma with two choices."
"Yeees. It would be so convenient if I could just find him a suitable new love. Really, Father is so devoted and romantic, it's quite troublesome."
Go Yuri covered her mouth and laughed.
"On the other hand, you were the best, Doc."
"…"
"Your ability—to be honest, it was nothing special. It was F-rank. Ah. Originally, you were a completely ordinary person with no abilities, Doc."
"Is that so?"
"Yes. But your mentality—hmmm, your mentality. It was so incredible, it made me wonder how a person's will could be so strong. Of course. Your will was so sturdy that even as awakeners started to appear, you were always the one commanding the reconnaissance team of the Final Defense Line."
"Hm."
I couldn't relate to that.
Because it was a 'past I could not remember'.
But Go Yuri, as she talked about me, seemed, how should I put it, a little more excited.
"I became your precious family member and died once, and surprisingly! This person. In the next life, he was still a non-ability user. My goodness. Does that even make sense?"
She seemed happy somehow.
I had no choice but to let her continue.
"I was a truly perfect younger sister, you know."
"You were?"
"Yes. And you were the perfect older brother. The people in the reconnaissance team were so envious when they saw us siblings. Hmm, even now, when you're with Miss Lee Ha-yul or Miss Sim Ah-ryeon, or Miss Oh Dok-seo, you exude a very warm atmosphere that makes others quite envious. But I don't know. If they had seen the two of us siblings, they might have thought those other relationships were just lesser versions. That thought just crossed my mind."
"Hey, no matter how you put it. Isn't that a bit of an exaggeration?"
"If you realized just how much of a doting fool you can be, you would probably be extremely embarrassed yourself."
"…"
I had my own suspicions about my doting tendencies, so I quietly shut my mouth.
"We were such close siblings. And you were in so much pain when you saw me get abducted by the void and die as if being tortured, my limbs torn off by a monster."
"…"
"But when I went to find you in the next life, what do you know? This person. He hasn't Awakened at all…!"
"Hmm."
"D-don't tell me, all that doting on his sister was a lie? An act? Oh my god. How dare he deceive the eyes of a reincarnator like me. This is unforgivable. This time, I will become someone far, far more precious than a sibling from a past life and make you Awaken…"
Finding something amusing, Go Yuri chuckled to herself.
"I think I got competitive. Probably."
"…Sorry for being so indifferent."
"What? No, no. I thought so too at first, but the truth was different."
Go Yuri looked at me.
"Doc. Do you have any idea when or how you first Awakened?"
"No. Not at all."
"It was when you heard my story."
Story?
"You see. After trying to trigger your Awakening about 6 times and getting nowhere, I confessed everything in a fit of desperation. I came out as a reincarnator."
"Ah."
"So my plan was probably to just complain, saying things like, I've never met anyone like you, why on earth won't you Awaken, was your affection for me a lie, but…. As you listened quietly to my story. Well, you, Doc——"
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry for not remembering.
Sorry for not remembering you.
"You started to cry."
"…"
"Ahaha. I was so flustered, you know? You just held onto me and kept apologizing, saying you were sorry, truly sorry. I was wondering why this brother of mine, this person, who had remained so resolute even when the defense line fell and the citizens all died, was suddenly acting this way…"
At that moment.
"It's embarrassing, but tears fell from my eyes too."
"…"
"Ah. The truth is, I wanted to hear an apology. I realized it then."
Go Yuri reached out her hand.
Her palm caressed the regressor's head.
"The human heart is such a sly thing, isn't it? It's only natural that you all don't remember me. To want an apology for the oblivion of a past life, not even the present one, it's all a mess."
"…"
"It wasn't [Complete Memory] from the start. It was just, your memory got a little better. It was already good to begin with. To be honest, it's hard to call it a meaningful Awakened ability. Hmm, FFF-rank."
However.
"I think I just wanted to be a little spoiled by you, Doc."
There must have been many reasons.
In the name of finding an SSS-class ability user, she had treated her precious family members like gacha pulls. Furthermore, she distributed happiness and pain as if to lab rats to maximize the rank of their Awakening.
Atrocities that would have made the her from her first life faint in shock. Vile acts that would have her berating, 'How can you still be human after doing that?'.
Before she came to completely hate herself, while the her from her first life still remained, even if just as a vestigial organ, right now.
"I thought, maybe it would be okay if it was you, Doc—"
She took a gamble.
"No more reincarnating. Well, in reality, I kept on reincarnating and reincarnating, but the game of using my reincarnation to awaken people is over."
This is my last life.
"I decided to make this person, this man, my final destination."
Fix the Route.
Suppress the butterfly effect.
Select the people to save and the people to abandon. Among them are numerous S-class ability users. Abandon them.
Set 'the Undertaker' at the very center of the Route.
Simultaneously calculate the movements of billions of people to create the 'optimal Route'. I must create it. I can create it.
Change Uehara Shino's location. Adjust her to appear at the Busan Station Tutorial Dungeon instead of the original Seongsan Ilchulbong tutorial dungeon.
Change Saintess Jeong Ye-ji's location. In order to alter her walking path so she isn't swept away when the void appears in Seoul, a certain amount of groundwork is required, and carrying out this groundwork will cause the paths of three S-class awakeners to collide. Ignore it. Force it through.
"It was hard, but…"
The reincarnator realized. She had thought that time was the only resource she was given in infinite supply, but in reality, the resource she lacked the most was time itself.
"I was happy."
Despite using her teleportation ability to somehow create an optimized path, the best possible Route, schedules that had to be 'abandoned' inevitably arose.
The farther one was from the Korean Peninsula, the more strongly this phenomenon occurred. It couldn't be helped. The Undertaker, located at the center of this Route, lacked the teleportation ability.
Abandon. Abandon. Abandon. Abandon.
As it neared completion, from a distance, it was a world where 'most of the ability users were strangely concentrated on the Korean Peninsula'.
But the reality was the complete opposite.
It was a world where 'most of the ability users outside the Korean Peninsula had been abandoned'.
For example, the location of Leviathan's appearance changed with each different Route. She fixed its location to a middle school girl living in a certain village in Seoul, on the Korean Peninsula.
The best of worlds.
The worst of calculations.
A possible world where the best and the worst coexist, all for a single person.
"I'm sorry, but this was the best I could do."
Go Yuri held out her hand.
"Doc. You may not remember, but the two of us, a very long time ago, a really long time ago, we made a promise."
"…What kind of promise?"
"I asked you, Doc."
Can you save me?
"And you answered, Doc."
I will. No matter what.
"Now, I will ask you one last time."
To renew an old promise.
"Will you save this world, and me?"
The regressor did not hesitate to take the reincarnator's hand. Then, he covered their joined hands with his other one.
Humans had two hands.
They could overlap two resolves upon a single promise.
"I will."
"…"
"No matter what."
A smile slipped from the reincarnator's lips.
"Let's become one, Guild Leader."
When he opened his eyes the next moment.
The regressor could finally remember everything that had happened in the 1st cycle.