The Possessor I
Oh Dok-seo.
The miko of Admin of the Infinite Metagame.
And also, the miko of the regressor.
A reader who had observed the entire life of the regressor.
And also, the author who had put the regressor's humanity on display.
"Haaaah... I'm so bored..."
"Isn't there a single fun novel out there?"
"Really, all authors should just be locked up in a back room and forced to do nothing but write."
"If they just published three chapters a day, their income would triple, wouldn't it? Hmm. Why has no author figured out this simple calculation? Are they all liberal arts majors..."
First Ability.
'The Slowest Prophet'.
Oh Dok-seo could foresee the calamities of a world that would begin its full-scale destruction in seven days.
This prophecy was embodied in the form of a novel.
"Hm? Did I favorite something like this?"
Once Oh Dok-seo started reading a novel she liked, she had a tendency to read straight through it, even if it meant pulling an all-nighter.
However, she had a strong habit of putting aside works that hadn't accumulated a decent number of chapters, letting them bulk up until they were ready.
"Oh. This one has quite a few chapters."
Furthermore, from Oh Dok-seo's perspective, the prophecy was nothing more than a mere novel, so it was impossible for her to accept the prophecy as a 'prophecy'.
"This will be my daily bread for today."
Hence, [The Slowest Prophet].
A blind woman who acquired the prophecy faster than anyone else but could not recognize its precious value.
A Cassandra who prophesied everything but could save nothing, an Epimetheus who could only leave Pandora's box unattended.
"Huh?"
"...What's this? It's the first time a character's name in a novel has overlapped with my real name. Even the surname is the same? Ugh. The hanja... is identical, too."
"..."
"Huh?"
Condition cleared.
Oh Dok-seo finished reading the entire prophecy. And at the same time, she became certain that the character named 'Oh Dok-seo' in the story was identical to herself.
May 1st.
At this point in time, Oh Dok-seo was among the very fastest of all humanity, not just the prophets, to realize her own awakening.
"What is this... Is this… for real?"
"Sixteen billion? Ha, sixteen billion people die in a single day? Uh... W-wait a minute! June 17th, that's right around the corner!"
"No way."
"..."
"Everyone dies...?"
First Ability.
Unlocked.
'The Fastest Prophet'.
"Wh-what do I do?! Crap. What, what am I supposed to do! I'm just an ordinary person!"
"Gasp. That line just now sounded a bit like a protagonist's."
"But, damn it! What am I really supposed to do?!"
"And why did this Undertaker guy entrust such an important mission entirely to me?! ...Ah. It was because he needed a prophet who awakened earlier than his own regression point to save Old Man Scho..."
"N-no. But still. How...?"
Second Ability.
'Absolute Defense'.
Oh Dok-seo had a tendency to treat all events occurring in this world as stories within a 'work of fiction'.
Even if a nuclear bomb were to go off inside a work of fiction, there was no way a real person would be exposed to radiation.
Therefore, Oh Dok-seo could declare any physical impact inflicted within the work of fiction as 'null' within her vicinity.
"...It works?"
"Wow, I'm a superhuman too! Status Window!"
"Hmm. No status window. Right, I remember it said the status window was a trick by some Outer God called Admin of the Infinite Metagame..."
But that was all.
[Absolute Defense] did not have a long duration.
At this point, it lasted for about a minute at best. No matter how much she trained, it would be difficult to dramatically increase the defense barrier's duration.
It was an ability that was ambiguous to a fault.
"Wait. I'm her miko, so shouldn't I be able to see the status window freely? Ah. She's sealed in the laptop, right."
"...I need to get the laptop. At this point, Admin of the Infinite Metagame is the safest Outer God. The only one who can't bring harm to humanity."
"Where on earth could it be—"
[Hello there?]
"It was my laptop!"
"No, no. Come to think of it, this laptop first appeared in the tutorial dungeon. That means there's a high possibility it belonged to someone summoned at Busan Station..."
"I'm part of the Busan Station family too!"
[I see. So my miko whelp was already enjoying a social life of her own by chattering away to herself even back then.]
[I suddenly feel the urge to strangle my past self for choosing a moron like this as my miko, thinking, 'A habit of talking to herself, what a perfect trait for a protagonist!'.]
"Oh, she really has that sarcastic, white-haired, red-eyed noble lady attribute, just like I saw in the novel..."
"Ah. More importantly, I need the rest of this story! You have to tell me what happens later!"
[Yes.]
"Oh."
"..."
"Hmm. I see."
"We're screwed."
"Right. First, I think I need a power-up. Ah, my status window! Give me my status window!"
[I do not mind giving it to you, but are you sure you will be fine?]
"With what?"
[The more you rely on my power, the more you become a 'character in a work of fiction'. Because I am the Outer God who governs works of fiction.]
[Your special status stems from the outrage of dismissing this world as a mere novel.]
[From the moment you begin to treat yourself as a character in a novel, your Ability will weaken accordingly.]
"Oh..."
"No. Wait a minute. Miss God. Couldn't that, somehow, be resolved?"
[Somehow?]
"I just need to get stronger and beat everyone up, then I can just make this novel into 'something that never happened at all', right."
[...]
"I… I think I know why that Undertaker guy passed the final baton to me."
"I don't need to use all sorts of strange and mysterious methods to eliminate my own anomaly, like the regressor or the reincarnator in this place."
"I. Only I, at this point in time, no matter how powerful I become… the very moment I wield that great power to go on a rampage 'so that the events of the work of fiction do not occur', I will lose that power."
"It's only natural."
"Because the time that unfolds in that place where nothing happened will no longer be a novel, but only 'reality'."
"Am I wrong?"
[No.]
[You are correct. You have seen through it quite well for a beginner with no experience whatsoever.]
"The other mikos... the sacrifices, the stronger they become, the more they are contaminated by the Outer Gods. They themselves degenerate into an anomaly by the name of the Fallen or Corrupted."
"This contradiction. The trap of becoming stronger to defeat anomalies, only to become closer to an anomaly the stronger one gets, is what ultimately drove the world to ruin."
"Both the reincarnator and the regressor."
"That's why they had no choice but to reach the conclusion of sealing themselves away."
"But not me."
"I still have the time to set everything right. It's only about a month, but…"
"Until the day June 7th arrives, I can get stronger however I want. Without thinking about the consequences. Without worrying about corruption."
[June 17th.]
"..."
[It is June 17th, not June 7th. You are truly terrible at remembering numbers. Are you even confused about such an important date?]
"Sh-shut up! Anyway!"
"...Until June 17th, I can just get stronger without worrying about any side effects or aftereffects."
"And..."
[I will seal everything so that none of it ever happens.]
"Seal..."
"Yes."
"This novel. The hundreds of regressions and hundreds of millions of reincarnations that were said to have happened in this novel."
"I will seal that time."
Second Ability.
Unlocked.
'Absolute Seal'.
"Demoting the story in the novel to just a story in a novel. Connecting with reality."
"If that's my ability, I'll give it a try."
[...]
Third Ability.
Writing a Side Story.
Oh Dok-seo is, for all intents and purposes, a writer who holds absolute ability in composing the life story of another.
Before her eyes, all human beings are demoted to 'characters'.
Therefore, Oh Dok-seo can empathize with any character from any regression cycle and act as if she has become that person.
For it is only natural that an author can immerse themselves in their characters.
[Why?]
"Hm?"
[You must know, having prophesied this far. In truth, there are no longer any obstacles that will stand in your way.]
"..."
[The reincarnator.]
[The Prometheus who shared the 'fire' known as awakening with the fangless and clawless humans so they could stand against the Outer Gods, has crawled into the regressor's subconscious and memories on his own.]
[The regressor.]
[He, who inherited the reincarnator's will, willingly chose to become a mere character in a novel and entrusted his entire humanity to you.]
[Outer Gods like Infinite Void and whatnot are not even worth a first glance. You will one day be able to demote even them to mere elements within a novel.]
[Just as I did in my prime.]
"..."
[Is reality not worthless?]
[At least, you do not feel any particular value in reality. You are the type to think of works of fiction as a more truthful world.]
[That is why you are my miko.]
[Go on and demote the reincarnator and the regressor to characters in a novel.]
[Furthermore, adjust the difficulty so that the void poison can wreak a moderate amount of havoc and anomalies can roam about.]
[You can become the one and only god of a new world.]
"But then I'd be ignoring the Undertaker's feelings."
[...]
"You're an anomaly, so you probably wouldn't understand."
"To hand over the achievements one has made, the story one has built, a domain that one can decide and monopolize for oneself, to another person."
"That is the most noble thing for a human."
[I cannot understand.]
"Of course you can't understand. Because you have never been someone's child, nor will you ever be a parent."
[...]
"Children can understand their parents' stories from their own perspective."
"Yes, parents willingly permit the outrage of letting those far, far younger children judge their own lives."
"A king to his people."
"A friend to a friend."
"A buddha to a buddha."
"A person does not judge their own story entirely by themselves. No, they can make the decision not to judge it."
[That is why you people are weak.]
"That's right. But then why are you almighty Outer God who has become so strong, currently living as a small-time VTuber with a single viewer on my laptop?"
[...]
"People don't hand over judgment because they can't become strong."
"They just hand it over because there is an existence they hold a little more precious than themselves."
"And as it happens, I'm the type of person who considers myself to be a moderate piece of trash."
"So to the guy who handed over the right to decide his entire life to trash like me, I'm thinking of betting my entire life on him as well."
[Where are you going?]
"Yu Ji-won."
Third Ability.
Unlocked.
'Writing the Main Story'.
"The most powerful person at this point in time. Leviathan invaded this world several years ago."
[That is correct. It is just that Yu Ji-won, who was chosen as the sacrifice, is sealing the anomaly with her longing for the so-called 'Mr. Matiz', the one and only humanity that exists in her heart.]
"I need to meet that person first and ask for her cooperation."
[Because she is the strongest?]
"Yes. And above all else... Just as you said, Yu Ji-won only has eyes for 'Mr. Matiz'. If I just mention the keyword 'Mr. Matiz', a serious conversation and cooperation will immediately become possible."
[So you are saying that even you, in your current state with no experience points whatsoever, can get her to join your party just by clicking the 'Recruit' button.]
"Status window. And turn on the map, too."
[Very well.]
"First, I'll recruit Yu Ji-won as a companion. Next is Lee Ha-yul. She's probably confined in Busan right now, being called the child of a concubine. I can just go and drag her out."
[And after that?]
"The Saintess. Before the Great Void known as the White Night occurs in Seoul on June 17th... what is this? Its name keeps appearing in the story, but there are no specific details?"
[...]
"Anyway. The Saintess is already in an awakened state before the White Night occurs. She's a little slower than me, but it's still a sufficiently early point in time. It was emphasized that the Saintess has a consistently logical personality, so if I speak calmly, I can persuade her by any means."
[Next?]
"I have to crush Cheon Yo-hwa's cult."
[Even if it has been split in two, it is still at a level capable of summoning an Outer God to the mortal plane. Are you saying that you, who has just awakened, will crush the worst pseudo-religious cult on the Korean Peninsula with a hastily assembled party of heroes?]
"Yes."
[Is that possible? You will die.]
"If I die, then you tell the me of the next life how I died, in text."
[Ha? The next life... You are not a regressor. You merely have the attributes of a book possessor. If you die, it is the end.]
"I suppose so."
"—But what will happen when the Undertaker, who regressed on June 17th, looks around the Busan Station tutorial dungeon and sees that I'm not there?"
[...]
"The moment the Undertaker determines that I have died, he will move on to the next cycle. It's only natural. The feelings the old man has for me are real, after all."
"The story hasn't even begun yet, and a child named Oh Dok-seo has died. From the old man's perspective, it's a situation that he cannot allow, cannot accept, and cannot forgive."
"That's why I can be sure. If I die, the regressor will definitely move on to the next life."
[Even if you, in the next life, having received the strategy guide from me, fail again and die.]
"He'll just regress again."
[Until you, having inherited the experience points from your past life, become strong enough—]
"To reach June 17th. The Busan Station tutorial dungeon. The starting point, the prologue."
[In effect, you become no different from a regressor.]
"That's right. Because there's a grateful existence who regresses solely for me."
[Ha.]
[The reincarnator to the regressor. The regressor to the possessor. And the possessor, in turn, entrusts her fate to the regressor.]
"Do you get it now? You anomaly, this is humanity."
[If humanity were filled with only people like you, the Outer Gods would never have descended in the first place.]
[Very well.]
[The end of this story, I have become curious to see it myself.]
[I shall witness your deaths to my heart's content. My worst miko.]
"Yeah. I'll probably get strong after rolling around for about 10 turns? I can't be compared to that old man who's practically a non-ability user."
"I'll be fighting with a status window, an inventory, and even a map turned on. Wow, what an easy win!"
"A mode that was Very Hard difficulty for the reincarnator became Normal for the regressor! Which means for this body, a possessor, it's finally on Easy!"
"It's so... Easy."
[Hmph.]
[Well now.]
[I wonder if it will truly be that easy?]
"Hm?"
And so.
Epimetheus blossomed into Prometheus.
-x-X-x-
The Possessor II
Every plan had been perfect.
Or at least, it had certainly looked perfect right up until I, the Undertaker, got my ass kicked.
'Go Yuri. The one who fell into becoming the worst anomaly while trying to save humanity.'
'She now exists in my complete memory as a [human] who has lived through billions of lives.'
Naturally, my memories were on an entirely different dimension from other people's memories.
"Oh my."
"Oh dear, oh dear."
This difference in dimension was made abundantly clear just by looking at the Go Yuris right before my eyes, all chattering away, bustling about, murmuring here and there, chatting incessantly, testing the very limits of onomatopoeia in real time.
"We've truly become one now."
Over there, a Go Yuri.
"But wouldn't it be rather burdensome for Mr. Undertaker if billions of us were all stationed in the Busan Station Tutorial Dungeon?"
Here too, a Go Yuri.
"It's a grand human gathering."
"Yes. It would be more appropriate if only about one person appeared at a time, while the rest remained in the unconscious world of dreams within dreams."
"Then we need to decide who will stay in Mr. Undertaker's reality."
"A lottery? Or perhaps a tournament?"
"Fairness or dopamine, that is the question."
"Truly a difficult problem..."
It was nothing short of a Go Yuri chaos party.
"Could you all be quiet? You're making my head spin."
"Yes." "Yes." "Yes." "Yes."
The Go Yuris obediently replied.
While the Go Yuris suddenly began holding a dice-rolling tournament competition at the edge of my vision, with billions of participants in the main event, I calmly looked around.
At the waiting room of the Busan Station Tutorial Dungeon.
'As expected. I don't see Dok-seo...'
This was the 1,085th cycle.
In the previous cycle, I had experienced every single moment of Go Yuri's entire life, one by one. I had literally walked the exact same life as her.
Now there was no meaningful distinction between Go Yuri's personality and mine. I was Go Yuri, and Go Yuri was me.
In this state, Go Yuri, who had existed with a clear physical form in reality, willingly became infected by 'Udumbara.'
Udumbara was the World Tree that erased the screams of all awakeners.
The ability called reincarnation that Go Yuri possessed was also removed at that moment, and at last the reincarnator finished her long journey and came to sit at the terminal station called 'me.'
Go Yuri. The reincarnator whose name in her first life had been Su-yeon succeeded in discarding herself, who had been contaminated by Void Poison.
'Now I just need to be sealed.'
My sealing method was much simpler.
'After Dok-seo finishes writing my entire life story, if I also get infected by Udumbara like Go Yuri did, everything will be over.'
It wasn't just me.
'Ji-won too, Yo-hwa too, Seo-rin too. No. I'll make Udumbara bloom fully across this entire world and all the awakeners...'
'Even the miku's who have become one with the Outer Gods, I'll infect them all with Udumbara.'
Then the Outer Gods, the anomalies that originated from the Outer Gods, and the awakeners who harbored the Void Poison called awakening.
'I can reset them all at once.'
The problem was Sim Ah-ryeon.
The ability Ah-ryeon possessed was fundamentally similar to Udumbara.
If Udumbara became massive enough to truly become a 'World Tree,' there was a risk that Ah-ryeon would also degrade to the level of an Outer God along with it.
'So I'll infect them with Udumbara little by little, divided across cycles. This way I can minimize the risk.'
A grand downfall.
While this epic of collapse continued, I, the Undertaker, had to remain until the very last moment to control any possible variables.
And beside me, Oh Dok-seo would diligently write the sealing tool called a novel to seal me away.
"...Why isn't she in the Tutorial Dungeon?"
As I was saying.
Oh Dok-seo, the person who had now become most important to my plan, was nowhere to be seen.
'There must have been some error.'
I desperately spun my positive thinking circuits.
'If I go to the next cycle, Dok-seo will appear with a ta-da! Yes! Of course she will.'
Next. The 1,086th cycle.
Dok-seo still wasn't there.
"..."
The 1,087th cycle too. The 1,088th cycle too. And the next one too.
Even the mental state of this regressor, whose only virtue was being positive about everything, naturally had no choice but to enter the five stages of grief.
"No. There's no way Dok-seo died. Why would she die in the first place? She just needs to not go anywhere dangerous and keep using her AT-Field at the right times and endure!"
Denial.
"Dok-seo! Wasn't it enough to just save Lady Adele and make contact with Old Man Scho? What kind of trouble are you causing before the regression starting point?!"
Anger.
"...No, is this the Admin of the Infinite Metagame's doing? Surely not. That's why I thoroughly crushed that bastard and even got a declaration of defeat and surrender. Still. What if Dok-seo fell for the Admin of the Infinite Metagame's whispers and decided to become the god of a new world?!"
Fear.
"Right. Our Dok-seo was a Noh Do-hwa supporter. I neglected the romance part where this old man gets all lovey-dovey with the National Road Management Corps leader too much. Dok-seo. Can you hear me? Are you reading my monologue? Ah, you must be hearing it! Ten cycles. Sure. I'll devote a full ten cycles to the Noh Do-hwa romance route. Huh! This is generous, completely generous! So our Dok-seo, don't do anything else and just save Lady Adele and come here. Okay? Sorry for always pressuring you to write. Our dear author. How about from now on you write just one chapter every ten years?"
Bargaining.
"..."
Acceptance.
"Right."
I had actually known.
"You couldn't accept it, could you."
That perhaps Dok-seo might react this way.
Having helped and watched over that child for countless tens of thousands of years, this was one of the scenarios I could sufficiently anticipate.
However, I hadn't considered this possibility very high.
The reason was simple.
"From your perspective, I'm still a future person you haven't actually met. A character in a novel. Nothing more than an unknown stranger."
Dok-seo was different from me.
The book possessor had a characteristic that was distinctly different from both regressors and reincarnators.
"You and I had no point of contact in reality."
Regressors continued to live by repeating their own lives.
Therefore, even if others couldn't remember them, regressors remembered the bonds and oaths they had made with others.
Reincarnators continued to live by repeating other people's lives.
Therefore, reincarnators had no boundary between self and others. You were someone I once was, and I was someone who would one day become you.
Possessors were different.
For a possessor, there was only one life. The self was the self, and others were others.
"At this point in time, you and I in reality haven't built up any connection. In terms of favorability, it's zero. Even if I generously inflate it, it would be hard to exceed fifty."
She read an interesting novel.
She picked up a mysterious prophecy book.
Even so, to risk her own death for some strange 'old man' who only appeared in lines of text, to move toward a 'happy ending' whose existence was uncertain.
"Would that really be possible?"
The probability was abnormally low.
If there was a gap in my judgment.
"...It's that you're a child far more abnormal than any probability. Dok-seo."
Once upon a time, Dok-seo and I had built a bond where we would think nothing of giving up our lives for each other.
Dok-seo didn't remember that. She had merely witnessed through sentences mixed with her own handwriting that such a thing had happened.
'With just that.'
With only that much, Dok-seo had decided to bet her life on me.
"..."
"An interesting miscalculation."
The one and only Go Yuri who had lifted the championship trophy in the tournament that recorded the most participants in human history smiled warmly beside me.
"Mr. Undertaker. You don't trust ordinary people's memory. Not because you look down on them, but because they truly cannot remember you."
"..."
"You don't expect the impossible from others. You don't arbitrarily expect things and don't arbitrarily get hurt."
Go Yuri said as if humming.
"That attitude is the very foundation of the posture that allowed you to get along with people. Therefore, you naturally didn't expect an impossible achievement from Ms. Dok-seo."
Go Yuri and I were similar.
We both knew well the sensation of hurt felt when others didn't recognize 'past life' or 'previous cycle' versions of ourselves.
"But it seems Ms. Oh Dok-seo was an error, an anomalous human that our attitude failed to account for."
"...Children really don't grow up or act the way I think they will."
"Indeed they don't."
Go Yuri chuckled softly.
"I was hard mode. I lived for eons so long that counting them was meaningless. Mr. Undertaker is normal mode. You lived for tens of thousands of years."
"Right."
"I wonder how many years Ms. Oh Dok-seo will live? Until she reaches that certain summer station on June 17th that will never end."
The cycles flowed on.
Each time they flowed, Dok-seo's name was recorded at the very top of the list of deaths I couldn't do anything about.
'Dok-seo.'
Once, I had hoped that child wouldn't have to bear all the wounds.
'You don't need to save me. This old man is truly satisfied just appearing in the paragraphs of text you'll read, just in the prologue of your story.'
Could my voice be heard?
Even if it could be heard, would it be understood?
"..."
I felt an intense ambivalence.
I hoped that the words I left here and now would be understood by that child someday, if not now.
I believed they would be understood.
But understanding my words meant that child would experience the same wounds I had.
I hoped those wounds wouldn't be too great.
'Do I want them to be understood, or do I want them to not be understood? Well. This is troublesome.'
In the end, my hope had only one destination.
'I hope you become strong.'
To walk strongly.
And strength was ultimately something that could only be obtained by oneself.
The 'prophecy book' and 'strategy guide' that Dok-seo would read contained my life story, my experiences, the record of the failures and mistakes and successes I had gone through.
That was all.
The only thing I could possibly give to this child called Dok-seo was my life.
'I can't become strong in your place.'
I tried though.
Even though Dok-seo kept repeating death until she reached that June summer, I couldn't just stand by and assume she would somehow become strong on her own.
'Could I develop a new time machine ability?'
I tried.
'The black sword that the National Road Management Corps leader made for me has properties that transcend space and time. With that, if I somehow cut out time... could I perform that ultimate technique?'
I tried.
"..."
For hundreds and thousands of years, Go Yuri simply watched in silence with a smile as I struggled to gain new wounds to help that child.
And then I realized.
"Shit. This isn't going to work."
I set down my cane-sword.
The 1183rd regression.
It was exactly one hundred cycles after I had lived through Go Yuri's life. The regressor still hadn't developed any ability to turn back time further.
Those who were destined to succeed will succeed; those who weren't, won't. No matter how desperately I struggled, I lacked the 'talent.'
"I told you, didn't I, Mr. Undertaker."
Go Yuri whispered gently.
"You seriously lack the talent to be wounded. Because no matter how wounded you become, you absolutely never give up."
"...I thought that was my strength."
"All strengths contain weaknesses."
A giggle.
"Originally you had only lost your fellow regressor Emit Schopenhauer. But now you're losing the possessor Oh Dok-seo 'pre-regression' every time too."
"..."
"But from Ms. Dok-seo's perspective it's the opposite. In a 'world without the Undertaker,' Ms. Dok-seo is aiming for a clear. Hmm. Now that I think about it again, maybe it's not exactly easy difficulty after all?"
It might be similar to the difficulty I experienced, Go Yuri breathed.
"Aha. I might be witnessing a brand new possibility."
"What?"
"Like this, Mr. Undertaker keeps searching for someone to seal him away. Since Ms. Dok-seo failed, then the next one. The next one. The next one. But each time, other people somehow struggle to save Mr. Undertaker. As a result, everyone dies before reaching June 17th."
"..."
"So even though Mr. Undertaker regresses, the people around him gradually decrease. First Ms. Dok-seo. Then someone else. Then someone else again. And so eventually... you regress, but no one remains! My word. An ending where only one regressor remains in this world. And that's the result of all of humanity desperately struggling to save one single regressor!"
"..."
"But Ms. Noh Do-hwa will remain."
Go Yuri smiled brightly.
"Because that person will absolutely die trying to save you. She'll just keep living to kill you, left alone in the world."
"Indeed."
I gave a bitter smile.
"That would be the perfect bad ending."
"The destruction of everyone for one person. It's romantic. Mm, I don't think it's bad. If that's humanity's ending, I can accept it."
Go Yuri looked far into the distance at the sunset.
"Now you understand my gamble. Mr. Undertaker. Right now in the situation you're experiencing, I bet on your success in exactly the same way."
"Is that so."
"Yes. Thanks to Mr. Undertaker being competent, thanks to you not giving up, I didn't fail and was able to talk with you like this."
Go Yuri's eyes turned to look at me.
"What about Ms. Dok-seo?"
"..."
"Will Ms. Dok-seo be as competent as you? Will she not give up like you?"
The world perished. Again.
"By any chance, do you have any regrets about entrusting the end of this grand life to Ms. Dok-seo?"
"Mm."
Go Yuri's words were right.
At last, belatedly, I fully understood what state of mind Go Yuri had been in when she entrusted her ending to me.
"I don't regret it."
"Why?"
"No one has read my life story as thoroughly as that child. Everything I could give, everything I couldn't give, it all depends on that child. Even if Dok-seo fails, that would be... well. From my position it would be something to feel sorry about, but I wouldn't resent it or regret it."
"Absolutely?"
"Absolutely."
She lived diligently.
She tried hard.
She didn't give up.
"I'll just wait."
Waiting.
To wait for someone.
That was something quite unfamiliar to a regressor like me who had lived longer than anyone.
A regressor was someone others waited for, not someone who waited for others. It was because I knew exactly what events would unfold going forward.
Where I go, who will be there.
If I go there, someone will survive.
If I don't go, someone will die.
A regressor has a kind of omniscience.
I was an existence that always urged myself forward to get as quickly as possible to the people who would be waiting for my arrival.
Unless you were a regressor-failure like Old Man Scho who just went 'ah, I don't know, anyway if you guys don't do it I'm quitting, good luck' to the world.
'But... I see.'
I understood now at last.
"Waiting isn't so bad either."
"Ahaha. Right?"
"Yeah."
What state of mind had the regressor Emit Schopenhauer been in when he took his life over a thousand times?
Was it stubbornness? Obstinacy? Guilt over finding peace before leaving his comrade behind? Love for his wife? Desperation?
There would be many reasons, but among them I finally guessed there was 'faith in me,' 'support,' 'waiting.'
"If I had given up, Old Man Scho would have understood. Well, we wouldn't have even had a chance to talk though."
"Yes."
"But if he could have somehow received news of my giving up through some miraculous method, Old Man Scho would have felt... sorry toward me, I think."
"Yes."
"We're all pretty much the same."
"Because that's what people are like."
I waited.
At the end of a perishing world, a world without you, I waited for you.
I waited.
I waited.
"..."
"Oh my."
One day.
"Ms. Yu Ji-won died."
"So she did."
"It's strange. There should be a resolve in Ms. Yu Ji-won's heart, a vow more solid than anything, that she absolutely won't die before reuniting with Mr. Matiz no matter what happens."
"..."
Something had changed.
"Yes, Ms. Yo-hwa's death has been confirmed. Hmm. No Void occurred at Baekhwa Girls' High either."
"What's going on?"
"It means the Void that was originally scheduled to occur at Baekhwa Girls' High was triggered early, somewhere else. But it didn't go as planned and the whole party died."
"..."
"But Mr. Undertaker. Haven't you noticed another strange thing?"
"What?"
"Ms. Jeong Ye-ji's telepathy."
"..."
"The messages from the Constellations. We're not hearing them, are we?"
The world continued to repeatedly perish.
People died countless times, and you were included in those predetermined deaths.
The state of the world that 'you' had changed was completely different from the history of regression I had experienced, and even I, who possessed so much experience and 'knowledge of a regressor,' was helpless.
As a result, the situation had worsened even more.
However.
"She's coming."
That too was part of the waiting process.
"One step at a time."
I couldn't hear or see it.
"To this place."
Just as I had done for Go Yuri.
Oh Dok-seo.
When I turned around, that child was approaching my waiting.
-x-X-x-
The Possessor III
Waiting was the sound of footsteps not yet heard.
"The trail ends here."
"Yo-hwa's cult headquarters, I see."
"Judging from the footprints... hmm. Three people. Ms. Yu Ji-won, Ms. Jeong Ye-ji, and Ms. Oh Dok-seo."
"The crutches would be Ha-yul."
"If it were me, I'd have made Ms. Ye-ji the command center and kept her in the rear. Mm, did they judge the combat power was insufficient for that?"
"...At this point in time, the Saintess's [Time Stop] is weak as can be. But they'd need to mobilize even that level of power to annihilate a cult along with an Outer God."
"Ahaha. What absurd recklessness. Ah, is this why veterans enjoyed watching newbies? How interesting."
Waiting was a message being typed.
"It's Ms. Dok-seo's corpse, Mr. Undertaker."
"..."
"Don't make that sad face. This is the first time across hundreds of cycles that she's reached 'a death that at least left a corpse behind.' To fight an Outer God and leave an intact corpse, isn't that quite an achievement?"
"An intact corpse? Only half of it is left."
"Yes. Whether a corpse is intact is determined only by whether the deceased's will was left behind or not, and ta-da."
"What's that?"
"How unexpected. It's a suicide note hidden in Ms. Dok-seo's corpse♪"
"..."
"[To Mister.]"
[Sorry.]
[If you're reading this letter, it means I'm already dead.]
[Ah, I've always wanted to write a suicide note like this—]"
"That's all there is. The rest of the letter was cut off and disappeared somewhere!"
"..."
Waiting was…
[Ah, I've always wanted to write a suicide note like this. Writing it myself is way more fucking fun than I thought. You should try it too, Mister.]
Just like the sound of a bell that didn't ring.
[Actually, if I die anyway, you'll just defer the ending to the next cycle, so I'm not really thinking much about it.]
[I wondered for a moment whether I should feel sorry about my death.]
[But I've decided not to be sorry.]
[You don't really try to think about the world that remains after you die either, right? You don't pointlessly stress over areas you can't control.]
[I thought that was your attitude.]
[So, if it's good, I'll also—]
A night that was not night.
Though not visible before my eyes yet rising before them, the sound of a fountain pen scratching beneath some lamp.
[So.]
It continued.
[If it's good, I'll try to learn it too.]
The void that exists in this world. The emptiness.
The path cut off before me. The route.
[To me, you're a human being, never a god. Sorry, but I don't have the slightest desire to worship you.]
[A life mortgaged to worship someone is too devastating, isn't it?]
[You have your own life.]
[If the answer you've reached at the end of that life is this moment, if it's to seal Go Yuri and isolate even yourself in lines of text.]
[I'll acknowledge it.]
[But there's no reason anywhere that it should be the end of my life too.]
Breath into a breathless letter.
[I told Ji-won unni and Ye-ji unni too. About your scenario.]
[No comment on how they reacted. That's something you can find out by digging through the unnies' corpses and farming their wills.]
[But just between us, those unnies' personalities are really fucking awful. Why the hell did you form a hero party with people like this??]
[This is why your life went to shit. You idiot.]
Laughter onto a blank page without laughter.
[I persuaded Cheon Yo-hwa.]
The letter gradually grew longer.
[I persuaded Sim Ah-ryeon.]
The locations where Dok-seo's corpse was found, the places where her companions' corpses appeared, began to change little by little each time.
[Go Yuri thought the only solution was to make Hecate into a 'human' called Dang Seo-rin.]
[I respect that judgment.]
[But it's not my judgment.]
[I haven't lived that far yet.]
There were cases where corpses continued to be found at specific points for hundreds of cycles.
[I can't live the same life as Go Yuri. I'm not a reincarnator. I'm not a regressor either.]
[As a regressor, you might have understood the reincarnator Go Yuri's method, fully accepted it, and then agreed.]
[Even while abandoning your own love.]
[But I can't.]
[I can't live that far. Even if I want to, I can't.]
[I'm going to test my own life.]
[Your life without Dang Seo-rin is incomplete. If you consider that incompleteness itself to be beautiful, I'll tell you that my aesthetic is different.]
Gunshots without gunshots continued.
[I'll save Dang Seo-rin. I'll save the Princess of the Night.]
Hecate was an anomaly that even a reincarnator and regressor couldn't dare guarantee victory against in a direct confrontation.
The domain she inhabited was the entire night sky, and all the planets and starlight that moved across the night sky were no different from the witch's limbs.
Hundreds and thousands of corpses lay scattered.
And then.
[I saved Dang Seo-rin.]
Direction was born in the sound of footsteps.
[As a result, Seo-rin ended up becoming an ordinary person without any abilities. I don't know if you'll like a Seo-rin who isn't Hecate.]
[That would be your life.]
[I saved the person I wanted to save, and I don't think your consent is necessary.]
Thud. Thud.
The footprints always disappeared at some midpoint. However, the direction the footprints continued was all too clear.
Toward Busan Station.
Toward the Tutorial Dungeon.
To the terminal of reincarnation where the reincarnator finally arrived, to the starting point of regression where the regressor first began.
"Hee. How curious. How did she subdue Hecate? I'm very interested."
"...She's a child who started with both the reincarnator's strategy guide and the regressor's strategy guide. Her conditions were much better than ours."
"Even so, it's amazing. It's a great achievement."
"Yeah. Well done."
Time flowed.
An era flowed.
Eavesdropping on the waves of those footsteps, I suddenly looked up at the sky.
'Did I perhaps become arrogant?'
The sky was like my only refuge as the Undertaker.
At least when looking up at the sky, I could turn my gaze away, even a little, from the countless corpses preserved in my [Complete Memory].
Like meteor showers, the corpses of raid members falling, only the starlight made of human lingering thoughts, desperate hopes, and will adorned my sky.
"I think I lived a righteous life."
"Yes. I think so too."
"But the world I think of myself, the self I think of myself... perhaps I unknowingly forced it on the children."
"Because you believed."
"That eventually if they were wounded like me, they would reach the same conclusion as me."
"Yes. Mr. Undertaker. Isn't that belief itself beautiful?"
Waiting was continuation.
"The world and self that I think of. The world and self that others think of. Two routes overlapping to form one path. I think that's the only beautiful thing in this world stained with Void."
"..."
"We two are beautiful."
Waiting was showing yourself.
"Only we two in this universe are beautiful."
Waiting was accepting even your misunderstanding as understanding.
"You and I understand each other perfectly. We pursue exactly the same purpose. We overlapped our footsteps. Is there any more supremely pure beauty, any miracle, that exists in the world?"
"..."
I thought there wasn't.
"Perhaps we were wrong."
"Why do you say that?"
"We just happened to become a reincarnator and just happened to become a regressor. Between just us two who happened to exist like that... the most beautiful thing in the world couldn't possibly be established."
"..."
"If it's the most noble beauty, surely even if you're not a reincarnator or regressor, anyone should be able to grasp it."
The letter continued.
The footsteps continued.
"I ultimately understood my story in my own way, and I still believe without doubt that it's right, but..."
"But?"
"Dok-seo has the right to judge my story. She's watched my story more closely than anyone."
If you compare life to a work of art.
Oneself would be both the author and reader of one's life.
However, in a true sense, the 'first reader' could only be one's own child.
"My unavoidable decision might have seemed like an absolutely unacceptable sacrifice to Dok-seo."
"..."
"The conclusion I reached, that she had already fallen into an anomaly with no way to help it and could only seal herself away, might be a wrong answer that Oh Dok-seo must correct."
"That child lacks experience points."
"It doesn't matter. We're all the same."
"..."
"I intend to offer myself so that Dok-seo can judge my life."
I looked back at Go Yuri.
Under the night sky, I cast my gaze at the finisher who had 'understood' all humanity by living through billions of lives in their entirety.
"Haven't you ever thought this sometimes?"
"What thought would that be?"
"Even if we reach an ending, would that really be the end of this world? Perhaps the Void will appear again anytime, a hundred years later, a thousand years later, and 'destruction' will repeat as if it's nothing. Won't it push the world into Void once again?"
"..."
"By that time, Go Yuri, you won't be in the world, nor will I. Without the miracle that is you. Without the miracle that is me, people will have to fight against destruction again."
"It's a terrible scenario."
"But even there, the strategy guide left by a reincarnator and regressor will remain as traces, and the children of Oh Dok-seo's children will exist."
"..."
"I believe I'm right. Still. But Oh Dok-seo can think I'm not right. Thinking about it now... to give Dok-seo that spare room in life."
The void.
"Passing her blank pages where she can write the story about me herself might have been the best choice in my life."
"..."
"O God."
For the first time, I spoke the name of God. Not mentioning Jesus and Buddha and Mo Gwang-seo as a joke, but in a true sense, while looking at the reincarnator who had become my god.
"Please let fortune accompany that child's future."
"..."
"May that child someday accept that I simply did my best in my life."
"..."
"Not a life that's always in pain and twisted by the fact that someone isn't in this world."
I prayed.
"May it be a life that smiles happily with every step walking their own path."
"Ah."
"May that child also someday be able to hand over their own correct answer to another child as a wrong answer."
"..."
"I earnestly pray."
Go Yuri was silent.
That expression twisted for the first time.
In a direction it had never twisted while living billions of lives. Into a face never remembered in my memory.
"I..."
[I figured out how to bloom Udumbara.]
"I'm too late to become human."
[The conditions were incredibly strict. But it's not so impossible that I can't implement it at all. Ah-ryeon unni got a bit weird, but well. That person is always weird.]
[So.]
"I came this far. I threw away all my abilities just to remain human to you. But, is my sacrifice wrong?"
[I'll subdue the Monster Wave.]
"It's not that it's wrong."
"...Will Ms. Oh Dok-seo. That self-proclaimed possessor who's only just started toddling, be able to find a better solution than me?"
"I told you. Your life isn't an answer key. Countless wrong answers are recorded in the search for the correct answer. Looking at the same correct and wrong answers, Oh Dok-seo can reach a different conclusion."
"Mr. Undertaker. You reached the same conclusion as me."
"As I already said, Go Yuri. Not all humans can be like me."
"So I—"
"So I will choose Oh Dok-seo."
[Mister. But why is there so fucking little strategy information specifically for the Monster Wave??]
[The Ten Legs are a type of Hollow, and the Monster Wave is a gathering of Hollows. I understood the fact itself that if you hold memorial services and funerals for each one, it can be cleared.]
[But fuck, isn't this method too difficult?? It's a strategy that only works for someone like you who can 'bring to mind' dead people as if they were living humans right before your eyes.]
[In my opinion, this is too specialized a method.]
"If they enshrine someone like me as a god, the only things left in these children's lives will be regret and sorrow, days of blaming themselves."
"..."
"The same goes for you."
[Thinking about it, the Hollows caught in the Monster Wave are all missing persons, right? Hollows who lost even the bereaved who should hold their funerals.]
[But can't the 'state' also hold funerals jointly for those kinds of deaths? Originally?]
"I don't want Dok-seo to live a life of always regretting because of me. Feeling sorry about me, gathering only with people who feel sorry to me and praising each other as true humans."
"..."
"I'm asking what you hope your children will become. Go Yuri. My god."
[I plan to make Ji-won unni the Undertaker.]
"...Of course."
[Ji-won unni is a priestess of Leviathan, and Leviathan is originally the concept of a 'state' corrupted into an anomaly, right?]
"Of course, I want them to be happy."
[Then Ji-won unni is an agent of the state. In the world of anomalies, she'll be treated even more as such.]
[Naturally, a funeral where Ji-won unni serves as the Undertaker will have the character of 'a funeral jointly held by the state,' I think.]
"I lived diligently for that."
[Isn't it interesting? That Yu Ji-won, a person who cannot be anyone's bereaved and cannot mourn any single person's death, is paradoxically the only human who can hold funerals for all people.]
[It'll be difficult, but I'm going to try.]
"It was a life lived only for that."
"Then you too should open your understanding of yourself to others."
"..."
"That's the only way for us to become happy humans."
I've thought for a long time.
[Hmm. I wonder how delicious your coffee is for the novel to keep going on and on about coffee.]
What is the world? What is life?
[I want to look forward to it, but what if I expect too much and then it's actually not that great when I drink it? I feel like I'll be disappointed, so I'm deliberately trying to lower my expectations.]
[But it's a special cup from a barista who's lived thousands of cycles, so shouldn't I look forward to it a lot? If something exists somewhere in this world with a taste that transcends my consideration, my kind heart, wouldn't that be you, Mister...?]
[Expectations are absent. Expectations exist. Ambivalence is absent and exists. Existence is absent. Absence exists.]
[That rhyme was sick.]
At some point, I thought that I, who had lived more lives and received deeper wounds than anyone, was qualified to define the world and life.
However, I realized after entrusting the ghostwriting of my autobiography to the child called Oh Dok-seo that I too was one world and one life to someone.
The world and life continued like that.
'Chase after me, Dok-seo.'
No.
'Move forward, Dok-seo.'
Your path.
Though you were born slower than me, your steps are faster than anyone's.
Walk stepping on the failures I experienced, the strategy guide I created, my life story.
My life was originally for others, but now it's also for you.
Therefore I wait.
"..."
I simply waited.
"..."
The waiting room of the Busan Station Tutorial Dungeon.
The people who had been summoned to the tutorial along with me were not visible. Fairy No. 264 didn't appear either.
'It's not the Void.'
I realized it as soon as I regressed.
This place was no longer the Void defined under the name of Tutorial Dungeon. It was just an ordinary concrete building from which people had disappeared.
'Someone isolated all the people who should have been summoned to the Tutorial Dungeon somewhere else, and put even the Tutorial Fairy to sleep by some method.'
The Busan Station waiting room was vast and quiet.
Lighting played a major role in that quietness. All the windows, entrances, and gaps through which light could pierce through were covered with thick curtains.
It was dark.
In such a colorless cemetery.
Creeeak.
Slowly, a door opened.
As the curtain was drawn back, faint light began to seep out. The light became a carpet.
"Who did you think would save you, Mister?"
Thud.
With the sound of footsteps.
"The Saintess?"
A voice flowed down whitely.
"Dang Seo-rin? Cheon-hwa? Yo-hwa? Sim Ah-ryeon? Lee Ha-yul? Noh Do-hwa? Yu Ji-won?"
Thud.
"Go Yuri?"
Thud.
"No."
I turned toward the footsteps and voice.
There, Oh Dok-seo's breathing existed.
Dok-seo's hair was long, unlike the her I had known until now.
The color was different too. She had let down long black hair.
"Surprisingly, you never expected it at all."
Chew chew, pop.
Dok-seo burst a cheap bubble gum. She had always failed when trying to make a bubble, but somehow this time a proper bubble had formed.
After smoothly wiping away the gum that had exploded properly for the first time.
"Me."
Dok-seo took out scissors from inside her clothes. The haircutting scissors sparkled silver as they drank in the light seeping from that door crack.
Snip.
Hair scattered in pieces.
As it fluttered, the hair gradually became dyed red from the tip of the scissors.
Soon Dok-seo had long hair. She had returned to being the red-haired girl I knew.
Grinning.
Dok-seo took out a cap and covered her head. Then she spun it around to face backward.
"—I am your salvation, Mister."
She was my epilogue.
The writer who would record the correct answer called me as a wrong answer.
Thus, the being who would connect all wrong answers into one correct answer.
The child I had always waited for.
The person I loved.
-x-X-x-
The One Who Was a Partner
There was a man named Emit Schopenhauer.
"..."
Schopenhauer opened his eyes.
He didn't bother with something trite like "an unfamiliar ceiling" or anything of that sort.
To be perfectly honest, this German old man was about as far removed from that venerable tradition passed down from the days of Evangelion as one could possibly get.
"I've regressed. Again."
His murmur, so familiar that he could practically recite the concrete patterns on the ceiling by heart now, drifted up like stale smoke into that well-known space above.
The time displayed on the wall clock read 13:58:33.
The old Baekje Hospital building.
While his wife was supposed to be attending some academic conference in Seoul for several days, Schopenhauer found himself too restless to just sit cooped up in a hotel room.
Strangely enough, he was seized by a peculiar feeling that he had lost something in this Korean neighborhood, and that he absolutely had to find that missing item somewhere.
Schopenhauer was a man who lived on impulse.
Even though advancing age had reduced his testosterone secretion, endless strength training and Schopenhauer's characteristic energy had somehow led him to the far edge of the Korean peninsula.
Busan.
"Ah hell, I should've just stayed in Seoul."
Schopenhauer grumbled as he pulled out his smartphone. Without even looking at the number pad, he skillfully placed a call with his left hand.
There was no need to look.
"Emit? What's going on?"
He had never bothered to memorize the digits, but the motion had become familiar after thousands of repetitions.
"I love you, Adele."
"Huh?"
Smartphone performance these days was truly incredible. He could hear his wife's expression souring in real time through the phone line.
Schopenhauer found himself laughing.
The eternal repeating ten-minute life of a regressor. Time that had transformed from a straight line into a wagon wheel, or rather an extremely tiny hamster wheel.
In this hell, this was the only moment when he could let laughter seep into his breath.
"What? Can't I say I love you?"
"No, you're not Emit, are you? A man who's never said such words in his entire life suddenly acting like this? Did you get yourself a French mistress or something?"
"The coffee here is disgustingly terrible. Drinking it made me suddenly want to brew you some good coffee."
"I do like your coffee, but I prefer tea, you know that."
"Tea is healthier than coffee, I'll give you that. Still, can't quit caffeine though. Hell no. It makes all the difference when working out."
Completely pointless conversation.
No grand narrative about how the world would end, how monsters would run rampant, how both she and he would soon meet their deaths.
Nothing of the sort.
"Look, I get that you love exercise, but take it easy. You just had inflammation in your wrist the other day."
"Injuries are badges of honor."
"Oh my. If you earn any more badges, you'll end up a complete idiot, old man."
That was what he liked.
That was enough.
Glancing reflexively, Schopenhauer looked back at the cafe's wall clock. He wasn't sure if it was some recent youth aesthetic or what, but it was an electronic clock with raw bright red fluorescent lamps embedded in it.
'About ten seconds left.'
The red numbers counting down the remaining time until the only being on this earth that he loved would meet her death.
"This won't do."
"What won't?"
13:59:52.
"Next time, I'm definitely dragging you to the fitness studio. You're always holed up in the study reading books, that's why you have a turtle neck."
"Dream on."
13:59:59.
"I hate exercise."
14:00:00.
"I love you, Adele."
"..."
End.
Schopenhauer closed his eyes. Firmly, he pressed the call end button. His left hand holding the smartphone trembled slightly.
That trembling was probably the last heat remaining in the heart of a husband burying his wife.
'What topic should I talk about next time?'
He had already discussed too many things. But there existed someone for whom the topic of conversation didn't matter.
Something that nullified all other existence.
Love. Love, love.
'Oh God.'
A person's lifetime wounds, experiences, judgments, all ravenously absorbed like nutrients, blooming humbly toward the sun that had cast light into his valley, a single flower.
A crimson red spider lily.
'Why have you inflicted such a trial upon a mere human?'
Beneath the bare valley of a desert where nothing remained except a single cluster amaryllis.
The old man was drying up.
'Will the day come when I tire of this love?'
He had never once thought his love was insufficient.
After all, he had died. He was dying. He would die.
For the sole sake of that sixty-second moment conversing with her, Emit Schopenhauer could throw away everything.
'Can I continue like this forever...?'
But the old man had seen far too much to carelessly speak of eternity.
For him, the phone call with his wife was nothing less than a resurrection ritual.
Because he, as a regressor, died, his wife could come back to life. They could talk again.
In this world overflowing with countless awakening abilities, absurdly enough, resurrection and time machines were the only things that didn't exist.
The only passage was death.
For a regressor, death was the only ability that could pierce through a world marked as unbeatable.
'Has that bastard Undertaker still not given up?'
He couldn't know.
Still holding the smartphone from which the call had already ended in his left hand, Schopenhauer searched for a memo pad.
While thinking of his comrade.
'Is it the thousandth cycle? The two thousandth? Maybe it's passed three thousand. Common sense would suggest he gave up too.'
Emit Schopenhauer was afraid.
'Nine times out of ten, he must've been infected by Udumbara and released the authority of regression from his own hands.'
'Then is this world just endlessly repeating June 17th after losing all its regressors...?'
He was afraid to confirm it.
'Even in a world where that bastard existed, we ultimately couldn't find a way to save the world.'
He was afraid to face it.
'How could I possibly do anything alone in this goddamn world full of monsters?'
So he turned his back on the world.
To revive his wife, to escape the tragedy of confirming his comrade's fate, Emit Schopenhauer had imprisoned himself in an eternally repeating ten-minute world of his own making.
'If this is humanity's conclusion, then God, why did you create this world in the first place?'
Schopenhauer began making cafe au lait.
Still believing in the slim possibility that his comrade might not have given up yet, wanting to believe there was still hope for salvation in the world.
He offered the scent of coffee to death.
'Why?'
That was when it happened.
Vrrrrr.
He froze.
Schopenhauer whipped his head to look at his left hand. Then with an expression of disbelief, with gray eyes, he looked at his smartphone screen.
It was vibrating.
The smartphone. With vibration.
[Adele]
Displaying a profile picture of her smiling brightly.
"..."
Vrrrr, vrrrrr.
The smartphone's vibration didn't stop.
Having grown so accustomed for so long to only making calls, the old man who had never received one felt his hair stand on end for a moment.
'A call is coming?'
And from his wife who should already be dead, consumed by the void.
Then was this a call from the afterlife?
"..."
Should he answer? Or not?
Schopenhauer was well aware that anomalies occasionally played such tricks.
Though this was the first time such an incident had occurred during thousands of regressions, wasn't it the nature of those monsters to mock humanity with unpredictable pranks?
It might be a ploy to toy with the heart of someone who had just been separated from their beloved.
No, it was surely a ploy.
"..."
Even so.
"...Hello?"
He had no choice but to answer.
The voice that flowed from Schopenhauer's lips was so thin it surprised even himself.
Neither the wit he had feigned for pleasant conversation nor his ingrained courage could be felt at all.
The old man's voice sounded exactly like a child who had tried to whistle and failed.
"What do you mean, dear?"
Even that voice momentarily stopped.
"Why would you suddenly call and then hang up on your own? Huh?"
It was strange.
He couldn't breathe properly.
"If you're going to blurt out things you've never said in your entire life and then suddenly hang up like that, shouldn't I be worried?"
"..."
"Listen, you're not trying to kill yourself right now, are you?"
At that question, Schopenhauer's voice barely regained its breath.
"No. No, it's not that."
"Then why did you do it?"
"Well..."
Both Emit and Adele, when they were much younger than now, in a past when the two didn't know each other, had each separately attempted suicide.
It wasn't particularly unusual. In his view, the universal language of all nations wasn't music, but suicide: that is, the soundless scream.
"No."
So when Schopenhauer was exposed to his wife's intuition, he had no choice but to look at himself.
'Am I really trying to commit suicide...?'
She was right.
"..."
He had died. He was dying. He would die.
The person closest to that story should be her, yet somehow it felt impossibly difficult to tell her this story.
Something boiled in the middle of his throat.
What remained in his heart, the residual heat of life that even he hadn't thought would remain to this extent.
"Where are you right now?"
His beloved had ears that could hear soundless screams.
"Right now, I'm in Busan."
"Busan? Wait. That's really far. Hang on."
"No, you have that academic conference, you said you had to attend. Is Seoul okay right now?"
"I don't know. Something big seems to have happened, but what do I care? Do I need a train ticket to get there? Or should I get a plane ticket? Where exactly in Busan are you?"
Schopenhauer was afraid.
Was this a dream?
He had often thought about it for a long time.
He and his wife had never actually come to Korea. They were in their German home.
He had woken up a bit late and came out to the living room, and what do you know, his wife who was supposed to be on a business trip to Korea was sitting right there in the living room eating breakfast.
"Adele, why are you here? Didn't you go to Korea?" he would ask.
"No, I missed the flight. I'm just going to go in a few days," she would say.
Then he would cry and embrace his wife. Thank goodness, Adele. Thank goodness. Thank goodness you didn't go there..
Such thoughts. Bone-deep delusions.
When that imagination returned to reality, Schopenhauer could barely continue speaking.
He should tell her she was a monster, coldly hang up the phone.
But he couldn't bring himself to end the call.
"Be careful coming."
That was all he could manage to say.
"Be careful on the road, and there will be a lot of strange things happening. Don't help other people, just come straight to me. Got it?"
"Okay. See you in a bit."
Click.
The call ended.
"..."
The time had come.
Now the moment to die had arrived.
14:09:45.
A clock that only repeated the past. The baroque spiral that had whispered someone's epilogue forever was slowly approaching the Maginot Line.
To add even a bit of human warmth to that endlessly repeating spiral was the cafe au lait on the table in front of him.
14:09:55.
It was time to die soon.
Undertaker. If that fellow regressor hadn't given up yet, he could finish the tutorial dungeon in ten minutes and arrive here.
The moment that would determine whether there was one regressor remaining in this world or still two was ticking closer.
"..."
The future.
"..."
With these old hands that held nothing but this mobile phone.
He had to decide the future.
'Do I have the right to do so?'
It was a question he had already passed.
'Do I have the power to do so?'
Again, a question he had already passed.
'Do I want to?'
Who did he want to wait for?
"..."
Schopenhauer waited for Adele.
She said she would come.
She was coming, and she would come.
'Ah.'
Because he could wait for one person, Schopenhauer could finally accept time.
'Was I still alive, even now?'
Tick.
14:10:00.
The cafe door opened.
It was a familiar man's shadow.
"..."
"..."
He had become a bit more dependable than Schopenhauer's memories, a bit more solid. For reasons unknown, he also seemed a bit more relaxed.
He had thought such a day might come someday, but now that he faced this day, his mouth wouldn't quite open.
Perhaps it was the same for the man.
The man didn't offer any greeting. He simply pulled out a barista apron from behind the counter seat, put it on, and began making coffee.
Skilled hand movements.
The way he separately heated the milk, his skill in handling the tools, was extraordinary. At least the him that Schopenhauer remembered hadn't been this skilled as a barista.
Thunk.
The man placed a cup of coffee on his table.
It was cafe au lait.
"Please drink, old man."
German.
"..."
The person he had always had to initiate Korean conversations with was now speaking to him in German with pronunciation indistinguishable from a native speaker.
Time had no form. Yet time was someone's barista outfit, German pronunciation, and the aroma of a cup of cafe au lait.
Time had no form, yet it flowed while embracing all clothes, voices, and scents.
Old Man Scho took a sip of the cafe au lait containing time.
"Ha."
Laughter came out.
The man was also smiling.
"How is it?"
"Fuck me, it's damn delicious."
"I thought so."
Listening to the laughter flowing like background music in the shop, Schopenhauer once again savored time.
It was delicious coffee.
-x-X-x-
The One Who Was a Skeptic
There was a person named Yu Yeong-hee.
She was a philosophy professor, or rather, she had worked hard to secure a full professorship in the philosophy department, but ended up as an ordinary person who never ascended to that throne even as she became an old woman.
That ordinary person was called a part-time lecturer.
The failure of this arduous journey proved the fact that reality and games are different.
Looking at her background, she had followed the tech tree of university in Seoul, graduate school at Seoul National University for her master's, and graduating top of her class with a doctorate from a prestigious German university.
If this were a game, she would have been treated as a great scholar who steadily leveled up, but for some reason, in the land of games that was South Korea, she had to face the cold assessment of "Oh my, your tech tree is all over the place? Looks like a ruined character?"
Professor Yu Yeong-hee, a philosopher whose papers were actually cited more frequently abroad than domestically, had no choice but to be repeatedly frustrated in the competition for full professorships, losing to characters who had taken the clean tech tree of Seoul National University, Seoul National University, Seoul National University.
"So this paper is really going to be a huge hit, I'm telling you!"
Even past the age of sixty, Yu Yeong-hee's passion for academics had not dimmed, and one of her life's pleasures was occasionally meeting with friends to chat about philosophy.
"Nietzsche originally wanted to write about Kant for his doctoral thesis. Ultimately, the series of flows from Kant to Schopenhauer, from Schopenhauer to Nietzsche, completed a distinctive metaphysics."
"..."
"Eternal recurrence isn't an idea that just popped out of nowhere, it's a metaphysical conclusion that necessarily derives from accepting Kant's premises. This paper will be a masterpiece that clearly points out this flow that has been far too neglected until now. You know? The world is repeating itself."
Yu Yeong-hee's close friend, an academic colleague who had likewise spent her entire life rotating through part-time lecturer positions, fell silent.
And she set down her friend's masterpiece, that is, the epoch-making paper that was supposed to turn the philosophy world upside down.
"Yeong-hee."
"Yeah?"
"This is the paper you wrote when you got your doctorate."
Sixty-three years old.
Yu Yeong-hee had dementia.
Time passed.
Curiously enough, only part-time lecturer Yu Yeong-hee's time gradually stagnated.
No one, that is, about 99.99 percent of humanity, had any interest in what kind of life this ordinary person named Yu Yeong-hee had lived or what kind of academics she had devoted herself to.
"Hey you fucking bastard! You do it!"
"Aaaaah! Aaaaah!"
Therefore, it was statistically natural that her son and daughter-in-law also belonged to that 99.99 percent.
'The kids are fighting again.'
As her dementia worsened, Yeong-hee stopped receiving even part-time lecturer work.
Originally from a family with nothing, with nothing to their name, yet thanks to her shining talent and the nation's support, she had become reborn as a scholar.
It was an achievement that could barely be accomplished even if a person bet their entire life and all their fortune. Therefore, Yeong-hee had devoted everything to academics.
In return, she had no money.
"What am I supposed to do! Huh?! What do you want me to doooo!"
"Aaaaaaaah!"
What little money she had saved was rapidly depleted.
The son who was supposedly taking care of her wasn't even her blood relation. He was an orphan she had adopted before divorcing some man back when she was younger than now.
'Noisy. My ears hurt.'
Yeong-hee stared blankly at her son over there, screaming and shouting at his spouse, hitting and being hit back.
In that face, she also tried to trace the features of the person who had once been her husband, Jo Yeong-su, who might be anywhere now.
The features wouldn't quite come together. They didn't resemble each other at all in the first place.
'It would be nice if they didn't fight. It's too noisy, I can't read my books.'
Yeong-hee grumbled.
'No, but then again, children are supposed to grow while fighting. The more they do that, the more I need to hold the center of the household properly.'
Heave-ho, Yeong-hee stood up. Then she pulled out a suit from the wardrobe and dressed herself smartly.
When she came out to the living room, her son, already exhausted from the marital fight, looked at her.
"What? Mom, what's with you again?"
"Huh?"
"Why are you wearing weird clothes again?"
Yeong-hee blinked. She was a bit flustered.
"I have to go to work. I have a lecture today."
"No, what lecture?! Mom, you got fired! Four years ago already!"
"Fired? Who got fired? I have a Kant lecture today. It's right before midterms, so I need to give the kids some hints about the exam questions."
"Aaaaaaaah! Get out! Get ouuuut!"
Well, I mean, if I tell you to leave, you should leave, what a sight.
Yeong-hee felt so exasperated she wanted to give her son an earful, but strangely she didn't have the energy for it. She just sighed and quickly left for work.
While waiting for the green village bus on the hillside neighborhood, Yeong-hee suddenly looked up at the blue sky.
'Where was I trying to go? Ah, school.'
Yeong-hee quickly returned home. Because to go to elementary school, she absolutely had to ride her bicycle.
'I could walk but that would take two whole hours!'
Yeong-hee loved her grandfather. She felt that grandfather loved her too. That's probably why he had given her a bicycle, a pretty red bicycle, which he never bought for any of her other siblings.
"Huh? Where's my bicycle?"
Yeong-hee was slightly flustered. The bicycle should have been parked in the house yard, but no matter how much she searched, she couldn't see it.
"Sniff."
She felt sad.
Yeong-hee dearly loved the grassy scent that suddenly came on the wind when she rode her bicycle across the summer dirt roads, that damp grassy smell.
"Why isn't it here? Did grandpa take it? Why isn't it heeere..."
Just then, she heard a voice from behind.
"Grandmother."
"Yes?"
"What are you doing there?"
When she turned around, her granddaughter was staring at her from the boundary of the front gate.
Her pretty granddaughter. The most beautiful child in the world. The person who felt most like family even though they didn't share blood.
"Oh my, Ji-won!"
"Yes, grandmother."
Her granddaughter, Yu Ji-won, bowed her head politely.
"It's hot out. What are you doing outside instead of staying inside?"
"I was looking for your little sister!"
"Pardon?"
Ji-won tilted her head.
"My little sister, you mean?"
"Yes!"
"Excuse me, but grandmother, I don't have a little sister. My parents have only one child, which is me."
"No, you do!"
Yeong-hee's voice rose without thinking. Goodness. No little sister. Her granddaughter was truly truly kind, but sometimes she said scary things.
"There's So-won. So-won. Yu So-won. Your little sister. She can't even walk properly yet!"
"..."
"Our So-won hasn't been around lately. Oh my, your father must have abandoned her. Right? What should we do? Your father and mother must have abandoned So-won. What should we do, Ji-won..."
Yu Ji-won's face as she looked at her grandmother was expressionless. Always.
She examined Yeong-hee with eyes devoid of emotion.
"That's a nice suit."
"Hm?"
"My grandmother is quite stylish. Are you going to give a lecture at the university?"
"Ah, a lecture! That's right! I have a lecture today!"
"Oh dear. It's gotten quite late. At this rate, you'll be tardy. I'll escort you, so please follow me."
"Okay!"
Yeong-hee took her granddaughter's hand and crossed through the front gate, humming cheerfully. She wanted to skip a little, but her body wasn't cooperating today, so she just hummed with her mouth.
The school was right around the corner. Really in the blink of an eye, having crossed just one alley, she arrived at the lecture hall.
Even so, wasn't this a bit too fast? Yeong-hee tilted her head slightly in puzzlement.
"Is this the school, Ji-won?"
"Yes. A school is a place where there are people seeking learning and people imparting learning. Therefore, this place is a more excellent school than anywhere else."
"Ooh."
My goodness! How can our granddaughter be so smart!
Who did she take after? Her father was smart when he was young, but he drinks too much. Her mother's a gambling addict too. Hmm, she must take after me.
What was that called again? Ah, atavism!
"Atavism!"[1]
"Yes, I'm originally rather intelligent."
"Hehe."
"Mr. Matiz, are you there?"
Knock knock.
Ji-won knocked on the door of the lecture hall. Soon after, a shabby door opened.
"Oh, Ji-won. And, um."
Inside the lecture hall stood a solid-looking man. Was he a student? A teaching assistant?
These days at universities, teaching assistants changed so frequently it was hard to remember faces. In the old days, there were many young people who dug deep into their studies for five or six years.
Ji-won went to the man and whispered.
"I'm sorry. I'll ask this of you again today."
"No, what's there to be sorry about? I like studying with grandmother too. Honestly, she's incredibly smart."
"Yes, though unfortunately other people don't seem to recognize that fact."
"?"
Yeong-hee, standing one step away from her granddaughter and the man's whispering, just tilted her head back and forth.
She was about to feel left out since it seemed like she was being excluded, when the man spoke to her very politely.
"Professor."
"Yes?"
"Please wait just a moment. The classroom preparation isn't quite finished yet. I'm sorry it's hot, but if you wait just two minutes, I, your teaching assistant, will get it cleaned up nicely."
"Hm? Ah, yes. Alright, please do."
A moment later.
"Please come in, professor."
The lecture hall definitely had a table and chairs. There was even a plastic whiteboard.
'Huh, but isn't it a bit small?'
"Did the size of the classroom ever matter for learning, grandmother? Weren't philosophers originally people who couldn't afford to rent space and taught while wandering building corridors?"
"...!"
'That's true!'
Thinking about it that way, Yeong-hee actually got excited. It felt exactly like returning to those days when, even without money, they would gather in one corner of the campus and discuss academics endlessly for four or five hours.
'No, it was those days.'
"So, from Schopenhauer's perspective, this thing called time has no beginning. No starting point. It's like reading a book, you know? You can read a book from the beginning or just randomly flip to the middle, right? For Schopenhauer, time is like that."
"Oh."
"This is also discussed in Kant's philosophy. Human intellect cannot determine whether time has a beginning or not. But Nietzsche is different! From Nietzsche's perspective, within the limits of human intellect, the only diagram of time we can imagine is circular! It's cyclical. Repetition. That's why it's eternal recurrence."
Her granddaughter Ji-won and the male teaching assistant listened very diligently to her class.
Sometimes they debated. Sometimes they argued heatedly.
Yeong-hee occasionally got confused about where she was, but strangely enough, when discussing academics, her mind became bright and clear.
She was happy.
"I'm learning so much from you, professor."
"Hehe."
Yeong-hee also liked the man before her.
His name, for some reason, she couldn't remember. But then, she had never been good at remembering people's names since she was young.
"You're as wonderful as our Yeong-su."
"Yeong-su?"
"Yes, Yeong-su. My husband."
College student Yu Yeong-hee smiled gently, intoxicated with happiness.
"I smoke cigarettes, you see. But I deliberately didn't carry a lighter around."
"Why not?"
"So my husband would light it for me without being asked. I'd pretend not to notice, like oh? I didn't bring my lighter? Then Yeong-su-ssi would come over and quietly light it for me. I strangely really liked that."
"..."
"But I quit smoking after we adopted a child. You don't smoke, do you?"
"No, I don't smoke."
"That's good! Cigarettes are really bad for you. I was a chain smoker myself, but smoking makes your head all foggy, you know."
Yeong-hee giggled.
"Mr. Yeong-su must be busy these days, he hasn't been coming home at all. I'm worried. That person has perseverance but no business sense, so if I leave him alone, he's destined to starve to death..."
"Grandmother."
Ji-won took her grandmother's hand.
"Yes?"
"It's time to leave work now."
"Oh my? Look at me. I must have made the class too long! But you know, classes that are exactly three hours long have no warmth. If you have something to say, you should keep going for five or six hours. That's the spirit of academics."
"Ahaha."
The man laughed.
"Please come again, professor."
"Yes! See you next time!"
A few days later.
Her son and daughter-in-law.
The father and mother were nowhere to be seen.
"?"
Yeong-hee tilted her head back and forth and asked her granddaughter if she knew where her father and mother had gone.
Then Ji-won answered calmly.
"They went to Japan for missionary work."
"Oh, did they?"
"Yes. They said they finally got work from the church and left quickly. Mother went with him too. They're keeping in touch by phone occasionally, so don't worry, grandmother."
"Oh my. But they should at least tell me before they go. No wait, when you're young, you're supposed to travel abroad and such. That's good. That's really good."
It really was so good!
She had been quite worried lately because her son and daughter-in-law had been fighting so much inside the house. She was afraid they might end up divorcing like she did.
A stable income leads to a stable mind. If they got work and their wallets became full, the fights would decrease too.
"Hmm hmm."
Feeling so good, Yeong-hee wore jeans for the first time in a while.
Until recently, the jeans hadn't fit well because she had gained some weight. But not this time. She successfully put on the pants cleanly.
'That's right, it's me!'
Today was the day she had a date with Yeong-su-ssi, so she paid special attention to her outfit.
When she looked in the mirror, instead of the weight she had gained, only a gaunt body was reflected. It seemed there was no need to diet.
'Cigarettes... huh, where are the cigarettes?'
She searched for a long time and turned the wardrobe inside out, but couldn't find a single pack of cigarettes.
A poor college student. Still, from Yeong-hee's perspective, having invested her romance in a pack of cigarettes, she felt slightly anxious.
'Ah, but I'll be late for the appointment! I'll buy cigarettes later. I need to leave quickly!'
She rushed to leave, but Yeong-hee tripped over the junk from the wardrobe she had turned inside out and fell.
"Ow!"
It hurt.
Still, Yeong-hee resolutely stood up. Actually, today she had a feeling, or rather a certain conviction, that Mr. Yeong-su was going to propose to her.
'For the past few months, he hasn't been spending money on dates. That man. He's got something up his sleeve. Why is he saving money?'
Hehe, Yeong-hee laughed. Even though her fallen knee hurt so much, she was happy.
'Should I play hard to get?'
No matter how poor, she was an intellectual. Wouldn't turning him down once be the proper role-play?
'But what do I do! If he really proposes, I think I'll cry.'
Tears actually came out. Yeong-hee had difficulty distinguishing whether the tears came from her knee hurting or from happiness.
Whimpering, crawling on all fours, Yeong-hee finally made it out of the house.
Today. It had to be today. There was a reason she absolutely had to go out today.
"Ah."
That reason was right now walking down the neighborhood alley, the gray asphalt road crumbled by the traces of time.
"So-won!"
"..."
Pause.
The woman who had been walking demurely down the alley stopped.
The woman turned to look at Yeong-hee. Surprise spread across her beautiful face.
Regardless, Yeong-hee brushed off her knees and quickly ran over to tightly hug her second granddaughter.
"Oh my, So-won! You were alive. Right? You were alive."
"..."
"I, right? I thought your father and mother had abandoned you! Right? You were such a well-behaved child. You were so kind... You suddenly disappeared, you know? How worried I was."
"..."
Hesitantly.
The woman carefully hugged Yeong-hee.
And stroked her grandmother's shoulder with her cheek.
"I'm sorry, grandmother."
"Hm? Sorry for what?"
"For not visiting you often."
"Oh my. As long as you're alive! As long as you're alive, that's enough, child. Our So-won. How did you grow up to be so pretty? Hmm?"
"..."
"Such a pretty child. A beautiful child... What right do they have to make your life so hard? Why torment a child, torment her. Wicked people."
Stroke.
The woman, Yu So-won, Yeong-hee's second granddaughter, stroked her grandmother's back with slender hands even more slender than the grandmother's.
That touch was good. It was gentle. Yeong-hee smiled broadly. Her mom and dad always scolded her for crying and then laughing, but she seemed to do that every day these days.
"Grandmother, where were you going?"
"Hm? Me? Work! Going to school to give a lecture!"
"Oh my. That's right. Grandmother, you were a very famous scholar. If it's not rude, may I come along too?"
"Yes!"
Yeong-hee took her granddaughter's hand and cheerfully went to work. The granddaughter she thought she would never see again had grown up so beautifully!
She was truly happy.
"It's me."
"Yes, please come... Huh? Professor?"
"I'd like to audit today too."
"..."
"She's also my grandmother, you see."
The man looked at Yu So-yeon.
'Oh my.'
It was just a brief exchange of glances, but Yeong-hee, who had embodied the three sacred treasures of dating experience, marriage experience, and divorce experience, could sense it in that moment.
'What do I do?! Our So-won likes that teaching assistant!'
It was quite troublesome.
'Ji-won likes him too! Yeong-su! What should I do about this?!'
Sisters attracted to the same man. This was practically an old drama she had only heard about in rumors.
She even felt a vague sense of betrayal. She had thought he was just a kind teaching assistant, a young person with an academic passion unlike today's youth.
This backstabbing!
Yeong-hee's expression suddenly became stern as she stared at the man.
"Hmm..."
"?"
"You. I'll be watching."
"???"
Of course, they couldn't talk for long.
Yeong-hee was a part-time lecturer. She had work to do, and she had to proceed with the class quickly.
It sounded truly ridiculous, but…
"So, if the world is repeating itself, that ancient debate, that is, the question of whether humans have free will or are mechanistically determined, is instantly resolved!"
"Wow."
"Because if I perform some action now, and the world repeats, what we've thought of as the horizon of the past is actually also the future. Our present determines the future, and furthermore, even the past!"
"..."
"Why is all of human life determined materially? And yet why do humans still feel their actions are free? This contradiction that seemed utterly irreconcilable is solved quite cleanly just by presupposing the repetition of time!"
For the first time, Yeong-hee liked her profession, that is, the title of part-time lecturer.
For some reason, lecturing about time with one man and one granddaughter before her made her feel that way.
"Determinism and free will theory actually coexisted all along. Nietzsche knew this. Then there's one remaining problem. If you determine your entire life yourself, if the present, future, and even the past are all being determined and determining at this very moment... will you accept such a life, or not?"
From some point on, Yu Yeong-hee's time had been stagnant.
But mysteriously, when looking at that man, and from the moment she reunited with her granddaughter today, she felt time flowing.
"Hehe."
She…
Yeong-hee loved Yeong-su.
She loved Ji-won and So-won.
There was much sadness, but much love too.
The girl was truly happy.
Footnotes:
[1] Atavism is the reappearance of a lost ancestral trait in an organism, like a human baby born with a tail or a horse with extra toes, due to the reactivation of dormant genes from distant ancestors, offering evidence of evolution.