That Woman N III
Noh Do-hwa and the Undertaker.
A full year had passed since the last two surviving humans began living together on some stretch of shoreline.
It was right around then that the two of them started sharing the same bed.
The news had come as a real surprise to her too.
Noh Do-hwa, which was to say herself, seemed to have come to feel something almost like pity for that man.
"Undertaker? It's already four in the morning. What are you still doing up out here, moping around like this...?"
"Ah."
When had it started, she wondered. Looking back, that was probably the moment that set it all off.
It was early on, when the two of them had not been together long this cycle.
Summer's green was still bristling with envy at autumn's red when Noh Do-hwa woke in the middle of the night and shuffled out of her bedroom.
A strange thing, then. Wasn't the Undertaker sitting out on the terrace, perfectly at ease?
"My apologies. I thought I was being quiet, but it seems I disturbed your sleep, Do-hwa."
"No. Whether I sleep or not has nothing to do with you... More to the point, what are you doing out here? There's nothing worth seeing in the night view, I'd think..."
Busan. The sandy beach.
The Undertaker had skillfully converted the lobby of a building that had once been a hotel into living quarters.
She had no idea what kind of miracle he'd worked, but in this Azit the drinking water and the electricity still ran without a hitch.
Since it had been a hotel, beds were plentiful. Noh Do-hwa and the Undertaker each kept to separate rooms, ten meters apart.
"Hmm."
There, where night veiled the sea until it existed only as a sound and not a color, the Undertaker hesitated a little.
"The truth is, I haven't mentioned it to you, Do-hwa, but I don't sleep."
"Well, that's hardly strange. They say the older you get, the less you sleep, don't they? Heh. For someone who's lived through tens of thousands of years like it was nothing, of course you'd sleep little..."
"No. The thing is, it's not that I sleep little. I don't sleep at all. None whatsoever."
"...Excuse me?"
"It became this way at some point. Unless I make a deliberate effort, I find I have no need to sleep."
The Undertaker gave a wry smile.
"In a sense, you could say I've transcended humanity. Do-hwa. Rather than spend your days with a man as unfathomable as me, wouldn't it be wiser to defect to some happy refuge as soon as you can?"
"...No. Go screw yourself."
"Oh dear. What a shame."
The Undertaker gave a teasing shrug.
[Do not cross any further than this.]
Behind the Undertaker's pose, all feigned good cheer, an unspoken keep out sign stood planted.
"..."
To trample the fence a person's heart had staked around its boundary required a certain resolve, and a very firm sense of responsibility at that.
Ever since childhood, Noh Do-hwa had hated taking responsibility for anything.
So she said nothing and let the Undertaker's silence slide, treating it as no more than the slightly odd sound of the night waves.
"Hm?"
But.
The strange things did not stop there.
"Undertaker?"
"..."
"Undertaker. Why do you suddenly stop while you're walking? Did you see a ghost or something...?"
The two of them often took strolls through Busan's alleys, where moss and fallen leaves ran rampant now that the people were gone.
In the middle of a stroll, the Undertaker would sometimes halt with no warning at all.
"Ah."
Then he would blink (usually with a hard squint of his left eye) and turn to look back at her.
"My apologies. I drifted off into other thoughts for a moment."
"Hmm..."
"In any case, there's nothing to be gained from spending time with a strange, dull man like me. Do-hwa. I'd be grateful if you could agree to the time seal as soon as possible."
"..."
Strange, just as she'd thought.
'An absolute lack of sleep. Abnormal breaks in his everyday actions.'
Noh Do-hwa was no psychiatrist.
But when you faced patients at a hospital day after day, you tended to develop a certain affinity for mental illness.
Noh Do-hwa's instincts and experience were whispering to her.
'On the surface only his eyes are corpse eyes, but this man...'
So one day.
Noh Do-hwa went through with something the version of herself from the past would never, ever have done.
"Undertaker. Whatever else may be true, what you want is for me to agree to that time seal or whatever it's called, and then hurry up and get out of this world. That's the gist of it...?"
"I've never put it in such harsh terms. But, yes. That's correct."
"Then grant me everything I ask. Once my wishes come true, I'll decide whether or not to accept your proposal..."
"Very well. What is it you'd like to ask?"
"Sleep for me..."
The Undertaker froze.
"Sorry?"
Heh.
Watching how flustered he looked, Noh Do-hwa felt a little pleased with herself.
This man who always carried himself as though he understood, one hundred, two hundred percent, exactly what she meant by everything she said.
She was the one who had led him into the misunderstanding, yet Noh Do-hwa sneered as if it were entirely his fault for misreading her words.
"I mean it literally. In front of me, while I watch over you, lie down in bed and let me see you sleep..."
"Ah. Ahh, that's what you meant."
"Hmm? Then what exactly did you think I meant...?"
"No, it's nothing."
The Undertaker composed his expression and soon fell into thought.
He was probably mulling over the contents of the wish she'd put forward.
For Noh Do-hwa, savoring that face of his was its own little entertainment.
A man she'd known for so short a time, weighing every casual remark she tossed out 'this' seriously, every single time, was more fun to watch than she'd expected.
"Will it really not satisfy you unless you watch me sleep? That's a nasty little hobby. You must have plenty of other wishes, yet you go and pick this one."
"If you're going to refuse my request and just heap on the grumbling, I'll simply kill myself..."
"...Understood. I'll show you tonight."
The Undertaker sighed.
And that night, Noh Do-hwa confirmed once more that her instincts had not been wrong.
"Ah. Ngh..."
The dead of night.
Having forced himself to lie in bed and chase after sleep, the Undertaker was drenched in cold sweat from head to toe.
Spilling out groans far too thick to dismiss as mere sleep-talk, one after another.
"I'm, sorry. Dang Seo-rin. That's not it. It isn't that you're an anomaly... it's me. I've already come too far..."
That voice. That sight.
"..."
Seated in a wooden chair a few steps from the bed, Noh Do-hwa kept watching.
All night long.
"..."
As if even the act of blinking were a waste. As if even letting out a breath would get in the way. Steadily.
Noh Do-hwa gazed at him, and.
'Aha.'
In the end she could only admit it.
That her own self, her own heart, right now.
Was stirred to a degree she could say with certainty she had never felt since the day she was born, an excitement without precedent.
'Ahaa...'
There was something Noh Do-hwa had thought ever since she was young.
That she had probably been born wrong.
She could not wish for anyone's happiness. The sight of others in pain was her happiness, and the more genuine that pain, the deeper her happiness ran.
Noh Do-hwa's fortune, and her misfortune, was that she was smart enough to analyze 'logically' just how twisted and how wrong her own nature was.
And that she had patience exceptional enough to write up the judgments her 'head' reached as a formal order and force them upon this seething 'heart.'
For a person like Noh Do-hwa, happiness was not an essential element, neither for others nor for herself.
So she gave up on happiness, simply.
Instead, she accepted only the tasks she was capable of as her daily routine.
The work of making assistive devices for people with disabilities. By anyone's measure it was a worthy thing to do, and it was work that wouldn't draw the eyes of others, and it was work that let even Noh Do-hwa feel a modest sense of pride.
Great happiness. Great goodness. Great honor.
A measure of poison had seeped into every one of them.
Noh Do-hwa pursued the 'smaller' happiness, goodness, and honor instead. A reality small enough that even someone born the way she was could handle it.
[Do not cross any further than this.]
Noh Do-hwa's heart had always been ringed with yellow tape, with cordon ropes marked 'keep out.'
[Do not cross any further than this.]
Yes. A human being was not decided by what kind of passion or what kind of heart they were born with.
What truly mattered was the way they treated that heart.
For Noh Do-hwa, this yellow tape she had strung up herself was the very pride that proved her own 'humanity.'
And yet.
"It isn't so, Ms. Saintess. It isn't your fault... Ye-ji-ssi. You are not the one in the wrong. If anything, it's this world..."
"..."
To go on watching that man.
The heart she had sealed shut, leaving no gap for so much as a stray sound to leak through, kept striking up dissonant chords.
'I don't know whether it's Dang Seo-rin or whoever. But the people that man is murmuring about now...'
'Every one of them agreed to the [time seal] because they respected that man's wishes.'
Because they were precious, they respected him.
That kind of precious feeling was surely the wellspring of the choices that man's companions had made.
But.
'And me?'
Why was it that across more than tens of thousands of cycles Noh Do-hwa had not once granted that man's proposal?
'Aha.'
Because she could not allow it.
Noh Do-hwa's heart was cramped. A single seat. And so even the concept of 'preciousness' could be permitted to only one person.
Friend? Friendship? Lover? Affection? Great figure? Respect? Slave? Contempt?
A way to skillfully divide the heart up among such a host of words, Noh Do-hwa did not know.
Let her say it once more. The capacity of Noh Do-hwa's heart was always one person, and one alone.
He had to be the friend. He had to be the friendship. He had to be the lover. He had to be the affection. He had to be the great figure. He had to be the respect. He had to be the slave. He had to be the contempt.
Every word that existed in this world had to converge into a single vanishing point.
And here a simple piece of arithmetic took shape.
Her heart had been prepared for one single person, so didn't it follow that the other side, too, ought to be set aside for one person alone?
'Aha,' 'aha,' 'aha,' 'aha.'
Joy spread out from within her chest.
Long ago, Noh Do-hwa had wound cordon ropes around her heart out of consideration and respect for this world.
And now the world had perished.
Long ago, Noh Do-hwa had always kept ice close to her heart's temperature so as not to make anyone unhappy.
And now the people were gone.
All of them, save the man before her.
"..."
Slowly.
She felt them loosening. The cordon ropes.
Noh Do-hwa rose from the chair and stepped close to the bed. She climbed up, and as if even that were not enough, she looked down at the Undertaker's face from right above it.
A breath spilled out. Her own.
"Heh."
The steam that rose, hot, from that short laugh was the static electricity sparking up as the cordon ropes were torn apart.
Noh Do-hwa stroked the Undertaker's cheek.
"...!"
The moment she ran her hand over the tear-stained cheek, her spine rang with a jolt, as if she'd been electrocuted.
Noh Do-hwa flung off her glove. And once more, this time from even closer, she felt his cheek.
"..."
Astonishingly, it felt good.
'Ah.'
Her head spun.
Just as she'd thought, just as she'd been certain. It would turn out this way. Because they had been certain it would turn out this way, her past selves had probably scraped together all the junk scattered across the ground and built up a barrier wall.
That trash was made of language. 'Because I respect you.' 'Because I still believe in the line.' 'Because not hurting anyone is the only right answer.' 'Because not crumbling is what nobility means.'
A moment ago that mountain of trash collapsed. Along with the cordon ropes that had bound her heart tight.
She kissed him.
"...!"
The eyes of the Undertaker, who had been moaning through his nightmare all this while, snapped open.
At first he seemed unable to believe the scene unfolding before him, and Noh Do-hwa liked that bewilderment.
She bit the tip of a tongue. Whose tongue it was was hard to tell. The taste of blood came, and that taste, too, Noh Do-hwa liked.
She kissed him once more.
"N-Noh Do-hwa…?"
When a gap finally opened just wide enough for his voice to squeeze through, the Undertaker spoke.
"What is this… right now..."
"I do not wish for happiness."
Noh Do-hwa said. Speaking was a struggle.
Even so, she said what had to be said.
"Neither my happiness. Nor yours."
This man before her always acted so insufferably, as if he knew exactly what she meant by everything she said.
But thinking on it now, perhaps that had been a signal in the Undertaker's own way. 'I understand you.'
She, Noh Do-hwa, was trying the very same thing now.
A moment ago the Undertaker had been about to ask, 'what is this.' But that was trivial.
The meaning his question truly held inside it carried an entirely different resonance.
[If this happens, if we become this kind of relationship, what is to become of the two of us?]
This was the real question.
And so, Noh Do-hwa answered him.
"I simply wish to have you."
She was giving him her answer.
"Your grief, your sorrow. Whatever it may be... all the screwed-up things. Every last one of them. Think of it all as having been reserved for me."
"..."
"Blaming yourself? That's fine. Reproach yourself to your heart's content. Only, this is what you must understand..."
Noh Do-hwa whispered. In this posture there was no need to move her head much, which was comfortable.
"I had been longing, desperately, for you to become this way."
"..."
"Do you understand? Even what you think of as the worst, to me it looks like nothing but the fruit of a sweet wish..."
Heh. Without meaning to, a laugh slipped out.
"You asked me what my wish was, Undertaker?"
She was glad.
"I want nothing other than you, exactly as you are right now."
In a trashy world, the trash had vanished. At long last only two pieces of trash remained.
Noh Do-hwa reached out and ran her hand the length of the white throat of the trash she had gotten her hands on at the very, very end.
"So."
"..."
"You, too, want only me..."
The one who had won the gamble was herself.
-x-X-x-
* * *
There had never been a time when life was not like this, but lately the Undertaker had been especially confused.
"Did you sleep well...?"
"Ah. Yes. You too, Ms. Noh Do-hwa."
There was no need to point out who had caused the confusion.
Aside from the Undertaker himself, there was only one human left on earth anyway.
"Hmm."
Noh Do-hwa, receiving his morning greeting from the bed, smiled with sleep still lingering in her eyes.
"Even after all this, it's still Ms. Noh Do-hwa? You're impressively tiresome..."
The Undertaker was speechless for a moment.
A glance should not carry any fragrance.
And yet, from her look, a lemon scent seemed to bloom all at once, and the Undertaker shook his head as if to brush the body scent from his hair.
"...Back then, I always addressed you by your full rank, Management Captain Noh Do-hwa. Even now, from my perspective, this feels rather awkward."
"Hmm? Well, isn't that something. No, then again, that's none of my business. If anything, I like it. Please, keep finding it awkward."
"..."
At this point, even the Undertaker, who lived trapped in the past, could not help but notice.
The Noh Do-hwa before him wanted to be treated as someone who existed once and only once.
Uniqueness. Was this too something that ought to be called the aesthetics of the fleeting moment?
Noh Do-hwa calmly did things that would have been unimaginable in previous cycles.
As if all the "Noh Do-hwa data" he had collected until now were utterly useless.
For example, she was like that even now.
"Mmm."
"..."
Noh Do-hwa grabbed both his cheeks, then suddenly kissed him. No. Calling it a kiss was far too tame.
It was a motion like she meant to bite his tongue off.
As if she could not forgive him for the very act of drawing oxygen from the world, as if the only air he was allowed to receive had to be air filtered through her own lungs.
A tenacious, sticky act of breath-eating.
"..."
"..."
Their breathing shifted, and shadow seeped into the bed.
It was not because clouds had covered the sunlight beyond the window. It was only that two portions of shadow had overlapped and fallen across each other's bodies.
Just as breath, filtered through breath, seemed to take on poison, there was a faint addictiveness to bodies slipping into shadow too.
"Today..."
The shadow tilted up the corner of its lips.
"Do you have plans...?"
"Yes. I do."
"That's wonderful..."
"May I ask why that's wonderful?"
"Because it means there is still plenty of your time for me to ruin today as well..."
Watching the shadow deepen a little more right in front of him, the Undertaker suddenly thought:
Ah.
He might have come to cherish this poison.
* * *
After laying the last human down, who had rolled from a night's sleep straight into an afternoon nap, the Undertaker went down to the beach and found a woman sitting on a lonely bench.
"Good morning... No, good afternoon, Undertaker."
The woman's hair carried a pink hue.
In truth, from the Undertaker's point of view, even calling this thing a woman was inappropriate. It was not human, so how could he call it a person?
It was certainly an anomaly. But there was not even a clue to guess what kind of anomaly it was.
"...Go Yuri."
So all he could do was call her by her proper name.
"Yes! Hwaah. Now that everybody's gone, it suddenly feels so lonely. Ah, Guild Leader, sit here."
Go Yuri squirmed toward the edge of the bench and patted the empty seat beside her.
"..."
After a moment's thought, the Undertaker perched on the far tip of the bench, as far away from Go Yuri as possible.
Seeing that, Go Yuri giggled, then suddenly lifted her head.
"Oh, right, right. I brought a present for you, Guild Leader!"
"A present?"
"Here."
Go Yuri pulled out a placard from somewhere. Before he could even wonder how something had popped out of thin air, clunk.
Go Yuri hung the placard around the Undertaker's neck.
Written on it in elegant brush calligraphy were the following words.
[I am a promiscuous and obscene failure.]
"..."
"Lewd stuff is bad!!"
Go Yuri crossed her arms in an X, while making the beep-beep-beep sound herself with her mouth.
The Undertaker was dumbfounded.
"No, what..."
"Ah. That line just now was a parody of something. You didn't catch it? Was it too old? Mmm, well. Of course you wouldn't get it. This cycle's Guild Leader never got close to Oh Dok-seo in the first place."
"...Oh Dok-seo?"
The Undertaker frowned.
"Who is that... Wait. Don't tell me you mean the child who was summoned to the Busan Station concourse?"
"Yep!"
"I don't know why you suddenly brought that child up. It's been thousands of years since I've even heard that name. Was that child, by any chance, one of your followers?"
"Haah."
Go Yuri sighed.
"A Guild Leader who still hasn't learned either the method or the habit of letting go of himself isn't very interesting."
Why was it? The instant he witnessed that sigh from right in front of him, a chill ran down the back of the Undertaker's neck.
The source of that dread was her eyes.
The eyelids of the person who had always smiled with narrowed eyes were now lifted, and she was staring straight at him.
For an instant, everything seemed to stop.
"..."
Blink. Only after Go Yuri withdrew her gaze did the Undertaker realize that he had forgotten to breathe for a moment.
And that, before he knew it, he had already risen from the bench and taken hold of his sword hilt, ready to draw at any moment.
"..."
Looking at the Undertaker as he dropped into a combat stance, Go Yuri smiled again.
"Hmm. Your instincts are still alive, at least. That's impressive in its own way. To think your instincts still haven't died, even after you've declined this much."
"You are..."
The Undertaker moved his lips.
In truth, he wanted to move his hand. He wanted to draw his sword right away and cut that neck open.
He had already tried that dozens of times in the past.
He remained motionless only because he knew death meant nothing to the being before him.
Even so, the Undertaker's mind had to labor without rest to keep a bridle on his killing intent.
"What exactly are you?"
"I'm nothing at all."
Go Yuri brushed off her knees and stood.
Then, with a playful hup, she took a boxer's stance and smiled.
"And I'm everything too."
"..."
"Wow. Seriously. Don't tell me you don't know this one either? That's disappointing.
Go Yuri laughed.
"Then again, compared with the heroine you're with right now, she'd count as ordinary."
"Are you human?"
"Ah. Good question. Though an even better question is [Am I human?]."
"..."
"I haven't lived a life that was somebody's workbook or prep sheet, enough to let a person who can't answer their own question first see my answer sheet. A person always has to be a question unto themselves, and only ever the real test. It wouldn't do to settle for being nothing more than somebody else's practice."
What on earth was she talking about?
The Undertaker, as he was now, had trouble understanding it.
Go Yuri smiled faintly.
"Wave."
"What?"
"It's pretty. The wave."
She gestured toward the horizon.
Drawn by that finger, the Undertaker turned his head aside without thinking.
Waves were breaking. A deep navy that existed only as the shadow of sunlight layered over itself again and again, lending a depth that sunlight had never possessed on its own.
Go Yuri had said it was pretty. The Undertaker too lost himself for a moment, looking at the wave, at its sound, and at its boundless blue.
What was beauty?
"..."
There was no beauty in describing sunlight as sunlight.
To call sunlight beautiful, first an entire mass of rock had to be coated in nothing but water. It was the shadow of water.
Life had to become a single tree, blocking sunlight and letting it through again. It was the shadow of the earth.
Sunlight was still sunlight, and yet now it had become the deep navy of the sea and the blue of the tree.
Had he, perhaps, spent his whole life trying only to become sunlight?
Every human was born as foul water and filth. A shallow stream, too meager for anyone even to swim in.
For one stream of filth to become a sea, it had no choice but to accept all the other filth as well.
Otherwise, it could only become a swamp.
That was something Zarathustra had said.
The Undertaker was the one who remembered everything, the human who had lived the longest. But whose filth had he ever accepted, even once?
Was he, at present, a sea, or a swamp?
That question brushed past the Undertaker like a waking dream.
When he turned back to look beside him again, Go Yuri was already gone.
"..."
She had always seemed bizarre and strange to him, yet for some reason, her vanishing from that spot did not feel strange at all.
And the Undertaker was certain.
He would never again meet the being called Go Yuri.
The Undertaker turned away from the beach.
Rustle. Crunch. Listening to his footsteps stamping the sand, he felt that he was closer to sand than to the sea.
"Ah. You're back...?"
At the hotel Azit, Noh Do-hwa, who had woken up late, was waiting for him. She had been working on something.
She wore little more than a doctor's coat.
"Yes. Our food was about to run out, so I brought a few supplies. But Noh Do-hwa, what are you working on?"
"Ah. This...?"
Noh Do-hwa smiled faintly.
"Your eye..."
"Sorry?"
"Your eye. Your left eyeball. You said that if you closed your right eye and looked at the world only through your left, those shitty memories of the past would flash back on their own and torment you so badly that you couldn't even live a normal life, right...?"
Shake.
Noh Do-hwa shook the tool and the thing she was working on. Sure enough, one of the parts was a rounded lens.
"Pull your eye out..."
"..."
The Undertaker closed his lips.
A moment later, he spoke.
"I treat those visions as a kind of responsibility. They are all people I sent away. Whether they make me happy or sad, all of that is the portion assigned to me."
"Well, I figured you were probably jerking yourself off with some excuse like that..."
Noh Do-hwa parted her lips.
"But do you need it? That...?"
"..."
"Please look only at me..."
The sound of waves came in.
Even if sunlight stopped, the waves were always crashing there.
"Ah."
He was a swamp. Even so, if there were a night that would call the stench and rot of that swamp beautiful, then living as a swamp and dying as a swamp might not be so bad. He ended up thinking that.
"Yes."
The Undertaker nodded.
"Please perform the procedure."
"..."
Noh Do-hwa set down the tools and the work. Then, with her doctor's coat fluttering, she walked up to the Undertaker and hugged him tight.
She rose onto her toes. That still was not quite enough. The Undertaker lowered his head a little, and only then did their breaths overlap.
"Do you have plans today...?"
"Not particularly."
"Tomorrow...?"
"Tomorrow too."
"And the day after that...?"
"I don't think I have plans for any of them."
The Undertaker hugged Noh Do-hwa and lightly lifted her up. Their eyes met at the same height.
"Noh Do-hwa. From now on, my time is yours."
"..."
A lemon scent flowed from Noh Do-hwa's lips.
"Then you may take all of my time as well..."
The next day.
The Undertaker lost his left eye.
The newly transplanted eye always gave off a lemon-tasting body scent.
-x-X-x-
A few days had passed since the surgery.
"How's the pain? Does the left eye still itch or sting at all...?"
"No. I'm fine."
"Hmm, that's a relief. It was my first time gouging out and replacing a person's eyeball, so I worried something might've gone wrong..."
For the past few days, the Undertaker had gone about his life with a black eyepatch wrapped around his face.
It covered not just the left eye but the right one too. Thanks to that, he got to taste what it felt like to be a caveman shut inside a dark cavern.
And the material of this eyepatch was, well, very Noh Do-hwa, if anything ever was. It was none other than the leather glove she usually wore, mended into shape.
She claimed she'd disinfected it thoroughly, yet there was no telling why Noh Do-hwa's scent, that distinctive lemon fragrance, wafted up so strongly from the eyepatch's lining.
Total darkness. And fragrance.
For these past few days, that was the whole of the world granted to the Undertaker.
"Honestly. A beginner, and you went and performed the surgery with that much confidence? Do you know how easily the optic nerve gets damaged? What would you have done if it had gone wrong?"
"Well. Would anything serious really have come of it...?"
From beyond the blackout the eyepatch draped over him, Noh Do-hwa answered in a perfectly unbothered voice.
"Your body's tough as a damn beast anyway, and I confirm that every single day, so. I wasn't particularly worried..."
"..."
The Undertaker was at a loss for words. Seeing him like that, Noh Do-hwa snickered again, which only made him angrier.
"No. Look, Noh Do-hwa. I'm begging you, please, just curse me out instead."
"Why...?"
A mocking sneer.
"Not used to me being like this, are you...?"
"Of course I'm not. The Noh Do-hwa I've known all this time barely said a single word along those lines."
"Oho. Then you can surely guess how I'd answer that request of yours..."
She'd answer with something like, 'Awkward? No, I love it even more,' or, 'If this is the only side I've shown in this cycle, then I'd better keep it up from here on.'
The Undertaker sighed.
He really had ended up dating a strange woman.
"Enough. Can I take the eyepatch off soon? Being waited on by you from morning to night every day is uncomfortable too."
"Hmm? I find it fun, though...?"
"I'm sorry, alright, I'm sorry. And I'd like to check whether the eyeball that just moved into my skull rolls properly."
"Just wait a little longer..."
Noh Do-hwa chuckled.
"There's something I'm preparing..."
Preparing? What sort of preparation did she mean?
"It's a secret..."
When Noh Do-hwa said it was a secret, the Undertaker felt oddly afraid.
She'd already snatched one of his eyeballs, and now what kind of bizarre scheme was she cooking up, he worried, and then, all at once, he thought.
'Afraid? Me?'
The Undertaker's eyes, hidden behind the pitch-black eyepatch, twitched.
'Of course it isn't some enormous dread. It's just an emotion, half worry and half anticipation, over what unimaginable thing that person might pull. But...'
When was the last time I felt this?
Something this small, this trivial.
"..."
The days flew by in an instant.
Over those few days the Undertaker had to endure things he'd never experienced in his whole life.
In truth, this person's claim that she was hiding some secret was a bald-faced lie, and it got to the point where he suspected she was simply running every kind of experiment she'd ever wanted to try on a "partner who couldn't see what was in front of him."
"Take the eyepatch off already!"
When the fifteenth day finally arrived, the Undertaker, despite having long believed he'd cast off his humanity ages ago, found himself shouting for the first time in forever to protect his "humanity," that is, his dignity.
"The groceries need restocking soon too, and we've been holed up in the hotel all day. What kind of nonsense is this!"
"Hmm? Weren't you enjoying it too...?"
"That's a separate matter! Even real beasts pass their days more wholesomely than us!"
"Hm. A split personality, perhaps... It's quite uncanny how a person changes this much between day and night."
"Eyepatch!"
"Yes, yes, understood. I'll take it off tomorrow. Honestly. A man without a shred of patience in him..."
Noh Do-hwa muttered, 'If it were up to me, I'd lock you in darkness for about half a year.'
A chill ran clean down the Undertaker's spine.
'It would've been so much easier if at least my aura were intact.'
A year ago, after he'd sealed Yu Ji-won at the Convenience Store, the use of aura had somehow become impossible.
The Undertaker couldn't make sense of it. What on earth was the connection between sealing Yu Ji-won and his aura?
Just then, something gripped his chin.
"..."
The world's destruction did have one upside. There was no need to agonize over exactly which word to drop into a parenthetical blank labeled "something" or "someone."
Now, if someone in the world had grabbed the Undertaker's chin, it could only be Noh Do-hwa's slender fingers.
"What were you just thinking about...?"
"..."
A sudden mischief welled up in the Undertaker.
Was there such a thing as a plague for ways of thinking and feeling too? Maybe, from living with her, he'd caught Noh Do-hwa's poison himself.
"Ah. I was thinking about another woman."
He wanted to torment her a little too.
"Yu Ji-won, she's called. I think I mentioned her to you once before. Back when you reigned as the Management Captain, she always held the position of your second-in-command--."
His lips were sealed off.
His tongue was bitten. His breath was stolen. He stole some too.
The Undertaker thought.
When two people craved each other this often, already so accustomed and yet acting as if there were still room to grow more accustomed, there was no way their scents or their ways of thinking wouldn't bleed into each other.
Only two strands of time remained to flow in this world.
By chance, those two remaining strands seemed to enjoy knotting themselves together.
The next day.
The long-awaited day the eyepatch came off.
"Patient Undertaker. Watch your feet. We're heading into the shower now..."
"I can wash myself!"
"I know. But, so what...?"
"This is a human rights violation!"
"Aha. If you're an animal and not a human, then there are no human rights to violate either..."
That day Noh Do-hwa seemed even more fussy than usual.
Every other day she'd risen at her leisure, only after the sunlight blazed bright, yet for some reason today she'd been up since dawn.
The time she spent on the shower was unusually thorough too. Normally she finished within an hour at the longest, for fear he'd catch a cold, but today it felt like it ran past two hours.
"You're all clean now, Patient Undertaker. There. Now it's time to put your socks on first..."
"Be honest. Noh Do-hwa. You only got that orthotics-and-prosthetics technician's license so you could watch patients flounder helplessly without you, didn't you?"
"My. You've gotten your hands on the most secret information of my entire life..."
"I've literally roamed the whole world meeting every human there is, and you're the first person I've ever met who's so thoroughly made of nothing but nasty hobbies."
"Oh dear. And yet that nasty hobby happens to be your type, apparently..."
"..."
"Lift your neck a bit. It's hard to do up the tie..."
From the tips of his toes to the crown of his head.
When she told him to spread his arms, he spread them; when she told him to plant his legs, he planted them. The Undertaker changed into the whole outfit in the spirit of playing along with Noh Do-hwa's strange game.
'These clothes feel a little tight, though.'
You could tell just from the way she went around in nothing but a doctor's coat every day, but Noh Do-hwa mostly preferred a loose, roomy style.
Not the sense of sight but touch. She valued the sensation felt through the body overwhelmingly more than what was seen with the eyes.
She didn't impose on others what she didn't impose on herself. She'd never demanded any particular fashion style from the Undertaker either.
So, it was a strange thing.
"Good. All done..."
"Is this the part where I get to take it off?"
"No. Just follow me for a moment..."
She gripped his hand firmly.
Where were they headed? The Undertaker was curious, but he walked along in silence, letting Noh Do-hwa's hand and her steps lead the way.
The sound of the waves grew faint, little by little.
"..."
In the past he'd have spread his aura and grasped the surrounding terrain through ki-sense.
Now that didn't work well.
Every time he sealed people. Every time he taxidermied his precious companions into transparent graves, the Undertaker slowly weakened.
By now he was nothing more than an ordinary man who just happened to have a slightly tough body. The very one who had stood against every anomaly and wiped out all of humanity, this feeble. It was a laughable state of affairs.
Step.
In that darkness.
In the dead center of a dark where neither the direction of the path he walked nor the names of the alleyways, nothing at all, could be made out.
Step, step.
The only thing he could picture vividly, as if drawn before his eyes, was his companion who held his hand firmly and walked on. Noh Do-hwa's footsteps and movements, those alone.
Step. Step, step.
It made sense, since the two of them had spent so much time together.
A year. It might feel like a short stretch of time, but if you had to share it alone with just one other person in this universe, that too was long enough.
The pace of her steps. The angle at which she swung out her legs. The pressure felt in her fingers. The slight breeze brushing past his bangs each time she tilted her head to glance back and check whether he was keeping up.
Within his darkness, she alone grew distinct.
"Ah, we've arrived..."
Her steps stopped.
"The eyepatch. I'd like you to take it off yourself..."
"..."
A nod.
The Undertaker, with a careful touch, undid the shade that had hidden his vision for over fifteen days, and.
Dodging the razor blades of sunlight that came slashing sharply at him, he squinted for a moment.
But it was only for the briefest moment.
"..."
The scene that rose up before him.
A sight more mirage than any mirage seized his gaze, leaving him no room to spare for something like the sun.
The clothes Noh Do-hwa wore were pure white. By color alone they were no different from the doctor's coat she usually liked to wear.
But he swore, the Undertaker had never once seen Noh Do-hwa wearing clothes like the ones she wore now. Not up until now.
And never, for all eternity to come.
It was a wedding dress.
"..."
In that instant, the Undertaker felt he understood why sunlight was pure white. The reason the color white existed in the world.
Before him, Noh Do-hwa looked at his face, and.
"..."
Without a single word, she simply smiled, a little crookedly.
This was Babel Tower Plaza. It was a place that had once been called by that name. But with the ambition to link every road in the world from this very spot all forgotten, the plaza lay sprawled out as a desolate vacant lot.
In that place with no guests and no officiant, the two held both hands tightly. There weren't even any vows.
"..."
"..."
Words were never something needed to begin with. When a person didn't try to grope after and interpret another through words, she became fully herself to him, and he became fully himself to her.
He happened to be wearing black clothes at that moment. A tuxedo.
The black shade brought out the white sunlight. When the shade stood beside the sunlight, it became not darkness but a place of rest.
That was the reason black and white existed in the world.
And a single step behind, the Undertaker realized that the mirages which had tormented him for so long were no longer visible.
That was right. The only mirage permitted to him now belonged to a single person.
He pressed his lips to hers without a word.
A moment later, she too quietly laid her lips over his.
It was a truly curious thing. Of all the kisses the two had shared since they'd fallen into this remote place, today's was the gentlest.
"I think I'd better stop regressing."
"Why...?"
"I don't have the confidence to meet you again once you've lost the memories of right now. I might end up killing you."
"Oh dear..."
She laughed.
"Then isn't it a simple matter of just regressing together...?"
"There's no way to do that."
"Well. From the looks of it the eyeball rolls fine. So if we swap your body and mine bit by bit, maybe, with some luck, the regression ability gets transplanted into me too, wouldn't you say...?"
"Are you actually insane?"
"Eh. Even if it fails, the worst that happens is we just die together. Live together. Or die together. A simple set of choices..."
That was true enough.
"More than that, these clothes are a pain in the ass. Hauling you along on the walk over nearly killed me from how stuffy it was. I'll never put it on again after today, so go ahead and burn it into your eyeballs to your heart's content..."
"It doesn't matter."
The Undertaker smiled.
"Right now, for the first time, I'm grateful for my memory."
Had he gone wrong? Probably.
Had he ended up here by piling one wrong choice on another? Maybe.
But for the times when he went wrong, there had been someone who waited thousands, tens of thousands of stretches of time for him.
He was not unhappy. Even at this moment of reaching destruction, unhappiness had been unable, in the end, to swallow him whole.
Her too.
Because the world had been destroyed, 'that man' was always a single person.
Because humanity had gone extinct, 'that woman' was always a single person.
Because he and she had waited at the final terminal, this world, it seems, would never once meet a bad ending, for all eternity.
-That Woman N. Fin.
-x-X-x-
* *
Click.
"You son of a bitch!"
...
"What kind of bullshit is that!"
"Hoeee... Yes?"
"You son of a bitch! If you're gonna drag people here out of nowhere, the first thing out of your mouth should be an apology. Where the hell do you get off running your mouth instead!"
"No, hoeee. The thing is, this isn't something I did, I'm just one lowly handler..."
"You son of a bitch! Either way, you're saying you're the one in charge! Huh? You gonna apologize or not?"
"Buuut... The seniors told me people like this are rare these days. They said humans have gotten cunning, so provocation never works on them anymore..."
"..."
[1. An extra anyway. There's no way someone who carelessly leads with curses the moment he opens his mouth is hiding potential I don't already know about. Saving the world keeps me busy enough; no time to waste on a bit player. Leave him be.]
[2. There are no extras in this world. Who's to say he doesn't have some reason, like needing to go see his family right now? There's still much I don't know. Keep him alive.]
Click.
[1. An extra anyway. There's no way someone who carelessly leads with curses the moment he opens his mouth is hiding potential I don't already know about. Saving the world keeps me busy enough; no time to waste on a bit player. Leave him be.] ◀
Click.
"Ah. So you're here."
"You son of a bitch! Is what I say a joke to you?"
"Hoi."
...
"Done now? All right! Everyone, kindly follow my command!"
"Hieeeek! S-someone died...! Someone! Hiik, they just up and died! Hiiiik! A person, a person died...!"
Click.
[Notice of Service Termination.]
Click.
[Hello, players. This is the Admin of the Infinite Metagame.]
[We are thinking of setting out on a new journey.]
[It may take a very long time to reach our new destination, but somewhere at the end of the looping Möbius strip, we hope to meet you all again.]
[Thank you.]
[I truly want to meet you once more.]
"..."
[1. As expected. No human relationship survives once it's been tainted by the void poison of the Outer Gods. The void stains even every last corner of the human heart. Even the Saintess and Noh Do-hwa were powerless before it. Humanity amounted to no more than this.]
[2. ■■■ appears before you.]
Click.
[1. As expected. No human relationship survives once it's been tainted by the void poison of the Outer Gods. The void stains even every last corner of the human heart. Even the Saintess and Noh Do-hwa were powerless before it. Humanity amounted to no more than this.] ◀
Click.
"Wait."
...
"Hold on, Admin of the Infinite Metagame. If you have the understanding and reason to grasp human language, then don't close the server just yet, and hear my proposal."
...
"As you can see, I am not corrupted by you. The same goes for you. If we don't want to repeat an eternal stalemate, don't you think a compromise of sorts is needed here?"
[The 'Admin of the Infinite Metagame' always devotes its full effort to providing you with the best service.]
[Please leave your inquiry.]
"Let's cooperate."
...
"I don't know how many anomalies as mighty as you exist on Earth, but help me subjugate them. From your standpoint they're competitors too, aren't they?"
[The 'Admin of the Infinite Metagame' works day and night to fix the bugs that occur within the game.]
"In return, don't go trying to bewitch me either. A nonaggression pact. As long as you don't betray me, I won't harm you either."
[Awaiting response.]
"For the record, this is the first and last time I'll extend such an offer, Admin of the Infinite Metagame."
[Awaiting response.]
"Because I could just wipe out every human living on the surface and erase the very 'customers' you'd ever infect."
[Awaiting response.]
...
[Your response has been completed.]
Click.
Click.
Click.
* * *
[A new cycle has begun.]
The familiar mechanical sound.
Listening to a message that sounded like a foreigner of some other nationality forcing out each Korean syllable, the Undertaker lifted his eyelids.
A place more revolting than the Beginning Village.
The tutorial dungeon, the Busan Station concourse, came into his view.
"Wh-what? Where is this?"
"Huh? Busan Station? I was in the park just a moment ago..."
"Reverend? Reverend, where are you?"
Murmur, murmur.
People who had come to their senses in the same concourse slowly cranked up the volume of the noise.
But the Undertaker paid their racket no mind.
It was, after all, nothing but static, no help whatsoever to the 'clear.'
Within the noisy crowd, there was only one sound he listened for.
[The 'Admin of the Infinite Metagame' blesses you.]
That was the Constellation's message, audible in all the world to the Undertaker alone.
"Hmm."
The corner of the Undertaker's mouth curved in secret.
He carried on with his inner monologue, as was his habit. There was no need to show anything outwardly just to converse with his own Constellation.
'A blessing, is it. Yes, good. A blessing. I'd like a halfway useful one this time.'
The last cycle.
Working with the Infinite Metagame, the Undertaker had at last succeeded in subjugating yet another Outer God, the anomaly called the puppet master.
A formidable foe.
And from everything the Undertaker had observed so far, each time he subjugated another anomaly, the quality of the 'service' the Infinite Metagame provided got upgraded a little further.
'Now then. Tell me what blessing's been added this time.'
That was why he was quietly letting a flicker of anticipation show even now, having begun the same repeating life all over again.
[The 'Admin of the Infinite Metagame' informs you that, from now on, you may freely use the status window service from the moment the server opens.]
"Oh."
The Undertaker let out an idle whistle.
Right then, in the concourse, the Tutorial Fairy had appeared and was getting cussed out thoroughly by 'Mr. Bullshit-Cursing Man.'
Since every eye in the room was fixed on that spot, no one found the Undertaker's whistle the least bit odd.
'Not bad. The status window always used to open only after a while, which was a pain. Now I can even peek at the status windows of the guys who died off at Busan Station.'
[Announcing an additional update.]
[The status window now provides the player with more detailed information.]
[The skill tree! A detailed roadmap is given for which skills can be developed and how, covering the potential of NPCs.]
NPC.
A word that quietly made him uncomfortable no matter how often he heard it.
But the Undertaker didn't bother pointing it out.
He had realized long ago that pointing it out would never change the way the 'Admin of the Infinite Metagame' thought.
The Infinite Metagame was not human. Just because its messages were displayed in human language didn't mean he could expect any human warmth from it.
'Fine. Then let's try it out, quickly.'
Without letting any of his discomfort show, the Undertaker looked around.
'Let's see. Someone usable... Oh, dear.'
Just then, blood burst out across the concourse.
Unable to endure 'Mr. Bullshit-Cursing Man's' verbal abuse any longer, the Fairy had blown his head apart.
The usual WWE..., no. UFC, made the Undertaker snicker.
'At this rate I won't get to confirm that man's potential either. Well, he was an extra anyway, so he'd obviously have been useless.'
[The 'Admin of the Infinite Metagame' agrees with your opinion.]
'Shall I go find some decent talent.'
The Undertaker combed every inch of the tutorial dungeon, checking the stats of the NPCs.
Of course, even then, he refrained from any conduct too conspicuous, or any words and actions that might come across as cold-blooded.
Because the Undertaker was a kind person? Hardly. If it meant erasing the anomalies from this world, the Undertaker would sacrifice anything.
That list of sacrifices included, naturally, ordinary people, and awakeners too. Most of humanity would hesitate a little if asked, 'Is the Undertaker a good person?'
So the reason the Undertaker didn't show his ruthless side lay elsewhere.
'Infinite Metagame.'
[Awaiting response.]
'The Saintess of Seoul is surely spying on this area even now, isn't she?'
ID, Saintess. Sighting location, Yongsan, Seoul.
That awakener, all too familiar to the Undertaker, possessed astonishingly powerful abilities. Clairvoyance was one of them.
[Response: Affirmative.]
[The one currently codenamed 'Saintess' monitors the state of the Busan Station tutorial dungeon at an average interval of 120 seconds.]
Of course, being strong didn't mean she was safe from the void poison of the Outer Gods.
Not a true Constellation that bestowed blessings on him alone, but a false pretender to the title of Constellation.
Even so, if he didn't want to drag down the Saintess's regard for him, he still needed to hide his cold-blooded face for now.
'No different from usual... Just be quick to tell me the moment the surveillance cuts out. That's when I have to take care of Lee Baek.'
[Response: Affirmative.]
A little later.
[The 'Admin of the Infinite Metagame' informs you that, as of now, the Saintess's surveillance has lifted.]
[Time remaining: 118 seconds.]
Tap!
The Undertaker broke into his footwork without the slightest hesitation. There was no wavering in his stride.
In this period, in this hunting ground, he had of course committed to memory exactly where Lee Baek's gang was holed up.
Kwaaang!
The Undertaker entered, smashing down the door of the underground restaurant Lee Baek's crew had seized.
"Huh?"
Two awakeners standing guard were sent flying by the fragments of the blasted door. Instant death.
The crew, led by Lee Baek, was tormenting someone in the middle of the restaurant.
A glance.
The Undertaker checked quickly out of the corner of his eye and saw a green-haired woman lying facedown. Marks of kicking covered her clothes, and a sandwich was mashed flat in front of her.
Well. If she wanted to eat, they'd probably stomped the sandwich and told her to lick a shoe instead.
'Truly the sort of thing trashy extras would do.'
Monopoly of resources. Class stratification of distribution. Proof of class through violence. The same old tired repertoire.
In this world, only the Undertaker was a being free from the gravity of 'the predictable.' He was a player.
The extras all stood there with their mouths gaping, staring at the wreckage of the door the player had smashed with dumbfounded faces.
"Hey, what do you think you're doing..."
And that became his last expression.
Pow! The Undertaker swung his fist, and even from that distance, Lee Baek's head burst.
Even against a group of extras, he didn't pointlessly attack the small fry first.
If anything, precisely because it was a group of extras, hunting the leader first was all the more proper.
Behold.
"H-hiieeeek!"
"Run! A monster! It's a monster!"
With the leader gone, the rest of the pack finally grasped reality a little and went scrambling away in a stampede.
But there was nowhere to run. The Undertaker had already sealed off the restaurant's exit.
They only served to prove that the Busan Station tutorial dungeon was a time-honored hotspot for 'head explosions.'
"Whew."
The Undertaker unclenched his fist.
'Time?'
[Time remaining: 63 seconds.]
'Plenty.'
After cleanly dealing with even the last extra stuffed inside the restaurant's refrigerator, the Undertaker returned to his original spot.
"..., ..."
There was a survivor there.
The green-haired woman who had been exposed to Lee Baek's gang's violence still lay facedown in a hunched posture.
"Hmm."
He knew her name. Sim Ah-ryeon.
A passable enough healer, but her growth ceiling was too clear-cut to make her worth fielding in a party.
A third-rate awakener, in the literal sense.
She had shown her face the times he gathered awakeners from across the country to found an allied army, but as a rule, he had never met her again once the Busan Station tutorial dungeon was over.
"Hey."
The Undertaker bent down and crouched.
"Let me ask you something."
"..."
"You must have felt people dying and all kinds of chaos breaking out around you. So why are you still keeping your head down, not lifting it even once?"
"..."
Mumble, mumble.
A voice wormed its way out from between the disheveled hair and the bloodstained floor.
"Because if I, see your face. You might kill me."
"Kill? Who would?"
"You."
"..."
"I, didn't see anything."
The Undertaker's eyes widened.
[Time remaining: 40 seconds.]
His interest was piqued.
For the first time in a very long while.
"I won't kill you."
She didn't lift her head.
"I promise. On my life."
Still she didn't lift her head.
"Even if I have to sew your eyes shut and cut out your tongue, even if I take you along as a slave, I will not take your life here and now."
Only then did she lift her head.
Their eyes met.
The instant they did, gooseflesh rose on the back of the Undertaker's neck.
The pupils. They were not a human's. They were a beast's.
Pure beast's eyes were there, eyes that treated everything other than itself as 'an animal of a lower grade than itself.'
The eyebrows were anxious, the eyes frail. Lingering sentiment seemed to cling to the eyelids, and at the corner of her mouth was the heh-heh survival strategy of a timid herbivore.
But the Undertaker saw through every one of those scattered tricks of disguise and pierced straight to the woman's essence alone.
Because... he was of the same kind.
"..."
"..."
Her eyes suddenly settled into calm.
The corner of her mouth no longer wore a clumsy or loose smile. She had dropped the act, the performance that had deceived everyone but the Undertaker up until now.
[Time remaining: 20 seconds.]
The Undertaker spoke.
"There's no time."
"Why?"
"Someone is watching us."
"Yes."
"My name is the Undertaker. And you?"
"Sim Ah-ryeon."
"Your ability?"
"I can feel emotions, and I can eat them."
"And when you eat them?"
"I get stronger."
"Good."
[Time remaining: 4 seconds.]
The Undertaker reached out his hand. Sim Ah-ryeon took it. There was no catch whatsoever between his pulling her up and her rising.
"You've made me curious."
"Same here."
"Will you come with me?"
"Yes."
The Undertaker tapped the back of Sim Ah-ryeon's hand twice, tap tap. Then Sim Ah-ryeon squeezed his hand twice in return, press press.
The Undertaker marveled inwardly.
'Her judgment is astonishingly fast.'
The Undertaker had just said someone was watching them.
If the Undertaker conveyed a message through 'hand gestures' rather than 'words,' she could realize it was a means of evading the surveillance.
But the Undertaker hadn't explained any of that. He had merely tapped the back of her hand.
And yet Sim Ah-ryeon caught the whole signal, that 'the surveillance had now been restored' and that 'from here on they would communicate by hand gesture.'
Within barely a second or so.
'A genius.'
Why had he gone hundreds of cycles without knowing Sim Ah-ryeon had this kind of intelligence?
'...Because she hid it.'
From him. From them. From everyone.
Sim Ah-ryeon had hidden it. She concealed it because there was no particular gain in revealing her strangeness.
So no one had recognized it.
Even now, she had simply stopped hiding because she'd sensed the Undertaker was of the same kind as her.
[Reveal the status window of the opposing NPC Sim Ah-ryeon?]
'No.'
The Undertaker answered at once.
'I'll figure it out myself.'
At that, the Constellation too fell silent.
The Undertaker looked around. Since the clothes Sim Ah-ryeon wore had been reduced to such tatters, he was looking for something to cover her with.
As it happened, a pure white doctor's coat hung over a chair. Probably an outfit one of the thugs had looted on a whim.
"Put this on for now, at least."
"Ah, yes."
The Undertaker fetched the doctor's coat and went to drape it over Sim Ah-ryeon...
And in that moment.
Without his realizing it, his hand faltered for an instant.
"...?"
The Undertaker furrowed his brow.
'What? Why did I just stumble in my own movement?'
He couldn't understand it.
The Undertaker immediately began to deduce the cause logically.
'Infinite Metagame. Could an unidentified anomaly have appeared near me just now?'
[The 'Admin of the Infinite Metagame' guarantees that no meaningful phenomenon exists in the underground restaurant right now, other than player Undertaker and NPC Sim Ah-ryeon.]
"..."
If so, it was a truly strange thing.
He found a doctor's coat and draped it over the other person. Where in such a plain act could he have felt anything chilling enough to make the Undertaker hesitate mid-motion?
Since he couldn't understand it, the words that slipped from the Undertaker's mouth could only be words he himself couldn't understand either.
"...Treasure it."
Press.
The doctor's coat was at last wrapped around Sim Ah-ryeon's shoulders. The Undertaker's hand that had brought about that result had, without his noticing, tightened with force.
"...? Um, yes...?"
Before him.
Only the green-clad woman stood there blankly, blinking and blinking, unable to grasp the meaning of that gesture.
-x-X-x-
Did time move fast, or slow?
For a regressor, it was an easy question to answer.
The playback speed of time depended on one thing: how strong the grip of the hand clenched around it happened to be.
The Undertaker was no sadist. He was not some pervert who got off on watching someone groan and writhe in agony.
But there was one single exception.
When it came to abusing "time," he had been born with a heaven-sent talent.
[Mr. Undertaker.]
[Do you have a moment?]
It was around the time ten years had passed since he picked up a monster named Sim Ah-ryeon at Busan Station.
By then the Undertaker had long since walked the optimal route and built his own ecosystem across the Korean Peninsula.
The Saintess, who had just sent that telepathy, was one of those awakeners, a key resource in the ecosystem the Undertaker had built.
"Yes, Saintess."
So the Undertaker wrapped his expression and tone in something softer than usual. It was just the right amount of disguise, enough that it wouldn't read as hypocrisy.
"Has something happened?"
[Um, it's just... about Sim Ah-ryeon.]
The Saintess hesitated, which wasn't like her.
No. Hadn't the phrase "not like her" stopped being appropriate years ago?
For the past ten years, the Undertaker had not only studied with the Saintess every Wednesday, he had shared his every move, his every gesture with her.
It was more than enough time, an overabundance of it, to gaslight a single person.
The Undertaker had lived far, far more years than the Saintess. Scholarly cultivation. Life experience. Methods for dealing with anomalies, and strategy guides.
In no field could the Saintess match him. Naturally, just as the Undertaker intended, the Saintess's psyche went into redevelopment.
This was precisely how one handled the Saintess, the strongest awakener of all time, the one who possessed [Clairvoyance].
While she watched him, he watched her right back.
The Saintess's ability turned from a one-way street into a two-way one, and now, even when she reached a judgment on some matter, seeking the "correct opinion" from the Undertaker had hardened into a habit.
Respect. Reverence. Consideration.
Every one of them the name of a petal that stained easily into evil.
'This is the surest and easiest route to keeping the Saintess from falling.'
By now the Saintess rarely trusted her own judgment about anything.
Ethical wrongdoing, moral failings; even when she witnessed them, she sought the Undertaker's "opinion."
It was a brilliant reversal of thinking.
The problem is that you yourself might fall? Then isn't the answer simply to erase yourself?
'With this, I've sealed off the Saintess, who could become humanity's greatest potential threat. And yet her role as a watchtower stays intact.'
Satisfied with his own handiwork, he pressed on in an even softer tone.
"What about Ah-ryeon? Nothing bad has happened to her, has it?"
[Um. The thing is. Following what you told me, Mr. Undertaker... whenever something bad happens, I've been borrowing the Constellations' names to imply it's all Sim Ah-ryeon's fault, but...]
"Ah. You're doing a wonderful job."
The Undertaker gave a wry smile.
"You know Ah-ryeon's ability well, don't you, Saintess? And you'd have a read on her personality too, since you had that long talk, just the two of you, last time."
[...Yes.]
"For Ah-ryeon, that's the right thing. The more people resent and hate her, the stronger her ability grows. On top of that she has a self-heal ability, so even if she takes a few stones somewhere, she comes out perfectly fine, doesn't she?"
[...]
The silence dragged on.
Even through the telepathy he could feel her wavering over whether to speak, and in that moment the Undertaker quickly recited to himself.
'Infinite Metagame. Did the Saintess just activate her Time Stop ability?'
[Response: Affirmative.]
'Understood.'
The Undertaker wore a smile innocent enough to seem almost childlike, as if he knew nothing at all.
"I understand that, on the surface, the treatment Ah-ryeon gets looks unfair."
[Ah. Yes...]
"Even so, separate from all that, I'm glad you shared your worries with me, Saintess."
[What?]
"Do you remember the promise we made last time? That with everyone else aside, when you talk with me you wouldn't use Time Stop, you'd just talk normally. That leaning on each other's ordinariness was the very way to keep from falling into an anomaly."
[Ah...]
A very faint trace of fluster crept into the Saintess's voice. It must have struck a nerve.
But the Undertaker, as though he hadn't caught the slightest hint of the other party's inner state, kept chattering away in that glad tone.
"Ahaha. I heard that originally, even while you talked with me, you always spoke in perfectly correct pronunciation, perfectly correct sentences."
[Yes...]
"As I keep saying, you don't have to do that in front of me. To me, you are always, and already, an utterly human person, Saintess. I get a little embarrassed too whenever I show you my unworthy side... but still, you do the same for me, after all."
[...]
"I really think a fair relationship is something precious. And it's fun, too. Don't you feel the same, Saintess?"
[Yes, I do too... I do. It makes me happy.]
Silence settled in again.
This time the Undertaker deliberately did not speak first.
As if even this silence were a form of entertainment within their "sacred" relationship, he merely gazed up at the sky with a faint smile.
And then.
[U, um. Mr. Undertaker.]
The Undertaker knew well that, to the noble, a smile sometimes cut a more fatal wound than a resentful glare.
"Yes?"
[I'm... sorry. Actually, just now. For a very brief moment, no. The thing is. It was only a moment, but... I used Time Stop.]
"Ah."
The Undertaker blinked.
He knew how to control his own face.
To put on a "sad expression" here would have been the lowest of the low. Even a "face holding something back" was no better than middling.
"No, that, I'm the one who should be sorry! I mean, uh. I didn't realize. What I meant was."
Fluster. Confusion.
That was precisely what acted as an unbearable poison on the noblest, most faithful of souls.
"I mean, you only did it for a moment, right? One second. Maybe two. That happens. What I said was, uh... that just not using it too much is enough. There might've been room to misread it as never using it at all."
[...]
The Undertaker's fangs sank neatly all the way to the heart.
Considering how many ramparts the Saintess had built up over the years to protect that heart, it was a truly absurd venom.
[...I'm sorry.]
In the Saintess's voice, an agony she couldn't hide breathed like a breath drawn before a breath.
[I'm truly sorry.]
"No. No, Saintess. What we worry about is falling, and it isn't as if using Time Stop a few times like this suddenly tips you over all at once. You can rest easy. I'm the one who should apologize for speaking so thoughtlessly."
[...]
Her breathing grew more ragged.
This too was an exquisite battle of wits.
What had the Saintess just apologized for?
For the very "relationship" she had held to be sacred, holy. She apologized for breaking the promise of that relationship.
And what had the Undertaker forgiven?
For the very reason they had made that promise in the first place. For the root of it, the pledge to keep her existing as a human, so that she would never fall into an anomaly. He forgave her, saying he still believed she was human.
The Saintess's apology and the Undertaker's forgiveness seemed to interlock, yet were strangely misaligned.
A deliberate misalignment.
The Saintess was not foolish enough to miss it. She had only grown foolish enough that she could not pass the fault for it onto another, and laid it wholly upon herself.
Tender, oh so tender.
Abuse.
[Yes...]
"Mm. Still, you went out of your way to bring me a worry because you were concerned. Just leaving Ah-ryeon to fend for herself wouldn't be good either."
Here the Undertaker, like a gamer teabagging a corpse[1], landed the final blow on the Saintess's psyche.
He "quickly changed the subject so the Saintess couldn't blame herself." And the new subject was "the result of respecting the Saintess's opinion."
[Ah...]
The Undertaker was not at fault whatsoever.
Only she, the Saintess, had all of it shifted onto her shoulders.
In the end, the Undertaker succeeded in drawing the very words he had inwardly aimed for out of the Saintess's own mouth.
[Thank, you. Mr. Undertaker...]
That was it.
On this cruel chessboard, an "apology" alone was not enough. "Gratitude" was as good as a declaration of checkmate.
It had to be gratitude that welled up from the heart, and was agonizing all the same.
Forcing someone to put the word of thanks on their lips against their will, that was an act of violence only amateurs would commit.
It was also a siege method that would never work on someone whose walls of the heart stood as high as the Saintess's.
The Undertaker knew how to suffocate someone with consideration and respect alone.
"Not at all. Oh, right. I'm going to go see Ah-ryeon now, so could you turn off the Clairvoyance for a bit? It's just, I'd like to talk with her, the two of us."
[...Yes. Of course.]
A scene like this.
It had repeated without pause over the past ten years.
By now the Saintess's mental state had reached the point where she read even that request of his, the demand to lift the watch of Clairvoyance, as "him being considerate, so that I, the one who did wrong, could have a little time alone."
There was no way the rough hands of an anomaly could perform such a delicate operation.
The most fatal poison to a human always came from another human's fingertips, and more often still, from the tip of the tongue.
"Thank you, Saintess."
[No...]
"Then I'll see you again next time."
The connection cut off.
On the surface, the two of them had traded a word of apology and a word of gratitude, once each, in equal measure.
To the Saintess, who trusted logical judgment and the power of language, such an equivalent exchange could only become a shackle she bound herself with by her own hand.
"The fate of a human who can no longer listen to their own feelings."
Once he had confirmed the Clairvoyance was gone, the Undertaker muttered.
"No matter how much it's for her own good, I can't help finding the Saintess pitiful."
[The Admin of the Infinite Metagame is forever in awe of the skill with which player Undertaker tames the NPCs.]
"Who asked for your praise? Get lost."
[Answer: Neutral.]
What was "neutral" supposed to mean, neutral.
The Undertaker snorted a laugh and turned on his heel.
* * *
The maphack telepathy[2] was cut off now, so the next step was to ask the "real Constellation" for Sim Ah-ryeon's location, but.
'I'll just go find her on my own two feet. Whatever.'
Strangely, when it came to anything involving Sim Ah-ryeon, he had no desire to borrow a Constellation's power.
'No need to go far anyway.'
Pick roughly any one of the alleys branching slightly off Babel Tower Plaza, and Sim Ah-ryeon would be collapsed there.
As always.
But choosing a stroll like this came with a reaction the Undertaker had to put up with.
"Ah! It's the Undertaker!"
"Undertaker! Where are you headed?"
The endless requests for handshakes.
Even over that short walk, the ordinary citizens and awakeners of Busan, the "extras," were busy recognizing him and calling out greetings.
The Undertaker met them all with a smile.
"I'm in the middle of business, Hae-il. How's the shop these days?"
"Why, with the Undertaker watching over the city, of course it's fine! Come by sometime and I'll treat you to the works!"
"Mister Undertaker! Our place too!"
"Yes, yes. If Patissier Seo-a invites me, I have to come. I'll make time even when I have none."
Everyone, every last passerby, was plainly delighted to see the Undertaker.
Even as his own heart held a chill nothing like the warmth his face wore.
'What a bother.'
Honestly, he had neither the energy nor the leisure to spare on extras like these.
The reason he invested in image management before the citizens lay elsewhere.
'If I'm even a little unkind to the citizens, Management Captain Noh Do-hwa resigns and walks out on me, sheesh.'
It was simply that the cost of losing a first-rate talent like Noh Do-hwa outweighed the cost spent on image management.
Throb.
For some reason, the moment he thought of Management Captain Noh Do-hwa, a corner of his heart bristled again, but the Undertaker held the same consistent attitude as always.
Ignore it.
What did it matter? The feeling he was ignoring wasn't only the one about Noh Do-hwa, after all.
He was an expert, well versed in the art of separating his heart from his head.
Before long, he reached the alley where Sim Ah-ryeon lay collapsed.
Sim Ah-ryeon was not alone.
Beside her stood a woman whose posture was as straight as a bodyguard's.
"Ah."
A bow.
The silver-haired woman, Yu Ji-won, lowered her head at a perfect angle when she saw the Undertaker.
"You've come, Your Excellency."
"Yes. You always work hard at the escort duty."
"Not at all. It's my honor."
"Right. Is Ah-ryeon doing well?"
"Hm."
Yu Ji-won stepped slightly aside.
"As for whether she's doing well, that's not something I can judge. But she's just finished hitting today's quota of hatred and resentment."
The alley opened into view, thanks to the angle Yu Ji-won had widened.
The Undertaker's eyes met the one he had come to find.
"..."
"..."
Beneath a shabby wall, Sim Ah-ryeon was sprawled out, her eyes empty.
One arm and one leg severed.
"...Ah."
Sim Ah-ryeon gave a slack smile.
"You've come... Guild Leader?"
Footnotes:
[1] Teabagging is online-gaming slang for repeatedly crouching over a defeated opponent's body in a shooter, an intentionally humiliating taunt; here it figures the Undertaker's act as gratuitously kicking someone already beaten.
[2] A maphack is a cheat (originating in real-time strategy games like StarCraft) that reveals the entire map and all hidden units; here it likens the Saintess's omniscient Clairvoyance telepathy to that all-seeing cheat.