──────
* * *
For a moment, the Undertaker doubted his own ears.
"You're going to kill Sim Ah-ryeon? ...You?"
"Yes."
"I don't understand."
It threw him.
Until now, the Undertaker had assumed he understood the being in front of him well enough. A master of brainwashing. Wasn't this the anomaly that could manipulate affection itself?
But the words the pink anomaly was spouting now did nothing to raise the Undertaker's 'affection.'
If anything, they only drove his hostility higher.
'Is this really Go Yuri at all?'
So he had no choice but to stay on the highest guard.
From the start, the information the Undertaker had managed to gather about Go Yuri was crude beyond belief. And now even that crude information had become hard to trust.
"If you truly meant to kill Sim Ah-ryeon, the right move would have been to ambush me before showing yourself. Go Yuri. Surely you don't think I'd be swayed by your sweet poison?"
"It's faith, Guild Leader."
A breeze blew.
Even the sunlight baking the asphalt couldn't spoil the coolness of the wind passing between them. With a gesture, Go Yuri slowly settled her scattering pink hair.
"There's no point telling you, you won't get it anyway. There's no way you'll understand anyway. Anyway, anyway, anyway. That very attitude is the danger I avoid most of all."
"No matter how much you spout, I will absolutely never take part in killing Sim Ah-ryeon."
"Ahaha. Really, they say if you grasp the truth in the morning you can die content by evening[1]. Aren't you changing a bit too much in a single day?"
"..."
"I don't think it's a bad thing. That honesty of yours, Guild Leader. The bold resolve. The willingness to throw away even who you've been until now. Those are the parts I like. Mm. Compared to 'before,' I think you've gotten so much better."
"Before?"
"Yes."
Go Yuri smiled brightly.
But she didn't bother to answer that question. She only carried on with the main point.
"The bad one is the other side. Sim Ah-ryeon. Ah, sorry. Was that a nasty way to put it? To be more precise, the problem is Sim Ah-ryeon's power."
"What's wrong with Ah-ryeon's power. So she grows stronger the more emotion she drinks, what's the..."
"There's no limit to it."
Go Yuri's smile gently took on a tinge of sorrow.
"I try, as much as I can, not to meddle with you, Guild Leader. But if I let you and Sim Ah-ryeon slip away here, and your two-person desert-island life keeps going on... This world will race toward ruin at a speed nothing can hold back."
"Ha."
He scoffed.
It didn't make him feel any better. Even a scoff had joints to it. As the breath rose back up his throat, the scoff buckled once.
The Undertaker forced himself to ignore that buckle.
"World annihilation isn't some kid's game. As if it'd happen because of Sim Ah-ryeon. At least dress up your lies with a little effort."
"A flower bloomed."
"...?"
"A red, red flower. A beautiful flowering tree. If you don't know that the world is beautiful, then red flowers bloom in such profusion that you can no longer ignore that beauty, and they cover everything, the earth, the heavens, all of it."
"..."
"That flower tells you that you, just as you are, are beautiful. No need to change. No need to strive. It sings that simply by existing, you are beautiful. So people shed even their awakening powers, throw off even their human faces, peel away even their animal hides... Every one of them becomes a single bloom, a single tree."
Why was it.
The Undertaker swore he had never once seen the scenery Go Yuri was describing.
And yet.
"In a garden that bloomed like that, there was always one knight guarding the World Tree."
His heart heaved like mad.
"A strange thing. The flowering trees in full bloom, oddly enough, refused to turn that one knight into a flower."
"..."
"Because the knight was the sole exception that came to think this, that the knight's own inherent beauty was more enrapturing than the beauty of the flowers it had woven."
"...I don't know what you're talking about."
"No. You do know, Guild Leader."
Go Yuri laid one hand against her own cheek.
"Haa. It was hard, you know? The whole Eurasian continent was being devoured by the World Tree. Rallying every last remaining force I could, striking all at once, and just barely severing the existence of you and Sim Ah-ryeon."
"..."
"Really. One slip and even I might have been done in. How long had it been since I'd felt genuine tension."
Her head tilted at a slight angle.
Go Yuri smiled with her eyes.
"Thrill addict that I am, I'm not foolish enough to repeat that kind of danger twice. Guild Leader. I'll say it again. Sim Ah-ryeon needs to die here and now."
Naturally, there was no chance the Undertaker would agree.
He moved at once to ready himself for battle.
'Infinite Metagame. I need backup.'
No answer came.
'...Infinite Metagame?'
Still no answer.
Cold sweat ran down the Undertaker's neck.
'Don't play around. Infinite Metagame. What are you doing at a moment this important? I'm about to throw myself into combat, so back me up...'
"Oh my. Could you, by any chance, be desperately crying out for my own little Outer God?"
The Undertaker's body, primed to attack at any instant, clenched tight with tension.
Go Yuri was watching him quietly.
"I'm sorry, but your little OG won't be answering."
The Undertaker's lips trembled.
"How do you know about the Infinite Metagame..."
"Ahaha. Didn't I tell you, Guild Leader? That I attacked by 'rallying every last remaining force.'"
In that moment.
"The 'forces' I gathered included not only humans but anomalies as well."
The asphalt grains of the old road shattered into pieces.
"...!"
No. Look closely, and the crumbs of asphalt hadn't broken apart at all.
The 'resolution' had dropped.
"Infinite Metagame!"
The Undertaker had witnessed this exact phenomenon once before.
The Outer God he'd halfway come to regard as a partner. Back when it had once wiped out all of humanity, the world's image quality had degraded into a dotted screen, just like this.
"So you really did betray me!"
No reply came from the Infinite Metagame.
"Oohoho."
Only Go Yuri's voice, laughing playfully as though even this situation amused her, felt utterly alien.
"Please don't blame it too much, Guild Leader. That little OG is designed to throw an error specifically when you and I, just the two of us, are in the same space."
"You..."
"Have you finished your preparations for farewell? Time. I think I gave you quite a lot of it."
Snap.
Go Yuri flicked her fingers.
"Just one day spent with you, Guild Leader, and the healing ability has already grown that much. Leave it as it is and the World Tree is sure to sprout. So before that, I'll remove it."
A gush.
Red blood splattered.
"..."
Blood splashed across his cheek. With his lips parted, the Undertaker looked down into his own arms.
The blood had burst from nowhere else but there.
"Ugh, urk... krp, huff, ah...?"
It was Sim Ah-ryeon.
From the mouth, nose, eyes, and ears of Sim Ah-ryeon, who had kept quiet all this while because the Guild Leader seemed to be having some serious conversation.
"Uh, haa..."
Gush, gush. The blood streamed down.
"Ah."
"Urk... ha, heh? Guild, Leader...?"
"Ah-ryeon! Ah-ryeon, pull yourself together!"
How? What trick had Go Yuri pulled? He hadn't sensed even the faintest sign of an attack, so how?
The Undertaker panicked. He flared his aura and wrapped Sim Ah-ryeon in a barrier. Even so, Sim Ah-ryeon's coughing of blood would not stop.
"Mmrgh. Paah...ha, urp, uaah..."
"Heal yourself. Ah-ryeon, don't panic. Hm? Stay calm. Just heal yourself!"
"No."
Clack.
Go Yuri took a step closer.
"I'm sorry, but Sim Ah-ryeon's vessel is small. Mm. The longer she spends with you from here on, the more vast her vessel will grow, exponentially so... But for now it's still shallow."
"What did you do!"
"It's simple. I just released about 100 million people's worth of emotion."
100 million? 100 million people?
"You scolded me for my foolishness, asking why I didn't choose an ambush, didn't you? But Guild Leader. There are beings in this world who have no need to bother with an ambush."
"..."
"If I set my mind to it, I could wreck the current Sim Ah-ryeon as many times over as I pleased. That's why I deliberately gave you the time to talk."
In his arms.
The Undertaker felt it. The life in his arms was thinning out at a terrible rate.
Like a heartbeat traced across a monitor, the thin line of life dropped, surged a little, then dropped again, over and over.
Some kind of attack Go Yuri had fired off had struck Sim Ah-ryeon, and the healing ability had triggered, but the blow was graver than the healing.
Pain. Recovery. Greater pain. Recovery. Greater pain.
"Guild, Lead...er..."
Cough.
That was the state Sim Ah-ryeon was in. She forced up the blood pooled in her throat and barely wrung out a voice.
The Undertaker wanted to draw his sword that very instant and rush at Go Yuri. But he couldn't.
The moment he set this child down out of his arms, the thread of life clinging on by a hair would snap. The Undertaker could sense it.
"Ah-ryeon. Ah-ryeon, no, Ah-ryeon."
"Uheh... Urp, haa. Heh..."
Sim Ah-ryeon clumsily mimicked a smile.
"I wanted, to see more of you... Hee..."
The Undertaker could not understand it at all.
Why did the child in front of him have to suffer nothing but pain her whole life?
Because she wasn't human enough? Because her talent was too excessive? Because she belittled others' talents? Because she teased them? Because she took pain as pleasure and converted it into power on top of that?
He was the one who had forced the fate of torture onto this child. That much he accepted. So he had resolved to spend the rest of his life apologizing to her, living a life that took responsibility for her.
And yet, with no regard for his resolve, Sim Ah-ryeon was being forced into death. Why? For what reason?
This child knew how to laugh. Her reasons for laughing were just different. This child knew how to grieve. Her reasons for grieving were just different.
She loved. The reason for her love was just different.
Did she have to die for that alone?
Was there such a thing as a person born by mistake?
"I promise. Ah-ryeon. Never again, never, will I let you suffer. So that you'll be all right even without suffering... So that you can keep, just keep, smiling. I'll make it so. I will."
"Puppy..."
Sim Ah-ryeon looked up at the Undertaker with eyes dyed red, with a smile painted over in red.
The Undertaker's vow no longer reached her. She could spit the blood from her mouth, but she had no way to clear the blood pooled in her ears.
"A puppy... I raised one. It hurt so much."
But she could still move her hand.
Sim Ah-ryeon somehow lifted her right hand, the one the excessive shock had thrown beyond her control. Pain had always been familiar to her.
"It hurt... It looked like it was suffering..., looked that way, but then the puppy saw me, looked at me, stuck out its tongue, it must have hurt, it must have been hurting, and went woof, and my hand, the puppy..."
"..."
"Poor thing... Everyone's so pitiful... But it's fine. Things like that. It's all, it's all fine. It gets better, but it's pitiful..."
The Undertaker.
Still holding Sim Ah-ryeon in his arms, he raised one hand and pressed gently, firmly, against her throat.
"Ah."
Sim Ah-ryeon smiled once more.
It might have been closer to a moan than a smile.
Having spat out all her blood, she could let her last remaining breath spill into his arms.
"I love, you... Guild Leader..."
A little more strength went into the hand at her throat.
And the palm slid down the Undertaker's cheek, tracing a red arc as it fell.
The sound of death settling down was that soft.
The cry of cicadas rang out over the silent road.
"...Did you finish it yourself."
Go Yuri said quietly.
"Truly fitting for one who bears the alias Undertaker. Always so cruel. To yourself. To Sim Ah-ryeon unni, and to you too, Oraboni."
"I will not hand over a single grain to you."
"A splendid frame of mind. Please, next time too, don't forget that resolve."
Clack.
Go Yuri took one more step closer. Holding Sim Ah-ryeon's body, the Undertaker watched his opponent.
He didn't draw his sword. This was an opponent he couldn't beat. He was certain that no matter how hard the current him thrashed and struggled, he would never reach her.
So he looked straight at her.
So that he would not forget. So that he would remember this moment forever, and never repeat the same mistake.
"You probably won't remember this, though."
In Go Yuri's hand was a red flower. An Udumbara[2].
"There exists no method for keeping Sim Ah-ryeon happy while always staying by her side, Guild Leader. I'd like you, if you can, to keep a reasonable distance."
"Never. I will absolutely never let Sim Ah-ryeon go from my life."
"Such a spoiled, stubborn thing."
Plip.
Go Yuri plucked a petal from the Udumbara.
"That's exactly why I chose you, though."
The Undertaker's vision dyed red.
It was strange. The petal she had picked should have been only a single one. Yet it was as if roses had burst into full bloom and buried his sight in crimson.
Perhaps it was bloody tears flowing from his own eyes.
The Undertaker had no way of knowing.
He could only feel, even in that moment, the clear weight of the fallen petal cradled in his arms.
"...Ah-ryeon."
Firmly, the Undertaker pulled her close.
Firmly. If a weight existed there that his arms could not fully hold, that his body could not fully receive,
then he wished, prayed, that his soul might take in the rest of her.
"The Guild Leader. This Guild Leader will, someday, surely, make you happy..."
That was the end of it.
The vow could not be carried through.
But for him and for her, the vow had never been made of words to begin with.
For him and for her there still stretched a great deal of time, a road of summer that would not end here.
-That Woman S. Fin.
Footnotes:
[1] A near-verbatim quotation of Confucius from the Analects (4.8): "If a man hears the Way in the morning, he may die content in the evening." It expresses that grasping the truth is worth more than life itself.
[2] The udumbara is a legendary flower in Buddhist scripture said to bloom only once every 3,000 years, heralding the appearance of a sage or a world-changing event; it is a symbol of an extraordinarily rare and auspicious occurrence.
-x-X-x-
──────
* * *
Something was off.
Something was strange.
Lately, the Undertaker found himself caught in these spells of déjà vu more and more often.
For instance.
"Hmm...?"
Management Captain Noh Do-hwa was right in front of him.
She looked at the table and frowned. The Undertaker had just set a cup of coffee down on it.
"What is this, awakener Undertaker? You barge into my office and slap down a coffee out of nowhere. I don't recall asking for this morning service...?"
"Uh."
That sharp glare flustered him. And along with another inexplicable wave of déjà vu, the meaning packed into that glare came through to him perfectly intact.
'Don't tell me the me from a previous cycle liked this kind of service?' 'And that's why you're pulling the same crap on this cycle's me?' 'That's some bullshit.' 'You son of a bitch.'
That was roughly what it meant.
Without even noticing, the Undertaker had apparently taken a job as Noh Do-hwa's personal cipher decoder, because he understood it with crystal clarity.
"Th, that's not it, Management Captain. To be honest with you. Truthfully, even I don't know why I'm doing this."
"Haah? Are you senile...?"
"I'm telling you, I don't know. I woke up before dawn today and suddenly felt like making you a coffee. Out of nowhere, really. That's all."
"Hmmmm..."
A suspicious squint.
Noh Do-hwa tipped the cup back for a sip. The crease between her brows deepened.
"It's good, though...?"
To anyone else it would have sounded like ordinary praise, but coming from Noh Do-hwa it took on an entirely different hue.
'You said this wasn't based on a previous cycle?' 'Then why does it hit my palate exactly right?' 'I've kept my coffee preferences locked away this whole time?' 'You son of a bitch.'
The Undertaker felt like he had been dropped into a dating sim.
He had no way of knowing when this authority had been stealth-patched into him.
Still, thanks to it, he could come up with the optimal answer. And it happened to be the truth, too.
"No. You've got it wrong. I don't know your coffee preferences at all, Management Captain. I still don't."
"Oho. Then why is this coffee so damn good, mister regressor...?"
"Hm. Well, the thing is, I just made the coffee while thinking of you, Management Captain, and this is how it turned out."
"..."
Noh Do-hwa's hand froze in place.
A moment later, a face so vicious it would have sent even the Four Heavenly Kings[1] guarding a temple gate fleeing in fright took shape on her features.
"Haah? This son of a bitch..."
"Hold on. Management Captain. I'm aware this sounds like flirting. But that doesn't mean I can lie about it, does it? You wanted an answer, and I gave you the honest one. I'll swear on it. That's everything."
"..."
Noh Do-hwa looked down at the cup.
A Joseon-era prisoner staring down a cup of poisoned wine[2] would have worn a more relaxed expression than she did now.
"So you're telling me. Out of every cycle combined, this morning is the very first time you've ever made me this coffee...?"
"Yes."
"..."
"..."
"I take back the part about it being good. It's damn terrible. Even if a new cycle comes, never serve me this kind of coffee again. It makes me want to puke..."
"I'll keep that in mind."
The Undertaker took his leave.
But the next day. And the day after. And the day after that.
The Undertaker kept bringing her that 'terrible coffee' at the exact same hour and the exact same temperature, and for some reason, Noh Do-hwa never stopped him.
"..."
Something was off.
Something was strange.
"Hng?"
Inunaki Tunnel[3]. Sim Ah-ryeon, who had been painting an anomaly picture to upload to SG Net, jerked her head up like a startled squirrel.
"J, just now. Wasn't that weird? Guild Leader?"
"...What do you mean?"
The Undertaker spoke with a face that gave nothing away.
"You were just painting. And this Guild Leader was ironing."
"Mmmm. The thing is. Up until a moment ago I could feel a color coming off you, Guild Leader, like bread baked all golden-brown? But then suddenly, um, it was like I bit into the bread and found out fifty percent of it was raisins... that kind of feeling-feeling."
"Your emotion changed?"
"Yes!"
"That's only natural, Ah-ryeon. Emotions flip around all the time."
"N, no no! That's not it-. It, it changed way too fast. Even when it changes, the speed, um. There's usually a steady rhythm... to it?"
Sim Ah-ryeon nibbled on the tip of her brush.
"But ju, just now it really flipped in an instant. It's supposed to go whooo-whirl-whirl when it changes, but it went whip! all at once... It, it's weird."
"Your words sound weirder to me. A person's heart is like water, sure, and sometimes the current can run fast."
"Mmmmm. Is, is that so...? It's not, though."
There's no way that's it.
Sim Ah-ryeon muttered to herself even as she turned her focus back to the painting.
She was a kid who got a five-hundred-percent concentration buff whenever she painted, so even pausing her brushwork for a moment was an unusual case.
That was when it happened.
The world stopped.
It was no metaphor, nothing of the sort. The pause button had truly been pressed on the world.
Strangely, the color changed too. It was as though, alongside the pause, something had layered a 'black-and-white effect' over everything as well.
The surroundings had been painted entirely in white, gray, and black, like an old black-and-white film.
"...Hoo."
Sim Ah-ryeon's brushwork, the Undertaker's ironing, even the tail-flicks of the tropical fish beyond the Inunaki Underwater Tunnel, all of it frozen in place.
In that place, one being alone gave rise to sound and noise. Although no one could turn their head to look, the voice alone was enough to give away its identity.
"That was a close call. Truly. Since Sim Ah-ryeon senses emotional shifts by visualizing them, there's a chance she could notice the change before and after [Time Stop] cuts in."
It was the Saintess.
"I'll have to be a little more careful."
Squeeze.
Inside the black-and-white screen where no one but herself could make a sound or even move, the Saintess clenched her small fist.
Forcing her monologue alone upon the entire world.
"...But it was strange, wasn't it?"
The Saintess walked over.
Her steps came to a stop right in front of the Undertaker's face. He had, of course, become a single statue.
"Mr. Undertaker's emotion changed... Mr. Undertaker surely can't escape [Time Stop] either. So why did the color of his emotion shift so abruptly?"
A long, steady gaze.
The Saintess looked up at the Undertaker.
She narrowed her brows, but it was nothing like the look from Management Captain Noh Do-hwa.
Unlike Noh Do-hwa, who always forced her contempt and malice onto her facial muscles, the Saintess wore a very faint expression.
And so it was steady. With a gaze that was nothing if not endlessly, quietly steady, she watched him.
"Could it be that you can actually move freely inside my [Time Stop], and you've been deceiving me all this time?"
Silence flowed.
"Mmm. There's no way. You haven't twitched in the slightest."
A faint smile to match the faint expression.
The ripple cast by the Saintess's laugh was the tiniest thing. Small enough that a stranger watching would have mistaken it for nothing more than a breath.
"Still, just to test it."
The Saintess lightly dabbed her lips against the knuckle of her index finger. Then she brought it close to the Undertaker's nose.
The faintest breeze. That is, had there been any sign of breath, the Saintess would have detected it at once.
Luckily for her, she felt no sign at all. The Undertaker, frozen like a statue, was in a state of perfect breathlessness.
After staying like that for about ten minutes, the Saintess let out a sigh of relief.
"What a relief."
Then again, the Saintess murmured.
"A long shot is a long shot, after all. If Mr. Undertaker could deflect [Time Stop], he'd have seen everything I do. Such a horrible possibility simply can't exist."
"..."
"I sometimes imagine possibilities for myself that are far too horrible. That might be a flaw of mine. I should give myself a little more room to... no. The very fact that I've allowed myself this kind of 'indulgence' means I've already found some measure of room. Still, I think I need to be a little bolder."
"..."
"What shall we do today?"
A little hum.
The Saintess now turned her back and walked closer to Sim Ah-ryeon to look over the painting, then walked closer to Lee Ha-yul and tried stroking her head.
And then.
'My apologies, but...'
The Undertaker thought.
'So the unthinkable really can come back to bite you, Saintess...'
Desperately holding back his breath and his blinking.
* * *
When had it started?
At first it was nothing more than a simple sense of unease.
But from a certain moment on, the Undertaker realized that even in the 'world where time was frozen,' he could move relatively freely.
'Huh? What is this? Why is the world black-and-white?'
This so-called movement amounted, at most, to the act of blinking. So the Saintess, too, failed to notice the 'Undertaker's anomalous phenomenon.'
'Could it be an anomaly?!'
It wasn't.
The fifth day since time had frozen. The Undertaker had been racking his brain over which Outer Gods he might have overlooked when the Saintess's figure slipped past right before his eyes.
'?'
The form the Saintess revealed as she appeared was... putting aside the risk of misunderstanding, well.
'A thief?'
That was roughly the impression.
"Hm. As I thought, there's a very slight margin of error in the field of vision I see through Sim Ah-ryeon's eyes."
Mutter, mutter.
The Saintess went around the guild Azit and ran her fingers over Sim Ah-ryeon's cheek. It seemed she was in the middle of finely calibrating [Clairvoyance].
"How fascinating. Could it be that among the visual information Sim Ah-ryeon's ability sees, there are parts that don't get transmitted to me...? An awakener's ability is something you can study and study and never reach the end of."
'What.'
The Undertaker, who had been frozen for days on end and felt like he might lose his mind, was relieved to see that scene.
'She's just handling administrative matters. Why I'm keeping continuity of consciousness even inside [Time Stop] is a mystery, though.'
The moment the Undertaker resolved that once this Time Stop lifted, he would explain the whole story to the Saintess, the Saintess approached him.
And then she spread both arms wide and wrapped them around the Undertaker in a hug.
'?'
A question mark floated above the Undertaker's head. If only he could have blinked, but he still needed more time to grow accustomed to this void.
It was a tragic thing for both him and the Saintess.
"Mmmm."
Nuzzle, nuzzle, the Saintess shook her head against the Undertaker's chest.
There wasn't the faintest hesitation in the act. It was the nodding motion of a scientist who had already learned, both theoretically and experimentally, at what angle and to what degree she needed to hug him for the optimal head-nuzzle to be achieved.
'?' '?' '?'
The question marks above the Undertaker's head could only multiply. And yet the Saintess's experimental spirit did not stop.
'What is this?' 'Is it an anomaly's stratagem?' 'Saintess?' 'Ah, I see, there's some philosophical curiosity hidden in this behavior.' 'You're lying, right?' 'Hold on.'
A faint shock leaked out from the folds of the Undertaker's brain, stained with confusion and chaos.
'If that's the case... uh. Can I really tell the Saintess... that I was thinking clearly the whole time inside [Time Stop]?'
He couldn't.
Because.
'Won't she kill herself??'
Wee-woo- wee-woo- wee-woo- wee-woo-.
A siren blared violently inside the Undertaker's head.
That's right. For all her appearances, the Saintess, unlike Yu Ji-won who belonged to the same expressionless alliance, had a normal emotional system. No, she had a heart far more delicate and tender than anyone else's.
For someone like her, there was no way her psyche could withstand the revelation of 'I know everything you did yesterday'!
No. It would be a mercy if it ended with her dying.
'She'll try to erase my memories!'
The only way to strip the Undertaker of his perfect-recall ability was to mobilize Udumbara.
And then? It would be back to the start.
Back to the very beginning. He would have to repeat an eternity of years without even knowing why he had been infected by Udumbara.
Why? For the crime of daring to spy on the Saintess's secret.
This was no joke.
Therefore.
"Hoooo."
"..."
That the Saintess had nuzzled her head against him, that she had laid her nose against his chest and breathed in, that she had timidly dragged over a dining chair, climbed up, looked down at the Undertaker's head and stroked it, and then timidly carried the chair back to the dining hall, that she now stood before him wearing an immensely satisfied expression...
There was no way he could ever tell her.
For all eternity.
"Yes. I feel like I've recharged my energy today as well."
"..."
"On the way home, maybe I'll stop by Sejong."
The Saintess left.
A week later. When [Time Stop] lifted and the black-and-white world reverted to a color TV, the Undertaker was drenched in cold sweat.
"Hng? G, Guild Leader. Why are you making that face like you desperately need the bathroom?"
"It's nothing."
"B, but your expression."
"Nothing... happened."
The Undertaker made up his mind.
The secrets of heaven must not be carelessly leaked.
'I have to hide it!'
Until when?
'Until I die! Until this cycle ends!'
A game of reading the room with world annihilation on the line.
Start.
Footnotes:
[1] In Buddhist tradition, four guardian deities (Sacheonwang) whose fearsome statues are placed at temple gates to ward off evil; here invoked for their intimidating faces.
[2] Refers to sayak, the poison the Joseon court ordered condemned nobles and officials to drink as a form of dignified execution by royal decree.
[3] The Inunaki Tunnel in Fukuoka, Japan, a real location and one of the country's most famous reputedly haunted sites, the subject of numerous urban legends and horror stories.
-x-X-x-
──────
* * *
"Hmm. Brother Jang."
"Yes, Elder SwordMarquess."
"The sight of you sunk in meditation is, in itself, fit to serve as a model for all comrades of the martial world."
Martial arts training hour. Haeundae.
On the sand, the last surviving bodybuilders of the apocalypse, led by Seo Gyu, were lavishly devoting themselves to strength training.
The Undertaker and SwordMarquess sat a little apart from that sweaty stretch of sand, gracefully honing their inner cultivation arts.
It wasn't as though homo sapiens actually came equipped with some mystical organ called a dantian, the sort that let you stockpile internal energy or develop cancer or whatever.
It was just that, now and then, SwordMarquess would demand that everyone around him stay faithful to the worldview called the "martial world."
And if the demand went unmet? Then SwordMarquess, too, would stop respecting the worldview called "reality."
Which meant the doom of Busan's food security.
For the safe procurement of food for all citizens, for the steady supply of wheat consumed at the Haeundae Bakery, and above all to avoid being murdered by Management Captain Noh Do-hwa, the Undertaker had to periodically share warm, cordial fellowship with SwordMarquess.
"Movement within stillness. That is the very phrase for the etiquette of circulating one's breath in cultivation."
SwordMarquess gazed at his companion with admiring eyes.
"Brother Jang's inner cultivation has truly reached the pinnacle of profundity. Whether you are even breathing, whether your eyes have so much as blinked once, this one cannot begin to fathom."
"...Thank you."
The Undertaker held it in.
It wasn't that he held in the urge to ask just what kind of low-rent, rootless wuxia set a cassette-tape radio at your side every time you settled into cultivation and blasted "A Man of Determination"[1] at full volume.
In truth, could you even call the title "Daoist friend" all that wuxia to begin with? Since olden times Korea had been generous about granting wuxia characters travel permits, whether to fantasy or modern settings, but it was razor-strict about linguistic etiquette. So the League Leader might ascend, yet he could never go all jump-manga on you[2].
What the Undertaker was swallowing down, therefore, was a different truth.
'If I don't train, the Saintess will catch on...'
That was right.
It had already been several months since freedom of thought had been achieved even within a world where [Time Stop] was in effect.
The Undertaker was slowly feeling the range of his freedom shift from a thought-substance over into a material-substance.
In other words, his body had begun to move.
'I can breathe and I can blink. If I focus as hard as I can, my legs move a little too.'
But.
This kind of freedom was never welcome to the Undertaker.
'Even just breathing makes the odds of the Saintess catching me skyrocket exponentially!'
Training. Nothing but training.
A person was a creature whose body went numb if it sat still for even a moment.
Yet the Undertaker, through sheer patience, held his "freeze" for five days, six days, sometimes over fifteen. Entirely of his own free will.
Self-mastery in its purest form.
"Beholding Brother Jang's lofty plane, this one cannot sit idle either. Watch. The Taeguk Fist this one learned wandering the martial world in youth..."
That was when it happened.
The world stained itself black and white.
'Again! Here it comes again!'
The Undertaker reflexively sucked in a breath.
'Hhhuuuup!'
This [Time Stop] was an unknown quantity; there was no telling how many days it would last.
To hold firm against that merciless current, he needed to at least lay in all the breath he could.
Sure enough.
"Mmm."
Trudge, trudge.
The sound of an unidentified walking object crossing the sand from far away reached him.
The Undertaker couldn't carelessly move his eyeballs, nor could he spread his senses with aura. He had no choice but to wait until the object in question entered his field of vision on its own.
At last, into the middle of a world locked in "freeze," someone made their entrance. The Saintess, of course.
"...Lately. There's been an anomaly advisory up, so I haven't gotten to walk much, and I feel like I'm putting on weight."
She glanced around, studying SwordMarquess's posture closely.
"Taeguk Fist... I've heard it's famous in China as a health exercise too. Maybe it would help me to learn it as well?"
And then, would you believe it, the Saintess set her backpack down and started taking poses, following along after SwordMarquess.
"Hup, hhhuuup-."
Grunting and straining, the Saintess practiced the poses.
Click. After she got one pose down, she went into the nearby beach restroom and let time run again. Click. Stop. She learned another pose, then hid in the restroom and let time run again. Click. Stop.
'Saintess...'
This entire panorama, like watching an old film clatter through a broken projector, the Undertaker took in from the very best seat in the house.
'So you've been wasting time on this nonsense even on ordinary days...'
It was, well. It was kind of a big letdown.
'Your form isn't even correct, Saintess. This cycle you swore off exercise and stayed cooped up in your room, so your physical functions really have dropped...'
In fact, the Saintess's potential where exercise was concerned was nothing to scoff at.
But it was for that very reason that the Undertaker steered clear of any situation where points got invested into the Saintess's physical conditioning.
Of course. An indiscriminate axe murderer, season 2, had to be avoided.
'I always thought she was only interested in study sessions and other intellectual pursuits. So in secret she was minding her exercise too...'
Guilt.
A sticky, clinging sense of sin came crawling up.
'I didn't want to know!'
The Undertaker screamed inside his heart as he watched the Saintess pitch forward in the middle of the difficult pose and plant her head in the sand with a muffled "Pff!"
'I never! Had any intention whatsoever of violating the Saintess's privacy!'
'So why... why is it only me who gets handed trials like this?!'
'Is it an anomaly?! It's an anomaly, obviously. This is the work of an anomaly, no doubt about it. Yes. Of course it is!'
The Saintess brushed the sand off her face.
"Ugh, mm... This still seems too much for me."
And with a deflated blank expression (the Undertaker could tell), she trudged off.
The way she walked was hardly ordinary, either. She moved not forward but backward, crouching low to wipe away, one by one, each footprint she had left in the sand.
'So that's it. Every time she comes to Haeundae she erases her tracks like this...'
What devotion.
As the edge of his heart grew tender in some indefinable way, the Undertaker felt an ominous energy.
'Wha-?'
That energy wasn't coming from the outside.
Just like the internal energy he had cultivated with SwordMarquess moments ago, it was rising up from inside the Undertaker himself.
'A sneeze?'
It was practically a national rule for an inner demon to come calling in the middle of cultivating one's inner arts.
'Now? Really, a sneeze, right now?'
The Undertaker felt his energy channels twist in an instant.
'N-no! Not now!'
Though the Saintess had backed away a bit and grown more distant, she still remained within range of his field of vision.
If he made even the smallest sound here, there was no way the Saintess wouldn't notice.
No. To begin with, whose field of vision the Saintess was sharing right now was a variable the Undertaker dared not guarantee.
Who knew if she might just be sharing the Undertaker's field of vision for fun, bored of erasing footprints?
The Undertaker.
'Hhup... hup hup, hup, hut, hot, oh, oh?'
Held it in.
He held in his fingertips that wanted to tremble and twitch. He had to. Otherwise he was dead.
Who? The Undertaker. And the Saintess.
And? The world would meet its end. The two of them companionably sipping Udumbara on the rocks[3].
'S-Saintess. Please. Please, get farther away. Quickly. Argh! Just use aura and wipe out your traces in one fiery sweep! Why do it uselessly, diligently, each footprint by hand one at a time, gck, ohk, n-no...'
And so.
"...Achoo."
It was small, far too small to be the sneeze of an adult man. Quieter than the beat of a dragonfly's wings, the sound slipped into the frozen world.
Whip.
The Saintess, who had been tidying footprints, lifted her head. Reflexively. Automatically. Very, exceedingly fast.
"..."
She stared.
The Saintess looked toward the direction where the Undertaker sat.
The Undertaker was seated in the lotus position. No thought, no idea. Nature was him and he was nature. He was demonstrating, in his own body, the plane of oneness between self and world.
"..."
She stared.
The Saintess still gazed at the Undertaker. Not only gazed, but, expressionless, holding that blank face the whole time,
she walked over.
"..."
She stared. Staaaaared. Stared hard.
Walking to the left. Walking to the right. And yet keeping her gaze fixed perfectly on the Undertaker's face.
She walked over. She approached. She drew near.
"..."
"..."
Whip.
The Saintess brought her hand beneath the Undertaker's nose. Silence followed.
"That's strange."
"..."
"I definitely heard a sound. And I think my field of vision moved a little, too."
The Undertaker screamed inside his heart. So she really had been sharing his field of vision with [Clairvoyance]!
'No. Come to think of it, the Saintess said that the higher her Clairvoyance rose, the more she looked down in third person rather than first person!'
In that case, holding both fields of vision at once, the Saintess's and the Undertaker's, self and other, on the same stretch of sand, would have been pocket change to her.
"Mr. Undertaker?"
No thought.
"Mr. Undertaker."
No idea.
"Don't tell me... you're watching. Or perceiving me. It isn't anything like that, is it? Mr. Undertaker?"
iamnotanundertakeriamastonestatueiamagoblinandanorcandamothercentaurwhobirthedasinglecentaurandacreatureofcaffeinewithabaristaflowingthroughmyveinsinsteadofblood.
"Hoo..."
Without any warning at all, the Saintess blew a puff of air at the Undertaker's eyeball.
'...!'
The Undertaker nearly blinked and triggered an utter catastrophe. Instead, from sheer shock, his stomach dropped a little.
His eyelids were steel and his heart was glass.
A man with thousands of years as a regressor under his belt was simply in a different class.
The Undertaker, chanting inside his head everything from Buddhist sutras to every Reality Marble activation chant he knew, succeeded in the end at holding his immovable posture.
"..."
After staring at such an Undertaker for a long beat,
The Saintess abruptly cleared her throat, as if embarrassed by her own behavior.
Maybe it was just his imagination, but her cheeks even seemed to flush a little.
"I did a... strange thing. Mm, yes. Suspicion like this is no good. I'm sure I just imagined it."
The Saintess steadied her breath. Then she fetched a step box from the open-air gym right beside them, climbed onto it, and patted the Undertaker's head.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Undertaker. Ah, of course, you won't be able to hear my voice."
"..."
"Because I always believe in you, Mr. Undertaker."
The sense of sin!
"That's why, even though it's a frozen world, I try every single time not to cross the line. Mm, whether I've put as much effort into practice as I've meant to, I can't say for sure either... But still. Thinking of your trust in me, Mr. Undertaker, I want to keep on trying."
The siiiiiin!
"...And yet, seeing that even strange suspicions like this are cropping up, maybe the time to stop this 'game' is slowly drawing near."
For a moment the Undertaker nearly cried out.
'Really?! Hallelujah! Thank you, Saintess! Thank you, Mo Gwang-seo Christ!'
Just as the classical music ringing through his ears was about to switch from the Symphony of Destiny to the Choral Symphony[4],
the Saintess's murmur came stabbing in.
"But if I stop even a game like this, then what will I use to keep my corruption at bay?"
...
"You must not lose your human heart. For that, you need a hobby. That's what you taught me, Mr. Undertaker... but in the end, apart from study sessions, I never found a hobby that suits me. Haa. Maybe this is my limit."
...
"A hobby. One where you don't lose yourself, yet you let yourself go. An effective hobby, just like the way you spend a vacation cycle, Mr. Undertaker. I wonder where in the world it might be..."
Trudge, trudge.
Spilling out a worry she had never told anyone, this time the Saintess truly grew distant.
And of course, crouching backward to erase her footprints was something she did not forget either.
Watching that forlorn figure.
"..."
The Undertaker made up his mind.
To transmute the material of his heart from glass into steel.
* * *
The next day.
"Mr. Undertaker."
"Oh. Welcome, Saintess. Did you stop by in the middle of your morning walk?"
"Yes. Ah, coffee. Thank you."
"Not at all. I'm the one who's always grateful."
"Mm... So, um. I'm not quite sure how to start."
"Goodness! Please, speak freely, freely. Is something on your mind?"
"...Yes. The truth is, I have a small hobby."
"Oho, oho."
"But even though that hobby never, ever harms other people, there are times it brushes up against my conscience. If that's the case, would it be better to give the hobby up?"
"No, no! What are you saying! Of course you should keep that hobby of yours, Saintess!"
"Ah... Is that so?"
"Yes indeed. The more we're awakeners, the more we have to allow ourselves a little leeway. Otherwise the heart wears thin, wears right out. Just look at me. Calls himself a regressor and goes off taking vacation cycles. Quite the mess, isn't it? Ahaha. Whatever hobby it is, your pastime is bound to be tamer than mine."
"Mm... But, my conscience..."
"As long as you don't get caught. As long as you don't get caught."
"...So it really is that way?"
"It really is."
"Mmm, yes. Mm. Thank you, Mr. Undertaker. Thanks to you, a bit of the weight on my heart feels lifted."
"I'm simply glad if I could be of even a little help. So you intend to keep the hobby going, then?"
"Yes. Now that I've gotten your answer too, Mr. Undertaker, I think I'll try practicing really letting myself loose."
"I'll be cheering you on."
"Thank you."
"Ahaha. It's nothing, nothing."
Today's lesson.
The road to hell is always paved with good intentions.
Footnotes:
[1] "A Man Should Strengthen Himself," also rendered here as "A Man of Determination," is the iconic Cantonese theme song associated with the Wong Fei-hung films, especially Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China series. It is instantly recognizable shorthand for over-the-top kung fu heroics.
[2] A pun in the original: the League Leader can "soar" or "take flight" in elevated literary diction, but he can never "jump" in the flashy manga sense, implying he stays a proper wuxia figure rather than a battle-manga hero.
[3] Udumbara is the flower-like anomaly established earlier in the series. "On the rocks" turns it into a grim joke about the pair drinking the cause of catastrophe like liquor.
[4] Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 (nicknamed the "Symphony of Fate/Destiny" in East Asia for its famous opening motif) and Symphony No. 9 (the "Choral," which culminates in the triumphant "Ode to Joy"); in other words, his mood shifts from doom to jubilation.
-x-X-x-
──────
* * *
Double standards.
That fateful streak in human nature, captured in the saying [When I do it it's romance, when others do it it's an affair], summoned challengers who longed to overcome it precisely because it was fate.
'Right. Isn't this just a matter of keeping it simple?'
The challenger of fate. His name was the Undertaker.
'When I go off on vacation, I tune out world annihilation and everything else and just enjoy myself. Seo Gyu dies too. Honestly, Seo Gyu is a victim who's died dozens of times thanks to my deliberate indifference.'
The Undertaker adopted the serene mindset of a high monk who had attained enlightenment.
'Let me take on Seo Gyu's mindset.'
The so-called Seo Gyu Theory.
Just think about it. When Seo Gyu's neck turned into a watermelon on a midsummer beach in some Japanese anime[1], did he really resent the Undertaker?
He did not.
Seo Gyu died knowing nothing. That very ignorance was salvation for the Undertaker on vacation.
'I too shall become an ignorant man like Seo Gyu before the Saintess!'
Starting the very next day after the counseling session ended.
As if she'd shaken off all the worry and torment she'd carried until then, the Saintess cast [Time Stop] more and more diligently, which is to say even more shamelessly.
"Hng, hup."
With far lighter, far more playful movements than before, the Saintess lifted up Sim Ah-ryeon.
For the record, Sim Ah-ryeon had been caught in [Time Stop] while positioned on the Undertaker's lap.
The Undertaker's lap and back had always been semi-public property. Whether the text bothered to describe it or not, one of them, Lee Ha-yul or Sim Ah-ryeon, was forever occupying them.
"Phew. All moved... Sim Ah-ryeon, you weigh a little more than you look."
If Ah-ryeon had heard that, she'd have topped up the red paint for her next painting with the Saintess's blood.
The Undertaker thought it to himself. Strictly to himself.
Viewed objectively, the Undertaker's body was as serene as the principal Buddha statue at Seokguram, a posture worthy of the UNESCO World Heritage list all on its own.
"Hup."
Plop.
The Saintess sat down with the soft give of a castella sponge cake lightly pressed by hand. And the moment she settled on the Undertaker's lap, she was rather surprised.
"...It's, hmm. Wider than I thought. Well, every time I happened to see it, I did think it was big."
"..."
The heart of Seo Gyu!
"And it's incredibly firm. So this is what the legs of people who work out hard are like. It almost feels like a separate living creature, how curious."
"..."
Only the heart of Seo Gyu!
'No. Wait a moment. Doesn't this risk sounding like Seo Gyu and the Saintess are an item?'
It was a problem that might have stirred up endless controversy, yet the Undertaker, true to a seasoned regressor, arrived at a solution at once.
'Right, I wasn't learning the heart of just any Seo Gyu, but the heart of a Seo Gyu whose neck had flown clean off. So it doesn't matter.'
Only the heart of a Seo Gyu whose neck had flown clean off!
That's right. Anyone would have noticed by this point, but the truth was that the Undertaker's level didn't come anywhere close to that of an enlightened high monk.
He was desperately reciting nonsense in his head to steer his mind elsewhere.
No matter how much of an aura genius he was, how could it ever be easy to multitask the feats of 'holding the breath,' 'stopping all movement,' 'halting the heart's pounding,' 'ignoring the sensation coming up from the knee,' and 'erasing all change in emotion'?
"Ah. That's right. I wanted to try this too."
By now it might have been time to stop, but having heard the verdict of 'you're fine' and 'let's keep going just like this' in her one-on-one session with the Undertaker, the Saintess was invincible.
She scurried off somewhere. And thirty minutes later, she scurried back. In her hand was a hairbrush.
Hairbrushes themselves were plentiful here too. Even Sim Ah-ryeon, who had just tasted the Saintess using her authority to teleport her, had one right there.
And yet the Saintess had gone out of her way to ride the Inunaki Tunnel[2] and rush all the way home and back. It was very much like the Saintess, who strictly distinguished between her own things and other people's things even when no one could possibly call her out on it.
So why was she doing this to the Undertaker? As stated, his body was generally public property.
If this world's genre had been yuri and the protagonist's gender had been different, she'd have earned a yuri-genius certification mark in a heartbeat (the bad-ending count would have multiplied too).
Anyway.
"Here, umm... Yes. Like this."
The Saintess carefully assembled the joints of the Undertaker's fingers.
The result of the assembly: the hairbrush ended up equipped onto his hand, not hers. The Undertaker thought to himself absently. Probably this was how a game character felt when a player forcibly made it wear a piece of gear.
"Hmm."
Creak, creak. As she worked the Undertaker a little more, even the angle of his arm finally came out just right.
The Saintess put on a deeply satisfied blank face and entered the head-pat-and-brush procedure.
"..."
"Mm. Mm-mm, mmm."
A quick aside here.
As mentioned earlier, the Saintess was perched on the Undertaker's lap.
No matter how painstakingly she'd adjusted the joints of the Undertaker's arm, the Saintess was no Puppeteer.
By the plain facts of the matter, she had no real authority to force the Undertaker into a gentle head-patting motion inside a world frozen by [Time Stop].
And yet, if the Saintess demanded most-favored-nation treatment from the Undertaker, demanding the same patting he gave Sim Ah-ryeon, then an inevitable posture followed.
Hop. Hop, hop.
That's right. The Undertaker's arm and hand, and above all the hairbrush, were fixed in midair.
Only the Saintess raised and lowered her head over and over, jumping and landing on the Undertaker's knee, working the miracle of seizing a head-pat for herself by her own effort.
Had there ever been, in all of history, a great figure who accomplished the head-pat cliché by such a pitiful method? Let alone one who used the overwhelming power of [Time Stop] for nothing more than this?
There had not, he could declare for certain.
'Saintess...'
Facing this momentous historical instant before his very eyes, the Undertaker felt his mind nearly drift away.
'No, no. Saintess? What am I on about? Wasn't I just Seo Gyu, whose head got blown up by the tutorial fairy? The heart of Seo Gyu. I am nothing but a headless corpse.'
The Undertaker grabbed his runaway mind by the scruff and dragged it back into his skull.
He thought about the Saintess's suffering. About a life where her mind wore down and her trust in humanity ground away as she watched over the Korean Peninsula every hour of all 365 days a year.
If her inner demon could be soothed by this kind of 'play,' wasn't that something to be glad about, if anything?
'Use me as you please, like a ride at an amusement park, Saintess. I am nothing but a lump of stone that happened to be set down here. If a ride called me can help your spiritual cultivation even a little, that alone would be my joy.'
"Uh, umm..."
Before long the Saintess's poor stamina seemed to run flat, and she panted. She even broke into a sweat.
"Something. Something, hmm. I get the feeling that this... isn't quite it..."
'Well, naturally.'
"This is an awfully tiring motion. Why do Sim Ah-ryeon and Mr. Undertaker repeat it every day, and why did they react as though it felt good...?"
'Because it's an entirely different motion.'
"It isn't anything special. Perhaps just realizing that fact today means I've earned valuable Experience Points."
'You really had a blast, didn't you, Saintess?'
In any case, under the Undertaker's silence, the Saintess was able to relieve her stress.
And though it was a truth the Undertaker rather hated to admit... he too was secretly enjoying the strange and wondrous situation at hand.
If you can't avoid it, enjoy it. Wasn't that the old motto of the man called the Undertaker?
"Hello, Mr. Undertaker. Good morning."
"Yes. Good morning, Saintess. Enjoying your dawn walk again today?"
"Yes. Leaving the house, crossing the tunnel, drinking coffee, that whole stretch is my routine these days."
For example, just like now.
Until barely an hour ago, the two of them had pried open a new epoch in the field of head-patting.
But once [Time Stop] was lifted, as if no such history had ever happened, the Saintess visited the café Azit with a perfectly composed face.
"I'll make your coffee right away. Please wait just a moment."
"Yes. Take your time."
The regressor couldn't help admiring the Saintess's composure as she managed her expression without so much as twitching an eyebrow.
'...Now that I look, the Saintess's acting is as splendid as my own.'
Or was it? Was it not acting but the real thing?
The Undertaker nearly mistook the memory of an hour ago for an illusion some anomaly had maliciously implanted.
"Here you are."
"Ah, yes. I'll gladly drin...?"
She froze.
Seeing the coffee the Undertaker had made for her, the Saintess's eyes wavered slightly.
It was only natural. Her favorite menu item was always fixed. A packet of Maxim coffee[3]. Half a spoon of cinnamon powder.
Thanks to that, the Saintess could enjoy the romance of saying 'barista, the usual' without reciting a separate order.
But the coffee now placed before her was none other than a café mocha. Whipped cream. Loads of thick, gooey chocolate syrup.
It was Sim Ah-ryeon's favorite menu item.
"..."
And a moment ago, the Saintess had a track record of casting [Time Stop] and borrowing the ride Sim Ah-ryeon always favored.
Thump-thump.
The Saintess's heart began to race.
"Um, Mr. Undertaker. This is...?"
"Ah. My apologies. It seems some mouse crept in from somewhere and gnawed open some packets of Maxim coffee."
The Undertaker laughed softly, the answer he'd prepared in advance rolling off smoothly.
"There were some intact ones, but I could hardly serve a flawed ingredient like that to you, now could I, Saintess. I'll bring in a fresh batch tomorrow, so how about enjoying a different menu item just for today?"
"Ah..."
"As it happens, the chocolate syrup came out really well this time. How shall I put it, as if old man Sword Marquess had put a little more care into stomping it than usual? It's not too sweet and the flavor runs deep."
"I... see."
Thump-thump.
The Saintess also had quite a knack for aura control. The instant she realized her heart had strayed outside its normal range, she spread a soundproof barrier around her chest.
Thump-thump.
The same went for the Undertaker. No matter how great an actor he was, heir to Joshua von Arnim, when had he ever tried this kind of prank on a Saintess who was earnest about everything?
Time stopped.
The instant he sensed the black-and-white tone unfold, the Undertaker froze his facial muscles right in that laughter-tinged smile.
She shot up.
The Saintess stood and ran off. Probably she'd gone to check the food storage the Undertaker kept for barista use only.
But it was useless.
'I've already taken countermeasures, Saintess.'
The Undertaker had secretly drawn his aura out long and thin like a snake and damaged the coffee packets so they really looked gnawed by a mouse's front teeth.
He hadn't even left them damaged in the storage. He'd thrown them in the storage trash can.
He'd stayed faithful to the setting of 'given the Undertaker's personality, when ingredients meant for serving guests get ruined, he never leaves them be.'
The devil was in the details. And the Undertaker was a splendid devil.
"..."
Sure enough. Having run to the storage and witnessed all the evidence, the Saintess came trudging back with an expressionless, endlessly expressionless face.
"It's a... coincidence, isn't it?"
She mumbled as she sat back down at the table.
"Yes, it's a coincidence. That's right. It's a coincidence. There's no way Mr. Undertaker remembered what happened this morning and deliberately made me Sim Ah-ryeon's café mocha... no way."
"There's absolutely no way," she mumbled.
"There mustn't be."
"..."
"...Time Stop, release."
Color returned to the world once more. The Undertaker, too. The Saintess, too. Both held the exact same attitude as before time stopped.
The Saintess fought down the tremble that threatened to take her hand and took a sip of the café mocha as though nothing were the matter.
"How is it?"
The Undertaker, too, asked as though nothing were the matter.
"Not bad to enjoy a different menu item like this once in a while, right?"
"...Yes. Just as you said, the chocolate syrup isn't too sweet, so it's delicious."
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
"I think I finally understand why Sim Ah-ryeon likes it."
"The flavor changes again depending on whether you eat the whipped cream separately or mix it in as you drink. Being able to adjust the intensity however you like is the charm of café mocha type coffees."
"Ah... It really does."
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
The Saintess looked at the Undertaker. The Undertaker smiled with pure innocence.
The Undertaker looked at the Saintess. The Saintess smiled faintly.
'Mr. Undertaker. You couldn't possibly?'
'I know nothing at all.'
There were depths even within a gaze. And so beneath those depths there could only be a fierce submerged battle being waged.
'It isn't true, is it?'
'Isn't it, though?'
'If it really is that, then why?'
'And what if I'm only having my fun too?'
'I can't be found out. At the very least, if it's my fate to be exposed, then it shouldn't be me but...'
'You're the one who should raise the white flag first.'
Clink.
The Saintess set down her cup.
At the same moment, time stopped.
"..."
This time the Saintess didn't run off somewhere else. Instead she came closer.
As it happened, the Undertaker was also drinking a café au lait. The Saintess lifted the coffee cup with a grave face.
Gently.
So that it wouldn't show, she took a tiny lick. Really just a tiny bit, she stole a sip of the Undertaker's café au lait.
"...!!"
At that profound martial art, the Undertaker shuddered.
'I see. So if I drink the coffee now as though nothing had happened, it'll be cemented!'
An indirect kiss.
The cliché that would be a letdown if it didn't follow right after the head-pat.
There was a reason a cliché was a cliché. The Undertaker was learning the sternness of that law firsthand.
Gulp. The Undertaker swallowed the spittle of his heart, not down his throat but down the hole in his heart.
'If by any chance I show even the slightest hint of awkwardness here...'
Time resumed. Play.
Without a single trace of awkwardness, without a shred of hesitation, the Undertaker lifted the coffee cup and drank the café au lait.
He didn't even rotate the cup. His lips came in to land on the very spot where the Saintess had deliberately, carefully pressed hers.
"...!!"
Time Stop again. In a frantic rush.
The Saintess quickly snatched the coffee cup from the Undertaker's hand and wiped the rim back and forth with her sleeve.
Whoo, hwah, whoo.
Tense diaphragmatic breaths rippled from the Saintess.
"..."
Once again, she looked at him.
"..."
And of course, he was looking at her too.
'Why? Mr. Undertaker. Why do such a thing?'
'Who are you talking to? Right now?'
'...What the truth is doesn't matter. It might be so, it might not, but I can't be the one to back down first.'
'Same here.'
A battle waged by two acting geniuses.
A miraculous matchup with no victor, only a lesser loser and a greater loser, was established here.
Footnotes:
[1] A nod to suika-wari, the Japanese summertime beach game of smashing a watermelon while blindfolded, a stock scene in anime beach episodes; here Seo Gyu's head being split open is likened to the bursting watermelon.
[2] The Inunaki Tunnel (Fukuoka, Japan) is one of Japan's most notorious 'cursed' / haunted locations in urban legend; the name is used here as a creepy nickname for the teleportation passage.
[3] Maxim is the dominant Korean brand of instant 'mix' coffee, sold in single-serve stick packets and treated as the default everyday coffee in Korea.
-x-X-x-
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* * *
The Saintess, Jeong Ye-ji, was suspicious.
Of whom? Of the Undertaker. Of what? Of the doubt over whether she really was the only person who could move inside Time Stop.
Doubt. Doubt. Doubt that never let up.
'Isn't it possible that he already knows?'
Lately the Saintess could not escape this whirlpool of suspicion, no matter how she tried.
Even on ordinary days her head was crammed so full of this one thought that she could barely keep her hands on her work.
'...Mr. Undertaker is a regressor. He pulls off feats that surpass everyone's expectations without batting an eye.'
'In theory, there'd be nothing strange about him having a resistance to Time Stop.'
'So what if he really, truly knows everything, and is only pretending not to...?'
Take two weeks ago, for instance.
The coffee cup the Saintess had secretly pressed her lips to. What if the Undertaker had gone ahead and drunk from it knowing that? What if he hadn't refused? Then that would.
'What would that even mean...?'
"Saintess."
Jeong Ye-ji jolted.
"Oh."
She lifted her head, which she hadn't realized had dropped, only to find that most of the colleagues seated around the table were staring at her as if something was off.
The one who had just called her was Yu Ji-won. That face, so beautiful that admiration welled up in Jeong Ye-ji's heart whenever she looked at it, was watching her without expression.
"Mm. Yes, Ji-won. I'm sorry. I was lost in thought for a moment."
"Not at all. This officer is well aware that you labor day and night for the security of the Korean Peninsula."
"..."
It was a thought that crossed her mind every time they spoke like this, but neither the speech nor the word choice was anything you'd expect from a face like that. "This officer"? It was far too strange.
"In any case, if something troubles you, please confide in this officer, no. In us as well. We may have formed around His Excellency the Undertaker, but are we not one team?"
By "us," she meant Seo Gyu, Jeong Ye-ji, Cheon Yo-hwa, Yu Ji-won, Lee Ha-yul, Sim Ah-ryeon, and Noh Do-hwa.
As they were doing now, the Regression Alliance would gather all its members and share a meal at least once every six months.
By long custom, the distance between hearts is proportional to the distance between bodies.
Whether the Undertaker was present or not, regular gatherings were essential for the colleagues to maintain trust.
No. Quite the opposite. At gatherings like this, the Undertaker absolutely had to be absent.
"Aaare weee noot ooone teeeam-."
Plop.
Cheon Yo-hwa had flopped face-down onto the table and poked her head out, jeering in a heavily sarcastic tone.
A plastic straw balanced on the bridge of her nose, holding its precarious position like a tightrope clown at the circus. Quite the sense of coordination.
Yu Ji-won tilted her head.
"Student council president. Do you have something to say?"
"Yeah! A whole lot! One team my foot. It's just us schmoozing to the teacher like, 'We don't have any problems at all- running normally-.' All for show!"
"It is precisely the show that matters."
Yu Ji-won answered calmly.
"No one is forcing true friendship upon us. Cooperation. Trust. The deployment of predictable combat strength. If we can build these virtues, is that not enough?"
"Aaah, yes, yes. Fine words, fine words. But before that, can't we do something about the painter leeching onto the teacher over there like a parasite?"
"H, hiik."
Sim Ah-ryeon, seated in the corner, flinched.
For the record, at a table where everyone sat crammed shoulder to shoulder, somehow only the one meter to Sim Ah-ryeon's left and right sat completely empty.
"A, a parasite...? Calling a human. Like that, like a bug..."
"Hey. Fuck, that was you who drew that disgusting pic of the teacher getting strangled to death at 3:23 this morning and dropped it as a surprise upload, wasn't it? Huh?"
"I think a, anonymity has to be guaranteed in community activity..."
"Why does the teacher just leave a freak like that alone?!"
Cheon Yo-hwa slammed the table with a thud. And everyone thought the same thing at once. She's got a point, though.
"Schmoozing or whatever, you know? You need at least a halfway normal human being to build trust or anything! That green-head is just an anomaly, I'm telling you?! An anomaly!"
"Th, that's too... harsh."
Everyone at this gathering, save for a single person, conceded that Cheon Yo-hwa's claim was a proposition that truly could not be denied.
'I'm not sure why, but even I feel oddly restless whenever I look at Sim Ah-ryeon.'
It really was a strange thing.
Jeong Ye-ji didn't particularly judge Sim Ah-ryeon to be a wretched human.
She had a habit of looking inward before criticizing others, and each time she did, she would pick out her own flaws.
For all that it was for the sake of the entire Korean Peninsula's security, wasn't it a fact that she too spied on every move of countless people?
'Compared to that, the chaos Sim Ah-ryeon stirs up on SG Net is child's play, really... So why does it make me this angry?'
That wasn't all.
A glance. Jeong Ye-ji secretly looked at the one person who hadn't said a single word since the gathering began.
'Noh Do-hwa too.'
Her heart churned.
'Someone I respect. As upright as Mr. Undertaker, perhaps even more upright than Mr. Undertaker, someone I truly respect on a human level...'
For some reason. Something just didn't fit.
'...It's my own lack of virtue.'
Jeong Ye-ji thought.
'I can't protect everyone on my own. Everyone has to carry out their own role from their own position, and they are doing exactly that. And yet here I am, dissatisfied. ...Just what is it that I lack, that makes my heart turn so spiteful?'
"Oh, by the way."
Cheon Yo-hwa slurped at her lemonade and asked listlessly.
"What's the teacher up to today?"
"His Excellency is dining with the Samcheon World Guild Leader."
Zzt.
Just as Jeong Ye-ji had struggled to settle the turmoil in her heart, her chest ached all over again.
"Dining? ...Ah, the. What was it again? That, what, gourmet tour or whatever, that thing that isn't even funny?"
"Yes. Once every half month, His Excellency deliberately makes time to enjoy a hobby with the Samcheon World Guild Leader. Of course, by personally touring the markets together, the two of them attend to the people's livelihood while also reaffirming the citizens' support."
"Touring my foot. It's obvious she's just scheming to score points while she's out on a date with the teacher."
"President Cheon Yo-hwa has a bad habit of analyzing people too simplistically. Human emotion is layered, in its makeup."
"Wow, that's really something I don't want to hear from an actual psychopath..."
Cheon Yo-hwa laughed as if dumbfounded.
"Then want to make a bet? On whether that witch over there is secretly treating us like idiots while she's on her restaurant date with the teacher?"
"I respect the character of the Samcheon World Guild Leader. Though, regarding the analysis that she treats President Cheon Yo-hwa like an idiot, on that point alone I can agree."
"You really want to die?"
"..."
Zzt. Tingle, zzt.
Jeong Ye-ji bowed her head.
Why was it.
All the way until the gathering wrapped up, her heart could not find peace for a single moment.
The one consolation to her conscience was simply that she hadn't used Time Stop even once while all the back-and-forth went on.
* * *
The moment the gathering wrapped up, Jeong Ye-ji slipped out in a hurry.
She did so even when Cheon Yo-hwa linked arms with her and said, "Saintess unni, want to go for a second round and drink with us?"
"I'm sorry. There are some terrorists I have to keep a careful eye on today."
"Ah."
Cheon Yo-hwa grinned, hehe, looking disappointed.
"Then there's no helping it! It's thanks to you, unni, that we can leave our base empty and head out without a care in the world."
The truth was, the only person at this gathering who got along smoothly, if at arm's length, with everyone else was Jeong Ye-ji.
There was good reason for it. The Regression Alliance members were aware that Jeong Ye-ji watched them twenty-four hours a day.
At first they might shudder swallowing this red pill of a truth, but later on they could only come to feel an emotional closeness to her.
A person who 'knew every shameful part of you yet never spilled the secret,' whose 'attitude toward you never changed,' and who 'would listen to your troubles whenever you wished.'
That was what a Saintess was.
So it was only natural that, within the Regression Alliance, Jeong Ye-ji commanded nothing short of absolute respect and reverence.
Even Cheon Yo-hwa, who was damn hard to get close to, showed the Saintess affection without hesitation, and that said it all.
"See you again next time, unni!"
"...Yes. Cheon Yo-hwa."
"Hey. Lee Ha-yul. You're old enough to drink now, right? Let's go."
[This one had been waiting for nothing but those words.]
The Regression Alliance members drifted off in twos and threes.
There was even the astonishing sight of Lee Ha-yul dragging along Noh Do-hwa, who had insisted she absolutely did not want to go and was scowling like a vengeful demon.
"..."
Jeong Ye-ji, alone and apart, walked off somewhere.
She walked, passed through the Inunaki Tunnel[1], returned to her own home in Yongsan, and then stopped time.
Then she retraced the path she had walked, in reverse. She arrived in Busan, loitered for a while, then loitered some more. In front of a certain restaurant.
As though chance itself had guided her, she stepped inside.
A corner of the restaurant. Dang Seo-rin sat at the table by the window, and across from her the Undertaker had frozen like a stone statue.
"..."
Zzt, thump. Zzt.
Watching the two of them seated at the same table, her heart ached all over again.
But there was not only ache.
Thump. Zzt, thump.
A rhythm that was clearly not pain but closer to its opposite hue was slowly spreading out from the edge of her heart.
'Ah.'
The Saintess was clever.
Far too bright to keep pretending she didn't understand her own feelings. Clever enough to shape the reason for that joy into words.
"You stopped... it, didn't you? Mr. Undertaker?"
Wise, she was not.
The feeling she had assembled into words, she could not, in the end, keep locked away inside.
She set herself loose in the world of Time Stop, where every line became a soliloquy.
"With Dang Seo-rin... for years now. The date you've carried out like a ritual ever since you first met her, you're in the middle of it, and yet."
"..."
"You stopped time, didn't you...?"
Soft and low.
"You mustn't stop it, Mr. Undertaker."
Careful, careful.
"Because then I'll get the wrong idea. Do you realize? Mr. Undertaker, you like Dang Seo-rin. And she likes you too. For something like me to barge in between the two of you, that, that's not a good thing."
Right now.
Whom was she speaking to?
"...A human like me is hideous."
What did she want the truth to be?
Did she want the Undertaker to truly be able to move inside Time Stop, to be the one and only spectator of a one-person play, secretly listening in on the soliloquy she now murmured?
Or did she, after all, want Time Stop to be absolute? To still be reflected in the Undertaker's eyes as a flawless human being. Did she want him never to find out that she was a fool getting worked up over this strange, silly game?
She didn't know.
Whether she wanted him to understand, or didn't, Jeong Ye-ji found it hard to tell.
For it was the very first time she had ever felt anything like this.
"Dang Seo-rin is unfair."
And the first time she had ever recited words like these, too.
"I could have expressed my affection any amount I liked. And I held back. Because it isn't the time for that, is it? The world is going to end."
"..."
"Dang Seo-rin is the only one who doesn't know about regression. So without the slightest awareness that moments like this will later remain as wounds for you, Mr. Undertaker, she shows her affection without restraint. That's really..."
Huh?
Speaking without thinking, Jeong Ye-ji gave a start. It was an outrage so absurd even she could scarcely believe it.
"...No. No. Please forget it."
Shake. Shake, shake, shake.
Jeong Ye-ji hurriedly shook her head.
"Dang Seo-rin only sacrificed herself, to the very end, so that you could use her ability at maximum efficiency, Mr. Undertaker."
"..."
"To call such a noble heart unfair. ...The truly cowardly one was me. I'm ashamed."
Right. Let's stop.
For now. For now, even though she had laid bare such a hideous side of herself, she had not crossed the decisive line.
The Saintess could feel it.
That coming here today, of all days, on purpose, to the place where Dang Seo-rin and the Undertaker were spending their time alone together, and pouring out her 'true feelings,' had been the very limit she could just barely manage.
'...This is my rock bottom.'
To think such a sticky marsh lurked within her own heart. The Saintess was on the verge of being utterly disgusted with herself.
Of course, the Undertaker would be disgusted too.
'If Mr. Undertaker was listening, then he won't go along with my game anymore.'
'And if he couldn't hear it, then that's fine in its own way. It just means the conclusion is that this was all a delusion of mine alone.'
'So.'
This was as far as it went.
The Saintess turned her back without lingering, no. She turned her back, leaving her lingering attachment behind in this place. Then she came home and released Time Stop.
'...And from now on I'll have to hold back as much as I can from watching Mr. Undertaker with Clairvoyance, too.'
She brewed chamomile tea and drank it.
She did a round of monitoring the awakeners she had classified as dangerous elements. She fed the fish. She wrote up the notable points in a computer document. She cleaned the fish tank. She remeasured the risk scores according to the scoring chart she herself had made.
Just as she was about to finish her routine that way.
Knock, knock.
"...?"
The Saintess's fingers, drifting over the keyboard, came to a stop.
'A knock?'
She checked the clock without thinking. Since she lived by a different flow of time than other people, a clock was, if anything, an essential item.
One in the morning.
'At this hour...? An anomaly?'
The Saintess lightly used Time Stop.
Hand axe in hand, she opened the front door. Fully intending to split the skull in one stroke of any anomaly that dared do nothing more than knock.
The Undertaker stood in front of the door.
"...?!"
Clunk! The Saintess quickly shut the front door.
"Huh? Eh? Huh?"
Mr. Undertaker? The real Mr. Undertaker? At this hour?
Could it be a doppelgänger? It was a reasonable inference. Leaning her back against the inside of the front door, she quickly activated Clairvoyance.
Sharing the Undertaker's field of vision.
She could see the scenery right outside the very front door she was leaning against. Proof that it was an awakener and not an anomaly.
"Eh."
This time she shared Dang Seo-rin's field of vision.
It was pitch dark. She had probably gone back to the Samcheon World Azit at Busan Station and fallen asleep.
Considering that the Undertaker and Dang Seo-rin usually drank late into the night, it was a somewhat strange situation, but.
"..."
She could understand it. After all, a person wouldn't crave drink every single day. Sometimes they might just eat a meal and part ways cleanly. Only, the problem was.
'Why... at my house?'
Thump.
"By chance, there's something he urgently needs to tell me... Ah. Because I wasn't watching with Clairvoyance today. Mr. Undertaker tried to contact me, but I didn't manage to see it..."
This was it. This had to be the answer.
She had set Clairvoyance aside for a moment out of consideration for the Undertaker, and at that very moment something had happened to him.
With the easy route of contact through Telepathy cut off, the Undertaker had come on foot himself. It was a perfectly reasonable analysis.
'What if.'
And yet.
'What if he heard the things I said earlier today...?'
Thump.
'And so, if he came to answer the words I laid out thinking they were a soliloquy...?'
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
"..."
Time Stop, released.
"Who is it?"
"Saintess. It's the Undertaker."
Creeeak.
"Ah, Mr. Undertaker."
"My apologies for the late hour."
"Not at all. Sleeping hours have no meaning for me anyway."
Thump.
"Please, come in. So..."
Thump-thump-thump, thump.
"What brings you here?"
Thump.
Footnotes:
[1] The Inunaki Tunnel in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan, is one of the country's most infamous real-world urban-legend sites, long rumored to be cursed and haunted; its name is shorthand in horror/subculture circles for a forbidden, otherworldly passage.