WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Damned Transmigration ◈
Chapter 106: I’m Going to Meet You
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Lacey Yuzha.
She stood before the Dersia Mage Tower, letting out one heavy sigh after another.
It had been an eventful journey.
When she first left for Alderan, she had expected it to be an enjoyable trip like last year's.
At the expo, she would browse creative, entertaining magic and items. In the city, she would have inspiring exchanges with young mages. That was what last year's expo had been like for Lacey.
This year had been terrible. An unexpected encounter had kept her from properly enjoying the expo, and she had even gotten caught up in a terrorist attack. Because of that attack, the magic expo might not be held for the next few years.
The aftereffects of the Akashic Records had lasted longer and clung to her more stubbornly than Lacey had expected, leaving her bedridden at the Mabeld estate for a week.
Her body had recovered, but the journey back had been difficult. Her heart felt heavy and uneasy.
It was still the same now. The reason she could not enter the Dersia Mage Tower, a place she had always visited with excitement and joy, was the letter tucked inside her robe.
‘How should I explain this?’
It had not been a planned meeting, but a chance encounter. That was truly all it had been, but would Elena believe her? Lacey knew Elena's mental state was unstable. What if she got the wrong idea...
‘What if she thinks I'm a Transmigrator too?’
That was what worried Lacey the most. No matter what excuse she gave, as long as she hid the fact that Yuri was a Transmigrator, she would inevitably be called a liar.
‘The letter is a problem too.’
She had not secretly opened it, so she did not know what it said. All she could do was hope the letter would not further stir up Elena's unstable emotions.
“Of course it will stir her up.”
Considering their circumstances and relationship, it would affect Elena one way or another. Yet standing in front of the tower and sighing would not change anything. Lacey moved forward with heavy steps.
Still, she could not go straight to Elena. First, she headed for Orca's room at the top of the tower.
“You mean she's away?”
“Yes.”
She was stopped on the way. An elder mage of the tower, with a tired face and a thick beard, sipped black coffee as he spoke.
“Recently, it seems Lady Orca has found some inspiration. She's been leaving the tower often.”
“Inspiration?”
“I heard she came up with a new spell.”
“That is... unusual, isn't it?”
Orca, who was presumed to have long surpassed the seventh tier and reached the eighth, considered the Akashic Records the ultimate goal of her personal magic.
It was magic with an impossibly long road ahead of it, so a new spell all of a sudden? And a spell that required her to leave the tower? Lacey blinked, unable to imagine what it could be.
‘What else has she been working on while I was gone?’
Surely she was not giving up on the Akashic Records now? If that was the case, Lacey intended to speak up without holding back. She had willingly offered up her body for the completion of the Akashic Records and had even suffered the humiliation of vomiting in front of that annoying man!
‘If she's giving up on the Akashic Records now, that means she tested it on me and decided it wasn't viable!’
Lacey had volunteered to take part in what could be called a clinical trial of unfinished magic, but she could at least voice her complaints.
“Did Elena go out with her too?”
“That child... is in the tower.”
Lacey let out a deep sigh at the answer, which came with a bitter smile.
“For how long?”
“She hasn't gone home for the past ten days. Ah, but she hasn't locked herself in her room the whole time. Until three days ago, she went out to eat every meal with Lady Orca.”
“Until three days ago?”
“Lady Orca left three days ago. The other mages and I have gone to see her at every meal, but... we haven't even seen her face. It's not as if we can force our way in.”
Of course they could not. At the Dersia Mage Tower, Orca and Lacey were the only two people Elena could spend time with outside magical research.
“Ah, right. I heard you reached the sixth tier. That's impressive.”
“I was in a situation where I would have died if I hadn't surpassed my limits.”
“Not everyone can surpass their limits in such a situation. Sixth tier at twenty-nine, hoho... Elena is remarkable, but you're no less so.”
“Thank you.”
It was praise delivered with a smile, but it was uncomfortable to hear. It sounded as though he were saying Lacey, not Elena, should have been the tower master's disciple.
It could not be helped. Most mages were eccentric and closed off, yet expected others to possess fine qualities that they themselves lacked.
Some elder mages thought Lacey, who was warm toward everyone and talented to boot, was better suited to become the next tower master than Elena, who could not guide her juniors or respect her seniors.
Lacey hated that assessment. She worried her very presence might become another source of pressure for Elena.
It was Lacey who had declined becoming the tower master's disciple.
“Elena?”
Elena used the entire floor directly beneath the top floor as her room.
The door Lacey saw as soon as she stepped off the elevator was tightly shut. She glanced at the food placed beside it. The meal sent up around lunchtime had already gone cold.
“Elena? It's me, Lacey. Are you asleep?”
Knock, knock.
Not long after she lightly knocked on the door, it opened.
“Ah, Senior.”
Her blond hair stuck out in every direction. Her face was a little thinner than before Lacey had left. Her eyes were hollow.
“When did you get back?”
Still, perhaps because Orca had made sure she ate every meal, she looked better than Lacey had imagined.
“I got back today.”
“I heard you went through a lot. Did you come straight to the tower?”
“I rested a lot in the carriage on the way back. Can I come in?”
Elena gave a faint smile and stepped away from the doorway.
It was a spacious room, one where she would not have suffered much inconvenience even if she had shut herself in for three days. It had a washroom and a bathroom as well.
But it was not tidy. Magic books and papers were scattered everywhere, especially around the bed and sofa. Lacey looked back and forth between the dolls strewn across the crumpled, messy bed and the pillows and blankets scattered over the sofa.
“I couldn't sleep in the bed.”
Elena said it as if making an excuse.
Every day, she would lie in bed and toss and turn. She would hug one of the dolls she had brought from the orphanage, but still fail to fall asleep, eventually curling up on the sofa instead.
In the past, she would have at least poured alcohol down her throat, but she had not drunk since talking with Orca. As advised, she had decided not to rely on alcohol, but on magic.
“What about food...”
Lacey trailed off. She had spotted crumpled wrappers on the floor beside the desk covered in papers. Calorie bars that were dry and tasteless. Lacey sighed deeply and shook her head.
“Orca will scold you if you eat things like that.”
“She'll say my brain won't work properly.”
Elena gave a quiet laugh. Shuffling over to the sofa, she sat down, hugged a pillow to her chest, and stared at Lacey.
“Are you okay, Senior?”
“Me?”
“There was a big incident in Alderan. Ah, congratulations. I heard you reached the sixth tier.”
“I haven't gone around telling anyone, so how does everyone know?”
“Lady Orca told me.”
It was not exactly a secret. Lacey cleared her throat and sat across from Elena.
“In Alderan... well, I did nearly die. But I'm fine. I wasn't hurt.”
Why haven't you gone home? What the hell happened to your room? Have you been doing okay while I was gone?
There was much Lacey wanted to ask, but the answers were too obvious.
Home? No reason. I'm more comfortable here than at home.
The room is messy because it can't be helped. I didn't let anyone in to clean it. Besides, this is more comfortable. Even if I cleaned it, it would just get messy again.
I was fine while you were gone. My days are always the same.
I'm glad you came back safely. I worried about you a lot. But Senior. In Alderan.
“A lot.”
The voice suddenly came closer.
“I heard he was hurt... a lot.”
Lacey blinked and looked at Elena.
“Um... Me? My body wasn't hurt. It was more like internal injuries, so I suffered a little from that...”
“Yuri.”
Elena spoke with a smile.
“I heard his injuries were extremely serious. That after everything was over, he was staggering even while speaking, and that he completely passed out in the carriage?”
“...”
“Ah, Senior didn't see it. Lady Orca was moving your body at the time. I heard it from Lady Orca too.”
“Um...”
How should she answer? Lacey hesitated briefly before nodding.
“His injuries... were serious. The opponent was too strong. He couldn't run away, and because he was fighting while protecting me, he couldn't properly avoid the attacks...”
“He had no choice, did he?”
Lacey's words cut off.
“If you hadn't reached the sixth tier, Lady Orca couldn't have been transferred. Whoever the opponent was, he would have had no choice but to fight while protecting you.”
What was this?
Lacey froze at the reply. It was a perfectly reasonable thing to say, but something about it felt like fingernails scraping across a blackboard, scratching at the surface of her emotions.
“How was Haryeong?”
“She was injured too.”
“Did she seem to be getting along well with Yuri?”
“Well... I didn't talk to them enough to get a sense of that.”
She lied.
It was true that she had not spoken with them much, but she could at least tell whether the two got along. Especially when they had met at the expo, Haryeong's openly displayed hostility had been...
“Did things between Haryeong and Yuri seem the same as they did two years ago?”
Elena asked with a smile.
“When Haryeong was my guard and Yuri was my childhood friend, back when we lived together at home.”
Lacey could not answer right away. After hesitating for a moment, she forced out her voice.
“I don't know. I don't know what things were like two years ago.”
“Didn't he ask about me?”
“Lady Haryeong... asked if you were doing well.”
“What about Yuri?”
That faint smile looked like cracked glass that could shatter at any moment. No matter what Lacey said, it felt as though it would only fall into a black hole. Her chest felt tight and nauseous.
“I received a letter.”
In the end, Lacey let out a short sigh and took the letter from inside her robe.
The moment Elena heard the word letter, her eyes widened.
“It is a letter Yuri asked me to deliver to you...”
Elena practically tumbled off the sofa and reached for the letter. Lacey jerked back in surprise, but Elena grabbed her wrist faster.
“Ah...”
Elena's eyes trembled as she gripped Lacey's wrist with a desperate expression.
“I'm... sorry.”
“No... It's okay.”
Lacey composed herself and handed over the letter. Elena's shoulders twitched as she placed it on her lap. Her dull golden eyes darted busily between the letter and Lacey's face. She clearly wanted to tear the envelope open immediately, but Lacey's presence before her made her hold back.
“Yuri asked me to tell you something.”
“To... me? Directly?”
“Yes.”
It did not feel right to stay any longer. Feeling an uncomfortable sensation like barbed thorns digging into her, Lacey stood.
“He said he would wait.”
“...?”
“I don't know what he means he'll wait for. I'll be going now. Elena, like you said... um... I think I should get some rest.”
The carriage she had ridden here in had not been uncomfortable at all, but this place was.
“Yes. Get plenty of rest, Senior.”
After walking Lacey to the door and seeing her off, Elena stood there and was about to tear the envelope open.
Then she stopped.
This was a letter written and sent by the Yuri of ‘now.’ The letters they had exchanged in the past had been with the ‘real’ Yuri, so this was the first letter she had received from the current Yuri.
Once she thought of it that way, she could not bring herself to rip the envelope open.
Elena bit down on her lip and hurried to sit at the desk.
The letter was sealed with wax. If she forcibly pulled it off, the envelope would tear messily. But tearing open the other side would make it look ugly when she kept the envelope.
So, carefully, she used a knife to cut beneath the seal. When she saw the neatly opened envelope, her heart began racing with a feeling of excitement she had not felt in a long time.
The letter was not very long.
She did not feel disappointed. This was the first letter she had received. It had been two years since he last contacted her. Rather than sharing all they had been through, there would still be too much awkwardness between them.
To Elena.
.
.
After reading it over several times, Elena sprang to her feet.
Naturally, it was very different from the letters she had exchanged with the real Yuri. The handwriting was different. The way he wrote was different. The emotions were different.
It could not be otherwise. The person who sent this letter was not Yuri, Elena's childhood friend. He was not the Yuri she had last seen ten years ago, whose letters were insincere and emotionless, whose replies came infrequently, and who said he wished she would stop sending letters.
‘He's ultimately a different person.’
The body was the same, but the soul inside was different. That was what it meant to be a Transmigrator. That ‘difference’ was the source of Elena's complicated love and hatred. Her grief for her dead childhood friend, her wish that the Transmigrator who entered his body could be her real childhood friend, the fact that she had come to love him, and her guilt over that.
“Letters.”
The letters she had exchanged with Yuri, her childhood friend, were still there.
‘Yuri... what did you say to me?’
The impression remained. He had been insincere. Emotionless. His replies had come infrequently. But she could not remember what they contained. Yuri had not talked much about himself. Most of what he wrote in reply had simply responded to things Elena had written in her letters.
Elena swayed as she rose to her feet. Yuri, the Transmigrator, had caused Elena suffering for the past two years. He was the reason Elena had resolved to become obsessed with magic.
The real Yuri... was fading from her memories.
‘No...’
She thought she needed to look at the letters again.
It had been two years since she had thought that. She had not opened them in two years because it was painful and frightening, but she had not thrown them away.
Elena pulled on her robe and left her room. Mages she encountered said something to her, but she ignored them. Pulling her hood low, she left the tower and returned to the estate for the first time in a week.
“The letters... The letters...”
Under the bed. She opened the box she had sealed with magic. Ten years' worth of exchanged letters. As she overturned the box and sorted through the letters, she suddenly realized something.
‘There are too few.’
She quickly understood why.
Two years ago, when she went to Oldor to bring Yuri back. Yuri's room on the second floor of that shabby apartment building.
-Let's exchange them and read them.
They had decided to exchange the letters they had sent each other and read them. After that, at the estate... they had grown close, exchanged their letters, and she never got them back.
“...”
Elena swallowed and stood up.
The door she pushed open for the first time in two years was far lighter than she expected. It opened smoothly without even a creak.
Thanks to magic, the neatly arranged room was free of dust. Elena slowly entered, pressing a hand to her churning chest.
She did not want to stay in the room too long. First, she approached the desk. The first and second drawers held nothing but writing supplies and blank paper.
The third drawer.
She saw neatly arranged letters and an old book.
“...?”
She had only meant to take the letters, but Elena's hand had already picked up the book.
“A diary...?”
Judging by the handwriting, it was the real Yuri's diary. Elena flinched and hunched her shoulders. It was someone else's diary. She should not read it. Those thoughts followed one after another, but Elena bit her lip.
This was the last memento the real Yuri had left in the world. Yuri had no family.
Of everyone who knew the real Yuri, Elena was the only one who knew Yuri had died and a Transmigrator had entered his body.
‘I have the right to read it.’
Forcibly holding onto her wavering, churning emotions, she turned the diary's pages.
-I received another letter from Elena.
Yuri began writing this diary after he turned seventeen and left the orphanage.
He had not written in it every day.
Only occasionally, when he could not sleep. When he hated lying blankly in bed, hating himself and his circumstances enough to want to write something. When he needed to pour out something that had filled his heart or head. He wrote it at times like that, so it was not really much of a diary.
-That bitch filled another letter with nothing but bragging about herself without me even asking. Her life in the big city, magic, whatever.
A trash can for feelings he could not put in a letter.
-What am I going to do after leaving the orphanage? I'll do something. Why does she always write to tell me she's doing so well?
Emotions that had festered and rotted.
-Why would I come looking for you? So I can live there running errands for you? How much of a fucking idiot do you think I am? Fucking bitch.
Inferiority that had turned into hostility.
-I hear mages die all the time doing magic experiments. Can't that bitch Elena die too? How long is she going to keep sending letters full of nothing but bragging? That bitch who used to do nothing but cry with snot running down her face...
Elena could not read any further. She covered her mouth.
Her stomach and head churned, as though everything inside her were turning over.
-Do you remember what you said the day you left Oldor?
The words Yuri had written in his letter became a voice that lingered by her ear.
-You said this then. "You'll come to think it was lucky that I came to get you today."
She felt like she was going to vomit.
-You were right. Meeting you then was the greatest fortune of my life.
Elena panted and collapsed where she stood. The headaches that had recently become less frequent came rushing back. Crackle, crackle...! Electricity boiled within her turbulent emotions.
The current grew larger and larger. At this rate, this room, this estate, would all burn to ashes. But would that not be fine? Did she need to endure it? This place had not been home for two years. After Haryeong left, she had lived at the tower more than she had at home. Even if this house burned to ashes, there would be no problem. If she said she needed one, she could have a new house, a better one than this, whenever she wished.
This was an Inner Demon. Her emotions were invading her reason and whispering of destruction. It urged her to destroy everything that caused her pain and find peace.
The diary, the letters, the memories, the house, all of it.
“N-No...”
Elena clutched her head, which felt as though it were being electrocuted. It could not burn. There were things in this house that could not burn. The doll she had brought from the orphanage, a gift from Yuri, who had written that he wished Elena would die. The letters she had exchanged with that Yuri.
The memories of half a year when she had not been alone.
The hairpin she had received as a gift.
“...”
The current that had swelled as though it would explode was drawn back into Elena.
* * *
“Huh.”
A disciple who looked different from usual waited in the room Orca returned to after four days.
Instead of the robe she always wore, she had on a white dress. Her overly long hair was still uncut, but rather than leaving it tangled and unkempt, she had combed it neatly.
“You look pretty.”
Orca smiled as she removed the vest she had loosely thrown on. Elena was different from when Orca had seen her four days ago. It was not only her appearance that had changed. Something in her heart had changed, and that change had gone in the direction Orca hoped for.
“Master.”
Elena, who had been fiddling with the blue hairpin resting on her lap, spoke. A twisted smile spread across her pale, sickly face.
“You said it last time. That if I reached the peak of magic, every problem that makes me suffer and struggle could be solved.”
“I did.”
Orca looked at her disciple with eyes overflowing with affection.
“You also said I could become as strong as you, no, stronger than you.”
“I did.”
At the end of the letter,
he had also written that he wanted to meet again, though he was afraid she would refuse.
If she wrote a reply, he had told her to leave it with the Adventurers' Guild.
-I'll wait.
She did not write a reply.
There was no need to. There were feelings that could not be contained in a letter or conveyed through one. To convey them with certainty, she had to meet him in person.
“I want to become strong quickly.”
Strong enough that Yuri would not need to protect her. Strong enough to protect Yuri. Strong enough to grant Yuri's wish.
“As quickly as possible.”
The letter she had reread dozens of times through the night was tucked inside her robe.
Elena clutched the hairpin she had not yet put in her hair.
“Good.”
Orca nodded with a bright smile.
Before that joyous madness faded, she needed to complete the Thunder Prison as quickly as possible.
Footnotes:
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