WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Returned as a God ◈
Chapter 78: If You're Sorry, Then Die (3)
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『Whoa.』
"Is it even okay to say this out loud?"
Yu Seyeon, one of Aria Guild's co-representatives, had a sister who'd been Park Siyu's fiancée. And Park Siyu had killed his own fiancée. That was definitely not a normal thing to be casually dropping into conversation.
Choi Suhyun huffed out a laugh.
"Obviously it's a secret. Though if Park Siyu ever finds out I told you two this, he'll probably come for me first."
"Garbage human being."
『Look at that personality.』
"Shut it. You were the one who brought up Beritaas, not me."
"Are you really okay with this? She was your fiancée, though."
"I already told you. It was some pointless thing the families arranged on their own. Park Siyu never had a say in any of it. And officially, Yu Chaeyoung died in a dungeon. Whatever they were to each other, it's nothing now, not for either of them."
"If hyung says so, I guess that's how it is."
There was clearly a story behind it, so I didn't push any further.
Choi Suhyun had good reason to spill something like this without flinching.
"No evidence, so there's no reason anyone would believe it even if you talked. And if word did somehow get out, I'd know exactly who leaked it. No need to keep it hidden either way."
Something about that line sounded a lot like a threat to hunt whoever spread it to the ends of the earth. Probably just my imagination.
"Still, it's strange. Beritaas should've collapsed after Yu Chaeyoung died."
Beritaas was a minor god, fewer than a thousand followers total.
A congregation that small producing an S-Rank Hunter, a Transcendent, was practically unheard of.
After Yu Chaeyoung, the central pillar of that faith, died, Beritaas's followers had basically vanished without a trace.
Choi Suhyun leveled a hard glare at Gomdolus the Third.
"Setting all that aside, it doesn't add up. There's no way a name like Beritaas comes out of your mouth that easily."
『Eek! It was Yu Jihan! Before Hangyeol-ssi, the follower of the god Soter, showed up, he was digging through everything trying to find the god Soter! Ugh, you have no idea how much trouble that caused me behind the scenes... I had to hack into Aria Guild to erase Kim Yuhan's records... mmph. I mean, visit. I found out when I visited.』
"Found out what?"
『Th-that Seo Jihoon and that Hunter, Yu Chaeyoung, used to date.』
Choi Suhyun kept his skeptical stare fixed on Gomdolus, silently telling it to keep talking.
『Seo Jihoon's falling-out with Raon Guild and founding Black Holdings happened after Yu Chaeyoung died in the great disaster, and the dungeon she died in was a joint expedition with Raon Guild.』
Even among Transcendents, there was a clear gap between one who served a god with a large following and one whose god had barely any.
Yu Chaeyoung had been a rising star of a Hunter at the time, which meant plenty of people had reason to keep an eye on her.
The guild most invested in keeping her in check had been Raon Guild, since it had produced Hunters of similar caliber in the same era.
And that Yu Chaeyoung had gone into an S-Rank dungeon together with Raon Guild?
The great disaster had buried most of the details, but there'd been more than enough circumstance for rumors to spread that Raon Guild had pulled something behind the scenes in Yu Chaeyoung's death.
Blinded by grief and love, cooked up some scheme for revenge, huh.
Plausible enough, sure, but the evidence was still thin.
"That's not possible."
Unlike me, who'd left room for doubt, Choi Suhyun cut it off flat.
Curiosity got the better of me and I asked why.
"Because the god Seo Jihoon serves is Elsion."
Elsion. A name I hadn't heard in a while.
Choi Minhyeok, who died the first time I entered the Tower of Trials, had also been a follower of Elsion.
Elsion hadn't consolidated into a single guild the way Lux's followers had with Raon Guild, but Elsion was still a fairly well-known god.
Whatever had happened this time, it was clearly the deliberate work of a god who'd already broken its taboo.
If Elsion had broken its taboo, the fallout wouldn't be small.
『Y-you think I didn't say the exact same thing? B-but, thinking it over some more, you don't exactly have to broadcast it to the whole neighborhood when you switch to serving a different god. Ugh, that's a good point even if I say so myself. Well, it was Yu Jihan who said it. Oh, mic's still on.』
This one's not entirely sane either, is it.
Can I even trust this thing?
Then again, no wonder it hangs around Yu Jihan so much.
"Got any actual proof Seo Jihoon became a follower of Beritaas, the dead Yu Chaeyoung's god, instead of Elsion?"
『That one's easy!』
"Easy?"
『Just wreck Seo Jihoon and find out!』
Looked like a teddy bear but had the mouth of a thug when it least mattered.
I narrowed my eyes at Gomdolus, suspicion creeping in.
"That was Yu Jihan's line too, wasn't it?"
『Caught! Eheheheh.』
Gomdolus laughed awkwardly, clearly hoping to slide past the moment however it could.
『H-how am I supposed to prove it without evidence! In cases like that, the best move is just asking the guy himself directly!』
"That's his line too."
『Guh.』
"Why was Yu Jihan even tangled up in this to begin with?"
The amusement park incident, fine, call that pure accident. But Yu Jihan had been chasing the incursion entity case almost as hard as Park Siyu.
No matter how I turned it over in my head, I couldn't find a good reason Jihan needed to be involved at all.
『That's obviously because of you, no... because of the god Soter.』
『How am I, a lowly minion, supposed to understand what goes on in a madman's head? He'd been muttering something about Soter even before all this, but then one day he suddenly started saying stuff like "the god Soter's on the move" and grilling me about anything weird going on lately. All I did was mention the bossless dungeons that had been popping up recently and a few rumors floating around among Hunters. Soon as he found out it wasn't Soter's doing, he backed off completely. Who knew things would turn out like this.』
Gomdolus let out a heavy sigh, grumbling the whole time.
Apparently, once Yu Jihan had crossed paths with me directly, he'd basically dropped the whole matter.
The answer I got out of Jihan, secondhand through Gomdolus, was ridiculous on every level.
None of this had anything to do with the god Soter in the first place.
Man, how obsessive can one guy get.
Did I wrong him in a past life or something?
At this point his fixation had gone past a grudge and started looking like blood vengeance for his whole family line.
"Ugh, why is everyone around me a walking bomb?"
"You're the biggest bomb of them all, idiot."
Choi Suhyun and I sighed almost at the same time.
Through the gap in the blinds, tilted slightly open by a fingertip, the midday view of Gangnam-daero stretched out below.
An ordinary, peaceful scene, the kind you could find anywhere in the middle of a city.
"Any idea how many people got sacrificed just to keep this ordinary little scene intact?"
"What, want to play superhero now? Sorry, but I'm not indulging that."
Seyeon pulled her finger off the curtain and turned around.
Park Siyu sat on the sofa, legs crossed, watching Yu Seyeon.
Park Siyu had called Kang Hangyeol into his office the moment the Cockatrice Farm dungeon clear wrapped up.
Choi Suhyun had been camped out in Park Siyu's office for several days straight now.
Even accounting for the fact that one of the Hunters kidnapped at the amusement park belonged to Aria Guild and Choi Suhyun had been the case handler, this felt like overkill.
Some corners were already whispering that relations between the Association and Aria Guild had soured. Total nonsense, that rumor.
Choi Suhyun might be the Association's poster boy, but he wasn't its core.
Even someone like Choi Suhyun had clear lines between what he could and couldn't do.
"Why bring that up to me?"
"Whim."
Back when they'd talked about Seyeon tailing Hangyeol at Skyfield, Seyeon had mentioned Seo Jihoon's god.
Seo Jihoon was a follower of Elsion.
Anyone with even passing interest in Hunters could've known that much, which made it strange that she'd brought it up to Park Siyu of all people.
"I always knew that guy would cause trouble eventually."
"Then why did you take him in?"
Seo Jihoon's falling-out with Raon Guild and the founding of Black Holdings had come after Yu Chaeyoung's death.
There was no way Park Siyu didn't know Seo Jihoon held a grudge against Raon Guild over her death.
He closed his eyes softly.
They'd first met at a café in a hotel.
She'd looked rough, the kind of tired that came from just crawling out of a dungeon.
"I'm against this marriage!"
"No one said anything about marriage."
He'd only agreed to meet her once, just to see her face, and here she was, the one on the receiving end, flatly rejecting the whole thing. Absurd.
He'd figured he'd give some half-hearted excuse to decline and be done with it.
He never expected that meeting to stretch on the way it had.
"I have someone I'm seeing."
"Is that so."
"Actually, we're not really seeing each other... he's just someone I like. I'm going to confess to him!"
"Then go do it."
"Actually, I don't even like him enough to confess... there's this one guy who's been chasing after me, though. Let's just say we're dating."
"Go for it."
"Hey, are you seriously trash or something?"
What.
Was there really a woman like this in the world?
He'd heard she was unusual, but this went beyond anything he'd imagined.
An engagement that might or might not lead to marriage, nothing more than something the families had arranged without either of them asked.
"What? You're that young?"
"Show a little interest, would you."
"Call me noona! You're the younger one here!"
"Why would I?"
"Oh really? Then I guess you're getting hit. Let's see who wins."
That day's scene flickered in front of his eyes.
"Siyu-ya, let's get a divorce... no, wait, let's call off the engagement."
"I already told you I don't care about any of that. What noona needs is my family's name, right? Use it however much you need to..."
"So young, and already picked up nothing but bad habits! You're right. Marrying you probably would've made things better for me than they are now. And I know you're not the type to keep tabs on me and that guy. That's exactly why."
"I don't understand."
"There'll be a day you understand. So let's just leave it here."
Collapsed buildings, sirens wailing without pause, monster corpses scattered through the middle of the city.
The feel of his sword had told him better than anyone else that his own hand was the one stealing away this woman's remaining time.
She reached out a hand.
The fingers that touched his cheek had been unbearably hot.
"Don't hate him too much, okay? His personality's just like that, but he's not a bad guy..."
He couldn't remember what he'd said back, in that moment.
Her hand had slid slowly downward, coming to rest against the edge of his chest.
"I told you blue looks better on you than red."
The tie he'd worn that day had been blue.
The hand that had dropped never rose again.
Park Siyu breathed slowly, steadying himself.
Seyeon had come to stand right in front of him without his noticing.
"Isn't it strange? You, the former fiancé, just sitting there doing nothing, while some other man throws a fit about avenging her instead. Now that's a proper trashy drama if I ever saw one."
"Is that all you came to say?"
Seyeon's face twisted into a scowl.
Park Siyu had always been like this.
She'd never actually expected words like that to shake him.
"You asked why I took Seo Jihoon in."
"Because he was a card I could use to keep Raon Guild in check."
"You...!"
"Whatever grudge Seo Jihoon's carrying around means nothing to me."
Yu Chaeyoung had asked Park Siyu not to hate Seo Jihoon too much.
But that request had been built on a false premise from the start.
Park Siyu had never felt anything toward Seo Jihoon, not once.
With no feeling there at all, there'd never been any reason to hate him in the first place.
"Then why side with Seo Jihoon?"
"Because you killed my sister. I'm just getting revenge for her."
Park Siyu bit down on the edge of his lip.
That dungeon had been a trap Raon Guild built specifically to kill Yu Chaeyoung.
Revenge.
A word he hadn't heard directed at him in a very long time.
There was no way Park Siyu carried no grudge of his own.
Taking Seo Jihoon in, and pushing that somewhat excessive request onto Hangyeol, maybe both had just been him looking for someone else to vent his anger through.
But becoming a Transcendent came with a price: a bound restriction.
Park Siyu's taboo was this.
Never seek revenge.
Footnotes:
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