WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: LiteraryGirl

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◈ I'm an Infinite Regressor, But I've Got Stories to Tell

Chapter 323

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The Skeptic XVI

The next scream, long and drawn-out, came from Yu Ji-won’s mother.

“Aaack... Aaaaah...!”

Nine parts of the noise from outside the window were the pounding rain, the remaining one part was screams and moans—a murder scene unfolding behind the curtain of rain.

Although only sound reached my heightened senses, I knew Ji-won better than anyone. From the screams alone, I could piece together what was happening.

‘She picked the moment her parents were asleep.’

Her father’s screams had already ceased, likely because he’d been attacked while in a deep slumber. A man who spent his life shouting at his family and daughter ended up facing death with nothing but a deafened howl.

’But he probably struggled at the very end. Or maybe she stabbed the blade at a bad angle and his blood splashed on her mother.’

Whatever the case, it wasn’t a perfect double-kill in one strike. Such were the slip-ups of a fourteen-year-old. However, just like in the future, this younger Yu Ji-won wasn’t a compulsive gambler. She always stayed keenly aware that she could make mistakes.

‘She deliberately chose a night of heavy rainfall.’

It was an environment optimized for murder. Even if the victim’s screams managed to thread their way through the downpour and reach the neighbors, it hardly mattered.

‘After all, her house was always loud with shouting and violence.’

It wasn’t an accidental crime or a stroke of luck, but a stark decision made with absolute clarity:

Yu Ji-won was killing her parents.

‘Intervening right now... is not allowed.’

If I stepped in, I might save at least one life. Even earlier—if I’d given her any hint that I knew she intended to kill her parents, perhaps I could have prevented the crime altogether.

But I didn’t.

‘Because that would create a gap between past and future.’

Yu Ji-won kills her mother and father. It was far too pivotal a moment in her life, something that can’t be changed—or mustn’t be changed. No matter how much preliminary work was needed to cement her as Leviathan’s Miko, I wouldn’t upend the course of her life.

‘I won’t intervene.’

Summer rain was whittling away the world’s edges. Misty droplets scattered night into fragments, and I silently gulped them down.

‘Let murder and death take their course.’

That was my decision.

“Aaaaaargh...!”

This wasn’t a timeline where Cheon Yo-hwa’s twin sister survived, nor where Dang Seo-rin’s family wasn’t killed by an Anomaly, nor where Yu Ji-won avoided staining her hands with her parents’ blood.

“Ah... aah... aah...”

I chose this world, with all its crooked lines, perfectly continued from the footsteps those children and I had taken in so far.

“...ah...”

The rain buried the night. The night shadowed their lives.

When two lifespans had been consigned to a double grave, I finally rose from my seat at the window. I pulled on a raincoat, slipped on galoshes, and donned rubber gloves. All were already waiting by the door.

There wasn’t a need for tools, I had them stored in my trunk.

Lastly, I checked my computer. I had it set to stream an online lecture at a specified time, good enough to prove my half-day alibi.

Then I stepped outside.

The rain fell.

I drew in a lungful of air, taking in a slow deep breath, and exhaled. The odor of water still carrying the warmth of higher air funneled through my windpipe like a drain. Then, I stepped onto the alley’s walkway, which had embraced the sky’s downpour a bit earlier than I did—splash, splash. Each time my weight landed, a puddle shattered.

What is life?

In that moment, life was right here, in the gap of an alley too narrow for even a single car to pass.

It was in the raindrops, carrying the sky’s heat as they fell to the ground and scattered.

It was in the half-open front gate of the peeling blue villa.

It was in the third-floor door’s passcode, fixed at 5555 for the sake of a grandmother with dementia, now rusted like moss.

Beep, bi-bi-beep.

The digital lock’s faint chime, a meager sign it was made by civilization, trickled out between the sounds of rain.

Beep.

Rainwater dripped onto the keypad, and the door swung open. Darkness as deep as an abyss filled the entryway.

There was a sharp whistle, a sound cutting through the darkness. It was the hand axe I had given her.

I stepped back to dodge.

“Ji-won.”

No reply. Instead, a second swing came my way.

But a predicted ambush has no meaning. Especially from a middle-schooler with a model’s physique, someone who hadn’t trained any martial art to a meaningful level.

“It’s me.”

A heartbeat of shock.

“Mr. Matiz.”

The attack didn’t stop. The silence didn’t either.

So I forced it to stop. My grip on her arm sapped the power she had to swing that axe and likewise sapped her ability to remain silent.

“I’ll help you.”

She struggled. She couldn’t land a hit.

“You must have prepared tools to wash away the blood. But if we do it together, we’ll finish much faster.”

She struggled again, weaker now. Still no success.

“Do you even know how to dispose of a body?”

A ragged breath.

“If the ground isn’t dug deep enough, this heavy rain will turn the soil to mud in no time. No matter how carefully you seal it, the stench of a corpse is strong. If a sniffer dog comes while the smell lingers, you’ll be exposed. And if you thought about dismembering them and dumping pieces in the sewer, forget it. In a rundown neighborhood like ours, no way you flush all those remains.”

A slower, steadier breath.

“What about CCTV routes? Do you have a plan to manipulate the victims’ alibis and confuse the police investigation? You just learned how to ‘kill a person,’ but do you know how to ‘erase a person’?”

One-tenth of silence.

“I’ll help you.”

The rain pounded.

“Let me help.”

Lightning flared from somewhere far off, briefly illuminating Ji-won. She wore a raincoat and rubber gloves, with boots just like mine.

There was a slash across her face. Not from a moment ago. Maybe from yesterday, or the day before. A scratch that could be fatal to a model.

A trace of violence well past the limit.

Yu Ji-won slowly lowered her head against my chest, pressing her nose near me. Black bangs fell and hid the cut.

She inhaled my scent in silence.

That was her permission.

From here on, it was a race against time.

“All chopped up?”

“Yes.”

“I finished cleaning. Let’s go.”

We spoke only the bare minimum.

“Your grandma?”

“She’s asleep in her room. When Mother screamed, she complained about the noise and then immediately drifted off again.”

“Good.”

We crossed the rain to the Matiz.

A thump, then the trunk slammed, then the car door. Ji-won sat in the passenger seat. We wore her father’s and mother’s clothes respectively, so that if someone spotted us, they might mistake us for her parents.

“Listen carefully while we drive.” I started the engine and pulled away. “They racked up a gambling debt and fled into the night. They stole their daughter’s bank account on the way out. Do you have your mom’s usual gambling site ID?”

“Yes, she used a few.”

“Transfer all your money from your account into hers. Then deposit it on one of those gambling sites.”

“Understood.”

Without hesitation, she operated her phone and her late mother’s.

Her entire life savings were 34.6 million won distributed across three banks. Two of those accounts, totaling 19 million won, vanished in seconds from the passenger seat—part of her funds for studying abroad to the states.

“Leave the remaining 15 million alone, but try logging in and deliberately fail the password five times.”[1]

“Yes... Done.”

“Good. Now rest until we arrive. Driving up a mountain in this weather won’t be easy.”

Silence.

At a quick glance, Yu Ji-won was leaning her head against the window, eyes closed. Her axe was no longer across her lap, just lying on the floor.

Rattle-rattle-rattle.

Night rain hammered down relentlessly. Sometimes the sheets of water grew so thick I couldn’t see outside at all.

Tonight, I was grateful for this downpour. In this weather, at this hour, the odds of a witness were slim.

Eventually we reached northern Seoul, Bukhansan.

“We’re here. Let’s get out.”

“Okay.”

Another used car was parked there.

“We’re switching cars,” I explained.

“Move everything over?”

“Naturally.”

“I thought we’d dump them here on Bukhansan.”

“We’re staging a runaway, so we switch cars a few times. We’re not forging our alibi, but your parents’.”

“Then...”

“We’re not sticking to Bukhansan. We’ll go to Dobongsan.”

A transfer. Off to the next stop.

Though Bukhansan and Dobongsan lay side by side, the route took a while for certain reasons.

After a long drive, we arrived. She was about to climb out, but I pressed a hand to her knee to stop her.

“Mr. Matiz...?”

“Pay attention, Ji-won.” I locked eyes with her. “This is Dobongsan. Even if you spot some sign or label showing the real name of this area, do not read it. Understood? It’s Dobongsan.”

It was a lie, and she knew it. For the first time since the murders, doubt escaped her lips.

“Why?”

“Hopefully it won’t come to that, but if the police catch a whiff, they might use a lie detector on you. Those tests are mostly junk, but it’s still best to keep yourself shrouded in suspicion from the start. Make sure you ‘genuinely’ don’t know where you are.”

A flash of admiration passed in her eyes. “Understood. Makes sense.”

“All right. Let’s go.”

We got out to step upon a deserted mountain trail. Eventually, we reached the marsh I’d scouted in advance, which was already thick with trash. From my memories of traveling all over the country, I knew it would never be developed.

For all I knew, multiple bodies were already sunk in this swamp.

“Everything tied up properly?”

“I’ve double-checked. No mistakes.”

“Then let’s dump them.”

A soft splash. We finished a few more steps, and that “somewhere in Dobongsan” marsh swallowed any trace of her parents’ remaining life, silently and without evidence. It’d take a bit more time for the swamp’s “digestive system” to fully break down the remains.

“What about the bones? I cut them as much as I could, but I couldn’t grind them to dust.”

“A little farther up, there’s a row of abandoned graves. We’ll bury them there.”

“I see.”

We arrived at a half-collapsed graveyard. Some I’d dug ahead of time, some were already half-dug. We placed the bones deeper than a coffin’s depth and covered them with gravel, stones, twigs, leaf litter, and earth in layers, packing down the soil.

That took the longest. If I’d used Aura, it would’ve been quick, but I didn’t. Right now, I was no different from this era’s Yu Ji-won, just an ordinary person.

Her shovel scraped the surface, cutting into the earth’s soft underbelly.

“I’ve been curious about something.”

“What?”

“My mother carried me when I was a helpless infant. So I wanted to ask her a question before I killed her.”

Scrape.

“Why did she give birth to me?”

Scrape.

“I didn’t need a real ‘answer.’ It’s just... Like you said, there’s nothing in this world that’s inherently ‘wrong,’ so I assumed my mother had her own reasoning.”

“Couldn’t you just have asked her anytime?”

“She’s not a reliable narrator in everyday life.”

Scrape.

“Objectively, creating me was an excellent investment from their perspective.”

Scrape.

“I’m diligent, intelligent, and quick to act. The reason I focus on modeling is so that if an interview opportunity arises, the ‘middle-schooler who kept first place academically yet still worked professionally’ angle leaves a strong impression on the public.”

Scrape.

“My parents’ gambling addiction, my mother’s fanatic cult, my grandmother’s dementia—none of this is a real disadvantage for me. Anyone who’d attack me over it, I can easily paint as shameless scum.”

Scrape.

“Overcoming all these environmental obstacles to succeed in life, all while supporting my parents and grandmother—that story, by itself, would undeniably grant me a cloak of ‘humanity.’”

Scrape.

“Then... why are my parents not happy?”

The earth gave way.

“Even if they do nothing, they’ll profit from me. I never demanded they change. In fact, I told them it’s okay if they remain as they are. If they changed, that would affect my personal narrative. If they didn’t, that would affect it differently. Either way, they were just raw material for my story.”

Each time the shovel dug in, rainwater rapidly pooled in the hole. The shovel blade carried half the weight of earth and half the weight of sky.

“They could change, or not. If they needed money for either path, I’d give it to them... And still, humans don’t become happy?”

The shovel froze.

At some point, Yu Ji-won turned to look at me.

“What if that misery isn’t wrong, either?”

At that moment, the raindrops that had been falling in straight, unwavering lines around her suddenly slowed. Water droplets quivered, elongated.

My eyes went wide.

Globs of water wriggled around Yu Ji-won, gathering, spreading, then coalescing again. For an instant, they formed 雨, the shape of the Chinese character for “rain,” before melting back into the puddle. The same symbol faintly appeared on the puddle’s surface, then sank away.

A bizarre phenomenon.

Seoul’s endless summer, the midnight sun, the apocalypse, those were still far off. And yet...

Here, in front of this grave, where people died and then more death was layered atop it, something akin to the world’s first Anomaly was stirring.

“Mr. Matiz.”

But it seemed Yu Ji-won herself was oblivious.

Her breath, her warmth, the outline of her raincoat, the very texture of her presence all blended with the storm.

She was...

“Maybe humanity itself—the world that spawned such humans—was broken from the start?”

...only looking at me.

Footnotes:

[1] Around $24,000, $13,200, and $10,400, respectively. So Ji-won sends away over half of her life-savings, which originally put her just above South Korea’s poverty line.

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