WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: LiteraryGirl

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

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

Chapter 327

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The Skeptic XX

Mr. Matiz. Is it really necessary for me to learn self-defense in such a systematic way?

Yes. I told you before, didn’t I? A few years from now, the world’s going to end. We need to build up your muscles and nervous system in advance.

I see. So it wasn’t a metaphor, but something you meant quite literally.

Exactly. And don’t worry about your joints or anything, if you get some bone disease, we’ll have a way to fix it down the road.

...?

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Mr. Matiz. There’s something I’ve been curious about for a while, so let me just ask you directly.

Sure. You always ask directly, anyway.

Would you like to date me?

...

If by extending your kindness to me you’re trying to secure private benefits or desires, specifically, a romantic relationship, then please, I beg you to stop. You cannot expect any romantic interest from me.

Hey... look. Sorry, but that’s not it at all. If I died and came back to life 775 times, I still wouldn’t end up going out with you.

That’s a strangely specific number.

Yep.

Is it because I’m a minor, so having a romantic connection with me would be illegal? Frankly, that would seem contradictory for a man who’s already conspired to commit murder.

No, no. I just don’t want to date you.

Pardon?

How are you not getting this? Yu Ji-won, your age isn’t the problem. Even if you were an adult later on, I absolutely, seriously, never, ever would date you.

...

I’d rather date the Inunaki Tunnel than be with you... Wait, what are you doing with that hand mirror all of a sudden?

Hmm. My apologies, Mr. Matiz.

For what?

If this isn’t too forward... I’m wondering if you might be suffering from erectile dysfunction.

You little piece of...

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If someday in the future, I become the president of the entire world...

That’s not an actual job, Ji-won.

My apologies, allow me to correct that.

Right.

If I start World War III, wipe out every existing nation on Earth, establish the one and only legitimate government, and become a new dictator under the banner of the Three Han Bloodline...

...

I’d make it mandatory for all citizens to wear perfume every day.

...Why?

Because the world is too messy. People blur together immediately. We need an anchor to fix our own positions. Not just smells, but hair color, eye color, even nametags should be used more aggressively so we can tell one another apart.

If you go that far, wouldn’t it be more of a headache? Perfumes are so strong that they give me headaches if everyone’s wearing a different scent.

That’s fine. Keep someone with no scent closest to you, and it’ll have the effect of a tranquilizer.

...?

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Mr. Matiz. Do you have any plans to dye your hair?

Huh? Why ask out of the blue?

We’re heading to Japan soon, aren’t we? It’d be easy to lose track of you in an unfamiliar street if you keep your current look.

Ah, so if I go blond or something, I’ll stand out, which is convenient for you?

Yes, though blond is too common and doesn’t mean much. For instance... how about splitting your hair in half and dyeing one side red and the other blue?

So you want me to look like a walking Taeguk symbol?

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I walked.

I carried out the usual routine: formed alliances with my comrades, cleared the Busan Station dungeon, and defeated the Void in Baekhwa Girls’ High.

That’s what my feet were doing. But inside my head...

‘Dyeing.’

That single word played on loop, again and again.

So everything—human hair, human scent, and even Aura—was actually the result of being “dyed” by these water-bug creatures. Meaning that Leviathan—or more specifically, the Outer-God-connected Yu Ji-won—wanted this world to be colored in the first place.

My mind repeated the same steps over and over, stuck in a rut and weighed down by countless thoughts.

‘She wanted to tell people apart.’

Prosopagnosia, or face blindness.

Ever since she was born, Yu Ji-won had struggled to recognize people’s faces.

I’d go so far as to say that as a young girl, she called anyone with a similar build “Mom” or “Dad” no matter who they really were.

I walked.

“That brat can’t even recognize her own parents!”

In those flashbacks, I’d sometimes hear her parents yelling that from a nearby apartment building.

To Ji-won, people were indistinguishable lumps of matter—not fixed solids but fluid liquids. Less like rational humans, more like mindless bugs.

Water-based insects.

Just some wiggling, squirming things.

When congenital face-blindness was paired with a psychopathic nature, it forced the young girl named Yu Ji-won to see the world in that kind of warped way.

But if that child ever found someone she wanted to remember...

If, instead of lumping everyone into nameless crowds, she resolved to distinguish certain meaningful individuals, to truly see them...

Then what kind of wish would that girl have made upon the “Anomaly” that descended into her life?

I walked, entering a shopping mall.

The interior had been ravaged, the mark of looters who had long since come and gone. Scavengers had ignored things unrelated to survival, so some perfumes were still lying around, though luxury brands like Chanel and other high-end names had been snatched up.

Even in the post-apocalypse, the shopping mall remained a showcase of how human greed stratifies everything.

I wandered among the ruins, gathering seven different kinds of perfume.

Mr. Matiz.

Could it be that humanity itself... or the world that harbors humanity... was fundamentally flawed from the start?

Human beings have always been poorly engineered. We have no way to mentally cope with a situation like the ground splitting open while we sleep, swallowing our home and killing our entire family in one stroke. We have no way to write off a horrifying “accident,” like a luxury cruise or passenger plane destroyed by a freak event, as just something that happened to occur.

This world contained far too many things, and humans themselves had far too many deficiencies.

What we call “God” was simply a name for the void that has existed from the start between humans and their world.

‘...Okay. I’ve got them all.’

As for how to bridge that void, I couldn’t be sure I ever explained it properly to a 14-year-old child like her.

‘Let’s see. These perfume brands... Yes, that’s them.’

Ji-won. 地圓. “Earth is round.”

A child was born into this world bearing that name, a name that described the round, flattened surface of the Earth.

I made my way to that child.

There was a convenience store. If one took the shortest route from Sejong City, they’d inevitably pass it.

“Hmm?”

From behind the store’s cash register, someone turned to look at me. A head of silver hair fell across her shoulders.

It had been seven years for her. For me, it had been tens of thousands of years since we last met.

Yet in that single moment, there we were again—separated by a counter—passing through an instant and an eternity simultaneously.

“How curious.”

But the 14-year-old girl from seven years ago didn’t recognize me at all.

“I set up a fairly elaborate booby trap at the entrance. How did you get in without triggering it?”

I inhaled. “So... are you the owner of this shop?”

“Yes, I’m the proprietor.”

“I spotted two corpses outside. I’m guessing they were the store owner and a part-timer?”

“Hmm, you have a keen eye.” Ji-won nodded. “Yes, but they attacked me the moment I entered. I merely exercised my right to self-defense. Whether they were the original owner and employee... I have no proof.”

“I see. Don’t worry, I have no intention of interrogating you over murder. I have no right to do so.”

“You’re rather reasonable...?” She blinked. “Hmm. Since I’m supposedly the shop owner, I should greet my customer, yes? Is there something you want? If it’s not crucial for survival, I can give it to you.”

“Two packs of Marlboro Red, please.”

“Cigarettes are precious luxuries these days, but...”

“I’m prepared to pay you properly.”

“Well, if that’s the case... All right.”

She grabbed the packs from the display. At the same moment she handed them over, she whipped out a small hatchet from her waistband, swinging it down at my wrist.

Or she tried to.

Her eyes widened. Halfway through her swing, the hatchet came to a stop when I’d caught it in my hand.

Yes, it was something that had happened hundreds of times across countless cycles. But only in this 777th run did I finally see something clearly:

‘They’re exactly the same.’

The hatchet Ji-won was holding was the very one I once gave her as a “present”—back when I was driving a car with her onboard. The motion by which Ji-won swung it was precisely the same as the swing she’d used the night she killed her parents, when I opened the door of that third-floor apartment.

One of us was holding the handle of the ax, the other gripping the blade. For a moment, our gazes locked without speaking.

I let go. She did not complete the swing.

“You know... in the old days,” I began quietly. “I used to think Leviathan was just some Anomaly representing the state.”

I pulled seven bottles of perfume from my pocket, placing them on the convenience store counter.

Then I took out a few tools and began mixing them together, piece by piece.

“Because the further my life went on, the more infrastructure got built up. And that made me assume Leviathan’s power was growing stronger, like a ‘state’ that accumulates strength over time.”

Spritz, spritz— and raw scents began drifting through the air.

The “one and only body fragrance in the world” I’d created once upon a time was made of relatively cheap perfumes. Each had some harshness when taken as an individual, a scent body of rough edges left unpolished.

“But now I realize it wasn’t just the land’s infrastructure growing as my life went on.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, customer.”

“Yu Ji-won... You grew stronger too, in step with my turning of the wheel.”

I thought back to the distant past back in the 5th cycle, when Yu Ji-won was with me in the Samcheon World guild.

“Vice Guild Leader.”

“Yes?”

“Could you get me passage on a ship bound for Japan?”

I had assumed she wanted to escape the hellscape of the Korean Peninsula and flee overseas. But maybe... Maybe she simply realized that no matter how far she roamed throughout Korea, she’d never find “the person” she was searching for. So she had to broaden her search to another country.

“Vice Guild Leader, please kill me.”

“Hold my funeral with your power. I beg you.”

I had interpreted that as a sign of total despair with the world, or that she wanted to use Time Seal to prolong her final moments. Could it be, though, that she just wanted to relive a “certain day” that had almost vanished from her memories? That she wanted to recover it in its entirety, even if it meant a brief extension of life?

“Vice Guild Leader, Your Excellency! I will serve you faithfully like a loyal dog until the day this world ends. So please, promise me this.”

“Of course, in the next cycle, I in my foolishness might not recognize your greatness, O Savior.”

I’d concluded that she was just a psycho obsessed with personal survival and power, turning traitor the moment she discovered I was a regressor, wanting to stay on a “fast track” to success across every cycle.

“When that time comes, just say this: ‘I know you killed someone at fifteen and dumped the body in a minari swamp on Mt. Bukhansan.’”

“What? You killed someone in middle school? Wait, that’s not the point... Hey! Quit clinging to my pants!”

Maybe, just maybe, she had some vow or promise that couldn’t be fulfilled that cycle, so she needed to try again in the next. She had to succeed eventually, no matter what.

And along the way, Yu Ji-won steadily became stronger. From my aide-de-camp, to Dang Seo-rin’s secretary, to a member of the National Road Management Corps, to a team leader, to the Corps’ second-in-command, to the regressor’s most trusted right hand. Across the entire span from the 5th cycle to the 776th.

It wasn’t just the Korean infrastructure that developed in tandem with my wheel of time. Yu Ji-won herself had advanced alongside it.

“In retrospect, it’s strange... You were always smart enough to hide your ambition for power if you wanted to. Yet you flaunted it, every single time, like you were deliberately feeding into people’s assumptions that ‘a psychopath thirsting for survival and power is only natural.’”

When she was 14? She was different then. She did have ambition, but no particular desire for happiness. If she decided on something, if she found a certain “answer” or encountered a certain “failure,” she was willing to end her own life without hesitation.

Above all, her highest priority was meeting “Mr. Matiz” again.

“You hid your true aim. Because the moment others discovered what you really wanted, that knowledge could become a weakness. Not even I, your regressor, was an exception.”

For thousands of years.

For tens of thousands more.

She kept her deepest secrets, all while shadowing me.

She pretended to be nothing more than a “power-hungry” subordinate who was cold-blooded yet never betrayed me, quietly leeching off my regressor’s life. All the while, I wandered Korea, then Japan, then China, eventually crossing the Eurasian continent so that the entire world would be mapped out, with every Void discovered, every person added to her Mini-Map.

All to find that single, solitary “one person” she sought.

“I’m sorry... For thousands of years—far more than ten thousand—you kept searching without fail, but I selfishly went and forgot everything.”

Inside a transparent perfume bottle swirled the mixture of seven distinct scents, an aroma only I knew how to create. I picked up the bottle and lightly spritzed it behind each ear.

A hush settled over us as my personal scent spread through the air.

“It may be late, but... I’m alive and back again, Ji-won.”

Finally, she spoke.

“Do you recall what happened on Dobongsan that day?”

“Sure. Even though there was no such mountain.”

Under her silver hair, a smile formed.

The same smile that a 14-year-old girl had once worn so many thousands of years ago, one sweltering summer day.

“Welcome back, Mr. Matiz. I’ve been waiting.”

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