WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: Abstract

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

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

Chapter 441

──────

That Man II

Some ignorant people mocked the Saintess for being weak.

"She acted all high and mighty, then surrendered in just a week."

"Ahh. So that was all the Saintess had, huh."

Anyway, a major rival withdrawing on her own was good news.

They boldly declared, "I'm different," reached out to the Lee-Oh-Sim trio, and said, "Try living with me this time."

And then.

"Kraaaaaaah!"

No one was exempt. Everyone got to share the rare experience of having the very hand they used for a handshake burn away.

"Get out! Get out of my house!"

"I… I don't understand... Sim Ah-ryeon-ssi, I'm sorry, but why... why on earth don't you wash?"

"I see. So this is killing intent."

Surrender. Surrender. Surrender again.

People later learned that the Saintess lasting a week was not "just" a week. It was "a whole" week.

Of everyone who declared they'd challenge next, not one lasted seven days. Dang Seo-rin held out for 25 hours, and Cheon Yo-hwa lasted only 3.

[Hoo.]

Only then did a smile, no, a smirk spread across Lee Ha-yul's face. If you could shape the concept of "victory" into lips, it would probably look like that.

I asked that brat why she was smiling.

[I knew this would happen.]

The poison in Lee Ha-yul's smirk grew thicker.

[In the end, nobody accepted us.]

"Wow. What a proud achievement. So?"

[Now, due to unavoidable pressure, we have no choice but to live with Dad.]

"...?!"

[I could not have reached this state alone. But if I used 'Sim.' I believed it would be possible. My belief was proven.]

"..."

[I focused all aggro and resentment on 'Sim,' and only gained a reputation as 'the cutest and most normal' one in the trio.]

Creak. Lee Ha-yul pushed her wheelchair.

[This is called killing with a borrowed knife.]

For reference, her favorite Three Kingdoms figure was Jia Xu.

[It is fine if Dad never ends up with anyone.]

[It is also fine if he does end up with someone.]

[If he does not, I can live with him without issue. If he does, that partner will still love me most.]

[Sayonara.]

"..."

And then that Lee Ha-yul brat really did move right into Mister's house and start living with him.

'Psycho, psycho, psycho. Total psycho....'

Even now, whenever I remembered her back receding with that smug confidence, I shivered.

It was true.

The biological daughter of Jung Sang-guk, Busan's mayor and a rising presidential contender, had clearly inherited her father's criminal political instinct, no matter how much she denied it.

"Dok-seo?"

"Ah, yeah."

I had spaced out in my recollection room for a moment when Mister called to me.

"Are you okay? You said you had something to confess, then suddenly went quiet. You're making things hard for this old man."

"Ah. Yeah, sorry. It's just..."

I set down my coffee cup.

"You know, back then. Not now, but in some earlier cycle. I took the right to write [side story] chapters without your permission, remember?"

"Hmm."

Mister nodded while grinding beans. But a vague uncertainty still lingered on his face.

"Right. I think something like that happened. I cannot remember it clearly, though."

"..."

Throb.

A sharp pain stabbed near my heart.

A year ago, in that abandoned school, he got infected by Udumbara with our teammates and lost all his powers. Since then, sometimes... he was like this.

He had not lost his memories. They had simply faded.

The timeline of conversations he had with people became mixed, and even when he remembered key points, he could not recall every exact word.

Like any human.

He had become human.

"Yeah, yeah. Back then, you promised I could serialize one side-story episode every 100 chapters."

I quickly changed the topic so I would not show anything on my face.

Mister was quick to notice. If I looked even a little sad, he would catch it immediately.

"I still have one of those rights left... So, can I use a slightly dirty method?"

"Dirty method? What do you mean?"

"The manuscript is really, really in its final stage now. So the side stories I'll write from here on out, can you just bundle all of them together and count them as one?"

"No, that is a bit..."

Mister looked troubled, but I did not back down at all.

I could not compromise on this.

"Pleeeease, yeah? Misteeer. Hmm? Even if they're side stories, the theme is the same. They're only separated on the surface. You could still call them one episode."

"Stop acting cute."

"Okay."

Fuck. He indulged Ha-yul and Sim Ah-ryeon when they acted cute, so why was he strict with me? This was family discrimination.

"Well, in the past year you've worked harder than anyone could imagine. I never thought you'd keep up five chapters a week..."

"See? It really was the curse of Infinite Metagame. Once it disappeared, I could actually do my duty as a writer properly."

"...This is what normal should have been in the first place. Anyway, what kind of side story are you trying to lump together?"

"Yeah. Mister's romance stories."

"..."

"Let's be blunt. Individual routes, individual routes. Which heroine Mister ended up with, and if he did, what happened next. I, LiteraryGirl, will write it in righteous, unflinching prose in full detail... aaah, ah! Don't go! Mister, don't go! Hear me out!"

Draaaag.

Before I knew it, I had turned into a robot vacuum, clinging to Mister's barista apron and getting dragged across the floor.

I sprang to my feet.

"No. Hey, Go Yuir."

"Good heavens."

At my lion's roar, Mister squeezed his eyes shut like he was horrified. Even then, I did not stop.

"How is this my fault? Huh? What did I do wrong? This is all happening because you don't date anyone. At this rate, what? Are you going to stay single forever? Is this the Lee Ha-yul ending? The Lee Ha-yul-Oh Dok-seo-Sim Ah-ryeon trio ending? Not even a friend ending but a family endiiing? Even in dating sim history this is unheard of. What even is this!"

"I am perfectly satisfied with things as they are."

"That's the problem! You said you love people. You threw around 'I love so-and-so' all the time."

"No, love does not only mean romantic love. Dok-seo, I love you too..."

"Fuck offfff!!"

Crash! I kicked over a chair.

My head and body both burned all at once. There was no way I could hold this rage in.

"I agreed to having your abilities deleted... especially Complete Memory. Because I calculated that if your dead teammates disappeared from your sight, your eunuch-protagonist cliché would finally break."

"Hmm."

"But that sly little Lee Ha-yul...! Thinking back, she was always smart. She saw you'd end up cornered and moved first. Ah, I thought we were best friends! Damn it, I got stabbed in the back by that little brat. This is betrayal of friendship! Betrayal!"

Hoo.

After pouring out everything in my chest, I finally calmed down.

Even then, it still felt like scraps of nameless emotion clung to the ends of my lungs. Well, probably my imagination.

It was strange, though. Lately I always got like this when I was with Mister.

In the old days, even silly chatter with him felt like an air purifier had switched on inside my chest and cleared the air completely.

"As Mister's ghostwriter, I have the right to claim my fair share. So allow it. Tragic romance side stories."

"They are tragedies too..."

Mister looked even more troubled.

"Still, Dok-seo. You should not invent stories that never existed."

"Yeah, true."

I smiled brightly.

"Don't worry. Side-story episodes that count as 'stories that truly never existed at all' will only be two... or maybe one."

"What?"

"The rest are all based on true stories."

Mister frowned.

"Based on true stories? I do not understand. As you know, I have never experienced romance that could be called [individual routes]."

"Really?"

"..."

"Are you sure there were none?"

Mister's pupils shook. Maybe he sensed the ominous edge in my voice.

Seeing that expression made the tightness in my chest ease in a strangely cheerful way.

"Mister, I don't know if you remember, but this happened in the 146th cycle. It was when you cleared Inunaki Tunnel alone."

Back then, Inunaki Tunnel greeted Mister through graffiti on the tunnel wall.

"Welcome back. Already your seventh time?"

It was a strange greeting.

At the time, Mister had definitely faced Inunaki Tunnel six times.

So where did the remaining one, the one Mister could not remember, come from?

"That was..."

Mister spoke as if feeling through fog in his mind.

"Utopia. Right, because of the cycle with Dang Seo-rin after she fell into Hecate, no? I could not remember that cycle, so one was added."

"Hahahaha."

I burst out laughing without meaning to.

"That was cycle 173, Mister. Clearing Inunaki Tunnel was cycle 146. The timeline is obviously off."

"..."

"Hmm. But in one sense, you hit the mark. Right. The principle is the same as Hecate's utopia."

I could feel the corners of my mouth pulling up uncontrollably.

So what? Mister said he liked seeing me smile. I had nothing to hold back.

"There were more. Cycles you don't remember."

"..."

"Still don't get Go Yuri's trick? Go Yuri fixed the coordinates so Emit Schopenhauer would commit suicide at the starting point every single time. Why?"

Undertaker.

Even if the protagonist Go Yuir pressed the 'give up' button, he was only a fake regressor.

The true regressor, Emit Schopenhauer, had already died. In other words, this world's regression was fixed.

"So even if you got infected by Udumbara and lost memories of that cycle, even if you gave up everything, you could always start again."

"..."

"It did not matter if you dropped out. The 'Undertaker who gave up' was erased from the data. In the end, only memories of the 'Undertaker who did not give up' remained and were maintained."

When I realized this, I was genuinely impressed.

Go Yuri had not blindly entrusted the future to a man called Undertaker. She did not pass things down by relying on words like faith or hope.

She acted. She built a mechanism. She designed it.

She calculated every case, even failure, even the route where he laid down his own life, and designed the world so that even if he gave up, it would restart.

How kind.

How noble that sense of responsibility.

And how cruel.

"No. Wait. If I get infected by Udumbara, do I not lose Complete Memory entirely? Then how can I exclude only that cycle's memory and start again..."

"You repeated cycles 1 through 146 exactly one more time. That's all."

"..."

"You suspected it too, right, Mister? Maybe the cycle you think is your 100th was not truly the 100th in the strict sense."

Repeat. Again and again. Endlessly.

Until when?

Until Undertaker did not choose [Get infected by Udumbara and give up abilities], did not give up, and moved on to the next cycle.

"Then..."

"Yeah. The 'one missing cycle' Inunaki Tunnel mentioned meant that, at that point, the cycles had been repeated in full."

"..."

"From its perspective, [Undertaker who gave up] and [Undertaker who did not give up] were distinct. But aside from that, every cycle was identical, so it counted it as, ah, there was one extra cycle."

"..."

"Do you get it, Mister? It was only cycle 146. Just 146. But by then you had already been infected by Udumbara once and repeated cycles 1 through 146."

Mister's expression tightened with pain.

A sharp sting pulsed near my chest. A little pain. Even so, overwhelming certainty.

Because even like this, Mister would never think badly of me or reject me.

A side of me others might call ugly. But in front of Mister, I did not need to pretend.

Like he said, he loved me.

"So then, Mister."

"..."

"You already gave up once by cycle 146, and yet we rolled all the way to nearly 3,000 cycles."

I could not hold it in and blurted it out.

We had removed countless obstacles. They were all in the past now. Lost things even Mister could not remember.

Now it was safe to say.

So I said it.

"How many times did you actually give up?"

"..."

Corps Commander Noh Do-hwa, no. There was no National Road Management Corps anymore, so just Noh Do-hwa unni? Noh Do-hwa-ssi?

I understood all too well why Noh Do-hwa tormented Mister.

When someone accepted your existence exactly as it was, not less, not more, anyone would want to leave claw marks.

"Got it? I'm not making up stories that never existed. It's the exact opposite. I'm only restoring stories that disappeared."

"You..."

"I've already collected the happy endings. Then shouldn't a true gamer run for 100 percent completion?"

"You... no way, are you addicted to Infinite Metagame..."

"That thing is gone now. What are you saying, Mister."

Press.

I took Mister's hand. Rough hand. Strong hand. But with the guarantee that none of that roughness or strength would ever turn on me.

Mister flinched and tried to pull his arm away, but I did not let go.

"Now it's just a bastard that has only a name left. It's gone. No substance. This laptop is mine."

"Ah..."

Sway.

Mister staggered, then collapsed against the counter. He had lost consciousness.

"Heave-ho."

Thud. I supported his upper body and lowered him slowly so he would not get hurt.

I pulled out an empty bottle from inside my clothes and set it beside the coffee cup.

"You can't let your guard down, Mister."

"..."

"Ahaha. Even if all awakeners are gone, 'items made before infection by Udumbara' still exist."

For example, Uehara Shino.

A 'MacGuffin' I had hidden as thoroughly as possible all this time, so Mister would never read my novel and grow suspicious.

She was a pharmacist. An alchemist.

In pure healing ability, she was naturally weaker than awakened Sim Ah-ryeon, but when it came to making items that had absolutely nothing to do with saving the world, she was vastly superior.

"Seriously. Mister is too kind, that's the problem. Even if you're a C-rank healer, you're S-rank as a drug maker, so why not use it?"

Of course.

I, Oh Dok-seo, had stocked up on all kinds of drugs before the White Night on June 17 arrived, accounting for the possibility that Mister might give up his abilities.

Now these were items you could not get anywhere.

A reversal where a C-rank agent turned back into an S-rank agent. This was what holding out was all about.

"Good. Mm-hm, the effect is solid. Good thing I used the fact that Mister drinks café au lait every morning and mixed it into the milk last night."

Until now, this had truly been a story told from Mister's viewpoint, a good person so rare there might be only one in this world.

Sorry, but to reach one happy ending, life had to pass through countless bad endings.

Mister seemed to think failed cycles alone were bad endings... but well.

From my perspective, those 'give-up' cycles I pointed out earlier.

Those dead ends where Mister got infected by Udumbara and truly had to repeat from cycle 1 to cycle X all over again, those were the real bad endings.

The main story had ended.

A happy ending beyond dispute. Mister, the people around him, even the laws of physics had recovered ordinary life.

But readers well versed in dating sims and visual novels would know.

The world has not only happy endings, but also a true ending.

And true endings unlock only after you pass through all happy endings and bad endings.

The final dessert served to a guest who visited the shop, to a gourmet who enjoyed the omakase without skipping.

"Don't worry, Mister. This 'finish line' that Go Yuri, you, and I finally reached won't be damaged."

"..."

Pat.

I stroked Mister's hair as he lay slumped over the counter bar.

Even now, the seven-colored perfume he wore every day seeped faintly into my nose.

"Like I said, it's safe now. It's all in the past. Ah. Did I only monologue that in my head? Anyway."

Press.

I set the laptop beside Mister's head and turned on the screen.

As always, a blank white page greeted me.

I stretched long.

"Uuung! Huaaah... Should I finish this quick before Mister wakes up?"

This was the recollection room.

Individual routes. Bad endings. True ending.

If "clearing" the game for a protagonist called Undertaker meant saving the world, then for one gamer named Oh Dok-seo, who chased every last bit of fun, "clear" meant running around for 100 percent completion even after the main ending.

Play. Literally, play.

"Heheh."

The rules of the game were simple.

-------------

1. Oh Dok-seo uses the one remaining charge of the authority 'Side Story Creation' she had saved.

: With this, she earns the right to serialize a side-story series.

2. Of the 'canvases' Undertaker still does not recognize, she consumes the remaining two sheets.

: She inserts bad endings, never meant to be remembered, after the main story.

3. But canvases are only two sheets.

: The remaining individual routes that receive no canvas are truly 'falsehoods' that never existed in any worldline.

4. Oh Dok-seo does not reveal whose side story is true and whose is false.

: She leaves enough clues to judge what might be false, but keeps the answer in the realm of deduction. That's more fun.

-------------

After writing those rules into a memo, I grinned from ear to ear.

"It would not be an exaggeration to say I've lived for this exact moment...!"

Well, it was an exaggeration.

Anyway.

This time, let's finally bring out the true epilogues.

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