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 443
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That Woman N II
The Undertaker walked. And kept walking.
No one called his name anywhere. There were no passersby to begin with.
Seoul, Suwon, Sejong, Daejeon.
There was no sign of life in any of those cities.
“......”
Babble, babble.
In the middle of dead cities, a stream alone flowed without end, proving that a trace of vitality still remained.
The stream’s whisper sounded exactly the same.
When people were there and when they were gone, when children crossed the stepping stones laughing and when they did not, it was still only the murmuring of the brook.
Where people vanished, only the water remained intact.
“......”
Was this how the world ended?
Even though he himself was the one who had made this scene, the Undertaker was wrapped in hollow emptiness.
‘I was not wrong.’
‘No. Even if I was wrong... at least I was less wrong than this world.’
That was right.
Around the stream stood only transparent gravestones, lined up like silent stone figures. Forgetting even the sound of the flowing water, everyone dreamed of the happiness granted to everyone else.
‘The world is always the worst. So what could humans born in it possibly do? I can only be the second worst.’
Now no one would laugh again with their feet dipped in that stream.
Unable to endure the silence, the Undertaker spoke.
“Yo-hwa.”
A voice came from behind him.
“Yes, teacher.”
“I’m still glad you’re here. If even you were gone, I might have gone mad already.”
“Ahaha. Teacher, really. You’re still worrying about that?”
“It doesn’t matter if you go mad. There are only two of us left on this journey anyway, and only our journey is left in this world.”
“If two people are swallowed by madness and those two are the only ones left, then it’s not madness. It’s normal, teacher.”
Those words made the Undertaker happy.
So he turned to pat Cheon Yo-hwa on the shoulder, and there she was, the student council president of Baekwha Girls’ High, smiling brightly with perfect, lifelike clarity.
The Undertaker almost really patted her shoulder.
At least until she, the illusion of Cheon Yo-hwa, passed through him like a ghost and kept walking.
“......”
He paused.
Following Cheon Yo-hwa’s back, the Undertaker looked around.
Even with the world on the edge of ruin, elementary school children were still using the stepping stones in the stream as their way home, laughing.
Their parents watched them with worried faces, because those stepping stones could never become an evacuation route.
“Come on, teacher! Let’s go find the next corpse!”
Cheon Yo-hwa vanished into the crowd where illusions of corpses flickered.
Lee Ha-yul too. Sim Ah-ryeon too. Yu Ji-won too. Every trace of those who had once walked this “journey” with him shimmered like summer heat haze.
“......”
Ah, there was the world.
An optical illusion created by [Complete Memory].
As if nothing had been destroyed, as if time were still flowing somewhere, the mirage embroidered the city.
The Undertaker could only let out a groan.
‘They all left me behind.’
No. That was the wrong conclusion.
‘I sent all of them away.’
Why?
Because the world was wrong.
Because he believed that humans born into such a world were still not at fault.
As a result, the world split into “this side” and “that side” for the Undertaker.
This shore and the far shore.
Now, he could not even tell which side was truly the real world.
‘Which side do I live on?’
The Undertaker closed his left eye. The world seen through his right eye was hushed and still. Even the mirage was gone, and only the stream could be heard.
The Undertaker closed his right eye. The world seen through his left eye was noisy. Cheon Yo-hwa was laughing, his other companions were fine, and the world was still full of sound.
He closed both eyes, then opened both.
“......”
Both sides felt unbearably far away.
He walked through a world that never came any closer, no matter how far he walked.
Toward the reason he could still keep walking even in a world like this.
“Hmm......?”
That reason was sitting slightly reclined in a national rehabilitation hospital in some remote city.
“How surprising. I didn’t expect there to be a living person......?”
That reason had slightly coarse black hair.
That reason wore a white doctor’s coat, not for authority or self-justification, but simply to reassure patients.
“Though I do wonder whether you’re a real person. Well, the world being messed up is nothing new...”
A name tag reading ‘Noh Do-hwa’ dangled from that reason’s chest like a hanged corpse.
“So...”
In his left eye and his right eye, on that shore and this shore, that reason floated unchanged like a single buoy on waves.
“Who are you...?”
From today onward.
The Undertaker had to erase the last reason left in this world, and the last reason left for himself.
This was his alleyway.
He had no choice left.
“That was quite an interesting little lament...”
Several days passed.
For seven days and nights, the Undertaker and Noh Do-hwa talked at length.
During those talks, they occasionally strolled through the city. Sometimes, and only when Noh Do-hwa requested it, they directly toured someone’s dream spread out inside the crystal gravestones.
“Well, I still have questions here and there...”
Because of that, Noh Do-hwa stopped doubting what he said.
Naturally. She had even ridden a two-seater aircraft and gone beyond the sea for a quick look. Noh Do-hwa was not so narrow-minded that she would keep nitpicking after that.
“But a few things are clear. First, the reason civilization was completely wiped out, and responsibility for it, lies entirely with you...”
“I do not deny it.”
“And second, you’re a complete lunatic. Hah. You hated seeing people suffer over and over, so you made their happiest day repeat forever? Even among devils, that is a special kind of devil...”
“......”
The Undertaker gave no answer.
Noh Do-hwa ran her eyes over his tightly shut lips and face, clearly fascinated.
If human eyes had tongues, that gaze was closer to licking than scanning.
“I’ll ask just one thing first. Undertaker? Hmm. Is it fine if I just call you Undertaker...?”
“Yes. Ask anything.”
“Is there even one reason I shouldn’t treat you as the worst anomaly among anomalies that ended the world, rather than as a human...?”
“......”
The Undertaker could not answer.
A strange light flickered in Noh Do-hwa’s eyes.
The silence of the weak was sometimes escape, sometimes a shield. But the silence of the strong? In many cases, it was weakness, blood flowing from a wound.
Noh Do-hwa had been gifted with an instinctive sense for detecting human blood.
“Well, I mostly understand. I’ve often had childish thoughts like, ‘I wish the world would just end.’ But for it to really end. And for me to be the only survivor left on earth. Quite a rare experience...”
Her voice was now almost a hum.
Over the past few days, Noh Do-hwa had provoked the man before her in all sorts of ways. Tested him. Experimented on him.
Compared to her, a prosthetics technician, he was overwhelmingly strong. A hunter who could twist her neck and kill her at any moment.
Even so, the Undertaker never threatened Noh Do-hwa. Not once. Not even a little.
‘Aha.’
When the experiment ended, Noh Do-hwa was genuinely impressed. How could this not be astonishing?
The man in front of her had destroyed humanity, yet he sincerely believed that by his own will, he lacked the “right” to kill even a weak human like her.
‘Humanity was destroyed by someone like this?’
Noh Do-hwa wanted to sneer.
‘Or was it because he was this kind of human that he could destroy humanity?’
Noh Do-hwa felt happy. She could not fully understand why. But the fact that a moment like this had been given to her at all.
The fact that the “chance” and “choice” to truly confirm humanity’s destruction had been given not to anyone else, but to her, amused her.
‘What a nasty joke...’
Noh Do-hwa studied his face again, carefully. His features were bold.
Yet his eyes held the darkest shadows. If those eyes were plucked out and displayed, would even obsidian lose its shine?
‘No.’
Hold back.
There was no need to rush.
Noh Do-hwa suppressed the tight heat rising in her heart as it tried to race on its own. It took only a little effort.
“Even the Necromancer who wandered with you for tens of thousands of years has disappeared, I hear. And yet I remained...”
Calmly, step by step, as if chewing and savoring each word with neat white teeth.
She spoke in clipped phrases.
“Does that mean that for countless years, without changing, I kept refusing [Time Seal]...?”
“That is correct.”
“Show me...”
Show me.
Even as she bit that sentence into pieces, Noh Do-hwa had already expected how this conversation would go.
For example.
“What do you want me to show you?”
“You said tens of thousands of years, did you not? Then I can assume you used every possible method to persuade me and shove me into [Time Seal]. Those methods. Every approach you used to win me over, show them to me directly.”
“......”
“Why did I reject your offer? What were the ‘past me’s’ thinking? I won’t be satisfied until I know everything from beginning to end, Undertaker. Until then, I will never accept your proposal.”
Like that.
Conversation had a kind of tempo. Maybe not enough to become music, but enough for a tune to hum itself.
But.
“Understood.”
“...?”
His answer was a little different from what Noh Do-hwa expected.
As if there were no need to match tempos and figure out her intent behind “show me,” he stood up from his seat.
“Please wait a moment...”
Noh Do-hwa grabbed him.
“Yes?”
“You. Are you sure you understood what I asked you to show me? I didn’t explain anything in detail...?”
Noh Do-hwa herself did not realize it, but she was frowning.
Even after seeing that expression, the Undertaker gave no particular reaction. It was deliberate indifference.
If he had paid attention to people’s expressions all day, if he had given his heart to the crowd of “mirages,” his soul would not have lasted long before collapsing.
“Yes.”
To him, a human face had already become, in many ways, like a reptile’s face.
Just as no one reads emotion from a crocodile’s expression, the Undertaker no longer gave meaning to human expressions.
“Didn’t you ask me to show you, one by one, how the Noh Do-hwa from earlier cycles reacted?”
“...No, well, yes, that’s right.”
“First, you were the director of the National Road Management Corps... Ah. It was something like a government institution on the Korean Peninsula. You were its head. The Regressor Alliance was also still functioning, more or less, at that time. In any case, I need to show you stories from that era first.”
“Hmm...”
“At that time, you demanded a promise from me.”
“......”
Why was it?
Watching that man speak of the so-called “past” with lifeless eyes.
“Do not even dream of trying to persuade me before sealing every other human left on this earth. First, move to Busan, then one by one, what happened in previous cycles...”
“......”
Watching him analyze her now based on the ‘Noh Do-hwa’ he had met and spoken with then, understand her, and read even the leftover parts of words she had skipped.
Something about it bothered her.
Her heart pounded.
“Mm...?”
Without thinking, Noh Do-hwa raised her arm and pressed lightly over her heart.
It was pounding wildly. Even black leather gloves could not block the pulse.
“...?”
“Please follow me, Ms. Noh Do-hwa. The road to Busan is long, so you must be careful.”
“Ah. Yes. I’ll be careful...”
The Undertaker turned his back and started walking, exposing his pale white neck.
“......”
Was it because those corpse-dead eyes had left her sight? The beauty of his body seemed to reveal itself only now.
Suddenly…
Noh Do-hwa wanted to break that neck.
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