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 444
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That Woman N III
Noh Do-hwa and the Undertaker.
A full year had passed since the last two surviving humans began living together on some stretch of shoreline.
It was right around then that the two of them started sharing the same bed.
The news had come as a real surprise to her too.
Noh Do-hwa, which was to say herself, seemed to have come to feel something almost like pity for that man.
"Undertaker? It's already four in the morning. What are you still doing up out here, moping around like this...?"
"Ah."
When had it started, she wondered. Looking back, that was probably the moment that set it all off.
It was early on, when the two of them had not been together long this cycle.
Summer's green was still bristling with envy at autumn's red when Noh Do-hwa woke in the middle of the night and shuffled out of her bedroom.
A strange thing, then. Wasn't the Undertaker sitting out on the terrace, perfectly at ease?
"My apologies. I thought I was being quiet, but it seems I disturbed your sleep, Do-hwa."
"No. Whether I sleep or not has nothing to do with you... More to the point, what are you doing out here? There's nothing worth seeing in the night view, I'd think..."
Busan. The sandy beach.
The Undertaker had skillfully converted the lobby of a building that had once been a hotel into living quarters.
She had no idea what kind of miracle he'd worked, but in this Azit the drinking water and the electricity still ran without a hitch.
Since it had been a hotel, beds were plentiful. Noh Do-hwa and the Undertaker each kept to separate rooms, ten meters apart.
"Hmm."
There, where night veiled the sea until it existed only as a sound and not a color, the Undertaker hesitated a little.
"The truth is, I haven't mentioned it to you, Do-hwa, but I don't sleep."
"Well, that's hardly strange. They say the older you get, the less you sleep, don't they? Heh. For someone who's lived through tens of thousands of years like it was nothing, of course you'd sleep little..."
"No. The thing is, it's not that I sleep little. I don't sleep at all. None whatsoever."
"...Excuse me?"
"It became this way at some point. Unless I make a deliberate effort, I find I have no need to sleep."
The Undertaker gave a wry smile.
"In a sense, you could say I've transcended humanity. Do-hwa. Rather than spend your days with a man as unfathomable as me, wouldn't it be wiser to defect to some happy refuge as soon as you can?"
"...No. Go screw yourself."
"Oh dear. What a shame."
The Undertaker gave a teasing shrug.
[Do not cross any further than this.]
Behind the Undertaker's pose, all feigned good cheer, an unspoken keep out sign stood planted.
"..."
To trample the fence a person's heart had staked around its boundary required a certain resolve, and a very firm sense of responsibility at that.
Ever since childhood, Noh Do-hwa had hated taking responsibility for anything.
So she said nothing and let the Undertaker's silence slide, treating it as no more than the slightly odd sound of the night waves.
"Hm?"
But.
The strange things did not stop there.
"Undertaker?"
"..."
"Undertaker. Why do you suddenly stop while you're walking? Did you see a ghost or something...?"
The two of them often took strolls through Busan's alleys, where moss and fallen leaves ran rampant now that the people were gone.
In the middle of a stroll, the Undertaker would sometimes halt with no warning at all.
"Ah."
Then he would blink (usually with a hard squint of his left eye) and turn to look back at her.
"My apologies. I drifted off into other thoughts for a moment."
"Hmm..."
"In any case, there's nothing to be gained from spending time with a strange, dull man like me. Do-hwa. I'd be grateful if you could agree to the time seal as soon as possible."
"..."
Strange, just as she'd thought.
'An absolute lack of sleep. Abnormal breaks in his everyday actions.'
Noh Do-hwa was no psychiatrist.
But when you faced patients at a hospital day after day, you tended to develop a certain affinity for mental illness.
Noh Do-hwa's instincts and experience were whispering to her.
'On the surface only his eyes are corpse eyes, but this man...'
So one day.
Noh Do-hwa went through with something the version of herself from the past would never, ever have done.
"Undertaker. Whatever else may be true, what you want is for me to agree to that time seal or whatever it's called, and then hurry up and get out of this world. That's the gist of it...?"
"I've never put it in such harsh terms. But, yes. That's correct."
"Then grant me everything I ask. Once my wishes come true, I'll decide whether or not to accept your proposal..."
"Very well. What is it you'd like to ask?"
"Sleep for me..."
The Undertaker froze.
"Sorry?"
Heh.
Watching how flustered he looked, Noh Do-hwa felt a little pleased with herself.
This man who always carried himself as though he understood, one hundred, two hundred percent, exactly what she meant by everything she said.
She was the one who had led him into the misunderstanding, yet Noh Do-hwa sneered as if it were entirely his fault for misreading her words.
"I mean it literally. In front of me, while I watch over you, lie down in bed and let me see you sleep..."
"Ah. Ahh, that's what you meant."
"Hmm? Then what exactly did you think I meant...?"
"No, it's nothing."
The Undertaker composed his expression and soon fell into thought.
He was probably mulling over the contents of the wish she'd put forward.
For Noh Do-hwa, savoring that face of his was its own little entertainment.
A man she'd known for so short a time, weighing every casual remark she tossed out 'this' seriously, every single time, was more fun to watch than she'd expected.
"Will it really not satisfy you unless you watch me sleep? That's a nasty little hobby. You must have plenty of other wishes, yet you go and pick this one."
"If you're going to refuse my request and just heap on the grumbling, I'll simply kill myself..."
"...Understood. I'll show you tonight."
The Undertaker sighed.
And that night, Noh Do-hwa confirmed once more that her instincts had not been wrong.
"Ah. Ngh..."
The dead of night.
Having forced himself to lie in bed and chase after sleep, the Undertaker was drenched in cold sweat from head to toe.
Spilling out groans far too thick to dismiss as mere sleep-talk, one after another.
"I'm, sorry. Dang Seo-rin. That's not it. It isn't that you're an anomaly... it's me. I've already come too far..."
That voice. That sight.
"..."
Seated in a wooden chair a few steps from the bed, Noh Do-hwa kept watching.
All night long.
"......"
As if even the act of blinking were a waste. As if even letting out a breath would get in the way. Steadily.
Noh Do-hwa gazed at him, and.
'Aha.'
In the end she could only admit it.
That her own self, her own heart, right now.
Was stirred to a degree she could say with certainty she had never felt since the day she was born, an excitement without precedent.
'Ahaa...'
There was something Noh Do-hwa had thought ever since she was young.
That she had probably been born wrong.
She could not wish for anyone's happiness. The sight of others in pain was her happiness, and the more genuine that pain, the deeper her happiness ran.
Noh Do-hwa's fortune, and her misfortune, was that she was smart enough to analyze 'logically' just how twisted and how wrong her own nature was.
And that she had patience exceptional enough to write up the judgments her 'head' reached as a formal order and force them upon this seething 'heart.'
For a person like Noh Do-hwa, happiness was not an essential element, neither for others nor for herself.
So she gave up on happiness, simply.
Instead, she accepted only the tasks she was capable of as her daily routine.
The work of making assistive devices for people with disabilities. By anyone's measure it was a worthy thing to do, and it was work that wouldn't draw the eyes of others, and it was work that let even Noh Do-hwa feel a modest sense of pride.
Great happiness. Great goodness. Great honor.
A measure of poison had seeped into every one of them.
Noh Do-hwa pursued the 'smaller' happiness, goodness, and honor instead. A reality small enough that even someone born the way she was could handle it.
[Do not cross any further than this.]
Noh Do-hwa's heart had always been ringed with yellow tape, with cordon ropes marked 'keep out.'
[Do not cross any further than this.]
Yes. A human being was not decided by what kind of passion or what kind of heart they were born with.
What truly mattered was the way they treated that heart.
For Noh Do-hwa, this yellow tape she had strung up herself was the very pride that proved her own 'humanity.'
And yet.
"It isn't so, Ms. Saintess. It isn't your fault... Ye-ji-ssi. You are not the one in the wrong. If anything, it's this world..."
"..."
To go on watching that man.
The heart she had sealed shut, leaving no gap for so much as a stray sound to leak through, kept striking up dissonant chords.
'I don't know whether it's Dang Seo-rin or whoever. But the people that man is murmuring about now...'
'Every one of them agreed to the [time seal] because they respected that man's wishes.'
Because they were precious, they respected him.
That kind of precious feeling was surely the wellspring of the choices that man's companions had made.
But.
'And me?'
Why was it that across more than tens of thousands of cycles Noh Do-hwa had not once granted that man's proposal?
'Aha.'
Because she could not allow it.
Noh Do-hwa's heart was cramped. A single seat. And so even the concept of 'preciousness' could be permitted to only one person.
Friend? Friendship? Lover? Affection? Great figure? Respect? Slave? Contempt?
A way to skillfully divide the heart up among such a host of words, Noh Do-hwa did not know.
Let her say it once more. The capacity of Noh Do-hwa's heart was always one person, and one alone.
He had to be the friend. He had to be the friendship. He had to be the lover. He had to be the affection. He had to be the great figure. He had to be the respect. He had to be the slave. He had to be the contempt.
Every word that existed in this world had to converge into a single vanishing point.
And here a simple piece of arithmetic took shape.
Her heart had been prepared for one single person, so didn't it follow that the other side, too, ought to be set aside for one person alone?
'Aha,' 'aha,' 'aha,' 'aha.'
Joy spread out from within her chest.
Long ago, Noh Do-hwa had wound cordon ropes around her heart out of consideration and respect for this world.
And now the world had perished.
Long ago, Noh Do-hwa had always kept ice close to her heart's temperature so as not to make anyone unhappy.
And now the people were gone.
All of them, save the man before her.
"......"
Slowly.
She felt them loosening. The cordon ropes.
Noh Do-hwa rose from the chair and stepped close to the bed. She climbed up, and as if even that were not enough, she looked down at the Undertaker's face from right above it.
A breath spilled out. Her own.
"Heh."
The steam that rose, hot, from that short laugh was the static electricity sparking up as the cordon ropes were torn apart.
Noh Do-hwa stroked the Undertaker's cheek.
"...!"
The moment she ran her hand over the tear-stained cheek, her spine rang with a jolt, as if she'd been electrocuted.
Noh Do-hwa flung off her glove. And once more, this time from even closer, she felt his cheek.
"..."
Astonishingly, it felt good.
'Ah.'
Her head spun.
Just as she'd thought, just as she'd been certain. It would turn out this way. Because they had been certain it would turn out this way, her past selves had probably scraped together all the junk scattered across the ground and built up a barrier wall.
That trash was made of language. 'Because I respect you.' 'Because I still believe in the line.' 'Because not hurting anyone is the only right answer.' 'Because not crumbling is what nobility means.'
A moment ago that mountain of trash collapsed. Along with the cordon ropes that had bound her heart tight.
She kissed him.
"...!"
The eyes of the Undertaker, who had been moaning through his nightmare all this while, snapped open.
At first he seemed unable to believe the scene unfolding before him, and Noh Do-hwa liked that bewilderment.
She bit the tip of a tongue. Whose tongue it was was hard to tell. The taste of blood came, and that taste, too, Noh Do-hwa liked.
She kissed him once more.
"N-Noh Do-hwa…?"
When a gap finally opened just wide enough for his voice to squeeze through, the Undertaker spoke.
"What is this… right now..."
"I do not wish for happiness."
Noh Do-hwa said. Speaking was a struggle.
Even so, she said what had to be said.
"Neither my happiness. Nor yours."
This man before her always acted so insufferably, as if he knew exactly what she meant by everything she said.
But thinking on it now, perhaps that had been a signal in the Undertaker's own way. 'I understand you.'
She, Noh Do-hwa, was trying the very same thing now.
A moment ago the Undertaker had been about to ask, 'what is this.' But that was trivial.
The meaning his question truly held inside it carried an entirely different resonance.
[If this happens, if we become this kind of relationship, what is to become of the two of us?]
This was the real question.
And so, Noh Do-hwa answered him.
"I simply wish to have you."
She was giving him her answer.
"Your grief, your sorrow. Whatever it may be... all the screwed-up things. Every last one of them. Think of it all as having been reserved for me."
"..."
"Blaming yourself? That's fine. Reproach yourself to your heart's content. Only, this is what you must understand..."
Noh Do-hwa whispered. In this posture there was no need to move her head much, which was comfortable.
"I had been longing, desperately, for you to become this way."
"..."
"Do you understand? Even what you think of as the worst, to me it looks like nothing but the fruit of a sweet wish..."
Heh. Without meaning to, a laugh slipped out.
"You asked me what my wish was, Undertaker?"
She was glad.
"I want nothing other than you, exactly as you are right now."
In a trashy world, the trash had vanished. At long last only two pieces of trash remained.
Noh Do-hwa reached out and ran her hand the length of the white throat of the trash she had gotten her hands on at the very, very end.
"So."
"..."
"You, too, want only me..."
The one who had won the gamble was herself.
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