WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 446: That Woman N V
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* * *
A few days had passed since the surgery.
"How's the pain? Does the left eye still itch or sting at all...?"
"No. I'm fine."
"Hmm, that's a relief. It was my first time gouging out and replacing a person's eyeball, so I worried something might've gone wrong..."
For the past few days, the Undertaker had gone about his life with a black eyepatch wrapped around his face.
It covered not just the left eye but the right one too. Thanks to that, he got to taste what it felt like to be a caveman shut inside a dark cavern.
And the material of this eyepatch was, well, very Noh Do-hwa, if anything ever was. It was none other than the leather glove she usually wore, mended into shape.
She claimed she'd disinfected it thoroughly, yet there was no telling why Noh Do-hwa's scent, that distinctive lemon fragrance, wafted up so strongly from the eyepatch's lining.
Total darkness. And fragrance.
For these past few days, that was the whole of the world granted to the Undertaker.
"Honestly. A beginner, and you went and performed the surgery with that much confidence? Do you know how easily the optic nerve gets damaged? What would you have done if it had gone wrong?"
"Well. Would anything serious really have come of it...?"
From beyond the blackout the eyepatch draped over him, Noh Do-hwa answered in a perfectly unbothered voice.
"Your body's tough as a damn beast anyway, and I confirm that every single day, so. I wasn't particularly worried..."
"..."
The Undertaker was at a loss for words. Seeing him like that, Noh Do-hwa snickered again, which only made him angrier.
"No. Look, Noh Do-hwa. I'm begging you, please, just curse me out instead."
"Why...?"
A mocking sneer.
"Not used to me being like this, are you...?"
"Of course I'm not. The Noh Do-hwa I've known all this time barely said a single word along those lines."
"Oho. Then you can surely guess how I'd answer that request of yours..."
She'd answer with something like, 'Awkward? No, I love it even more,' or, 'If this is the only side I've shown in this cycle, then I'd better keep it up from here on.'
The Undertaker sighed.
He really had ended up dating a strange woman.
"Enough. Can I take the eyepatch off soon? Being waited on by you from morning to night every day is uncomfortable too."
"Hmm? I find it fun, though...?"
"I'm sorry, alright, I'm sorry. And I'd like to check whether the eyeball that just moved into my skull rolls properly."
"Just wait a little longer..."
Noh Do-hwa chuckled.
"There's something I'm preparing..."
Preparing? What sort of preparation did she mean?
"It's a secret..."
When Noh Do-hwa said it was a secret, the Undertaker felt oddly afraid.
She'd already snatched one of his eyeballs, and now what kind of bizarre scheme was she cooking up, he worried, and then, all at once, he thought.
'Afraid? Me?'
The Undertaker's eyes, hidden behind the pitch-black eyepatch, twitched.
'Of course it isn't some enormous dread. It's just an emotion, half worry and half anticipation, over what unimaginable thing that person might pull. But...'
When was the last time I felt this?
Something this small, this trivial.
"..."
The days flew by in an instant.
Over those few days the Undertaker had to endure things he'd never experienced in his whole life.
In truth, this person's claim that she was hiding some secret was a bald-faced lie, and it got to the point where he suspected she was simply running every kind of experiment she'd ever wanted to try on a "partner who couldn't see what was in front of him."
"Take the eyepatch off already!"
When the fifteenth day finally arrived, the Undertaker, despite having long believed he'd cast off his humanity ages ago, found himself shouting for the first time in forever to protect his "humanity," that is, his dignity.
"The groceries need restocking soon too, and we've been holed up in the hotel all day. What kind of nonsense is this!"
"Hmm? Weren't you enjoying it too...?"
"That's a separate matter! Even real beasts pass their days more wholesomely than us!"
"Hm. A split personality, perhaps... It's quite uncanny how a person changes this much between day and night."
"Eyepatch!"
"Yes, yes, understood. I'll take it off tomorrow. Honestly. A man without a shred of patience in him..."
Noh Do-hwa muttered, 'If it were up to me, I'd lock you in darkness for about half a year.'
A chill ran clean down the Undertaker's spine.
'It would've been so much easier if at least my aura were intact.'
A year ago, after he'd sealed Yu Ji-won at the Convenience Store, the use of aura had somehow become impossible.
The Undertaker couldn't make sense of it. What on earth was the connection between sealing Yu Ji-won and his aura?
Just then, something gripped his chin.
"..."
The world's destruction did have one upside. There was no need to agonize over exactly which word to drop into a parenthetical blank labeled "something" or "someone."
Now, if someone in the world had grabbed the Undertaker's chin, it could only be Noh Do-hwa's slender fingers.
"What were you just thinking about...?"
"..."
A sudden mischief welled up in the Undertaker.
Was there such a thing as a plague for ways of thinking and feeling too? Maybe, from living with her, he'd caught Noh Do-hwa's poison himself.
"Ah. I was thinking about another woman."
He wanted to torment her a little too.
"Yu Ji-won, she's called. I think I mentioned her to you once before. Back when you reigned as the Management Captain, she always held the position of your second-in-command--."
His lips were sealed off.
His tongue was bitten. His breath was stolen. He stole some too.
The Undertaker thought.
When two people craved each other this often, already so accustomed and yet acting as if there were still room to grow more accustomed, there was no way their scents or their ways of thinking wouldn't bleed into each other.
Only two strands of time remained to flow in this world.
By chance, those two remaining strands seemed to enjoy knotting themselves together.
The next day.
The long-awaited day the eyepatch came off.
"Patient Undertaker. Watch your feet. We're heading into the shower now..."
"I can wash myself!"
"I know. But, so what...?"
"This is a human rights violation!"
"Aha. If you're an animal and not a human, then there are no human rights to violate either..."
That day Noh Do-hwa seemed even more fussy than usual.
Every other day she'd risen at her leisure, only after the sunlight blazed bright, yet for some reason today she'd been up since dawn.
The time she spent on the shower was unusually thorough too. Normally she finished within an hour at the longest, for fear he'd catch a cold, but today it felt like it ran past two hours.
"You're all clean now, Patient Undertaker. There. Now it's time to put your socks on first..."
"Be honest. Noh Do-hwa. You only got that orthotics-and-prosthetics technician's license so you could watch patients flounder helplessly without you, didn't you?"
"My. You've gotten your hands on the most secret information of my entire life..."
"I've literally roamed the whole world meeting every human there is, and you're the first person I've ever met who's so thoroughly made of nothing but nasty hobbies."
"Oh dear. And yet that nasty hobby happens to be your type, apparently..."
"..."
"Lift your neck a bit. It's hard to do up the tie..."
From the tips of his toes to the crown of his head.
When she told him to spread his arms, he spread them; when she told him to plant his legs, he planted them. The Undertaker changed into the whole outfit in the spirit of playing along with Noh Do-hwa's strange game.
'These clothes feel a little tight, though.'
You could tell just from the way she went around in nothing but a doctor's coat every day, but Noh Do-hwa mostly preferred a loose, roomy style.
Not the sense of sight but touch. She valued the sensation felt through the body overwhelmingly more than what was seen with the eyes.
She didn't impose on others what she didn't impose on herself. She'd never demanded any particular fashion style from the Undertaker either.
So, it was a strange thing.
"Good. All done..."
"Is this the part where I get to take it off?"
"No. Just follow me for a moment..."
She gripped his hand firmly.
Where were they headed? The Undertaker was curious, but he walked along in silence, letting Noh Do-hwa's hand and her steps lead the way.
The sound of the waves grew faint, little by little.
"..."
In the past he'd have spread his aura and grasped the surrounding terrain through ki-sense.
Now that didn't work well.
Every time he sealed people. Every time he taxidermied his precious companions into transparent graves, the Undertaker slowly weakened.
By now he was nothing more than an ordinary man who just happened to have a slightly tough body. The very one who had stood against every anomaly and wiped out all of humanity, this feeble. It was a laughable state of affairs.
Step.
In that darkness.
In the dead center of a dark where neither the direction of the path he walked nor the names of the alleyways, nothing at all, could be made out.
Step, step.
The only thing he could picture vividly, as if drawn before his eyes, was his companion who held his hand firmly and walked on. Noh Do-hwa's footsteps and movements, those alone.
Step. Step, step.
It made sense, since the two of them had spent so much time together.
A year. It might feel like a short stretch of time, but if you had to share it alone with just one other person in this universe, that too was long enough.
The pace of her steps. The angle at which she swung out her legs. The pressure felt in her fingers. The slight breeze brushing past his bangs each time she tilted her head to glance back and check whether he was keeping up.
Within his darkness, she alone grew distinct.
"Ah, we've arrived..."
Her steps stopped.
"The eyepatch. I'd like you to take it off yourself..."
"..."
A nod.
The Undertaker, with a careful touch, undid the shade that had hidden his vision for over fifteen days, and.
Dodging the razor blades of sunlight that came slashing sharply at him, he squinted for a moment.
But it was only for the briefest moment.
"..."
The scene that rose up before him.
A sight more mirage than any mirage seized his gaze, leaving him no room to spare for something like the sun.
The clothes Noh Do-hwa wore were pure white. By color alone they were no different from the doctor's coat she usually liked to wear.
But he swore, the Undertaker had never once seen Noh Do-hwa wearing clothes like the ones she wore now. Not up until now.
And never, for all eternity to come.
It was a wedding dress.
"..."
In that instant, the Undertaker felt he understood why sunlight was pure white. The reason the color white existed in the world.
Before him, Noh Do-hwa looked at his face, and.
"..."
Without a single word, she simply smiled, a little crookedly.
This was Babel Tower Plaza. It was a place that had once been called by that name. But with the ambition to link every road in the world from this very spot all forgotten, the plaza lay sprawled out as a desolate vacant lot.
In that place with no guests and no officiant, the two held both hands tightly. There weren't even any vows.
"..."
"..."
Words were never something needed to begin with. When a person didn't try to grope after and interpret another through words, she became fully herself to him, and he became fully himself to her.
He happened to be wearing black clothes at that moment. A tuxedo.
The black shade brought out the white sunlight. When the shade stood beside the sunlight, it became not darkness but a place of rest.
That was the reason black and white existed in the world.
And a single step behind, the Undertaker realized that the mirages which had tormented him for so long were no longer visible.
That was right. The only mirage permitted to him now belonged to a single person.
He pressed his lips to hers without a word.
A moment later, she too quietly laid her lips over his.
It was a truly curious thing. Of all the kisses the two had shared since they'd fallen into this remote place, today's was the gentlest.
"I think I'd better stop regressing."
"Why...?"
"I don't have the confidence to meet you again once you've lost the memories of right now. I might end up killing you."
"Oh dear..."
She laughed.
"Then isn't it a simple matter of just regressing together...?"
"There's no way to do that."
"Well. From the looks of it the eyeball rolls fine. So if we swap your body and mine bit by bit, maybe, with some luck, the regression ability gets transplanted into me too, wouldn't you say...?"
"Are you actually insane?"
"Eh. Even if it fails, the worst that happens is we just die together. Live together. Or die together. A simple set of choices..."
That was true enough.
"More than that, these clothes are a pain in the ass. Hauling you along on the walk over nearly killed me from how stuffy it was. I'll never put it on again after today, so go ahead and burn it into your eyeballs to your heart's content..."
"It doesn't matter."
The Undertaker smiled.
"Right now, for the first time, I'm grateful for my memory."
Had he gone wrong? Probably.
Had he ended up here by piling one wrong choice on another? Maybe.
But for the times when he went wrong, there had been someone who waited thousands, tens of thousands of stretches of time for him.
He was not unhappy. Even at this moment of reaching destruction, unhappiness had been unable, in the end, to swallow him whole.
Her too.
Because the world had been destroyed, 'that man' was always a single person.
Because humanity had gone extinct, 'that woman' was always a single person.
Because he and she had waited at the final terminal, this world, it seems, would never once meet a bad ending, for all eternity.
-That Woman N. Fin.
Footnotes:
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