WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 448: That Woman S II
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* * *
Did time move fast, or slow?
For a regressor, it was an easy question to answer.
The playback speed of time depended on one thing: how strong the grip of the hand clenched around it happened to be.
The Undertaker was no sadist. He was not some pervert who got off on watching someone groan and writhe in agony.
But there was one single exception.
When it came to abusing "time," he had been born with a heaven-sent talent.
[Mr. Undertaker.]
[Do you have a moment?]
It was around the time ten years had passed since he picked up a monster named Sim Ah-ryeon at Busan Station.
By then the Undertaker had long since walked the optimal route and built his own ecosystem across the Korean Peninsula.
The Saintess, who had just sent that telepathy, was one of those awakeners, a key resource in the ecosystem the Undertaker had built.
"Yes, Saintess."
So the Undertaker wrapped his expression and tone in something softer than usual. It was just the right amount of disguise, enough that it wouldn't read as hypocrisy.
"Has something happened?"
[Um, it's just... about Sim Ah-ryeon.]
The Saintess hesitated, which wasn't like her.
No. Hadn't the phrase "not like her" stopped being appropriate years ago?
For the past ten years, the Undertaker had not only studied with the Saintess every Wednesday, he had shared his every move, his every gesture with her.
It was more than enough time, an overabundance of it, to gaslight a single person.
The Undertaker had lived far, far more years than the Saintess. Scholarly cultivation. Life experience. Methods for dealing with anomalies, and strategy guides.
In no field could the Saintess match him. Naturally, just as the Undertaker intended, the Saintess's psyche went into redevelopment.
This was precisely how one handled the Saintess, the strongest awakener of all time, the one who possessed [Clairvoyance].
While she watched him, he watched her right back.
The Saintess's ability turned from a one-way street into a two-way one, and now, even when she reached a judgment on some matter, seeking the "correct opinion" from the Undertaker had hardened into a habit.
Respect. Reverence. Consideration.
Every one of them the name of a petal that stained easily into evil.
'This is the surest and easiest route to keeping the Saintess from falling.'
By now the Saintess rarely trusted her own judgment about anything.
Ethical wrongdoing, moral failings; even when she witnessed them, she sought the Undertaker's "opinion."
It was a brilliant reversal of thinking.
The problem is that you yourself might fall? Then isn't the answer simply to erase yourself?
'With this, I've sealed off the Saintess, who could become humanity's greatest potential threat. And yet her role as a watchtower stays intact.'
Satisfied with his own handiwork, he pressed on in an even softer tone.
"What about Ah-ryeon? Nothing bad has happened to her, has it?"
[Um. The thing is. Following what you told me, Mr. Undertaker... whenever something bad happens, I've been borrowing the Constellations' names to imply it's all Sim Ah-ryeon's fault, but...]
"Ah. You're doing a wonderful job."
The Undertaker gave a wry smile.
"You know Ah-ryeon's ability well, don't you, Saintess? And you'd have a read on her personality too, since you had that long talk, just the two of you, last time."
[...Yes.]
"For Ah-ryeon, that's the right thing. The more people resent and hate her, the stronger her ability grows. On top of that she has a self-heal ability, so even if she takes a few stones somewhere, she comes out perfectly fine, doesn't she?"
[...]
The silence dragged on.
Even through the telepathy he could feel her wavering over whether to speak, and in that moment the Undertaker quickly recited to himself.
'Infinite Metagame. Did the Saintess just activate her Time Stop ability?'
[Response: Affirmative.]
'Understood.'
The Undertaker wore a smile innocent enough to seem almost childlike, as if he knew nothing at all.
"I understand that, on the surface, the treatment Ah-ryeon gets looks unfair."
[Ah. Yes...]
"Even so, separate from all that, I'm glad you shared your worries with me, Saintess."
[What?]
"Do you remember the promise we made last time? That with everyone else aside, when you talk with me you wouldn't use Time Stop, you'd just talk normally. That leaning on each other's ordinariness was the very way to keep from falling into an anomaly."
[Ah...]
A very faint trace of fluster crept into the Saintess's voice. It must have struck a nerve.
But the Undertaker, as though he hadn't caught the slightest hint of the other party's inner state, kept chattering away in that glad tone.
"Ahaha. I heard that originally, even while you talked with me, you always spoke in perfectly correct pronunciation, perfectly correct sentences."
[Yes...]
"As I keep saying, you don't have to do that in front of me. To me, you are always, and already, an utterly human person, Saintess. I get a little embarrassed too whenever I show you my unworthy side... but still, you do the same for me, after all."
[...]
"I really think a fair relationship is something precious. And it's fun, too. Don't you feel the same, Saintess?"
[Yes, I do too... I do. It makes me happy.]
Silence settled in again.
This time the Undertaker deliberately did not speak first.
As if even this silence were a form of entertainment within their "sacred" relationship, he merely gazed up at the sky with a faint smile.
And then.
[U, um. Mr. Undertaker.]
The Undertaker knew well that, to the noble, a smile sometimes cut a more fatal wound than a resentful glare.
"Yes?"
[I'm... sorry. Actually, just now. For a very brief moment, no. The thing is. It was only a moment, but... I used Time Stop.]
"Ah."
The Undertaker blinked.
He knew how to control his own face.
To put on a "sad expression" here would have been the lowest of the low. Even a "face holding something back" was no better than middling.
"No, that, I'm the one who should be sorry! I mean, uh. I didn't realize. What I meant was."
Fluster. Confusion.
That was precisely what acted as an unbearable poison on the noblest, most faithful of souls.
"I mean, you only did it for a moment, right? One second. Maybe two. That happens. What I said was, uh... that just not using it too much is enough. There might've been room to misread it as never using it at all."
[...]
The Undertaker's fangs sank neatly all the way to the heart.
Considering how many ramparts the Saintess had built up over the years to protect that heart, it was a truly absurd venom.
[...I'm sorry.]
In the Saintess's voice, an agony she couldn't hide breathed like a breath drawn before a breath.
[I'm truly sorry.]
"No. No, Saintess. What we worry about is falling, and it isn't as if using Time Stop a few times like this suddenly tips you over all at once. You can rest easy. I'm the one who should apologize for speaking so thoughtlessly."
[...]
Her breathing grew more ragged.
This too was an exquisite battle of wits.
What had the Saintess just apologized for?
For the very "relationship" she had held to be sacred, holy. She apologized for breaking the promise of that relationship.
And what had the Undertaker forgiven?
For the very reason they had made that promise in the first place. For the root of it, the pledge to keep her existing as a human, so that she would never fall into an anomaly. He forgave her, saying he still believed she was human.
The Saintess's apology and the Undertaker's forgiveness seemed to interlock, yet were strangely misaligned.
A deliberate misalignment.
The Saintess was not foolish enough to miss it. She had only grown foolish enough that she could not pass the fault for it onto another, and laid it wholly upon herself.
Tender, oh so tender.
Abuse.
[Yes...]
"Mm. Still, you went out of your way to bring me a worry because you were concerned. Just leaving Ah-ryeon to fend for herself wouldn't be good either."
Here the Undertaker, like a gamer teabagging a corpse[1], landed the final blow on the Saintess's psyche.
He "quickly changed the subject so the Saintess couldn't blame herself." And the new subject was "the result of respecting the Saintess's opinion."
[Ah...]
The Undertaker was not at fault whatsoever.
Only she, the Saintess, had all of it shifted onto her shoulders.
In the end, the Undertaker succeeded in drawing the very words he had inwardly aimed for out of the Saintess's own mouth.
[Thank, you. Mr. Undertaker...]
That was it.
On this cruel chessboard, an "apology" alone was not enough. "Gratitude" was as good as a declaration of checkmate.
It had to be gratitude that welled up from the heart, and was agonizing all the same.
Forcing someone to put the word of thanks on their lips against their will, that was an act of violence only amateurs would commit.
It was also a siege method that would never work on someone whose walls of the heart stood as high as the Saintess's.
The Undertaker knew how to suffocate someone with consideration and respect alone.
"Not at all. Oh, right. I'm going to go see Ah-ryeon now, so could you turn off the Clairvoyance for a bit? It's just, I'd like to talk with her, the two of us."
[...Yes. Of course.]
A scene like this.
It had repeated without pause over the past ten years.
By now the Saintess's mental state had reached the point where she read even that request of his, the demand to lift the watch of Clairvoyance, as "him being considerate, so that I, the one who did wrong, could have a little time alone."
There was no way the rough hands of an anomaly could perform such a delicate operation.
The most fatal poison to a human always came from another human's fingertips, and more often still, from the tip of the tongue.
"Thank you, Saintess."
[No...]
"Then I'll see you again next time."
The connection cut off.
On the surface, the two of them had traded a word of apology and a word of gratitude, once each, in equal measure.
To the Saintess, who trusted logical judgment and the power of language, such an equivalent exchange could only become a shackle she bound herself with by her own hand.
"The fate of a human who can no longer listen to their own feelings."
Once he had confirmed the Clairvoyance was gone, the Undertaker muttered.
"No matter how much it's for her own good, I can't help finding the Saintess pitiful."
[The Admin of the Infinite Metagame is forever in awe of the skill with which player Undertaker tames the NPCs.]
"Who asked for your praise? Get lost."
[Answer: Neutral.]
What was "neutral" supposed to mean, neutral.
The Undertaker snorted a laugh and turned on his heel.
* * *
The maphack telepathy[2] was cut off now, so the next step was to ask the "real Constellation" for Sim Ah-ryeon's location, but.
'I'll just go find her on my own two feet. Whatever.'
Strangely, when it came to anything involving Sim Ah-ryeon, he had no desire to borrow a Constellation's power.
'No need to go far anyway.'
Pick roughly any one of the alleys branching slightly off Babel Tower Plaza, and Sim Ah-ryeon would be collapsed there.
As always.
But choosing a stroll like this came with a reaction the Undertaker had to put up with.
"Ah! It's the Undertaker!"
"Undertaker! Where are you headed?"
The endless requests for handshakes.
Even over that short walk, the ordinary citizens and awakeners of Busan, the "extras," were busy recognizing him and calling out greetings.
The Undertaker met them all with a smile.
"I'm in the middle of business, Hae-il. How's the shop these days?"
"Why, with the Undertaker watching over the city, of course it's fine! Come by sometime and I'll treat you to the works!"
"Mister Undertaker! Our place too!"
"Yes, yes. If Patissier Seo-a invites me, I have to come. I'll make time even when I have none."
Everyone, every last passerby, was plainly delighted to see the Undertaker.
Even as his own heart held a chill nothing like the warmth his face wore.
'What a bother.'
Honestly, he had neither the energy nor the leisure to spare on extras like these.
The reason he invested in image management before the citizens lay elsewhere.
'If I'm even a little unkind to the citizens, Management Captain Noh Do-hwa resigns and walks out on me, sheesh.'
It was simply that the cost of losing a first-rate talent like Noh Do-hwa outweighed the cost spent on image management.
Throb.
For some reason, the moment he thought of Management Captain Noh Do-hwa, a corner of his heart bristled again, but the Undertaker held the same consistent attitude as always.
Ignore it.
What did it matter? The feeling he was ignoring wasn't only the one about Noh Do-hwa, after all.
He was an expert, well versed in the art of separating his heart from his head.
Before long, he reached the alley where Sim Ah-ryeon lay collapsed.
Sim Ah-ryeon was not alone.
Beside her stood a woman whose posture was as straight as a bodyguard's.
"Ah."
A bow.
The silver-haired woman, Yu Ji-won, lowered her head at a perfect angle when she saw the Undertaker.
"You've come, Your Excellency."
"Yes. You always work hard at the escort duty."
"Not at all. It's my honor."
"Right. Is Ah-ryeon doing well?"
"Hm."
Yu Ji-won stepped slightly aside.
"As for whether she's doing well, that's not something I can judge. But she's just finished hitting today's quota of hatred and resentment."
The alley opened into view, thanks to the angle Yu Ji-won had widened.
The Undertaker's eyes met the one he had come to find.
"..."
"..."
Beneath a shabby wall, Sim Ah-ryeon was sprawled out, her eyes empty.
One arm and one leg severed.
"...Ah."
Sim Ah-ryeon gave a slack smile.
"You've come... Guild Leader?"
Footnotes:
[1] Teabagging is online-gaming slang for repeatedly crouching over a defeated opponent's body in a shooter, an intentionally humiliating taunt; here it figures the Undertaker's act as gratuitously kicking someone already beaten.
[2] A maphack is a cheat (originating in real-time strategy games like StarCraft) that reveals the entire map and all hidden units; here it likens the Saintess's omniscient Clairvoyance telepathy to that all-seeing cheat.
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