WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 451: That Woman S V
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* * *
That day, the Undertaker woke up late.
[The Admin of the Infinite Metagame will stand in as your alarm clock.]
[The Admin of the Infinite Metagame will stand in as your alarm clock.]
[The Admin of the Infinite Metagame will stand in as your alarm clock.]
Was it already past noon?
If the Constellation had not been firing off messages so diligently, he might have slept even longer.
“What time is it...?”
[The Admin of the Infinite Metagame informs you that it is 12:02 PM.]
“Mmm.”
A groan slipped from the Undertaker’s mouth.
For the past ten years. No, counting the previous cycles, he had lived for at least several centuries with almost no sleep at all.
‘...How long had it been since I last slept in?’
His head felt foggy.
The bedroom was dark. Since a living space had been artificially carved out of the void that had originally been the source of the Inunaki Tunnel, the lighting was bound to be lousy.
He could even faintly smell dust. The place felt bleak. Unlike in other worldlines, the Undertaker here had never opened a cafe.
Here, he had no need to invent notations like “depth 100 meters” or “depth 1,000 meters” to show how strong awakeners were.
His ally, the Infinite Metagame, could just pop open a status window and display the level.
Which was why.
-Scratch, scratch.
Only belatedly did he notice that a figure was crouched like a ghost in the corner of the room, some distance from the bed, painting away in a frenzy.
“Hwuahk!”
“Hyeek?!”
The Undertaker jumped. The person painting jumped too.
The timing was perfect. If they had entered any Olympic event run in pairs, they might actually have medaled.
In any case, thanks to that jump, the doctor’s coat the other person had been draped in like a rag slipped right off.
“Ah, Ah-ryeon?”
“Ah. Yes... Y, you’re awake?”
“What are you doing over there? I thought an anomaly had broken into my bedroom. You scared the life out of me.”
“Mmm... Sorry. I can’t be bothered talking right now, so please shut up...”
The Undertaker’s head went even foggier. This time it did not seem to be from sleepiness.
‘After reaching a position like mine, was there anyone besides Management Captain Noh Do-hwa who could tell me to shut up to my face?’
Fortunately, the Undertaker had many, many vices, but pride and arrogance were not among them.
If anything, it was the opposite.
In fact, right now, even if someone walked up and stabbed him on the street, the Undertaker probably would not have gotten particularly angry.
It was just that no one else, and not even he himself, realized his state of mind had been driven that far.
So even though someone like Sim Ah-ryeon, far weaker than him and treated as a traitor to humanity on top of that, had just verbally abused him with a “shut up,” the Undertaker really did shut up.
His mouth might have shut, but his hands were free. To drive off the enemy called sleep, he brewed some caffeine. While he was at it, he also changed the badly soiled blanket and bedsheets.
“Here. Coffee.”
“...”
“I didn’t know what kind of coffee you like, so I just made a cafe latte.”
Sim Ah-ryeon did not reply. She did not even touch the coffee he had brought over.
She just kept moving her brush without rest.
“Hmm.”
The Undertaker shrugged.
Then the hand reaching for his espresso froze in midair. His gaze had finally fixed on the canvas.
“...”
It was incredible.
Magnificent.
For a moment, his vocabulary itself seemed paralyzed. That was how fiercely the reds and blues Sim Ah-ryeon had conjured up writhed like blood vessels.
‘...Even a beginner like me can tell. This is a terrifying piece.’
But that was as far as it went.
The Undertaker, as he was now, lacked the eye to describe in detail why, how much, or in what way that painting was great.
What could he do? He had never once put any effort into cultivating or caring about hobbies or tastes.
‘Infinite Metagame. What level of painting is this?’
[The Admin of the Infinite Metagame judges that the painting placed before the player is ominous.]
‘Ominous?’
The Undertaker tilted his head. It was a word his partner, the Constellation, rarely used.
No. It might even have been the first time in several thousand years he had heard that kind of word in that kind of tone.
[A world rests on the perception with which an intelligent being beholds it. A work of art is always an attempt to rival a world.]
[For that reason, a highly perfected work of art is no different from a Void.]
[Player Undertaker. The painting placed before you is a Void.]
“...”
[The Admin of the Infinite Metagame designates this painting as a Void and recommends incinerating it at once.]
The Undertaker did not do so.
Instead, he watched. The whole time.
The painter was not picky about her tools. Sometimes she used a brush. Sometimes her palms and fingers.
She smeared paint all over her bare body, paint that gave off that distinctive well-cooked oil smell.
“Hooah.”
It seemed she had gotten up much earlier than him. In less than two hours, the finishing touch had been laid on the canvas.
“It’s, it’s been a while...! I really painted again after so long!”
Sim Ah-ryeon stretched long and wide. From the silly grin at the corners of her mouth to her fully extended body, complete satisfaction overflowed from her.
“Good. Nice work. Drink your coffee.”
“Ah! Coffee...!”
Like every other art school graduate, Sim Ah-ryeon too was a slave to caffeine. Her brain rejoiced at the master who had finally deigned to visit.
“Hwaaa, it’s good... Guild Leader, you make really good coffee. B, but I kind of prefer sweeter coffee...”
“How would I know your tastes? Those beans are precious, so drink it gratefully.”
“Yeees.”
Leaving Sim Ah-ryeon to sip at the cafe latte, the Undertaker leisurely examined the finished piece.
“Did you paint a dog?”
“Mmm. Well, yes...”
“I can sense some dissatisfaction in that answer.”
“Well, I mean. Ex, explaining my own work to some scrub with trash eyes who does not know the first thing about art feels really lame to me...”
“...I don’t know much about your field, but aren’t painters supposed to explain the meaning and context of their work in front of people? Isn’t that a proper part of the job too?”
“Q, quiet. Just shut up. Look if you want, or don’t...”
A brief silence followed.
“Right. Come to think of it, where did you get the paint and canvas? I wouldn’t have stocked anything like that here in the Azit.”
“Ah. I, I asked Yu Ji-won to bring them.”
“?”
The Undertaker turned his head. Sip. Beside him, Sim Ah-ryeon was still carefully savoring her coffee.
“Yu Ji-won?”
“Yes? Yes.”
“This is my Azit, so why would Yu Ji-won, and how, take a request from you...? Ah. Did you use the Saintess’s Telepathy?”
“Eh? N, no?”
“...Then?”
“I had a schedule starting this morning. She, she came to get me ready at dawn. Yu Ji-won. Knocking on the door. But, um. I felt like painting today. So I canceled the whole schedule and asked her to bring me painting supplies instead.”
“...She came? Right up to this room, in person?”
“Yes? Yes.”
“Why didn’t I know about that?”
“? Be, because you were asleep...?”
“...”
The Undertaker looked.
At the being called Sim Ah-ryeon right before his eyes.
She might have been draped in a rag, but if you asked whether it covered her body completely, the answer was no.
Traces of time. To put it bluntly, traces of last night still remained all over her.
Then he looked down.
At his own body.
He turned and looked behind him too.
There was the bed. Since he had changed the blanket and sheets earlier, it looked at least somewhat presentable now, but that did not mean the smell hanging thick in the room had gone anywhere.
“...”
The Undertaker bolted out.
“Ah. You’re awake.”
At the entrance to the Inunaki Tunnel, Yu Ji-won had set up a parasol and was waiting leisurely.
Grab. Without thinking, the Undertaker seized both of Yu Ji-won’s shoulders. Her slender body swayed a little.
“Ji-won.”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
Yu Ji-won’s face was as flawlessly expressionless as ever. Since it was no different from yesterday, the Undertaker let himself hope, maybe.
Of course, hope, as always, was the overture to despair. Soon, a classic rang out from Yu Ji-won’s neat lips.
“Did you enjoy last night?”
“...”
Da da da daan.
The title of the classic was Beethoven’s Fifth, the Fate Symphony.
“I’m sorry, Yu Ji-won. Whatever you saw at dawn today, forget it.”
“Hmm? Understood.”
Yu Ji-won said that casually, even while her shoulders were still being gripped.
Considering that the Undertaker’s eyes were bloodshot red right now, Yu Ji-won’s nerve was anything but ordinary.
“I had judged that Your Excellency’s heart had come to rest on Sim Ah-ryeon. If it was merely a one-night whim, that is rather a relief. It means the danger of Sim Ah-ryeon framing me has disappeared.”
“Don’t tell me that after seeing that scene at dawn, and given how deeply you’ve been involved in torturing Sim Ah-ryeon until now, you rushed to bring in paint and canvas for the sake of your own self-preservation, in short, to flatter and fawn over her?”
“Yes. People in middle management like me must always pay attention to the direction power is flowing.”
“You really are a lunatic. You know that?”
“And isn’t that exactly why Your Excellency employs me? I am always grateful for my own madness.”
“...Who else knows?”
“Ah, please do not worry. I instructed the Saintess that today the Undertaker, Your Excellency, would be with Sim Ah-ryeon, so she must absolutely not keep watch.”
“That means the Saintess knows too!”
The Undertaker shook Yu Ji-won’s shoulders violently.
But no matter how much he put her on a roller coaster, it still was not enough to draw from a customer like Yu Ji-won the review, “The ride called Undertaker seems too intense.”
“Who else? Who else knows?”
“Your Excellency, I regret to say this, but I have disclosed that fact to no one. I merely put up an extremely friendly warning asking that surveillance be halted and the like. If the recipient, upon receiving that warning, happened to infer a certain fact, then that would be due to the recipient’s own deduction, not any leak on my part...”
“I asked who knows!”
“Sim Ah-ryeon is under my supervision, and I belong to the National Road Management Corps. To change a schedule, I naturally need to report it to my superior.”
“Management Captain Noh Do-hwa?!”
“It is true that my superior is also known by that name.”
“Management Captain Noh Do-hwa?!”
“Your Excellency. Again, forgive my boldness, but I have begun detecting aura from the grip currently on my shoulders.”
“Management Captain Noh Do-hwaaaa?!”
“Hmm. If you seek my confirmation once more, then yes. That is correct.”
“...”
Da da da daan.
“Your Excellency, I say this only out of concern, but I have never once dealt with Sim Ah-ryeon out of malice or bitterness. Please, I beg that not only Your Excellency but Sim Ah-ryeon as well understand and excuse my professional mindset, too...”
The Undertaker ran.
Now and then, citizens who recognized him tried to speak to him, but it was impossible.
At the moment, his footwork was as elite as when he had fought Outer Gods, and it was not easy for an ordinary person to keep up with that speed.
In under two minutes, he stormed into the office of the Management Captain at the Tower of Babel, headquarters of the National Road Management Corps.
“Management Captain Noh Do-hwa.”
“Yeees. Did you feed your manners to the dogs...?”
“Whatever you may be imagining or inferring, it differs from the truth.”
“The truth? What truth...?”
Noh Do-hwa shuffled through some documents.
“You branded the Sacrifice your accomplice against humanity and kept her locked in a year-round torture horror show, and now, whether your conscience finally started to sting or you got horny late in the game, you’re saying you slept with the very Sacrifice you created? Then again. Well. You’re not some beast. There’s no way a story like that could possibly be true...”
“...”
Da da da daan.
‘Why. Why had it turned out like this?’
The Undertaker clutched his head and sank down.
He hated being put in situations like this. Whether it was in front of Yu Ji-won or Noh Do-hwa.
He instinctively avoided situations where the conversation flowed on the assumption that he was human.
Management Captain Noh Do-hwa surely knew about that dislike of his. Until now, that was why both of them had lived without touching the other’s sore spots.
The wall they had both worked so hard to maintain, barely, precariously, was collapsing with astonishing ease.
The Undertaker’s heart grew anxious.
So much so that even he himself did not notice it.
“Well, well.”
Noh Do-hwa laughed at him with her eyes.
“So you did know how to make a face like that...?”
“...”
“I thought a bastard not even human only did things even less human. But now I see you were completely hopeless in that department...? Hah. It’s not even funny as a joke...”
“Just one thing.”
The Undertaker ground his lower teeth against his upper teeth like a millstone.
“Let’s correct exactly one thing, Management Captain.”
“Do as you please. Or rather, do as your dick pleases...”
“I did not seduce her. Absolutely not. I swear to heaven. I had no such intention whatsoever.”
“That is an astonishingly trashy thing to say...”
“She was the one who jumped me.”
“Are you actually insane...?”
“That is the truth!”
“You’ve really got all sorts of ways to spew bullshit...”
A snort. Noh Do-hwa was not taking his excuse seriously at all.
‘Ah!’
Only now did the Undertaker realize.
‘Of course. They don’t know. They don’t know what kind of person Sim Ah-ryeon is. No one knows.’
His body trembled. Not from the joy of realization, but from fear.
‘By anyone’s eyes, I am the one with power. I am the stronger one too. So even if I say Sim Ah-ryeon jumped me, everyone will just snort!’
‘What sort of relationship has formed between us. Has ended up forming between us. The appearance and the reality are completely different!’
But the Undertaker had nowhere to air his grievance.
Because... had he not seen this kind of picture many times before?
‘It’s me!’
The Undertaker’s brain had not rotted away completely just yet. The concepts of self-awareness and self-reflection still remained inside his skull.
‘When I dealt with the Saintess. When I dealt with other people. I was the one acting first. And I swore I would not make excuses for that. So, so...’
He could not make excuses!
‘I can’t even explain that Sim Ah-ryeon is not someone you can regard as nothing more than a pitiable victim!’
What kind of absurd fate was this?
-Knock, knock.
It was then.
Someone knocked on the office door.
“Hmm...?”
Since the Undertaker, in the middle of being toyed with by fate, kept his mouth firmly shut, the role of asking who the visitor was naturally fell to Noh Do-hwa.
“Who is it...?”
-My apologies.
A crisp voice rang out from beyond the door.
-Management Captain, this is Yu Ji-won.
The Undertaker jerked his head up.
Yu Ji-won? Again, at a time like this? Why?
“Team Leader Yu? Didn’t you take today off? What brings you here...?”
-I sincerely apologize. There is someone who needs to see not the Management Captain, but His Excellency the Undertaker, so I had no choice but to bring the guest along.
Noh Do-hwa’s brows drew together. The Undertaker’s brows trembled.
The reason was the same for both of them. Yu Ji-won. That power-oriented psychopath had referred to a third party, of all people, with an honorific.
In Yu Ji-won’s worldview, the Undertaker and Noh Do-hwa were exempt from honorific suppression.
If she had said, “There is someone who wants to see His Excellency the Undertaker,” that would have been one thing, but “There is someone who needs to see His Excellency the Undertaker”?
Was she saying that a character who had to be elevated even above the Undertaker and Noh Do-hwa had suddenly been added to the setting?
“...Come in.”
-Yes.
The door opened.
“Ah! G, Guild Leader!”
“...”
Da da da daan.
“Y, you suddenly ran out and scared me. I, I was going to ask you to make me another cup of coffee. Ah. Yu, Yu Ji-won. Thank you for bringing me here...”
“Not at all, Master Painter Sim Ah-ryeon. I am nothing but a microbe unfit for a setting like this, so I shall take my leave.”
“Yes, yes. Please take good care of the painting I left with you earlier...”
“Need you even ask? Compared to such a masterpiece, a life like mine is no more than a fly. Even if I must sacrifice the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay alike, I will defend Master Painter Sim Ah-ryeon’s work.”
“Yes!”
“On second thought, for someone capable of producing such a grand masterpiece, the title Master Painter seems somewhat too low. Would Painting Marquis, Painting Artisan... no, Painting Emperor, Painting Sage, or Painting God suit you better?”
“Mmmm... Painting God, maybe...?”
“Would Painting Immortal be better? I have heard that, judging by recent content trends, the word immortal tends to rank higher than god these days.”
The Undertaker finally grasped the whole truth of the matter.
‘You betrayed me, Yu Ji-won!’
That was right.
At dawn today, the moment she opened the door and saw the scene in the bedroom, Yu Ji-won had sorted out the entire hierarchy with her genius brain.
“Why would His Excellency the Undertaker, with Sim Ah-ryeon?” “The protector of humanity, with humanity’s traitor?” Questions like that were not sexy from Yu Ji-won’s point of view.
“Aha, so she is no longer humanity’s traitor, but the predator of humanity’s protector.” That was the correct answer.
Yu Ji-won immediately shifted her stance with perfect flexibility.
From that point on, deceiving someone like the Undertaker was perfectly fine. Even if she deceived him, who was going to punish Yu Ji-won? All she had to do was win Sim Ah-ryeon’s favor.
When a king died, it was customary for a eunuch to climb onto the palace roof and cry, “Changeover ritual cry! Changeover ritual cry!”
Yu Ji-won truly was a loyal retainer. While delivering the paint, she had immediately relayed the news to the Saintess and Noh Do-hwa, placing the Undertaker in an irreversible situation.
“Yu Ji-won! Operations Team Leader Yu Ji-won! I valued you highly, and yet how could you do this to me!”
“My apologies.”
Yu Ji-won withdrew, graceful as a swan.
She had survived.
Yesterday too. Today too. And of course, tomorrow as well.
Footnotes:
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