WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 453: That Woman S VII
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* * *
For a moment, the Undertaker doubted his own ears.
"You're going to kill Sim Ah-ryeon? ...You?"
"Yes."
"I don't understand."
It threw him.
Until now, the Undertaker had assumed he understood the being in front of him well enough. A master of brainwashing. Wasn't this the anomaly that could manipulate affection itself?
But the words the pink anomaly was spouting now did nothing to raise the Undertaker's 'affection.'
If anything, they only drove his hostility higher.
'Is this really Go Yuri at all?'
So he had no choice but to stay on the highest guard.
From the start, the information the Undertaker had managed to gather about Go Yuri was crude beyond belief. And now even that crude information had become hard to trust.
"If you truly meant to kill Sim Ah-ryeon, the right move would have been to ambush me before showing yourself. Go Yuri. Surely you don't think I'd be swayed by your sweet poison?"
"It's faith, Guild Leader."
A breeze blew.
Even the sunlight baking the asphalt couldn't spoil the coolness of the wind passing between them. With a gesture, Go Yuri slowly settled her scattering pink hair.
"There's no point telling you, you won't get it anyway. There's no way you'll understand anyway. Anyway, anyway, anyway. That very attitude is the danger I avoid most of all."
"No matter how much you spout, I will absolutely never take part in killing Sim Ah-ryeon."
"Ahaha. Really, they say if you grasp the truth in the morning you can die content by evening[1]. Aren't you changing a bit too much in a single day?"
"..."
"I don't think it's a bad thing. That honesty of yours, Guild Leader. The bold resolve. The willingness to throw away even who you've been until now. Those are the parts I like. Mm. Compared to 'before,' I think you've gotten so much better."
"Before?"
"Yes."
Go Yuri smiled brightly.
But she didn't bother to answer that question. She only carried on with the main point.
"The bad one is the other side. Sim Ah-ryeon. Ah, sorry. Was that a nasty way to put it? To be more precise, the problem is Sim Ah-ryeon's power."
"What's wrong with Ah-ryeon's power. So she grows stronger the more emotion she drinks, what's the..."
"There's no limit to it."
Go Yuri's smile gently took on a tinge of sorrow.
"I try, as much as I can, not to meddle with you, Guild Leader. But if I let you and Sim Ah-ryeon slip away here, and your two-person desert-island life keeps going on... This world will race toward ruin at a speed nothing can hold back."
"Ha."
He scoffed.
It didn't make him feel any better. Even a scoff had joints to it. As the breath rose back up his throat, the scoff buckled once.
The Undertaker forced himself to ignore that buckle.
"World annihilation isn't some kid's game. As if it'd happen because of Sim Ah-ryeon. At least dress up your lies with a little effort."
"A flower bloomed."
"...?"
"A red, red flower. A beautiful flowering tree. If you don't know that the world is beautiful, then red flowers bloom in such profusion that you can no longer ignore that beauty, and they cover everything, the earth, the heavens, all of it."
"..."
"That flower tells you that you, just as you are, are beautiful. No need to change. No need to strive. It sings that simply by existing, you are beautiful. So people shed even their awakening powers, throw off even their human faces, peel away even their animal hides... Every one of them becomes a single bloom, a single tree."
Why was it.
The Undertaker swore he had never once seen the scenery Go Yuri was describing.
And yet.
"In a garden that bloomed like that, there was always one knight guarding the World Tree."
His heart heaved like mad.
"A strange thing. The flowering trees in full bloom, oddly enough, refused to turn that one knight into a flower."
"..."
"Because the knight was the sole exception that came to think this, that the knight's own inherent beauty was more enrapturing than the beauty of the flowers it had woven."
"...I don't know what you're talking about."
"No. You do know, Guild Leader."
Go Yuri laid one hand against her own cheek.
"Haa. It was hard, you know? The whole Eurasian continent was being devoured by the World Tree. Rallying every last remaining force I could, striking all at once, and just barely severing the existence of you and Sim Ah-ryeon."
"..."
"Really. One slip and even I might have been done in. How long had it been since I'd felt genuine tension."
Her head tilted at a slight angle.
Go Yuri smiled with her eyes.
"Thrill addict that I am, I'm not foolish enough to repeat that kind of danger twice. Guild Leader. I'll say it again. Sim Ah-ryeon needs to die here and now."
Naturally, there was no chance the Undertaker would agree.
He moved at once to ready himself for battle.
'Infinite Metagame. I need backup.'
No answer came.
'...Infinite Metagame?'
Still no answer.
Cold sweat ran down the Undertaker's neck.
'Don't play around. Infinite Metagame. What are you doing at a moment this important? I'm about to throw myself into combat, so back me up...'
"Oh my. Could you, by any chance, be desperately crying out for my own little Outer God?"
The Undertaker's body, primed to attack at any instant, clenched tight with tension.
Go Yuri was watching him quietly.
"I'm sorry, but your little OG won't be answering."
The Undertaker's lips trembled.
"How do you know about the Infinite Metagame..."
"Ahaha. Didn't I tell you, Guild Leader? That I attacked by 'rallying every last remaining force.'"
In that moment.
"The 'forces' I gathered included not only humans but anomalies as well."
The asphalt grains of the old road shattered into pieces.
"...!"
No. Look closely, and the crumbs of asphalt hadn't broken apart at all.
The 'resolution' had dropped.
"Infinite Metagame!"
The Undertaker had witnessed this exact phenomenon once before.
The Outer God he'd halfway come to regard as a partner. Back when it had once wiped out all of humanity, the world's image quality had degraded into a dotted screen, just like this.
"So you really did betray me!"
No reply came from the Infinite Metagame.
"Oohoho."
Only Go Yuri's voice, laughing playfully as though even this situation amused her, felt utterly alien.
"Please don't blame it too much, Guild Leader. That little OG is designed to throw an error specifically when you and I, just the two of us, are in the same space."
"You..."
"Have you finished your preparations for farewell? Time. I think I gave you quite a lot of it."
Snap.
Go Yuri flicked her fingers.
"Just one day spent with you, Guild Leader, and the healing ability has already grown that much. Leave it as it is and the World Tree is sure to sprout. So before that, I'll remove it."
A gush.
Red blood splattered.
"..."
Blood splashed across his cheek. With his lips parted, the Undertaker looked down into his own arms.
The blood had burst from nowhere else but there.
"Ugh, urk... krp, huff, ah...?"
It was Sim Ah-ryeon.
From the mouth, nose, eyes, and ears of Sim Ah-ryeon, who had kept quiet all this while because the Guild Leader seemed to be having some serious conversation.
"Uh, haa..."
Gush, gush. The blood streamed down.
"Ah."
"Urk... ha, heh? Guild, Leader...?"
"Ah-ryeon! Ah-ryeon, pull yourself together!"
How? What trick had Go Yuri pulled? He hadn't sensed even the faintest sign of an attack, so how?
The Undertaker panicked. He flared his aura and wrapped Sim Ah-ryeon in a barrier. Even so, Sim Ah-ryeon's coughing of blood would not stop.
"Mmrgh. Paah...ha, urp, uaah..."
"Heal yourself. Ah-ryeon, don't panic. Hm? Stay calm. Just heal yourself!"
"No."
Clack.
Go Yuri took a step closer.
"I'm sorry, but Sim Ah-ryeon's vessel is small. Mm. The longer she spends with you from here on, the more vast her vessel will grow, exponentially so... But for now it's still shallow."
"What did you do!"
"It's simple. I just released about 100 million people's worth of emotion."
100 million? 100 million people?
"You scolded me for my foolishness, asking why I didn't choose an ambush, didn't you? But Guild Leader. There are beings in this world who have no need to bother with an ambush."
"..."
"If I set my mind to it, I could wreck the current Sim Ah-ryeon as many times over as I pleased. That's why I deliberately gave you the time to talk."
In his arms.
The Undertaker felt it. The life in his arms was thinning out at a terrible rate.
Like a heartbeat traced across a monitor, the thin line of life dropped, surged a little, then dropped again, over and over.
Some kind of attack Go Yuri had fired off had struck Sim Ah-ryeon, and the healing ability had triggered, but the blow was graver than the healing.
Pain. Recovery. Greater pain. Recovery. Greater pain.
"Guild, Lead...er..."
Cough.
That was the state Sim Ah-ryeon was in. She forced up the blood pooled in her throat and barely wrung out a voice.
The Undertaker wanted to draw his sword that very instant and rush at Go Yuri. But he couldn't.
The moment he set this child down out of his arms, the thread of life clinging on by a hair would snap. The Undertaker could sense it.
"Ah-ryeon. Ah-ryeon, no, Ah-ryeon."
"Uheh... Urp, haa. Heh..."
Sim Ah-ryeon clumsily mimicked a smile.
"I wanted, to see more of you... Hee..."
The Undertaker could not understand it at all.
Why did the child in front of him have to suffer nothing but pain her whole life?
Because she wasn't human enough? Because her talent was too excessive? Because she belittled others' talents? Because she teased them? Because she took pain as pleasure and converted it into power on top of that?
He was the one who had forced the fate of torture onto this child. That much he accepted. So he had resolved to spend the rest of his life apologizing to her, living a life that took responsibility for her.
And yet, with no regard for his resolve, Sim Ah-ryeon was being forced into death. Why? For what reason?
This child knew how to laugh. Her reasons for laughing were just different. This child knew how to grieve. Her reasons for grieving were just different.
She loved. The reason for her love was just different.
Did she have to die for that alone?
Was there such a thing as a person born by mistake?
"I promise. Ah-ryeon. Never again, never, will I let you suffer. So that you'll be all right even without suffering... So that you can keep, just keep, smiling. I'll make it so. I will."
"Puppy..."
Sim Ah-ryeon looked up at the Undertaker with eyes dyed red, with a smile painted over in red.
The Undertaker's vow no longer reached her. She could spit the blood from her mouth, but she had no way to clear the blood pooled in her ears.
"A puppy... I raised one. It hurt so much."
But she could still move her hand.
Sim Ah-ryeon somehow lifted her right hand, the one the excessive shock had thrown beyond her control. Pain had always been familiar to her.
"It hurt... It looked like it was suffering..., looked that way, but then the puppy saw me, looked at me, stuck out its tongue, it must have hurt, it must have been hurting, and went woof, and my hand, the puppy..."
"..."
"Poor thing... Everyone's so pitiful... But it's fine. Things like that. It's all, it's all fine. It gets better, but it's pitiful..."
The Undertaker.
Still holding Sim Ah-ryeon in his arms, he raised one hand and pressed gently, firmly, against her throat.
"Ah."
Sim Ah-ryeon smiled once more.
It might have been closer to a moan than a smile.
Having spat out all her blood, she could let her last remaining breath spill into his arms.
"I love, you... Guild Leader..."
A little more strength went into the hand at her throat.
And the palm slid down the Undertaker's cheek, tracing a red arc as it fell.
The sound of death settling down was that soft.
The cry of cicadas rang out over the silent road.
"...Did you finish it yourself."
Go Yuri said quietly.
"Truly fitting for one who bears the alias Undertaker. Always so cruel. To yourself. To Sim Ah-ryeon unni, and to you too, Oraboni."
"I will not hand over a single grain to you."
"A splendid frame of mind. Please, next time too, don't forget that resolve."
Clack.
Go Yuri took one more step closer. Holding Sim Ah-ryeon's body, the Undertaker watched his opponent.
He didn't draw his sword. This was an opponent he couldn't beat. He was certain that no matter how hard the current him thrashed and struggled, he would never reach her.
So he looked straight at her.
So that he would not forget. So that he would remember this moment forever, and never repeat the same mistake.
"You probably won't remember this, though."
In Go Yuri's hand was a red flower. An Udumbara[2].
"There exists no method for keeping Sim Ah-ryeon happy while always staying by her side, Guild Leader. I'd like you, if you can, to keep a reasonable distance."
"Never. I will absolutely never let Sim Ah-ryeon go from my life."
"Such a spoiled, stubborn thing."
Plip.
Go Yuri plucked a petal from the Udumbara.
"That's exactly why I chose you, though."
The Undertaker's vision dyed red.
It was strange. The petal she had picked should have been only a single one. Yet it was as if roses had burst into full bloom and buried his sight in crimson.
Perhaps it was bloody tears flowing from his own eyes.
The Undertaker had no way of knowing.
He could only feel, even in that moment, the clear weight of the fallen petal cradled in his arms.
"...Ah-ryeon."
Firmly, the Undertaker pulled her close.
Firmly. If a weight existed there that his arms could not fully hold, that his body could not fully receive,
then he wished, prayed, that his soul might take in the rest of her.
"The Guild Leader. This Guild Leader will, someday, surely, make you happy..."
That was the end of it.
The vow could not be carried through.
But for him and for her, the vow had never been made of words to begin with.
For him and for her there still stretched a great deal of time, a road of summer that would not end here.
-That Woman S. Fin.
Footnotes:
[1] A near-verbatim quotation of Confucius from the Analects (4.8): "If a man hears the Way in the morning, he may die content in the evening." It expresses that grasping the truth is worth more than life itself.
[2] The udumbara is a legendary flower in Buddhist scripture said to bloom only once every 3,000 years, heralding the appearance of a sage or a world-changing event; it is a symbol of an extraordinarily rare and auspicious occurrence.
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