WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 454: That Woman J I
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* * *
Something was off.
Something was strange.
Lately, the Undertaker found himself caught in these spells of déjà vu more and more often.
For instance.
"Hmm...?"
Management Captain Noh Do-hwa was right in front of him.
She looked at the table and frowned. The Undertaker had just set a cup of coffee down on it.
"What is this, awakener Undertaker? You barge into my office and slap down a coffee out of nowhere. I don't recall asking for this morning service...?"
"Uh."
That sharp glare flustered him. And along with another inexplicable wave of déjà vu, the meaning packed into that glare came through to him perfectly intact.
'Don't tell me the me from a previous cycle liked this kind of service?' 'And that's why you're pulling the same crap on this cycle's me?' 'That's some bullshit.' 'You son of a bitch.'
That was roughly what it meant.
Without even noticing, the Undertaker had apparently taken a job as Noh Do-hwa's personal cipher decoder, because he understood it with crystal clarity.
"Th, that's not it, Management Captain. To be honest with you. Truthfully, even I don't know why I'm doing this."
"Haah? Are you senile...?"
"I'm telling you, I don't know. I woke up before dawn today and suddenly felt like making you a coffee. Out of nowhere, really. That's all."
"Hmmmm..."
A suspicious squint.
Noh Do-hwa tipped the cup back for a sip. The crease between her brows deepened.
"It's good, though...?"
To anyone else it would have sounded like ordinary praise, but coming from Noh Do-hwa it took on an entirely different hue.
'You said this wasn't based on a previous cycle?' 'Then why does it hit my palate exactly right?' 'I've kept my coffee preferences locked away this whole time?' 'You son of a bitch.'
The Undertaker felt like he had been dropped into a dating sim.
He had no way of knowing when this authority had been stealth-patched into him.
Still, thanks to it, he could come up with the optimal answer. And it happened to be the truth, too.
"No. You've got it wrong. I don't know your coffee preferences at all, Management Captain. I still don't."
"Oho. Then why is this coffee so damn good, mister regressor...?"
"Hm. Well, the thing is, I just made the coffee while thinking of you, Management Captain, and this is how it turned out."
"..."
Noh Do-hwa's hand froze in place.
A moment later, a face so vicious it would have sent even the Four Heavenly Kings[1] guarding a temple gate fleeing in fright took shape on her features.
"Haah? This son of a bitch..."
"Hold on. Management Captain. I'm aware this sounds like flirting. But that doesn't mean I can lie about it, does it? You wanted an answer, and I gave you the honest one. I'll swear on it. That's everything."
"..."
Noh Do-hwa looked down at the cup.
A Joseon-era prisoner staring down a cup of poisoned wine[2] would have worn a more relaxed expression than she did now.
"So you're telling me. Out of every cycle combined, this morning is the very first time you've ever made me this coffee...?"
"Yes."
"..."
"..."
"I take back the part about it being good. It's damn terrible. Even if a new cycle comes, never serve me this kind of coffee again. It makes me want to puke..."
"I'll keep that in mind."
The Undertaker took his leave.
But the next day. And the day after. And the day after that.
The Undertaker kept bringing her that 'terrible coffee' at the exact same hour and the exact same temperature, and for some reason, Noh Do-hwa never stopped him.
"..."
Something was off.
Something was strange.
"Hng?"
Inunaki Tunnel[3]. Sim Ah-ryeon, who had been painting an anomaly picture to upload to SG Net, jerked her head up like a startled squirrel.
"J, just now. Wasn't that weird? Guild Leader?"
"...What do you mean?"
The Undertaker spoke with a face that gave nothing away.
"You were just painting. And this Guild Leader was ironing."
"Mmmm. The thing is. Up until a moment ago I could feel a color coming off you, Guild Leader, like bread baked all golden-brown? But then suddenly, um, it was like I bit into the bread and found out fifty percent of it was raisins... that kind of feeling-feeling."
"Your emotion changed?"
"Yes!"
"That's only natural, Ah-ryeon. Emotions flip around all the time."
"N, no no! That's not it-. It, it changed way too fast. Even when it changes, the speed, um. There's usually a steady rhythm... to it?"
Sim Ah-ryeon nibbled on the tip of her brush.
"But ju, just now it really flipped in an instant. It's supposed to go whooo-whirl-whirl when it changes, but it went whip! all at once... It, it's weird."
"Your words sound weirder to me. A person's heart is like water, sure, and sometimes the current can run fast."
"Mmmmm. Is, is that so...? It's not, though."
There's no way that's it.
Sim Ah-ryeon muttered to herself even as she turned her focus back to the painting.
She was a kid who got a five-hundred-percent concentration buff whenever she painted, so even pausing her brushwork for a moment was an unusual case.
That was when it happened.
The world stopped.
It was no metaphor, nothing of the sort. The pause button had truly been pressed on the world.
Strangely, the color changed too. It was as though, alongside the pause, something had layered a 'black-and-white effect' over everything as well.
The surroundings had been painted entirely in white, gray, and black, like an old black-and-white film.
"...Hoo."
Sim Ah-ryeon's brushwork, the Undertaker's ironing, even the tail-flicks of the tropical fish beyond the Inunaki Underwater Tunnel, all of it frozen in place.
In that place, one being alone gave rise to sound and noise. Although no one could turn their head to look, the voice alone was enough to give away its identity.
"That was a close call. Truly. Since Sim Ah-ryeon senses emotional shifts by visualizing them, there's a chance she could notice the change before and after [Time Stop] cuts in."
It was the Saintess.
"I'll have to be a little more careful."
Squeeze.
Inside the black-and-white screen where no one but herself could make a sound or even move, the Saintess clenched her small fist.
Forcing her monologue alone upon the entire world.
"...But it was strange, wasn't it?"
The Saintess walked over.
Her steps came to a stop right in front of the Undertaker's face. He had, of course, become a single statue.
"Mr. Undertaker's emotion changed... Mr. Undertaker surely can't escape [Time Stop] either. So why did the color of his emotion shift so abruptly?"
A long, steady gaze.
The Saintess looked up at the Undertaker.
She narrowed her brows, but it was nothing like the look from Management Captain Noh Do-hwa.
Unlike Noh Do-hwa, who always forced her contempt and malice onto her facial muscles, the Saintess wore a very faint expression.
And so it was steady. With a gaze that was nothing if not endlessly, quietly steady, she watched him.
"Could it be that you can actually move freely inside my [Time Stop], and you've been deceiving me all this time?"
Silence flowed.
"Mmm. There's no way. You haven't twitched in the slightest."
A faint smile to match the faint expression.
The ripple cast by the Saintess's laugh was the tiniest thing. Small enough that a stranger watching would have mistaken it for nothing more than a breath.
"Still, just to test it."
The Saintess lightly dabbed her lips against the knuckle of her index finger. Then she brought it close to the Undertaker's nose.
The faintest breeze. That is, had there been any sign of breath, the Saintess would have detected it at once.
Luckily for her, she felt no sign at all. The Undertaker, frozen like a statue, was in a state of perfect breathlessness.
After staying like that for about ten minutes, the Saintess let out a sigh of relief.
"What a relief."
Then again, the Saintess murmured.
"A long shot is a long shot, after all. If Mr. Undertaker could deflect [Time Stop], he'd have seen everything I do. Such a horrible possibility simply can't exist."
"..."
"I sometimes imagine possibilities for myself that are far too horrible. That might be a flaw of mine. I should give myself a little more room to... no. The very fact that I've allowed myself this kind of 'indulgence' means I've already found some measure of room. Still, I think I need to be a little bolder."
"..."
"What shall we do today?"
A little hum.
The Saintess now turned her back and walked closer to Sim Ah-ryeon to look over the painting, then walked closer to Lee Ha-yul and tried stroking her head.
And then.
'My apologies, but...'
The Undertaker thought.
'So the unthinkable really can come back to bite you, Saintess...'
Desperately holding back his breath and his blinking.
* * *
When had it started?
At first it was nothing more than a simple sense of unease.
But from a certain moment on, the Undertaker realized that even in the 'world where time was frozen,' he could move relatively freely.
'Huh? What is this? Why is the world black-and-white?'
This so-called movement amounted, at most, to the act of blinking. So the Saintess, too, failed to notice the 'Undertaker's anomalous phenomenon.'
'Could it be an anomaly?!'
It wasn't.
The fifth day since time had frozen. The Undertaker had been racking his brain over which Outer Gods he might have overlooked when the Saintess's figure slipped past right before his eyes.
'?'
The form the Saintess revealed as she appeared was... putting aside the risk of misunderstanding, well.
'A thief?'
That was roughly the impression.
"Hm. As I thought, there's a very slight margin of error in the field of vision I see through Sim Ah-ryeon's eyes."
Mutter, mutter.
The Saintess went around the guild Azit and ran her fingers over Sim Ah-ryeon's cheek. It seemed she was in the middle of finely calibrating [Clairvoyance].
"How fascinating. Could it be that among the visual information Sim Ah-ryeon's ability sees, there are parts that don't get transmitted to me...? An awakener's ability is something you can study and study and never reach the end of."
'What.'
The Undertaker, who had been frozen for days on end and felt like he might lose his mind, was relieved to see that scene.
'She's just handling administrative matters. Why I'm keeping continuity of consciousness even inside [Time Stop] is a mystery, though.'
The moment the Undertaker resolved that once this Time Stop lifted, he would explain the whole story to the Saintess, the Saintess approached him.
And then she spread both arms wide and wrapped them around the Undertaker in a hug.
'?'
A question mark floated above the Undertaker's head. If only he could have blinked, but he still needed more time to grow accustomed to this void.
It was a tragic thing for both him and the Saintess.
"Mmmm."
Nuzzle, nuzzle, the Saintess shook her head against the Undertaker's chest.
There wasn't the faintest hesitation in the act. It was the nodding motion of a scientist who had already learned, both theoretically and experimentally, at what angle and to what degree she needed to hug him for the optimal head-nuzzle to be achieved.
'?' '?' '?'
The question marks above the Undertaker's head could only multiply. And yet the Saintess's experimental spirit did not stop.
'What is this?' 'Is it an anomaly's stratagem?' 'Saintess?' 'Ah, I see, there's some philosophical curiosity hidden in this behavior.' 'You're lying, right?' 'Hold on.'
A faint shock leaked out from the folds of the Undertaker's brain, stained with confusion and chaos.
'If that's the case... uh. Can I really tell the Saintess... that I was thinking clearly the whole time inside [Time Stop]?'
He couldn't.
Because.
'Won't she kill herself??'
Wee-woo- wee-woo- wee-woo- wee-woo-.
A siren blared violently inside the Undertaker's head.
That's right. For all her appearances, the Saintess, unlike Yu Ji-won who belonged to the same expressionless alliance, had a normal emotional system. No, she had a heart far more delicate and tender than anyone else's.
For someone like her, there was no way her psyche could withstand the revelation of 'I know everything you did yesterday'!
No. It would be a mercy if it ended with her dying.
'She'll try to erase my memories!'
The only way to strip the Undertaker of his perfect-recall ability was to mobilize Udumbara.
And then? It would be back to the start.
Back to the very beginning. He would have to repeat an eternity of years without even knowing why he had been infected by Udumbara.
Why? For the crime of daring to spy on the Saintess's secret.
This was no joke.
Therefore.
"Hoooo."
"..."
That the Saintess had nuzzled her head against him, that she had laid her nose against his chest and breathed in, that she had timidly dragged over a dining chair, climbed up, looked down at the Undertaker's head and stroked it, and then timidly carried the chair back to the dining hall, that she now stood before him wearing an immensely satisfied expression...
There was no way he could ever tell her.
For all eternity.
"Yes. I feel like I've recharged my energy today as well."
"..."
"On the way home, maybe I'll stop by Sejong."
The Saintess left.
A week later. When [Time Stop] lifted and the black-and-white world reverted to a color TV, the Undertaker was drenched in cold sweat.
"Hng? G, Guild Leader. Why are you making that face like you desperately need the bathroom?"
"It's nothing."
"B, but your expression."
"Nothing... happened."
The Undertaker made up his mind.
The secrets of heaven must not be carelessly leaked.
'I have to hide it!'
Until when?
'Until I die! Until this cycle ends!'
A game of reading the room with world annihilation on the line.
Start.
Footnotes:
[1] In Buddhist tradition, four guardian deities (Sacheonwang) whose fearsome statues are placed at temple gates to ward off evil; here invoked for their intimidating faces.
[2] Refers to sayak, the poison the Joseon court ordered condemned nobles and officials to drink as a form of dignified execution by royal decree.
[3] The Inunaki Tunnel in Fukuoka, Japan, a real location and one of the country's most famous reputedly haunted sites, the subject of numerous urban legends and horror stories.
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