WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 455: That Woman J II

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* * *

"Hmm. Brother Jang."

"Yes, Elder SwordMarquess."

"The sight of you sunk in meditation is, in itself, fit to serve as a model for all comrades of the martial world."

Martial arts training hour. Haeundae.

On the sand, the last surviving bodybuilders of the apocalypse, led by Seo Gyu, were lavishly devoting themselves to strength training.

The Undertaker and SwordMarquess sat a little apart from that sweaty stretch of sand, gracefully honing their inner cultivation arts.

It wasn't as though homo sapiens actually came equipped with some mystical organ called a dantian, the sort that let you stockpile internal energy or develop cancer or whatever.

It was just that, now and then, SwordMarquess would demand that everyone around him stay faithful to the worldview called the "martial world."

And if the demand went unmet? Then SwordMarquess, too, would stop respecting the worldview called "reality."

Which meant the doom of Busan's food security.

For the safe procurement of food for all citizens, for the steady supply of wheat consumed at the Haeundae Bakery, and above all to avoid being murdered by Management Captain Noh Do-hwa, the Undertaker had to periodically share warm, cordial fellowship with SwordMarquess.

"Movement within stillness. That is the very phrase for the etiquette of circulating one's breath in cultivation."

SwordMarquess gazed at his companion with admiring eyes.

"Brother Jang's inner cultivation has truly reached the pinnacle of profundity. Whether you are even breathing, whether your eyes have so much as blinked once, this one cannot begin to fathom."

"...Thank you."

The Undertaker held it in.

It wasn't that he held in the urge to ask just what kind of low-rent, rootless wuxia set a cassette-tape radio at your side every time you settled into cultivation and blasted "A Man of Determination"[1] at full volume.

In truth, could you even call the title "Daoist friend" all that wuxia to begin with? Since olden times Korea had been generous about granting wuxia characters travel permits, whether to fantasy or modern settings, but it was razor-strict about linguistic etiquette. So the League Leader might ascend, yet he could never go all jump-manga on you[2].

What the Undertaker was swallowing down, therefore, was a different truth.

'If I don't train, the Saintess will catch on...'

That was right.

It had already been several months since freedom of thought had been achieved even within a world where [Time Stop] was in effect.

The Undertaker was slowly feeling the range of his freedom shift from a thought-substance over into a material-substance.

In other words, his body had begun to move.

'I can breathe and I can blink. If I focus as hard as I can, my legs move a little too.'

But.

This kind of freedom was never welcome to the Undertaker.

'Even just breathing makes the odds of the Saintess catching me skyrocket exponentially!'

Training. Nothing but training.

A person was a creature whose body went numb if it sat still for even a moment.

Yet the Undertaker, through sheer patience, held his "freeze" for five days, six days, sometimes over fifteen. Entirely of his own free will.

Self-mastery in its purest form.

"Beholding Brother Jang's lofty plane, this one cannot sit idle either. Watch. The Taeguk Fist this one learned wandering the martial world in youth..."

That was when it happened.

The world stained itself black and white.

'Again! Here it comes again!'

The Undertaker reflexively sucked in a breath.

'Hhhuuuup!'

This [Time Stop] was an unknown quantity; there was no telling how many days it would last.

To hold firm against that merciless current, he needed to at least lay in all the breath he could.

Sure enough.

"Mmm."

Trudge, trudge.

The sound of an unidentified walking object crossing the sand from far away reached him.

The Undertaker couldn't carelessly move his eyeballs, nor could he spread his senses with aura. He had no choice but to wait until the object in question entered his field of vision on its own.

At last, into the middle of a world locked in "freeze," someone made their entrance. The Saintess, of course.

"...Lately. There's been an anomaly advisory up, so I haven't gotten to walk much, and I feel like I'm putting on weight."

She glanced around, studying SwordMarquess's posture closely.

"Taeguk Fist... I've heard it's famous in China as a health exercise too. Maybe it would help me to learn it as well?"

And then, would you believe it, the Saintess set her backpack down and started taking poses, following along after SwordMarquess.

"Hup, hhhuuup-."

Grunting and straining, the Saintess practiced the poses.

Click. After she got one pose down, she went into the nearby beach restroom and let time run again. Click. Stop. She learned another pose, then hid in the restroom and let time run again. Click. Stop.

'Saintess...'

This entire panorama, like watching an old film clatter through a broken projector, the Undertaker took in from the very best seat in the house.

'So you've been wasting time on this nonsense even on ordinary days...'

It was, well. It was kind of a big letdown.

'Your form isn't even correct, Saintess. This cycle you swore off exercise and stayed cooped up in your room, so your physical functions really have dropped...'

In fact, the Saintess's potential where exercise was concerned was nothing to scoff at.

But it was for that very reason that the Undertaker steered clear of any situation where points got invested into the Saintess's physical conditioning.

Of course. An indiscriminate axe murderer, season 2, had to be avoided.

'I always thought she was only interested in study sessions and other intellectual pursuits. So in secret she was minding her exercise too...'

Guilt.

A sticky, clinging sense of sin came crawling up.

'I didn't want to know!'

The Undertaker screamed inside his heart as he watched the Saintess pitch forward in the middle of the difficult pose and plant her head in the sand with a muffled "Pff!"

'I never! Had any intention whatsoever of violating the Saintess's privacy!'

'So why... why is it only me who gets handed trials like this?!'

'Is it an anomaly?! It's an anomaly, obviously. This is the work of an anomaly, no doubt about it. Yes. Of course it is!'

The Saintess brushed the sand off her face.

"Ugh, mm... This still seems too much for me."

And with a deflated blank expression (the Undertaker could tell), she trudged off.

The way she walked was hardly ordinary, either. She moved not forward but backward, crouching low to wipe away, one by one, each footprint she had left in the sand.

'So that's it. Every time she comes to Haeundae she erases her tracks like this...'

What devotion.

As the edge of his heart grew tender in some indefinable way, the Undertaker felt an ominous energy.

'Wha-?'

That energy wasn't coming from the outside.

Just like the internal energy he had cultivated with SwordMarquess moments ago, it was rising up from inside the Undertaker himself.

'A sneeze?'

It was practically a national rule for an inner demon to come calling in the middle of cultivating one's inner arts.

'Now? Really, a sneeze, right now?'

The Undertaker felt his energy channels twist in an instant.

'N-no! Not now!'

Though the Saintess had backed away a bit and grown more distant, she still remained within range of his field of vision.

If he made even the smallest sound here, there was no way the Saintess wouldn't notice.

No. To begin with, whose field of vision the Saintess was sharing right now was a variable the Undertaker dared not guarantee.

Who knew if she might just be sharing the Undertaker's field of vision for fun, bored of erasing footprints?

The Undertaker.

'Hhup... hup hup, hup, hut, hot, oh, oh?'

Held it in.

He held in his fingertips that wanted to tremble and twitch. He had to. Otherwise he was dead.

Who? The Undertaker. And the Saintess.

And? The world would meet its end. The two of them companionably sipping Udumbara on the rocks[3].

'S-Saintess. Please. Please, get farther away. Quickly. Argh! Just use aura and wipe out your traces in one fiery sweep! Why do it uselessly, diligently, each footprint by hand one at a time, gck, ohk, n-no...'

And so.

"...Achoo."

It was small, far too small to be the sneeze of an adult man. Quieter than the beat of a dragonfly's wings, the sound slipped into the frozen world.

Whip.

The Saintess, who had been tidying footprints, lifted her head. Reflexively. Automatically. Very, exceedingly fast.

"..."

She stared.

The Saintess looked toward the direction where the Undertaker sat.

The Undertaker was seated in the lotus position. No thought, no idea. Nature was him and he was nature. He was demonstrating, in his own body, the plane of oneness between self and world.

"..."

She stared.

The Saintess still gazed at the Undertaker. Not only gazed, but, expressionless, holding that blank face the whole time,

she walked over.

"..."

She stared. Staaaaared. Stared hard.

Walking to the left. Walking to the right. And yet keeping her gaze fixed perfectly on the Undertaker's face.

She walked over. She approached. She drew near.

"..."

"..."

Whip.

The Saintess brought her hand beneath the Undertaker's nose. Silence followed.

"That's strange."

"..."

"I definitely heard a sound. And I think my field of vision moved a little, too."

The Undertaker screamed inside his heart. So she really had been sharing his field of vision with [Clairvoyance]!

'No. Come to think of it, the Saintess said that the higher her Clairvoyance rose, the more she looked down in third person rather than first person!'

In that case, holding both fields of vision at once, the Saintess's and the Undertaker's, self and other, on the same stretch of sand, would have been pocket change to her.

"Mr. Undertaker?"

No thought.

"Mr. Undertaker."

No idea.

"Don't tell me... you're watching. Or perceiving me. It isn't anything like that, is it? Mr. Undertaker?"

iamnotanundertakeriamastonestatueiamagoblinandanorcandamothercentaurwhobirthedasinglecentaurandacreatureofcaffeinewithabaristaflowingthroughmyveinsinsteadofblood.

"Hoo..."

Without any warning at all, the Saintess blew a puff of air at the Undertaker's eyeball.

'...!'

The Undertaker nearly blinked and triggered an utter catastrophe. Instead, from sheer shock, his stomach dropped a little.

His eyelids were steel and his heart was glass.

A man with thousands of years as a regressor under his belt was simply in a different class.

The Undertaker, chanting inside his head everything from Buddhist sutras to every Reality Marble activation chant he knew, succeeded in the end at holding his immovable posture.

"..."

After staring at such an Undertaker for a long beat,

The Saintess abruptly cleared her throat, as if embarrassed by her own behavior.

Maybe it was just his imagination, but her cheeks even seemed to flush a little.

"I did a... strange thing. Mm, yes. Suspicion like this is no good. I'm sure I just imagined it."

The Saintess steadied her breath. Then she fetched a step box from the open-air gym right beside them, climbed onto it, and patted the Undertaker's head.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Undertaker. Ah, of course, you won't be able to hear my voice."

"..."

"Because I always believe in you, Mr. Undertaker."

The sense of sin!

"That's why, even though it's a frozen world, I try every single time not to cross the line. Mm, whether I've put as much effort into practice as I've meant to, I can't say for sure either... But still. Thinking of your trust in me, Mr. Undertaker, I want to keep on trying."

The siiiiiin!

"...And yet, seeing that even strange suspicions like this are cropping up, maybe the time to stop this 'game' is slowly drawing near."

For a moment the Undertaker nearly cried out.

'Really?! Hallelujah! Thank you, Saintess! Thank you, Mo Gwang-seo Christ!'

Just as the classical music ringing through his ears was about to switch from the Symphony of Destiny to the Choral Symphony[4],

the Saintess's murmur came stabbing in.

"But if I stop even a game like this, then what will I use to keep my corruption at bay?"

...

"You must not lose your human heart. For that, you need a hobby. That's what you taught me, Mr. Undertaker... but in the end, apart from study sessions, I never found a hobby that suits me. Haa. Maybe this is my limit."

...

"A hobby. One where you don't lose yourself, yet you let yourself go. An effective hobby, just like the way you spend a vacation cycle, Mr. Undertaker. I wonder where in the world it might be..."

Trudge, trudge.

Spilling out a worry she had never told anyone, this time the Saintess truly grew distant.

And of course, crouching backward to erase her footprints was something she did not forget either.

Watching that forlorn figure.

"..."

The Undertaker made up his mind.

To transmute the material of his heart from glass into steel.

* * *

The next day.

"Mr. Undertaker."

"Oh. Welcome, Saintess. Did you stop by in the middle of your morning walk?"

"Yes. Ah, coffee. Thank you."

"Not at all. I'm the one who's always grateful."

"Mm... So, um. I'm not quite sure how to start."

"Goodness! Please, speak freely, freely. Is something on your mind?"

"...Yes. The truth is, I have a small hobby."

"Oho, oho."

"But even though that hobby never, ever harms other people, there are times it brushes up against my conscience. If that's the case, would it be better to give the hobby up?"

"No, no! What are you saying! Of course you should keep that hobby of yours, Saintess!"

"Ah... Is that so?"

"Yes indeed. The more we're awakeners, the more we have to allow ourselves a little leeway. Otherwise the heart wears thin, wears right out. Just look at me. Calls himself a regressor and goes off taking vacation cycles. Quite the mess, isn't it? Ahaha. Whatever hobby it is, your pastime is bound to be tamer than mine."

"Mm... But, my conscience..."

"As long as you don't get caught. As long as you don't get caught."

"...So it really is that way?"

"It really is."

"Mmm, yes. Mm. Thank you, Mr. Undertaker. Thanks to you, a bit of the weight on my heart feels lifted."

"I'm simply glad if I could be of even a little help. So you intend to keep the hobby going, then?"

"Yes. Now that I've gotten your answer too, Mr. Undertaker, I think I'll try practicing really letting myself loose."

"I'll be cheering you on."

"Thank you."

"Ahaha. It's nothing, nothing."

Today's lesson.

The road to hell is always paved with good intentions.

Footnotes:

[1] "A Man Should Strengthen Himself," also rendered here as "A Man of Determination," is the iconic Cantonese theme song associated with the Wong Fei-hung films, especially Tsui Hark's Once Upon a Time in China series. It is instantly recognizable shorthand for over-the-top kung fu heroics.

[2] A pun in the original: the League Leader can "soar" or "take flight" in elevated literary diction, but he can never "jump" in the flashy manga sense, implying he stays a proper wuxia figure rather than a battle-manga hero.

[3] Udumbara is the flower-like anomaly established earlier in the series. "On the rocks" turns it into a grim joke about the pair drinking the cause of catastrophe like liquor.

[4] Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 (nicknamed the "Symphony of Fate/Destiny" in East Asia for its famous opening motif) and Symphony No. 9 (the "Choral," which culminates in the triumphant "Ode to Joy"); in other words, his mood shifts from doom to jubilation.

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