WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 461: That Woman Y II
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The lodging Go Yuir had booked was a budget business hotel, good bang for the buck.
It sat a little outside the city center, but since the plan was to get around by bicycle for the whole month anyway, that hardly mattered.
If anything, there was an upside.
"Ah."
Just a short walk from the hotel led straight into a dim back alley like this, untouched by any streetlight.
"You came out quick," she said.
"And you? Teleportation?"
"Yes!"
Go Yuri.
The mysterious woman who claimed to have been his little sister in a past life stood there, the shade of night draped over her alone like a coat.
"I figured it'd take you longer to slip past Yu Ji-won's eyes, Undertaker."
"She happened to turn in for the night. First trip abroad. She must've worn herself out without even noticing."
"Hmm."
Go Yuri smiled with her eyes.
"Yu Ji-won, you say..."
"What? Something bothering you?"
"No. It's just. I have my doubts that someone who calmly counts even the number and force of each breath she takes could really fail to manage her own condition."
What alien from what planet are you even talking about, Go Yuir was about to fire back, but he stopped.
His attention scattered right then as he caught the drink Go Yuri tossed him.
He saw what kind of drink it was and his brow furrowed.
"...A protein shake?"
"Yes!"
"Hey. Don't you usually go for something with a little romance to it at a moment like this? A warm canned coffee or something?"
"Ah, sorry. Come to think of it, Oraboni, you haven't taken up strength training yet."
"..."
"Still, it's much better for your health than caffeine in the middle of the night, so drink up and don't worry!"
There it was. Again. This kept happening.
Whenever Go Yuir spent time with the woman in front of him, his stomach churned at a feeling that crept up on him again and again.
'...Even while she's dealing with the present me, she's mixing me up with a future me.'
The very way she addressed him shifted from one moment to the next. Sometimes Guild Leader. Sometimes Oraboni. Sometimes Undertaker.
Inside her, far too many versions of 'him' existed.
'Of course, it's only the future me from my perspective. From hers, it'd be the past me.'
Go Yuir had no idea how to put what he was feeling right now into words.
He didn't blame her for it, though. The number of cycles she had 'reincarnated' through was beyond anything he could even imagine.
How many years had she lived? A thousand? Ten thousand? No. Surely even counting was meaningless.
She had lived far too long and been through far too many events. A little confusion in her memory was a natural penalty.
"To get to the point. Now then, Oraboni? There isn't much to share with you today. The situation with the Cheon family's Cult is..."
The night deepened.
In a remote alley of a foreign land where no one was around to eavesdrop, just two people quietly conspired about the future, vowing to stop the world annihilation that would come someday.
If anyone else had known, they'd have been dumbfounded, wondering what kind of crazed lunatics these two were.
"I keep quietly laying the groundwork about you, too, Oraboni. Once this trip is over, you'll naturally step in as my successor..."
"Go Yuri."
"Yes?"
Go Yuri's mouth, which had been chattering away so cheerfully, paused for a moment.
"What is it, Guild Leader?"
"You told me before. To share anything and everything without holding back, no matter how trivial the feeling."
"Yes!"
Go Yuri smiled brightly.
"I rate your 'feelings' extremely highly, Oraboni. When dealing with anomalies, rational judgment alone often isn't enough to solve things."
"Right. About that. From yesterday up until now, something's felt off."
"...Something's felt off?"
Blink.
"How is it off, specifically?"
"I'm not sure."
"..."
"If I had to be specific. It started yesterday afternoon. I was looking up at the sky, the cicadas were chirping, and all of a sudden this world stopped feeling like my world... that kind of feeling?"
Go Yuri's face.
Turned chilling.
"..."
What kind of expression was that, anyway? That one.
Cold. But not cold because it was empty. Rather, cold the way deep water turns cold, the flow of thought running too thick beneath the surface.
Like the sea.
Go Yuir felt as if, for the first time in his life, he was seeing his 'little sister's' true face laid bare.
"Yesterday, huh."
Go Yuri murmured.
It was nothing more than 'something started feeling off,' so she could easily have let it slide, and Go Yuir himself wouldn't have minded in the least.
Yet her tone was as serious as could be.
"Please tell me in a little more detail."
"Hm."
"Right after the feeling set in, what happened? That part might be the most important."
"What happened... Ah. Ji-won."
"Yu Ji-won?"
"Ji-won called for me. Today was departure day, so she said she'd finished packing the bicycles."
"Aha. ..."
Go Yuri propped her chin in her hand.
She didn't drag out the deliberation for long.
"Please close your eyes for a moment. Open them when I tell you to."
"You're going to teleport?"
"Yes."
He did as told.
The instant Go Yuir closed his eyes, the presence that had clearly been right in front of him suddenly vanished. The sweet apple scent, too.
Only after about a minute did that familiar fragrance drift back into the night air.
"Eyes. Open them, please."
He did as told again.
Go Yuri was there. But her appearance had changed.
She must have used [Teleportation] to go somewhere, and now she held several fairly large picture frames in her arms.
Inside the frames were portraits. Photorealistic paintings so precise you might mistake them for actual photographs.
"Look at this person first. Turn on your flashlight."
"..."
"What do you feel, Oraboni?"
The figure in the portrait.
Curiously, wore a monocle. Draped over them was a white coat like the ones doctors wore. And whether their hair was a touch wavy or just carelessly combed, it sat in disarray.
What caught Go Yuir's eye most of all in the portrait was the figure's eyes. You might say they held shadow. Or that soot had settled into them.
At those pupils, which looked as though every appraisal of this world had already been settled, the tender flesh of Go Yuir's heart was stirred up.
"...My chest is churning."
"Good. Next."
Go Yuri showed him fifteen portraits in all, one after another.
Since the alley was pitch dark without a single light, Go Yuir had to examine each painting with his smartphone flashlight.
"How about this person?"
"I feel nothing at all."
"Even though they're this pretty?"
"I'll grant that they're pretty. But still, no real reaction."
"..."
Among them were portraits that moved Go Yuir's heart, and far more that did not.
When the puzzling test was over.
"...Ms. Noh Do-hwa, Ms. Sim Ah-ryeon, Ms. Jeong Ye-ji. You reacted to exactly three people, right on the nose."
Go Yuri's expression grew even graver.
She kept up a string of meaningless mutterings, hm, hmm, mm-mm, before her lips popped open.
"This is really, truly, tru-ly strange, Oraboni."
"Can you explain it to me too?"
"Normally I'd never go through with a 'spoiler' like this. But yes. Given how extraordinary the situation is, I have no choice but to throw a gamble myself."
Go Yuri said,
"The three people you just reacted to. As it happens, they're all partners you shared love with in your last, second-to-last, and third-to-last lives, Oraboni."
"...What?"
The content was too far over the line, and Go Yuir's mind hit a momentary stun.
But the other party went on serenely, as if that sort of thing didn't concern her in the least.
"It's not exactly your past life or the one before that. I was just counting the 'meaningful' lives as I saw them. But it's true."
"Uh. Um. Uhh... The, what exactly do you mean by sharing love...?"
"Aack! No sexual harassment! I think the lewd stuff is off-limits!"
"..."
That reaction alone was answer enough.
Go Yuir's mind reeled fast into a haze. Without thinking, he dug back through the portraits Go Yuri had just set down. These people? Me? We become lovers?
"Uh. It's, their looks. Hm. I don't know if I should be the one saying this, but they're so... Everyone's traits are different, their looks are different..."
"Yes. I was startled too, you know? Goodness. To think, no matter how off guard I was, that you'd end up in that sort of relationship with Ms. Sim Ah-ryeon of all people. You really are a monster of possibility, Oraboni."
"What's that supposed to mean??"
"You'll come to understand. Hm, no. Since you've been spoiled, the route may have gotten completely tangled now. You may never come to understand it."
Go Yuri let out a small sigh.
"There's a good interpretation and a worst-case interpretation. Which would you like to hear first?"
"...The bad one."
"The good interpretation is the hypothesis that you're a hopelessly love-crazed sap, a romanticist who instinctively remembers even loves from two lifetimes ago."
"..."
Why, when he'd clearly asked for the bad one first, had she handed back the exact opposite answer?
It made no sense, yet it was perfectly consistent so long as Go Yuri insisted on her little-sister persona. What little sister in the world ever does exactly what her older brother says?
"I don't really seem like a guy that crazy about love, though."
"Should I just kill this man? Seriously."
"Hm?"
"It's nothing."
Go Yuri smiled sweetly.
"Next. The worst possibility is..."
"The possibility is?"
"That without you or me realizing it, we've fallen into some kind of anomalous phenomenon. While we ourselves are even under the illusion that we're cleanly regressing and reincarnating."
"Uh..."
Such a thing.
"It's possible."
Go Yuri snatched the question one step ahead, before Go Yuir had even retched it up from inside.
"At the very simplest, we could assume all of this is a dream, couldn't we? To get a little fancier, we could interpret it as a simulation running, like a brain in a vat[1]."
"...Horrifying."
"Yes. That's what an anomaly is."
Go Yuri nodded, then said,
"So first I'll kill the Cheon Yo-hwa twins and check how this world reacts."
She said it as if it were nothing.
"What?"
"I told you, didn't I? That there's a chance this is a simulated universe. If that's the case, it means Taeguk is at work, so killing the Cheon Yo-hwa twins should provoke a reaction one way or another."
"Wa, wait."
Go Yuir grabbed her shoulder. He felt that if he let go here, she'd hop on a teleport straight to the murder scene any second.
"Yuri. Wait. That conclusion is strange. All I said was that yesterday and today my mood's been off. So why does that lead to killing someone... and not just anyone, but children you raised yourself, playing teacher to them since they were small, without the slightest hesitation?"
"Because I trust your feelings dearly, Guild Leader."
"Are you, are you serious? What if you killed them. Killed them, and your guess was wrong?"
"Please calculate the risk coolly."
Go Yuri's expression didn't waver.
"If I kill the Cheon Yo-hwa twins and nothing at all happens, that's actually for the best. From the next life on, we won't have to worry about whether we're trapped in a simulation or not."
"A person would die!"
"This is the path that saves people. Yes, I know. It'll sound like sophistry. But the moment I went through with spoiling you, this life became a 'discard card' for me. If it's a discard anyway, I should put it to the best possible use..."
That was when it happened.
Tok. Something fell onto the back of Go Yuir's hand where it gripped her shoulder. And onto Go Yuri's cheek.
"...Rain?"
It was a raindrop.
Tok, ta-ta-ta-ta-tat-.
In less than ten seconds, the raindrops grew into streaks, and the streaks into a downpour.
No matter how often East Asia's climate got mistaken for Southeast Asia's these days, this was a downright uncanny shower.
Go Yuir thought, rather, that it had worked out well. Now he had an excuse.
He gripped Go Yuri's hand firmly.
"For now. You're too worked up. Let's at least duck into a convenience store and cool your head for a bit..."
"No."
A murmur.
"Yuri?"
"No. This isn't rain, it's..."
Pak.
Along with an extremely faint tremor, redness mixed into the rainwater.
Go Yuir's breath stopped at the sight that unfolded before his eyes.
And the same went for the one who had drawn out that redness.
"...Ah?"
Go Yuri looked down at her own chest with a slightly dazed face.
Drip. Drip.
Red rainwater was running down a kitchen knife slick with blood.
"Ah, ha."
Soon the knife twisted at a bizarre angle. With that, even the breath that had been leaking from Go Yuri's lips at a more or less steady pace lost its rhythm.
A dim, pale blue chill clung to the kitchen knife.
"Ora, boni."
A voice thin enough to be washed away by the rain.
Go Yuri pressed more strength into Go Yuir's hand, the one she already held.
She was soaked through, her bangs plastered to her forehead, but her gaze stayed fixed straight on Go Yuir.
"Next time. Again..."
The sound of a person collapsing wasn't erased even by the rain, and a soft thud rang out.
Now there was nothing left to obstruct the rainwater.
Behind where Go Yuri's body had blocked the view, the figure of the one standing there with the kitchen knife also came fully into sight.
Go Yuir looked in turn from his sister's corpse fallen on the ground to the culprit before him.
And with difficulty, he opened his mouth.
"...Ji-won."
"Yes."
Yu Ji-won wore the hood of a raincoat pulled over her head, hiding hair that flowed down not in black but in silver, and spoke with the same expressionless face as always.
"So now Mr. Matiz has become a little freer too."
Footnotes:
[1] A classic thought experiment in philosophy: if a disembodied brain were fed simulated sensory signals, it could not tell its experience from reality, casting doubt on whether anything we perceive is real.
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