WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 463: That Woman Y IV
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* * *
Yu Ji-won had known for a long time that she was not a psychopath.
"..."
Soft, even breathing.
The man's face hovered before her eyes. The two of them lay together on a bed in the dim room.
It was not as though romantic desire had grown between them. He had passed out on the sofa, and Yu Ji-won had merely carried him to the bed in secret.
'You cried all through last night, didn't you, Mr. Matiz.'
Yu Ji-won reached out and stroked the other's hair.
She had learned long ago, after sneaking into the house, that his real name was Go Yuir. But what did it matter? To her, he was always nothing more than Mr. Matiz.
'It was my first time seeing Mr. Matiz cry like that. It was fascinating.'
A bed in some lodging where no one was watching.
Yu Ji-won secretly drew up a bluish energy at her fingertips. It resembled water, wriggled about, then gently covered Matiz's face.
On the surface, it looked exactly like someone had washed up and then put on a sheet mask.
So that his breathing would not be obstructed while he slept, the bluish energy wrapped around his entire face except for his nostrils.
"Hm."
Yu Ji-won narrowed her brow as though uncertain.
'As expected. Even like this, I still cannot make out the shape of his face.'
She knew there was a nose there. Eyes as well. But no matter how hard she tried, she could not picture Matiz's appearance in her mind.
'If he is with other people, I think I can somehow tell him apart. Distinguishing him itself seems possible. But if you ask whether I could recognize Mr. Matiz by himself, that is another matter.'
Yu Ji-won shifted a little more and buried her nose beneath Matiz's chin.
Then she slowly drew in a breath.
'...A nice smell.'
The fog in her head calmed down.
'He had prepared it for me alone, so that even if this world faces annihilation and we are separated, we can find each other when we meet again someday.'
'A single fragrance.'
A smile drifted across Yu Ji-won's lips.
It was an intentional smile. A learned expression.
That was why Yu Ji-won's smile looked utterly bizarre on the surface.
Ordinary people calculated not only when to smile, but when to withdraw it as well. How appropriately, how quickly, they should let that smile fade so as not to be rude to the other person.
Everyone desperately aimed for naturalness.
But Yu Ji-won's smile lacked that sort of calculation. The smile was there, then immediately gone. It was not there, then suddenly it was.
Anything beyond that level of naturalness was still unnecessary for Yu Ji-won.
Her smile was, in any case, an artificial thing made for one person, and that person had never once blamed her for it.
Stroke. Yu Ji-won brushed back his bangs.
"What is love?"
"..."
Flinch. Yu Ji-won's voice must have reached his eardrums, because Matiz stirred, but his eyelids remained shut.
Yu Ji-won thought. Could the relationship she shared with the person before her be defined as the emotion called love?
It was impossible.
To say it again, Yu Ji-won had known for a long time that she was not a psychopath. She could not feel emotion in nearly every respect.
A psychopath was not the same sort as someone like her, someone who could not feel emotion. A psychopath merely had the ability to empathize with others cut away.
'Mr. Matiz. It seems I still feel no emotion toward you either.'
Wriggle, wriggle.
Water droplets bubbled at Yu Ji-won's fingertips. The clear droplets moved as though alive, then burst with a pop.
The world Yu Ji-won saw was always submerged underwater.
The man before her had said the following about the droplet that had just burst.
-Water bug. That's a water bug. A miniature version of the giant sea dragon called Leviathan. The water bugs gather and gather until they form the shape of a dragon.
In truth, that was wrong.
From Yu Ji-won's perspective, these droplets were bubbles. The sort of bubbles that rise when a diver exhales underwater.
For Yu Ji-won, the world had long since been submerged in water. That was why the forms beyond the water-covered veil were always distorted.
Just as the outlines of things waver and blur when one looks up above the surface from underwater.
'I want to touch it.'
Bubble, bubble.
Whenever Yu Ji-won wished for it, the water bugs were born. From her fingertips. From the space around her. The bubbles boiled up and rose toward the eternal surface.
Yes. Up toward the surface.
Matiz seemed to find it terribly fascinating that the water bug rain fell not from above to below, but from below to above.
But was that not perfectly natural? If they were bubbles rather than rain, then of course they would rise upward.
It was a difference in perspective.
'Mr. Matiz. What is emotion?'
She wanted to feel it too.
It was not simply some vague curiosity about what it might be like to feel. It was the will to look at the world the way he looked at it.
'What do you look like?'
'To me, people's voices always sound like signals scattered and refracted through water, dull and wavering. What sort of tone does your voice have out there?'
Wriggle, wriggle. Wriggle, wriggle.
Transparent bubbles kept popping without end.
'A nice smell.'
And yet, even in this underwater world, fragrance alone came through clearly.
"...Ji-won?"
A voice suddenly came from above her head. When she looked up, Matiz was looking down at her with sleep-heavy eyes.
"Yes. Good morning."
"Yeah, good morning... But can I ask why you're biting my nape?"
"The perfume smell was strongest here."
"Are you actually a pervert?!"
"That is rude, Mr. Matiz. This is merely an act of confirming your existence. By that logic, everyone in the world who looks at other people's faces would be a pervert."
"That woke me right up, seriously!"
Matiz grumbled as he got up and started tidying himself. It was midsummer. Since they planned to ride their bicycles for several hours, he could not afford to apply sunscreen sloppily.
From Yu Ji-won's standpoint, sunscreen was a very slight hindrance. It made the carefully applied perfume smell somewhat vague.
But that was merely a matter of getting used to it, and so, wanting to get used to it, she buried her head deep in Matiz's arms before the ride.
"...You don't need sunscreen?"
"Yes. There is no problem."
"Good grief. Don't trust your skin too much just because you're young. You'll still be working as a model for at least a few years before world annihilation arrives."
"As you said, I am fine precisely because I am young. Even if my skin tans a little, it would only add a temporary, season-limited sort of exotic beauty to my charm."
"A psychopath and a narcissist, this is really something else..."
Of course, that was a lie.
'In the first place, I am submerged underwater twenty-four hours a day, so there is no chance for sunlight to reach me.'
Why was she hiding this secret on purpose?
Why, naturally.
'Mr. Matiz did not know that these are bubbles. Which means the reincarnator named Go Yuri does not know either.'
If you wanted to deceive the enemy, you had to deceive your allies first.
'Mr. Matiz seems to trust reincarnators quite a bit. But trust alone cannot make all the affairs of the world go around.'
To trust another was to trust oneself.
Those words might sound beautiful, but they were not enough to make a beautiful world. There was no need to even bring up the JTB problem. Belief and reality were different things.
Therefore, Yu Ji-won's decision to hide that information was perfectly natural.
'If, by some chance, the reincarnator deceives Mr. Matiz, or if the reincarnator deceives herself, then I will be needed as a last resort.'
Today's schedule had also become especially busy.
First, Yu Ji-won contacted the caregiver she had arranged in advance. Now that the reincarnator was dead, someone else was needed to take care of Grandmother.
The caregiver, as if waiting for the call, confirmed the payment and replied that there was no need to worry. It had been a promised arrangement from long before they left for Japan.
"...You, just how thoroughly did you plan this murder?"
"Even if the murder had not taken place, I could not leave Grandmother with an unidentified person like the reincarnator. I needed to create an alibi that would not matter even if it were exposed to a public institution."
"Sometimes you scare me, Ji-won..."
Was that true?
She could infer that the other person had made a joke. But what if it was not a joke? What if the joke contained some sincerity?
To reason that out, she needed the other person's voice and expression. If she had those, it would be quite simple.
But both offered Yu Ji-won only pitifully meager data.
So then, did Mr. Matiz truly find her frightening?
'That is possible.'
Yu Ji-won thought it through.
'I killed someone who may have been Mr. Matiz's family, teacher, perhaps even a lover.'
'Of course, Mr. Matiz accepted me. He forgave me. But that is Mr. Matiz's resolve and action, not his emotion.'
'I have heard that emotion is something humans cannot help. Even if Mr. Matiz's emotions fear me, there is nothing to be done about that.'
What was emotion?
'I want to know.'
How did he feel about her?
'I want to touch it.'
So she reached out her hand.
"...? Ji-won?"
"..."
Press. She took hold of Matiz's hand.
And from hand to hand, she sent a transparent water droplet over, no. A bubble.
"?"
Apparently, Matiz could not see the bubble.
That was not strange. Sometimes he could see this, and sometimes he could not.
That was why Yu Ji-won freely controlled the bubbles without worry.
'Skin.'
The bubbles wriggled as they crawled up Matiz's forearm. In an instant, they seeped beneath the skin.
'Muscle. Bone.'
A little deeper.
'Heart.'
Thump.
The bubbles wrapped around Matiz's heart. They clung to it.
And so, in those deep waters invisible to the eye, thump.
Every vibration he felt came through to her as well, clear and distinct.
And then.
'This speed.'
Yu Ji-won splashed bubbles onto herself as well. She adjusted them, tuned them. How?
'This tone.'
By copying the direction and speed of the other person's heartbeat exactly. She made hers the same.
Thump, thump.
When Matiz's heart beat, Yu Ji-won's heart beat as well. The rhythm his heart held, Yu Ji-won's heart also came to hold.
"Mr. Matiz."
"Hm?"
"Are you afraid of me?"
"Yeah. Seriously, scared as hell. Ji-won. I prophesy that you're going to become a Korean model who succeeds a German art student and a Georgian poet."
"..."
Thump, thump.
'At peace.'
Thump, thump.
'So it was a joke.'
Yu Ji-won nodded.
'This is Mr. Matiz's emotion when he jokes.'
A smile hung at the corner of her mouth.
"I, too, deeply respect those two as my seniors. Over the next few years, I plan to devote myself to studying art and the craft of poetry."
"Is that for real..."
The two of them ate lunch and set off again.
"Hrk, huff. Hrk. What kind of damn uphill road is this. Why won't it ever end..."
Thump. Thump.
'This is the emotion called hardship.'
'Mr. Matiz's hardship.'
Yu Ji-won was not tired at all.
No matter how steep and long the uphill climb was, she merely judged how much muscle fatigue had built up, then attached the label hardship to that judgment.
The label was always a blank pale beige. It never became dyed in the hue of emotions like "I want to give up" or "I do not want to ride a bicycle."
"Wow."
Not anymore.
"Ji-won, stop for a second."
"Yes? We still have to pedal for another twenty minutes before we reach our destination."
"No. Look at that sunset over there."
Screech. They stopped their bicycles for a moment in the middle of the uphill road, and Yu Ji-won turned her head after Go Yuir.
'Red. Orange. A faint wine color.'
Yu Ji-won looked up at the surface expressionlessly.
'One side of the sky is already night. Given the time, in ten more minutes the twilight will rapidly lose its colors. We must arrive at our destination before night falls.'
'The wind is cool. If we remain stopped like this, our sweat may cool and our body heat may rapidly drain away.'
Yu Ji-won turned her gaze expressionlessly. Go Yuir's face was there in profile, his lips slightly parted.
"It's beautiful..."
"..."
Bubbles.
Skin. Muscle. Bone. Heart.
Thump.
'Beautiful.'
Thump.
'This is the emotion called beauty.'
Thump. Thump.
'Mr. Matiz's beauty.'
Once more, Yu Ji-won looked up at the sunset.
The world was dyed red. The clouds had dissolved bath salts into the sky. Along the fine cracks drawn across the heavens, the cry of cicadas trickled down.
"..."
Yu Ji-won smiled.
"Yes."
Resting her head against Go Yuir, intertwining their fingers tightly, she said,
"It is beautiful."
Long ago.
Yu Ji-won had already known that she was not a psychopath.
She was merely empty. Sunlight rarely reached down into this deep sea, and even when it did, it came only as the shadow of light, so Yu Ji-won could do no more than grope at the outlines of the world beyond the surface as shadows.
She still could not know the world.
The only smile she knew was his smile.
The only pain she knew was his pain.
The only beauty she knew was his beauty.
"Truly, it's beautiful."
And for her, that was enough.
Because there was someone by her side who breathed the breath her heart needed to beat, in her place.
She considered herself happy to have been born in this abyss beneath the sea.
-That Woman Y. End.
Footnotes:
[1] A reference to philosopher Edmund Gettier's challenge to the classical definition of knowledge as "justified true belief." The point here is that belief and reality are not the same.
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