WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 464: That Woman C I
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"Ji-won, stop for a second."
"Yes? We still have twenty more minutes of pedaling before we reach our destination."
"No. Look at the sunset over there."
...
"It's beautiful..."
"Yes. It is beautiful."
...
"Truly... beautiful."
"..."
[1. Now that the reincarnator has been killed, world annihilation is inevitable. From here on, live out your remaining days for the girl in front of you alone.]
[2. You struggle alongside them. To the very end.]
Click.
[2. You struggle alongside them. To the very end.] ◀
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[ERROR.]
[That selection is impossible.]
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[ERROR.]
[That selection is impossible.]
Click.
[ERROR.]
[That selection is impossible.]
[That selection constitutes a clear alteration of the past and gravely violates causality.]
[Even if the player chooses this option at this point, no meaningful ending can be derived.]
[Please choose a different option.]
"Ji-won."
"Yes, Mr. Matiz."
"I don't think this route is wrong. No. I won't let this route be judged as the wrong one."
"I'm sorry. I don't understand what you mean."
"You killed Go Yuri for my sake. Maybe Go Yuri's death wasn't right, but the heart behind it, the part of you that thought of me, that can't have been wrong."
"..."
[ERROR.]
[Please choose a different option.]
"In the end, it's our actions that decide whether a heart is right or wrong. I want to prove that you weren't mistaken."
"..."
"We'll probably fail. Fail miserably, even. The reincarnator's project has run aground, so I'll never awaken as a regressor. Most of the strategy intel I got from Go Yuri has probably gone useless too."
"Yes. I imagine that's true."
"Even so, will you live alongside me?"
"..."
[ERROR.]
[Please choose a different option.]
"Spend one single life, one that will linger in no reincarnator's memory and in no regressor's record, just struggling pointlessly at my side."
[ERROR.]
[Please choose a different option.]
"Your hand."
[ERROR.]
[Please choose a different option.]
"Will you take my hand, Mr. Matiz?"
[ERROR.]
[Please choose a different option.]
"...Yes, I can feel it. So clearly. So vividly."
[ERROR.]
[Please choose a different option.]
"Fear. Worry. Tenderness. Despair. Trust. Ice that looks ready to melt at any moment under a summer sun. Ice as transparent as crystal."
"..."
"I see. So this is the future you picture for the two of us, Mr. Matiz."
[ERROR.]
[Please choose a different option.]
"I think it's beautiful."
...
"As long as I'm with you, Mr. Matiz."
...
"Even the most meaningless world and the most useless life will always be the most beautiful music to me."
[You struggle alongside them.]
[To the very end.]
* * *
There were no land-owning nobles on the Korean Peninsula.
There were, of course, a number of factions you might call local magnates or men of influence. But set them next to the genuine magnates of the Japanese archipelago right next door, and the reaction you'd get was more along the lines of "oh my, how adorable."
This did not mean the noble class of the Korean Peninsula had fallen, though. If anything, it was the exact opposite.
They had simply escaped the supremely "material" condition of land and achieved a loftier, more "spiritual" ascension instead.
A few disloyal ruffians called this noble collective, with their attained state of spiritual transcendence, a "pseudo-religious cult," but that was nothing to fret over.
After all, how could it suit a noble's dignity to answer the rudeness of every last lowborn?
"Young lady."
"Hm?"
"Allow me to report on the search operation you ordered last time."
The heiress of a family that reigned in Sejong, the spiritual capital of the Republic of Korea, as nobles even more spiritual than the rest, the lady Cheon Yo-hwa, did not particularly lend an ear to the opinions of lowborn folk either.
"Order? Ah. You mean Teacher Go Yuri?"
"Yes. We secured the cooperation of the police and conducted a search centered on her residence, but we couldn't pick up her trail at all."
"At all?"
"That's right. We confirmed she entered her residence on a specific date, and it was even cross-verified, but after that her whereabouts go completely cold."
Cheon Yo-hwa let out a hum and propped her chin in her hand.
"She went into her house and vanished. Then, simply put, there's just a secret passage in the house, isn't there? Our house has plenty of them too. Underground secret passages."
"That's just it..."
The Cult official let his words trail off.
"I cleared out the police and searched the house from top to bottom. The yard too. But I really couldn't find a single trace."
"Anyone else come or go?"
"No one."
"What? Then you're telling me she really evaporated into thin air?"
"I have no excuse..."
The back seat of the limousine. By order of her father, the cult leader, all manner of listening devices had been installed here, but that didn't matter.
Anything she truly couldn't let her father find out, she wouldn't have discussed with her subordinates here in the first place.
In any case, "Teacher Go Yuri" was a benefactor among benefactors, the one who taught her and her younger sister how to win their freedom.
Above all, the teacher's disappearance was a great source of worry not just for the twin sisters but for her father as well.
If word spread that she, the heiress and his daughter, was working this hard, running around like this, then at worst it would earn her points with her father, never a minus mark.
'Or maybe not? Maybe it's too blatant, like I'm leaning on the listening devices too hard, and that's a minus?'
After carefully gauging her father's twisted temperament, Cheon Yo-hwa's lips curved smoothly.
"Honestly. Please try a little harder, Uncle. Teacher Go Yuri isn't just some ordinary tutor, you know? Haven't you heard the rumors?"
"Erm. Young lady, if you mean the rumors..."
"My father's, you know. This. This one."
Cheon Yo-hwa smirked.
"No."
The official's expression turned to panic.
"Th-that's a baseless rumor, isn't it, young lady. It wasn't long ago that we dealt with the servant who leaked talk about that..."
"Come on. I don't know what the truth is either. But considering how foully the rumor spread and yet Teacher Go Yuri came away without a single hair harmed, she'd clearly secured my father's favor at the very least, wouldn't she?"
"I, I'll pretend I didn't hear that just now."
The official cleared his throat.
"The Reverend is extremely wary of street gossip of that kind. As you well know, young lady... Isn't it the single greatest obstacle to bringing ordinary young people into the Cult's operations?"
"Ordinary people? Ah, the Oechul lot[1]? Why would I care? Whether or not some clots of flesh who weren't even chosen by Taeguk[2] come in."
"Young lady. The Reverend will be furious if he hears that..."
"Yes, yes. Nagging again."
Cheon Yo-hwa swallowed a smile far more sinister than the one showing on her face.
This was about right.
Through this exchange, she had implied that she knew nothing at all about "the fact that listening devices were installed in the limousine."
And going further, that she had a "marked tendency to blindly separate pure-blooded believers from new converts."
'Just about the flavor my super control freak father likes. Well, whatever.'
The heiress Cheon Yo-hwa's range of movement and way of thinking remained under the control of her father, the cult leader...
The so-called "Yo-hwa is still a pure little papa's girl >_<)!!" operation.
It would be hard to put an end to her father's pathological suspicion with a single secret chat, but as the saying goes, dust piles into mountains. The preservative that extended the shelf life of his trust would grow a touch stronger, bit by bit.
That was when the limousine came to a somewhat abrupt stop.
"Eugh."
Cheon Yo-hwa, seated in the back, lurched slightly. As for the official across from her, he toppled outright and briefly did a bit of knee-cleaning on the limousine floor.
"You bastards... Hey, what's going on!"
The official shouted, his face going red.
Bang! Apparently eager to bury the fact that he'd embarrassed himself as fast as possible, he kicked the door open with a roar and stormed outside.
"Don't you know the young lady's aboard right now? Huh?"
"S-sorry. Some madman suddenly threw himself into the road..."
"What?"
"It's true. There, that guy."
A great commotion.
Cheon Yo-hwa quietly lowered her window, to see what all the fuss was about.
She was, by nature, a romantic who chased the extraordinary over the everyday, war over peace, dopamine over enlightenment.
The lowborn might counter with "isn't it just that she likes stirring up trouble?", but the noble eardrums of Cheon Yo-hwa, the puppet-master heiress, would never lose to such low-grade slander.
'A person cut in? Is it someone with a screw loose? Or some fool who handed over his entire fortune to our dear father? Which scenario is it?'
What she saw through the lowered window was not someone with a screw loose.
'Oh.'
The face attached to that head was somewhat out of the ordinary, though.
'Bit good-looking?'
A bit of a look about him.
But Cheon Yo-hwa had never once thought of herself as weak to a pretty face.
Especially when the man in question had blocked her vehicle's path, nearly caused an accident, and was, as a result, being subdued by her bodyguards in real time, it became all the harder to judge a person by their face alone.
"Lady Cheon Yo-hwa! Lady Cheon Yo-hwa, please hear me out!"
"What are you doing, you idiot! Subdue him! I said subdue him!"
"No, this guy, he looks scrawny, but where's he getting this strength..."
"All of you, pile on at once! Pile on! Now!"
A crashing, banging tumble.
The man, who looked like a college freshman at the oldest, was, surprisingly, putting up quite a fight even while ringed in by four bodyguards.
It was a losing battle, of course.
They were no ordinary bodyguards but elites selected to protect the heiress. Every one of them a Naechul believer, able to wield at least a little divine power.
"Young lady! Lady Cheon Yo-hwa!"
'Hmm.'
Cheon Yo-hwa rested her elbow on the window frame and propped her chin. A grinning smile hung on her lips.
'The blow-his-whole-fortune scenario after all? He knows my name and where I'm headed, so he's no total stranger to all this. If he's risking his life to report something in person, then, well, "please clear my name," that sort of thing.'
Cheon Yo-hwa's eyes narrowed.
'And he's got a nice build too.'
'No idea how much he donated to my father, but if it's under three hundred million, should I just take him for myself?'
Not bad.
Watching him finally get pinned from behind by the bodyguards and flung onto the concrete, watching the sorry sight of him squirming like a worm to wriggle free somehow, it started to feel more and more "not bad."
"Lady Cheon Yo-hwa!"
'Heh. Nice voice too.'
She wasn't exactly a sadist obsessed with torture.
To begin with, torture carried out from a position of "overwhelming superiority" over "an already captured opponent" was far removed from the puppet-master heiress's refined tastes.
She had only mastered its techniques.
Cheon Yo-hwa had done so in a thoroughly professional manner. To prove her qualifications and rigor as the heiress. To harvest recognition and respect in front of her father and the believers.
In short, she had learned the arts of torture in the spirit of a diligent farmer.
'That man, somehow... I want to torment him. Yeah.'
That was the strange part.
She'd met him for the first time today. She had never felt anything like this before, and yet, oddly... no. Wait.
A man she'd met for the first time?
Cheon Yo-hwa's brow furrowed faintly. Was he really a man she was seeing for the first time?
'Strange. There's this, this nagging feeling like I've definitely seen him somewhere...'
"My name is Go Yuir!"
Blink.
Cheon Yo-hwa blinked.
"I'm Go Yuir, Go Yuri's younger brother! The one who aced the college entrance exam and got into a prestigious university, whose religion is Taoism! The interview! The one who was supposed to be hired as your tutor, taking over after my sister!"
'...Ah.'
Only then did her mind light up bright. So much so that she clapped her hands together without thinking.
Right. That was it! He was "that" successor Teacher Go Yuri had sung the praises of every single day, every chance she got!
'The high schooler ID photo guy!'
What this meant was that when Teacher Go Yuri bragged about how handsome her little brother was, the photo she pulled out happened to be a "national ID card photo."
Naturally there was no retouching to speak of, and the pose was as stiff as could be. The hairstyle was plain itself.
And yet it was a face that made it roughly clear why Teacher Go Yuri doted on him so foolishly, so the impression had been filed away, gathering dust, in a corner of the study in Cheon Yo-hwa's mind.
'Whoa. The real thing was way better, huh?'
"Lady Cheon Yo-hwa! Young lady!"
'No. Hmm, maybe he's the type who blossomed after entering university...'
"Please, even just for a moment, talk with me!"
'Right, college really is nature's plastic surgeon, nature's dermatologist...'
"Young laaaaaadyyyy!"
Oh.
Cheon Yo-hwa realized she'd gotten too absorbed in the show. The man named Go Yuir was already being beaten to a pulp by the believers.
Cheon Yo-hwa lightly opened the back door.
"Uncle. Stop hitting him."
"A-young lady?"
"He says he has a clue about Teacher Go Yuri's disappearance. We were just talking about that anyway, so this worked out well."
"Still, a man of unknown identity like this...!"
"Ah, how tiresome. Enough. Uncle, you ride in another car. Bring our guest over here."
The Cult official shut his mouth.
When it came to Cheon Yo-hwa, the word "tiresome" was a kind of warning. A line being drawn. That if he kicked up any more noise here, it wouldn't end well for him.
The official did not want his innards "harvested," so he had no choice but to bow his head.
"...Understood. Hey. Bring the guest."
"Ah. Yes."
A short while later.
The limousine began running down the asphalt road again. Inside it, Cheon Yo-hwa and the man sat facing each other.
The man's appearance was, to put it kindly, a complete mess.
Scraped along the road, crumpled by fists. Covered in scratches. His lip too had been grazed against the asphalt and was bleeding.
"Hmm."
Cheon Yo-hwa crossed her legs.
"You're bleeding, you know. I don't know what you wanted to talk about so badly that you'd pull a crazy stunt like this, but how about wiping your mouth first?"
"Ah."
The man lightly wiped his lip with the back of his hand. Spots of blood came away, and he glanced at it from beneath his eyelids before losing interest.
"It's fine. I've already lost all my manners in how I treat you, young lady."
The man looked at her straight on. Blood still smeared a little at his mouth. With a gaze the wounds could neither cover nor trample down.
"In that case, the least I can do is show you my sincerity."
Thump.
"..."
Huh?
'Hm?'
'Hmmm...? Hm-hm? Hmmmm?'
Cheon Yo-hwa's smile wavered slightly.
What the.
Don't tell me... am I a sucker for a pretty face?
Footnotes:
[1] Oechul, literally "outsider," is the Cult's coined term for non-believers; it is paired with "Naechul," the term for insiders and believers.
[2] Taeguk is the established name of the anomaly invoked by the Cult here.
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