WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 475: That Woman D II
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A rowdy clamor.
"Ohh. A splendid hotel."
"Yep. This place lets you book everything at once and connect the suites together. We've got way too many people, right? Nowhere else could handle us."
"B-bourgeois. Even during the apocalypse we stayed at pretty high-end places, you know. Hwaaa. The luxury of real civilization really is something else."
[It's like comparing the bedchamber of the most powerful great noble in the Middle Ages to the life of a modern middle-class family.]
"Then, as the financier who booked this place, I hereby declare the bed next to Ha-yul as mine."
"Ah, unni! No fair!"
Chatter, chatter.
"But unni. Why didn't you book separate lodgings for Sim Ah-ryeon? Doesn't she need to be quarantined?"
"Tr-treating a person like nuclear waste. That's really rude."
"Mm. But isn't the rudeness Ah-ryeon is committing against the very concept of humanity more criminal than the rudeness we've committed?"
"Hoo. Little sister. This great unni has a plan for everything."
"A plan? What kind of plan?"
"The person who shares a room with Sim Ah-ryeon and gets assigned the bed beside her will be decided, as of now, by drawing lots!"
"Kyaaaaaaaa!"
"...Th-this really is not a rudeness of this world."
"I see. A penalty contest no one can afford to lose. Allow me to remind you all: I cannot distinguish faces by sight, and I possess a highly developed sense of smell. Should my nose ever become paralyzed, I hereby give notice that there exists a risk you may, at any moment, be mistaken not for yourselves but for Sim Ah-ryeon."
"Shit, I hate to admit it, but that's a damn persuasive threat."
"Wasn't there something like that among the potions Uehara left behind? A drug that brings someone back to their senses. Or at least a drug that makes your whole body itch if you don't wash at least once a day."
[Not easy.]
Lee Ha-yul turned her head.
The head turn of Lee Ha-yul, reborn as the daughter of an undisputed presidential frontrunner, was captured beautifully by the camera lens.
The top-of-the-line camcorder bought just for this day was rolling.
Lee Ha-yul scribbled letters across her sketchbook.
Then she lifted the question sheet toward the "director of photography."
[What've you been doing since the flight out?]
[You're usually the one making the biggest fuss at times like this, so why so quiet?]
"Ahh."
At that the camcorder wobbled a little. The director of photography had waved a hand.
"You don't have to mind me! Don't mind, don't mind!"
[It's not "don't mind," "never mind" is more natural. You really are an otaku.]
"Aw, c'mon."
The voluntary director of photography for this trip.
Director Oh Dok-seo, who was also saving the camcorder footage to a "laptop" whenever she got the chance.
Behind the screen reflected in the lens, her bright, lively laughter was recorded.
"This group outing. It's the first trip where we've all gathered to enjoy ourselves without a care in the world, right? Who knows when an event like this'll come around again. I just want to record the precious memory of this moment, that's all!"
[Highly suspicious.]
"How do I put it. The calm within the typhoon? The eve of the storm? Like the last peace before hell. The peace of our era."
[ ? ]
"Anyway, this is a moment of historical value. Right now. Believe it or not, as a lowly scribbler who worships culture, I can't let a single second slip away in vain."
[Honestly no idea what you're babbling about.]
"Ah, you don't know? 'That.' Never mind. It's too early to tell you what 'that' is. But, I see. So that's how it is."
Lee Ha-yul's expression in the camcorder soured. Beautiful characters appeared across her sketchbook too. A character completed in five strokes. It was the convex character, the throwing-up-a-middle-finger one[1].
[Besides, if it's "all" of us gathered, isn't Mister Seo Gyu not even here?]
"Ah. I sent Mister Seo Gyu a private message and gave him the wrong itinerary on purpose."
[ ? ]
[Wait, the reason Mister Seo Gyu kept spamming that crying bogeyman-grandpa emoticon in the group chat was because of that??]
[You're actually insane?]
"Yeah. I'll admit it. Right about now Mister Seo Gyu is watching travel photos pour into the group chat one after another, realizing he got ditched. But, Ha-yul. Do you know? Just one more day, and Mister Seo Gyu will come to feel grateful to me. It'd be no exaggeration to call me the savior of his life."
[What are you actually scheming??]
"Me, author. Spoiler. No can do."
Just then Cheon Yo-hwa shouted.
"Ding! By forfeit in the draw, the bed next to Sim Ah-ryeon goes to Oh Dok-seo!"
"Hwuooooooork?! Heavens above!!"
"...Until every single person here has been assigned the spot beside her, one by one. I. I absolutely will not go to the pool or take a bath."
It was lively in every way.
The outcast group (Noh Do-hwa and Jeong Ye-ji), who proudly held a 0% share of the dialogue above, was, against all expectations, enjoying the trip too.
Hidden behind this was Cheon Yo-hwa's contribution.
To make this trip a success, she had brought out a "you don't have to lift a finger" concept from the very start.
The Eight Trigrams handmaidens and various attendants trailed everyone around, tending to the alliance members' comfort.
And not only that. The cultists living near San Francisco, and even those over in Los Angeles, were all mobilized.
The travel difficulty was, quite literally, zero.
Restaurant reservations? Already booked out in full. Communication? No problem at all, even speaking only Korean.
The alliance members didn't even need to drag their own luggage around.
They simply moved their bodies, and oh my, how remarkable, the contents of their suitcases had all been delivered to the rooms of the signature suite and laid out prettily on display.
There were even cosmetics and clothes added that they were certain they had no memory of packing.
The alliance members tasted, for the first time in their lives, the true face of power and wealth.
Until now they'd been laboring under the misconception that those two things were just for protecting humanity from annihilation.
Of course, from Cheon Yo-hwa's standpoint, she'd recently been enjoying a "left some money with an acquaintance and somehow the family fortune doubled" event, so luxury on this scale was nothing to her.
'Fun!'
Dang Seo-rin, too, was savoring the trip to rave reviews.
'Delicious!'
Nom. As she sat eating, one bite at a time, a dessert said to have been made at some famous shop and spirited to the hotel room all on its own, happiness recharged itself within her.
'What's this, what's this. I thought these girls were intruders butting into my trip, but, surprisingly, we get along?'
That sentiment had a few errors in it.
First, this was not "my trip," it was "Yu Ji-won's trip." Strictly speaking, the intruder was Dang Seo-rin.
Yu Ji-won had promised this trip to the Undertaker, just the two of them, ever since she was a middle schooler. That day had even been the very moment Yu Ji-won decided to give up on suicide.
Into this kind of first experience, intruders barged in en masse, and "juniors" at that, who had met the Undertaker far later than she had.
And yet, the fact that Yu Ji-won had brushed it off without so much as a blink, saying, "Ah, it doesn't particularly matter to me," made her an abnormally magnanimous person, the holder of a transcendent spirit. She really was not human.
But as for the rest.
On the point that the alliance members "meshed" better than expected, Dang Seo-rin's insight was correct.
'Hmm. ...But it's strange. Wasn't most of my memory of us getting together just fighting and bristling at each other?'
In truth, it wasn't strange at all.
It wasn't only Dang Seo-rin. The Cheon Yo-hwas, Jeong Ye-ji, and the rest who sat chatting around the tables and sofas happened to be harboring a similar impression at that very moment.
The impression of 'Huh? Aren't we closer than I thought?'
You might wonder how a gathering of humanity's strongest mental patients could be so cheerful and warm, but think it through and the reason wasn't hard to guess.
Because... the era was fucked!
Among the maxims floating around the internet, there's one that says if you want to learn someone's true character, put them through extreme hardship.
It was another case proving the truth that internet maxims are utterly useless. Just swap "hardship" for "battlefield" and anyone can feel that something's off.
Before reaching the happy ending, the world the Regression Alliance members had to live through was, quite literally, a battlefield every single day.
Not one of the people now sitting around the hotel, laughing and chattering away, had failed to stand on the front line of that battlefield.
The anomalies came at all hours, chased you even into your dreams as you slept, and the moment you let your guard down even a little, they grew lush within your heart and gave you a lesson in what "corruption" meant.
By any common sense, no sane mind could possibly survive it.
Wrapped in that much stress, a human's head explodes the instant their lover so much as brushes their forearm. So what of the frontline warriors of the anomaly apocalypse?
The one who, even in such circumstances, steadfastly took in their comrades' complaints and counseling sessions, calmly smiling and saying, "I see," "that must have been hard," "I have a coffee I researched and customized just for you over hundreds and thousands of years, and it's truly delicious," "want to drink it and ease your heart?", that certain regressor was the strange one. He really was not human.
In short, the alliance members' "mental illness" was exaggerated to a degree. No, to a large degree.
Anyone dropped into an era like that had no choice but to go mad. And when mad people jostle against mad people, friction is bound to arise.
And so, in the present day, you no longer had to suspect "an anomaly?" when a knock came at the door, nor wonder "an anomaly?" when dessert was delivered to your room all on its own.
"Then I will head to the university with Mr. Matiz. Thanks to the consideration of Her Excellency, Cheon Yo-hwa, the supreme young lady, I've been granted the honor of touring the campus freely."
"Ah! Me too, me too!"
Surprisingly, Dang Seo-rin raised her hand high... not out of any sense of duty along the lines of 'I can't leave Yu Ji-won and the Undertaker alone together,'
but simply from the thought, 'The hotel's comfy too, but it's boring,' and 'It'd be fun to move around with these guys, hehe.'
"Do-hwa unni, you come too!"
This line was Dang Seo-rin's as well. Yes, just now Dang Seo-rin had addressed "Noh Do-hwa," the "former Management Captain," as "unni."
It was a feat accomplished before even 24 hours had passed since the American trip began.
"Insane, fucking hell. If you're going, go among yourselves. Why do you keep trying to drag me in?"
"Aww. If not now, when are you ever gonna come here and see Stanford? They say the campus is super pretty!"
"I, I want to go too. Heh. Now that all the people have been cleared out, even if I tag graffiti on the school building's outer wall, I won't get caught, right?"
"No. Ah-ryeon. No matter how much money our Cult has thrown around, that crosses the line, so please spare us."
"Hieeng..."
The alliance members had, every one of them, broken through the hellish age of the latter law.
They were also among the very few who shared an understanding, the precious handful who got that the reality of 'this world where the laws of physics apply as though it were obvious' was by no means obvious.
"Let's all just go together. I called a limousine."
"Waaaaaa-!"
Comrades-in-arms.
"What? You're saying you made a YouTube channel, Ah-ryeon?!"
"Y-yes. The money I left with Ye-ji is enough to live off for a lifetime, but I do want to exhibit my work now and then. And yet I hate getting tangled up with real-world people. So I'll debut as a super-beautiful genius painter and rake in all the attention."
[Non-member comment: Sim Ah-ryeon < I heard this girl actually doesn't even wash her hair or bathe, is that true?]
"Goodness. L-look. The video isn't even up yet and there are already hate comments. Scary. As expected of the super-pretty genius painter who shakes the world."
[Big trouble. The damage isn't landing. She's even started calling herself not a beauty but a pretty little girl.]
"Ah, please don't release the anomaly pictures as videos or anything! Our Cult will just buy them at a high price."
Beautiful comradeship.
Slowly, in Dang Seo-rin's head, the deranged notions of 'Hmm, isn't traveling the world together with these guys way more fun than just playing alone with the Undertaker?', 'Let's ask for an ultra-luxury yacht! From Cheon Yo-hwa, obviously!', 'We'll travel by yacht!' were gradually gaining persuasive power.
"Hmm?"
"What is it, Ji-won?"
"That lawn over there. If it wasn't a trick of my eyes just now, a bubble... one of Leviathan's water bugs flickered for a moment, like a mirage."
"Huh?"
"I'll go closer and check. Everyone. It might be dangerous, so please wait behind me."
An ultra-luxury yacht world tour.
"...For now, there's nothing. Aside from the fact that this one spot is oddly damp and soaked with water, I detect no anomalous phenomena anywhere."
[How about digging it up?]
"A fine suggestion, Lady Lee Ha-yul, Your Excellency. Truly the insight befitting the real master of the presidential office that will rule the Korean Peninsula's power going forward."
"Hold on. I'll have one of our cultists go fetch a shovel! It'd be a shame if your clothes got dirty."
For reference, a yacht was a ship.
"Hm?"
"This is..."
"A box?"
"I-it's a box."
"Looks like there's nothing for it but to open it."
"No, are you insane? There's no regression or anything anymore, and you're going to just open something that so obviously reeks of bad omen? Do these people still think they're awakeners...?"
"That is precisely why we must open it, Noh Do-hwa. The fact that our awakenings have been neutralized means the Outer Gods have vanished too. Therefore, in the current situation, no anomaly capable of threatening us can exist."
"Wow. I'm a supreme-dignity young lady Excellency and Ha-yul's a young lady Excellency too, but with the National Road Management Corps gone and the era changed a little, over there it's just plain Noh Do-hwa now."
[Not easy.]
"Then, everyone, I will open the box."
And a ship was also a boat.
"...?"
"Eh?"
"Ah?"
"Eh?"
"Huh?"
"..."
"..."
"Ah...?"
That is.
"..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..." "..."
Nice Boat[2].
Footnotes:
[1] The character is the five-stroke "convex" character (read cheol in Korean), widely used in East Asian internet culture as an emoticon depicting a hand with the middle finger raised; drawing it is a silent "flipping the bird."
[2] "Nice Boat" is an anime-fandom meme from the 2007 broadcast of the visual-novel adaptation School Days, whose graphically violent finale was replaced by footage of a boat; fans now post it to mock-cheerfully defuse a sudden ominous or shocking reveal.
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