WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 476: That Woman D III
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* * *
At the very moment everyone was gathered together, all chummy, taking part in the grand unboxing ceremony of Pandora's box.
The Undertaker, surprisingly, was not on the scene. It was a truly terrifying piece of evasive maneuvering.
Thanks to the sixth-sense instinct that had saved his life more times than he could count over his long career as a regressor... well, no. That wasn't it.
Honestly, even for the great Undertaker, dodging this particular bit of cosmic rigging would have been more than a little difficult.
After all, in a worldline from some other cycle, the completed body of the Endless-puppet master had gone "Hwahha, die" and fired off its ultimate technique.
The reason the Undertaker happened to skip the box-opening ceremony of all things was this.
"Aah. All of a sudden my throat is just so, so dry."
This, too, was a blessing courtesy of cinematographer Oh Dok-seo.
The Undertaker tilted his head at Oh Dok-seo, who was holding a camcorder and grumbling that her HP had run out.
"Hm? If you're thirsty, you can just ask Yo-hwa's secretaries over there anytime. The cooler's got every kind of drink and ice cream you could want."
"Haaa... My, my. Mister, you really are clueless. What my parched throat craves right now is not some cheap mass-produced junk. To be precise, very specifically, I want the coffee you make for me."
"Huh. Here?"
"Yep."
"No, I don't even have the tools, so how am I supposed to..."
"I saw earlier there's a cafe inside the campus, right? Go make some there and bring it back."
"You..."
"Ah, dunno, don't care! Coffee made by Mister! I want coffee with ice cubes bobbing in it, all nice and cold! I've been filming our trip on the camcorder all day, so you can grant me at least this much of a wish!"
There was no diva quite as diva as this.
But Oh Dok-seo knew.
No matter how much of a diva she played, in the end the Undertaker, even while heaving sigh after sigh, even while lamenting his fate and his whole life, would still indulge little Oh-doks-brat's whims.
In the Regression Alliance, exactly three people were granted that privilege. Lee Ha-yul, Sim Ah-ryeon, and Oh Dok-seo were the only ones allowed it.
Yet the privilege those three enjoyed only looked the same on the outside. Look closely, and the essence of it was quite different.
At least, that was how Oh Dok-seo saw it.
'The reason Ah-ryeon-unni and Ha-yul get all their unreasonable demands granted is... Well. In the end it's closer to Mister indulging them and being generous, isn't it?'
In short, charity.
By her reckoning, "Undertaker-Sim Ah-ryeon" or "Undertaker-Lee Ha-yul" could hardly be called equal relationships.
There was such a thing as power, even in the heart and the emotions. Weigh up the distribution of that power, and the relationship chart between those parties was, at the most generous estimate, maybe 7 to 3.
Whereas.
'Hmm. Mister and I are exactly 5 to 5.'
Neither of them had anything to be cowed about.
If the Undertaker had never existed, the savior LiteraryGirl could not have existed either, and the happy ending would have been impossible.
If Oh Dok-seo had never existed, the Go Yuir of today could not have existed either, and likewise the happy ending would have been impossible.
Therefore.
'I have no need to dress up an inequality with titles like 'Dad' or 'Guild Leader' just to define my relationship with Mister.'
Just, 'Mister.'
Some people might take it as rude, but it didn't matter. The Undertaker treated Oh Dok-seo just as rudely.
The two of them, even while treating each other rudely, harbored a respect that would never melt away, and because neither of them was an ice that would melt first, their fondness and gentleness had no need for the sunlight.
Carnal desire? From Oh Dok-seo's standpoint it was a feeling she could take or leave. Literally a "why bother" sort of sentiment.
'Aren't we already in a state of platonic love??'
Writers, by nature, tended to like ancient Greece a fair bit. And in ancient Greece, it had been a virtue for the elder to become the 'spiritual' pillar of the younger, embracing and nurturing them.
By Oh Dok-seo's reckoning, the only person who breathed at roughly the same level as herself was, at best, Yu Ji-won.
'But Ji-won-unni's relationship chart isn't 5 to 5 either. Mm-hm. More like 6 to 4?'
Dok-seo-chan, total victory!
What we can gather from this is that Oh Dok-seo was not merely a brat who thought of physical love and spiritual love in dichotomous terms, but also someone who, having declared victory in her own mind entirely on her own terms, then completed the whole process of self-justification and self-satisfaction as well. In a certain sense, a person with an astonishingly healthy way of thinking.
There were more than one or two things one could point out about this way of thinking.
Just imagine the case where the Undertaker came to favor someone other than her.
Oh Dok-seo's mental state would instantly be reexamined as a textbook case of shoddy construction, right alongside the Collapsed Apartments[1].
But what could you do? Treating other people like fools was a chronic affliction Oh Dok-seo had been born with.
The true endpoint of a connoisseur of misery porn. It was to walk the road of regret, obsession, and ruin onto oneself...
But however the future might flow, for now Oh Dok-seo had entered "the one who enjoys" mode, and.
"Oh right, while you're making mine, get the others' coffees too, pretty please!"
"I never imagined I'd come all this way to end up playing barista..."
Right before the box-opening ceremony began, they had succeeded in safely whisking away the single most important VIP, the Undertaker.
Thanks to that, Oh Dok-seo no longer needed to bustle the camcorder back and forth.
Had the Undertaker been present, she would surely have whirled the camera frantically in the order of alliance member, Undertaker, alliance member, Undertaker, all to capture his expression.
Thanks to that, she was able to catch the moment Pandora's box quietly opened, fully and completely on her lens.
Steam rose up curling like mist. The steam, in every color imaginable, crackled with static, a fuzz of noise.
Before the alliance members could even react, the mist split off into separate strands and seeped, whoosh, into their mouths and noses.
And so.
"Ahaha,"
The first masterpiece shot captured on the secret-weapon camcorder bought for this very day was.
"Ahahaha! Aha-ha, ha- ahahahaha!"
A burst of laughter.
It was Cheon Yo-hwa's laughter.
* * *
"U-unni?"
"Aah. Hngk, urk, haaaa... ahahat! Ahahaha, hng, hueaa... Haaa. Hm, mm-mm. Mm!"
Cheon Yo-hwa wiped away her tears.
A smile of the utmost refreshment hung on her lips.
"As expected, it's me. Cheon Yo-hwa. You really are a genius!"
"..."
"Mm-hm. This unni never gives up, not even on a world whose destruction is a foregone conclusion, not even on a love whose defeat is a foregone conclusion. The world's going to end? Then I just send a Spirit Bomb[2] over to a worldline that hasn't ended, right? Love's doomed to fail? Ah, then if it's going down, I just make everyone sign the love letter so we all go down together, right? Hyaaa. What a woman I am, how can I be so perfect! At this rate I have no choice but to love myself...!"
"..."
Silence followed.
It was only natural, since aside from the older-sister Cheon Yo-hwa, the eyelids of everyone seated here on the lawn were trembling faintly.
A moment ago they had opened a recollection room for "memories that could not possibly exist," that is to say, the so-called bad endings, ones that had not only met destruction but should have had their save files deleted for all eternity.
Among them, naturally, were heaps of bad endings that had never been observed in the main text. Of course the cycles in which the regressor had failed and then forgotten could hardly amount to a mere five or six.
For instance... the number of bad endings in which Saintess Jeong Ye-ji and the Undertaker had ended up together was absolutely not "just one."
There was even an ending where he'd ended up with the Cheon Yo-hwas and married into the family outright as the live-in son-in-law of the twin sisters.
Memories like that had all been downloaded directly into the alliance members' minds, "vividly," all at once.
The conversations shared with the Undertaker in the isolated bad-ending cycles, the whispers, fingers laced tightly together, believing without a shred of doubt that they were soulmates, in a world where only the two of them remained, doing this..., and that, and anyway every last one of those scenes! All of them!
All of them!
With this, their heads went momentarily paralyzed, stuttering as if infected by a virus, no way around it!
"..."
In the midst of a silence colder than death, only the deliberate culprit, Cheon Yo-hwa, was cheerfully laughing.
Barely a minute or so passed, perhaps.
"Th-that..."
Saintess Jeong Ye-ji parted her lips.
To be the first to gather her wits even in a situation like this. Truly fitting of the Yongsan control tower, who had observed every awakener's best and ugliest sides throughout the apocalypse.
"This is..., um. There's no guarantee this is all true, is there...?"
The Saintess, as the avatar of reason and rationality (BUT, who serves crushed raw ramyeon as drinking snacks), led off with a fact-check first.
"This box is a cursed object forged by the authority of the Endless and the puppet master... that is, the Outer God 'Taeguk.' There's a possibility... that the Outer God ran a false simulation and set a trap, is what I think."
"Ohh."
Cheon Yo-hwa laughed brightly.
"A trap! A trap, you say. Nice~. So, Ye-ji-unni. The Dang family's proud asset manager. What good would springing a trap like this do an Outer God?"
"Um... To sow discord between us, maybe...?"
"Heee. The Infinite Metagame has been reduced to nothing but a measly laptop, and this Outer God has nothing left but the box, and even that box just opened and will fulfill its purpose and soon vanish, so what radiant blessing does it hope to gain by going out of its way to drive us apart?"
"Revenge... or something."
"Well, revenge. That's possible. Though I do wonder whether an Outer God even has emotional motives like that."
The corners of Cheon Yo-hwa's mouth curled up.
"If you're that worried, then, Ye-ji-unni. Why don't you put the memory you just received back into the box?"
"..."
"Hurry. I can feel it. Just a little longer and this time capsule will melt and disappear. But right now there's still a chance! You can stow them away before they vanish completely."
Cheon Yo-hwa looked around at the others.
"Everyone else too! Don't hold back, by all means!"
"..."
"Come on, hurry, hurry! If you miss the last train now, you'll have to live your whole life carrying these memories, you know? Swept up in a filthy Outer God's scheme, tied to the ending of a cycle you didn't particularly want, with no choice but to live out a life where bad endings and happy endings are all mixed together, forever? Now then. Ten seconds. Nine seconds. Eight."
Even as Cheon Yo-hwa taunted in a tone that was plainly mocking and toying, the surroundings stayed silent.
It was all too obvious.
There was no way they could throw it away. This memory.
"Three seconds, two seconds... One! Ding! Ding-ding-ding!"
Tak.
Cheon Yo-hwa snatched the box from Yu Ji-won's hand and clapped the lid shut.
Wondrously, the moment the lid closed, "Pandora's box" slipped away, vanishing without form or trace.
"Oh my~?"
Cheon Yo-hwa smirked.
"Nobody put their memories back, did they, everyone~?"
"..."
"To decide what is true and what is false, that is precisely the right of a person. A moment ago, all of you decided to accept these memories as the truth... That's how I interpret it! Bang-bang! Verdict rendered!"
"..."
"So then, everyone! I can now look up at the heavens and honestly love even myself, and on top of that I've come to love Teacher too, so I'll be off to go propose to Teacher..."
Grab.
Someone seized Cheon Yo-hwa's shoulder.
The very party who had been raising rational objections just moments ago. Jeong Ye-ji.
"...So you were after this."
"Yeah?"
"This is all foreign soil, where none of us have a base. But you alone, Cheon Yo-hwa, summoned your congregants by your own power and even booked the hotel. In other words, Cheon Yo-hwa, the moment you decide to, you can confess to Go Yuir anytime in a 100% prepared situation."
"Ah- huh? Aha, does the story really come out that way~? How strange."
The bright, beaming smile never left Cheon Yo-hwa's face.
"I really, truly did not intend any of it! Maybe it's because I usually live such a virtuous life? It's like the heavens are helping me! Ahem. But, well, I'm not such a pushover that I'd turn down good fortune. Yep. I'll gladly take it."
"As of today, I resign from my post as your asset manager."
"Let's have a calm little chat, Ye-ji-unni."
The Saintess subdued the older-sister Cheon Yo-hwa, who was one step from running wild, in a single move. The younger sister thrown in as a bonus.
As a result.
While the Undertaker borrowed the campus cafe and worked hard at making coffee for everyone, a secret pact was forged in this place.
The contents of the agreement went roughly like this.
◇ For the time being, the fact that they had inherited the memories of bad endings through the time capsule shall be kept a 'secret' from Go Yuir.
◇ Should anyone break the secret, all the rest shall join forces to root out the traitor.
◇ Each person shall be granted a level of opportunity and freedom that is reasonable by common sense. However, this common-sense line of opportunity and freedom shall be decided only through the agreement of all.
◇ Should Go Yuir come to love someone while the 'secret' remains undisclosed, all shall accept it cleanly and bow out.
There were many objections regarding the final clause, but it somehow managed to pass.
The truth was, the overwhelming majority of the people gathered here had no confidence.
The 'confidence to lose,' that is.
In the memories injected into the alliance members, each of them was a victor.
Just how devotedly the Undertaker had whispered of love, ultra-high-definition video files of it were playing back in their heads.
That the Undertaker would fall for anyone other than oneself. Such a future could not exist.
There were even those who, on the inside, clenched their fists in resolve.
'It's genuinely bewildering, but now that it's come out that Sim Ah-ryeon holds the same kind of memories as me, she can no longer cling to Lee Ha-yul or Oh Dok-seo and push that trap clause demanding that she be accommodated too...!'
'Heavens! Thank you! Thank you, unni! Thank you, Taeguk! At last I can dodge the Sim-Ah-ryeon-cohabitation-clause!'
'This is actually better.'
'Th-the Guild Leader likes me so, so much, after all. So it doesn't really m-matter.'
An exchange of glances.
As each of them desperately prepared for battle, there was one figure whose expression was uniquely dazed.
"..."
It was Dang Seo-rin.
'Uh...'
Having absorbed every last memory down to the Utopia cycle, the Great Witch's pupils were trembling, at present, exactly as if an earthquake had struck.
'My world tour?'
She sensed a crisis of her very existence.
'Could it be, surely not...'
'If I lose here, does that mean I can never go off on a world tour, just the two of us, alone with the Undertaker forever??'
A battle that absolutely could not be lost.
Begin.
Footnotes:
[1] "Collapsed Apartments" is a Korean internet meme for shoddily built apartments that collapse at the slightest provocation, used as shorthand for anything flimsy and prone to total breakdown.
[2] The Spirit Bomb, or Genki-dama, is a signature attack from the manga/anime Dragon Ball, formed by gathering energy contributed from all living things. The joke is that she would gather power across worldlines.
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