WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 478: That Woman D V
──────
They say a person summons superhuman strength when faced with the threat of death.
"Hwooooooough!"
The Undertaker was no exception.
The moment it came to light that the beloved disciples he had trusted with all his heart were in fact drift specialists[1] scheming to reshape this world's genre into kidnapping-confinement-conditioning fetish material, the Undertaker wrenched himself free from the two sisters' grip with everything he had.
"Ah."
"Teacher, we lost him."
He'd escaped the little devils, sure. And yet.
Cold sweat ran down the Undertaker's face as his head whipped this way and that, scanning his surroundings.
Gulp.
'Run away... w-where do I run?'
Normally, the most reliable refuge in a situation like this was, without a doubt, Noh Do-hwa. Noh Do-hwa and no one else.
Even in the cycle when Salvation Narrative Syndrome had broken out, hadn't Noh Do-hwa held onto a firm, unshakable will to the very end?
But.
"..."
Right now, Noh Do-hwa was staring at the Undertaker with eyes that promised to kill him.
There was no mistaking that glare. It was pure, undeniable killing intent.
As someone who'd racked up a +1 to his death count every single time he caught a look like that, he found it extremely hard to misread its meaning.
「Why?」
He hadn't done anything, so why the bloodlust? He looked at Noh Do-hwa with that question in his eyes, and Noh Do-hwa fired right back, wordlessly, with nothing but her own gaze.
「Don't get the wrong idea. Right now, I'm cutting you some slack.」
「Sorry, but how exactly is this cutting me slack?」
「I could kill you on the spot and die right after, and yet here I am holding back.」
「Why? Should I? Die?」
「You wouldn't know, but I just inherited some really shitty memories. In those memories I swore my love, and the instant you pick anyone here who isn't me, that vow is void.」
「Because you tried to keep your vow, but if I remember nothing and break the promise of love, that means I'm no longer the 'me' you made that promise with?」
「You catch on quick, you bastard.」
「I see... So the very fact that you're not killing me yet, that you're watching how I act instead, is, from your standpoint, a kind of mercy and a reprieve, and I should be grateful there isn't already a kitchen knife buried in me. That the gist of it?」
「Just get ready to croak.」
The Undertaker shuddered. What miracle of logic was this?
But the real miracle lay elsewhere.
The true miracle was that, just now, Noh Do-hwa and the Undertaker had gleaned every last detail of each other's circumstances without leaning on telepathy or any such occult sorcery, on nothing but a one-on-one exchange of glances.
This was on the level of listening to a piece of classical music and from it sensing the babble of a brook, the slickness of stone, the wriggle of an earthworm perched on that stone floor, and within that wriggle the greatness of life stirring into being. What was this if not the true height of a kindred spirit who understands the music of another's soul[2]?
In truth, such glance exchanges between the two of them happened all the time.
And they were alike in another way too: neither of them ever stopped to calculate how that wordless understanding looked to the people around them.
Naturally, the rest of the group, who weren't connected to the Undertaker through the Khala, got a little pissed off every time they had to watch that eyeball nonsense.
Most of them figured Noh Do-hwa was showing off the special bond she shared with the Undertaker in some sneaky, underhanded way, and thought it was kind of obnoxious.
So now you can objectively understand why Management Captain Noh Do-hwa didn't have a single drinking buddy in the entire Regression Alliance besides Lee Ha-yul.
As for why this objective fact had stayed beneath the surface all this time... well, obviously, because everyone had only ever been lit up through the regressor's first-person point of view. What would the Undertaker have known?
[Looks like I've got no choice but to step in here.]
Creak.
Lee Ha-yul rolled in, pushing her wheelchair.
[If I can't make everyone into a mom, then I'd rather not take in even a single mom.]
At that, Jeong Ye-ji, ever the devotee of reason and good sense, pointed something out.
"Um. Ha-yul. I've always gone back and forth on whether to bring this up, but isn't your birth mother, Lee So-yoon, alive and perfectly well right now?"
[Can't be helped. As the daughter, I'm the only one who can support my no-good Dad...]
Reason and good sense were brushed aside as lightly as ever. Then again, you shouldn't expect ordinary filial piety from Lee Ha-yul, a father slayer, in the first place.
'Th-that's it. I just have to live with Ha-yul.'
The Undertaker's eyes flashed with desperation.
'I just kick out Dok-seo and Ah-ryeon. No, if I try to kick them far away, those two will try to kill me. So roughly the house two doors down... If I declare I'll live with Ha-yul and only Ha-yul, who could possibly object...'
"No. Don't fall for it. Mister."
Someone shouted.
He turned his head, and it was Oh Dok-seo, sprawled out on the lawn with her arm trembling all over.
It was a sorry sight, more than worthy of the title of hack author, but the cry that burst from her mouth was impossible to ignore.
"Lee Ha-yul over there owns a bad ending too."
"What?"
The Undertaker was aghast. Had she lost her mind?
"Are you telling me I shared love with Ha-yul?"
If that were true, the Undertaker was prepared to take his own life right this instant. There were rules in this world that had to be upheld.
He ended up with Sim Ah-ryeon? That, he could understand. There are real people who marry animals or marry a 2D slab, so ending up with a bug, or Sim Ah-ryeon, was within reason. Oh Dok-seo? That, too, was statistically possible.
But Lee Ha-yul was a no. He could declare with certainty that his affection for Lee Ha-yul, boundless as it was, ran along the lines of parent and friend, with not one shred of romance beyond that.
"Uh, well. It's less love in that sense and more like possessiveness..."
Faced with the Undertaker's horror, Oh Dok-seo's voice shrank a little too.
"So, in a worldline where both Management Captain Noh Do-hwa and Sim Ah-ryeon were out of the picture, there was a cycle where Mister lost his limbs. But Ha-yul was around then. With all four limbs out of commission, Mister had Ha-yul supporting him like a sort of senior, and the two of them lived together, I guess... Anyway, she's a little off too. There's no way her heart was pure."
[This is slander.]
Lee Ha-yul didn't so much as twitch an eyelid.
[When a parent's mobility fails, personally tending to their care is, by any measure, orthodox filial piety. I simply fulfilled my role as a dutiful daughter.]
"Mister couldn't move on his own, so you operated his entire body with your puppetry from the puppet room and controlled his every movement. And after Mister died, you turned him into a puppet and casually played daddy-and-daughter dollhouse, moving his tongue and vocal cords and mouth yourself, delivering his lines for him, and you lived another two hundred years."
This time it wasn't just the Undertaker; every last person was aghast. Had she truly lost her mind?
Oh Dok-seo shrieked at the top of her lungs.
"I, huh? I just didn't write it up as a side story for the sake of your honor, Lee Ha-yul. Huh? You even puppeted the corpses of the other comrades, churning out lines like 'Ha-yul, you and Mr. Undertaker really are a perfect match,' and you turned a whole city into a Puppet State to play dollhouse... Damn. Aren't you even ashamed?"
[Hmm.]
"If I'd really wanted to, I could've sent your reputation straight to hell too. Be grateful to me. This effort of mine, protecting a friend's reputation to the very end. This kindness. This gentleness. Recognize it."
[I ask you this: what is death?]
Lee Ha-yul still hadn't blinked even once.
[If one lingers in memory even after death, then that soul carries on. Though my Dad's flesh died, in my memory he never died, so I never granted that death my permission.]
"..."
The Undertaker quietly took a few steps back from Lee Ha-yul, careful that no one would notice. His daughter's filial devotion was far too heavy.
He faced reality.
'Not a single person... to lean on?'
He'd felt wronged from the start.
'I've never even been in a relationship.'
Where dating begins is a matter experts would disagree on, and at the extreme there are types who'd insist holding hands once counts as dating, but at the very least it was clear the Undertaker had never reached any proper relationship stage.
'Why do I have to get dragged into this mess because of stuff pulled by other-cycle Undertakers I don't even remember... Huh. Is this how the people around me felt watching me, the regressor?'
He realized it.
'So there was a reason Management Captain Noh Do-hwa found me so insufferable.'
Of course, it was a realization that did nothing whatsoever to improve the present situation.
'Ugh. If only Seo Gyu were here.'
'I could've dumped it all on him and asked what he thought, so why, of all the crucial moments, is he off with a bodybuilding competition for an excuse? You bastard, you bastard, you bastard...'
Ah. For the record, the bodybuilding competition business was a pretext Oh Dok-seo had fabricated.
'Mister Seo Gyu says traveling will be tough since he's prepping for a competition. Trips make it hard to stick to your diet and keep up your workouts,' was the excuse Oh Dok-seo had prepared in advance.
On the off chance the lie got exposed, Oh Dok-seo had gone so far as to actually register Seo Gyu's name as an entrant in a real bodybuilding competition.
Every holiday from now on, Seo Gyu ought to perform the three-bows-and-nine-kowtows ritual[3] in Oh Dok-seo's direction. The holiday gift, naturally, was fixed at a premium Korean beef set worth no less than five hundred thousand won.
Crash.
That was when it happened. Everyone turned their heads toward the source of the shattering glass, and there stood Dang Seo-rin, gripping something in her trembling hands.
A kitchen knife.
"Seo-rin?"
Jeong Ye-ji, who back in the day had sliced up a person or two with an axe, asked in a bewildered tone.
"Where did the kitchen knife come from...?"
"E-everyone. Don't move."
It was very Jeong Ye-ji of her to lead with 'where' the kitchen knife came from rather than 'why' she'd grabbed it, but regardless of all that, Dang Seo-rin shouted.
"I, I just. Wanted. To travel the world happily with the Undertaker, that's all."
Sniff. Tears welled in Dang Seo-rin's eyes.
They weren't false tears. Dang Seo-rin truly felt aggrieved. Eighty percent of that grievance stemmed from the desperation that she might lose, just like this, the soulmate she'd already staked her claim to.
The remaining twenty percent came from something else.
"I got cl-close with all of you too. The truth is, I was wondering whether to suggest we all travel the world together."
"..."
"This is too cruel. I never wanted to abandon anyone. D-Do-hwa unni too. I was so thrilled that I finally got to call her unni today..."
"..."
"W-we can't hate each other. It's supposed to be a happy ending. It's supposed to be the route we barely managed to reach. And just because a little memory came back, we're fighting again. This is the Outer God's scheme..."
Her face brimming over with tears, Dang Seo-rin turned to look at the Undertaker.
"So."
She murmured.
"Let's cut it off, Undertaker..."
"?"
A dazed question slipped out from between the Undertaker's lips.
"Uh, uh. Sorry, Seo-rin. What was that?"
"Hrk."
Dang Seo-rin only wiped at her tears. Her emotions were surging violently.
"Just shut your eyes tight and... let's just cut it off."
"??"
"I, I can give it up. Yeah. Even if we, we cut that off. We can still kiss, right? A kiss is enough. Love can be expressed just fine through a kiss too..."
"???"
"You see, if you just get rid of the physical lust, even polyamory becomes possible. Yeah... It's completely normal. That's the root of all evil, the starting point of every problem... If we cut it off, everything gets solved, right?"
Dang Seo-rin's eyes blazed.
And so did the kitchen knife.
"I, I... liked the female Undertaker too."
Dang Seo-rin stepped closer.
"It's okay. We... can definitely find happiness."
The Undertaker.
Sensed he was screwed.
Footnotes:
[1] "Drift" is Korean web-novel/fandom slang, borrowed from racing terminology, for forcibly veering a story off its expected course into a wildly different genre or direction.
[2] An allusion to the Chinese idiom zhiyin, literally "one who knows the tone," from the legend of musician Bo Ya and woodcutter Zhong Ziqi: a bosom friend who understands one completely, the way Ziqi alone grasped the scenes Bo Ya played on his zither.
[3] The three-bows-and-nine-kowtows ritual, the Qing court's ritual of submission requiring three kneelings and nine head-knocks to the ground; in Korea it evokes the 1637 Samjeondo surrender of King Injo to the Qing emperor, so it connotes abject, humiliating obeisance.
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
