WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 480: That Woman D VII
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* * *
The back-alley surgery rampage that had nearly turned the Undertaker into a female Undertaker had happened only a few hours ago.
It would have been more than enough to add a new entry, [Phobia: Dang Seo-rin], to the Undertaker's character sheet, and yet he opened his door without a word of complaint.
The reason? Simple.
"Hey... I'm sorry, Undertaker. I got way too worked up earlier..."
Because, tens of thousands of years ago, [Precious Bond: Dang Seo-rin] had already been engraved on his sheet in red letters.
To put it bluntly, even if Dang Seo-rin had actually castrated him, it wouldn't have made the slightest dent in the Undertaker's affection.
This was a man prepared to accept even world annihilation for Dang Seo-rin's sake. Next to a whole world, that particular part of himself was worth precisely nothing.
"It's fine. I understand. When memories you couldn't even recall come flooding in like a tidal wave, keeping your composure isn't easy."
"Y-yeah. Now that I think about it, you went through something similar to us a long, long time ago, didn't you..."
The earlier experience Dang Seo-rin meant was, of course, the reincarnator, the incident with Go Yuri.
Recalling that, Dang Seo-rin let out a quiet sigh of relief inside.
'...So he's not just saying it's fine to be nice.'
People could afford to be generous with others about mistakes they'd lived through or committed themselves.
Astonishingly, the Undertaker had even taken in 'memories that never existed,' and beyond that had once been a person of a different gender from his own.
There were precious few situations on present-day Earth that the Undertaker couldn't understand. To genuinely surprise him, you had to be on Sim Ah-ryeon's level.
"...Mm. It's too quiet in here, so, um. Want to take a walk around the hotel and talk, just the two of us?"
"Sure."
The Undertaker instantly pulled up the layout of the area around the hotel in his head.
Thanks to having mapped it out in advance, on the off chance a walk like this might come up somewhere on the trip.
"There's the sea, if we walk a bit."
"Oh, the sea. Is it pretty?"
"Well. The water's so-so. It's not a beach, just a stretch of docks lined up one after another."
"Hmmm..."
"Still, you can watch the people wandering around. You'll be able to hear the waves too, so it's not a bad spot for a walk, is it?"
"Yeah! Let's go, let's go!"
Dang Seo-rin perked up at once. As if she'd never once paced anxiously outside the Undertaker's door, her mood lifted clean up, strangely enough.
Like a tiny bit of magic.
In truth, this whole process came very naturally to the Undertaker.
Scouting the area around wherever they were happened to be a habit of his, and on top of that, whenever he was out with Dang Seo-rin he always looked up good restaurants and the like to visit together with her.
Stepping out of the hotel and walking down the street...
Dang Seo-rin, too, suddenly...
"..."
Came to realize that very thing.
'It's always fun being with the Undertaker.'
It wasn't as though some grand event had taken place.
Dang Seo-rin loved the sea. She loved walking. She loved watching the streets where people came and went.
If she could duck into a café along the way and have a tasty coffee or dessert, that would be perfect, but even without it, even just getting to sit on some old bench now and then was enough.
'While he was prepping for the trip... in case he might end up walking with me.'
Quietly.
Strolling side by side down the harbor street, Dang Seo-rin stole a glance at her companion's profile.
'Wondering whether there might be a walking route I'd like... and just. Giving the map one more quick once-over, I bet.'
Just.
'It's not like he even needed to check the map, since Cheon Yo-hwa said she'd plan the whole itinerary and to leave it to her.'
Just.
"..."
Her heart was pounding.
Dang Seo-rin just, plain liked his profile.
She knew it well. In love, the word 'just' was not what you reached for when there truly was no reason at all.
A love that brushed past for a moment and then parted at an intersection, maybe. But not this.
A love that insisted on overlapping its path, that stopped together when the light blinked, that crossed together when a crosswalk came, that promised to sit on a bench together and gaze at the sea once they reached some shore where the road went no further.
'Just.'
If you came to have a love like that, then while walking the road, people had to step on a great many 'justs,' one by one by one.
And as you walked, stepping on them like that, the answer you'd so readily given, 'I just live,' to the question of why you were born and went on living, changed at some point without your even noticing.
'I live for you.'
In love, the blank painted over with the word [just] always had the word [you] hidden inside it.
'For your sake, I think I just... wouldn't mind getting up early.'
The sound of the waves passed by, brushing water across this man's profile.
'I'd even be glad to just go for a walk whenever it suits you.'
'I'll just stay up at night until you come back.'
'Even if everything I have now disappears. Even if it all falls apart. The truth is, as long as I can be with you, I can get back up anytime.'
'I just... feel like I could.'
Dang Seo-rin...
'You feel that way too, don't you?'
A firm squeeze.
Without thinking, she reached out and took the Undertaker's right hand.
"..."
At that, the Undertaker turned his head and looked at her. A little surprised, maybe. His eyes had widened slightly.
"..."
But before long, his gaze softened and settled gently.
And the touch with which Dang Seo-rin had caught only the tips of his fingers, the Undertaker answered with a larger motion, wrapping her whole hand in his.
"..."
"..."
Dang Seo-rin's face grew a little warm. So she walked with her head bowed a touch.
The words went quiet between them, and only the thickness of the fingers clasped tight and the warmth of his palm filled up her head.
The silence wasn't oppressive. It just felt like nothing at all. So she worked up a bit more courage and lifted her head, and her eyes met the Undertaker's.
Dang Seo-rin couldn't help laughing.
"Idiot."
"Why?"
"Dummy."
"That's an unforgivable slander."
"Want me to tell you one scary fact?"
"If it's a scarier story than the one where a certain body part nearly got cut off, sure."
"Sim Ah-ryeon, that girl, the second she got into the hotel she showered and took a bath..."
"That's insane."
"And she says that when you head off to play in the hotel pool, she's going to put on a swimsuit and go too..."
"That really is scary. I've got goosebumps..."
When it came to topics worth chatting about at a moment like this, nothing beat trash-talking Sim Ah-ryeon.
Isn't trash-talking a comrade going a bit far, you ask? Uh... you heartless elder-abandoner[1].
"Ugh. Forget it, forget it."
"Forget what?"
"Just forget all of it."
How to put it. Dang Seo-rin meant to stamp an official seal on this, just like this.
'Hide nothing from me. Treat me as the most precious thing of all. Whenever I want, go on a trip with me anytime.'
If those were the conditions, then the way Dang Seo-rin saw it, she could honestly accept being in 'a relationship that looks utterly bizarre to others.'
Of course, a person's heart isn't something even the person in question can know from the start, so once this side-splittingly absurd relationship raised anchor and set sail, her heart would probably shift here and there.
If it changed, she could just talk it out again when the time came, was what she figured.
'Sim Ah-ryeon, that girl... I don't get her either. Let's just decide she's not a person, but an alien wearing human skin.'
It was a superhuman tolerance only possible because she herself had once been devoured by an Outer God.
And so, the moment Dang Seo-rin opened her mouth to share her resolve...
"Wait a second."
"Hm?"
"Hold on."
Thunk.
The Undertaker cornered Dang Seo-rin. Saying he cornered her sounds like an odd way to put it, but to be more blunt, it was the so-called 'wall-slam' pose.
'Eh?'
Dang Seo-rin looked up at the Undertaker's face as it cast a shadow over her. Her back was against the wall of a big harbor building standing by the road.
An utterly serious expression was looking down at her at an angle.
"Wh... what is it?"
It was so sudden that, without meaning to, Dang Seo-rin's tongue tripped over itself.
But she couldn't help it.
Sure, she'd been the one to signal the hand-hold first, but the Undertaker had never initiated physical contact this intensely.
With Pandora's box opening today, the events from 'Utopia' had come back to her vividly, but even in that cycle he'd never pressed his face in this boldly, had he? Had he?
"Dang Seo-rin. I have some idea of what it is you're about to say."
"Eh, uh, uhm...?"
"But I'm not so foolish a man as to let you be the one to say it first. So, won't you wait just a few more days? I got some personal advice, and I'd like to test it out a little."
"Wait...? Wh-what for?"
"Whatever it may be."
And then came something jaw-dropping.
The shadow drew closer. Deepened. It came near enough for her to make out the other person's eyelids, and then something soft brushed Dang Seo-rin's left cheek.
'Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?'
In short, once Dang Seo-rin's brain, fumbling belatedly, tried to make sense of it...
A moment ago the Undertaker had pinned her to the wall, bent at the waist, and lightly kissed her on the cheek.
'???'
It was moving way too fast.
Faced with the reality that, before she'd even officially declared anything one way or another, the Undertaker had fired off a cheek-kiss first, Dang Seo-rin could only spiral into chaos! Because, well, because...!
'Y-you. You fire off flirting like breathing, but you absolutely, absolutely never made this kind of physical contact first, did you?!'
The truth was, there had never been a man as walled-off as the Undertaker.
Trying to hold hands, it was always her first. Stretching out a foot under the café table to tangle them up playfully, her first too. First, first, first.
He'd handle everything else so easily and take care of it first, like planning the walking route today, and yet, uniquely! When it came to physical contact, absolutely never!
A case of him sending the first signal had never once existed in all of history.
Thanks to that, Dang Seo-rin had learned just how comfortable and easy to mess around with a 'man with no sex drive' was... and just how damnably frustrating!
Only after meeting the Undertaker had she been able to learn it.
A madman among madmen who truly believed in platonic love and practiced it.
That was the Undertaker for you.
For someone who, now and then, harbored the desire to hold hands and do this and that, it sometimes made her feel needlessly like the greedy one, and wondering whether she was the only one feeling this way, honestly she'd felt a little, no, a lot hurt.
"Will you wait for me?"
"Uh, uh, uh..."
For the first time in her life, the Undertaker had stepped forward and made the appeal himself, and Dang Seo-rin's head spun. She'd been caught in an unexpected ambush.
Maybe that was why.
"...Mm. I'll wait."
The Dang Seo-rin who answered like that was flushed with all the embarrassment in the world.
A little later.
The walk over, they came back, and she sent the Undertaker up, and sitting alone in the hotel lobby, Dang Seo-rin blankly looked up at the chandelier.
She thought, dazed.
'Wh-what on earth is happening?'
How could Dang Seo-rin ever have guessed.
That the puppet master behind this whole turn of events was Seo Gyu.
* * *
Obsession.
To the Undertaker, it was an utterly unfamiliar hwadu[3].
But he was a man who knew nothing of giving up, and above all, a person who knew how to take another's advice seriously.
The Undertaker resolved to 'try' and 'make an effort' so that he 'could obsess over other people.'
Considering that, statistically, his effort tended to flow in the exact opposite direction, it was a truly strange thing.
In any case, as the first step of that effort...
"Yo-hwa."
"Ah, Teacher!"
The Undertaker sought out Cheon Yo-hwa.
"You called me out by myself. My goodness! To think you'd approach me first, before I even got the chance to make a move on you. Of course I'm okay with it! There, there. Shall we head to the room I reserved just for us, then?"
"That's not it. There's something I need to ask of you."
"Hm? What is it? If it's a request from you, Teacher, I could even track down One Piece for you[2]."
"The time capsule. Pandora's box."
The Undertaker said.
"That thing didn't actually disappear, did it?"
"..."
"It's an authority that was passed to you, so you can probably control it however you like, to some degree."
Taking advantage of everyone falling into confusion, Cheon Yo-hwa had haphazardly called a timeout, but in reality no such time limit existed.
The Undertaker, more versed in the Outer Gods' cursed objects than anyone, saw through Cheon Yo-hwa's lie in no time.
"Give it to me."
"Wh-what?"
"The memories held in Pandora's box. Open it right here, right now, so I can have them injected into me too."
"Mem... ories, you mean. Um, whose memories? You can pick and choose however you like, Teacher."
"All of them."
"..."
That's right.
The solution the Undertaker's effort had arrived at was simple.
"Hand over every single one of the memories that 'I' went through across every bad ending, without leaving even one out."
Can't manage obsession?
Then he just had to summon every last one of the 'selves' who had each obsessed over someone, one by one.
──Super Giga Undertaker, combination complete.
Footnotes:
[1] The handle alludes to a legendary (likely apocryphal) old Korean custom of abandoning elderly parents in the mountains to die; the term is used colloquially for casting aside or disposing of someone who has become a burden.
[2] One Piece is the long-running Japanese manga/anime by Eiichiro Oda, whose central plot revolves around the search for a legendary treasure also called the "One Piece." The joke is that she would hunt down that fabled, never-found prize for him.
[3] Hwadu refers to a Korean Seon Buddhist meditation phrase or question used as the focus of contemplation.
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