WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 481: That Woman D VIII
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* * *
All at once, memories beyond the capacity allotted to a human came surging in like the sea, and the Undertaker's head exploded.
That sort of thing did not happen.
An explosion ending, in this day and age. What else could you call that but the worst.
"Kraaaaaaagh!"
Still, even if it was not the worst, what the Undertaker was tasting right now was the runner-up, one infinitely close to the worst.
"Hhuuugh! Hhaaaaaagh!"
"T, Teacher! Are you all right?! Why do you suddenly sound exactly like someone screaming while a torture awl gets jammed between their bones and scrapes the nerves between their joints?!"
"Si..."
"Si?"
"Sim Ah-ryeeeeon...!"
The Undertaker was pouring out the bloodless half of tears of blood. The missing blood, incidentally, was spraying out of his mouth-hole.
"To Ah-ryeon! That I! Th-that I loved her!"
"..."
"Memories of whispering that I loved her! Memories of the two of us running away together to protect our love! Hhuuugh! Khaaaaaaagh!"
Looking down at the Undertaker as he lay face-first on the floor and thrashed about, Cheon Yo-hwa was impressed. With whom? None other than herself.
A display ugly enough to cool even a thousand-year love.
Even after witnessing that desperate bug-wriggling from point-blank range, the thought that rose in Cheon Yo-hwa's heart was simple.
Cute.
Maybe it was just arithmetic. A thousand years? Her own love had already blown past that shelf life by tens of thousands of years.
Beaming, she crouched down.
She rested her elbows on her knees, propped her chin in both hands, looked down at the Undertaker like a sunflower, and said:
"Wow! Sim Ah-ryeon's boyfriend!"
"Khuuuuugh!"
"Guy with the OldManGoryeo villain!"
"Hhuuuuuuuugh!"
"Wait, so that means...! Wow, that is basically hearing, 'There goes Sim Ah-ryeon's husband'...!?"
"Wha! Whaat! Whaaaaaaat...!"
"To still go on loving such a pathetic man..."
"..."
"Teacher. Um."
The mood sank in an instant.
Cheon Yo-hwa was fully prepared to use the occasion to ram in a confession too.
It might seem strange that, after going to all the trouble of showing off a lunatic design, she was setting up a proposal in such an utterly moodless spot, but Cheon Yo-hwa's nose thought otherwise.
Life was all about timing.
As Cheon Yo-hwa saw it, this world was made out of a dating sim. At the very least, there was clearly some kind of barrier like that spread around the Undertaker.
Otherwise, why would she ever have lost to Yu Ji-won?
Power? Wealth? Cheon Yo-hwa held an overwhelming advantage in both.
And yet that dirt-poor domestic-abuse victim, serial-killer girl breadwinner had ended the spar with a single click.
"So, did you meet Mr. Matiz before you met me?"
It was proof that, in this world, victory and defeat were decided solely by how early you had formed a connection with the Undertaker.
Cheon Yo-hwa had absolutely no intention of ignoring a life lesson like that.
Especially when it was a lesson her past self had literally fired at her like a Spirit Bomb while destroying the universe. Even if she had wanted to ignore it, that would have been harder.
'Right now, Teacher... he just got injected with the memories of the bad endings. He's basically the same as having his personality updated.'
'In other words, the affection he builds from now on matters more than the affection the members have piled up so far!'
This was the full truth behind the scheme genius strategist Cheon Yo-hwa had been plotting since her previous life.
She was late. So she would forcibly line everyone back up on the same starting line.
What mattered here was the fact that the authority to manipulate Pandora's box rested with her.
Because if the Undertaker wanted to regain his memories, he absolutely had to stay near Cheon Yo-hwa, the owner of the time capsule.
Just like now.
Ah, farewell to the days of being nothing but a cackling cheetah.
At last, Cheon Yo-hwa smiled the smile of a racing hound. There was no one around. If she dropped the confession and pushed straight on to the next step, who would dare stop her?
Well, plenty of people would try. But this time, they were the ones due to taste the cheetah's humiliation.
"For a long time now, Teacher, I..."
And so Cheon Yo-hwa tried to cast the Imperius-class finishing spell called 'I've loved you.'
But her ambitious incantation failed halfway through.
The reason was simple. At some point, the other party had already stretched out a hand and covered her lips with his palm.
"...?"
Cheon Yo-hwa blinked.
She now understood exactly how a combining robot or a magical girl felt when interrupted in the middle of a transformation scene. It was deeply bewildering.
"Yo-hwa."
What was even more bewildering was what the Undertaker did next.
"I know what you are trying to say."
"..."
"Those memories I just recalled, maybe they are reality, and maybe they are illusions created by the simulation."
"..."
"Either way, I think it is too soon for the me of now to accept your feelings."
Cheon Yo-hwa felt as if her heart had dropped.
'N, no way.'
The truth was, all this time she had only been consciously running her happy circuits.
Strictly speaking, even if Cheon Yo-hwa had escaped the cheetah position, there was no guarantee that meant automatic victory.
There was another possibility.
'Am I... getting rejected?'
Yes.
Even after inheriting all the bad endings, there was still the possibility that the Undertaker would pass over her and choose one single person instead.
That possibility definitely existed too.
'N, no. No!'
'After I, after I gave up being human and dragged this fight all the way here!'
Cheon Yo-hwa's pupils shook wildly.
She wanted to scream, but she could not, because his palm was blocking her mouth.
"If I only said, wait for me, that would be me blurting things out without thinking about you. Yo-hwa, you are smart. You always have the habit of considering the worst possibility first."
"..."
"So that you will not doubt my words."
The Undertaker's face drew near.
Naturally, so did his lips.
His lips came closer and closer, then stopped with a faint sound. They had caught on the back of his own hand, the very hand that was covering the corner of Cheon Yo-hwa's mouth.
'Ah.'
She could not feel the touch of his lips.
Only the vibration.
An endlessly gentle knock passed through his hand from his lips.
"..."
Cheon Yo-hwa closed her eyes without realizing it.
Among the bad endings the time capsule had passed down, there were routes where the Undertaker ended up with Cheon Yo-hwa. Naturally, there had also been countless kisses.
Those memories went fumbling after the lips hidden beyond the palm.
If she cracked her eyes open just a little, she could feel his breath right in front of her.
When the hand-kiss, brief if brief and eternal if long, finally ended,
the Undertaker moved away.
"I am sorry. We finally came on this trip together, but this teacher needs to shut himself in his room for a while and take some time to sort out these memories. Will that be all right?"
"...Yes."
Cheon Yo-hwa answered.
Of course, if one wanted to describe things as close to the truth as possible, that sentence above needed revision. Cheon Yo-hwa had by no means performed the act of answering of her own free and independent will.
The answer had simply flowed out on its own.
And while answering, Cheon Yo-hwa stared up at the Undertaker with her mouth half open, like someone who had sat in a hot bath too long and melted half to pieces.
"Um... I'm actually really, really good at waiting."
Had there ever been a time when the tongue inside your mouth felt too hot? Cheon Yo-hwa felt exactly like that.
Seeing her face, the Undertaker smiled faintly.
"I haven't sorted it all out yet. But the things you put in the time capsule and showed me, every one of them is a precious memory and treasured recollection to me."
"Ah..."
"The things we failed to gather and left behind, you picked them up and brought them back. Thank you very much, Yo-hwa."
"No... that was my own greed too."
"Even helping someone out of goodwill is difficult, and yet you help me even through greed. Meeting you was one of the blessings of my life."
"..."
Cheon Yo-hwa's face turned red. The springs of the brain that usually hummed along so energetically were, for now, on strike.
They seemed to exchange a few more words after that, but she could not remember them well.
Only after a long time had passed since the Undertaker left the room did Cheon Yo-hwa feel as if her internal cooling system had started working again.
Blaaank...
She stared up at the ceiling for ages, then suddenly muttered, dear god.
'...What kind of monster did I just wake up?'
That monster possessed the experience of staying together until death with the owners of especially twisted and warped hearts on this planet, Yu Ji-won, Jeong Ye-ji, Sim Ah-ryeon, Oh Dok-seo, Noh Do-hwa, and the rest.
It was the arrival of the most terrifying experienced rookie.
* * *
"A, ah! Guild Leader!"
They ran into each other in the hotel hallway.
"I just finished washing up! And a second ago I swear I heard somebody calling out for me from somewhere, and th, that was you too, Guild Leader, right? In my room... huh?"
"I'm glad you're alive, Ah-ryeon."
"Huh?"
A hug.
"When this trip is over and we go back, let us raise a puppy."
"Huh..."
Pat, pat.
"Did it hurt?"
"No! N, not at all!"
"I'm sorry."
"Hheh heh... if anything, I liked it. I've experienced real death now, right? There was even somebody who cut off an ear just to experience something sort of like that. And getting strangled by you felt surprisingly nice too..."
"You would get along well with Noh Do-hwa."
"Huh? N, Noh Do-hwa was not the one getting strangled, she was the one doing the strangling, was she not?"
"If you want to observe the abyss, you have to accept being observed by the abyss as well. That is the way of the world."
"Hhuuugh...! Inspiration is suddenly flooding me! I need to hurry up and write an adults-only short about a character named Ye Do-hwa who looks suspiciously like Management Captain Noh Do-hwa and post it on SG Net... Ah. Right. It is gone now."
"Sometimes I wonder whether Do-hwa wasn't the ruler who tolerated freedom of speech most generously in all of human history."
Noisy chatter.
"Right. This Guild Leader is going to shut himself in his room for a few days and sort through some memories. Will you wait for me?"
"Yes! I will hold back!"
Leaping over the iron wall called Sim Ah-ryeon, who had just come back from bathing and was even wearing a swimsuit, with absurd ease,
the Undertaker sat alone on the floor of the guest room.
That lofty cross-legged figure looked exactly like a supreme master entering Closed Retreat.
"Obsession."
He muttered to himself from time to time.
There was no one around to hear anyway, and he wanted to focus calmly and wholly on the hwadu.
"What is obsession?"
At present, countless streams of inner demon were mingling inside his heart.
If one judged by memory alone:
Just now, he had exchanged the proposal of a lifetime with Noh Do-hwa in a wedding dress.
Just now, he had personally strangled Sim Ah-ryeon to death while she stood on the verge of being annihilated by Go Yuri.
Just now, the Saintess who had said she would stop time and go buy some ice cream for a moment never came back, and he was killed by Go Yuri.
Just now, just now, just now, just now...
'Which one of those is me?'
His memories had twisted and clouded together. If the heart were compared to a stream, then his heart right now was undoubtedly closer to muddy water.
'All of this is me.'
If someone had a status window ability and looked into the Undertaker's heart right now, they would recoil in horror.
[affection - Noh Do-hwa: MAX], [affection - Sim Ah-ryeon: MAX], [affection - Jeong Ye-ji: MAX], [affection - Oh Dok-seo: MAX], and so on. The affection he held for every member had broken through its limit one after another.
Normally, something like this was impossible.
No matter how much a person talked about equal love with their whole body, how could there possibly be no tilt in the heart depending on time and place?
And yet that bizarre event had happened.
The Undertaker was a romantic madman. Whenever he loved, he loved with complete sincerity, and in every bad ending, flawlessly, he lived only for the one before his eyes.
When those separately divided bad endings were gathered together...
the result was that his love for the leads of every ending had reached a perfect apex.
"What is obsession?"
He reversed the direction of the hwadu and chose to swim through the raging torrent of murk.
In other words.
"When would I become obsessed?"
He imagined it.
Imagination and memory were, in essence, the same.
Therefore, the Undertaker was as outstanding at imagining as he was at remembering, and the things he imagined had a texture almost equal to reality.
'What if Ye-ji dated someone other than me?'
Until just a day ago,
even if he had heard the news that the other person was dating someone else, not the slightest dark shadow would have fallen over the Undertaker's heart.
What darkness? On the contrary, the Undertaker would have been happier than anyone and supported and blessed them in every possible way, thinking that the comrade he treasured had finally found a partner.
But now?
"..."
Now that he had absorbed all those memories, of Ye-ji rejoicing and blushing by herself because she thought Time Stop had worked, of struggling to bring over drinking snacks she had never once made before in her life, of the two of them pressing their lips together alone on the beach?
'I can't...'
The Undertaker of now,
'I don't think I can allow it.'
Squirm, squirm.
Inside his heart, something.
'I'm to be excluded from Ye-ji's life?'
'Instead of seeing her every day whenever I want, I'll only see her sometimes. Or maybe not even sometimes, maybe I won't get to see her at all?'
'There will come a moment when I no longer know what food Ye-ji likes, what movies she likes, or where she wants to travel?'
Squirm, squirm, squirm.
Something swirled violently inside his heart.
'No.'
Darkness.
It was overwhelming darkness.
'No. I hate it. I would hate it even if I died. No, truly. I would rather die.'
'My life needs her. Her life needs me too. Is there any need for doubt there?'
'And even if someone raised a doubt, it would not be my mouth saying it, nor Ye-ji's. So what possible difference would it make?'
The dark inner demon raged wildly.
'There is none. And even if there is, I will make it so there is not.'
'Even if the world is destroyed, it is not more important than Ye-ji alone.'
And it was hardly just the Saintess.
In his cross-legged posture, the Undertaker carefully immersed himself in imagining the members with whom he had shared love in the bad endings promising their whole lives to other people.
If this method of Closed Retreat needed a name, it could be called the so-called Adoption Mind Art. Or perhaps the NTR Mind Art.
Immersed in the Adoption Mind Art, he ran through every member's case one after another.
'No.' 'Absolutely not.' 'No matter what happens.' 'I can never allow it.'
Only then
was the Undertaker able to face the darkness lurking inside his heart.
"...I see."
Only after an entire night had passed did he open his eyes and mutter:
"As expected, Seo Gyu was right. Love is accompanied by obsession. I am the same. I acted lofty, as if I had become some transcendent immortal, but was there not such deep obsession within me all along?"
It was such a distorted enlightenment that if Seo Gyu heard it from across the Pacific, he would have blurted out, Me?
But sadly, Seo Gyu was not in America. That was how puppet masters were. Their plans sounded grand enough, but in the end they always failed.
"I can never give up...!"
The Undertaker rose.
Usually, for a one-to-many relationship to exist, it was normal for the many to cling to the one.
Otherwise, there was no way a one-to-many relationship could have formed in the first place.
But here, now, perhaps for the first time in history, a miracle had been born.
"Not a single one!"
A reversal of obsession, or obsession flowing both ways.
In the formula of 1:many, the 1 also obsessed over the many, and what was more, obsessed over every single one of them so equally that it made no difference at all...
A truly insane equation had been born.
Responsibility for creating such a monster could probably be laid at the feet of Oh Dok-seo, Infinite Metagame, Cheon Yo-hwa, big-sis version, and Go Yuri, but it would not help much.
They would probably just keep repeating the same answer.
"I didn't know it would turn out like this..."
Alas.
People often described a male character obsessed with love as an obsessive man.
But if one called the monster born here and now an obsessive man, it would be an insult to obsessive men across the country, across all dimensions.
Therefore.
'From now on, I will live for all of you.'
Not an obsessive psycho-top, but just a plain crazy obsessive man.
And off he went.
Footnotes:
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