WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 482: That Woman D IX
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* * *
If you asked who in the Regression Alliance could really hold their liquor, about two names came to mind.
First, Dang Seo-rin.
She'd always been a good drinker. No, she enjoyed anything at all, as long as there was something to eat or something to drink.
One reason Busan's food scene managed to flourish even amid the ruin of the world was that the city's ruler, Her Excellency the Great Witch, was forever smacking her lips and going, "Isn't there some new place worth eating at around here?"
After her came... Noh Do-hwa.
Anyone in the know knew it well. Noh Do-hwa loved wine to an absurd degree. She'd dug out a separate wine cellar in the underground bunker just to safeguard her collection, which said it all.
If Dang Seo-rin's drinking style was broad, savoring not just the liquor but the whole boisterous mood of drinking and chattering with others, then Noh Do-hwa was the exact opposite.
The only drink she cared for was wine.
She was even the truest loner of the age, insisting on eating alone and drinking alone.
Of course, now and then Lee Ha-yul got summoned as Noh Do-hwa's drinking partner.
But considering that Lee Ha-yul herself was, by her very nature, physically incapable of being anywhere near "boisterous," you could guess just how much Noh Do-hwa loved quiet.
The food industry of end-of-the-century Busan had developed to suit the palates of these two power-holders.
Yet the two of them rarely crossed paths, thanks to that "difference in taste."
And so.
"Care for a drink...?"
When Noh Do-hwa abruptly made that offer in the middle of the trip, Dang Seo-rin was completely caught off guard.
"Huh? Uh, uhh... Huh?"
The first "huh" was for glancing around. Naturally, Dang Seo-rin assumed she'd been inviting Lee Ha-yul, not her.
The final "huh" came after confirming there was nobody around, let alone Lee Ha-yul.
"Me?"
Having proven the strange truth that most communication in Korean gets handled with a single "huh," Dang Seo-rin pointed at herself with her index finger.
"Is there anyone here besides you...?"
Noh Do-hwa replied with the exact same face as always. Which was to say, the expression that everything in the world was a bother and humanity was contemptible and detestable.
"Or what, you don't want to, by any chance? If you don't want to, I really don't mind being turned down..."
"No! I'd love to! Totally love to! Let's drink together, Do-hwa unni!"
"I'd be so happy if you'd toss that 'Do-hwa unni' title into a recycling bin somewhere..."
And so.
Dang Seo-rin found herself going through with the event known as "drinking alone with Noh Do-hwa," a penalty game for every human alive except the Undertaker and Lee Ha-yul.
The venue was a nighttime swimming pool. Cheon Yo-hwa had rented this out in its entirety too, and a dedicated bartender had even been stationed at the bar set up along one side of the pool.
'Whoa. Now I'm getting nervous for no reason.'
Noh Do-hwa, meanwhile, was calmly chatting with the bartender like an android that hadn't had tension built into its blueprints in the first place.
"A sweet martini, please..."
"Yes. A sweet martini. Coming right up."
"Ah," Dang Seo-rin quickly added her own order.
"I'll have a Manhattan!"
"A Manhattan. Coming right up."
To come to a cocktail bar and order a Manhattan for her very first glass meant, for Dang Seo-rin, that she needed to get a little drunk tonight.
Honestly, even though she'd managed to call the woman "Do-hwa unni," it was still awkward to drink face to face with her stone sober...!
"..."
"..."
A silence like death flowed between them. Maybe she really should have dragged Lee Ha-yul along after all, Dang Seo-rin regretted a little.
The bartender didn't toss any fuel onto the conversation either. He'd probably been told beforehand by his employer Cheon Yo-hwa not to disturb the two of them.
Normally, right around now, Dang Seo-rin would have skillfully loaded up the insider-exclusive unique skill [Small Talk], but...
'Ugh. No matter how I look at it, Do-hwa unni's the type who really hates small talk.'
A true insider read the other person before using their skills.
So Dang Seo-rin waited quietly for the host who had summoned her to this deadly drinking session to speak first.
Before long the cocktails arrived.
'Ah. Delicious.'
At the faint, barely-there hint of sweetness in the cocktail's aroma, Dang Seo-rin's happiness recharged at once.
While alcohol slowly seeped into her heart, distilling out her true feelings, a voice came from beside her.
"Have you heard the news...?"
"Hm? News? What news?"
"That Undertaker fellow. Apparently he opened the time capsule yesterday and absorbed all his memories. Just like us."
"Huh?"
The tipsiness rushed straight up to her face.
"H-how? Wasn't Pandora's box closed forever?"
"That was a lie, apparently. Word is unni can basically play with it however she pleases..."
'Cheon Yo-hwa, that little...?!'
Dang Seo-rin was stunned. Don't tell me she'd squeezed out a lie at the very moment they'd all opened the box together on the lawn?
'You really can't let your guard down around this one! Right to the very end!'
Truly the cunning, the dankness of a strategist who deceives friend and foe alike. Fitting for the Miko who handled the yin within Taeguk[1].
"I had originally intended to say screw it and not care whatever choice that human made, but..."
Noh Do-hwa tilted her cocktail glass.
"The memories of me. What was it called, a bad ending? Whatever. If he's regained those memories, that's a different story..."
"U-uhh?"
"That man is mine."
"..."
The air went as still as the surface of the pool, which no one but the two of them was allowed to enter anymore.
Dang Seo-rin looked at the woman across from her.
A few strands had slipped loose from her tied-up hair, draping over the side of Noh Do-hwa's face like wisteria blossoms.
She'd thrown a light white cardigan over her shoulders, on top of her swimsuit, and it resembled the doctor's coat that was Noh Do-hwa's symbol so closely that it suited her oddly well.
She was a pretty person.
"I married him."
"..."
"If it's a marriage and a vow that only my side remembers, one-sided, I have no intention of forcing it. There's nothing wrong with burying it in memory and living on forever. Well, you could say he's practically a different person, couldn't you?"
"..."
"But if he's remembered, yes. If he's remembering, that's a different story. From now on, no matter what happens, I will not let that man go..."
That this pretty person.
Had gouged out the eyes of the one she loved and demanded that he look at no one but her, that much was beyond any way for Dang Seo-rin to know.
Even so, that this woman's love would be terrifying, she could grasp in full without ever having lived through it.
"And so."
"..."
"Would you kindly piss off?"
"Don't want to."
It was an immediate answer.
Only then did Noh Do-hwa turn to look at her. The corner of her mouth was twisted strangely. Her gaze was like glaring at a corpse already dead.
Even so, Dang Seo-rin looked straight back at her without so much as a flinch.
"I am never going to give up."
"Even if that man and I enjoyed some seriously deranged days together...?"
"Yeah. It's a different cycle anyway. A bad ending story, right? And on top of that, a half-baked memory you took in by converting an imagined scenario Cheon Yo-hwa ran in a simulation into memory."
"..."
"Is it even certain that really happened? Me, on the other hand, I'm certain. Was it the 40th cycle, or whatever cycle it was. Anyway, the first time the Undertaker subjugated the Meteor Shower. I heard he kissed me. My first kiss."
Dang Seo-rin gladly took the bait.
She'd also calculated in an instant how the other woman would fire back about this. As if one glass of liquor would turn her into an idiot.
A laugh slipped out between Noh Do-hwa's lips, a soft "heh."
That was ominous. Before that breath could even shape itself into words, it felt to Dang Seo-rin as though a burn had already been seared into her chest in advance.
"That would be Hecate, not you."
"..."
"Because that man treats you as both Dang Seo-rin and Hecate, do you reckon you've actually become that yourself? Is the standard that man? Then like I said, since both of us have regained our memories, the same goes for me, doesn't it...?"
"..."
"Well. Or is it that, drenched in memories that crawled up from your subconscious after subjugating the reincarnator, you reckon you've inherited Hecate? Hmm. But if you put it that way, this memory of mine and that memory of yours seem to be equally half-baked."
"..."
"Which is it?"
Oh. To think such a person.
A person who could drive a knife this casually, this deep, into another's heart.
The Undertaker had been able to love her.
So it was something even a person like this could do.
This thing called love.
"You..."
"From unni to you. The way you address me keeps flipping around. Well, personally I prefer this one."
"...You. You really are vicious. So what is it you want? To chase everyone else off and live alone with the Undertaker? Don't tell me you mean to do that to Ha-yul too?"
"Yes. Obviously."
"My goodness. They're father and daughter! Both of them turn miserable if they're apart! You say you love him, and you don't even wish for the Undertaker's happiness?"
"Yes."
"..."
"In case you misunderstand, let me say this. It's not as if I particularly wish for that man's unhappiness."
Noh Do-hwa's eyes smiled.
"I only wish for both his unhappiness and his happiness to originate entirely from me. The oath of marriage, isn't that what it's about?"
"You're insane..."
Dang Seo-rin groaned.
She had no choice but to groan.
"...Until now I thought Sim Ah-ryeon was the craziest of all our members. Guess not. Sim Ah-ryeon, at least... at least, she wouldn't regard the Undertaker as her possession."
Sim Ah-ryeon merely loved beautiful things.
The name "Undertaker" had been inscribed at the very pinnacle of that beauty; it wasn't that she'd drawn the concept of beauty out of the Undertaker himself.
A matter of order.
The former Management Captain before her, by contrast, was saying she would draw every valuable thing in this world out of the Undertaker and the Undertaker alone.
Dang Seo-rin could grasp it intuitively.
"...Now I see why you're the only one among us who never fell to corruption. You were already crazy. You're a crazy person. Which is exactly why there wasn't even a gap for an anomaly to seep into."
It was a strange thing.
In a world stained with anomalies, Noh Do-hwa should have been the most human of humans.
And yet, in this present world where humans had returned as masters... Noh Do-hwa was the closest thing to a monster.
Just how absurd were the people the man she'd come to love had gathered as companions, she felt it cut to the bone all over again.
"...Whether you love the Undertaker or not, that's not my problem."
"Hmm."
"Honestly. When I went on a date with the Undertaker along the sea road yesterday, I was going to confess."
Yes.
While strolling the wharf, Dang Seo-rin had been prepared to accept a life spent forever with the other members, so long as just a promise along the lines of "he'd like me best" got engraved into her heart.
It wasn't as if she had some grand plan. More like, the Undertaker can handle it however he likes, and if handling it however he likes doesn't work out, she'd figure it out then.
But.
"...If I leave someone like you alone, everything's going to end up a mess again before I know it. The chaos you'd cause is on a level Sim Ah-ryeon can't even compare to."
"That one just now stung a little..."
"And hand the reins over to Cheon Yo-hwa instead? No way. The unni's far too untrustworthy, and the younger sister's far too emotional. Ye-ji? She's got way too much sentiment, and she's far too kind. Leaving it to Dok-seo or Ha-yul would be insane."
"So you'll be the Captain, then?"
"Yeah. Originally I figured I'd try to work something out with you, but I can't trust you."
Dang Seo-rin felt a sense of duty.
And whether it was when she'd first tried to take over the flower shop from her family, or when the Korean Peninsula had collapsed completely and only Busan remained, Dang Seo-rin was the type who sublimated a sense of duty into her reason for being and her purpose in life.
That instinct, which had gone off a couple of times before, sounded its siren alarm without reservation this time too.
'It has to be me! Everything's doomed otherwise!'
At Dang Seo-rin, exuding a tragic heroism about standing in the heavens herself, Noh Do-hwa scoffed.
"Will it work out...?"
"Will what."
"Everyone living it up, laughing ha-ha and ho-ho. Well, I can't imagine the human heart being so soft and round."
"Wow."
"Go ahead, do as you please. But a catastrophe is bound to happen, plain as day, and when it does I'll kick back and amuse myself."
"Wooow."
Dang Seo-rin was genuinely impressed.
"You, don't tell me right now... you're going to believe we'll fail, and wait for the aftermath of that failure? Again? Aaagain? After pulling that crap, waiting all the way until the Undertaker dropped into a bad ending?"
"There's a fallacy in the word 'wait.' Whatever you do or don't do, I'll enjoy what there is to enjoy with that man. So rather than wait, 'look forward to' would be the correct expression..."
"Seriously. Wow, seriously. You're cold-blooded. You. How about you just go ahead and admit you lost the bet you made with the Undertaker?"
"I admitted it. A while ago. But somehow, the scenario where the bad ending succeeded has now entered my head too... In that case, even tallying wins and losses, it's one win, one loss. Practically a draw, isn't it?"
"..."
"A draw means a rematch. It'll be a fun rematch. Try running things well. See if you can."
Dang Seo-rin clicked her tongue.
"Forget it. If I keep talking with you... with Do-hwa unni, my own head's going to go strange too. I'm leaving."
There was a sarcastic remark at the address that had flipped yet again, but Dang Seo-rin paid it no mind.
Because she stood up at once. To head back to her room.
'Seriously, seriously, seriously, seriously!'
Treading over the hallway carpet, Dang Seo-rin fumed all on her own.
'Please, Undertaker! Couldn't you have hung out with some normal kids?!'
'...If they'd been normal kids, they wouldn't have been so powerful as awakeners, I guess.'
'Couldn't you have just gone all lovey-dovey, all in love with me and me alone?! I saved you, didn't I!'
'...But wait, I was an Outer God. If you'd only hung out with me, the universe would've ended.'
'Do-hwa unni isn't even a particularly strong awakener! So why drag in human trash like that too?!'
'...She's similar to Ha-yul, I guess. Ha-yul would be sad living apart from the Undertaker too. And Do-hwa unni, life would have no meaning for her now without the Undertaker either.'
'Why are there seriously no normal people around at all?!'
'...Well, that's because the Undertaker himself is abnormal.'
This was the problem with being a rational person.
Even when she tried to vent her anger outward, her head had already produced counterarguments against herself, completing a miraculous self-sufficiency system.
"...Haah."
At a repeat sign too large to swallow down alone, Dang Seo-rin sighed and sighed.
'I give up. I left the drinking half-finished too. I'll just go to the Undertaker, have a drink, and talk a bit.'
That was when it happened.
"Dang Seo-rin."
"Hm?"
A familiar voice rang out in air stripped of noise the way only hotels manage. She raised her head, and the Undertaker was walking toward her, step by step.
"Ah, Undertaker!"
The moment she saw his face, her stomach, which had been groaning and aching, loosened right up, ahh. A handsome face came with a built-in defrost function.
Maybe it was because she was so happy to see him.
"Perfect timing! I was just drinking and stuff, but it got cut off halfway and it was really no fun. Let's drink together in your room, you and I..."
"Drink?"
Dang Seo-rin didn't immediately catch that his expression and tone carried a shadow unlike his usual.
"Who did you drink with?"
"...Hm?"
"True enough, a trip abroad. An ultra-luxury trip at that, so of course you could go meeting other people. But it was only for a single day."
"...Hm hm? Hm?"
Step.
The Undertaker came right up to her face. The whole time, nothing but question marks kept firing off from Dang Seo-rin's expression.
'Hmm? Something, something... isn't the mood a little different?'
When she looked closely. No. He'd already come right up to her face and cornered her against the hallway wall, so she'd been forced to look closely whether she liked it or not.
'There's a bit of a shadow under his eyes too. Huh, and his dress shirt's slightly undone...?'
If the white doctor's coat was Noh Do-hwa's symbol, then a neat appearance anytime, anywhere was the Undertaker's emblem.
'Did he, did he go drinking like me too?'
But whether her nose was numb or for some other reason, no trace of alcohol whatsoever could be detected from the Undertaker's body as he lowered his head to envelop her.
"You're a free-spirited soul. Left alone, you could fly off anywhere you pleased, however you pleased. I know that well."
"Uh... huh?"
Not even twenty seconds after they'd met, a strange mood was hanging in the air.
Feeling she ought to say something, Dang Seo-rin opened her mouth, breaking out in a nervous sweat.
"Um, look. I don't really get what you mean. Anyway, you've got it wrong, Undertaker. It's not like I met some total stranger..."
"Mm."
Right onto her parted lips, the sound of his breath layered over.
"...?!"
Dang Seo-rin's pupils dilated rapidly. She tried to let out a muffled moan, mm, but even that, before she knew it, her hand had been clasped tight in the Undertaker's hand.
She couldn't move in the slightest.
"...!!"
It wasn't only her hand that was caught.
The tip of her chin. As if he wanted to kiss her even a fraction closer, he'd lightly taken hold of her chin, adjusting the angle at which their breaths flowed together.
A moment that felt like eternity.
In Dang Seo-rin's head, countless question marks and exclamation marks crossed back and forth in turn.
Was she flustered? Of course. Was it a little unfamiliar, this being so different from usual? Maybe.
But just one day earlier, Dang Seo-rin had nearly fired off the proposal of a lifetime, and even before that she'd had countless, truly countless, will-they-won't-they moments with the very man before her now.
The fluster and unease settled, and his breath and touch came to the fore.
In the middle of the red carpet.
Just as the Undertaker had taken her hand and chin without realizing it, before she knew it, without anyone realizing it, Dang Seo-rin too had wrapped her arms around the Undertaker's waist.
"..."
"..."
Their lips drew apart. A little.
It was the perfect distance for gazing into his eyes, so Dang Seo-rin saw. And felt.
'Is he feeling anxious?'
Who? The Undertaker.
'Why?'
Because he hadn't seen her face for a day. Because in the meantime, she might have spent time with someone he didn't know about.
'No way.'
This man, who was always composed and as carefree as though he stood one step removed from the secular world, and yet, despite all that, who'd been bound to the secular world more than anyone and had tried to save people.
'The Undertaker? Him, the Undertaker?'
Dang Seo-rin looked up into his eyes once more. In the pitch-black darkness, only she was reflected.
'He was... fixated on me? Just now?'
Thump.
'The Undertaker is fixated on me.'
Her heart went all ticklish.
In this very moment, Dang Seo-rin newly became aware of a preference of hers that she'd never once noticed across all those tens of thousands of years, whether she'd been an Outer God or a human.
'It's not... bad.'
It seemed that she.
'No, I actually like it!'
It seemed she liked it when the person she loved fixated on her like mad.
* * *
The night had flowed on for a while.
Even though Dang Seo-rin had slipped away, the drinking didn't break up. From the start, for Noh Do-hwa, liquor had been something to drink alone.
And so, taking her time, now that she'd even gone and secured a bartender to use exclusively, Noh Do-hwa ran through a full course of cocktails.
The flavor wasn't as deep as wine, but cocktails had their own way of being enjoyed too.
Freely changing the strength and taste of her cocktails, Noh Do-hwa savored the night thoroughly.
And then, on the way back to her room.
"Management Captain Noh Do-hwa."
"Mmmmm...? Oh. Who do we have here. Heh. The day before yesterday, or is it the day before the day before yesterday now? The regressor fellow whose wedding I officiated, donning a wedding dress and all, isn't it."
"You smell of alcohol."
"Alcohol? Aaalcohol? Ah, well. I had a bit. Having money sure is convenient. I'm seriously thinking I might just go mooch off that Cheon Yo-hwa's place from now on."
"Who did you drink with?"
In that moment.
"...?"
Even dead drunk, Noh Do-hwa sensed something ominous. Her vision, this, sloshing around with the liquor, wasn't seeing too well.
'What is this?' 'Something.' 'I'm getting,' 'a seriously moronic feeling here?'
Still, Noh Do-hwa was Noh Do-hwa. The seasoning of her days reigning as the absolute power of the Korean Peninsula hadn't gone anywhere.
Putting the part of her brain not yet drowned in alcohol into maximum operation, she tried to read the expression on the man's face before her.
Fortunately, Noh Do-hwa had a very good read on the human called the Undertaker.
She'd known him well to begin with, but in a world destroyed by a bad ending, the two of them living together through thick and thin, eyes gouged out, marriage held, she'd come to know him even better. After all, he was her husband.
That instinct of hers was whispering.
"Who did you drink with, Noh Do-hwa?"
That this son of a bitch was up to something weird again.
Footnotes:
[1] Taeguk (the Korean form of the taijitu) is the red-and-blue swirl on the South Korean flag, dividing cosmic forces into yang (the active, bright half) and yin (the passive, dark half); calling her the one who "handled the yin" casts her as the dark, concealing counterpart of the pair.
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