WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 151: Javert’s Iron and Justice (15)
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[You have successfully cleared Regret ‘Memory’.]
[All trauma has been cleared.]
The 90th floor had been cleared.
A woman’s story had finally come to a close after passing through unbearable hardship.
The passage written as the ending became a seam, remaining as a memory that linked recollection and imagination.
-So, Inspector.
-I hope you’ll live a little longer.
We whispered those words as though in a dream.
Afterward, we held each other for a long time.
“Urgh…”
Javert kept her face buried against my chest.
I quietly patted her.
Maybe it was because the air was as cold as winter.
The biting chill stung, and every time it did, we felt each other’s presence all the more desperately.
Javert had always felt cold, but at that moment, I could feel the heat of her body.
“Inspector.”
“…”
I pulled myself upright after having gone slack.
Whenever I exhaled, a brutal pain suddenly shot through the back of my neck.
Throb.
“…Urgh.”
Was it because I had died nearly three hundred times?
The aftereffects seemed to leave phantom pain crawling through me.
My neck had been seared by intense heat and broken by strangulation over and over again.
When my shoulders flinched, Javert noticed the change and her eyes wavered.
“S-Student Viktor…”
Her face stiffened like stone.
Did she think it was her fault?
“Are you all right? No, um, does anything feel strange…?”
Javert looked up at me anxiously.
Only then did I realize my mistake and fix my faltering smile.
I couldn’t make her worry right now.
She was as fragile as a glass bowl on the verge of shattering.
“I just got a little dizzy.”
“Don’t you feel any aftereffects, or something…?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Even if it was a loop, you died hundreds of times. There’s no way your body could be completely fin…”
“There really is no problem. I actually feel refreshed. I think it’s because you’re worried about me, Inspector.”
Javert looked utterly exhausted as she asked.
I had to repeat several times that I was fine.
Trying to ease the heavy mood, I changed the subject with a needless tease.
“Pfft… I never knew you had this side to you, Inspector. You’re quite an emotional person.”
I gently reached out and stroked her tear-stained cheek.
Her eyes were still red.
Maybe it was because I reacted as though it were someone else’s story.
Javert furrowed her brow and brought her face close to mine.
Tap.
Our foreheads bumped together.
Our lips were left dangerously close to touching.
Our breaths mingled across that small gap.
“…”
Javert tightly gripped my clothes.
Her watery eyes trembled.
Her expression was complicated.
Emotions were rushing through her, yet she seemed confused because she didn’t know what to say.
Gratitude, apology, sorrow… all kinds of feelings showed clearly through her eyes.
The faint sound of breathing only made the moment more tender.
“Inspector.”
I spoke almost in a whisper.
The air was cold.
Our breath bloomed in soft white clouds like flowers.
The flowers of two people intertwined, painting a single bouquet in the air.
Whoooosh.
That alone made the world bloom.
I wrapped my arms around her back.
Then I effortlessly scooped up her slender body.
“Hup.”
“…?!”
A princess carry.
Javert looked up at me in surprise.
Ignoring that, I started walking with a small smile.
“It’s not over yet, is it? There’s one last place we need to visit.”
“…Ah.”
There was something I had saved for this ending.
One gift, delivered through Purgatory.
Javert held her breath.
Creak.
An old wooden door stood before us.
As if retracing our steps, we grasped the doorknobs we had passed and turned them.
* * *
The very first regret we had cleared.
The Past, Recollections.
““…””
The boy and the woman returned there once more.
Night had faded, and morning had arrived.
Sunlight softly illuminated the winter air.
Black and red crossed the thickly piled snow.
Crunch, crunch.
Neither of them walked in a hurry.
Before long, Javert stopped in front of a mansion.
“…”
The home where she had lived as a child.
She walked slowly, as though sinking into memories.
As she passed each familiar sight, complicated feelings rose anew.
On the street.
At the gate.
In the garden.
In the hallway.
Everything brought the past to mind.
After taking a shallow breath, Javert stood before the final room.
‘The study…’
Her hand couldn’t bring itself to grasp the doorknob.
There was someone beyond the thin door.
She knew who it was.
Javert hesitated for a long time, then finally opened the door as though making up her mind.
Creeeak.
The room was brightly lit.
Javert’s gaze then met that of an elderly woman.
“…”
“…”
Silence settled between them for a moment.
Had she been in the middle of reading?
The elderly woman held a thick book in her hand.
Her blue eyes only stared blankly at the woman who had suddenly appeared.
‘What if she doesn’t recognize me?’
That worry was proven pointless.
A mother would recognize her child at a glance, no matter how much she had changed.
“Javert…?”
The elderly woman murmured in a daze.
It was understandable.
Her daughter, now fully grown, had suddenly appeared before her.
Serian seemed flustered at first, but soon spoke as if she understood the situation.
“…You’re not the Javert of this time.”
The elderly woman’s response was calm.
Javert could only look at her mother.
A voice she had longed for.
Her mother looked exactly as Javert remembered.
Her chest suddenly tightened, and fragile emotions blocked her throat.
‘What should I say first?’
There were too many things she wanted to say, and too many things she needed to say.
There were stories she wanted to tell her.
There were things she wanted to ask her.
She had always imagined a moment like this, practicing what she would say over and over.
‘What was I going to say…?’
But now that it had become real, her mind went blank.
The sentences she had prepared shattered into pieces she could no longer make sense of.
She went rigid.
“Javert.”
“…”
It was the elderly woman’s voice that woke her.
A faint smile rested on her lips.
“Is there something you want to tell me?”
“…”
Javert managed a nod.
The elderly woman gave a small laugh and patted the seat beside her on the sofa.
She was telling Javert to sit beside her.
Javert hesitated for a moment before following her mother’s invitation.
That comforting scent and warm body heat seemed to seize her heart.
“Ahem.”
Viktor stepped back into the corner of the study so the mother and daughter could speak comfortably.
A wrinkled hand stroked Javert.
Her red hair fell into a gentle disarray.
Serian silently looked over her grown daughter.
“You’ve grown so much, my daughter.”
“…Yes.”
“How old are you now?”
“…I’m twenty-three.”
“You’re an adult. You’re from nine years in the future.”
“…”
“You got awfully blunt when you grew up, didn’t you? You’re not my innocent little Javert anymore. Mom might be a little hurt.”
“I’m sorry. I try not to be, but I just… can’t seem to get the words out.”
Javert bit her lip as if holding back tears.
But that defense was too fragile to withstand even a few words.
“You still cry easily, though.”
“…”
Javert forced herself to calm her breathing.
There was something she had to say.
Once this attempt was complete, the 90th floor would no longer be accessible.
So even if it wasn’t real, Javert wanted answers from the person before her.
-The 90th floor of Purgatory is a strange place.
-It’s certainly fake, but it isn’t a place made entirely from empty fantasies.
-The recreations here are closer to copies than creations.
She remembered what Viktor had told her.
-A near-perfect rate of reproduction.
-Purgatory learns information from the world, accumulates it endlessly, and constructs scenes from it.
-It reproduces every detail without exception, including a person’s personality, habits, and speech.
In other words, a copied personality.
She couldn’t tell the real person anything, but she could at least hear an answer to a question.
If this personality had been reproduced perfectly, it would give the same answer the real person would have given.
“…Mother.”
There was something Javert wanted to ask.
She quietly cleared her throat.
“There’s something I need to say.”
“Speak freely, dear.”
Javert laid everything bare.
What had happened in the future.
Her mistake, the elderly woman’s death, and the life that had fallen apart afterward.
She spoke with suppressed emotion, as though carefully reliving every scene.
Her voice gradually grew watery, trembling as though tears might spill at any moment.
‘No.’
She could not allow herself to cry.
She was a sinner.
Javert clenched her fists and swallowed back the rising emotions.
After she had finished telling everything, she faced the elderly woman.
“Mother.”
There wasn’t even the slightest trace of agitation in Serian.
Only quiet sorrow could be seen in her eyes.
Javert took a deep breath.
“There’s one thing I want to ask.”
“Yes, my daughter.”
“You have to answer honestly. No lies, and no sparing my feelings.”
“Your mother only speaks from her heart. I’ll always do that for you, my daughter.”
A request for honesty.
Then Javert finally voiced the question she had kept buried for so long.
“…At the very end.”
A winter night returned to her mind.
You, blooming red as you closed your eyes forever.
“At the moment you died… did you resent me…?”
Her mother had only said that it was all right.
She had said it wasn’t Javert’s fault, that they had simply been unlucky.
“Did you hate me?”
She knew.
Her mother wasn’t someone who resented or hated others.
Perhaps this was only a question Javert had left behind out of guilt.
That one question had gnawed away at her for her entire life.
Now was the moment to face it.
Whatever answer came back, Javert was ready to accept it.
“Javert.”
“…Yes, Mother.”
Javert looked as if she might break.
But the elderly woman didn’t answer her daughter’s question.
Rustle.
She simply pulled her slender daughter into her arms.
Javert helplessly collapsed into that warm embrace.
“Of course not.”
Those short words made the tears she had been holding back burst free.
The mother let her daughter cry and whispered.
Her voice was endlessly gentle.
“Your mother could die any number of times. For you, my daughter, I would make the same choice over and over.”
“…”
“You lived. You grew into such a wonderful adult. That alone makes your mother as happy as if she had the whole world.”
“…Hk, sob.”
The sound of weeping.
The elderly woman quietly patted her daughter’s back.
Only tender words echoed through the study.
“You’ve suffered so much. It was hard, wasn’t it, my daughter?”
“M-Mom…”
“Thank you for growing up so well. Thank you for coming to see me like this. Your mother is happy. I mean it.”
“I’m sorry, Mom… Hk, sob. Because of me, because I ruined everything…”
“It’s all right. Your mother is all right.”
The frozen knot in her heart melted away.
The thorn buried deep in her heart was pulled free.
That moment felt like a miracle.
They forgot it was fake, and for a moment, it became real.
“Your mother would always love you, my daughter. That will never change.”
Javert Droit.
Only after nine years could she finally receive forgiveness from the scar that had wounded her deepest.
Footnotes:
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