WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 15

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The Origin of the Biometric Terminal

The regressor glared at me sideways and spoke.

"Once you get a biometric terminal engraved, like it or not, you become bound to the military state. On top of being surveilled by them for your every move based on the data it collects, other countries will start watching you with suspicion too. In nations hostile to the military state, like the Empire or the Federation, you might even have agents tailing you."

I wondered what she was on about this time. Matching her crooked posture, I replied offhandedly.

"Unless you are the sort of person planning to defect to another country, that is hardly a concern."

The regressor glowered at me. I glowered right back.

Badmouthing the military state was fine. That country was a pseudo-state that threw even innocent people into the Abyss.

But badmouthing the biometric terminal I used? That I could not abide. I was not using the biometric terminal and clothing packet out of any loyalty to the military state. I used them purely because they were convenient!

"...On top of that, the biometric terminal is a weakness in and of itself. A magical device embedded in my body that can exert influence over my entire being. That is no different in essence from the slave brands they used in the old days, just shaped differently."

What? So she was calling me a slave? My mood soured in an instant.

I, too, had wished for the military state's downfall several times a day, and ever since being locked up in Tantalus, cursing the military state had become second nature. In terms of sheer variety of offenses, I could run circles around her several times over with my record from the back alleys. Fraud, gambling, embezzlement, blackmail, bribery, and so on!

And she was treating me like a slave of the military state? No, I was the military state's worst petty criminal! The nature of my crimes might differ from hers, but the sheer number far exceeded it!

I flared up in full and shot back.

"That is going too far. By that logic, what in this world is safe? You could look at a tight-fitting suit and call it a prison squeezing around me, look at a necktie and claim it is no different from a collar around my neck. By that reasoning, you would have to confiscate every fountain pen in the world, too. After all, the pen is mightier than the sword."

The regressor leaned back against her chair and fixed me with a piercing stare.

A stubborn hostility pricked at me. It was a chronic sort of hatred. Wearying, yet never fading, a dark shadow that had clung to her through all thirteen deaths. The grime steeped in the military state's shadow still occupied a corner of her being.

"...It is not as if you don't know."

The regressor sent me a frigid look laden with the emotions of several lifetimes. Her heart was so cold that it seemed it would never burn again.

That gaze sent a chill through me, and I muttered inwardly.

Military state. What on earth did you do to get on the regressor's bad side? You really ought to be more careful. The world is a vast place, and somewhere out there, individuals exist who can stand against entire nations. For example, a regressor who loops back infinitely.

So maybe ease up on the torture a little, treat people a bit better going forward....

"The very first thing the military state used the biometric terminal for was... torture."

A faint trace, a short and vivid recollection. Through mind reading, I caught the past the regressor had called to mind. Quite far back, her very first cycle. Those aged memories surfaced.

All I could feel from them was fragmented pain.

The only thought lodged in her mind was "It hurts." Two syllables, and nothing more. Like some wretched piece of performance art, those words blacked out the final page entirely. Alongside scars that had been worn ragged.

I swallowed hard.

Military state, it seems you are already past saving.

I needed to get out of this country as soon as possible. Adios. Once we parted ways, let us never meet again.

"A biometric terminal is an Archi Avatar, forcibly opened from the outside through alchemy and magic. A second body of my own flesh. If you pry the biometric terminal open by force and insert a specially manufactured toxic substance.... Heh, you can keep the sensation intact while delivering nothing but pain. Run an electric current through it and it spreads across the entire body in an instant. The iron needle only touches my wrist, and yet my toes curl up on their own. Hah. The military state did not only advance mundane technology. What developed fastest and most drastically was the technology for making weapons and... the technology for inflicting pain."

A dark tide of emotion rolled in. So heavy that the vampire lost her words, and even the normally oblivious Azzy pricked her tail up and looked around nervously.

The vampire remained silent.

Still, where her heart was leaning was plain to see. If her heart were expressed as a compass, the vampire's needle was pointing squarely at the regressor.

The regressor recalled the pain and repeated her thoughts with a hollow detachment.

"Everyone who was subjected to that torture died. I could not endure it either, and I killed myself. From that day on, I carried poison with me at all times so that I could die painlessly whenever I needed to. No matter how I think about it, I can never forgive them. The military state...."

I was screwed.

If I had known, I would never have impersonated an instructor. As if I could have read such painful memories!

No wonder she had hurled a blade at me from the start. Maybe I should count myself lucky to still be alive.

The regressor clenched her fists. Hard enough to draw blood, just to stop the trembling.

"Even knowing all this, do you still think the biometric terminal is necessary?"
"If this man sides with the military state even after knowing its darkness. Sooner or later, we will clash."

The regressor was sizing me up right now. If I made one careless move here, I would be branded an "enemy" and suffer for eternity. For the regressor, this cycle was not the end.

It was not as if telling her I was not actually an instructor would do any good at this point. She would never believe me.

In that case.

I lowered my voice. The cheerful tone pitched half a note higher than usual, I swapped out in a single instant as though changing a mask.

Within that abrupt shift, I reset my awareness. I severed the thread of conversation by force, snapping it clean. If a conversation were a living creature, this would have been its death. As though insisting none of what came before had any bearing, I erected a wall of silence to carve out the distance.

The end of one conversation, the beginning of the next.

Once I had readied myself, I unfolded a new dialogue.

"When the biometric terminal and the clothing packet were first created. That kind of application was never part of the design."

My voice was measured, as though gazing from somewhere very far away, yet carrying warmth within it.

Filling it with as much depth as I could, I recited an old tale.

"The person who first conceived of the clothing packet was an old woman with a daughter-in-law. A small-time seamstress who ran a modest fabric shop, this old woman watched with pity as her daughter-in-law, who had no talent with her hands, stitched and scrubbed until her fingers blistered. The daughter-in-law, once bright and lively, had a face that was now perpetually clouded with worry. But as someone who needed to carry on the family trade alongside the old woman's son, sewing and laundering were duties the daughter-in-law simply had to shoulder. The old woman wracked her brain for a way to help her daughter-in-law grow accustomed to the housework, but no good solution came to mind. Then, while she was still struggling, a certain noble placed an order with her."

A steep slope, a jagged outcrop of rock, when viewed from a distance, was nothing more than a delicate brushstroke adorning a gentle landscape. A story alone could never fully contain all the tears and suffering shed along the way.

Yet even capturing just a fraction of those emotions, a single story could stir someone's heart.

"That noble ordered the most lavish and beautiful garment the old woman could possibly make. The old woman was horrified when she heard the request. The thing, with all manner of ornaments stitched together, could hardly be called clothing by any measure. The old woman prostrated herself before the noble and answered."

My ability cannot produce such a garment.

Make it.

The fabrics and threads are tangled and twisted like dogs tearing at each other, and if I were to sew it as instructed, it would be impossible to put on or take off.

That is no matter. Make it.

The layers of fabric are so dense that not even the smallest child with nimble fingers could squeeze through the gaps, so if the garment tears or frays, it would be impossible to mend.

That is no matter. Make it.

Silks and cloth of fundamentally different natures are interwoven as though they were one, so it must never touch water once soiled, nor could it be cleaned even with pigment-infused holy water applied by brush.

That is no matter. Make it.

Why would my lord desire a garment that can neither be worn again, nor mended, nor cleaned?

It is meant for a single day, one day alone. When that day has passed, I will remove it, tear it apart, and bury it in the earth. Your concerns are unnecessary.

It would be a monstrosity unfit to be called clothing.

That is no matter. Make it.

I carried the dialogue on by myself, as though I had become a pansori singer. I wet my parched throat and continued.

"It was an eccentric commission from a whimsical noble. A request so unreasonable that no one in the world would readily accept it. She could have dismissed it as mere caprice or refused it as impossible. But for the old woman, who had been racking her brain for her daughter-in-law's sake, it was an inspiration that arrived like a miracle."

A daughter-in-law with no aptitude for needlework, whose laundering and sewing were thoroughly hopeless. The old woman had scolded her on the surface, but upon noticing the blood and water stains on the girl's sleeve, she had swallowed her tears in secret.

"If you only wore a garment for one day and discarded it, there would be no need to launder or mend it at all."

Seamless perfection was reached.

"It should have been impossible. It was meant to be impossible. Sewing a new garment every time one dressed, disassembling it through alchemy instead of removing it, how could that possibly work? There was no way it was easy. It must have been extraordinarily difficult. The old woman would have had to burn every last year of her remaining life. At an age when her eyes had grown dim enough to consider retirement, she must have taken up the needle once more. She possessed skill bordering on artistry, and yet her age was a cruel misfortune. Her trembling, weakened hands were pricked dozens of times over, and unlike her younger days, the wounds did not heal easily. There was not a single day her fingers were free of blood."

I stopped there and deliberately held my breath. Then I held up the small opening in my own body for them to see.

To show what was contained within this tiny hole.

"The true nature of the biometric terminal is a wound left by a needle. The true identity of the clothing packet is a garment sewn for a daughter-in-law. The military state simply made it a bit more... arcane-engineered."

Everything bad in this world was made by the military state.

But before the bad became bad.

It had been a far more trivial, far more precious sentiment.

I walked toward the regressor. As I did, I reverse-summoned the clothing packet. As though someone had pulled every loose thread across my entire body at once, the fibers unraveled strand by strand and converged on my left hand. Like a silkworm spinning its cocoon, like a spider wrapping its prey. The slender threads shifted from translucent to opaque and returned to a small bead.

By the time I had taken a few steps, I was back in my standard-issue shirt and shorts.

With a small pop, the instructor uniform packet ejected from the biometric terminal. I snatched it out of the air and stood before the regressor's desk.

"I cannot speak on behalf of the military state, and Trainee Shei, you cannot represent every person who has ever suffered. Even so, I will ask for forgiveness."

It was not something I had done. But because I, too, was part of it, I would ask forgiveness for my share alone.

With that intention, I took the regressor's hand. To find the biometric terminal.

The regressor watched what I was doing in silence.

"The sin of those who took the warmest achievement in the world and forged it in hellfire, I will..."

And so, where the biometric terminal should have been, I placed my finger on.

Huh, it was smooth. Far from any opening, all I felt was a pulse bouncing merrily beneath the skin.

Puzzled, I asked.

"What? You don't have a biometric terminal?"

Why not? That was strange. Her memories of being tortured had been vivid and raw.

Just as I was about to tilt my head, the regressor yanked her hand away in a fluster.

"W-wait. Hold on."

"The torture happened in my second cycle, when I was reckless and clueless.... This time around, I never got the procedure done in the first place."

Ah, right.

The torture had been in a previous cycle. I had gotten so absorbed in the thoughts and memories I was reading that I momentarily forgot. The memory had just been that intense.

Having grasped the situation, I stopped mid-sentence and looked at the regressor with a deeply awkward expression. The regressor, equally uncomfortable with the atmosphere, was struggling to look back at me.

Well. This made me look like a complete fool.

I had read her thoughts without permission, overempathized, set the whole mood up, all on my own. I had assumed the regressor herself had been tortured. Well, she had been tortured, technically. In a previous cycle.

But this cycle, she had been the one tearing things up on her end.

The situation had suddenly gotten complicated. The regressor had told a lie that could only be explained by regression, and I had come to know something that could only be explained by mind reading.

What was I supposed to do at a time like this? If my identity as a mind reader were exposed?

After a moment's deliberation, I flung my arms wide and shouted at the top of my voice.

"Liar! You spoke as though you had been tortured yourself! I thought the person who was tortured was you!"

Turning the tables and getting angry!

To make it abundantly clear that I had been deceived by the regressor, I stomped my foot hard and yelled.

"Tortured, my foot! You don't even have a biometric terminal! Huh? On this, this smooth wrist, how is anyone supposed to shove anything in!"
"Th-this is."
"Was showing off that important to you? Or were you trying to steal the painful scars of those who actually suffered and pin them on yourself as some kind of medal to decorate your life with? How shameless! First poverty gets stolen, and now torture and hardship too!"
"W-wait! I really did!"
"Really did?"

When I lifted my chin and pressed her, the regressor moved her lips with a look of sheer frustration. But she could not shape her thoughts into words fast enough.

"I still... can't reveal the fact that I can regress!"

Of course not. The regressor's ability to regress was the secret she had to keep hidden until the very end.

So how was she going to explain this? How did she plan to escape the corner I had backed her into?

The answer turned out to be surprisingly simple.

Crash!

The regressor launched herself bodily and fled. A physical escape, in the most literal sense.

Well. She had resorted to a method I had absolutely no way of countering. She got me there.

[That was quite an interesting story.]

The vampire, who had been listening quietly the entire time, seemed rather pleased with today's lesson and approached with a satisfied air.

[It was well worth breaking my seclusion for an outing. However, I have yet to hear the ending of your tale. So, what became of that old woman?]
"Ahaha."
[...Why do you laugh?]
"Oh, no reason. I was just puzzled by why you would call her an old woman. She lived in the modern era, at least. Even if she were alive today, she would not yet be two hundred. Far younger than Trainee Tyrkanzyaka. So instead of calling her an old woman, please call her a little girl. My, my. To think someone could be treated as a child by your standards...."

Crash!

The vampire smashed through the exterior wall of the building and vanished. She had fled.

Well. Just by running my mouth, I had driven one woman and one corpse to flee. Someone watching would surely be proud of me.

Come to think of it, that coffin was made of wood, so how in the world had it smashed through a concrete wall and come out unscathed? Common sense felt thoroughly violated.

"That is property damage, you know.... Ah, forget it. Whatever happens, happens."

It was not as if I were the military state's budget office. They would sort it out themselves. All I needed was a place to sleep.

"Now then...."

I walked toward Azzy, who was dozing on and off at the back of the classroom. As my footsteps drew closer, Azzy's tail started wagging first. Then her ears perked up, and she lifted her head, recognized my approach, and sprang to her feet.

The drool trailing from the corner of her mouth suggested she had been living the good life once again today. Dodging her attempts to wipe the slobber off on my hand, I spoke.

"Azzy. Did you pay attention during class?"
"Woof!"
"Can you tell me what today's lesson was about?"
"Woof!"
"So you are telling me not to expect anything at all?"
"Yeah!"
"...It is really annoying when you only speak human at times like this."
"Annoying?"
"Yes! I am annoyed, you mutt! At least try to listen!"
"Mutt?! Bark! Bark!"

Good grief. What was I going to do with this mutt.

She was incredibly gentle and followed humans well, but according to the future the regressor had seen, this one also transformed into a fearsome killer that tore humans apart.

I had no idea why that would happen, but it was a future that had to be prevented. I had thought that maybe drilling some common sense into Azzy might help, but.

"I must have been out of my mind. Even the person who coined the proverb about a dog learning to recite poetry after three years at a village school would balk if someone actually brought a real dog and asked why it was not getting the metaphor."

While I was scratching my head, Azzy stretched out her upper body and barked furiously.

"Woof! Woof woof! Woof!"

Azzy's gaze was fixed on my left wrist.

Could it be? Had she actually been listening to the lesson and realized what this was?

Half-doubting, I held my left wrist out to Azzy.

"What? Did you actually remember? That is right. Look. This is what is called a biometric terminal, and if you insert a clothing packet here..."
"Chomp!"
"GYAAAAAAAAAH!!"

Along with the sensation of sharp, hard canines digging into the opening in my body.

I blacked out on the spot.

1. Pansori (판소리) is a traditional Korean form of musical storytelling performed by a single singer accompanied by a drummer. The narrator compares his solo back-and-forth dialogue (playing both the old woman and the noble) to a pansori performance.

2. The proverb "서당 개 삼 년이면 풍월을 읊는다" literally means "A dog at a village school for three years will recite poetry," meaning even someone with no talent will pick things up through prolonged exposure. The narrator invokes it to lament that Azzy, being an actual dog, renders the metaphor useless.

3. "Adios" is used directly in the Korean text as a loanword for comedic effect, emphasizing the narrator's dramatic desire to flee the military state.

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