WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 42

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How to Hide a Corpse

Night, with the day lights out. In a darkness where not a single ray could penetrate, only the faint glow of the night lights remained to mark the world. The prison corridor, sealed against every source of light, was nothing but pitch-black outlines, as though someone had laid carbon paper over reality and pressed it flat with a pencil. Dark enough that you could walk straight into a wall without ever seeing it coming.

Through that darkness, a man moved, each footstep swallowed whole.

He carried something large, wrapped in a bundle. From the gaps in the knots, grotesquely bent arms and legs jutted out at angles no normal human body could produce, angles only possible if the limbs had been fastened somewhere vertebrate anatomy never intended.

Or if the arms and legs had simply come clean off.

Carting around a body in pieces like that, the way he moved could only mean one thing. Someone trying to hide a corpse. He deserved to be seized on the spot and made to answer for it, but the veil of darkness covered not just his form but his crimes. What you can't see isn't a sin. Under the cover of night, with no one to stand in his way...

"Woof? What's that?"

"Shh. Azzy. Go away. It's a surprise gift."

"Woof? A gift? For me?"

"Unlikely."

...without any person standing in his way, he tucked the dismembered body away in a hidden spot.

"Woof!"

"Don't you dare dig it up! Hey! It's not food! Bad girl!"

He hid it. He did, in the end.

Another peaceful day. With the trainees assembled, I took my place at the chalkboard. I reached for the chalk only to find the box completely empty, and turned to the regressor.

"We're all out of chalk. Shei trainee. Could you grab some from the cabinet behind you?"

"Why does it have to be me?"

"You're right next to it. Please."

"Tch. Fine, since you're asking."

The regressor sauntered toward the cabinet. I counted her steps in silence.

One. Two. Three. Now.

Right on cue, she yanked the cabinet door open.

Out tumbled a body, all grotesquely bent limbs and twitching crimson muscle. The face, tongue lolling out in a convincing imitation of death, met the regressor's eyes for just a moment before beginning a slow, deliberate collapse in her direction. Arms and legs in pieces and all.

No warning, no context. Just a bizarre corpse, appearing from nowhere. A sight that would floor anyone with ordinary nerves.

The regressor met it without blinking.

"Heavenly Mirror."

She might as well have been sidestepping a gust of wind. Expression locked flat, she pushed the falling body aside with one hand, and...

'AAAAAAHH--!'

...with only her expression flat.

Beneath that composed exterior, the regressor was screaming. When the detached right arm started wiggling on its own, she shuddered and shoved it back inside with barely contained urgency.

'What on earth...! What is this?! Why is something like this inside the cabinet?!'

Inwardly she was losing her mind. Not a trace of it reached the surface.

The Heavenly Mirror, the regressor's energy technique, was the art of carving responses so deeply into the body that they fired in any situation, reflexively. It activated even in moments of genuine shock. Her heart was hammering, but the body that had endured so much training held completely still, maintaining not an unshakeable will but an unshakeable form.

She glanced back at me. Voice perfectly even.

"There's a corpse in here. Hey. Know anything about this?"

'...When did a corpse end up here? Don't tell me it's been here since we first arrived? That's... a little unsettling.'

She gathered herself fast. What a disappointment. I'd expected a stronger reaction. That was supposed to be my jack-in-the-box moment, and it got me nothing.

Swallowing my frustration, I played innocent.

"Oh dear. When did that get in there?"

Azzy's ears shot straight up and she rose to her feet.

"Woof! I know! Yesterday--"

"Silence! A beast dares interrupt while a person is speaking?!"

I clamped the witness's mouth shut and waved a hand like it was nothing.

"Looks like someone hid this corpse in the cabinet. We'll have to investigate. Shei trainee, could you bring it out here for a moment?"

"This thing?"

"You're right next to it. Please. You're not squeamish about corpses, are you?"

"That's true."

She hauled the body out without ceremony. To look at her, she hadn't been startled in the slightest. Her inner state, well, it was nearly the same.

The mind follows the body, so they say. Without that Heavenly Mirror she might have made quite an undignified scene. What a shame.

"There."

The regressor laid out the immortal's dismembered pieces. I crouched down and began fitting the limbs back together right in front of her. For dramatic effect I'd pried the tongue loose the night before; I tucked it back in. The right arm had been bound finger by finger in case it caused trouble; I undid all that and set it back in place.

As the puzzle came together and a human shape emerged piece by piece, the regressor's gaze went still.

'It wasn't just a corpse. Muscular, powerfully built, dark skin... that's definitely the immortal.'

There it is.

Hiding the immortal in the cabinet hadn't been purely about startling the regressor. That was a side effect at best.

According to the regressor's memories, this immortal had apparently survived every single previous cycle to the end. Fitting enough, for an immortal.

In the previous cycle, the regressor, digging for information, had crossed paths with this person and learned the rough outline of what had happened in Tantalus. Wanting more precise details, she had then personally infiltrated this place.

That was as far as I could read. The regressor's recollection had ended there, so whatever the immortal had told her, and whatever had actually unfolded in that earlier cycle, remained out of reach. It would have been convenient to read the memories of past cycles directly, but for some reason I could only access them through the regressor's recollections in the first place.

Which meant that to find out why I had died, I needed to bring this immortal before the regressor. Any small clue might shake something loose from her head.

The regressor's tone shifted, a shade more serious.

"This immortal, has he been here the whole time?"

"Not sure."

"He shouldn't have been. Injuries that severe would have bled. Tyrkanzyaka should have noticed."

The vampire answered that question herself.

"Not necessarily. If this is who I believe it to be, even I would not have detected them."

Still seated atop her coffin as always, the vampire regarded the limbless body without any particular interest.

"A soil-kin from somewhere on the plains."

"Soil-kin?"

"As both are immortals, we distinguish between the kinds. We call them soil-kin. They call us blood demons. Relations between us are... distant. They consider us cursed, and we cannot take their blood."

She raised a hand. The coffin lid cracked open just slightly, and from within, dark crimson fluid seeped out and crept toward the immortal's body, as if to swallow it whole.

The moment it touched the immortal, it lost all strength. The red turned black, crumbled like dry sand, and fell to the floor.

"Their flesh resembles the Mother Earth. Immortality came to them through the sacrifice of their own kind. Flesh as sand, blood as mud. Their bodies are so deeply impure that only they themselves can inhabit them. So even when blood leaves the body, my bloodcraft holds no power over it."

The vampire wrinkled her nose faintly and shook her hand out. The remaining blood that had not crumbled drifted back to her side. She flicked it away as though she had touched something foul.

The regressor gave a slow nod.

"...I see. So nobody actually knows when this immortal arrived here."

Azzy, who had been listening, sat up straight.

"Woof, I know! Yesterday--!"

"Silence! Where does a double-digit IQ get off opening its mouth in a three-digit establishment! Even the village school dog keeps quiet and listens for three years, and here the prison watchdog thinks it can speak up?! Ten more years before that mouth opens!"

"...Grrrr."

Azzy's goodwill toward me had visibly slipped. It would take at least an hour of brushing later to claw that back.

For now, keeping her quiet was what mattered. The regressor had already lost interest in both of us.

'What is he doing to Azzy now... whatever. He's always like this. Nothing new.'

This is why how a person conducts themselves day to day matters. Do enough strange things and no one questions the next one. My long investment in erratic behavior was finally paying off.

'Either way, the immortal comes first. He looks to be in critical condition. Can he even open his eyes? Above ground might be different, but down here in the Abyss where the earth's pulse is severed, recovering on his own won't be easy.'

The regressor's uncertain gaze settled on the immortal. An immortal could regenerate from wounds that would kill anyone else, but in the Abyss there was nothing to aid their recovery.

'The only thing might be the Mother Earth's grace... if they ate enough crops, maybe. But who knows how long that would take. A potion? If things go differently from how they went before, my information becomes useless.'

It suddenly made sense. There had been talk of the immortal downing entire pots of bean stew that an ordinary person would never stomach. To regenerate those wounds, evidently.

I had only planned to show the body and leave things at that. But given the situation, maybe it was worth trying to wake him up.

Right. Decision made. I waved the regressor off.

"Shei trainee, you've been staring down at that man with quite the hungry look. Maybe step back a little?"

Lost in thought, she startled badly. Nearly tipping over, she caught herself and turned on me.

"Wh, what are you talking about?!"

"He's unconscious, but that doesn't mean you get to keep staring like that."

"Like what?! I'm normal!"

"Oh? You prefer women, then? That would explain the time you washed Azzy yourself. Maybe what you were scrubbing off wasn't dark grime at all, but dark and desperate yearning."

"That's not it at all!"

"Right, right, of course it isn't. Because you prefer men."

"That--!"

Caught in a trap with no way out, the regressor stood there, face red, unable to say a word.

The vampire tapped the desk lightly with her parasol.

"Enough."

She opened it just a little and brought it up to shield her face. From behind the parasol, a faintly embarrassed voice emerged.

"I will vouch for him. I observed as you asked, and when Shei was washing the King of Dogs, there was no particular awareness in his expression, only discomfort. So what you said about him preferring men may well be true.... Oh my."

"Tyrkanzyaka, wait--"

"It is all right, Shei."

Unable to quite meet her eyes, the vampire kept only the corner of her mouth visible and spoke in the regressor's defense with a warmth that was hard to name.

"I have thought on it carefully, and your inclinations are a part of who you are. You may have turned away from the natural order of yin and yang, but I too am a creature that defies heaven. The Sanctum would no sooner accept me than you. I am in no position to fault you for it."

"I'm not like that--!"

"It is all right. I understand."

The vampire had made her decision: full acceptance. The warmth in it was so genuine that even the sharp-tongued regressor had nothing left to say.

Thoroughly cornered. The regressor's face went crimson and she pressed her lips shut.

'If I just admitted I was a woman right now...! No. I can't. Saying it at this exact moment, it'd feel like I lost!'

A strange place for pride to plant its flag. She saw telling the truth as defeat, because the timing made it look like a retreat.

From where I stood, reading every thought, it was almost funny.

Well. She didn't know I was using mind reading. I could just keep lifting the curtains and poking at whatever I found underneath.

'On top of that, I have the Mask of Agartha from the treasure vault, which makes everyone's first impression of me unmistakably male. The only way to break that suggestion is to undress... but I'd sooner kill than do that!'

So that was it. The reason that flimsy disguise never got seen through, another inexplicable treasure doing all the work. The world really is full of strange things.

Wait. Did she say sooner kill? Not "I'd rather die"? Kill who?

I stepped in quickly to bring things back on track.

"Alright, that's enough of that! Let's try to revive the unfortunate soul who found himself in this predicament!"

...Good. No more teasing. In a rare act of mercy, I had arranged an opening for the regressor to escape through. I turned and pointed to the immortal lying there, limbs reattached, still completely out cold.

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