WeTried Translations

Translator: Hydrogen B

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◈ Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 82

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An Eraser in the Mind

No matter what, an unmarried man and woman could not spend the night in the same room. To Tyrkanzyaka, that was unquestionable common sense.

After letting him into the room, Tyrkanzyaka laid him on the bed. She could not bring herself to undress him herself, so even if it was uncomfortable, she had to let him sleep fully clothed.

Maybe because three days of fatigue had built up, he fell asleep the moment his head touched the pillow.

Tyrkanzyaka silently pulled the blanket over him and stepped back out. She settled in front of his room. Sitting atop her coffin with her parasol over one shoulder, she spent the night with the sound of his breathing from inside as background noise.

Then, right before the day lights turned on, the King of Dogs appeared. Azzy came lightly down the far corridor. Tyrkanzyaka briefly tightened her grip on the parasol, but then.

"Woof?"

Azzy only tilted her head after seeing Tyrkanzyaka.

Tyrkanzyaka was reminded once more of what she had regained. A small surge of emotion stirred in her.

It was nothing more than the King of Dogs not barking, yet even that tiny thing made her happy. Regained emotions could touch her through details this small.

"You really are not barking...."

Azzy spoke toward Tyrkanzyaka, who was blocking the door.

"Woof! It's morning! We have to wake him!"
"Wait. I will wake hi...."
"Woof! Woof!"

The moment Tyrkanzyaka opened the door, Azzy shot through the gap like an arrow. Azzy tore around the room and barked fiercely.

Startled, Tyrkanzyaka hurried in after Azzy.

Azzy was loud enough to wake even someone who had lost his memory.

He slowly raised himself like a mummy. Even after sleeping, his eyes were still vacant, fixed on empty space.

"Are you awake?"

Tyrkanzyaka spoke to him as she had yesterday. She did not say it expecting an answer. She only wanted to give him some sense of routine.

Then.

"Hello...."

At the voice from the bed, Tyrkanzyaka jolted so hard it felt like her heart dropped.

"Shei! Shei!"

Tyrkanzyaka immediately carried him over on the coffin and went straight to Shei. Shei rubbed her eyes and opened the door, and Tyrkanzyaka shouted while showing him, still blank-faced.

"It seems his memory has returned!"
"Huh?"
"This morning, right after waking up, he greeted me. His memory must be coming back!"

Tyrkanzyaka spoke with excitement still ringing in her voice. Shei, on the other hand, reacted coolly.

"Are you sure? To me, he still looks far off. Look at that vacant face. He's completely different from his usual self."

"Is he not better than yesterday? Yesterday he only repeated bits of what I said, but today he spoke on his own. He is clearly recalling words!"

Shei watched the excited Tyrkanzyaka and hesitated for a moment. If she told the truth, Tyrkanzyaka would be disappointed.

But Shei had no talent for comforting lies. It was not in her nature.

"Losing memory like that is not the same as losing information. Information like knowledge and language stays in your head. What disappears is the self that ties that information to who you are and draws it out."

He did not even seem to realize they were talking about him. He only sat blankly on the coffin as he listened.

Shei muttered while watching him.

"See? No real reaction. He probably doesn't even know who he is right now."

"But this is a little different. Look."

Tyrkanzyaka hurried over in quick little steps. He had been sitting there blankly, but he finally reacted when Tyrkanzyaka came close. She lightly tapped his shoulder, pointed to Shei, and whispered.

"Now then, over there. Try greeting Shei."

He sat there blankly like a baby, while Tyrkanzyaka cared for him with total devotion.

Seeing that, Shei muttered to herself.

'Ah, this is giving me cognitive dissonance.'

From the outside, it was a grown man and a young girl. Yet the girl was caring for him like a mother.

And that grown man was the military-state instructor who had smirked and radiated suspicious vibes just a few days ago. The same man who had kept Shei on edge over and over was now sitting there with a guileless face, being waited on by Tyrkanzyaka. It made her head spin.

'I get how Tyrkanzyaka feels. Something must have gone wrong while he was fixing her heart, so she probably feels deeply responsible.'

Even so, Shei still could not relax. That person, reading everything from a distance and toying with people through little notes, was exactly the kind of mastermind Shei hated most.

If he had only seemed like a mastermind, that would have been one thing. But because he had casually repaired the Progenitor's heart, Shei could not even guess his true intentions.

He was neither fully black nor truly white, but something chaotic in between.

'This really, really is not an act, right? There is no clear reason for him to do that, but....'

Even without a reason, he was the kind of person who could calmly do something insane. Shei wanted to stop doubting him, but suspicion kept sticking in one corner of her mind like a stain.

Shei was glaring at him sharply when.

"Gree...ting."

He understood Tyrkanzyaka's words, then gave Shei a timid nod.

"H-hello...."

Even this behavior looked suspicious now, and that was because of everything he had done before. Shei waved a hand.

"This means nothing. Even if you lose your memory, you can still greet people...."

"...Unni."

"?!!"

Goosebumps rose on Shei's arms.

A chill ran through her whole body.

At the same time, a visceral rejection and dizzying shock hit her, and Shei shouted in panic.

"W-w-w-what are you saying! It should be noona!"

Tyrkanzyaka corrected her.

"Shei, would hyung not be correct?"

"Ah, right, hyung, no, I'm younger, no, more importantly! Wait! Everyone stop where you are!"

When Shei got suddenly flustered, she had only one response. She grabbed Skywarbler, floating by her bedside, and stirred up wind.

Whoooong. Compressed air spread in all directions. Complex currents formed around Shei, and the wind scraping through the narrow door gap made a sound like a beast's howl.

"What in the world is this all of a sudden?"

Tyrkanzyaka lowered her parasol to block the wind and frowned as she looked back. Thankfully, because she blocked it, his body did not topple backward.

Shei fiddled with her treasured sword Skywarbler and calmed down.

"Hoo. I just needed to cool my head for a second."

"If you cool it twice, this prison will be uprooted. Be careful. In any case, do you understand now why I said this was different?"

"Yeah. I do get it...."

The honorific unni was what a younger woman called an older woman. To use it, you needed the ability to objectively gauge the relationship between yourself and the other person.

In other words, he had at least some awareness of himself and some ability to recognize the other person.

"Then why unni of all things?! That's the complete opposite!"

'Why is that guy a man but seeing himself as a woman?!'

Shei aimed that at him, but Tyrkanzyaka took it the other way, rested a hand on her chin, and looked Shei up and down.

"Hmm. You are somewhat pretty. Pretty enough that one might mistake you for a woman......... for a woman...."

Her words suddenly dragged out, and Tyrkanzyaka's brows quickly drew together. She looked seriously back and forth between Shei and the instructor several times, then groaned as if worried about something.

Then she approached him and explained gently.

"Do not get confused. Shei may be small, with thin limbs and a pretty face, but he is clearly a man. A man in every sense."

"A man?"

"Yes. A man, so remember that well. Not unni, and even less noona. Getting that wrong is the height of rudeness."

It sounded less like correcting a misunderstanding and more like warning him away. Seeing Tyrkanzyaka shooting her a sidelong glance, Shei felt an emotion she could not describe.

'The way she acted yesterday too... no way. Did she really melt that frozen heart or something? Are my suspicions actually coming true?'

Only much later did Shei finally notice something strange.

Just as Tyrkanzyaka said, Shei was currently disguised as a man. It came from an artifact, so it kept working even when Shei did not pay attention.

But he had called Shei unni.

Unni. In other words, a word you could only use if you recognized the other person as female.

'Wait. He saw through the Mask of Agartha? How?'

A fresh suspicion rose in an instant. Had he seen through Shei's male disguise from the beginning?

But Shei quickly dismissed it.

'No way. The Mask of Agartha definitely works. Tyrkanzyaka and everyone else still believe I am a man. And if he had seen through it, revealing it now would be weird.'

Then how?

Shei quickly found a reasonable hypothesis.

'Right. My artifact, the Mask of Agartha, has the power to determine first impressions. First impressions are a major factor that keeps affecting later encounters, but this artifact only affects first impressions. It does not work on people you have already met.'

That meant only one thing. This was not his first time seeing Shei, but his first impression had not remained.

In short, he had lost his memory.

'Looks like he really did lose it. I can drop that suspicion.... No, maybe I can use this chance to naturally clear up the misunderstanding that I am a man....'

She had cross-dressed to enter the Abyss, and kept it up for possible contingencies, but Shei was not very attached to the disguise. She often forgot she was cross-dressing herself.

Rather than forcing the disguise, it might be better to clear things up now and deal with people more comfortably. Not that she wanted to throw off her clothes just to forcefully prove her gender.

If this could naturally plant the idea that Shei might be a woman....

"Man...."

"Yes. A man. You remembered?"

As Tyrkanzyaka finished speaking, he gave a big nod and muttered.

"Somehow, it felt ambiguously romantic."

Somehow. Ambiguous.

He had not fully shaped it into words, but Shei could hear what filled that gap, that it was "hard to see [her] as a woman." Regardless of the Mask of Agartha....

A vein bulged at Shei's temple. With a terrifying expression, she beckoned him over.

"Hey. Wait a second, you. Come here. You do remember, don't you!"

His instinct for danger moved before his self did. Frightened, he hid behind Tyrkanzyaka. Tyrkanzyaka gave him a gentle smile, soothed him, then immediately scolded Shei.

"Shei. Do not scare him so much. Can you not see he is afraid?"

"No, isn't that suspicious? Look at how he talks. He's starting to needle me!"

"Is it not true that you are ambiguous? Your features are delicate for a man. Even I got confused from time to time."

"Confused, and that's it?!"

'Wait. Just now, didn't that bastard say something different from ambiguous?!'

When Shei glared with wide eyes, Tyrkanzyaka moved even closer and shielded him. The parasol over Tyrkanzyaka's shoulder covered his face.

"Perhaps before, but now he has lost his memory while trying to help me, so he is no different from a child who knows nothing. How can you think of blaming him?"

"It's suspicious enough that he keeps confusing my gender, but first of all it makes no sense that he sees himself as a woman! There is zero reason for that! Hey! Be honest. You didn't lose your memory, right?! You're just laughing inside, right?!"

"Now it is slander? For a man's heart to be so narrow, how harsh. Is that not so?"

Because Tyrkanzyaka defended the instructor to the very end, Shei could only fume without making a move. But her glare was so sharp that he, left with instinct alone, got scared and hid behind Tyrkanzyaka's back.

And Tyrkanzyaka quietly enjoyed that fact. That was one reason she did not bother shouting at Shei.

When she felt his hand clutching her collar tightly, Tyrkanzyaka soothed him again.

"Do not worry. Did I not say I would take responsibility for you."

"Th-thank, you. Uh...."

As his words trailed off, Tyrkanzyaka added softly.

"Did I not tell you earlier. Call me Tyr."

"Yes, Tyr."

"Good, well done."

Shei stood there with her mouth hanging open in disbelief.

'I wasn't planning to attack him anyway! Stop casting other people as villains!'

It was getting more absurd by the minute.

Even when she tried not to suspect him, suspicion kept surging up. If he was pretending to have lost his self, that was absurd, but even if he had truly lost it, that was still incredible. How could someone keep acting suspicious even after losing his memory?

After grinding her teeth for a while, Shei suddenly had an idea.

"Wait. Why didn't I think of that?"

If he had really lost his memory, he would answer questions honestly.

If he was pretending, he would evade questions that were hard to answer.

'If it's the first, I can pull out his secret information. If it's the second, I can expose his act. This is a chance!'

Either way, there was nothing to lose. Shei spoke excitedly.

"Tyrkanzyaka. This is it. This is our chance to pry information out of him!"

Of course Tyr would not nod right away. Still, Shei was confident she could persuade her.

As expected, Tyr reacted negatively at once.

"Information? You mean to interrogate someone who lost his memory? What else do you intend to pry out? Absolutely not...."

"His name, rank, or why he came here, or his abilities! If not now, we'll never get another chance to know!"

But if her curiosity could be stirred. Shei flashed a triumphant smile and suggested it lightly.

"Well?"

Tyr, who had been about to refuse fiercely, stopped mid-sentence.

"His name, his name...."

Muttering quietly, Tyr looked at him once with a face half curiosity and half guilt, then lightly closed her eyes and stepped back one pace. It was a reluctant sign of agreement to Shei.

"...If I am to keep caring for him from now on, I should at least know the basics. His name, for example. Mm."

The wall that had been shielding him disappeared. He stared fixedly at Tyr, but Tyr only avoided his gaze.

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