WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS x FLAME COMICS
Translator: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint ◈
Chapter 817: Episode 41: Sophistry (1)
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「Stories exist precisely because not everything can be recorded.
What cannot be told vanishes beyond the Scenario, sometimes appearing in the universe in unfamiliar forms.
They are commonly called Outer Gods, entities from another world.
Yet no name can contain their sorrow, so the Recorders collectively call them Fear.」
- Recorders of Fear
* * *
A snowflake landed on Lee Gilyeong's face and melted warmly. He opened his eyes at the gentle sensation.
"Hyung."
A pure white snowfield stretched before him. At its edge stood the person he had missed. Someone lightly waving a slender arm. Someone whose lonely smile suited him so well.
As always, he grinned, then vanished among snowflakes as white as his face.
"Dokja hyung!"
A name he had thought he would never be able to call again. Gilyeong shouted it at the top of his lungs.
"Kim Dokja!"
Memories surfaced.
「He had come here to find Dokja.」
To meet that person again, to reunite in their complete forms, his Allies had chosen a single conclusion.
They gathered his fragments from gray ruins where nothing remained. They accepted the tragedy of entering the Scenarios again.
They went to the Recycling Center.
"Dokja hyung! Dokja hyung!"
When he first saw him, Gilyeong denied that he was Kim Dokja. Just because he shared some of his memories did not mean he could call him Kim Dokja.
「To Lee Gilyeong, Dokja was both protagonist and god.」
The Dokja he remembered was omniscient. A man who knew everything and always made choices that defied everyone's expectations.
A man who could place a single grasshopper in the hand of an unremarkable boy amid a subway tragedy where everyone was killing one another.
That was Dokja.
「That was why the 'man' of the 41st round was too weak to be Kim Dokja.」
He resembled Dokja in face and manner of speaking, but he was a frail human who did not look capable of protecting anything by himself.
Afraid that he might die, Gilyeong constantly watched over him from the shadows of the Scenario.
The more he watched, the more different he was from Dokja.
He saved people without even knowing he was about to die. He fought for humans not worth keeping alive. He could not even handle the Scenario right in front of him, yet his eyes kept measuring the distant future.
That really isn't Dokja hyung.
Even as he repeated that to himself, Gilyeong continued watching his story. He watched him force his way through the Scenarios, watched more and more people begin following him.
As he watched his story trace a path strangely different from the one Kim Dokja Company had walked, Gilyeong sometimes found himself thinking:
「Was Dokja hyung strong from the beginning?」
The Dokja in his memories had been complete from the start.
A man who held every record in the world in his hands.
But had Dokja really been that way? Had it all been an illusion he made for himself?
Maybe Dokja hyung had wanted to run away every time, too.
Maybe he didn't want to fight.
He must have been afraid of death.
Forging a new path that no one had walked before must have been harder for him than for anyone else.
「"Just wait a little longer."」
Even so, Dokja always fought with the fantasies of his Allies on his back.
He was the omniscient Dokja.
Dokja, who always had to sacrifice himself alone.
Gilyeong hated Dokja for trying to bear everything by himself. He wished Dokja wouldn't sacrifice himself. He wished he wouldn't be left alone.
And yet.
Or perhaps because of that,
「"Because I'm going to write that sentence now."」
When the man made the same choice as that Dokja, Gilyeong had no choice but to acknowledge it at last.
"Don't go! Don't do it!"
That person was Kim Dokja.
"Please! Don't do it!"
The Kim Dokja he sought was always the Kim Dokja who left him behind. Within that irony, Gilyeong shouted and shouted again at Dokja's vanishing back.
[Fable Demon King of Salvation begins its story again.]
That story could not be allowed to be recorded. Dokja could not be allowed to die again.
Just as he reached out toward him once more,
[You've worked hard. Return now.]
The answer he received did not belong to Dokja.
It was the old man who had brought Gilyeong to the Recycling Center.
"No."
Gilyeong growled back. He had not done what he needed to do yet. He had not saved the hyung of this world.
However, the Recycling Center Director, the Mass Production Maker, shook his head.
[His story with you all has already ended.]
"What kind of bullshit is that?"
Their story was not over.
Dokja was still his protagonist and this world's god.
[Didn't Han Suyeong already finish the story in which he was the protagonist?]
The moment he heard that, Han Suyeong came to mind. Right. Han Suyeong was there. Maybe she could do it. She could change all these records.
Yet once again, the Mass Production Maker shook his head.
[Another story has already begun.]
Gilyeong wanted to ask what that meant.
He was still here.
Kim Dokja Company was still looking for Dokja. So the story was not over. Their roles continued.
[Do you still know nothing?]
As if pitying Gilyeong, the Mass Production Maker reached out and touched his cheek.
[No, perhaps it would be better if you continued not knowing.]
When he opened his eyes again, he saw a pure white snowfield. Looking closer, it was the ceiling of a hospital room.
Something ran down from the corner of his eye. A hand that seemed absent-minded at first wiped away his tears.
"Idiot. You're awake?"
When he turned his head, Shin Yuseong was looking at him. Gilyeong stared blankly up at the girl. The two children looked and looked at each other for a long while.
Gilyeong spoke.
"We failed."
Once again, the two children had failed to save Dokja.
* * *
For the first time in a while, Kim Dokja Company had gathered in one place.
"Gilyeong, don't you have something to say to everyone?"
At Sangah's words, Gilyeong was called to the front. The boy endured the gazes of his Allies before letting out several deep sighs.
"Um, can't I do it later? My arms and legs are tingling so badly right now, and my throat hurts too..."
It was not a lie. Due to the Plausibility Backlash, Gilyeong's Incarnation body had sustained injuries large and small throughout.
Fortunately, his Patron, Abaddon, had borne some of the backlash for him. Otherwise, the injuries might have killed him.
Still, he could not get away with using pain as an excuse this time.
"You weren't the only one hurt."
At the cold voice from Sangah, which he had not heard in a long time, Gilyeong hunched his shoulders and looked over his Allies.
Sangah, Seolhwa, Yuseong, and that dark bastard... No one appeared injured.
Did she mean their feelings had been hurt?
"Come on, just forgive him. The kid made a little mistake."
Someone entered through the hospital-room door, which opened with a creak.
Startled, Yuseong sprang to her feet and supported the staggering figure.
"Unnie, why are you coming out already?"
"Oh, come on. I'm fine. I'm all better."
"How are you better? Seolhwa unnie said you needed to rest earlier, too..."
Gilyeong's eyes widened.
Lee Jihye waved her right hand while wrapped head to toe in bandages.
"Noona?"
"What?"
"No, why are you covered in bandages?"
"What about them?"
There was nothing strange about wearing bandages. The issue was that she was covered in them, or more precisely, that she needed bandages at all.
There were countless ways to heal injuries in this world. There were medicines that completely healed wounds by the next day after taking a single pill and going to sleep. There were ointments that grew fresh flesh in no time when lightly applied.
Yet despite the existence of such items, Jihye was wearing bandages. That meant her injuries could not be healed without them.
"Why are you all looking at me like that? I'm really fine. I told you, I'm perfectly okay."
As she said that, Jihye looked as though even raising both arms was difficult. After struggling for a while with Yuseong's support, she collapsed into a chair and continued.
"Don't all of you give him such a hard time. Kids can make mistakes. That's how they grow up."
Only then did Gilyeong realize why Jihye was so badly hurt. His palms began sweating coldly without him noticing. He bit down hard on his lips.
Normally, he would have snapped, "Well, who told you to come save me?" But he could not say that this time. At a glance, Jihye's injuries looked truly severe.
"Noona..."
At Gilyeong's uncharacteristic attitude, Jihye giggled.
"Hey, it's really nothing. I just haven't fought in a while, so I was a little rusty."
"...Who did this to you?"
"Why? Are you going to get revenge if I tell you?"
"Tell me."
"Spear That Draws the Boundary of the Sea."
"Poseidon."
Gilyeong ground his teeth.
Jihye coughed lightly, wiped her nose, and smiled.
"Hey, isn't it pretty good that I fought Poseidon this well? He's one of Olympus's Three Highest Gods, after all."
"..."
"I made him unable to move with [Ghost Fleet]. I burned through fables and fired hundreds of shots per second, and that old man's face went pale..."
Gilyeong could not bring himself to raise his lowered head.
He wanted to ask why she had come so far to save him.
He wanted to tell her she did not need to come. That he would have survived and returned somehow.
That she did not need to get hurt like this.
"Gilyeong, I know what you're thinking."
Jihye spoke to him. With a hand wrapped in bandages, she held the shoulder of the boy who had grown so much.
"I was just the same as you."
Speaking in place of the prideful boy, Jihye looked at their Allies. Then, with a waist that would not bend easily, she creaked as she bowed her head.
"So, I'm sorry."
As he watched Jihye apologize in his stead, something Gilyeong had stubbornly held in finally burst inside him.
Gilyeong staggered to his feet, then dropped to his knees on the floor.
"I was wrong. I'm sorry for making you worry. I'm really, really sorry."
Seolhwa stopped the children from apologizing over and over and seated them.
"Both of you, calm down. Have a drink."
No one there blamed the children. Not Sangah, Seolhwa, or Junghyeok.
In truth, they all knew. If they had been in the children's place, they would have acted exactly the same way.
"It's enough that you survived."
Junghyeok was the one who said it.
The remaining Allies looked quite surprised simply because Junghyeok had said those words.
Junghyeok frowned and added,
"That is enough unnecessary talk. I'd like to hear why we gathered here."
Sangah nodded.
They had not gathered merely to reprimand the children. There was something far more important.
"There are two pieces of news."
"Speak."
"One concerns Huiwon and Hyeongseong."
Jeong Huiwon and Lee Hyeongseong. At the familiar names they had not heard in a long time, the children swallowed.
"I think the two of them have finally made up their minds."
Made up their minds.
At Sangah's words, their Allies' expressions brightened.
Yuseong spoke first.
"Uncle Hyeongseong and unnie Huiwon came here too?"
"Where are they? The two of them..."
Yet no matter where they looked, the two were nowhere to be seen. Even when they heightened their awareness and sharpened their senses, they could not feel either presence.
"Ah."
With Yuseong's sigh, the Allies realized.
Just as they had chosen their conclusion, the other two had chosen their own conclusion.
Sangah nodded.
"The two of them went to a different conclusion from ours."
Footnotes:
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