WeTried Translations
Translator: ZEROSUGAR
Editor: Abstract
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 349: Ruin (10)
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When I came to my senses, I saw myself.
Yes, myself. Kim Jun-ho, seen from the outside. Watching my own appearance as a third party was a pretty fresh experience. No, if that had been all, I wouldn't have called it "fresh."
"Aaaargh!!! Why won't they lower the interest rate?!"
Me, howling at a stock chart.
"Coming through~"
Me, delivering food on a motorcycle.
"Yes, so I'll handle this part, and for the rest, at minimum let's use Excel..."
Me, in a suit, typing furiously on a keyboard while on a phone call.
All sorts of "me" drifted past around me. Different ages, different expressions, different jobs. Every one of them was different.
"..."
I stared blankly at the passing versions of "me," and before I knew it, another me stood right in front of me. This time, not alone.
"Ji-won."
"...Yeah."
"Ready?"
"Haah..."
Choi Ji-won stood there with her arms crossed, looking sullen. And me, trying to persuade her. The two of them talked like I wasn't even there. The me in front was driving a car, and Choi Ji-won sat in the passenger seat. "I" was sitting in the back.
"Hm."
I reached my hand out as a test, but the two of them kept up their ordinary conversation like I wasn't visible at all. Right, no intervening. If I couldn't do anything, then I had to watch and remember as much as I could. I steadied myself and carefully observed my surroundings, and the first thing I saw was the me who was driving.
The driving me's face looked far weaker and more exhausted than the face I remembered, and Choi Ji-won's face looked far more worried than the one I remembered. Seeing it from a third party's perspective made the difference stand out even more.
"Still..."
"Firefighter Cheol-jin failed, didn't he. Can't be helped. And Dok Su-hee... wasn't in any condition to regress, either."
Firefighter Cheol-jin failed? Dok Su-hee wasn't in a condition to regress?
In the middle of this bewildering scene, the pieces finally started clicking into place. Right, I understood now. This was... the future I would have "chosen." Now I understood what the Book meant when it said it would "show" me something.
But what still confused me was... why? Why did the Book want to show me a future like this? What was its "intention"?
"..."
I happened to catch my own reflection in the car's rearview mirror. I didn't look transparent like a ghost or anything; it was the face I always saw.
The only difference was that the reflection in the mirror looked as tired, as worn out, as the one having this conversation right now. My raw strength itself must have grown dozens, maybe thousands of times stronger. My skin, my body, none of it looked any different from peak condition.
But the eyes. The presence. The expression. Unlike the me I remembered... it looked genuinely weak. When had I become like this? When had I grown this frail? So that was why Ji-won had been looking at me with that worried expression.
I could have sworn that, back in the day, I'd been able to endure dozens, hundreds of regressions... that I'd trusted myself completely. Had I worn myself out? Or had I eroded somewhere in the process of regressing over and over? I didn't know the reason, but one thing was certain. I had grown weak.
My head dropped without my meaning it to. I felt like lying down somewhere, but this wasn't the time.
"If only Dok Su-hee had been okay."
The other me said that, letting out a long sigh.
"...What can you do when she's sick."
"Yeah, can't be helped. Mental illness is... exactly the kind of condition you shouldn't regress with."
I didn't know the full situation, but it sounded like Dok Su-hee had come down with some kind of mental illness. Right, that would explain why they weren't bringing her along in the regression.
Physical wounds could be overcome through regression. Items came back too, once you regressed. But an illness of the soul wouldn't. It would obviously carry over regardless.
And bringing someone into a companion regression right now meant she'd be a companion going forward, indefinitely. There was no way they could recruit a woman suffering from mental illness into such a precious spot. Better to regress first and find a way to cure the illness afterward.
"Mr. Cheol-jin, too..."
This time it was Choi Ji-won who sighed.
"If only the President's condition had been just a little better... he wouldn't have found out."
No detailed explanation here either, but it implied that firefighter Park Cheol-jin had failed. Even with the mask, even with Zetter's help, how had it failed? I'd been sure... he wasn't foolish enough to mess that up.
"If only there'd been someone else who had a mask..."
"There was no one but Zetter who could get a mask. Can't be helped."
Ah. I understood now. The source of the mask had been the problem.
The only means firefighter Park Cheol-jin had of obtaining a "mask" was Michael Zetter. To begin with, you had to clear Floor 23, and out of the three rewards, choose the mask. At this point in time, someone at that level was, quite literally, a top-tier player.
Firefighter Park Cheol-jin had no way to contact a player of that caliber, and borrowing the mask was close to impossible. Which meant the conclusion was that he had to get the mask from Zetter.
But the President had already been betrayed once by Michael Zetter. If, in the middle of all that, he'd realized the "mask" came from Zetter... what would the half-mad President have thought?
Probably that Zetter and firefighter Park Cheol-jin were in on it together, conspiring to deceive him. That was a plausible enough scenario. And since no other reason for failure seemed likely, the probability only climbed higher.
"..."
To sum it all up, every alternative Choi Ji-won had come up with had failed. Not by choice, but by necessity, they'd been pushed into using the ring, the last resort.
"Let's do what we can do."
But the me standing there, despite being cornered, looked fairly composed. No, not composed exactly, but at least similar to how I looked right now.
Well... the reason was obvious.
"It's okay. We can do this."
Choi Ji-won. She'd worried about me, but she'd always stayed by my side, always looked out for me, and that was why the other me was still hanging on to the last thread of composure. Thinking that warmed something in my chest.
Screech.
The moving car came to a stop. They must have reached their destination, and it was a place I recognized. That's right... near the restaurant Ronald frequented.
"The Book said it. That the connection between our world and the 'World's Center' would be severed. That the Book itself would never have existed to begin with, that Ronald would never have been summoned to the Tutorial... and that my identity would never become known, either."
"...Yeah."
"Don't worry about me. We can find that method again, right? You know me. I always find a way."
"...Yeah."
The content of the conversation sounded like I was reassuring Choi Ji-won, but the actual dynamic was the opposite. The me who looked more anxious than anyone was pouring out reasons why "I'm okay," and Choi Ji-won was nodding along to my words, reassuring me in turn.
"Nothing's going to happen. I'll be back."
Just as I reached to open the car door and step out, I stopped moving. Maybe because I was watching myself, I felt like I understood what I was feeling.
I must have been grateful. Must have felt so much gratitude. Must have wanted to repay it somehow. And no matter how many ways I thought it through, I must have kept arriving at the same conclusion: none of them fit the moment.
So the only thing left to do was speak. To put it into words.
Words we'd never said, worn down by all our hardships. Words too embarrassing to say often, because we'd grown closer than friends, closer than lovers. Words that, right now, absolutely had to be said.
"I love you, Ji-won. I really do."
"...Me too."
I pulled her into a tight embrace, the woman who had suffered climbing the Tower, who had tried so hard for my sake. And because I had worked just as hard for Choi Ji-won's sake, Ji-won's hand patted my back, as if comforting me.
"..."
I turned my gaze toward the window from the back seat. It was my own self out there, but something about it felt strange. Not like there was anything I could do about it right now.
Only... if I made it back, I already knew what I'd say to Ji-won. That much, at least, was settled.
"I'll be right back, then."
The car door swung open. I couldn't call it confident, exactly, but the footsteps carried a certain conviction. I climbed carefully out of the car too, and followed those footsteps.
Ding-dong.
The restaurant door opened. The bell rang. Eyes turned, all at once.
"Oh, Jun-ho-nim?"
"It's the regressor. For real."
"Hey, get a picture, get a picture."
Ronald, recognizing me. Citizens pulling out their phones. The ring, gripped tight in my hand.
"Ronald."
"Uh, yes?"
"I'm going to erase your trait."
Gritting my teeth, I forced the ring onto Ronald's finger and wished for it with all my strength inside. That the trait called "Book of Truth" would vanish from this world.
"Uh, ah?"
The ring on Ronald's finger began to glow slowly, as if responding to my will. The light, faint as a flickering lightbulb at first, gradually, very gradually grew stronger.
Whoosh!!!
Then, in an instant, it surged as if exploding, and the light swallowed the entire world at once.
"..."
The light faded. My eyes, closed without my noticing, opened again.
"...Huh?"
I was back in my own studio apartment.
The overwhelming power that had wrapped around my body was gone. Even the voices of countless people I'd heard no matter how hard I tried to filter them out had disappeared. What remained was the familiar noise of everyday life. Footsteps passing on the street, the scraping friction of a delivery box being pushed over a small pebble in the hallway, a phone call full of laughter.
Everyday life. Yes, the sounds of everyday life. The everyday I'd longed for so badly.
"Huh? Ah?"
But there was a wrongness. A strange wrongness ran down my spine. Something was different. Something had changed at some fundamental level.
Like the feeling of trying to breathe with no air. Like the floor giving out beneath me. Like up and down had swapped places.
Because something so utterly "obvious" had changed, I couldn't even perceive it at first. What was it? What on earth was different? I'd forgotten something important. Something... something...
"...Ah."
And only then did I notice.
It was gone.
"Ji-won?"
Every trace of Choi Ji-won.
Her phone, which used to sit on the table. Her clothes in the closet. The sneakers that always sat in the shoe rack. Bung-bung, who used to hum and grumble.
"Choi Ji-won?"
The women's cosmetics that had sat in the bathroom. The toothbrush. The shampoo we used together. Her scent that lingered on the pillow and blanket. Every single trace of her that had lived in this tiny home.
Gone.
Footnotes:
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