WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

Editor: Abstract

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◈ Regression is Too Much

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Chapter 353

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Regression (1)

Pat.

The moment I thought I heard that sound, I came back to my senses. The underground laboratory from before.

"Jun-ho? Kim Jun-ho? Are you back?"

Choi Ji-won gripped my shoulder and shook me. Yes, this was the real Choi Ji-won. A living, breathing Choi Ji-won. The moment I confirmed her existence, I found myself pulling her into a tight embrace before I even realized it.

"I love you."

"Wh, what? All of a sudden? Here? Huh?"

"I said I love you."

"...Me too."

I'd hugged her without thinking, but once it hit me how far off the mark that was for the moment, I quietly let go. The Book had been watching, after all. Right. The Book.

"...Where's the Book?"

The Book had vanished at some point. According to Choi Ji-won, right after the moment I'd been standing there in a daze, it just disappeared.

"Ronald? Do you think you could summon the Book?"

"J, Jun-ho-nim? The Book? Of course! Just a moment... huh? Wait? Why isn't it..."

I asked Ronald, the Book's owner, separately, but all I got back was that the Book couldn't be summoned right now. So... had it finished its role and vanished? When I opened my status window, the trait itself still existed, so it didn't seem entirely gone.

"Jun-ho, what on earth happened?"

"...For now."

My head was too tangled up to think straight. I had no idea what had actually happened.

"Let's go home."

I needed time to think.

"This is it."

"What is?"

The familiar sight of the studio apartment. Yes, this was it. Thick with the smell of another person living here, or more precisely, thick with traces of Choi Ji-won everywhere. This was the studio apartment I remembered. That cold, bachelor-stink apartment was nothing but an illusion.

After soaking in the nostalgic scent of the place, I sat Choi Ji-won down. She was giving me a look that demanded an explanation, and what I was about to tell her would take a while.

"So here's what happened..."

A full day passed like that. I spent the entire day explaining to Choi Ji-won everything I'd seen in that vision.

"..."

After hearing the whole story, she sank into thought too, her expression grave. Well, I wouldn't have believed it either if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

"Okay, first... it makes sense that companion regression would vanish along with everything else."

Even Ji-won could follow the logic up to this point. Erasing the Book severed the connection to the World's Center, and as a result, "companion regression" got caught in the fallout too. That much made sense.

"And I get why you ended up... like that, too."

And as a result of Ji-won's disappearance, it made sense that I'd half lost my mind. It's a little embarrassing to say it myself, but I'd been leaning on Ji-won pretty heavily, mentally speaking. In a regression where everything else kept disappearing, she was the only human I could share the whole of it with. I'd already talked this part to death, so let's skip past it.

"Honestly, the part I don't get the most is... how we ended up together again."

"..."

"No, no. You know that's not what I mean. Right?"

The phrasing came out a little strange, but I understood what Ji-won was actually trying to say.

"Companion regression definitely wasn't in play there, right?"

That world's connection to the World's Center had been severed. Which meant no matter what method you tried, "companion regression" itself was impossible.

And yet somehow, that Kim Jun-ho had ended up with Choi Ji-won there. That part was genuinely strange.

Me making up my mind and getting back together with Ji-won? Sure, that's possible. That much I could accept easily enough.

I knew Ji-won inside and out, better than almost anyone, and she'd always liked me for who I really was. We'd had disagreements before, sure, but nothing that left either of us truly disappointed in the other or turned off. If I put in enough effort, getting back together felt within reach.

Though what if she rejected me? Nah, come on. Enough with the pathetic what-ifs.

Anyway, the fact that they ended up together, fine, I could accept that. That part made sense.

"How did they get... that deep, though?"

But the Choi Ji-won and the Kim Jun-ho I saw in that world had a bond that went far past what you'd call simple "lovers."

There was none of that fresh, awkward newness you'd expect from a couple who'd just gotten together. It was a relationship built on deep mutual trust, the kind you'd see between reliable partners who'd been through everything together. I, Kim Jun-ho, could say that with confidence. It was my own life we were talking about, after all.

"But this doesn't add up either."

Think about it. The Kim Jun-ho who entered Floor 29 didn't have much time to work with. The monsters were going to show up before long to begin with, and even after he beat them back, there was no way he'd get to stroll through a park at his leisure. Either the world had descended into chaos, or he'd become wildly famous. It had to be one or the other. (Even if that world's Choi Ji-won drew relatively less attention, a park date would still be rough for people in our position.)

But in that short span of time, without any shared memories of struggling through the Tower together, could that level of intimacy really form from nothing but conversation and real-world experience alone? No, intimacy, sure, that could happen. But what I'd seen was "trust." Trust doesn't build easily. At the very least, Choi Ji-won doesn't hand out her trust carelessly.

A mystery. A genuine mystery. It didn't add up. No, seriously, it didn't. Was I overreacting? But I always figured that the reason Ji-won and I got this close was because we'd seen every ugly, unguarded side of each other inside the Tower's extreme conditions.

"Well, whatever the case... one thing's certain, that Kim Jun-ho figured out some kind of solution."

Let's set aside what already happened. What mattered was that it was possible.

He'd overturned the natural order and gotten Choi Ji-won back. By the same logic, all I had to do was overturn the natural order myself and reclaim a peaceful life. If it was possible to reunite with a Choi Ji-won who'd lost every memory of me, then it should be possible to undo having my entire identity exposed to the world too.

Convincing the Hero? Sure, that'd help. But it was still just a stopgap. In the end, it wouldn't change the fact that world leaders everywhere already knew about me. The better solution, the one with a far higher ceiling, was whatever that world's Kim Jun-ho had pulled off.

"But we don't even know what that solution is... or what we're supposed to do."

"That's true."

But I did know what he'd done first. I knew where he'd started.

"Let's follow that thread."

If I did, some kind of clue would probably surface.

Finding a clue was one thing. In the meantime, Ji-won and I rested for nearly a month, taking it easy and recovering properly. With my identity already exposed, I couldn't rest in the studio apartment, so we went off to some empty jungle in the middle of nowhere, set up nothing but basic supplies, and just rested there. It wasn't exactly comfortable, but the sense of ease outweighed the discomfort.

My mental state? Not great. Not great at all, but I knew I couldn't take the easy path, not when I knew a new answer existed. I couldn't just keep wallowing forever.

The difference from before was this: back then, it had felt like wandering a maze with no visible exit, like I was being forced into some extreme choice just to get out. Now it felt more like threading a needle, but at least there was light at the end of it.

"Alright. Time to regress."

Once I felt like I'd rested enough, I regressed and started retracing that world's Kim Jun-ho's exact footsteps. Getting famous was easy enough with the President's help. I tried free-falling from high in the sky, staying on Floor 29 on purpose instead of leaving, hunting monsters like I'd lost my mind, standing under a waterfall...

"Hmm..."

Honestly, I couldn't tell what the point of any of it was. What meaning was hidden in this? What was he trying to accomplish? I had no idea, but I followed the steps mechanically anyway. I didn't want to stand in front of everyone, but I gritted my teeth and pushed through it. Because the path lay somewhere in there.

"Yes, I am the regressor."

Getting even more famous.

"...This is something I did?"

Getting even stronger.

"Of course. I'll take care of it."

People going wild for me.

In the middle of watching things I'd already witnessed become my own reality again, I kept as much composure as I could and observed the situation closely. The reason I'd had to grow this strong. The reason I'd gained this much popularity. The reason I'd tried to push the Hero trait to its absolute limit.

Regress. Regress. Regress again. Sometimes I threw myself headlong into grinding through time, and other times I'd suddenly take an entire cycle off to rest. It was hard, genuinely hard, but with Ji-won at my side, I could endure it. I wasn't alone. We were in this together.

How many times had I regressed by now? How much time had passed?

"...Huh?"

It happened during an interview, same as always, while I waved at the crowd. While I wore my practiced professional smile and carefully scanned my surroundings.

I sensed a man reading a web novel. Third floor of a nearby villa, lying in bed, absorbed in his phone. Yeah, I remembered being like that once. A time when I had nothing to worry about, just reading web novels and snacking on a bag of chips.

-Christ, it dies and regresses from the very start every damn time.

The man muttered to himself. A prologue that opened with death. A web novel I'd seen a thousand times before. Regression. An element that had become inseparable from my own life by now.

But it's different. My regression and that regression are different. Fundamentally, completely different.

"...I get it now."

I understood the method that world's Kim Jun-ho had figured out. He'd focused on the past. He'd fixated on everything that had already happened. I, on the other hand, had only ever agonized over how to break through the situation right in front of me. That was the difference between us.

I understood now. There was exactly one method that existed. A genuinely absurd possibility, one that looked far harder than threading any needle. But without this, there was no solution. No, this was the only solution there was.

I'd had the clue all along. I'd already seen the possibility once before. I'd just dismissed it, thinking it was impossible.

Me. The me in the world where the Book had vanished, and the me on Floor 25 without Choi Ji-won.

"I regressed."

The answer had been close by the whole time.

"For the first time."

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