WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Alyo
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Surviving Among the Anomalies ◈
Chapter 17: The World Beyond the Right Eye - The Theater in a Dream, World Destruction
──────
‘It’s already nine. I should get to sleep.’
Kim Mi-ri, who lived in Busan, went to bed early again that day. As a high school senior, she had less than two months left until the College Scholastic Ability Test, but she did not feel the need to study.
‘I can start tomorrow.’
It was not that she had less than two months left. She still had a whole two months. There was plenty of time, so there was no need to start now.
‘If I master one subject a week, that’ll be enough, right?’
So she could rest just for today.
She knew it was nonsense, but that was how people rationalized things once they decided to slack off. Mi-ri quietly turned off the light and closed her eyes.
[All participants, wake up.]
The instant she did, a brilliant light made her squint.
“What?”
When Mi-ri opened her eyes again, she found herself in the middle of a vast, empty field.
[We will now begin Act 999 of the Dream Theater, Battle Royale.]
She pinched her cheek to see whether this was a dream. It hurt. Therefore, this was not a dream.
[For those unfamiliar with the concept of battle royale, allow us to explain. There are currently ninety-nine participants on this island. From now on, you will fight for your lives until only one person remains.]
Still unable to process what was happening, she looked around. There was a vast field and a clearing within it, the sea in the distance, a village in the lowlands, and containers and bridges scattered here and there.
[The first day is for rest. Good acting requires good rest. Participants, please get acquainted with one another or rest and prepare for tomorrow.]
Why am I here?
Mi-ri was not the only one reacting that way.
“Where are we?”
“What was that voice from the sky just now?”
“I definitely fell asleep at home...”
“What the fuck!?”
“これはどういうことですか？”
“What the hell is this place?”
“Träume ich?”
“呃啊! 这是哪里!”
People from countries all over the world were gathered together, equally bewildered.
[We would like you to film a beautiful drama.]
The voice came from the sky again.
[Realism is an important element here, but an inability to communicate disrupts the flow of the drama and makes it dull. Therefore, we will unify your languages.]
“What are they talking about?”
“Is it an angel? Is it an angel?”
“It’s finally an Otherworld! I’ve finally been chosen! Damn parents! Look at this! I was right! I’m the winner for living as a shut-in!”
Everyone spoke in their native language, yet the words were automatically translated and delivered straight into their minds.
“Everyone, let’s gather up first!”
“Yes! Let’s put our heads together and figure out what’s going on!”
Those with strong leadership stepped forward. Under their direction, people began offering their opinions.
“The voice in the sky told us to have a battle royale.”
“What’s a battle royale?”
“Good grief, you don’t even know what a battle royale is? Battle royale is a genre that began with Battle Royale, a novel written by Takami Koushun in 1999. It’s a genre where people kill and are killed in a confined space until the final winner is decided. Isn’t that common knowledge?”
As a fat Japanese man in a plaid shirt shook his head and explained, the uproar grew louder.
“You’re saying we’re supposed to kill each other?”
“How could anyone do something so insane?”
“We’ve fallen into hell. The angels are testing us to punish people who don’t believe in God!”
No sane person would kill a stranger just because an unknown voice in the sky had told them to.
“In novels, there are sometimes transcendent beings that trap people in dreams like this.”
“Could all of this be an incredibly vivid dream?”
“Maybe we’re hallucinating. I made a mushroom dish yesterday. I found the mushrooms in the mountains, and they looked so delicious.”
“What if I died suddenly in my sleep? What if this is the dream you see before death?”
A private tutor, a housewife, a high school teacher, a high school student, a stay-at-home security guard, an assistant manager at a construction company, an amateur gamer, a bank employee, a culinary researcher, and so on.
They were ordinary people, after all.
“Let’s ignore the voice in the sky for now!”
“Right! Why should we fight? Let’s live peacefully and find a way to escape this place!”
And so, the first day passed.
＊＊＊
[It is now the second day. Weapons have been placed at various points around the island. Those who acquire weapons will have a greater chance of survival, so make use of them. Also, having everyone gathered in one place interferes with the proceedings, so all participants have been moved to random locations.]
The voice came from the sky. Mi-ri checked her wristwatch.
[07:00]
Then she thought,
‘When did I fall asleep?’
She did not know whether she had been kidnapped, sent to hell, or dropped into another dimension called an Otherworld, like a Japanese man had shouted about the previous night.
‘How could I sleep in a situation like this...?’
She had to sleep.
Right. Why had she forgotten everything she had learned until now?
“Tension is no help in battle.”
My name is Kim Mi-ri. I’m nineteen years old.
『A soldier loyal to her country, trained in special-forces combat from the age of five and turned into a human weapon.』
‘I had intended to win this battle royale and bring glory to Korea, yet I’d forgotten for a moment.’
It was all because of the stress from factional infighting.
“It would have been enough to send me alone. Why did they have to create other Korean participants? There can only be one winner, so we’ll have to fight. What a waste of national strength.”
She quickly searched the area. Behind a container, she spotted signs of a hidden box.
“An M1 Carbine? What is this, World War II?”
With the rifle braced against her shoulder, she searched the area. Then her eyes gleamed, and she pulled the trigger.
“Ghk!”
A hole appeared in the forehead of an old woman who had been about to pounce on her from the bushes.
“Ha. I never expected the legendary Italian special-forces commander, Avella Gito, to be here. Legends are completed by death. Congratulations on becoming a true legend.”
Mi-ri did not remember it, but the previous night, that old woman had looked after her, saying she had a granddaughter the same age as Mi-ri.
“As expected, this is a high-level competition. The difficulty is high enough to permit murder.”
She loaded more bullets.
“I’ll survive, win, and bring glory to Korea!”
＊＊＊
Kim Mi-ri’s struggle was desperate. Since this competition offered the greatest honor in history, none of the participants were easy opponents.
[Albert Dennis (37), electrical technician, head of a household with a wife and two daughters. Died from excessive blood loss after a dagger was lodged in the neck.]
『Sergeant Albert Dennis, a legendary man called an iron man, who has served in the U.S. Marine special unit DEVGRU for ten years and is a nightmare to terrorists.』
After pursuing an enemy stronger than herself for three days, she seized an opening and drove a dagger into his neck.
[Nellie Hexton (21), student at Berklee College of Music. Dreams of becoming a violinist and playing music beautiful enough to reach her deceased mother. Died from a gunshot wound that ran from the perineum to the skull.]
『Nellie Hexton, called a genius bomber since childhood, who modified numerous small bombs and swept through battlefields with them, earning the title Witch of Explosions.』
She hid beneath a pit toilet and, the moment the target appeared, fired a bullet into her anus and through the crown of her head.
[Giulio Salvi (75), retired former carpenter. Enjoys carving toys by hand for his grandchildren. Recently, he has been bringing flowers he grew himself to the grave of his late wife. Died from carotid artery constriction caused by wire.]
『Giulio Salvi, a legendary sniper who killed one thousand enemy soldiers during active service.』
She used a dummy to locate the sniper, approached him in secret, and strangled him to death with wire.
“Huff, huff.”
“Damn it!”
At last, she fought the final battle against the last remaining participant.
[Kujo Suzuki (30), office worker employed by a black company. Recently preparing to change jobs and wondering whether to ask the convenience-store clerk he sees after overtime for a phone number. Died from a fractured skull.]
They fired at each other until they ran out of bullets. Once even those were gone, they switched to close combat. In the end, Mi-ri knocked away her opponent’s knife and smashed his skull with a brass-knuckled fist.
[The final victor has been decided. The final victor is Kim Mi-ri of Korea.]
“Ah, finally...”
The Korean national anthem played from the sky.
[Until the East Sea’s waters run dry and Baekdu Mountain wears away, may God watch over our land. Long live our country.]
Her eyes grew moist as she placed a hand over her left breast.
[Three thousand ri of splendid rivers and mountains covered in hibiscus. Koreans, forever uphold Korea.]
The single tear that fell carried the patriotic pride of her people.
[Cut.]
“...What?”
At the moment everything ended, Kim Mi-ri remembered who she was.
“Ah, ah?”
She remembered herself as an ordinary high school girl.
That did not mean the memories of everything she had done until then disappeared.
“Uwegh!”
The acrid smell of gunpowder still lingered.
The fading pulse and her opponent’s limp body.
The spilled intestines, and even her own voice mocking her opponent as she casually stepped on them.
“Uweeegh!”
She wanted to vomit everything inside her. If possible, even her soul.
[Hmm.]
Before she could make a final choice out of guilt, the sky answered first.
[Patriotism is a selling point that draws in audiences, but this work went a little too far with it. A high school girl special-forces operative as the protagonist was good, but the rest was lacking, and the patriotism felt childish instead. Based on our internal review, this work receives a score of 3/10.]
The opponent who had just died came back to life, along with everyone who had died there.
[We will begin reshooting.]
＊＊＊
[We will begin the seventeenth reshoot.]
In this production, Kim Mi-ri was a ninja who had studied kunoichi techniques in Japan. The setting was a city rather than an island, and her role was that of a Korean Wapanese sidekick obsessed with old Japanese customs in a cyberpunk world.
“Everyone, run!”
Then, for the participant playing the protagonist, she shielded them with her body and was shot to death.
[We will begin the twenty-seventh reshoot.]
In this production, Kim Mi-ri played the victim. As a victim of a global organ-trafficking organization, she had all sorts of organs, including her corneas, kidneys, and liver, torn out while still alive, and died.
[We will begin the one hundred seventeenth reshoot.]
In this production, Kim Mi-ri was a concubine. It was an ancient Chinese historical drama, and her role was Consort Qi.
[We will begin the five hundred seventy-second reshoot. From now on, we will add fantasy elements. Let’s make it spectacular.]
In this production, Kim Mi-ri was a space marshal. She was a person from the future who could use telekinesis after having a cyberchip implanted, but she was swallowed by a black hole and died.
Her roles continued to change. She was a criminal whose head was cut off, a murderer who ate hearts, and a queen destined to be hanged.
‘Who am I?’
Very occasionally, she remembered herself as a high school girl. Yet the memories from that time were as distant as a dream, so faded now that they meant nothing.
‘A memory this vague can’t be reality.’
Ah, she understood at last.
That time was the dream, and this was reality.
This was reality, her life as an actor dancing to the director’s instructions.
[We will begin the one hundred thirty-one million, two hundred seventy-two thousand, two hundred eleventh reshoot.]
She played countless roles, became countless fantastical beings, and experienced countless deaths. The story and setting changed with every production, but the ending in which most participants died never changed.
[Cut!]
After so much time had passed that she could no longer remember the past,
[Filming is complete. We have finally made a work we like. Everyone, you worked hard.]
At last, she regained her freedom.
[We will return you to the world where you live. Time has not passed in reality, so there is no need to worry. Goodbye.]
When she opened her eyes again, she was in a room she no longer remembered.
“...”
But freedom was no longer freedom.
“I, I, I, I am, I am.”
All her experiences until then.
All the roles she had played.
All the superpowers and Supernatural Abilities she had possessed.
“Iamahighschoolgirlspecial-forcesoperativeandaconcubineoftheHandynastyandavictimofhumantraffickingandaferrymen’sprostituteandavictimofgeneticmodificationexperimentsandanactivistdevotedtoJoseon’sindependenceandahuntertryingtokillthemonsteroftheHanRiverandJoseon’snewqueenandSherlockHolmes’sbelovedwomanandacookingkillerand.”
They all became reality.
“Sis! Why are you being so loud?”
“You little bitch! Why are you rapping in the middle of the night?”
Her younger sibling and mother entered the room. Shocked to see her body trembling as though she were having a seizure, the two rushed toward her.
“Sis! What’s wrong?”
“Oh my goodness!”
Her body reacted first. With one hand, she snapped her sibling’s neck. With the edge of her hand, she struck her mother’s solar plexus and pierced her heart.
“Iamanasceticseekingtoattainenlightenmentwithbarehandsandanortherngrandduke’soneandonlybeloveddaughterandasacrificeofferedtotheDemonKingtobeeatenaliveandaheroineresurrectedasundeadafterbecomingtheblackmage’sloverandafairyascendingtoheavenandafoolwhostranglesthemselvestodeathand.”
She ran out of the house and killed everyone she saw.
“Aaaah!”
“It, it’s a monster!”
“A superhuman!?”
She could use every absurd superpower she had displayed throughout the reshoots. Having remained in the dream for far too long, her mind and body had already become part of it. She could pull everything she had experienced and learned in the dream into reality.
“It’s a monster! Kill it!”
The military was deployed, but they could not stop her. Her body had already become part of the dream, and dreams could not be killed, so every attack from reality was meaningless.
The other ninety-eight participants also caused the same phenomenon in their own countries.
“This is an emergency! We have to deal with those monsters somehow!”
“Damn it! Monsters that tanks and missiles can’t stop!?”
No one knew who fired first. All anyone knew was that someone somewhere had launched a nuclear missile at their own country to kill the monsters, setting off desperate efforts to solve the problem somehow.
Kim Mi-ri walked through a desolate street in a world reduced to ruins, where no living people could be seen.
“Iamagirlwhostoleabicycletoraceandavictimwhosestomachwassplitopenbyaclownandacollegestudentcuttopiecesbyachainsawandacheerleaderstabbedwithaknifeandcoughingupbloodandawomanwhohangsherselfbecauseshecannotovercometheshockofheartbreakand.”
The ninety-nine participants like her walked the world.
It was a perfect apocalypse.
＊＊＊
“You’re saying we’re supposed to kill each other?”
“How could anyone do something so insane?”
“We’ve fallen into hell. The angels are testing us to punish people who don’t believe in God!”
Watching the people gathered in the clearing talk noisily, I mulled over the future my right eye had shown me.
“Hmm.”
After quietly leaving the clearing, I put a cigarette between my lips.
“This makes entering the Broken Ark pointless.”
The original plan was to head for the island’s special zone, which opened from the second day onward. If I opened the hatch there and went inside, I could escape the dream. In the game, that was how one survived this Anomaly.
“It isn’t the same as what the game showed.”
Even if I escaped according to the original plan, the world would end. That had not happened in the game.
‘It looked like the participants who became assimilated into the dream gained the identities and abilities of the roles they had played there, then went berserk.’
They even became immortal in the process.
“Phew.”
After taking deep drags until the cigarette became a butt, I exhaled toward the sky.
“Hello?”
Toward the director in the sky who was watching me.
No, watching all of us.
“My name is Lee Seung-hoon.”
“I’d like to discuss the play you, or all of you, are filming.”
Because dialogue is where the solution to every problem begins.
Footnotes:
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