WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Little Prince in the Ossuary

Chapter 122

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April Vengeance (10)

The person on the internal line was, as expected, the man claiming to be the governor of the Pacific Republic. Gyeoul had anticipated it. In a closed society, contact with the outside is a dangerous variable. It has to be controlled.

After hearing Gyeoul’s identity and purpose, the governor suddenly burst into loud laughter.

[Oh, my God. This is truly astonishing! Hahaha! I never thought a rescue team would actually come!]

Then he mocked whoever had made that decision.

[I do not know who approved this, but it is unbelievably stupid. Even right now there must be hundreds, thousands of ships asking for rescue... no matter if this is America, do they really have resources to waste like this?]

From the context, the governor himself seemed to have ordered the distress signal. Gyeoul asked,

“You were the one who sent the signal, but you did not actually want rescue?”

[Of course not, Lieutenant. I threw away the illusion that the world is kind a long time ago. A fixed course toward San Francisco. A massive passenger ship out of control. If I were in charge, I would have ordered it sunk. But since you came, it seems the U.S. military still does not understand reality. Tsk tsk. It will not last much longer.]

Ah, humanity’s future is bleak. The man muttered nonsense and chuckled to himself. The FBI investigator, listening through the secondary receiver, frowned. Gyeoul read two emotions on her face: contempt and guilt. The second was directed at herself.

Both the carrier strike group commander and the FBI investigator had initially supported sinking the ship. In that sense, they were no different from this murderous lunatic. That was how she seemed to feel.

This was not the time to comfort her. Gyeoul asked again.

“I do not understand. Then why send the signal?”

Even if the odds were low, trying to save themselves would have made more sense.

[To die like human beings, of course.]

“Like human beings?”

[Yes. Without hope that rescue might come, my beloved citizens would have gone mad and rampaged. The republic’s order would have collapsed, and I would not have come out alive either. I could not allow the outrage of citizens murdering their governor. If we were all going to die together, that was another matter. So I was expecting a torpedo or a missile...]

The words poured out quickly. The governor seemed to enjoy talking. Like a man desperate to unload a prepared excuse on someone.

So he had sent a distress signal for mass suicide? Just to stretch his own life a little longer...?

Was he sincere, or just testing him? By instinct, it felt closer to the former. Gyeoul could not be sure. For now, he decided to keep going along with him.

“You call that a human death?”

[Of course. Struggling until the very last moment because you want to live even one second longer. What could be more human? A dignified way to commit suicide.]

“I do not know. You wanted to live that badly, yet you had no trouble eating other people.”

The logically insane man laughed again.

[Are you trying to sneer at what we had to do to survive? How noble of you. But Lieutenant, the citizens of this republic were ordinary people. They were not born cannibals or murderers. Anyone could become like us, if they were hungry enough to want to eat people.]

Gyeoul denied it immediately.

“No. You were worse than that. You put disease and humans on the same stage and enjoyed it. You cheered their fights and deaths. Did you know this? The last monster still chained on a leash is still there. It will last a long time. It fed well.”

A circle had been drawn on the stage floor. The radius was exactly the length of the monster’s leash.

Once someone entered the circle, they could not leave until they completed the task. Ten tumbles. Ten push-ups. Ten jumps. Ten hula hoop spins. Ten jump rope skips. A chain of ridiculous tasks like that, completed while running from a mutant. Nothing was set in advance. The host and audience demanded things on the spot. Even from gestures alone, the madness was easy to read.

Killing the mutant was considered cheating. Armed personnel would shoot you dead. On silent-film-like CCTV screens, Gyeoul watched cheaters die over and over, even though he had not reviewed the footage for long.

The tasks grew more grotesque over time.

The worst was necrophilia. They were told to violate a living corpse, a mutant. Killing it was still cheating, so most challengers died. Mutants were physically powerful. In front of a starving rape victim, the unavoidable perpetrator became helpless prey. The line between perpetrator and victim was not clear.

The moment the perpetrator was bitten by the victim, the perpetrator was shot dead.

‘It was like mantis mating...’

He had never imagined seeing in humans what female mantises did, grinding up and devouring the male.

There were successful cases too. How was that even possible? As proof of success, the host removed the condom that had been put on in advance. The contents were what mattered. When white fluid spilled out, the audience erupted in cheers.

The rules became more complex too. At first there was only one circle, but later there were five. The opponent a person had to fight was another person. The match ended only when the last survivor stood in the narrow area where all five circles overlapped.

“You are saying even that was unavoidable to survive?”

At Gyeoul’s words, the governor answered lightly.

[Of course.]

“...”

[Are you pretending to be naive, or are you actually naive...? You are still young, so perhaps the latter. Then let me teach you, Lieutenant. Pleasure is essential to life. Humans are creatures that cannot live without pleasure. Why do prisoners long for the outside? Hmm? It is not like they are starving, freezing, or getting battered by rain and wind. Answer me.]

What came to mind were people desperate for pleasure, shouting about sex. Viewers from another world, miserable in their own lives, envied the afterlife of an unremarkable boy. Humans could not live without pleasure.

“You are right about that. But that does not mean you get to squeeze your pleasure out of someone else’s heart. Do not ask for agreement while ignoring basic common sense. It is disgusting.”

[Haha. That is different from the common sense I know.]

“How is it different? Since you brought up age, let me say this. Humans are social animals. Even middle school students learn that. It means people absolutely need other people to live. It is also the most basic reason people cannot eat people.”

By the same logic, altruism is ultimately self-interest. They are not different. It had been the dream the boy carried while alive. Now that he was dead, it no longer mattered.

‘Rather than loving only myself, I wanted to love everyone, and for everyone to love me in return...’

It was a childish wish from when he was young and immature. People always said to give first as much as you wanted to receive, but when he truly gave, nothing came back. People who only took. So this became a world of people who loved only themselves.

Maybe people clung tighter because they had so little. Afraid to give away what little they had when there was no certainty of being repaid. That was human weakness, and human limitation. What did the boy have to share besides his body and heart? He was too small to hate the world itself.

The intoxicated psychopath cut through his thoughts.

[Yes, you certainly have the right to say that. If everything I saw on TV was true. Honestly, I was impressed. You behaved like the kind of man who would die if his conscience told him to. That reckless sprint in Santa Maria, and risking your whole unit to protect one pregnant woman. But.]

He continued, still smiling in his voice.

[If you live like that, what is left for you? Hmm? In the end, nothing will remain. If you even give your heart for others, is that life really happy? Hmm? How happy have you been so far?]

“...”

[Admit the truth. Conscientious people get applause because everyone else benefits from them. A fool who gives endlessly, how beautiful.]

“Enough.”

No need to hear more. He had never intended to have this conversation in the first place. The killer had dug at Gyeoul’s wounds by dumb luck, but it was still just self-justifying noise from a murderer.

“You are not even a dog, but you bark for way too long.”

At least dogs are cute. It was a monologue meant to be heard, a deliberate provocation. Unlike before, when he had simply played along, Gyeoul now spoke with deliberate emphasis, throwing out threats like casual remarks. The tension came from that intentional unnaturalness.

“How the world works and how the world should be are very different things, you piece of trash. Who are you trying to sell that deception to?”

[Do the deaths of people who would have died anyway matter that much?]

On this sea, no one would blindly believe a broadcast promising free food with no strings attached. Only people with truly no hope had been drawn in. So, in the end, did he not think this ship surviving was more important right now? More nonsense followed, and Gyeoul cut him off again.

“You really talk too much. You are loud, and from now on, every word you say that I did not ask for costs you one bone.”

The governor let out a sigh mixed with laughter, as if saying: can someone preaching human morality really say that?

[Hahaha! What a humanitarian statement.]

That made one. Gyeoul calmly counted in cold numbers.

“Think about the people who got infected on purpose just to take revenge on you, and be grateful I am not saying I will kill you right now. Until I get there, think hard about which bone you should throw away.”

The leverage was on this side. There were only two of them, but the threat was not an empty bluff. They had a helicopter. You could do more with one helicopter than people thought.

‘If they lost the bridge and retreated, their remaining firepower is probably pathetic.’

The Grand Galley on Deck 3 was where all food on the ship was concentrated. It sat in the middle of the vessel, and the entrances were limited. It was exactly the sort of place someone would use as a final stronghold.

And that was exactly what bothered him. There might still be living food in there.

‘The kitchen CCTV is not enough.’

It was hard to see the governor up to now as a man who had been starving for a long time.

“Lieutenant. I will take it from here.”

She temporarily blocked outgoing transmission, and Gyeoul tilted his head.

“Do you need to?”

“From what I have heard so far, this bastard calling himself governor is not afraid of you, Lieutenant. Either he is truly insane, or he has been resigned for a long time. Either way, your name will not have much effect. In that case, I am better suited for this. In negotiating with criminals and extracting information, few places surpass the Bureau.”

He smiled at the fact that she did not claim no one surpassed it.

“You are going to try to sweet-talk him?”

“Negotiation starts with identifying and stimulating the other side’s desires. We already threw the rescued chef into the sea, so there is no way this bastard and his accomplices will get better treatment. This son of a bitch knows his position, so unless we force the issue, he will just keep mocking us. In other words, he thinks he has nothing to fear.”

Even so, the investigator showed clear intent to toy with him in return.

[Hello-? Lieutenant Han Gyeoul? Is nobody there?]

A snickering voice came through the speaker.

Gyeoul handed the receiver to the investigator. The boy could read people well, but using that was a different domain.

============================ Author's Afterword ============================

#Q&A

Q. rumen: @Was the movie Gyeoul watched Law Abiding Citizen? The one with Gerard Butler?

A. Correct. The ending feels uncomfortable, which makes it even better for thinking about limits. Hehe.

Q. Cheongnyuryeon: @And author-nim, something like a shadow appeared in my dream and said if I gave it my soul you would do rapid updates. That was not you, right?

A. Ah, that was Pelicana Chicken impersonating me. If it appears again, bite its legs off first.

Q. LifeSaver: @There were more countries with cannibal cultures in the past than I expected, China, Europe, South America, etc.

A. If people lived there, I assume it existed there.

Q. RGZ95: @As expected... in this kind of setting, this had to show up @[email protected]

A. There was a cannibalism-related episode in The Walking Dead (Game) Season 1 too. It was really fun, but I cannot bring myself to replay it on Steam. I am curious about Season 2, though...

Q. Pirque: @Great read. The charm of your writing is setting background, narration, and plausibility, and all three stand out clearly. In quality, I think it goes beyond the recent average and still has room to spare. Please keep writing, and thank you for giving us a work like this.

A. Thank you for consistently reading a novel this slow in updates and this niche in taste.

Q. Na-Ru: @Hm, so the movie Gyeoul watched was Law Abiding Citizen. Also, it was a bit disappointing that something in the middle seemed skipped.

A. If what disappointed you was the more detailed content of the colosseum, I think this episode probably cleared that up.

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