WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ The Little Prince in the Ossuary

Chapter 129

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Golden Gate (1)

Things do not go well all the time. Still, as 「Days after Apocalypse」 kept repeating, catastrophic failures had become rare, and Gyeoul had grown used to that.

By stepping beyond human limits, people could overcome situations humans were never meant to overcome. It was a kind of joy he had never expected in life. Back when he understood himself even less than he did now. Back when he still tried not to hate the world. Enough time had passed that it now felt close to habit.

That was why April Pacific stuck to him. Disappointment thick as tar. It had been a long time since he had failed this badly.

Joanna gave a bitter smile.

“Even if we could not save anyone, it was not a total loss. We confirmed special mutants that had never been reported before, did we not? The same goes for those people we could not even classify as mutant or human. The samples you brought back will be useful to the Medical Service Corps. And there is political significance too.”

“Political significance?”

“Think of it as a safeguard for worst-case scenarios. Politicians are always afraid of exposure. The current blockade strategy has serious humanitarian problems. They are even actively attacking civilian ships.”

She spoke like she was talking to herself. How many civilians had the Navy sent to the bottom by now? That was beyond what Intelligence Correction could infer. The margin of error was too large.

One hundred thousand? A million? Or ten million?

The numbers felt unreal. But this was not a joke. Even ships under ten thousand tons could carry over ten thousand people if packed deliberately. Sink ten such ships, and that was already a hundred thousand.

He looked back on the start of this world. Refugees fleeing camp had been met with machine-gun fire. Behind the effort to recruit refugee volunteers were U.S. soldiers already mentally destroyed. As Elliot had said, it could not have been only because they had lost family. What had massacring unarmed civilians done to their minds?

Carrier strike group commander Admiral Kitchener had also complained about manpower shortages. There had to be a connection, including pilots refusing orders.

“The presidential election is coming. Politicians are obsessed with tearing each other apart. The things I hear through intelligence channels, Gyeoul, you probably cannot even imagine. I am used to it, but I still do not understand it. Is a change in administration really more important than humanity’s survival?”

She let the words out with a sigh. People at the top really did think in their own way.

“They live in different worlds. If the world you live in is different, your life is different too, and when life changes, your thoughts change, right?”

Joanna frowned at Gyeoul’s reply.

“Different worlds? Not one world on the edge of ruin?”

“Maybe. I think one person’s world is a collection of what that person has seen and felt. So maybe everyone lives in their own world. We are only similar to the extent we can empathize with each other.”

At that moment, Gyeoul remembered psychotherapy. Even the same color might truly be felt as a different color by each person. He had once said that to the woman pretending to be his counselor. Color was a symbol. A way of seeing the world. A person and their essence were divided at the boundary of the senses.

Everyone lived by tinting the world with their own color. Empathy was what narrowed that distance. It was something he had felt deeply in his short life.

“Hmm, I do not really know.”

The FBI investigator shook her head at the abstract talk. Her uncertain expression showed she did not understand. He also caught a trace of caution. She was trying not to treat his words like teenage leftovers, or she had thought exactly that and was trying not to show it. Gyeoul read it as easily as ever and let it pass.

The investigator brought the conversation back to reality.

“Anyway, that is the point. Everything we obtained from April Pacific will justify the current blockade strategy. It is enough to persuade the public. Above all, you are the central figure in it.”

Gyeoul forced a thin smile.

“A hero story. Like that man said.”

A story of a boy hero defeating a cannibal monster. An Odyssey of the Pacific.

The investigator’s expression hardened.

“I hate to admit it, but that bastard’s brain worked. Gyeoul, I will say this again. Forget what happened. If you call that a failure, primary responsibility is mine.”

“Because we could not persuade the Governor?”

“No. Because I am the supervisor.”

Joanna drove the point in like a nail. Do not forget that I had decision-making authority. It sounded forced, but if she had opposed it to the end, they would never even have boarded. They would have been stopped at identity verification when contacting the destroyer USS Higgins.

“I will try. But Anne, are you really okay?”

“You go numb doing this kind of work long enough. You do your best, and if you fail, that is where it ends. You have to know your limits. If you keep reaching past them, you will not last.”

For a boy who was often frustrated by limits, it was not easy to accept.

Still, she had done her best. The Governor had simply been a madman beyond all measure.

Gyeoul sank back into the tar.

Last night, the path into the Grand Galley had been blood-red. He should have been cautious. That rotten man and his companions would have treated the Governor as an enemy. Why they failed to get in was obvious.

The Grand Galley had only two entrances, one toward the bow and one toward the stern. Both were wide, but they were ideal choke points for concentrated firepower. With a fan-shaped field of fire, they could block enemies ten times or a hundred times their number.

So Gyeoul left the next part to the investigator. Making them come out on their own was also the role Joanna had volunteered for. Smooth persuasion over the all-ship broadcast.

And so the citizens of the cannibal republic threw away their weapons and walked out, along with the final food reserves they had been saving.

A warning from 「Survival Instinct」. Red trajectories flooded his vision.

Boom! Boom-boom! Shotgun blasts tore through the crowd.

When the flames and shockwaves died down, Gyeoul, still crouched, heard someone humming. He aligned his sights at once. At the end stood one person, now the only survivor, tossing aside two clackers and wagging a finger.

“Ah, ah, ah, ah. You cannot do that. No rushing, Lieutenant. Hmm? This is the climax. I am unarmed now anyway. More importantly, is there not something you want to ask before you kill me?”

Bang! Gyeoul blew off his fingertip.

Silence stretched for a while. The Governor dropped to his knees and folded in on himself. Only tiny gagging sounds came out. Saliva hung from his mouth in strings. It was almost impressive that he was not crying.

Not nearly enough. The goal that had brought him this far had vanished in front of his eyes. Gyeoul spoke coldly.

“One bone for every word I did not ask for. How many words have you said so far?”

One, two, three, four, five. Counting without mercy, Gyeoul trusted sensory correction and walked toward him. As the man himself had said, he was unarmed. His combat ability was pathetic. The clackers connected to the Claymores seemed to be only the two he had just used. Now the Governor was within kicking range.

Gyeoul kicked him. Crack! The man’s forehead split, and he tumbled loudly across the floor. Blood pooled where he rolled, not only from the severed fingertip. Shrapnel had scattered, and the floor had turned razor-sharp.

“Ugh, ahh, this, ahh, ah, it hurts, it hurts so much.”

The Governor made strange sounds. Half sobbing, half laughing.

“A, a finger. Just one finger. It hurts this much. I was right after all. I was right. Uheuheuheuheu. Heuheuheuk.”

Should he ask? Gyeoul considered it for a moment. He had no intention of asking anything. It felt like dancing to a madman’s rhythm. But this was a kind of madness he had never seen before. Virtual personalities were fossils from humanity’s accumulated past, and here he had found a new vein of insanity.

No. Even if I ask, I will not get anything coherent.

Madness had never been in short supply in the world before he died. Instead of questions, he chose violence against something no longer human. A release for rage and resentment. Even now, when the joy had faded from it, it still held a little meaning.

The madman kept trying to speak until his final moment, as if that mattered more than surviving.

“Gyeoul? Lieutenant Han Gyeoul-nim? Your coffee is getting cold.”

Joanna’s tired voice. Gyeoul returned from his habitual drift of thought to reality. The sea wind was unchanged, and the half-empty cup held little warmth. It no longer gave off the same aroma as before. The person who had made it looked at him with reproach. Gyeoul put on an awkward expression.

“I am sorry. I said I would try, but I was careless.”

“Finish it first. No more wandering thoughts.”

He had no choice but to obey.

“But this is not coffee, is it?”

“It is coffee.”

The FBI investigator answered with a straight face. Gyeoul gave a flat laugh and took another sip from the cup he had neglected. The shift in temperature had changed the taste. The sweetness had gone out of balance, and the harsh alcoholic note sat badly in his mouth. Even his rough palate, which could treat combat rations as gourmet food, found it unpleasant, though still drinkable.

“They say if there is no stage, there are no people.”

Joanna tilted her head at Gyeoul’s words.

“Was that that bastard’s last message?”

“Yes. More exactly, one of his last messages. He rambled a lot of other things too. I still do not really know what he meant.”

“That sounds exactly like an empty-headed fool drunk on intellectual vanity.”

“I do not think that was all it was.”

“You do not need to understand him. Just look at how he hid his name to the end. That alone makes him a vile bastard. It was self-preservation instinct.”

On that point, Gyeoul agreed. He had said his name would not remain in history, and from there it was hard to read it any other way. The stage talk was probably the same thing.

Joanna spoke.

“Human sociality is nothing more than performing a role assigned on a specific stage. Society has countless layers and cross-sections, and when the stage changes, people rapidly change themselves. They learn and internalize the role the stage demands. Therefore, people have no essence. There are only roles and theater.”

She stopped there and snorted.

“That is the logic people often quote, or invent, to justify criminal acts. He was exceptionally insane, but there are plenty of intellectual narcissist criminals like him. The moment they start talking about stages, the answer is obvious. They are weak people who cannot tolerate themselves without grand, large-scale self-justification. Different from trash who commit crimes first and think later. Well, being able to say this comes from profiling data accumulated over a long time.”

“So by not revealing his name, you think he separated his real self from his role?”

“Nine times out of ten. I am surprised that question came to you right away. You are not ordinary either, Gyeoul.”

The investigator gave him a fresh look, and Gyeoul answered with another clumsy smile.

He felt he could understand a little more of the madness he had passed through last night. Roles demanded by the stage. Wherever he went, he did seem to adjust himself to fit that stage.

The self required at work. The self required at home. The self required among friends. Sometimes they collided and slipped out of alignment.

Now he thought of the April Pacific passengers who had eaten people.

When the stage changed, did people really change that easily?

And what about the world out there?

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

#KakaoTalk

Tunguska: So there are people on Naver doing rating terrorism too.

Tunguska: I ran the numbers as ratings increased, like an equation, and a few people were giving it 0 points.

Tunguska: For example, the person who gave the 46th score, I will show up in your dream tonight.

Cartoonist Friend & Programmer Friend: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

#Q&A

Q. MasterKalsolum: @With childlike innocence alone, it is hard to survive in this polluted world. I collapsed at work, got taken to a hospital, got diagnosed with high blood pressure (198/120), and after two months without meat, life feels drier than chicken breast. I need more childlike innocence, stronger childlike innocence... enough innocence to forget this reality..

A. A life without meat... maybe a bowl of gomtang filled with the energy of the universe would work? It is hard for me to increase your childlike innocence supply...

Please take care of your health. ;_;

Q. kaley: @I read chapter 40 and slapped my knee lol. Have another day full of childlike innocence today.

A. Yes, start your day today with my childlike innocence too.

Q. BlueCrystal: @Author, I was curious after seeing the cover, was Gyeoul not just a brain? Then is that person on the cover really Gyeoul??

A. If you look, both coffins only contain brains. So rather than a literal body, I think you can take it as a kind of metaphor.

...That said, even I, the author, do not know the exact expressive intent. Hehe.

Q. Guaaaaak: Ooh!! The cover, ooh!! Naver uses per-episode payment and this place is subscription, did that not cause contract issues?

A. Because of the promise to remain on Noblesse, the chief editor probably had a rough time with that.

Q. GoDE: Wow... I am binge-reading and my childlike innocence is... childlike innocence is overflowing... Is it because I met childlike innocence again after so long... It is too overwhelminggg! On Naver, does it go up exactly as is, no content deletion from censorship?

A. It went up as is except for chapter 24. In chapter 24, there was some editing, but... I still tried to deliver the content itself somehow. I rewrote or removed only explicit expressions and context.

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