WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 152: The Past, The Season When Roses Wither

──────

#The Past (9), The Season When Roses Wither (2)

The old tyrant in a young body sat with his chin propped on one hand. He wore nothing. Slick, wet sounds rose from below. She was an expensive woman. Every movement she made was both elegant and vulgar. When their eyes met, she smiled with them. Beautiful. No easy feat with her mouth full, and yet. Even then, her tongue moved. A private temptation hidden beneath the surface. A movement far removed from her graceful appearance. Her mouth was hot.

But the reaction that should have been there was absent. The tyrant was cold. His skin was almost chilled. One of the women who had passed through had once said he was like a cold-blooded animal. That it was frightening, because he did not seem human.

Back then, the tyrant had laughed inwardly. Humans were cold animals to begin with.

In any case, he had a problem with sexual function. Before he traded out his body, he had thought it was old age. No, he had believed it was. He had thought that if he traded for youth, the life he had lost would return. That he could begin everything again.

‘I wanted to become a new me.’

Go Geon-cheol hated his past self. When he looked in the mirror, rage boiled up inside him. He saw the face of an idiot. A stupid bastard who could not even keep one woman. At the scene where the affair was exposed, the woman who had been his wife had laughed like a madwoman. Look at yourself now. Did you think anyone could sincerely love a hideous thing like you?

Ah, that sharp laughter. His head throbbed every time he remembered it. A memory that repeated on its own. He could not lower the volume inside his head. Hahaha, hahahahaha! It grew louder and louder, until at last it became an indistinguishable roar. It sounded like rolling stones. Rumble, rumble.

Smack! Chairman Go Geon-cheol blinked. A stinging pain came from his thigh. A faint handprint had been left on flesh that had cooled pale white. It was the work of the woman down below. She changed position. The gaze looking up at him was submissive, and the hand caressing him was dominant. With her free hand, she swept her hair back. Her white, slender neck was revealed. Tilting her face slightly, she smiled and said,

“That’s too much. You’re thinking of someone else while you’re with me.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions.”

“Am I wrong?”

The Chairman frowned. But he did not get angry. It was not easy to find a woman he could tolerate keeping at his side. Just seeing other women’s naked bodies made him nauseous. What was especially hard to endure were the smiles thicker than makeup and more disgusting than perfume. Those clumsily concealed emotions that only made the ugliness underneath stand out more.

At least this woman knew how to smile decently. He could sense honesty in how she accepted her own filth. Her mixed-race features were acceptable too. The more different she was from the woman who had been his wife, the better. Thanks to that, he could keep her beside him and bear it to some degree. Among disgusting things, she was one of the better ones. There was no need to get angry and drive her out. His habitual anger was another thing he needed to overcome anyway. For his new life.

Saaak, saaak. A white hand moved over a sensitive place. Like playing an instrument. The emotion she put into each variation was light complaint and temptation. The soft friction was like a bow drawing across strings. Yet even superb skill could not bring a dead instrument back to life. The sound box was not empty. It was packed full of crackling stones, leaving no room for any performance to deepen.

The tyrant demanded,

“Keep doing what you were doing.”

At that, the woman pouted.

“Let me rest for a moment. My jaw hurts. If this keeps up, my jaw’s going to get all square, you know?”

Then she climbed up coquettishly. Pressing her whole body against him, she appealed to the cold-blooded man with her warmth. Her hand was still moving. She straddled his firm leg, kissed his cheek, bit his earlobe, and asked,

“Do you like my mouth?”

The Chairman answered honestly.

“It’s unpleasant.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

The woman puffed out her cheeks. She showed just enough sulkiness.

It was the truth. When he closed his eyes and felt it, it was truly filthy. It felt like something inhuman was attached to him, a damp, dirty mollusk. An act that filled him with extreme revulsion. Even so, he kept asking for it again and again, and the Chairman found himself ridiculous. Was he not like a child peeling the scab off a wound that had not fully healed?

“If you hate it, why do you keep asking me to do it?”

“That’s none of your concern. Just do as you’re told.”

“Whew, fine. Not right now, though. Sometimes, you should just leave it to me.”

“I have plenty of other pleasures too,” she whispered sweetly, and the tyrant shivered.

It was a literal chill. There had been a time when he had been ruled by whispers like this. The cold of an old winter pushed into the hot room. The difference in temperature between reality and memory drove the broken man into a sharp corner.

That unusually harsh day had been his daughter’s birthday. The father had been terribly busy, so he could not be there. He had not planned to be there. But an important meeting was postponed. He did not board the plane. Bad luck. At the time, he had thought it fortunate in a certain sense, but in the end, it was the worst thing that could have happened. The child who should have been receiving congratulations was alone outside in the snowy garden. Shivering. Hugging a doll. What kind of doll had it been? No, that did not matter. She seemed to have been there for a long time. Her head and both shoulders were covered in white.

The father asked,

“What happened? Why are you out here alone? Hm?”

His youngest daughter was the one child who could not get along with the others. Usually, he had thought she was just shy. The youngest was often depressed and quiet. She did not seem to have friends either. It was common for her to sit hugging a doll for hours. But seeing her alone outside on a day when she should have been celebrated felt strange.

Hearing her father’s voice, his daughter jumped in fright. When he hugged her tight, she cried and said,

“You can’t go inside.”

That was even stranger. He went in quietly. The servants were nowhere to be seen. The butler was one thing, but even the maid on duty was absent. The inside of the house was hot. Yet his bones were cold. His heartbeat seemed about to deafen him, but not enough to make him miss the sounds coming from the bedroom. Clothes caught at his feet. Things shed one layer at a time while moving. His breath stopped because they did not belong to one person. The woman’s clothes were familiar, and the man’s clothes were familiar too. Only the latter were not the Chairman’s own.

The door was not locked. It was not even closed. How rushed had they been? It had only been pushed to. Panting leaked out through the gap. The Chairman looked through the crack in the door. He knew both of them. One was his wife, and one was his younger brother. His wife was attached to his younger brother’s lower body.

“You’re thinking of someone else again. Who is it? This woman more charming than me.”

The present intruded into the past. Go Geon-cheol looked at the sulking woman. His answer was impulsive.

“My daughter.”

“What?”

The woman held her stomach and laughed. She laughed until she grew tired of it. Complaining that her stomach hurt, she wiped away her tears.

“What is so funny?”

“How could I not laugh? The secretaries tremble because they’re so scared of you, and even with a woman like me in front of you, all you do is look disgusted. You have such an amazing body, but you’re worried about erectile dysfunction, and in the middle of sex you want so desperately, you suddenly think of your daughter. My goodness! Chairman, were you always like this?”

Then she laughed for another long while. The Chairman said,

“I don’t want to have sex.”

“Then what is it?”

He wanted to get it back. The Chairman held back the unnecessary words.

If all he wanted was to have sex, he would have used drugs. There were plenty of fast-acting drugs. They would not create sexual desire where none existed, but swollen erectile tissue would respond sensitively. Because humans were made that way. Because they were nothing more than functional, inefficient lumps of meat.

But the Chairman wanted a new beginning. He wanted to recover everything the woman who had been his wife had stolen from him. Sexual desire was one of those things. Sexual desire itself meant nothing. If anything, it was horrible and low. Yet even that deeply contemptible thing had to be restored first. Even if he recovered it only to throw it away.

Once he shook it off, he intended never to have relations with a woman again.

The present, tired of waiting, dug in from another angle.

“Your daughter must be the new Chairman of Paradise Group, right? She was really pretty. How do I compare?”

Should he ignore her? The Chairman suppressed the rage rising pathologically inside him. He had rejected every woman his aides had brought. Now only this one woman remained. He needed to do something different from what he had done until now.

‘You need stimulation?’

That was what the doctor, who ended up bloodied every time they met, had said. That he needed mental stimulation.

“She resembles her mother.”

“Whew, then I can’t beat her.”

“You’re much better.”

At that, the woman burst into laughter again. Go Geon-cheol dug back into the thought. Stimulation.

The doctor had suggested Virtual Reality as a means of treatment. He said that in it, Go Geon-cheol could continuously experience intensity and variety impossible in reality, without any burden on his body. Laughable nonsense. The other party always had to be real. The truth was that this “real” could not be distinguished by the senses anyway, but was he not always the one assigning meaning? A fake must not intrude into his new life. It had to be fiercely his life.

‘That woman is still ruling me.’

Along with anger, the familiar regret washed over the tyrant. He should have killed them more horribly. Both of them. If he had, perhaps these aftereffects would not have remained. Why, exactly, had someone like him, a human as efficient as himself, suffered a malfunction like love? Had that woman ever been worth it?

“Whew, what a scary face. This won’t do. I’ll leave it here for today. I did gain something, in my own way.”

The woman sitting on his lap kissed the old boy on the forehead, smiled, and withdrew.

Even the way she dressed was lovely. She was worthy of being called the current peak of the entertainment world. Yet all he felt was that she was beautiful. Only flat thoughts passed through his mind. How much had they said it cost to bring her here? Had she wanted something besides money? What was her name again...?

“What did you gain?”

When he asked the belated question, she had returned to a proper appearance. A pure, innocent style that carried none of the decadence from before. She tilted her head and smiled.

“You said I was prettier than your daughter. That’s a big step forward.”

“...Get out.”

But she trotted back over. Slowly closing the distance, she placed her lips over the old boy’s. Once in a brush, twice in little pecks, three times deep and long. The tyrant barely endured the final wave of disgust. His two hands twitched on the chair’s armrests.

“Do you know what?”

The woman said,

“I have a lot of money. Of course, compared to you, Chairman, it’s a drop in the bucket, but I’ve saved enough to take care of myself into the afterlife. This is an age where life is nothing more than the process of preparing for the afterlife.”

She stepped a few paces away and continued.

“So I didn’t come here for money. I just wanted to keep doing this work while I’m alive. Until I can retire satisfied. I didn’t want to die without ever having properly lived.”

“Did you want patronage?”

“Yes. As you know, being an entertainer these days isn’t easy. What can I do when my competition is cost-effective electronic girls? They can’t completely replace people, but when it comes to scripts and direction decided in advance, they aren’t that different from people. I can feel my place shrinking more and more.”

“....”

“Maybe I should look for other work. But no. I don’t want to. This is my life. If my life changes, then that isn’t me. I have to live at least once before I die. I thought I could do anything for that. Even if I grew young again like you, Chairman, this kind of life would be impossible.”

The Chairman lost interest in the lengthening talk. Humans buried in function were everywhere, were they not? Foolish things. A life ruled by something was not a true life. One had to rule everything. Money was the means to do so. The all-purpose opportunity cost. Therefore, an economic life was the correct life.

The Chairman waved a hand.

“Discuss that sort of matter with my secretary. They’ll handle it as they see fit.”

“Whew. Think about why I’m saying this.”

The woman playfully furrowed her brow.

“I find you very interesting right now, Chairman. Enough that my original purpose doesn’t matter much anymore.”

“You’re only a tool.”

“I know. I felt it. But I can become a tool you cherish, can’t I?”

“If you make the effort.”

“I am making it.”

This time, she truly withdrew and said goodbye.

“Call me again. Next time, I’d like you to call me by my name.”

The Chairman felt a poisonous displeasure.

============================ Author’s Note ============================

#Q&A

Q. zkqkel-nim: @ Author-nim, your chapters often go up at dawn. Is dawn when childlike innocence is at its fullest?

A. Not really... It’s just that I write slowly. I’m very jealous of other authors who can produce 30,000 characters in 10 hours.

Q. Guaaaaak-nim: @ How on earth are you supposed to pronounce that Russian word lolol

A. It’s Vladimir.

Q. Nanananyang-nim: @ Author-nim, please take care of your daily routine. You need to stay healthy so we can keep canning your novels for a long time.

A. It’s becoming common for me to write one chapter, get soaked in fatigue, and then let the day pass somehow. I know I shouldn’t be doing this, but... haha. Thank you for worrying about me.

Q. JulyNavy-nim: @ When will this be published as a book T_T I want to buy it right away when it comes out

A. I’m told it’s in progress. I think Volume 1 will probably come out next month.

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried