WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 181: The Past, The Season When Roses Wither

──────

The tyrant had not yet plucked the rose.

Han Ga-eul was a beautiful season. Eyes full of sorrow, shadows, yet clean and unwavering. A fleeting air, gentle bearing... The scent of a person. Not a literal smell. It meant that unlike ordinary humans, she had not rotted.

A few words of conversation were enough to judge her. As a merchant, the Chairman knew how to read people. No one could stand at the top of a world made of people without trading in people.

But every human being rotted in the end. Han Ga-eul would be no exception. Most people wilted before they could bloom, but every now and then, there was someone beautiful for at least one season. Still, no flower bloomed forever. Beauty withered, passion cooled, and memories decayed. Humans were products with expiration dates. They were like seasons destined to pass. Only, no second spring would come.

He could not understand why he was drawn to her. He had even wondered if it was an emotion engraved into the body. But an irrational suspicion was contemptible in itself. Superstitions without scientific proof were surely nothing more than the workings of a fickle heart. Fear was weakness. He could not allow weakness.

He had to overcome it.

Love, that sweet, dizzying, disgusting emotion, was also the memory of a terrible defeat. It was the mental scar the Chairman had never managed to shake off. If this feeling he felt while looking at Han Ga-eul now was a new form of love, fine. This was a good chance to make up for that defeat. Running away was absurd. He would face it head-on and conquer it. He would surpass the limits of humanity.

I want her, I want her, I want her.

Chairman Go Geon-cheol suppressed his pounding heart and fierce impulse.

‘I have to put a price on her. I have to pay the price. I have to acquire her fairly through bargaining and contract.’

There was no such thing as an emotion that wanted nothing in return.

Once was enough for being ruled by irrational emotion. The heart’s irrationality would be converted into rational economic value through a rational transaction.

Chairman Go Geon-cheol wanted to be an oppressor even toward himself. Absolute control over every element that made him up. Ah, life had to be economical. He was a tyrant who never wanted to lose himself again. Therefore, the principle had to be upheld. One single principle. Contracts and transactions. Human life.

How many times had this been? The Chairman asked Ga-eul.

“This time, I would like to hear an answer. Do you intend to accept the deal?”

Gyeoul’s sister quietly stared at the tyrant. At the gentle original form that remained beyond that violent expression. The face that had once been Gyeoul’s became harder to resent the more she looked at it. Each time she felt that the soul was different, it hurt. Even so, in the end, she found herself longing.

That was why these meetings forced on her were not only painful. As long as Ga-eul did not have the courage to face her younger brother, that precarious soul who wanted to let go of everything, even this small comfort was precious to her.

But even if she could no longer have that comfort, she did not want to accept the deal.

To begin with, seeking Gyeoul in a stranger who had merely taken his body was enough to make her feel guilty.

Ga-eul folded both hands over the hem of her green dress and spoke in a calm voice.

“Chairman. Please let me go now.”

Twitch. Go Geon-cheol raised his eyebrows with the face of an angry Gyeoul.

“Is that a refusal?”

“Yes. The deal you proposed was impossible from the start.”

Why! The Chairman swallowed the rage that had nearly burst out of him like a seizure. Before reason could act, it felt as if the body, the heart, had suppressed it... No. An illusion. He was only holding back because anger would not help the negotiation. I am a merchant. Reassuring himself, the Chairman suppressed his groundless concern.

“I would like to ask why you think so, but I have a feeling I will get an obvious answer, so I will leave it there.”

Some foolish nonsense about how a person’s heart could not be bought with money. The Chairman had heard that shallow line far too many times. The more fake something was, the louder it became. He had never seen anyone who played the gentleman that way and did not trade away conscience and love. It was only a matter of how large or small the required sum was.

“Still, I suppose I should make what I want clear.”

Accurately defining the article of trade was the prerequisite for a fair transaction.

“You seem to be mistaken, but what I want is not some substanceless emotion. It is a more concrete relationship. A collection of individual acts of affection to satisfy desire, and a heart willing enough to allow them. That is sufficient. Nothing beyond that exists in the first place.”

Ga-eul let out a deep, soundless sigh. This person really doesn’t know what he’s asking for. How did someone end up like this? I should hate him, but it is hard to hate him.

Lost resentment became cold frost settling over her heart.

‘Gyeoul, this world is full of adults younger than us.’

He could easily force her with power, yet the stubbornness with which he kept proposing deals was also a clue. Ga-eul understood. He was someone who could only live this way.

Her steady silence was a firmer refusal than words, so Chairman Go Geon-cheol had to hold back his boiling rage once again. He clenched and unclenched his hand several times in irritation. Forcing a deal on an unwilling party was also part of a merchant’s skill. The Chairman twisted his mouth into a smile.

“You really are selfish.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you not pity your younger brother? I heard his coverage period is in danger.”

That idiot, that stupid bastard, who even mortgaged his afterlife for the sake of his family.

Ga-eul’s shoulders trembled. To the Chairman, the flash of emotion that crossed her in that instant looked like a chance to negotiate. He tried to dig into that tender place with sharpened words, to shake her somehow.

“His name was Han Gyeoul, wasn’t it? How much of a share do you think you had in why that bastard sold his body to me? At the very least, more than those moronic parents of yours, I imagine. If so, I believe you ought to feel that much debt over the situation your brother is in. Am I wrong?”

“...”

“Hmph. Still, I tried to make a fair trade. It is true that those creatures called parents concluded the deal, but that did not make it right to steal all the profits. Did you know? They came to bargain over their child’s body, and all they cared about was how much money would come back to them. They said the son who would die soon would be fine with the basic coverage, that it was fine if no money went into his Afterlife Insurance account, and asked me to pay even half of that amount to them instead.”

They truly were disgusting bastards. The Chairman showed his contempt.

“That was not fair! It was not fair! I ignored that demand. I threw away the chance to make a much cheaper deal! Why? Because the afterlife of the bastard handing his body over to me could not be that miserable! Because someone who made a deal with me could not fall that low! I am a merchant! That was an insult to me! In an unfair deal, both parties are filthy!”

Ga-eul’s wet gaze dropped to her feet. The tyrant snapped at her. Look at me.

“You right now are worse than I was back then! You are nothing but unfair! Tell me. What help can you give your brother? Have you imagined even once how terrified your younger brother must be right now, as he draws closer day by day to the end of his afterlife? Do you really have no thought of easing even a little of that fear?”

“...”

“Even while you act noble all by yourself, Han Gyeoul, that bastard, is losing the time he has left. We live in an age where men and women sleep together after a single night everywhere you look. Say you can earn 100 million from doing that common thing once. Again and again, until I get sick of you! Who would not envy you? Hm? Where else would there be a fool as empty-headed as you? Even a man would spread his asshole in front of me!”

“...”

“If you have a conscience, sacrifice even a little for your younger brother. What actual loss would you suffer by accepting the deal?”

At this question, Ga-eul, who had only been listening until now, raised her head.

“I know better than anyone what it means to act for my brother’s sake.”

“Ah, do you now?”

Unmoved by the sarcastic reply, Ga-eul was calmly furious.

“That child would have already let everything go if not for me. Only because of me... Because I said I had no confidence I could live in a world without him, he is waiting. And even that, he tries not to show in front of me... Who is trying to protect whom...?”

As she spoke, watery grief rolled down from her blinking eyes.

Seeing that, the tyrant clenched his fist. His heart was acting on its own again. The unpleasant feeling that this was not his own body. Strangely, though, the feeling was not only unpleasant.

Ga-eul shook her head and went on.

“Extending an afterlife he does not even want that way, even by selling my body... That is absolutely not helping him. It would trample on the precious heart that is waiting for me. I cannot do that. I will do my best too, but I will not deceive Gyeoul. I will not make him smile with a lie.”

It would be difficult to deceive him in the first place. As far as Ga-eul knew, few children were as clever as Gyeoul. What would he think if hundreds of millions suddenly came in? That she had won the lottery?

More than Ga-eul read Gyeoul, Gyeoul read Ga-eul. If she met him with a guilty heart, could she really hide it until the end? No. Absolutely not. Then she would end up not meeting him at all, and that too would be a grim clue to Gyeoul. The moment Gyeoul thought his noona had become miserable because of him, Ga-eul would face the disaster she most wanted to avoid.

‘That child knows me too well.’

Ga-eul sometimes remembered Gyeoul, who had quietly stayed by her side when she needed comfort even though she had not said a word. His own days must have been hard, yet he had never failed to notice.

Watching the longing that flowed through her, the tyrant sensed his desire growing even thirstier. He wanted her. He wanted her. Even if the feeling would change and fade anyway, was she not a high-grade item unlike anything he had seen before? Even a single moment of vain pleasure would do. If it became the occasion for him to become complete.

The Chairman felt blood gather in his lower body.

Oh.

He wanted to press this woman down at once, break her, and defile her until he was satisfied.

‘Defile? Why?’

The Chairman frowned at the desire beyond his understanding. But the impulse that had flashed through him for an instant did not return to explain itself.

“Well, fine. Then how about this?”

Chairman Go Geon-cheol pressed the internal line to the secretary’s office.

“What happened to what I told you to look into?”

[There are records sent by the special secretary. Shall I send them?]

“Send them.”

While Ga-eul wiped her tears and straightened her posture, the Chairman displayed the data delivered from the secretary’s office as a hologram.

“Look at the screen.”

Han Ga-eul lifted her head in confusion, then her expression gradually hardened. What she saw were boys and girls whose condition was clearly poor at a glance. A long series of fragmentary videos, each spending less than ten seconds on one child. Even after she watched for quite some time, they did not repeat.

“What you are seeing now are the brats that poor bastards irresponsibly squeezed out and abandoned. At this rate, they will die in sickbeds, or have their bodies repaired and be handed over for cheap, or end up in a situation similar to Han Gyeoul’s, but even worse, on the condition that only their intact organs get removed and sold. Well, the things called parents are all vulgar, and naturals are always popular. Like how farmed ginseng is treated as inferior to shabby wild ginseng.”

“...Why are you showing me this?”

“Because I, and you, can save these bastards.”

The Chairman explained the new terms of the deal without expression.

“I will add keeping these things alive as a bonus to the compensation I originally promised. Ha, they would pass over to Afterlife Insurance anyway, so I do not pity them, but I suppose you feel differently. That luxurious pity of yours, I mean. In other words, you have demand, and I have supply.”

“...Are you in your right mind?”

“There is no such thing as a right mind in this world. What standard judges that? The average of things that are not even human? I trust you are not saying that without knowing your parents, and the parents of these bastards here, would also be included in calculating that.”

“...”

“Who do you think you are glaring at?”

The tyrant leaned back against his chair and let his contempt spill out.

“Was I the one who made those brats pitiful? Was it me? I said, was it me! You and I bear no responsibility at all! If not for you, I would have had no reason to look into this! If not for me, you would have had no chance to pity these things! They are only trash who would have died according to the fate given to them at times and places neither you nor I knew! This is what the world has always been!”

Then he cut off even the expected objection.

“You could say using human lives as a means of trade is immoral! But the people about to lose their breath right now will not welcome that idealism, will they? They would welcome me instead! Even rolling in a field of dog shit, this world is still better than the next! Whatever the circumstances, they will want to live!”

Madness was more dangerous the more rational it was.

Ga-eul quietly looked straight at the Chairman and said,

“You are so inhuman it is pitiful.”

Chairman Go Geon-cheol frowned. Is she pitying not only the brats, but me too? Daring to pity me?

“I truly do not know why you want me that badly, but if you are going this far, there must be some reason for it. You need me enough to go through all this trouble to threaten me, right?... I think I know what I need to say to you now.”

“...And what is that?”

“If you let those children die, you will never, ever be able to obtain me. The most important thing to me right now is Gyeoul... Since I swore I would do anything for that child, no matter how pitiful the other children you showed me are, I will not sell myself. It is ridiculous, isn’t it? When I cannot even save one younger brother, I cannot take responsibility for every misfortune in the world. So.”

Strength entered Ga-eul’s eyes as she looked at the Chairman.

“Do not do crazy things with my brother’s body, you evil bastard.”

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

#Q&A

Q. Pare: @Doesn’t something like a Chink purification movement happen?

A. Well, uh... haha... you will see.

Q. awkawr: @If they are electronic girls, they sound like Cortana from the Halo series...

A. Looking at other people’s comments, it seems Cortana is right. But I have only played the first game, so I do not know the story after the second game. Or why Cortana gets treated that way.

Of course, there is no need to explain it to me! I plan to play it myself someday!

Q. svjk: @Sob sob, the nuclear warhead fell in the end. But aside from the humanitarian side, I feel like when a hard-line response comes out, the chance humanity does not go extinct might actually go up. How about that? In the Middle Ages, when a plague spread, there were cases where they burned the whole village, and I have heard people say that was a reason more of humanity did not die from the plague. Would this be different because it is people vs people?

A. If they had launched a preemptive nuclear strike before the nuclear weapons were fired, there probably would not have been a fatal disruption to Manifest Liberation, but on the other hand, there may have been a problem with the stability of the administration. Of course, this depends on how the author writes it...

Q. Kyogre: @If it is a multiple-warhead missile, is it like the Jericho missile from Iron Man?

A. If you search MIRV, a lot of information will come up. Jericho is... hmm... I think that is closer to a cluster bomb whose submunitions have guidance functions.

Q. LewdDemonF: @An ultra-large supply base got blown away, but America has its own ammunition production capacity, so the immediate problem is the supply gap over the next few weeks to few months. By the way, they will probably try to activate at least some of the SOSUS systems spread through the bay. If they can track that damn nuclear submarine, in the worst case, it would be possible to wipe out the remaining forces with conventional weapons.

A. Even a supply gap of just one week would be fatal.

Footnotes:

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