WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 465: Final Chapter - Childhood's Beginning (3)
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Night in the mountains was a peaceful darkness. Aside from a little artificial light spilling over the ridge, there was no light pollution to hide the stars. Combined with his enhanced eyesight, it gave Gyeoul a new pleasure. With the naked eye, he could now see more stars than he ever had through night vision.
To Gyeoul, the sight felt rather symbolic. Bom, who respected Gyeoul, would also shine lights on people other than him, lights they would never have found through their own abilities alone.
‘Maybe I should call it an age when people don’t find the stars, but the stars come to find people...’
Gyeoul lay on the soft bed and drew in a deep breath. In this world, the bedroom Gyeoul and Anne shared had a ceiling made entirely of a special material. It could switch between transparent and opaque, showing Gyeoul the sky exactly as it was whenever he wanted. Since the walls were mostly windows as well, lying there made it easy to feel as if only a few walls had been raised in the middle of an open mountain valley. The room had been designed for Gyeoul, who often fell into quiet idleness while looking up at the night sky.
With his vision so clear and fresh, his other senses were affected too. The air felt cooler than it really was. For an engaged couple who liked sharing body heat, that had to count as another advantage.
Just then, Anne entered the bedroom in white pajamas. Gyeoul smiled pleasantly at the shift of the bed as she climbed onto it, and at the scent that suddenly drew close. After kissing Gyeoul on the cheek, Anne lay on her side, propped her chin on her hand, and looked at him. Her gaze held the same unwavering affection as always.
“What were you doing?”
At her question, Gyeoul pointed upward with his chin.
“I was looking at the stars. Thinking about you, too.”
Anne shook her head.
“I can see this side, so I know. I was asking what you were doing over there.”
“Ah.”
The “there” Anne meant was the world where the apocalypse had been postponed.
Gyeoul answered.
“I was just about to wash up. I need to head to the unit soon. What about you, Anne?”
“I’m already at work. There’s the time difference... I’ll have to go to the White House soon. President Kramer is insisting on receiving reports about the terrorism investigation in person. It’s not as if the director can go every time, either. I’m the easy one to send.”
Morning in D.C. began three hours earlier than in San Diego. Anne, always busier than Gyeoul, had probably already been sitting in her office for four or five hours by that world’s time.
Gyeoul, on the other hand, had no reason to hurry. Junior officers had to participate in physical training every morning, but that did not apply to senior field-grade officers. Even allowing plenty of extra time, arriving by 8:30 a.m. would be enough.
Anne asked something else.
“How is it? Today is the fourth day. Are you getting used to it now?”
Gyeoul sighed.
“...It’s still not easy. If I let my guard down even a little, I keep making mistakes.”
Bom had given Gyeoul the ability to exist at the same time in two different worlds, and beyond that, in even more worlds, but getting used to that ability was not easy at all.
Still, having time in that world frozen for their convenience was deeply uncomfortable for both Gyeoul and Anne. To Gyeoul, and to Anne, who had accepted his way of thinking, the people on the other side were other people, existing beyond a barrier of sensation.
‘Even objectively, that must be true. They’re independent personalities separate from Bom.’
The other worlds would follow the same course in the near future. The moment the calculations showed that the personalities there would not become unhappy, Bom planned to make all of them independent. Bom was simply a god who had decided to love people by human standards, and so would not unilaterally “throw” those created beings into a harsh world.
“Hmm.”
Anne frowned in thought.
“I want to give you some advice, but my experience probably won’t help. The conditions we were given are basically different from the start.”
Unlike Anne, whose soul resided in the Trinity Engine, Gyeoul’s thoughts originated from his brain as physical continuity. Compared to Anne, of course his adaptation would be slower. From what he had felt when he gained a new body, rapidly expanding his consciousness without taking this difference into account had a high chance of causing Gyeoul’s mental death.
‘Or leaving damage so fatal it could never be undone.’
That was one reason they had judged that he would need at least one lifetime to adapt.
Was it an expression of affection mixed with encouragement? Anne, who had been staring at Gyeoul, gently closed her eyes and kissed him. Gyeoul was savoring that softness when he groaned at an unexpected pain and pulled his lips away.
“Ugh...”
“What’s wrong? Does something hurt?”
“I stabbed my gums with my toothbrush.”
It was a mistake in the other world. As a bonus, he had dripped the toothpaste foam in his mouth all over his bathrobe. Anne’s eyes went round, and then she started laughing quietly.
Gyeoul put on a sulky voice.
“It really hurts, you know.”
Gyeoul was used to pain, but pain was still pain. Whenever he did something that required focus in one world, he often ended up zoning out in the other. In moments like that, even separating the senses of both worlds became difficult.
This was exactly why he had kept sleeping in for four days with a body that did not need sleep. While he slept in this world, he could focus his consciousness entirely on the other side. Sleep alone was not enough to handle all his work over there, but he was somehow managing by overlapping his free time here with his free time there.
Even though Anne knew all that perfectly well, she became even more mischievous.
“Now, point to where it hurts. I’ll lick it gently for you.”
“...Are you really doing this?”
“They say training should always be like the real thing. I’ll help you adapt as quickly as possible.”
Gyeoul gave the snickering Anne a sullen stare. But she did not seem to have any intention of stopping her sweet torture. Unable to continue getting ready for work over there, Gyeoul protested to his lover again.
“I’m going to be late at this rate.”
“Then you should try not to be late.”
Unable to hold back any longer, Gyeoul pulled her in by the waist. He couldn’t just keep taking it. Gyeoul knew that Anne’s use of her ability was far from perfect too. Depending on the intensity of the stimulation, he could make the Anne on the other side lose her senses as well. And Gyeoul had become thoroughly familiar with Anne’s body. For both her and Gyeoul, at least in this respect, the body here and the body over there were no different.
“Wait. I’m driving right now...”
As expected, she panicked. As she had said earlier, she must have been on her way to the White House. But what did that matter? The other side was a world where all coincidence and uncertainty acted for people even more than this side did. Especially when the targets were Gyeoul and Anne, who already knew the whole truth. There was no need to worry about suspicion toward a divine being.
Ignoring her weak resistance, Gyeoul pushed Anne’s senses to the limit.
“Mm-”
In a scene Gyeoul could not see, Anne barely managed to pull the car she had been driving onto the shoulder, gripped the steering wheel tightly, lowered her head, and trembled.
After getting past the peak where even breathing had become difficult, Anne panted and still giggled happily. Out of habit, she rubbed her forehead against Gyeoul’s. It was a gesture like a small animal’s. Her hair was slightly damp with sweat, and a fragrant sweetness came from her mouth.
She whispered in a dreamy tone.
“Haa... A lot of other things will gradually get better, but right now, I’m happiest that I can always be with you. It really was such a hopeless wait, with no end in sight...”
Since Bom’s intervention worked by adjusting coincidences beyond human perception, they could not hope for the world to change in an instant.
By the same logic, Gyeoul and Anne in that world could not become comfortable right away. Gyeoul was the most famous war hero of all, and Anne was a promising FBI deputy director. Both held positions with enormous social influence, and that meant they were meant to play important roles within Bom’s calculations.
‘In other words, the best future Bom designed in the world where the apocalypse was postponed... depends on the premise that Anne and I each do our best in our positions for a while.’
If they did not, the time others had to spend suffering would grow longer. Bom might consider that acceptable, but Gyeoul and Anne did not.
In other words, for about another year, in that world only, a long-distance relationship was unavoidable again. And at a distance that required at least half a day on a plane just to meet. As mentioned earlier, Washington D.C. and San Diego alone had a three-hour time difference.
It was a relief that they could always be together in this physical world. If not, it was hard even to imagine how painful and lonely the wait would have become.
Whenever Gyeoul came up against people’s limits over there, he would briefly wake from sleep here and gently stroke Anne’s hair.
“By the way-”
Anne changed the subject.
“Parang follows me very well. Just like with Gaeul, I worried a lot at first about how to get close... but I don’t think I need to worry about my relationship with my sibling-in-law.”
“Really?”
“Yes. If we keep this relationship going, it will be much easier for Parang to accept the truth about Bom later. And before that, there’s our wedding.”
Obviously, Anne still wanted a wedding in the other world. Most of the relationships she had built existed there.
“You’re not impatient, are you?”
When Gyeoul asked, Anne burst into a soft laugh.
“I told you before that I was fine, but now I have even less reason to feel impatient. Though sometimes it gets complicated in a different sense.”
“A different sense?”
“Imagine we have a child in any world. If we raise that child as an ordinary person, like everyone else, then the time we can spend with that child lasts only until the versions of us in front of that child grow old and disappear. After that, when I think about us watching from far away for long ages as our children have children, and those children have children of their own... Ugh, I already feel like my mind is starting to go strange.”
“That would definitely be enough to make your head spin...”
On top of that, each of those children was eventually supposed to receive either eternal life through technological advancement in each world, or even an afterlife.
Anne continued.
“But if we tell those children everything and raise them while sharing the same kind of immortality and truth we prepared ourselves for, then their children would have to be given immortality too... At that point, a new humanity different from existing humanity would be born.”
“...”
“Then would we be worshiped by our descendants as the first ancestors, and as a pair coordinating the spring of humanity? Would we have to prepare a single world for our descendants, who would share the truth of Bom, so they could live together?”
“A world for our descendants, huh...”
It was the kind of worry that seemed like it belonged in science fiction, but for Gyeoul and Anne, it was a real problem they would face in the not-too-distant future. If Gaeul and Parang also accepted eternity, they would share the same worry.
Anne pulled Gyeoul’s arm over and used it as her pillow.
“That’s why I wonder if maybe Bom alone is enough as our child, but I haven’t reached a conclusion yet. I’ve wanted to give birth to your child for a long time, you see. At the same time, I’ve also pictured the days of raising a child with you as good parents.”
Gyeoul had dreamed of those days too. He also had worries and fears about whether he could really become a good parent.
Anne playfully pinched Gyeoul’s cheek.
“Just know that I’m thinking about these things. We can take our time deciding after we get married, so don’t start worrying about it so seriously already. At this rate, you really will be late to work.”
“Ah...”
Anne was right. The Gyeoul on the other side still had the toothbrush in his mouth.
Footnotes:
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