WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The World After the Fall ◈
Chapter 260: Episode 32. The World After the Fall (10)
──────
We are still living in the age of classical mechanics.
Jaehwan thought he could vaguely understand what that meant.
Professor Sakamoto took another sip of coffee and continued.
“From classical mechanics in Newton’s time, to relativity in Einstein’s, and recently to quantum physics and grand unified theory. The prevailing theories that seek to interpret the world have continued to advance. But look at people today. Most people neither know nor care what those theories are. To them, this world is still an innocent place where apples fall from trees, and they pick them up to eat.”
“...”
“Three hundred years have passed since Newton. In all that time, humanity has only learned to cultivate fallen apples, or at best, watch videos of other people eating them.”
Jaehwan suddenly thought of the Phantasmal Tree, and the residents of Chaos struggling desperately to obtain Fruit. Then he thought of the gods and Lords who had watched and toyed with their tragedy through 《Little Brother》.
He thought of the humans of this world.
“No matter how grand a theory may be, the human world can only exist within the limits of human vision. Within the crude vision of people who cannot even observe a single atom.”
“...”
“That is why we can never know what the ‘real world’ looks like. Because even this damned ‘classical mechanics’ keeps the world running well enough. Relativity, quantum mechanics. People can live just fine without knowing any of that. They eat, earn money, and reproduce.”
There was a strange passion in Sakamoto’s voice. He stopped there, took several more sips of coffee, then let out a light sigh.
“I got a little carried away. I’m sorry. I’ve been like this sometimes lately.”
“No, it was good to hear.”
“This is not what you wanted to hear, is it? You have something on your mind, don’t you, Jaehwan-ssi?”
Jaehwan raised his eyes slightly and asked, “How did you know?”
“People who wonder about things like parallel universes usually have similar troubles.”
Professor Sakamoto had finished his coffee. He stared into the empty cup for a moment, then spoke in a slightly dazed voice.
“Maybe it is because this is the first time a student has come to me with something like this. I suddenly remembered the dream I had yesterday.”
“A dream?”
Professor Sakamoto nodded shyly.
“I’m only telling you this, Jaehwan-ssi, but I often have strange dreams. I have never told anyone because it is embarrassing.”
“What kind of dreams?”
“Can you promise not to laugh?”
“I promise.”
Professor Sakamoto traced the rim of his empty cup, then scratched his cheek awkwardly. He lowered his voice as if whispering.
“Dual-Wielding.”
“Pardon?”
“In that dream, I am a warrior who uses the Dual-Wielding skill.”
For a moment, the air around them seemed to harden.
“That world is one where everything has been destroyed. A strange structure shaped like a tower descends from the sky, and humanity must climb it. I am one of them. Ha ha, is that not something even Professor Freud would laugh at?”
Freud might have laughed.
Jaehwan could not.
Because he already knew this story.
“There, I raise my level and build up my stats as I struggle to clear the Tower. It is absurd, but even in the dream, people call me Sakamoto. Dreams are strange things. Even people I know appear in them. Manager Hwang, for example. It is an incredible delusion, is it not? And then...”
Professor Sakamoto’s story continued. Jaehwan listened without breathing, like someone who had found a miracle he had awaited for far too long in an unexpected place. Like a child praying that a story would never end.
“...and then, one time... Oh, Jaehwan-ssi, why are you suddenly...!”
Sakamoto pulled several tissues from the box and held them out in front of Jaehwan’s face. Only after some time had passed did Jaehwan understand why.
He quickly lowered his head and wiped his eyes.
“Jaehwan-ssi, what kind of person are you? I said not to laugh at me. I did not tell you to cry. Are you trying to make fun of me?”
“No, that is not it.”
Jaehwan wore a strange expression, as though he might laugh or cry.
How could he explain this feeling? Could he explain it at all?
Instead of explaining, Jaehwan wiped his cheeks with a tissue and asked another question.
“Professor Sakamoto, do you believe in those dreams?”
“Hm?”
“Do you believe those dreams are events happening in another universe, events that truly exist?”
Perhaps the question caught him off guard. Sakamoto lowered his eyes for a moment.
After a long silence, he finally spoke.
“To be honest, I think they might be.”
Jaehwan suddenly wanted to tell him.
That it had definitely happened. That in that world, Sakamoto had climbed the Tower with him and kept moving to protect the world.
In that world, Sakamoto had...
But Professor Sakamoto rose from his seat with an embarrassed expression, and Jaehwan could not bring himself to say it.
Sakamoto paced by the window, cleared his throat several times, then turned back toward Jaehwan.
“Anyway, that is what I wanted to say. What the ‘real world’ looks like may not matter very much to humanity. Revolution may not happen outside, but only inside a small, twisting, pitch-black box. And perhaps if that box changes, the ‘real world’ can change too.”
Jaehwan watched Sakamoto tap his own head as he spoke for a long time.
Then.
“Hm? Jaehwan-ssi, where are you going all of a sudden?”
“I am sorry. I just remembered I have somewhere to be.”
Jaehwan barely offered a farewell before running out of the laboratory.
Left alone in an instant, Professor Sakamoto scratched his cheek a few more times. He stared at the empty coffee cup for a moment, then quietly muttered toward the laboratory’s creaking glass door.
“I was just about to say that Jaehwan-ssi appears in my dreams too...”
* * *
It had been a long time since Jaehwan last came to Gwanghwamun.
Other than visiting to buy course books during university or coming a few times for work, Jaehwan had rarely been there.
Still, he had always seen Gwanghwamun on television and in the news. He had seen candles filling the streets, and people shouting to protect something.
There were far fewer people in Gwanghwamun now.
People had returned to their ordinary lives. In other words, they had returned to their own lives. Those who remained here were people with nowhere left to return to.
Jaehwan saw people sitting in tents before the statue of Yi Sun-sin, eating cup noodles. Some fought for the dead, while others fought for the living.
There were also those fighting for a cause, a group, or a political mission.
And among them was Jaehwan, who no longer fought anything.
“Why did you drag me out here all of a sudden? You two have decent jobs, but I am still looking for one...”
Yoonhwan grumbled, and Seoyul immediately snapped at him.
“We got fired, idiot.”
Soon after Jaehwan quit, Seoyul had left the company of her own accord. It was only natural. She could not have kept working at a company after something like that happened.
Jaehwan knew how hard Seoyul had worked to find a job, so he felt sorry. Yet she looked relieved instead. Yoonhwan, who also looked strangely relieved, added his own comment.
“You bastards. We are all in the same boat now.”
“You look awfully happy about it.”
Yoonhwan’s boisterous laughter and Seoyul’s teasing voice alternated beside him.
“What is that? There is a crowd gathered only over there.”
After they passed the tents and approached the statue of King Sejong, the scattered groups of people rapidly grew into a crowd.
A few organizations stood in their own formations, holding megaphones and shouting something. Their slogans were all similar, beginning with things like, “Step down!” and “Wake up!”
“Ugh, it is always loud whenever I come here.”
Yoonhwan frowned and looked around, as if searching for something entertaining.
“Hey, is that not that guy? The Teacher?”
He pointed at a massive installation beside the statue of King Sejong.
At first glance, it looked like a tower. To others, it was an unfamiliar shape. To Jaehwan, it was familiar.
A tower made from every kind of trash and discarded furniture.
A sorrowful feeling settled in one corner of his heart.
“Ah, I have seen that person too. They say he is always there, building that thing.”
“Oh, really? I thought he had not been in the news much lately.”
With the voices around them, Jaehwan and his Allies also approached the tower.
It was unbelievably tall for something one person had built. Weak spots had been reinforced with steel frames, while twisted sections had been filled in with cement.
It stood a little over ten meters tall. Small compared to the high-rise buildings around it, yet tall enough to take a person’s life.
The Teacher stood atop that strangely sized tower.
“Everyone! You must realize this! We are trapped inside the Tower!”
He was there again today, shouting the same words he always did.
Curious voices from passersby drifted over.
“That person is still doing this?”
“What? Did he really build that himself?”
The protest groups who had always occupied this place did not seem particularly interested in the Teacher.
A few representatives even picked fights with him. Their argument was simple. Because of him, the entire protest movement was suffering, so he should tear down that structure at once.
“I heard that person is getting paid. Some political party is paying him to do this.”
Someone said that.
Jaehwan could not understand it. Who would pay that man? The man who represented no one’s interests.
“Well, everyone gets paid to do things like that.”
“He will go into politics eventually. Once he gets famous, political parties will come trying to recruit him. That is what he is after too...”
Jaehwan wanted to get angry. He wanted to shout at the people, or at the Teacher himself.
Why are you still standing there?
You adapted to this world better than anyone. Why are you letting yourself be treated like that?
Yet Jaehwan did not speak.
Instead, he watched the Teacher. He silently watched as the Teacher shouted incomprehensible words at people, gathered scraps, and repaired the tower.
A thin layer of ice had formed on the ground in the winter cold.
Seoyul blew warm breath into her hands. Yoonhwan, who had come wearing only a padded jacket over his tracksuit, spoke in a sharp voice.
“Hey, how long are we staying? We did not come just to see that thing, did we?”
“We came to see it.”
“What? Why?”
Yoonhwan asked with a puzzled expression, but Jaehwan had no answer.
He did not know what he wanted, or what he did not know.
Time passed, and the weather grew colder. The number of protesters steadily increased. Was there some kind of organized protest that day? Before long, protesters tightly surrounded Jaehwan and his Allies.
“Waaaah!”
“Push! Push them out!”
Jaehwan was shoved forward by the crowd surging from behind. Yoonhwan and Seoyul screamed as they were pushed away from him.
People shouted from every direction. Curses and minor clashes broke out.
The situation grew more serious when large groups of riot police blocked the way ahead. Organizations representing their own interests were raising their voices all at once.
So many people were shouting at the same time that Jaehwan could not understand a single word they said.
The flustered riot police struggled to push the protesters back. Large and small bloody incidents broke out everywhere, while reporters gathered at a distance and fired off flashes without pause.
At the center of it all, the Teacher cried out alone.
“Everyone, you must realize this. Everyone!”
It was a very strange sight.
The Teacher continued shouting from atop that dreadful tower, speaking words no one heard.
Before he knew it, Jaehwan was shouting at the Teacher.
“Stop it. No one will listen to a voice like yours.”
“No matter how much you shout, people will never hear you.”
Jaehwan’s voice faded beneath the protesters’ cries.
As the protest grew more violent, more people crashed into the Teacher’s tower. Cracks spread across the cement, and the old steel frame bent inward.
His tower was collapsing.
Footnotes:
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried