Chapter 405 |
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The Interpreter I
Ta-da.
Who could have possibly guessed it?
The final stop for the infinite regressor wasn't in the 'future' but in the past, back in the very first timeline, of all places.
A classic cliché, twisted. Even the regressor was surprised by this one.
"...Mister. I'm sorry. But you're genuinely giving me the creeps, so could you please stop mimicking Cheon Yo-hwa without any warning? Seriously. I'm begging you."
Unfortunately, having received Oh Dok-seo's 100% sincere ultimate technique, the dogeza, I had to declare the end of the season for my Cheon Yo-hwa impersonation.
"My apologies. Some side effects still linger."
"Thank you for understanding."
"Yep. This is exactly why the Regression Alliance needs a manager like Noh Do-hwa. Someone has to tell the crazy person he's crazy for the world to function properly..."
Oh Dok-seo treated me like a complete lunatic, but honestly, I felt it was unfair.
The habitual transformation into the young lady, this convulsive impersonation of Lady Cheon Yo-hwa, wasn't just some perverse or self-deprecating joke of mine. It truly was a side effect.
"Dok-seo, imitating someone else entirely within the void is an incredibly dangerous thing to do. It only ended with this kind of joke because it was me you were dealing with. If it had been anyone else, they would have spent the rest of their lives with a second or third personality living in a corner of their mind."
"Hmm. Is it that serious?"
"It is. In fact, I'm more surprised that you're perfectly fine. You sometimes turn on your VTuber mode with [Side Story Creation] and completely immerse yourself in other people. How do you manage to maintain your own ego so effortlessly after doing that?"
"Well, you know?"
Oh Dok-seo tilted her head.
"For me, it just works."
"You talented rascal."
Well, it was probably thanks to Oh Dok-seo's unique skill, the absolute defensive barrier known as the [AT Field].
Oh Dok-seo's sense of reality was, in some way, detached from that of others.
It wasn't that she didn't live her life seriously, but she had a strong tendency to perceive her own life and the lives of those around her as a [story within a work of fiction].
She insisted that she herself possessed the attribute of a 'transmigrator' who had simply been dropped into the middle of a story.
An experienced actor knows how to fully immerse themselves in a role while still maintaining their own self.
Oh Dok-seo's [AT Field], her [Absolute Defensive Barrier], and her [Fourth Wall] might have been interconnected in that sense.
It was just as I was lost in thought.
– Yaaaaah!
A loud shout.
I had been sitting across from Oh Dok-seo, drinking coffee in the cafe at the Inunaki Tunnel, when a 'noise complaint' suddenly echoed from the floor above.
– Shit! Die! Just die! Get out! Get oooout!
"Ugh."
Oh Dok-seo's expression soured as she was drinking her espresso.
It wasn't just the noise from upstairs that made her face crumple. This girl, despite hating bitterness, insisted on drinking espresso.
If her chuunibyou was at that level, she had practically reached enlightenment.
"That house is at it again."
"Mm."
"No matter where you sit, there's like a 30% chance you'll hear that noise from upstairs. It's even more annoying because you can't make out what they're shouting."
Oh Dok-seo was right.
It was the so-called noise complaint anomaly.
The very fact that a noise complaint was being heard here in the Inunaki hideout cafe was bizarre. Where could an 'upstairs' that generated domestic noise possibly exist in a submerged underwater tunnel?
But that kind of shouting was often heard in any building that simply had a ceiling.
In truth, many of the anomalies that ordinary people encountered in their daily lives were of this trivial sort.
Too insignificant to subjugate, yet too annoying to ignore.
They were the kind you just came to accept as an uncomfortable neighbor in life.
"Can't you get rid of that thing for me? Mister? Every time I'm about to take out my laptop to start writing, that noise starts up and completely kills my motivation."
"Once you get rid of the noise complaint anomaly, I suppose the phobia of the blank white page in your notepad file, the writer's block anomaly, and the burnout anomaly will be waiting for you in succession."
"The only reason I can't write is because of all the anomalies."
"This mister has an inkling that anomalies were born in the first place because people blamed others instead of themselves, hated them, and shirked responsibility."
"What? Are you saying I'm one of those irresponsible and insensitive types? My goodness. I'm hurt. Because of this wound and trauma I've received from mister, I'll now forever be a pathetic writer who can't post two chapters in a row...."
– Dieeeee! Die! Just die, already! Die!
"...No. I'm not joking, Mister. Seriously, do something about it."
Oh Dok-seo looked up at the ceiling with a fed-up expression.
"People on SG Net are always complaining that the noise is driving them crazy. That thing genuinely lowers the quality of life."
"Hmm."
"It's always making a racket with that incomprehensible noise!"
"..."
"It would be better if I could at least understand what it's saying! Then I could at least curse back at it properly!"
While Oh Dok-seo was fuming, I just quietly sipped my coffee.
Because...
'I can actually hear it. What it's saying...'
An astute reader would have already noticed.
The subtle difference that existed between Oh Dok-seo's complaints about the noise and my own narration of it.
– Why are you my mom! Why are you my moooom!
That's right.
To me, Undertaker, the shouts of the noise complaint anomaly from beyond the ceiling were perfectly understandable.
And it wasn't just the noise complaint anomaly.
The voices of all anomalies, I could hear them.
[I'm the Only One Who Can Understand the Anomalies' Voices].
That was the web novel-esque title I had given to my current situation.
If you were to ask exactly when this strange phenomenon began, I could answer with great precision.
It was from the 1,000th cycle.
"Huh?"
The moment that made me certain of this anomaly was none other than my encounter with Dang Seo-rin.
It was our first meeting, an event that had already been repeated hundreds of times.
– Where is this place?
– Dad. Dad. I'm here, Dad.
The moment I arrived to meet Dang Seo-rin as usual, I began to perceive sounds that had never been audible in previous cycles.
The diagonal crosswalk at Centum City in Busan.
An alternate space, a 'crossroads' that had become bizarrely wide.
– Can you hear my voice?
– There's someone here. Someone's here.
Drip. Splat, splat.
Thousands of traffic lights stood like pillars in a temple at the crossroads, and crimson blood overflowed from every red light.
– Excuse me?
– Excuse me, hello?
The blood from the traffic lights became 'red handprints' that crawled across the crosswalk with splatting sounds.
There weren't just one or two. Tens of thousands of handprints were chaotically moving back and forth across the crossing.
Visually, it was no different from the previous cycles.
It was a scene I had watched to the point of exhaustion up to the 1,000th cycle.
'Why can I hear voices?'
Auditorily, however, it was completely different.
– My house disappeared. Officer. Please find my house, please.
– My mother isn't answering her phone. I had it turned off for a moment. There's a missed call. I shouldn't have turned my phone off then. My mother isn't answering.
– I was kicked out of my house. Does this make any sense? It's my house. There were strangers living there.
Swarm, swarm, swarm.
Every time a bloody handprint was stamped down, a sound, as if it were prerecorded, played from that spot.
It was like hundreds of people in a crowd all muttering whatever they wanted to say at the same time.
"..."
Faced with that overwhelming scene, I was momentarily at a loss for words.
'Why? I've never heard the voices of the handprints at this crossroads before. So why now, in the 1,000th cycle, without any warning....'
No.
At the time, I was too flustered to think about it, but this wasn't the only sudden change that had arrived around the 1,000th cycle.
"Actually. I... I can hear a song."
Dang Seo-rin too, had changed.
"I can hear a song from you, too."
To be precise, it had started from the 999th cycle.
Dang Seo-rin's testimony that everything in the world sounded like 'music,' 'noise,' or 'songs' remained valid even after the 999th cycle passed and the 1,000th began.
What kind of magic could have unfolded?
Dang Seo-rin, for whom all things in the world, including even the sunset in the sky, had truly begun to sound like 'sound.'
And me, who had begun to perceive the 'voices' of anomalies that had been completely inaudible before.
A clear similarity was observed between these two strange phenomena.
However, no matter how much I thought about it, there was no way to know why this 'ability' was suddenly granted to Dang Seo-rin and me without any warning whatsoever.
"Dok-seo."
"Yeah?"
"It seems like a very strange incident that I don't know about must have occurred around the end of the 999th cycle. Is there any way you could use your [Side Story Creation] to find out what happened?"
Come to think of it, the 999th cycle was strange.
'I was just having a drink with Dang Seo-rin, and then the world suddenly ended out of nowhere.'
There were no clues or evidence, but I could at least deduce that some kind of incident had occurred then.
"Uh, yeah. I'd like to help you out if I could, Mister."
"But?"
"The 999th cycle is too recent, you know. My novel hasn't progressed that far yet. To empathize with someone using [Side Story Creation], it needs to be at least somewhat close to what I've written...."
"..."
"Ah. Why? Don't look at me like that."
"..."
"I want to write too! I want to write the novel too! I want to be revered by the readers as a super-diligent-author-nim who posts every single day except for Chuseok and Christmas! You think I want to be like this?! Huh? Mister, you don't know anything. You don't know the pain of creation. You don't know the pain of the soul! Shit, all those diligent writers are just talented hacks! It's in their DNA! If my mom and dad had just passed down some more diligent genes, I wouldn't be in this mess――"
I'll omit what followed, not for Oh Dok-seo's honor, but for the honor of her parents.
It dawned on me anew.
If I were to ever get married but choose not to have children, the reason would be singular. It would solely be due to the fear that there was even a 0.01% chance of a child like Oh Dok-seo being born...
'Two Oh Dok-seo lifeforms on this earth?'
A shiver ran down the back of my neck.
No matter how many world-ending routes I, a professional destructionist, had walked, I couldn't bear to face such a future.
"A-Anyway, please try to write as quickly as possible. Now there's no risk of the world being corrupted by Infinite Metagame even if you write fast."
"The more you rush me, the more my motivation drops."
"Please write as slowly as possible."
"Are you saying you don't trust me right now?! Mister?!"
"...Just please stay healthy."
"I was actually thinking about getting personal training from Mr. Seo Gyu. I heard he is a PT master? Could you put in a word for me, Mister?"
"Sure. Just don't go beating up your readers after you get strong."
"Hm? Ahahaha. Are you silly, Mister? Where in the world is there an author who beats up their readers?"
"..."
"Anyway, just you wait! Once I get PT and become healthy, I'm definitely going to earn the title of a diligent author who posts five times a week, every week, except for the holidays!"
‘You think that's gonna happen?’
The truth of the mystery fell into a state of utter confusion due to a certain author's catastrophic writing pace.
Still, it was a relief. It wasn't an 'unsolvable' problem, but merely a 'delayed' one.
After all, if I just held on for a thousand or ten thousand more years, wouldn't a future Oh Dok-seo eventually reach the truth of the 999th regression on her own?
For a regressor, time was the one thing I had in abundance.
"But is there really a need to be so anxious? Mister? In any case, you gained another ability, so isn't that lucky?"
"..."
"An awakener has awakened again. For now, isn't it fine to think of it like that?"
Though my personality wasn't carefree enough to jump rope with my nerves like Oh Dok-seo, for now, I had no other choice but to adapt to the new situation.
The advantage of being able to [directly and fully understand the voices of the anomalies] had certainly brought me an enormous benefit.
For example.
– Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
– How I wonder, what you are.
– Up above the world so high....
– Like a diamond, in the sky.
– Twinkle, twinkle... little star.
– How I wonder what you are.
The Meteor Shower. Meteor.
The shooting star anomaly that always arrived in the skies above the Gimhae Plains seven years after a regression began.
From the anomaly that had once driven the entire Korean peninsula into terror and even destroyed the world, a 'voice' of incredibly clear quality could be heard.
"Heo."
Originally, that is, before the 1,000th cycle, the only sound I could hear from the Meteor Shower was, at best, something like noise.
To express it in text.
– Twi҉nkle҉,҉ ҉twi҉nkle҉,҉ ҉litt҉le҉ s҉tar҉.
– Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
– Ho҉w҉ I҉ wo҉nder҉ ҉wha҉t҉ y҉ou҉ a҉re.҉
Something like that.
The melody was so familiar that I could guess it was a 'lullaby,' but even so, I had never been able to hear the Meteor Shower's song clearly.
It was different now.
I could hear it.
– Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee.
– How I, wonder what you are.
– Like a diamond... in the sky....
And because of that, I could also understand.
I noticed a minute detail in the trembling of the song that I would never have caught before.
'The voice is trembling.'
The voice of the Meteor Shower belonged to a woman.
Between the brilliant starlight spread across the night sky, the whining sound of a siren was tearing through. It was an air-raid warning.
1. On a certain night when an air-raid siren is wailing.
2. A certain woman sings a lullaby.
3. With a trembling voice.
4. The humans who die by the Meteor Shower die instantly, feeling no pain.
"..."
Having gathered this many clues, I hadn't squandered my life as a regressor so foolishly as to be unable to make the leap toward the truth.
I wonder if you remember.
Back when I first subjugated the Meteor Shower.
I had mentioned in that story that there had been an 'unexplained bombing' in the Gimhae Plains at the time of the void's advent.
No evidence related to that bombing incident remained anywhere, so it was impossible to even know how exactly the bombing was carried out.
The reason for death had evaporated.
Because death went missing, life too went missing.
'Perhaps.'
I put Do-hwa down. I released my aura as well.
In a situation where I had to conserve my aura as much as possible to suppress Yu Ji-won's Outer God, also known as Leviathan, the Meteor Shower had been an exception until now.
I knew of no other way to deal with it other than to slice it apart in a single strike with a powerful aura.
However.
"...Mom."
Only after more than 1,000 cycle.
I felt like I finally knew how.
"I'm... I'm okay."
I muttered, looking straight up at the host of the Meteor Shower staining the night sky.
"I'm not scared."
– Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
"I'm with you, Mom."
– How I wonder...
"When I'm with you, Mom, I'm not really scared."
The siren wailed.
"Actually, I'm more scared when you cover my eyes."
The siren wailed.
"So it's okay if you don't cover them."
The siren wailed.
"I want to keep looking at your face, Mom, until the very end."
The Meteor Shower trickled down.
The streaks of starlight that had been ceaselessly striking down, etching diagonal lines across the night sky, began to fall all around like hail.
Thud, thud, patter.
Small fragments made of starlight.
As the fragments of light rained down, something wrapped around my shoulder. I couldn't see its shape, but it had a contour similar to a human arm.
– I love you. My baby.
The starlight all melted away, and the night sky blurred.
– Mommy, really, truly loves you.
I held onto the invisible forearm.
"Yes. I love you too."
Click.
The siren stopped.
The pebbles that had fallen to the ground no longer emanated starlight. The night sky grew quiet, as if it had always been that way.
"..."
I bent down and picked up a pebble that had lost both its light and sound.
And I realized.
I must not use my invincible aura. And yet, I must put the anomalies to rest.
My route, which was extremely self-contradictory and at a glance seemed impossible.
I realized how I could walk it.
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