Chapter 407 |
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The Exhibitor I
As I mentioned in the last story, I continued to travel around the world, ‘conquering’ anomalies as I went.
This time, let’s talk about something that happened in Busan along the way.
My colleagues in the Regression Alliance often expressed their gratitude to me.
The reason was simple. They said that my intervention, as a regressor, had changed their lives.
“Yeees. I'm so grateful that I feel like flaying you, stuffing you, and then enshrining you like a household god for the rest of my life.”
I’ll correct myself.
With the exception of personality-defects like Noh Do-hwa, ‘most’ of my colleagues in the Regression Alliance were grateful to me.
[Yeah. It’s horrifying to think of a world without you, Oppa.]
Having returned to the Busan hideout after a long time, Lee Ha-yul philosophized while curled up in my arms like a squirrel.
[I probably would have killed the esteemed Mayor Jung Sang-guk and then neatly ended my own life.]
[The extermination of all traitors to the nation. It’s sad, but this was the mission given to me, Lee Ha-yul, the last proud descendant of the Deoksu Lee clan....]
And she really would have done it.
But, to put it another way, it meant that I had presented the choice of life to a Lee Ha-yul who was originally supposed to meet her end.
Though no one forced me to, I felt a certain sense of duty about this.
Of course. If you’re going to force someone who wants to die to stay alive, shouldn’t you take responsibility for their life?
I didn’t mean I had to take responsibility for everything.
It meant I had to do just enough so that Ha-yul wouldn’t give up on life, just enough to keep her finger from leaving the ‘Continue’ button in a game.
[...]
I had no intention of just dropping her into a hunting ground and abandoning her to grow on her own.
Nor did I have any intention of letting her dependency on me go unchecked.
[You mean I have to get stronger.]
That’s right.
I taught her how to become stronger. I provided her with time to practice.
If there was a hole in her heart that was too difficult to bear, I would even enter her subconscious to reveal that ‘□’.
“It’s hard to believe how things ended up this way, but every person in this world has a scar from having lost a being named Go Yuri. Ha-yul, you’re no exception.”
[...]
“The secret to the magic that makes people feel an instinctive fondness for Go Yuri, as if they’ve been brainwashed, lies here.”
I used to think it was a simple brainwashing ability.
But not anymore.
“When people see Go Yuri, they feel the same emotion as if they’ve been reunited with a precious person they lost a long, long time ago. Subconsciously.”
[Because she really is someone we lost?]
“Yes.”
That was Go Yuri’s secret. Her trick. Her method.
Anyone who saw Go Yuri felt a sense of ‘longing’. They sensed a nostalgia for a time before the world had turned into a complete mess, before their own lives had been ruined.
It was a temptation that was difficult to refuse.
“But in my case, it went beyond just having a part of my past distorted. My past was thoroughly erased. It’s literally a blank space, a void. That might be why I was able to remain relatively free from Go Yuri’s brainwashing.”
[...]
Nestled in my arms, Ha-yul tilted her head back and looked up at my face.
[That’s actually a bad sign.]
“What do you mean?”
[Dad. If Go Yuri was a part of my life, even if I don’t remember it, and my memories were distorted as that part was cut away.]
[The fact that your memories disappeared entirely.]
[Doesn’t that mean Go Yuri was such a precious existence to you that simply cutting out a part of it wasn’t enough, so everything had to be deleted?]
“...”
She was a sharp kid, as expected.
I gently combed through Ha-yul’s chestnut-brown hair. It was slightly curly, and Ha-yul liked it when I combed it this way.
“The fact that I have a wound I don’t even know about doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing.”
[Why?]
“You and I, Ha-yul. The members of the Regression Alliance. And even other people, it means we all suffer from the same void in our memories, doesn’t it?”
[...]
Lee Ha-yul rubbed her head against my chest. I, in turn, accepted Ha-yul’s childish affection.
‘However.’
All of humanity shared a common ‘□’. They had lost the being known as Go Yuri.
For that very reason, for some people, when they descend into a dream within a dream, a dream of dreams, a great void known as the subconscious world must unfold.
‘An Outer God is a being that corrupts all humans and twists the world. If that’s the case, has Go Yuri already devoured the people of Earth?’
It was at that moment.
“Ah, ahhhh.”
At the entrance of the cafe hideout, Sim Ah-ryeon, who hadn’t even washed her hair, stood with a trembling finger.
“G-Guild Leader is... again! Again, you just got home after so long and you’re only giving affection to Ms. Ha-yul...!”
Lee Ha-yul let out a scoff.
[The early bird gets dad’s lap.]
“I... I was awake too. If only I hadn’t been protecting the peace on SG Net until dawn, I could have done it!”
[That’s impossible.]
Lee Ha-yul said coolly.
[Ah-ryeon unni is a famous community addict.]
“My hair! C-comb my hair too, please!”
[You smell. Don’t come any closer.]
“What? W-what are you talking about? I only smell nice.... The faithful followers of the Eastern Holy State all like me. If my smell is b-bothering you, then that’s entirely Ms. Ha-yul’s sense of smell that’s at fault.”
[Why in the world is this person a perfect woman when she’s cosplaying as a Saintess, but a complete mess the moment she comes home? I really don’t get it.]
Regardless of Lee Ha-yul’s laments, Sim Ah-ryeon squeezed herself in between us like a hedgehog and claimed her spot.
Ugh, Ha-yul let out a groan not with her voice, but with her entire body.
And yet, the fact that she only bickered with words and didn’t actually chase her away proved our Ha-yul’s beautiful nature. QED.
So what if she killed and tortured her family and carries them around as marionettes? Such things can happen.
It’s all the fault of Go Yuri, who implemented the Humanity Affection Deficit Plan by drilling a □ in Ha-yul’s heart. Mhmm.
“...”
Sim Ah-ryeon was staring at me intently.
Expecting this, I took out another comb I had brought separately and tidied her hair, and only then did her expression slacken into a wide grin.
“Ah-ryeon.”
“Yes?”
“Are the preparations for the exhibition going well?”
“Yes!”
Ah-ryeon giggled.
“It’s all thanks to you, G-Guild Leader.”
The one and only person who was always elected with an overwhelming first place in the ‘Shall we vote for the person in our Regression Alliance who might actually be an anomaly?’ poll, a title acknowledged by herself and others.
Sim Ah-ryeon.
This ungrateful OldManGoryeo Villain whined that I only ever doted on Ha-yul, but that was, of course, fake news.
I could confidently say that if you searched the entire three thousand worlds, past life, present life, and next life, you wouldn’t find anyone who put as much effort into caring for Sim Ah-ryeon as I did.
“A-a painting...?”
“Yes. I want you to paint funeral portraits for the anomalies.”
The portrait painting project.
This too was part of the plan to rehabilitate the human enigma known as Sim Ah-ryeon.
As I mentioned when I dealt with the Inunaki Tunnel in a previous story, around this time I was taking Sim Ah-ryeon around and always instructing her to paint ‘portraits of anomalies’.
There was a deep thought behind it.
‘Ah-ryeon is, in the end, just a pitiful victim who developed a sickness of the heart due to that wicked Go Yuri’s mischief!’
The reason why Sim Ah-ryeon couldn’t find fulfillment in the real world and always escaped to the SG Net community to leech self-esteem from others.
The reason why, when I begged her to live in reality and even got her a job as a Saintess in the North, she would cry out, ‘This isn’t the real me,’ and act as a completely different persona, turning reality itself into a stage play.
The reason why, every time she saw me, she would exert a silent pressure of ‘ehehe’ and ‘If you saved me, I won’t allow you to run away,’ showing the very essence of a menhera.
It must all, all be the fault of the ‘□’ that Go Yuri left behind.
“Um...”
Hearing this assertion of mine, Oh Dok-seo tilted her head.
“Mister. Didn’t you say before that the reason anomalies are born is because people disregard their own responsibility and blame everything on others and the world? It feels like you’re doing the exact same thing right now, just swapping ‘blaming others’ with ‘blaming Go Yuri’....”
“The most recently uploaded chapter was 172 days ago.”
“Gyaaaaaaaaaak!”
Do not worry. The monster that threw my pure and innocent readers into the swamp of a hiatus has been vanquished by me, the Undertaker.
Anyway, the problem was the heart. A sickness of the heart.
But it wasn't as if I could bring Go Yuri over and plead, ‘Now, become one.’
What could I do to heal Sim Ah-ryeon, this troublemaker of the Regression Alliance, this one-of-a-kind villain who manufactured trouble like a perpetual motion machine, even just a little?
The answer.
‘It’s art.’
That was the tentative conclusion I reached.
‘Ah-ryeon dismisses all her activities in the real world as mere ‘pranks,’ but at least when she’s drawing, she’s more serious than anyone.’
That was the blessing Sim Ah-ryeon had received.
The fact that she could be sincere in at least one field. The fact that there was a point of friction where she could make her own self confront the world and clash with it.
And she even possessed a heavenly talent?
If this wasn't a blessing, what was?
‘Even though I can draw quite well myself, Ah-ryeon’s anomaly paintings... they have a power that’s difficult for me to express, moving and living with detail.’
Considering that I, a regressor, had invested easily hundreds of thousands of hours into painting, Sim Ah-ryeon’s sense was truly remarkable.
‘And yet...’
The product of that very talent.
Sim Ah-ryeon had never once revealed it to people under her real name, her true name.
Even when she occasionally posted doodles on SG Net, it was always under the nickname
[OldManGoryeo] , the villain.
Or they were attached as uncredited illustrations to the guide posts uploaded by [The Librarian of the Great Library].
‘No. It’s not just her art.’
In the first place, how many people on Earth right now even know of the existence of Sim Ah-ryeon?
There were plenty of Awakeners who knew of the villain OldManGoryeo. There were even more people who worshipped the Saintess of the North.
Whether through infamy or fame, both ‘nicknames’ were receiving the most attention of the era.
But Sim Ah-ryeon?
“M-Ms. D-Dok-seo. Look at this. I’m sorry, readers. I’ve been cutting down on sleep to write and rewrite the manuscript, but I just can’t seem to get a satisfactory quality. I sometimes resent my own artisan spirit...”
“Hwaaaaaak! Mister! Ah-ryeon unni is tormenting me again! She’s reciting an old announcement I wrote and following me around!”
“...”
How many people, I wonder, truly know about Sim Ah-ryeon.
‘It’s probably just the members of the Regression Alliance.’
Whether it was the true Saintess residing in her home in Yongsan, or the fake Saintess coming and going from the palace in Pyongyang, both showed a strange similarity in that they were secluded from the world.
‘That’s why I’m going to make her debut! As the great artist Sim Ah-ryeon! The master of the art world who, following in the footsteps of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, has given birth to the Anomaly Expressionist style of painting!’
“?”
As if sensing my fervent gaze, Sim Ah-ryeon tilted her head. Then, thump thump, she returned with the comb and plopped down in front of me.
‘Hehe.’
I smiled like a wicked young lady and combed her hair. Ah-ryeon-ah, soon the whole world will be cheering your name.
‘Then you’ll find joy in reality and stop putting on your mask-and-troll acts!’
“?”
At last, the long-awaited day of the exhibition.
We set up a temporary gallery in the Tower of Babel Plaza so that the citizens of Busan could come and go and view it comfortably.
Noh Do-hwa seriously questioned whether it was right to invest manpower in such a project, but faced with the great cause of normalizing Sim Ah-ryeon, even the great Director of the National Road Management Corps had to concede.
“What’s this? An exhibition?”
“Wow, it’s been a really long time since I’ve heard that word.”
“Is it an event hosted by the National Road Management Corps?”
People who in the old days would never have given a second glance to something like an art museum, claiming it lacked dopamine, now looked around the gallery in twos and threes.
“Oh...”
“This has a certain vibe.”
“I know, right? It looks really esoteric, but it’s strange how you feel like you can understand what’s what.”
The choice of theme was also excellent.
In the exhibition hall, the visages of the anomalies for whom Sim Ah-ryeon and I had held funerals were painted in a vigorous style.
Anomalies, after all, were beings familiar to Awakeners and known to the general public through rumors. A field that held interest for everyone, regardless of class.
And yet, a genre that had never once been ‘properly’ established in art history was being created at the tip of Sim Ah-ryeon’s brush.
“Ah. Gremlin! I know this one! It’s a Gremlin!”
“Just looking at it makes me want to kill it...”
“Ahaha.”
“But what’s this masked kid here? Is this an anomaly too?”
“I don’t know. The esteemed Awakeners would probably know.”
Murmur murmur.
The number of visitors, which had been decent even during the early morning commute, had multiplied fivefold by lunchtime as word got out, and by the evening rush hour, the gallery was bustling enough to be completely full.
“Heh.”
“...I didn’t expect it to be this popular.”
On the second day, even Dang Seo-rin and Cheon Yo-hwa, who had each brought their executives, couldn’t hide their surprise.
Looks of newfound respect focused on Sim Ah-ryeon, who sat at the counter with her head bowed low.
“The Teacher always protected and doted on her, so I just thought she was someone who was all about healing...”
It was only natural to be impressed.
This exhibition was, after all, the "Special Anomaly Exhibition".
The more types of anomalies a viewer was familiar with, the deeper and more they could see.
In other words, it was designed so that the more outstanding an Awakener was, the more immersed they would become in the exhibition.
‘The response wasn’t this good when people saw it as an illustration on SG Net.’
There was quite a big difference between a picture cut off by a smartphone screen and encountering the real thing.
Sim Ah-ryeon had even expressed ‘Infinite Void’ and ‘Mastermind’ as abstract paintings infused with expressionist techniques.
In front of that enormous canvas, even Cheon Yo-hwa couldn’t help but linger for a long time.
“Hmm...”
Day four of the exhibition. Noh Do-hwa must have heard the rumors, as he somehow found the time to stop by.
After touring the gallery with my commentary, having taken on the job of a professional curator, Noh Do-hwa muttered.
“I see. I was wondering what kind of carefree art exhibition this was, but at this rate, it will be helpful for people to accurately perceive anomalies. This was meaningful...”
For even Noh Do-hwa, who had lived his life with a wall between himself and art, to evaluate it this way.
The exhibition project was, in short, a grand success.
– Anonymous: I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone who can draw that well in my life
└Anonymous: fr fr I thought modern art < this was just for clapping when a famous person takes a dump but my opinion changed a bit this time...
└[Samcheon]WitchJudge: I was surprised too
└Anonymous: Wow a comment from someone so esteemed in such a humble place;;
SG Net was also buzzing with talk of the exhibition.
“Hmm.”
I looked down at my smartphone with a pleased smile.
That’s right. Whether in reality or in the virtual world, it was fine even if she didn’t draw attention as the villain OldManGoryeo.
Sim Ah-ryeon was overflowing with enough charm to capture people’s interest.
Now, won’t Ah-ryeon be able to escape, even just a little, from suffering due to the deficiency in her heart?
As I was feeling so thrilled.
“...”
Blankly.
Sim Ah-ryeon was staring intently at me.
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