Chapter 410 |
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The Exhibitor IV
Wouldn't it be fair to call this a confession already?
“...”
I took a short breath as I combed Sim Ah-ryeon's hair from behind.
This was the reason why.
How in the world could I ever leave a child like this and go somewhere else?
In a world contaminated by Infinite Metagame and turned to dots, in other words, during the destruction of the 135th cycle, Sim Ah-ryeon hadn't abandoned me, even when I was nothing more than a mere ‘NPC’.
“Ah-ryeon, the Guild Leader is―”
Sim Ah-ryeon, who was sitting with her back to me, had her head tilted like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
“Ah-ryeon?”
I held her shoulders to check on her.
“Zzz...”
This kid, she was dozing off.
She was even drooling waterfalls to boot.
“Ha.”
A disbelieving laugh escaped me.
No way. It’s not like she’s some hard-of-hearing protagonist. How can she just say her piece during a heartfelt exchange like this and then immediately fall asleep?
Even the gentle Guild Leader was getting angry now.
“You little rascal. You really just live however you want, don't you. You little troublemaker.”
“Ube-eb, bee... uhehe...”
I poked her cheeks over and over, but Sim Ah-ryeon's sleep phase wouldn't budge from the ‘deep sleep’ stage.
The reason was easy enough to guess. For a whole week, she hadn't rested, painting endlessly without a care for her clothes getting dirty. How could her mental state possibly hold up?
She could maintain her physical vitality by casting self-heals. Thanks to that, she had completed a quest that would make anyone in the art world faint just hearing about it, ‘Preparing for Two Consecutive Exhibitions’.
But the vitality of her mind was another matter entirely.
Sim Ah-ryeon had been running on the high of her healing abilities, painting nonstop for a week without sleep. It wasn't normal.
She probably held on through sheer grit and willpower until I came to see her exhibition, and the moment she thought, ‘Ah, the Guild Leader has seen everything now,’ the rubber band in her head must have snapped.
“Uhehe, Giiild Leeder...”
“Yes, yes. The Guild Leader is right here.”
Pat, pat.
I set the comb down and stroked Sim Ah-ryeon's hair with my hand. I had cleared my schedule anyway, so I planned to stay by her side until the OldManGoryeo herself woke up.
――Thump.
Just then, I heard footsteps coming from the gallery entrance. It was a little strange.
I had hung a ‘No Entry’ sign at the entrance. The time had already passed midnight. There shouldn't be any citizen audacious enough to attempt a theft right under the nose of the Tower of Babel.
‘Did a drunk from near the casino wander in by mistake?’
Step. Step. Step.
The footsteps grew closer. Soon, they would round the corner and I would be able to see who it was, so I prepared to give them a warning in advance.
“I don't know who you are, but this is a restricted area for the general public. I'd appreciate it if you would head back out...”
“Oh my.”
Thump.
One of the person's feet peeked out from around the corner. Then their lower body, hidden by a long skirt. Their neat upper body.
And their pink hair, which cascaded down like a weeping willow.
“I'm sorry. I heard this exhibition was a nighttime exclusive, so I was under the impression the closing time was at dawn. Did I get the information wrong?”
“...”
My whole body froze.
Go Yuri.
The scent of apples, so rich it felt like it would sweetly pickle my very brainstem, was approaching from the gallery corner like a shadow.
Step. Step.
Go Yuri moved to stand before the massive canvas of "Title: Ten Legs".
“This one has had its frame torn off. Because there was no intention of preserving or managing the work later, because the plan was to use it for a single exhibition and then discard it. To not frame it and expose its bare face entirely... How wonderful.”
“...”
“An exhibition that contemplates how much a single frame can interfere with immersion. Of course, the perfume of Miss Ji-won might be seen as a distraction. The artist thought only of the Guild Leader for a whole week while painting, so they must have thought, ‘I wish the Guild Leader would also set aside their thoughts of someone else for a moment and look only at my work.’”
“...”
“It's an entirely reasonable transaction.”
I carefully shifted Sim Ah-ryeon, holding her tightly in my arms.
Of course, I never took my eyes off Go Yuri. I watched with maximum vigilance, so as not to miss a single movement, no matter how subtle the sign.
On the other hand...
“Aha, this one is Miss Seo-rin. And this one... could it be the death of Miss Yo-hwa? My. She was always a good painter, but for her skill to improve this much. Mmm. It's magnificent... As expected of love and death. No matter how the history of human art changes, these two themes remain endlessly potent.”
She strolled nonchalantly through the midnight gallery, stopping at each piece in turn as if they were bus stops.
90 minutes passed.
In the end, I had no choice but to open my lips.
“Why did you come here?”
“Because I heard a wonderful exhibition was being held.”
“Is that really the only reason?”
“For now, yes. To not only love someone's life, but to love even their death. To see their very existence as beautiful. Sincerely, sincerely, sincerely... Opportunities to witness the works of a master painter like that don't come around often, you know.”
“...”
“I enjoyed them very much.”
Bow.
Go Yuri bowed deeply before me, or rather, towards the both of us with Sim Ah-ryeon.
“If this world were a single work of art, and only beauty existed within it, then one could say that all the time a certain regressor has repeated over and over existed solely for this one moment.”
“...”
“They were masterpieces that would not be an exaggeration to praise as such.”
It was high praise.
But there was no way those words of acclaim would reach Sim Ah-ryeon's ears.
It wasn't because Ah-ryeon was asleep.
It's just that Go Yuri's voice never reached anyone in the first place.
Not curses, not praises, not even a simple everyday greeting.
She was an existence that simply returned an optimized response according to what the person facing her ‘wished’ for.
That was Go Yuri.
“But you and I both know, Doc. That the world cannot be described as simply beautiful.”
However.
I alone was the exception.
“Yes.”
For some reason, since the 1,000th cycle, I had become able to hear the anomaly's voice. I had also figured out the strategy that Go Yuri's words change to match her conversation partner.
That's why a trick like this was possible.
“...”
I looked around.
The gallery at night. Here, a monument of corpses built from my deaths from the 1st cycle to around the 1,000th was on display.
Without rushing, slowly, I connected ‘myself’ to the deaths expressed in all the paintings. I immersed myself.
Starting from the 1,083rd cycle and going in reverse order―― to the 5th. To the 4th. And finally, to the 1st cycle I had seen in Cheon-hwa's dream.
[Complete Memory].
This ability, which for me was both a lifelong curse and a blessing, became the teeth of over 1,000 keys.
Click.
The enigma named Go Yuri. I slowly aligned the tumblers on that single lock.
“Go Yuri.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you erase your own existence and fall into being an anomaly?”
“...”
The next moment.
Screeeech. As if a key and lock were grinding against each other, ‘voices’ ricocheted from the canvases scattered in every direction of the exhibition hall.
“What are you talking about?” “I have never fallen into being an anomaly” “Mr. Undertaker” “My” “Yes? Miss Cheon-hwa?” “Of course, it's for the sake of humanity” “That's sad...” “Your Excellency Undertaker” “Ahaha, I've finally been caught!” “There is none” “Don't you actually already know?” “I am human, just as you see” “That's interesting” “I have never mentioned the next teacher to the young lady” “With me” “Guild Leader” “Voice” “Being able to forget can sometimes be a blessing” “This was the only way” “The fact that distinguishing between anomalies and humans is extremely ambiguous” “That is your ego” “Let's become one” “Doc” “Can you hear me?”
The voices echoed endlessly.
They rained down like bullets on a battlefield.
But I didn't lose my concentration.
On a normal day, I might have, but here, with just a glance, the records of my deaths spanning 1,000 cycles were on display.
A child was asleep in my arms.
This was the temple that Sim Ah-ryeon had built for me.
Here, it was possible for me to maintain myself, continuously, without a single skip.
Therefore, I wove all the hopes and wishes of every cycle into a single thread, a single timeline, a single key, and reached it.
“What are you talking about?” “I have never fallen into being an anomaly” “Mr. Undertaker” “My” “Yes? Miss Cheon-hwa?” “Of course, it's for the sake of humanity” “That's sad...” “Undertaker-nim” “Ahaha, I've finally been caught!” “There is none” “Don't you actually already know?” “I am human, just as you see” “That's interesting” I have never mentioned the next teacher to the young lady” “With me” “Guild Leader” “Voice” “Being able to forget can sometimes be a blessing” “This was the only way” “The fact that distinguishing between anomalies and humans is extremely ambiguous” “That is your ego” “Let's become one” “Doc” “Can you hear me?”
I edited them.
“My” “voice” “Can you hear me?”
I answered.
“Yes.”
I broke the curse.
“I can hear you. Clearly.”
Go Yuri's lips closed.
“......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......” “......”
The countless paintings, the countless Go Yuris, all fell silent at once.
Screak. The grinding noise subsided. The key had been inserted all the way to the end of the lock. And all that remained was a single result.
“...”
Unlock.
The tinnitus faded.
The shadows that had been wailing in the abyss of pandemonium, crying for me to look at them first, to understand them, also disappeared.
I looked at the one person.
I was wishing for an answer.
And Go Yuri could not refuse my wish.
She was that kind of being from the very beginning.
She was.
“...It's taken a long time.”
She smiled.
“Humans aren't beautiful. Not even you, Undertaker. You throw everything away and go on a vacation just to wipe away the stains on your heart.”
I drew in a breath.
“When I go on a vacation cycle, Ha-yul kills herself. Yo-hwa becomes a mad necromancer. Seo-rin becomes a lonely dictator. My other companions also end up in unhappy lives. I leave, knowing all of this.”
“But, that is a temporary measure for you to remain human, Doc.”
“...The moment I think that the lives of those children are all my responsibility, I would try to take responsibility for all of humanity, and I am not a god. I would surely break and shatter someday.”
“And yet, some would call your method cowardly.”
“What's important is victory. Having come this far, I have no choice but to win. For that, I changed the way I live, and I even threw away the way I think.”
“Indeed, those are correct words.”
A fine line appeared on Go Yuri's lips.
“To know how to abandon oneself. That is the minimum requirement to walk the lonely path of this world stained with emptiness.”
“...”
“It's not enough to simply be prepared to abandon yourself. If it were a problem that could be solved with such resolve, no one would have suffered.”
“After devising the best possible way to abandon yourself, can you truly go through with it?”
Step.
Go Yuri walked past me with her hands behind her back.
Slowly.
“You asked why I abandoned myself. The answer to that question is very simple.”
“...”
“It is, of course, because my goal is to save people, not to give birth to a one-of-a-kind Outer God named ‘Go Yuri.’”
Surely the Doc, if no one else, would understand my heart, is what she seemed to say.
The sweet whisper dug into my ear.
“Ah. It would have been nice if I were a slightly more perfect being. God Go Yuri! Hiyah! I will take responsibility for all of you―like this. Ahaha.”
“...”
“But I am not a god.”
Thump.
Go Yuri's footsteps stopped behind me.
“I don't ask for much. It's just that I was born as this kind of person in this kind of world, and things just happened to turn out this way. Just like you, Doc.”
“You are.”
Go Yuri had said.
That if this world were only beautiful, then thousands of cycles would have been worth it for the sole reason of holding Sim Ah-ryeon's exhibition.
The world was not beautiful. This world hated humans. There were only humans who were born of that hatred.
That is why, if I could reach the single question and answer I was about to speak, then those thousands of cycles would have been worth it.
“Who are you?”
Go Yuri leaned in and whispered.
“I am a reincarnator.”
It was a revelation like a lightning strike.
“A human who is always born again.”
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