Chapter 413 |
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The Reincarnator III
Snap.
The Reincarnator's Arabian Nights came to an end right there.
The midnight exhibition hall, which had a thousand deaths on display, was once again wrapped in silence, much like a portable radio that had suddenly powered down after its batteries ran out.
“Go Yuri? Why did you suddenly stop talking?”
“...”
Go Yuri lifted her head.
A gentle smile was drawn upon her lips.
“Ah.”
“This place is a temple built for you, Doc. Thanks to it, you succeeded in receiving my voice. But now that you’ve heard ‘this much’ of my story, the reception should be clear even when you are outside.”
“Reception.”
“Yes. You could call it the way to tune into the radio channel that is me.”
The hem of her purple skirt flowed down.
Go Yuri stood up, letting the night air spill off her like a diver who had just broken the surface, shedding water droplets.
“This is the end of the prologue.”
She was looking down at me.
“Doc, please take Ms. Ah-ryeon to her lodgings. After she opened such a wonderful art exhibition for us, it would be sad to let her sleep on this hard floor, wouldn't it.”
“And you are...”
“I will be waiting.”
Shhh.
Go Yuri’s finger crossed her lips. She winked playfully with one eye.
“Please don’t ask where. We will be reunited when we are meant to meet, in the place we are meant to be.”
“...After hearing a story like that, you expect me to just wait quietly.”
“Yes. I’m sorry. Hmm, I don’t particularly intend to torment you, Doc. It’s just that in order to continue what comes next, you will need a resolve of your own.”
Resolve.
I had always considered my own resolve to be stronger than anyone’s. But the person before me was a reincarnator who had lived through billions of lives.
I couldn’t help but pause at the sheer weight that word must carry.
“The next time we meet, we will no longer be able to stop. We won’t be able to go back, nor can we take a single step backward.”
“...”
“Therefore, Doc. Please, take a long ‘vacation’. Enjoy it until you have no regrets left.”
“What is going to happen to me?”
“My salvation.”
Go Yuri’s smiling eyes widened.
“The promise will be fulfilled.”
“Promise...?”
“Please enjoy your last vacation. Ah, and please don’t worry about me. I’m used to waiting. Very much so.”
“How can I possibly do that after hearing all this—”
“Ahaha. Please, trust me. Hmm, although if we only consider the absolute numbers, you’ve only just passed 1,000 regressions, Doc, so you can’t be compared to me. Still, I believe you are the only one on this earth who can understand my familiarity with waiting.”
“...”
“Well then, goodbye. Until we meet again.”
Tap.
Go Yuri took a couple of steps back, then elegantly gathered the hem of her skirt and bowed like the daughter of a nobleman.
And without adding another single word, she left the exhibition hall alone.
Tap, tap, tap... Tap.
I immediately followed Go Yuri, holding Sim Ah-ryeon in my arms. Truly, immediately.
Therefore, when I turned the corner of the gallery, I should have seen the back of Go Yuri, who could not have gotten far.
But she was not there.
Not in the exhibition hall’s corridor. Not at the exit. No matter how much I scanned the city under the dark night sky, Go Yuri was nowhere to be seen.
There was only the chirping of insects like crickets.
“...”
“Uuumm. Guild Leaderrrr...”
The sleepy mumble of a frail, young child snuggled into my arms, digging into my chest as if there was a burrow, a □, carved out just for her.
By my side, there were many children whose four seasons were always winter.
I stroked the child’s head.
Go Yuri had disappeared.
Even when I inquired with the Saintess, she could not trace any sign of the disappearance.
[I'm sorry. As per your instructions, Mr. Undertaker, I had been deliberately averting my gaze from her, to ensure I wouldn't pry, not even by chance.]
[It seems she has vanished from the soup kitchen that was operating in Daejeon as well. There are no witnesses. I have no excuse.]
“No, it’s alright. I was the one who ordered you to never monitor Go Yuri until now. I’m the one who should be sorry for the sudden confusion.”
Where could she have disappeared to?
If I searched the entire world, could I find her somewhere?
‘No. That would be impossible.’
Go Yuri was a reincarnator. I was a regressor.
For the two of us, ‘disappearance’ was not merely a spatial concept.
A temporal disappearance was also entirely possible.
‘The next cycle.’
I will be waiting, she had said.
Until when?
‘Until I myself am satisfied. Until I have enjoyed this world without a single regret and can let it all go.’
It would be fine if it took a hundred years. It likely wouldn't matter if it took a thousand.
‘Because Go Yuri had already waited until I could receive her voice.’
Could my entire life have been a period of waiting for someone else?
“...”
“Huh? What is it, Mister. Why are you staring at me with that face?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Aha. You’ve fallen for my deadly charms, haven’t you? My, my. I suppose it can’t be helped to fantasize about a great author. But don’t get too close, okay? You might just melt like the wings of Icarus.”
It was a strange feeling.
Until now, I had always waited for others, but I had never been the one waited for.
Because I was a regressor.
I knew who they were and what their futures held, with a semi-omniscient point of view.
That’s why I knew all too well.
“Dok-seo.”
“Ung?”
“How is it? Is the writing going well?”
Dodododo, Oh Dok-seo covered her ears with both hands and ran off somewhere. The moment I had pronounced the ‘wri’ in writing, she was already in a cheetah’s stance.
I let out a bitter smile.
‘I can wait. As long as it takes.’
Still.
‘I would be happy if you could catch up as soon as possible.’
Of course, I was strong.
I could wait forever. I had built up the fortitude to endure that waiting.
But even the best-made structures eventually rust.
Even if one were to befriend that rust and call it a form of elegance, one could not deny the fact that the steel bars within were silently corroding away.
‘Go Yuri was waiting for me.’
Her words were certainly right.
The only person on this earth who could understand the heart-wrenching nature of a reincarnator’s wait was, regrettably, a single regressor.
“Now, now. Dok-seo.”
“Aaargh! I can’t hear you! I can’t hear anything! Guarantee the author’s human rights! Guarantee them! Guarantee them! An author is not public property but a privately existing human being! A human! A human!”
Normally, I would have retorted with something like, ‘Well, aren’t readers private human beings too?’.
But this time, I simply stroked the back of Oh Dok-seo’s head.
“...?”
Oh Dok-seo, who had been protesting with a ‘grrr’ in a hedgehog’s stance, cautiously lifted her head.
“Uh, Mister?”
“Mm.”
“What’s wrong?”
Looking up at my face, Oh Dok-seo’s expression grew even more anxious. Her red eyes trembled, unable to find a place to rest.
“Are you... going somewhere?”
As expected. She was a sharp kid.
I crouched down to meet her gaze at eye level. And then I smiled.
“Mister doesn’t really know either.”
“...”
“Even though I’ve lived for so very long. There are still so many things in the world that even Mister doesn’t know. But you know that Mister cares for you a lot, our Dok-seo, right?”
“Don’t go.”
“I’m leaving Ha-yul in your care.”
“...”
“Ah-ryeon too. And Yo-hwa. The other children as well. If Mister isn’t around, you have to be the center for everyone, Dok-seo. Can you do that?”
“Why, why are you saying things like that? You’re not really disappearing, are you? Right?”
She was just a child.
Children this young had died over 1,000 times. Perhaps billions of times. Perhaps billions of times that.
I had to save the children.
It wasn't some grand feat. There are more people than one might think who would disregard their own lives to save a child in danger right before their eyes.
‘Let these children have a continuation of their epilogue.’
My work was not fundamentally different.
‘I don’t care if it’s a world full of sorrow. That is something to think about when the time comes. But to die for such absurd reasons. Something like the void, or aberrations.’
‘They cannot be allowed to die for such things.’
The world was sickeningly full of such occurrences.
‘If that’s the case, then it’s the world that’s wrong.’
People called such a world nature, reason, the Dao, the path.
In other words, a Route.
Now, I could fully understand the words Go Yuri had left me with.
– What reason is there that a single human cannot change that path?
I agreed.
Therefore, in the next cycle. The 1,085th cycle.
Go Yuri was not at Busan Station.
As soon as I broke through the tutorial dungeon, I cast aside my contact with the Saintess and headed for Onyang, Asan, in South Chungcheong Province.
Go Yuri was standing in an old inn in Onyang, in room 202 on the second floor, a place where the murky, cream-colored paint was peeling off in patches like dead skin.
“...”
Seeing me enter through the open door, Go Yuri’s eyes widened as if in surprise.
An inn room. In that place where a nameless mother and son had withered and died like old trees, Go Yuri had been looking up at a red flower just moments before.
“Oh my.”
Her voice was one of genuine surprise.
“How did you do it in just one cycle?”
“It was a simple problem to solve if one thought about you and me. You, the reincarnator, chose me, and my title just so happened to be the Undertaker.”
“...”
“In the end, you were thinking of a way to die yourself. But for beings like us, death is not a simple end. To truly reach the end, to see the end of the Route, the ability itself needs to be eradicated.”
“Brilliant.”
Go Yuri smiled.
“Yes. That’s right. Therefore, Udumbara. I need a ‘reset button’ that can erase all of an awakener’s abilities.”
“So you deliberately aimed for the time when Ah-ryeon held her art exhibition. That girl, Ah-ryeon, possesses the same ability as Udumbara. Your very visit to the exhibition was a hint in itself.”
“Ah, that’s wonderful.”
Her smile deepened.
“I thought it would take you three regressions at the very least. Honestly, I thought you would miss it for about ten regressions. To think you reached the correct answer in a single regression. You truly are something else, Doc.”
Go Yuri crouched down on the floor.
She then reached out and caressed the wrist of the child who had starved to death. A string of prayer beads, a little too large for a newborn’s wrist, was wrapped around it.
Clatter. Clatter.
“We were originally twins.”
“...”
“One of them was me.”
On the bodies of the mother and child, crimson flowers bloomed here and there, like red spider lilies.
Like the banks of the river in the underworld.
“My mother, of course, tried to feed both of us children equally. But I, even as a newborn, was sentient. So I steadfastly refused.”
“...”
“Then she had to feed the other child, right? She had no choice. She kept fussing, hoping I would eat at least a little, but the child acted as if the two of them could only live if she sacrificed herself, and in the end... she was the first to die.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. As you can see, it was a fate they would have met all the same, even if I wasn't there.”
Hup, Go Yuri pushed herself up from her knees.
“Isn’t it strange? I wish she had eaten something. If she didn’t like porridge, if she didn’t like milk, if she didn’t like tap water, then I wish she could have eaten my thoughts as her mother instead. My love and my worry.”
“...”
“And from that, a tree that could eat even life and abilities was born. As for why it had to be a tree, well, hmm. I suppose I was envious of a life that could survive on just sunlight and water.”
Having said that, Go Yuri wore a smile that was both bitter and satisfied, like a theater owner who had just revealed the entire backstage of a play.
She was like an examiner giving a perfect score to a candidate who had reached their destination without a single error, like a professor who had just read a flawless graduation thesis.
However...
“For a long time.”
“...?”
“There was a point I always found strange.”
My part of the answer was not yet finished.
“I don’t know if you remember, but when I first met Oh Dok-seo, you were also in our party.”
“Oh my, yes, I remember. It wasn’t that long ago, was it? Although I can’t recall it as perfectly as you can, Doc.”
“At that time, I barely managed to persuade Oh Dok-seo and had you expelled from the party.”
Go Yuri let out a small laugh.
“Expelled from the party, you say. That’s a good cliché. Now it’s your turn to regret chasing me out and become obsessed, Doc.”
“It was on a sloping road.”
“Pardon?”
“After being expelled from the party, you walked down a sloping road. It was a single path. So if I had waited a little longer, I should have seen you walking up the next hill, but you never appeared.”
“...”
“After going down the hill, you vanished. There was nowhere else to go. Like a mirage.”
It was the same this last time.
Sim Ah-ryeon’s exhibition hall was located in the very center of downtown Busan, in the Tower of Babel Plaza. There was no way I wouldn't know the geography of that place.
And yet, just by turning a single corner in the gallery, Go Yuri had evaporated without a trace.
How?
Was it because Go Yuri was a being who walked through dreams? Because she was an aberration? Because she could brainwash humans into not perceiving her?
But Go Yuri was not a brainwasher. According to the revealed truth, she was merely the one who had lost all of humanity.
Go Yuri was human.
In that case, the conclusion became simple.
“You were the one... you were the teleporter all along. Go Yuri.”
“...”
“That’s why you disappeared on the sloping road, and why you vanished from the exhibition hall. The reason you sometimes don't get caught by the Saintess's Clairvoyance is simple too. You just teleported beyond the range of her vision.”
The inn grew quiet.
“I rushed here as soon as I cleared the Busan Station tutorial dungeon. And yet, you were already here before me.”
“...”
“There is only one answer. The ability user that Old Man Scho had been so desperately searching for. The person who can teleport is you.”
Silence.
“Perfect.”
Go Yuri’s lips slowly parted.
“Yes, Doc. I am the very awakener of teleportation that you have all been looking for.”
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