Chapter 417 |
──────
The Regressor III
Clank.
I infiltrated the cult and adjusted the timeline so that the ‘Cheon Yo-hwa’ twins would be born.
After the twins were born, I periodically approached them and influenced their way of thinking.
So they would function as sacrifices offered to an Outer God, yet still yearn to be free humans.
This route required 13,160 lives.
Clank.
The separation of the Outer God Taeguk was complete.
This route required 214,734 lives.
Clank, creak.
I grasped the nature of the Outer God, Monster Wave. It was a legion that endlessly swallowed death to expand itself.
From this anomaly, I separated the ‘ability to endlessly recover,’ the so-called ‘Heal’ ability. Severed it. Made it independent. I separately conceived an anomaly called ‘Udumbara.’
This route required 3,478,238 lives.
“...”
I looked down at my own hands.
“There isn’t enough time.”
One might ask how a being who is both a reincarnator and a teleporter could be short on time, but it was the truth.
‘A newly reincarnated life, at its longest, is only about 40 years. Usually, it’s between 20 and 30 years.’
‘In a mere 30 years, I have to implement every single strategy I’ve uncovered so far into reality.’
There was a limit to being overworked.
‘On Monday, I have to infiltrate the cult and gain the trust of the leader as a follower. On Tuesday, I need to go to Turkey and lay the groundwork so that Monster Wave and Udumbara can be separated...’
‘On Wednesday, it’s tutoring for the Cheon Yo-hwa sisters again. I have to cancel Seo Gyu’s trip to Japan so he doesn’t get caught in an accident. And if I leave things alone, Noh Do-hwa will die in a traffic accident next Thursday.’
And, and, and.
“I can’t save everyone.”
The butterfly effect of the optimal route.
When I, when Go Yuri, chose a specific route, it affected the world in one way or another.
As a consequence, children who would have been born in other routes were not born in the current one.
Like Jeong Seo-ah.
“...I have to discard what must be discarded.”
I had to save what must be saved.
And so, it was decided that tens of billions of beings who once were, and could have been, born on this earth would be erased from history.
“...”
Then one day, when I encountered the Monster Wave, I was faced with a bizarre scene.
– Ugh, uh, uh, uh, uh.
– Su-yeon unni! It’s me, unni!
– So there you were?
The Monster Wave, a mixture of the dead.
And there, I saw the faces of people who had certainly never been born in the current timelin, my younger siblings and relatives.
“Ah.”
I let out a bitter smile.
The candidates who had been dropped from the reincarnator’s ark made of time. The traces of past lives.
“So those people also appear as anomalies.”
No wonder.
I had thought that the number of anomalies was greater than the number of humans.
Now I saw that even the lives from past incarnations that failed to be born in the ‘current world’ were turning into anomalies.
“The more I repeat this life, the number of souls falling into that procession of the dead will grow exponentially.”
But if I quit reincarnating, the probability of humanity’s victory itself would become slim.
Could there be a shittier game than this?
“Ah, this shitty game! I’m not playing!”
Whoosh.
A girl threw her gaming console. She was the girl who had become my older sister in this reincarnation.
Her name was Oh Dok-seo.
“Unni.”
I said gently.
“That console is expensive, you really regretted it last time when you threw it and it broke.”
“I don’t care! It’s not fun!”
Little Oh Dok-seo threw a tantrum.
I laughed emptily in my heart.
‘My god. To think the day would come when I’d be born as Oh Dok-seo’s younger sibling.’
Regardless of my thoughts, the work Go Yuri had once undertaken proceeded as planned.
“Hey! Read this!”
Oh Dok-seo had a talent. A talent for writing.
“Ah, damn it. Why isn't anyone reading this...!”
Oh Dok-seo had no talent. She had no talent for selling her writing.
“It’s because your writing always makes the characters miserable, they only interact through twisted emotions, things don’t get better even when they do interact, and in the end, they all fall to ruin together?”
“Th-that’s what makes it good! That’s it!”
“I guess it’s not to people’s taste.”
“Hmph.”
If Go Yuri had not been born as her younger sister.
That is, if the reincarnator did not exist in the world.
Oh Dok-seo would have given up her dream of being a writer around the age of 20. Despite preferring works that were darkly twisted, the person Oh Dok-seo herself was not that gloomy.
Decent social skills. Quick-witted. Above all, the tenacity to see her tasks through to the end.
She would have found a job that suited her and continued her life as a reader, simply enjoying works that fit her niche hobby.
“But I like it. Your writing, unni.”
“Huh?”
“Your writing. When I read it, it’s so transparent, it feels like I’m looking at beautifully carved ice.”
“...”
But Oh Dok-seo’s life was twisted.
It was decisively altered from the moment she met Go Yuri, the reincarnator, me.
“R-really? Then... Should I submit it to a contest?”
“Yes! Unni. I’ll help you as your most dependable reader and editor!”
“Uh, oh. Um, uh.... Okay!”
Oh Dok-seo had a younger sibling.
“Wow! This character, the Count, is amazing! Hmm. For sure. There’s a cliché in novels that a beautiful girl deserves to be saved, but this novel asks if that cliché can be ethically permissible when pushed to its absolute limit! That’s the theme.”
“Ah, uh-huh. Yeah... That’s right.”
Her sibling was so beautiful and kind, and so smart, that she understood the lines Oh Dok-seo wrote exactly as Oh Dok-seo intended—or perhaps even more deeply and broadly than Oh Dok-seo’s own desires.
“Unni, I also love the parts in your novel where you describe the scenery! Hmm, it’s like the objects are alive and squirming like tentacles.”
“T-tentacles?”
“Yes. In the novel, the characters are like dead objects, and the objects are like living characters. Describing them that way adds a special flavor to the reading experience!”
“Oh.... Y-you really get it.”
Her sibling was so considerate that she elevated the ‘techniques’ Oh Dok-seo had attempted, consciously or unconsciously, in her writing style into a firm ‘method.’
It was simple advice from a being who was both a reincarnator and a regressor.
And it was more than enough advice to sharpen the tip of a young child’s pen.
Oh Dok-seo was rejected from the first contest. But there were five hundred readers in the world who were disappointed by her rejection, genuinely disappointed.
It was a feat accomplished at the tender age of 14.
“Unni. Don’t you think this sentence would have more flavor if you fix it like this?”
“Ooh! You’re right! Kyaaa, as expected of my little sister. There’s really no editor like you.”
“It’s because your writing is beautiful, unni. I can’t help but get interested and keep looking into it.”
“Hee-heehee! You’re so sweet with your words, too! Hwaa, how did such a pretty sister get born into my family...? My friends’ siblings seem totally different. I’m the chosen one...”
“Ahaha.”
Oh Dok-seo’s talent began to bloom.
Oh Dok-seo became happy.
The flower that had never been able to bloom in other timelines, in hundreds of millions of past lives, blossomed magnificently under the care of the reincarnator-regressor.
Oh Dok-seo became happy.
Her work was published. The desolation melted into Oh Dok-seo’s lines was a potent poison, but humanity’s stomach had always been good at gulping down even opium and mercury, calling them medicine.
She became famous in an instant.
An older high school sister as the author and her younger sister as the editor, I mean, what kind of crazy combination was that?
It was a combination that reporters, if they were in their right minds, couldn’t possibly ignore.
The conscientious reporters who did raise an issue, asking if they weren’t exposing the children to the media too much, were gifted with single-digit page views for the day.
“Ms. Author!”
“Praise me more.”
“Legendary Writer-nim!”
“More.”
“The grace and blessing of humanity in this era, to whom Shakespeare is but a mere mortal, the Great Author Oh Dok-seo-nim!”
“Uhehe.”
Author Oh Dok-seo produced a great number of readers.
Among them, there were three stalker fans who could be definitively labeled as villains.
The three were originally separate individuals who would have never crossed paths.
But for some reason, perhaps because someone had adjusted the ‘route,’ the three met. And upon meeting, they realized they could share their own evil.
“Huh?”
Evil was fast.
Perhaps if evil hadn't been so fast, the world would never have become like this.
“My... sister?”
She lacked a sense of caution.
It was because of the whispers of someone who had always grown up right beside her.
“Th-that’s... a lie, right?”
The criminal group of three stormed the author’s home.
But ‘by chance,’ the author was not at home. ‘By chance,’ the beautiful younger sister, who had been widely reported in all media as having lived as an irreplaceable reader and editor since childhood, was at home.
A bit of coercion. Resistance. An argument. Insults.
The criminals lost their reason at the provocations that seemed to pierce right through all three of their psyches and subconscious minds.
And so, Oh Dok-seo lost her sister.
“...”
Oh Dok-seo lost her only editor. She lost a teacher who was younger than her. She lost a friend. She lost a family member who would always play new games with her when they were released.
Oh Dok-seo lost the very first reader of her writing.
By the hands of the readers of the outside world who had made her happy, by anonymous readers.
“...”
Oh Dok-seo should have stopped writing.
However, Oh Dok-seo’s resentment was far too complex. To hate the novel itself, the most precious being to her was also connected to the novel.
She resented the readers. But to resent the readers, the most precious being to her was also a reader.
She didn’t want to write.
But she knew that only while she was writing did her sister’s trace remain in her sentences.
Oh Dok-seo’s soul was torn.
A gap formed in her torn soul.
It was a gap like a ravine.
This world is made of wind, and each and every human is a ravine hanging on the edge of a cliff, so whenever the wind blows, a unique scream rings out from the crumpled place on the cliff.
That scream was called an Awakening.
“Hey, you.”
“...?”
To Oh Dok-seo, writing was a wound. And Oh Dok-seo came to regard beings she could only meet through that wound as true humans.
The reason was simple.
“You’re my sister, right?”
“...”
Because the most precious person to her was always found not in her current life, but in the lines of an epilogue that had already passed.
“How...?”
“I can read it. It’s a completely absurd story. But for some reason, when I read it, I can feel that this really happened.”
Even though they had never met in this life, the other person was staring at me with conviction.
“What are you?”
“...”
Go Yuri had been flustered.
I, too, was flustered.
‘Didn’t Dok-seo originally read my life story as a novel? But... at first, she read Go Yuri’s story, not mine?’
I was about to ask myself why when I suddenly realized.
‘Ah.’
The Admin of the Infinite Metagame.
The Outer God that must have squeezed into the gap created in Oh Dok-seo’s soul.
‘From the very beginning, that The Admin of the Infinite Metagame thing... confessed that it couldn’t distinguish between Go Yuri and me.’
A cold chill ran up the back of my neck.
‘Just like, the me of now.’
‘Is Go Yuri, and at the same time—’
‘The Undertaker who has inherited Go Yuri’s dream, her humanity.’
If so, then naturally.
‘Dok-seo can read not only the life story of the Undertaker but also the life story of Go Yuri, earlier than anyone, like a prophet.’
Not right now.
Oh Dok-seo’s prophetic ability was slow.
The Oh Dok-seo staring at me now had only read the connection from a past life, the timeline where we were born as family just once, as a ‘novel.’
‘But.... if enough time passes?’
She would be able to read all of these events as a story.
No.
She would one day be able to seal all of these events in the form of a story.
Footnotes: