Chapter 422

I’m an Infinite Regressor, But I’ve Got Stories to Tell

The One who was a Companion

There was a man named Emit Schopenhauer.

"..."

Schopenhauer opened his eyes.

He didn't bother with something trite like "an unfamiliar ceiling" or anything of that sort.

To be perfectly honest, this German old man was about as far removed from that venerable tradition passed down from the days of Evangelion as one could possibly get.

"I've regressed. Again."

His murmur, so familiar that he could practically recite the concrete patterns on the ceiling by heart now, drifted up like stale smoke into that well-known space above.

The time displayed on the wall clock read 13:58:33.

While his wife was supposed to be attending some academic conference in Seoul for several days, Schopenhauer found himself too restless to just sit cooped up in a hotel room.

Strangely enough, he was seized by a peculiar feeling that he had lost something in this Korean neighborhood, and that he absolutely had to find that missing item somewhere.

Schopenhauer was a man who lived on impulse.

Even though advancing age had reduced his testosterone secretion, endless strength training and Schopenhauer's characteristic energy had somehow led him to the far edge of the Korean peninsula.

Busan.

"Ah hell, I should've just stayed in Seoul."

Schopenhauer grumbled as he pulled out his smartphone. Without even looking at the number pad, he skillfully placed a call with his left hand.

There was no need to look.

"Emit? What's going on?"

He had never bothered to memorize the digits, but the motion had become familiar after thousands of repetitions.

"I love you, Adele."

"Huh?"

Smartphone performance these days was truly incredible. He could hear his wife's expression souring in real time through the phone line.

Schopenhauer found himself laughing.

The eternal repeating ten-minute life of a regressor. Time that had transformed from a straight line into a wagon wheel, or rather an extremely tiny hamster wheel.

In this hell, this was the only moment when he could let laughter seep into his breath.

"What? Can't I say I love you?"

"No, you're not Emit, are you? A man who's never said such words in his entire life suddenly acting like this? Did you get yourself a French mistress or something?"

"The coffee here is disgustingly terrible. Drinking it made me suddenly want to brew you some good coffee."

"I do like your coffee, but I prefer tea, you know that."

"Tea is healthier than coffee, I'll give you that. Still, can't quit caffeine though. Hell no. It makes all the difference when working out."

Completely pointless conversation.

No grand narrative about how the world would end, how monsters would run rampant, how both she and he would soon meet their deaths.

Nothing of the sort.

"Look, I get that you love exercise, but take it easy. You just had inflammation in your wrist the other day."

"Injuries are badges of honor."

"Oh my. If you earn any more badges, you'll end up a complete idiot, old man."

That was what he liked.

That was enough.

Glancing reflexively, Schopenhauer looked back at the cafe's wall clock. He wasn't sure if it was some recent youth aesthetic or what, but it was an electronic clock with raw bright red fluorescent lamps embedded in it.

'About ten seconds left.'

The red numbers counting down the remaining time until the only being on this earth that he loved would meet her death.

"This won't do."

"What won't?"

13:59:52.

"Next time, I'm definitely dragging you to the fitness studio. You're always holed up in the study reading books, that's why you have turtle neck."

"Dream on."

13:59:59.

"I hate exercise."

14:00:00.

"I love you, Adele."

"..."

End.

Schopenhauer closed his eyes. Firmly, he pressed the call end button. His left hand holding the smartphone trembled slightly.

That trembling was probably the last heat remaining in the heart of a husband burying his wife.

'What topic should I talk about next time?'

He had already discussed too many things. But there existed someone for whom the topic of conversation didn't matter.

Something that nullified all other existence.

Love. Love, love.

'Oh God.'

A person's lifetime wounds, experiences, judgments, all ravenously absorbed like nutrients, blooming humbly toward the sun that had cast light into his valley, a single flower.

A crimson red spider lily.

'Why have you inflicted such a trial upon a mere human?'

Beneath the bare valley of a desert where nothing remained except a single cluster amaryllis.

The old man was drying up.

'Will the day come when I tire of this love?'

He had never once thought his love was insufficient.

After all, he had died. He was dying. He would die.

For the sole sake of that sixty-second moment conversing with her, Emit Schopenhauer could throw away everything.

'Can I continue like this forever...?'

But the old man had seen far too much to carelessly speak of eternity.

For him, the phone call with his wife was nothing less than a resurrection ritual.

Because he as a regressor died, his wife could come back to life. They could talk again.

In this world overflowing with countless awakening abilities, absurdly enough, resurrection and time machines were the only things that didn't exist.

The only passage was death.

For a regressor, death was the only ability that could pierce through a world marked as unbeatable.

'Has that bastard Undertaker still not given up?'

He couldn't know.

Still holding the smartphone from which the call had already ended in his left hand, Schopenhauer searched for a memo pad.

While thinking of his comrade.

'Is it the thousandth cycle? The two thousandth? Maybe it's passed three thousand. Common sense would suggest he gave up too.'

Emit Schopenhauer was afraid.

'Nine times out of ten, he must've been infected by Udumbara and released the authority of regression from his own hands.'

'Then is this world just endlessly repeating June 17th after losing all its regressors...?'

He was afraid to confirm it.

'Even in a world where that bastard existed, we ultimately couldn't find a way to save the world.'

He was afraid to face it.

'How could I possibly do anything alone in this goddamn world full of monsters?'

So he turned his back on the world.

To revive his wife, to escape the tragedy of confirming his comrade's fate, Emit Schopenhauer had imprisoned himself in an eternally repeating ten-minute world of his own making.

'If this is humanity's conclusion, then God, why did you create this world in the first place?'

Schopenhauer began making cafe au lait.

Still believing in the slim possibility that his comrade might not have given up yet, wanting to believe there was still hope for salvation in the world.

He offered the scent of coffee to death.

'Why?'

That was when it happened.

*Vrrrrr.*

He froze.

Schopenhauer whipped his head to look at his left hand. Then with an expression of disbelief, with gray eyes, he looked at his smartphone screen.

It was vibrating.

The smartphone. With vibration.

[Adele]

Displaying a profile picture of her smiling brightly.

"..."

*Vrrrr, vrrrrr.*

The smartphone's vibration didn't stop.

Having grown so accustomed for so long to only making calls, the old man who had never received one felt his hair stand on end for a moment.

'A call is coming?'

And from his wife who should already be dead, consumed by the void.

Then was this a call from the afterlife?

"..."

Should he answer? Or not?

Schopenhauer was well aware that anomalies occasionally played such tricks.

Though this was the first time such an incident had occurred during thousands of regressions, wasn't it the nature of those monsters to mock humanity with unpredictable pranks?

It might be a ploy to toy with the heart of someone who had just been separated from their beloved.

No, it was surely a ploy.

"..."

Even so.

"...Hello?"

He had no choice but to answer.

The voice that flowed from Schopenhauer's lips was so thin it surprised even himself.

Neither the wit he had feigned for pleasant conversation nor his ingrained courage could be felt at all.

The old man's voice sounded exactly like a child who had tried to whistle and failed.

"What do you mean, dear?"

Even that voice momentarily stopped.

"Why would you suddenly call and then hang up on your own? Huh?"

It was strange.

He couldn't breathe properly.

"If you're going to blurt out things you've never said in your entire life and then suddenly hang up like that, shouldn't I be worried?"

"..."

"Listen, you're not trying to kill yourself right now, are you?"

At that question, Schopenhauer's voice barely regained its breath.

"No. No, it's not that."

"Then why did you do it?"

"Well..."

Both Emit and Adele, when they were much younger than now, in a past when the two didn't know each other, had each separately attempted suicide.

It wasn't particularly unusual. In his view, the universal language of all nations wasn't music but suicide, that is, the soundless scream.

"No."

So when Schopenhauer was exposed to his wife's intuition, he had no choice but to look at himself.

'Am I really trying to commit suicide...?'

She was right.

"..."

He had died. He was dying. He would die.

The person closest to that story should be her, yet somehow it felt impossibly difficult to tell her this story.

Something boiled in the middle of his throat.

What remained in his heart, the residual heat of life that even he hadn't thought would remain to this extent.

"Where are you right now?"

His beloved had ears that could hear soundless screams.

"Right now, I'm in Busan."

"Busan? Wait. That's really far. Hang on."

"No, you have that academic conference, you said you had to attend. Is Seoul okay right now?"

"I don't know. Something big seems to have happened, but what do I care? Do I need a train ticket to get there? Or should I get a plane ticket? Where exactly in Busan are you?"

Schopenhauer was afraid.

Was this a dream?

He had often thought about it for a long time.

He and his wife had never actually come to Korea. They were in their German home.

He had woken up a bit late and come out to the living room, and what do you know, his wife who was supposed to be on a business trip to Korea was sitting right there in the living room eating breakfast.

"Adele, why are you here? Didn't you go to Korea?" he would ask.

"No, I missed the flight. I'm just going to go in a few days," she would say.

Then he would cry and embrace his wife. Thank goodness, Adele. Thank goodness. Thank goodness you didn't go there..

Such thoughts. Bone-deep delusions.

When that imagination returned to reality, Schopenhauer could barely continue speaking.

He should tell her she was a monster, coldly hang up the phone.

But he couldn't bring himself to end the call.

"Be careful coming."

That was all he could manage to say.

"Be careful on the road, and there will be a lot of strange things happening. Don't help other people, just come straight to me. Got it?"

"Okay. See you in a bit."

*Click.*

The call ended.

"..."

The time had come.

Now the moment to die had arrived.

14:09:45.

A clock that only repeated the past. The baroque spiral that had whispered someone's epilogue forever was slowly approaching the Maginot Line.

To add even a bit of human warmth to that endlessly repeating spiral was the cafe au lait on the table in front of him.

14:09:55.

It was time to die soon.

Undertaker. If that fellow regressor hadn't given up yet, he could finish the tutorial dungeon in ten minutes and arrive here.

The moment that would determine whether there was one regressor remaining in this world or still two was ticking closer.

"..."

The future.

"..."

With these old hands that held nothing but this mobile phone.

He had to decide the future.

'Do I have the right to do so?'

It was a question he had already passed.

'Do I have the power to do so?'

Again, a question he had already passed.

'Do I want to?'

Who did he want to wait for?

"..."

Schopenhauer waited for Adele.

She said she would come.

She was coming, and she would come.

'Ah.'

Because he could wait for one person, Schopenhauer could finally accept time.

'Was I still alive, even now?'

Tick.

1400.

The cafe door opened.

It was a familiar man's shadow.

"..."

"..."

He had become a bit more dependable than Schopenhauer's memories, a bit more solid. For reasons unknown, he also seemed a bit more relaxed.

He had thought such a day might come someday, but now that he faced this day, his mouth wouldn't quite open.

Perhaps it was the same for the man.

The man didn't offer any greeting. He simply pulled out a barista apron from behind the counter seat, put it on, and began making coffee.

Skilled hand movements.

The way he separately heated the milk, his skill in handling the tools was extraordinary. At least the him that Schopenhauer remembered hadn't been this skilled as a barista.

*Thunk.*

The man placed a cup of coffee on his table.

It was cafe au lait.

"Please drink, old man."

German.

"..."

The person he had always had to initiate Korean conversations with was now speaking to him in German with pronunciation indistinguishable from a native speaker.

Time had no form. Yet time was someone's barista outfit, German pronunciation, and the aroma of a cup of cafe au lait.

Time had no form, yet it flowed while embracing all clothes, voices, and scents.

Old Man Scho took a sip of the cafe au lait containing time.

"Ha."

Laughter came out.

The man was also smiling.

"How is it?"

"Fuck me, it's damn delicious."

"I thought so."

Listening to the laughter flowing like background music in the shop, Schopenhauer once again savored time.

It was delicious coffee.

---

Footnotes:

TL Note: IT’S BEEN A WHILE BUT HE’S BACK