I'm an Infinite Regressor, But I've Got Stories to Tell-Chapter 324
Editor: echo
Discord: https://dsc.gg/reapercomics
◈ I’m an Infinite Regressor, But I’ve Got Stories to Tell
Chapter 324
──────
The Skeptic XVII
Who was the very first Awakener?
No, what even is an Awakening in the first place?
Is it a type of Anomaly? Is it stubborn pride, determined to keep its human shape, even though it’s already infected with Anomaly?
Previously, I had no way to answer any of those questions. The solution to all of them ultimately lay in the beginning called the “first run”, a deep abyss place beyond my memory’s reach. Sure, I’d reconstructed bits of the past through Cheon Yo-hwa’s power and I learned I’d once been a tutor for the twin sisters, but that was about it.
And then, there was now.
“Ji-won, you... What are you...?”
I found myself witnessing the exact moment when the first Awakener started to open her eyes.
Yu Ji-won.
Water droplets hovered around her, wriggling like bugs. Gravity, the physical law that acts most directly upon this world, was being scorned by these watery creatures, as though they found it laughable. The sight was bizarre, no matter how you looked at it.
“Please answer me, Mr. Matiz.”
It seemed Ji-won herself couldn’t see this eerie phenomenon at all. Or maybe...
Perhaps...
In her current state, she considered it not abnormal but normal.
“If humans, if the entire world, were defective from the start, why shouldn’t I smash this broken kingdom of machinery?”
The water-bugs squirming in midair scuttled onto Ji-won’s hair. And then, a shocking event took place. Only seconds prior, her hair was black as ebony, polished to a glossy shine. But it was now turning... white.
Awakening!
Or perhaps, Ascension.
The water-bugs wedged themselves one by one among her strands of hair, as if hanging themselves.
Pop, pop—whenever the mucous-like membrane of a water-bug burst, her hair became dyed.
A color more transparent than pure white that could only be called silver was infecting the ends of Ji-won’s hair.
“I can’t trust other people’s words anymore. Even my mother’s final reply was, in the end, nothing but a lie.”
Splash.
“But if it’s you, Mr. Matiz...”
Ji-won stepped closer.
Right up to my face.
“If it’s your answer, I think it’s worth deliberating.”
Her eyes gazed upward at me as a water-bug wriggled in. The droplet broke open, and like mixing a chemical solution in a transparent beaker, her dark irises gradually changed.
“Mr. Matiz, you always charged me for rides and claimed it was profitable for you. But I realize you actually had another reason for helping me.”
Purple and blue. Two layers of color swirled like chasing each other’s tail, finally interlacing as one.
“You pity me.”
An aroma drifted out from the swirling pools of her eyes. The scent left behind by the dying water-bugs wrapped once around Ji-won’s hair and then reached my nose.
A faint, grassy smell. Like a wild plant, fresh and green, that grew randomly along an alley and might be crushed underfoot and die come winter.
It was the body scent inherent to the newly Awakened Yu Ji-won.
Compared to other Awakeners, it might be considered an unimpressive smell. Far in the future, adult Yu Ji-won would confess she disliked her own natural scent. It felt too lacking in dignity for someone holding the rank of Operations Team Leader in the National Road Management Corps, so she deliberately covered herself with strong perfume, with special preference for one with a hint of strawberry.
However, this 14-year-old Yu Ji-won was letting her unvarnished essence show unfiltered.
“From the very beginning, you matched yourself to me. You made that ‘perfume’ you claimed was your natural scent because of my disability, right? You always approached with a reason I could accept, asking only for expenses I could cover.”
At that moment, the girl’s hair, eyes, and scent all fully merged with what I recognized from her future self—the Operations Team Leader of the NRMC.
“That’s the relationship I dreamed of.”
I took a moment to formulate my response. “When you get older and stronger, you’ll find far more people willing to connect with you on those terms.”
New novel chapt𝒆rs are published on ƒгeewebnovёl.com.
“Yes. Probably.” She gave a curt nod, face still impassive. “But no one in my 14-year-old life, first year, class 2 of Shinseo Middle, did that for me... On the very night I killed my parents and tried to bury them, you were the only one who helped me with no strings attached.”
She clasped my hand.
“Would you die with me?”
In that instant, the torrential downpour that had been slamming the earth seemed to freeze.
What first appeared around Ji-won as a little circle of stillness expanded rapidly. It spread over the graveyard where we buried the bones, across the swamp where we tossed their flesh, over this lonely mountain, beyond the town leaning against the slope... across the city, across Seoul itself.
The rain held its breath.
“If I’m with you, Mr. Matiz, then dying here and now seems like the right answer to me.”
She might not perceive it, but I did, crystal clear. That monstrous phenomenon wriggling around and through her.
Later on, people would call it “Leviathan.” It now blanketed all of Seoul, maybe the entire world.
Whether my self at this point in time, the younger ■■■, could see it, I had no idea. Perhaps, like Yu Ji-won, he never realized what was really happening around him, obliviously carrying on a conversation in the rain.
I couldn’t know, but to find out, I opened my mouth.
“Why... Why do you want to die right here?”
“Because, even if I keep living, assuming I achieve the greatest success, my life only proves whether my own answer was right or wrong.”
And then, she whispered.
In this halted downpour, her voice was transparent, as though echoing across the entire nighttime sky of the city.
“And I’ve just found my answer.”
Ji-won pulled my hand toward her throat.
“I’ve found my ‘wrong answer.’”
She gently laid her left hand on my neck.
“Ji-won...” I said, hesitating.
“I haven’t made a mistake. I don’t regret killing my parents. Nor do I regret sparing my grandmother. I firmly believe I made the optimal choice.”
The wet, herbal odor clung to the air.
“And likewise, Mr. Matiz, you exist.”
I had no response.
“You didn’t approach me out of physical attraction. I tested that possibility many times, but you never showed interest.”
One by one, her fingers pressed against my neck. First the little finger, lightly nudging the side. Then the ring finger.
“You had no interest in my wealth, either. Half my bank account is gone, and the other half is locked out by a password error. You were indifferent to the most valuable things I owned.”
“No, that’s not—”
“You’re no idiot. At first I doubted you, but after spending this night together, I’ve confirmed it. Mr. Matiz, you’re an adult whose intellect surpasses mine.”
Her middle finger curled.
Though her strength was puny, she was indeed compressing my windpipe, bit by bit. If I decided to reject her, those fingers would retreat without resistance.
“Hence, you are my ‘wrong answer... How strange a person you are.”
Her index finger joined.
“Yet I’m sure that even if I live a life of success, I’ll never find a ‘wrong answer’ more significant than you.”
Her thumb.
Her entire left hand clutched one side of my neck. All that remained was her right hand, idle.
“It’s the same as how I could live a thousand times over and never find a ‘right answer’ beyond myself. Please. Die here with me.”
Far away, the raindrops stood still. The entire city, clad in night and mist, seemed to wail in unison.
v | v | || 雨
v v | vv | | |
v | 雨 v v
| v | |
雨 | || | v |v
v vv | v |v |
| | v | v 雨 |
| v |v v | v | v |
v | | | v v| | v v
v | v v v v ||
v | | | vv
| | | 雨 | | v v |
v v v | v v | v |
| 雨 | v v |
v v v
It sounded like the howl of a dragon, or the growl of an Anomaly, or maybe just the roaring downpour.
I knew at once.
If I said yes here, it would be just she and I but the entire world that got swallowed.
I didn’t know how or why. Maybe the 776th cycle Leviathan had chased me even into Cheon Yo-hwa’s illusions. Maybe Leviathan already had the power to submerge the world from the distant past and merely delayed the apocalypse until the 776th cycle. The one sure thing was that now, if Ji-won carried out her own suicide with me, she intended the world to fall with her.
A choking noose: five fingers around my neck, and invisible droplets around billions of humans.
v | v | || 雨
v v | vv | | |
c | 雨 v v
| r | |
雨 | || | v |v
v ov | v |v |
| | a | t 雨 |
| v |v k | i | v |
v | | | v v| | v v
v | v v v b ||
v | | | vv
| | | 雨 | | b v |
v v v | v i | v |
| 雨 | v v |
v r v
Just then, in the dragon’s roar...
v | v | || 雨
v v | vv | | |
c | 雨 v v
| rc |
雨 | || | r |v
v ov | v |v |
| | ao v雨 |
| v |v k | a | v |
v | | c v v| | k v
v | v r v v ||
v | | | vv
| | | 雨 o | v v |
v v v | a v| v |
| 雨 k v v |
v v v
...a bizarre frog croak swam through the pounding rain.
It was the water-bugs calling out.
v croak || 雨
croak v v v
| rcroak |
v ov | v r |v |
| | ao v雨 |
| v |v k | a | v |
v | | croak v| croak v
雨 | r | r vv
croak v o | v o |
v v v | a v| a |
| croakcroak |
They soared above the graveyard and the swamp, singing at the pitch of the night sky.
‘Ah.’
A flash of realization struck me like lightning inside since the actual night sky had frozen in place.
When Leviathan first invaded Busan, or boarded the Ark Fleet, I’d sometimes hear a frog-like cry. Why? Up to now, I’d assumed it was because the Chinese character for “frog” (蛙) and the character for “insect/bug” (虫) were visually similar, but that wasn’t it.
Think about it, there’s a particular story strongly linked to the theme of a frog: the Tale of the Green Frog.
Long ago, there was a frog that was different from all the others. Whenever all the “normal frogs” cried “croak,” that frog cried “ribbit.” Whenever others loved the rain, she despised the rain.
Everything was reversed.
Her mother, who bore a child so different from her kin, fell into despair. At the end of her life, anticipating the daughter’s contrarian ways, the mother left a will in reverse.
“When I die, don’t bury me in the mountains. Bury me by the stream.”
In her final moments, the mother tried to adapt to her daughter’s twisted logic.
Then a miracle happened. The daughter, who had never once obeyed others, complied this time, fulfilling her mother’s final wish—which meant the mother’s real wish went unfulfilled.
Even in that single chance of a perfect crossing, they ended up getting their wires crossed.
croak 雨
ribbit
croakcroak
croak 雨
croabbitcroak
雨 croakribbit
The whole world wept rain, droplets born and died from that freshly-dug grave and that waterlogged marsh, from the saddest soil and filthiest water.
Taking the place of Ji-won’s impassive face and voice, substituting for the psycho who saw people as faceless bugs, standing in for the child who killed her parents—
The entire world lamented.
ribbitribbitribbitribbitribbitribbit
“...Ji-won.”
I pulled the girl into a hug, shielding her with my back to cover her from the water-bugs’ baptism, from the downpour she might be seeing.
“I’m sorry,” I said earnestly.
“I don’t understand. Why apologize?”
“Please... wait a little longer.”
I couldn’t see her face, pinned as she was against me, but I felt a slight tremor in her eyelids brushing my cheek in a blink. “Why should I wait?”
I don’t know what words the younger me, ■■■, used. Surely they were his own answer. Even though I can remember everything, I can’t recall him. However, I do know the outcome.
Yu Ji-won didn’t die here.
On the same night she killed her parents, she survived. The young man living across the street survived too.
We did not choose a double suicide.
■■■ must have done everything he could to force her to live, so I had no choice but to do the same.
“The world ends regardless. It collapses... To a shocking degree, too. No matter how solid the world looks to you right now, you’d be surprised how easily it can vanish.”
“Is that... true?”
“Yes.”
She turned her head, holding my cheeks in both hands. Her purple-blue eyes stared at me. Ignoring that intense gaze, I went on.
“Humans don’t get to choose their world, but they can choose to throw the world away. And quite often. They choose it a lot more often than you’d think, Ji-won.”
Croak 雨 croabbit croabbit croabbit croabbit croabbit croak
One raindrop finally fell.
“You might have thrown it away already, maybe you’ve done it many times. And maybe you caused someone even more misery. Someone’s child, who ended up just like you right now, black hair and swampy eyes... You might have earned the right to be thrown away yourself.”
Croak 雨 ribbit croabbit 雨 croak
The second one followed.
“So don’t think it can only happen once. Just a little longer. If last time you made it this far, let’s live a bit further this time.”
“Until when?”
“I... Well...”
Croak雨雨 ribbitribbit 雨雨雨
“We spent a lot of money tonight.”
“Yes.”
“We need to make more.”
“Correct.”
“And you want to study abroad in the states, right?”
“Yes.”
“So I might... have to leave for a while. But not too far. I’m just going to Sejong. It’s close. I’ve... got a really good offer waiting for me there.”
“You’re leaving our neighborhood?”
“A little while from now, yeah.”
croak雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨ribbit雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨croak
“I still have a few years before I really move to Sejong, and it’s summer break anyway. Let’s take a break from extra classes, maybe go traveling?”
“Traveling.”
“Yes. By bicycle.”
“Bicycle? I’ve never been interested. Our neighborhood’s too steep. It’s fine on the way down, but uphill is brutal.”
“I bet you’ll like it.”
The silence cried.
“We’ll bike around the country. Even go to Japan next vacation. Of course we should be frugal—convenience store meals, that sort of thing.”
Crrrrroak雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨
“Then, if I leave for a bit... Could you wait? Until we meet again?”
雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨雨
And the rain fell.
