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

WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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The Receiver VI

Go Yuri's true face.

To insist I had never once imagined it would be a flat-out lie.

Yes… let me confess frankly.

Was she an anomaly? A genuine human being?

Did she have a blank, featureless head like Slender Man? Or was her face nothing but churning noise, like the Abyss itself?

Perhaps, just perhaps, she had once been one of my own companions, fallen and corrupted until "Go Yuri" was all that remained.

And so—

"……?"

Bzz-zzzt—

The instant my sight linked with the Constellations' and I saw what their third-person clairvoyance was seeing, I could hardly trust my eyes—nor even the [Clairvoyance] that was sharing the image with me.

"J-Jeong Seo-ah?"

There, a tiny child was standing.

Jeong Seo-ah. Anyone with a prodigious memory might recall the name, the little girl from the bakery in Haeundae who always ran up to me and gifted sugar-coated doughnuts, a pint-sized assassin whose dream was to become the Empress of Insulin.

'Jeong Seo-ah? Go Yuri? Why… how?'

Moreover, every time a cycle changed, Seo-ah's gender and appearance changed as well. It had to, because her baker parents conceived their child after the apocalypse, and the timing of a pregnancy naturally shifted from run to run.

'That's… Seo-ah from the 19th cycle.'

A being only I could recognize. Even her parents would not have known her if the cycle were different, yet there she was, in the 999th run, in front of the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, poking curiously at the parted walls of water like a child at the Red Sea.

'What in the world…'

Was that Go Yuri's true form?

Just a cute sugar-bomb terrorist whose lethal doughnuts threatened me with hyperglycemia, and yet she was supposed to be the star of the "pink entity"?

My understanding, painstakingly built over countless regressions, began to crack. Static crawled across my view like an old CRT screen.

Bzz, bzzt-bzzt. Bzz.

The black was Seo-ah's shadow—alive, tentacular, climbing to swallow her whole.

The white was Seo-ah's face—skin melting like candle wax, dropping onto the shadow in thick plops.

After black and white crossed—

"Ah?"

She changed.

A face at once familiar and impossible to grow used to.

– …

The so-called Undertakeress—my female self whom Dang Seo-rin and I had met on the flight to Salar de Uyuni.

– …Seo-rin.

Undertakeress looked up at someone.

Toward a shadow creature made of black-and-white noise—unrecognizable. She reached out with her right hand, gently stroked the thing's cheek.

– Sorry.

At that word, the shadow drove a dagger down. Thud! From the breast that blade pierced burst a spray of blinding white noise—blood.

White droplets spattered, and the shadow's sooty black spread like ink in water.

When black and white had mingled—

Bzz-bzzzt, kshh, bzzt-bzzt!

A wholly different scene unfurled.

– All units, advance!

A man's voice.

The face was familiar, yet my brain buffered a moment before it placed him.

– Guild Leader Lee Baek! A meteor shower's coming down!

– It matters not! If we falter here, the Great Witch of Night will wipe us out anyway! Fear no losses—forward!

Lee Baek. The thug from the Busan-Station tutorial who always split survivors into cliques—his power, Lion's Roar.

That I failed to recognize him at once even with [Complete Memory] was no wonder. His whole demeanor was transformed.

'Why is that punk… like this?'

First, the expression, it was stalwart. All the greasy bravado of a hoodlum was gone. His eyes stared straight at reality.

– Left flank! Draw the meteor fragments away!

– Yes, Guild Leader!

– Right flank! The Witch's main body is hiding nearby—find it and annihilate it!

– Aye, My Lord!

…What on earth was happening?

Lee Baek was commanding a vast battlefield with nothing but [Lion's Roar]. Awakeners moved as a single organism under his orders.

– Undertaker.

– Hm.

From behind came the one called Underta­ker. Lee Baek looked at him with absolute trust, a look that had never once passed between the real Lee Baek and me in ten thousand years of cycles.

– The final blow is yours.

– As always.

– Can you manage it? The foe is the Great Witch.

– That question is meaningless. If I can't, I die.

Behind Lee Baek stood Underta­ker; behind him, another presence flickered like a shadow. It murmured, and both Lee Baek and Underta­ker nodded at once. I tried to see who it was—

Bzzt-bzzt-bzzt-bzzt-bzzt!

Black-and-white static devoured the world.

From the left of my vision a white fluid splashed. Something burst with a wet pop. And I knew, instinctively, that it was happening not inside the "screen" projected by Clairvoyance but outside it.

"…Mr. Undertaker."

I opened my eyes.

My left hand—[Morning Star of the Second Coming] had been holding it moments ago. The Constellation still held it, yet her wrist had lost all weight. Her body dangled in empty air like a puppet on a broken swing.

"…"

"The Morning Star is dead."

I turned right.

[Understanding of Anguish] was not unharmed either. White blood trickled from her mouth, eyes, and ears.

"I won't last long either, so…"

"Exchange… information."

"…Yes."

Cough—white liquid spattered from her lips. She seemed to gather the last of her life into our interlocked fingers.

A vision attempted at the cost of life.

The Constellation reported the result.

"We… saw nothing."

"Nothing."

"Yes. Only swirling black-and-white static. Of that being itself—not a glimpse."

"…"

A critical clue… even fragments of the Saintess, degraded to ocean-class anomalies, had failed to observe Go Yuri's essence with their full [Clairvoyance].

Yet—

"Mr. Undertaker… you saw, didn't you?"

"I did."

Why only I could perceive it, I did not know. Perhaps someday I would. But through the sight they had fought to share, I had seen a part of Go Yuri.

"…Good… to hear."

Understanding gave a faint smile.

"Mr. Undertaker… please… the one that still… remains…"

[The Understanding of Anguishwishes you good fortune.]

Sluuush.

Her body, already melting like wax, collapsed completely.

Left hand. Right hand.

"…"

What last words had she tried to leave me?

'The one that still remains… take care of it.'

Whatever "it" was, I felt the outline in her broken breath.

"…I understand."

One fragment of a Constellation remained to me now. Only one.

Clap!

Go Yuri smacked her hands together.

"My goodness. A pair of nasty Constellations lying in ambush, and the mighty Guild Leader wiped them both out in one go. Amazing as ever!"

…I edited what had happened inside the palace and told her a more palatable version. She accepted without suspicion—or perhaps she simply didn't care whether she believed it or not.

R-r-r-umble.

Soon the parted sea crashed closed again, like the clap of Yuri's hands.

From the stern Lü Bu howled, manning the oar.

"Uooohhh!? As if I'd let my Red Hare sink! Red Hare is unsinkable! Not like the nags of commoners!"

"Kyah-aa-!"

With Lü Bu's rowing skill, already S-rank on water, the dinghy shot clear of the collapsing trench. The route was as wild as any roller coaster. Go Yuri screamed with delight while white spray, as pale as Constellation blood, lashed us on all sides.

"…Go Yuri."

"Yes?"

"By our bearings this must once have been Pyongyang. So Busan is completely submerged, isn't it?"

"Ah, yes, probably. After all, the uninhabited island where you first woke was Busan."

I peered overboard. The water was unnaturally clear, streets of a drowned city lay visible below. Empty underwater avenues, smashed windows, lampposts—with not even fish gliding between them. No sign of life at all.

"I see."

I chose my words with care, wearing a regretful expression.

"I guess I'll never again buy bread at that Haeundae bakery."

"Ah. That place was a gem."

Go Yuri volleyed back my remark as naturally as tossing a volleyball.

"I loved their croissants most! Mmh, peeling off those thin layers and biting down, so crisp."

"…"

After clearing the Busan Station tutorial, Go Yuri had vanished. Only later had sightings popped up in Daejeon. Chronologically, she could not have tasted any croissant there, for the bakery reopened much later.

"And inside, all pillowy and soft… like your tongue was lying down on a little bed."

Yet the expression melting across her face as she reminisced overflowed with life. She spoke of memories from a street that no longer existed.

"…Personally, I liked the owners more than the flavor."

"Eh?"

"Every morning at seven they swept the walk, greeting passers-by with big smiles. Met as exchange students in Hawaii, I think."

Go Yuri was watching me. I swallowed, not with my mouth, but with my heart.

"…Their kid was wonderfully polite too. I only wish she'd stop using me as the guinea pig for new recipes."

"Fufu. Guild Leader does exude that hard-to-approach aura. Children rarely dare get close."

"Isn't that too cruel? She calls me oppa."

"You have to understand, Guild Leader. Whether it feels unfair or not, you've lived tens of thousands of years by lifespan alone. If you still insist on being called oppa… hahh. You'll pioneer a new frontier in the domain of humanity's conscience…"

A drop fell into my chest.

In the 999th cycle, this very run, Jeong Seo-ah had been a boy. Not a little girl.

"…"

My heart thumped.

"…Well. Thanks to that boy Seo-ah I'm used to being called mister now."

This time I pictured the cheerful boy of the 999th run. As always, [Complete Memory] supplied a crystal-clear recall.

"Cute kids chirping 'mister, mister,' and their cuteness just overruns my dignity."

"…"

Thump. Thump-thump.

My racing heart would not calm.

Just now I had uttered two statements blatantly at odds with each other. A moment ago I'd said a girl named Seo-ah called me oppa. Immediately after, I added that a boy named Seo-ah called me mister.

A contradiction. An odd exchange. Any ordinary person—say, Noh Do-hwa—would have barked, "What nonsense are you spouting?" right away.

"Ahaha."

Go Yuri—

"――Maybe that's because you actually don't mind being called mister, Guild Leader."

—answered as though nothing whatsoever was strange.

"…Me?"

"Yes. Think about it. When Oh Dok-seo calls you mister, you feel quite a bit of closeness, don't you?"

As if there had been no oddity in our entire conversation.

"More than anything, you honestly don't care about age."

Go Yuri was smiling. As if teasing me.

"I even know why, you see?"

"…Oh? And why is that?"

"Because of Ms. Saintess. She used [Time Stop] so much her lifespan keeps stretching abnormally."

Go Yuri was smiling. As if finding me impressive.

"If you fretted about your own age, you'd inevitably force Ms. Saintess to count hers the same way. So you're being considerate of her."

Go Yuri was smiling. As if she understood me.

"…Is that what you think?"

I managed to reply, but I had no composure to move my tongue.

Every five seconds I pivoted the images in my mind with [Complete Memory]—Noh Do-hwa of the 53rd run. Switch. Sim Ah-ryeon of the 95th. Switch. Yu Ji-won of the 777th. Switch. The Saintess of the 107th.

Over and over, like turning a kaleidoscope, swapping memories at a resolution only I could achieve.

"Yes!"

Go Yuri was smiling.

"That delicate consideration of yours moved Noh Do-hwa." "Because Sim Ah-ryeon is surprisingly sensitive." "A natural at telling lies from truths." "Which made things hard for Yu Ji-won," "yet also led her to listen to your voice."

Go Yuri was smiling.

Go Yuri was smiling.

Go Yuri was smiling.

"And Ms. Saintess already knows—she won't say it out loud, but she knows you're thinking of her. Wahh. I find that relationship truly beautiful!"

"…"

Ah…

My soul, not my lips, released a sigh—black in color.

'This is not a conversation.'

No one could have realized it, unless they, like me, had lived through contradictory timelines. Unless they, like me, possessed flawless recall of each one.

'…I'm not talking with her at all.'

There was no such thing as "Go Yuri."

I could neither see her nor hear her.

Her thoughts, tastes, hobbies, likes and dislikes, memories, shared recollections—none of it could pass between us.

'She merely reads the sights of the timelines I've walked and, matching them, enacts the perfect dialogue, the perfect action…'

It was not mind control. It only becamemind control as a side effect.

'Whoever she speaks with, she reads their deepest interior and resolves it.'

The optimal conversation.

The optimal counseling.

In other words: the optimal route.

Strategy Guide.

That was Go Yuri's authority.

Within it, her own will and desire did not exist.

"…"

I thought about the being before my eyes.

Had she ever, even once, conversed with someone?

"Huh? Guild Leader?"

Go Yuri—

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

—was smiling.

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