I’m an Infinite Regressor, But I’ve Got Stories to Tell
Chapter 368

WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 368

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The Missing XX

The flower garden went up in flames, incinerating with it the Anomaly that had drunk deep the family’s blood as it turned into a billow of white-black ash that scattered on the wind.

In the very heart of the infernal blaze stood Dang Seo-rin, stunned. With hollow eyes, she looked around. Her gaze snagged briefly on the bodies of her family, then reached my face and waned into a half-lidded stare.

She smiled. “You saw it, didn’t you?”

The flames raged, framing the greenhouse in scorching flames that embroidered shifting shadows across Dang Seo-rin’s face. Even that smile, worn only because she had no other expression at hand, was stained in shadow.

“Yeah, that’s right. I already died once... Granted, I only recalled that fact a little while ago. Up until then, I thought I’d simply lost my mind when the Anomaly killed my family at our shop, and that I’d beaten the thing to death in that frenzy.”

It was memory distortion. Hecate had answered Dang Seo-rin’s wish—“I want to keep living as a human”—by gifting her a new life, one created by rewritting the memories so that Seo-rin had survived the conflagration in the garden.

No, calling it “memory distortion” might itself be imprecise.

“I... was born in that moment.”

Just as Go Yuri had hinted with that strange testimony of hers: that unlike her younger siblings, Seo-rin alone had been born at home.

“A child who lived until then and died then. I took the memories of the human called ‘Dang Seo-rin’ and was born here, in the midst of these flames.”

“Hecate...”

“Mhm.” Dang Seo-rin removed her witch’s hat. “Moonlight is nothing but sunlight reflected once. I’m the same, an Anomaly merely reflecting the light of the girl named Dang Seo-rin.”

She was an Outer God. This forsaken god, devoid of intellect or reason, had granted someone’s wish of “I want to live on as a human.” The price for fulfilling that wish was the entirety of said person’s being.

Seo-rin’s life. Seo-rin’s memories. Her recollections and love for her family. Her optimism toward the future. Her faint misanthropy. Her hate. Her fear. Her smile. Her voice.

Even the sixty years of life that should have remained.

The god of the night sky took every last bit.

“You know it’s true, don’t you, Undertaker? The Dang Seo-rin you loved... she never actually existed.”

I had no answer to that.

“I realized it just before you told me you’d stay with me even after I’d Fallen. I was truly happy.”

A spark leapt and lodged in Seo-rin’s cloak, then began to fizzle. The cloak, dark as the night sky, was being eaten away little by little as though by insects.

“Of course I’d be happy, I’m well aware of how much you hate Anomalies. To think that your care for me weighed more than all that hatred. Yes, that made me glad... But if I weren’t a human who later became an Anomaly, if I had been an Anomaly from the very, very beginning right to the end?”

The half-burned cloak lost its hold and slid off her with a whisper, like the torn wings of a swallowtail.

“Then it can’t be helped, can it? Even if that means I can’t stay with you, there’s nothing anyone can do.” Seo-rin let out a small laugh. “In the end, you will wipe out every Anomaly alive. That’s what you’re living for, after all.”

In the silence hanging over us, all I could manage was a quiet beginning: “Seo-rin.”

“This is the end now.” Seo-rin looked down at her own palm. The witch’s broom had already been let go and was rolling across the floor. “That child’s wish was simply to go on living as a human. To keep that wish alive, I even altered memories and lived while believing myself to be Dang Seo-rin, yes. But now... the contract is broken.”

Clink.

Moonlight that had reflected the flames cracked across the mirror of the night sky that held it. 

Crack, crack! 

The fissures spread like a spiderweb.

“They’ve found out I’m not human. That everything was a lie from the start. So Dang Seo-rin no longer exists. Not even the first contract can be kept, this is where the tale of an incompetent, contract-breaking Outer God ends.”

Seo-rin smiled.

“Listen.”

The corners of her lips trembled.

“Why... did we meet only now?”

“...”

“I fell in love. I came to adore all of it—the human life, living among humans. There were lots and lots of things I hated, sure, but still, because you were here, I grew to love this place.”

The moonlight shattered, again and again, and even the flames that had licked up to devour everything broke apart like moonlight and were trapped between the shards of mirror.

Thud. 

Seo-rin pressed a hand to her chest.

“It hurts. Right here.”

“...”

“It hurts. It hurts so much I could die. It’s strange, I shouldn’t even be able to die. I’m not truly alive at all, Undertaker. It hurts too much.”

“...”

“I’m sorry.”

At last even the sound of moonlight breaking broke apart on itself, spawning more sound that rippled outward like waves.

――Sorry for taking Dang Seo-rin away.

The shattering moonlight faintly mimicked someone’s voice.

Like that first mirror in this world that stole the sun and produced a counterfeit.

“I’m sorry for sullying your precious memories. Sorry that the one you loved turned out not to be human at all.”

――I couldn’t keep my promise. I’m sorry I couldn’t stay Dang Seo-rin until the end. Sorry that I’m not human.

“For being born this way.”

――Because there was no other way for me to come into this world.

“I’m sorry.”

Dang Seo-rin fades away.

There was never a happy ending for her.

The regressor’s world began on June 17. Seo-rin’s world was born on June 15.

The two timelines would never intersect.

Like the white crosswalk lines and the black asphalt passing by each other forever.

Going back and using a “blank canvas” to change Seo-rin’s past was impossible too.

The Seo-rin the regressor had built memories with up to now was none other than the Seo-rin born on June 15.

Even if the massacre of the Seo-rin family were somehow prevented, the witch the regressor had wanted to stay with would not return.

‘No, in fact, coloring that blank canvas was an impossibility from the start.’

It was different from the elder twin sister or Yu Ji-won. At least their stories were painted atop “facts that might actually have happened in the past.”

‘But Seo-rin?’

The moment you try to stop the family’s tragedy, countless contradictions arise. All the causality accumulated over a thousand runs collapses.

In the end, it’s a simple story.

There are beings in this world who are denied a happy ending from the very start.

――Huh?

And so Seo-rin’s eyes went wide.

The eyes that had calmly accepted extinction both as Seo-rin and as Hecate now opened in disbelief.

The regressor was holding her in an embrace.

“Undertaker? Why...?”

“I’ve finally figured it out.”

He held Seo-rin’s shoulders a little tighter.

“Why the road had to be so hard, why the door leading here was so narrow and the stairs so steep, I’ve understood it all now.”

“What are you talking about...?”

“It was so I could be with you.”

The world was scorching. He shielded her from the flames that were consuming the garden.

The world was deafening. He took on the moonlight that warped sound in her stead.

“The contract isn’t broken, Seo-rin. You haven’t forgotten already, have you? Tonight, beneath this night sky, everything between us will be forgotten.”

“...”

“I will forget your past.”

It didn’t matter if he cast out all the world’s heat and silenced all its noise.

The petals and songs he needed no longer existed there anyway.

“If there’s a past you don’t wish to revisit, I won’t look back either.”

“Ah.”

“I won’t dig into the reason for your silence. Whether you were an Outer God or whatever, it doesn’t matter. You are Dang Seo-rin.”

“But, I... if I don’t disappear—no matter how hard you try, in the end, like this...”

“Then we’ll disappear together.”

I said.

“We couldn’t be born together, couldn’t share a childhood. You’re right. Maybe we met far too late.”

“...”

“But we can still stay together until we die.”

Moonlight slid down.

“From now on I’ll begin a journey of discarding my own pieces one by one, settling all the over-flowing Voids of the world—completely, in a human way.”

“...”

“For a while—just until that day comes—I want you to stay by my side.”

Seo-rin’s shoulders trembled.

“Stay beside me and give it everything you have to remain human. If you try your hardest, I can keep from giving up, forever.”

“Nngh...”

“Not only the sixty years that were originally Seo-rin’s, Hecate, everything that still remains to you, discard them one by one while you walk with me.”

“If... if I do that.”

“We can die together.”

I took Seo-rin’s shoulders.

Then, gently, I pressed my forehead against hers.

“Seo-rin.”

“...”

“Will you die with me?”

There was no applause, no hymn. Only the deferred flames of hell and the clamor of moonlight adorning the Void filled the air.

‘...Yes.’

That was enough.

“Yes..., gladly.”

We had long known we were born into such a world.

“Gladly.”

The night sky collapsed.

The glittering jewels beyond—Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury—celestial bodies of the universe.

The planets that symbolized the Outer God’s power were shattering one after another.

Neither the moonlight nor the earth beneath were exceptions.

The last frame still burning finally collapsed.

With that collapse, even the ground beneath our feet began to crack apart, slowly.

A place of birth and of death, the holy ground of magic.

This place, at once a flower garden and a fire garden, was meeting its final season.

Now that I think of it.

Add up Earth, the Moon, and Saturn and all the rest, and the count still barely reached eight.

Two of the ten notes that should have rung through Pythagoras’s cosmos had gone missing somewhere.

“On the scale’s right pan, I place my everything.”

The secret behind that disappearance was revealing itself before our eyes.

Firmly, Seo-rin laid her right palm over her own heart.

“On the left... your heart.”

Then her left hand covered my chest.

A golden light blossomed.

The light formed a circle, sketching an unbroken golden ring that revolved around my heart.

Each time a planet shattered in the night sky, the golden ring embracing my heart widened.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight.

A golden revolution. The vow of a ring.

Circle Magic.

“...”

“Actually, I’d already cast one on you in secret.”

And I realized.

“Thanks to this spell... I alone was able to hear your voice.”

“Yes. And I could hear yours.”

A faint golden loop revealed itself between my heart and Seo-rin’s.

Yes.

The remaining two notes missing from the night sky were flowing, none other than, within our hearts.

Together we made ten.

Constellations were inscribed upon our hearts.

As many celestial bodies as that night sky were singing a silent song inside our chests.

‘...Please.’

Caressing the ten strands of heartbeat with both hands.

Seo-rin whispered quietly.

A song for one person alone in this universe.

Melody One.

“May you not grieve too deeply.”

Melody Two.

“When you do grieve, may I sense your loneliness.”

Melody Three.

“When you feel like dying, may I be at your side at that very moment.”

Melody Four.

“May you not... despise people too much.”

Melody Five.

“After you dream, may everything feel okay again.”

Melody Six.

“Yet someday, may you still find the world beautiful.”

Melody Seven.

“Sometimes, let everything go. When you’re exhausted, may you truly rest.”

Melody Eight.

“If the day comes when I hurt you, may the wound heal, and may I always be able to say I’m sorry.”

Melody Nine.

“I love you.”

Melody Ten.

“Together with you, until the day we die.”

“...”

As a regressor, I possessed several abilities.

One of them was called [Resume].

It was the vaguest of the powers I held.

All it really did was let the strength and effort I’d accumulated in a previous run persist into the next.

I unlocked that ability in my tenth cycle.

How I awoke [Resume], though such a trivial power, I had kept to myself until now.

The reason was simple.

In the tenth cycle, after defeating the Ten Legs, the day Seo-rin reached the end of her lifespan and I served as chief mourner at her funeral.

It was before her portrait that I Awakened [Resume].

However.

Looking back now, [Resume] may have been more than that.

Perhaps faint melodies that not even a regressor could hear had been singing inside my heart.

Like the song of Mars.

Like when we soared into Hecate’s night sky and none of us could catch the voices of the planets.

The reason I could keep from abandoning the world may have been the few threads of song you planted in my heart.

“My name is Dang Seo-rin.”

Not Resume, but—

“[A Spell Laid Upon You].”[1]

A covenant of ten rings.

A grand spell of the tenth circle.

Beneath the crumbling garden, the moonlight, and the night sky—everything breaking save for that golden ring—at the end of the world, at the curtain call of the stage.

The witch who had once been the goddess of magic drew my heart toward her.

“Thank you, Undertaker.”

“...”

“That I was able to meet you――”

Sound collapsed, and memory with it.

But it didn’t matter.

– Your name?

– Undertaker. It’s an alias.

– Someone who goes around burying people, huh? Not bad. The depth of a person depends on how many corpses they’ve buried inside their own heart.

From tens of thousands of years before I met you.

– I’ll be in your care from now on.

– Companion of my time.

Your voice had always been ringing inside my heart.

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[1] The skill uses the same characters as Dang Seo-rin's name but means "A Spell Laid Upon You".

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