I’m an Infinite Regressor, But I’ve Got Stories to Tell - Chapter 345

The Inviter II

‘Undertaker.’

‘Hey, can I ask one favor?’

‘Don’t die before I do.’

‘No matter what happens, okay? If at all possible.’

‘Don’t die before me.’

‘You can promise me that, right?’

Summer.

June 24, midday, when the sky had slathered on far too much white-cloud foundation, right in the middle of a diagonal crosswalk in Centum City, Busan.

There you were standing all alone, looking up at the sky.

“Excuse me, are you all right?”

You did not turn your head at the first call. You had already temporarily entrusted your lost address to the sky—it was still too early for you to anchor your heart here on the ground. Only ten days had passed since you buried your parents, three siblings, two relatives, and four friends in the earth.

Funerals come in two layers: the one where you bury them in the ground and the one where you bury them in your heart. The ground always lost its heat sooner than the heart, despite the worry it caused people.

Thɩ𝕤 𝒸h𝙖p𝓉ꬲr ḭ𝖘 pՕ𝙨𝐭℮∂ b𝗒 Ḱ𝙞†ɛ𝑛ⲟⱽҽ𝓁

Under the summer soil lay countless cicadas not yet fully born.

Standing in the center of that crosswalk marked by white X’s, you quietly speculated as to why the temperature of the earth below could not keep pace with the warmth of your heart.

On the surface of a heart that had just finished its mourning, a faint film of steam lingered.

That was why a single call was not enough to reach you.

“Hey, you over there. Are you all right?”

At last, you turned this way.

A single thread of a cicada’s cry clung to the tilt of your head. The cry of a being left to emerge before all others.

You were Dang Seo-rin.

“Standing there is dangerous! But don’t move either! Stay put for now!”

That was no lie. All of the traffic lights at the crosswalk where Dang Seo-rin stood were blinking red, where normally, at least one side of the four-way intersection should have been green. When looking closer, the red lights were dripping with some kind of liquid.

Blood.

Palm prints, stained with blood, trickled down from the traffic lights.

Slosh. Splat. Squish.

Those bloody handprints crawled eagerly over the crosswalk, pressing down here and there on the white stripes, almost as if they were massaging a human spinal column.

No one else was stopped at that intersection. No one else was alive there but Dang Seo-rin.

Her empty pupils stared this way.

“Please, just wait. Don’t make any sudden moves.”

I pulled a dagger from the pocket of my barista apron. Then with a gaping slice, I carefully cut across the center of my right palm. Bright red blood oozed from the wound I had opened.

For the first time, something like emotion flickered across her eyes. But it was neither shock nor horror. In the past few weeks, the world had seen far too much happen for mere human blood to be surprising.

What sparked to life there was merely mild curiosity.

I breathed out, spreading the dripping blood evenly over both my palms in a pat-pat motion. Then, holding one hand high, I began crossing the crosswalk.

One step. Two steps. Three steps.

Dang Seo-rin’s face came closer. The curiosity reflected in her eyes grew as her expression drew nearer.

“When red handprints start pouring out from a red signal like this, you have to coat your hands with the same color blood and hold them up as you cross. If you don’t do that, they consider it a rules violation, and the handprints strangle the pedestrian.”

“…What happens if the signal’s yellow or green instead of red?”

Her first words to me were polite, as anyone’s would be.

June 24. At that point, I was simply a stranger meeting her for the first time.

“You just have to stand still without budging,” I answered.

“And if you do move?”

“The green or yellow handprints will start digging into our bodies, trying to find something the same color as themselves… Maybe if your irises happen to match their color, you’d just end up blind and that’d be the end of it.”

I extended my other hand to her. It too was soaked in my blood.

“Anyway, we have to get out of here before the light changes. Come. Hurry.”

“…Ah.”

Dang Seo-rin pressed her palm against mine—firmly, like a stamp. Her hand was also stained with my blood.

We walked side by side, hands raised high, across the crosswalk.

Slosh. Splat, splat. Slosh.

The crosswalk was wide, far wider than the “original” that had once existed in this spot. The crosswalk thirty meters across and one hundred twenty meters long was lined on both sides by countless palm prints scurrying about.

“My condolences.”

A blink. Then she turned back to me at my abrupt words. “Pardon?”

“This crosswalk isn’t a place just anyone can come to,” I answered, expressionless.

“Not a place just anyone…”

“Yes. Only people who have lost their entire family are invited here… How did it happen for you?”

“…I was at home. I closed my eyes for just a moment, and when I opened them, I was standing there. I thought I was dreaming.”

I gave her a faint smile. “Is that so? Well, there’s not much meaning left in distinguishing reality from dreams, these days.”

“…Indeed.”

“Almost there. Until we’re completely past the crosswalk, please do not lower your hand for any reason. These little things will take it as you ‘belonging to their kind’ the moment your hand drops toward the ground.”

“Ah.”

Finally, the edge of the crosswalk. Our feet stepped up onto the sidewalk, and as we turned around—

Beeeep! Beeep! Hooonk! BEEEP!

“Hey! Move it! Aren’t you gonna move your car?!”

“Get outta the car, you jerk! Hey, I said get out!”

The sight of a street in the real world unveiled before our eyes as if it had been there all along.

It was still too early back then to say for certain that civilization had collapsed. In Busan, there were still families on the move somewhere with the last bit of remaining fuel, and from the looks of those people quarreling over there, some pedestrians standing by as witnesses were dialing the police on their smartphones.

Within another week, though, all of it—every bit of this fleeting season’s landscape—would vanish.

Dang Seo-rin gazed blankly at that scene.

“…That place. There. What exactly is it?”

“Not sure.”

What is emptiness?

There are far too many theories about and answers to that question. Just as one cannot call a person to you with a single summons, a single answer cannot solve such a mystery.

“I interpret it as the spot where people who’ve lost their way end up being placed. Do you know where people most often come to a stop?” I asked, pulling bandages and a handkerchief from my apron. “In the doorway of their own home and at crosswalks.”

I wrapped my own hand first, then handed the handkerchief to Dang Seo-rin, who thanked me politely before accepting it.

“So, for those who have lost the home they used to return to, the only stop remaining is the crosswalk… Perhaps the view of that crosswalk isn’t much different from the image in our minds, in a way. There’s no point separating dreams from reality, so maybe those things simply ‘invited’ us to the place we belong.”

“It’s a bit… literary, huh?” Dang Seo-rin blinked. “This is the first time I’ve heard someone describe these Anomalies, these monsters, like that.”

“It’s merely my own interpretation.”

“Earlier, when I was suddenly summoned—invited—onto that crosswalk…”

Summer. The cicadas cried.

“Right at my feet, there was a warning painted there: Do not move under any circumstances. By any chance—”

“Yes, I wrote that. There are so many people who lose their way.”

She hesitated, looking at the bloodied handkerchief in her grasp, uncertain whether she should return it now or wash it first and give it back.

Like the half-red, half-green pedestrian signal, her heart was split in two. Likewise, half of her gaze was silently asking for my address.

For people, a “road” can exist not only for the feet but for the eyes as well.

I smiled. “Shall we grab some coffee?”

“…”

“What do you think?”

“…”

“I looked through a bunch of books because our dear guild leader told me to try making some. Oh, the beans may be a bit old, but at least we managed to get them from a nearby store.”

“…”

“Since I’m already wearing a barista uniform, I agreed it’d be nice to get more familiar to coffee in some way, just as you suggested.”

“…”

“So, how’s your very first taste of my coffee?”

“…It’s friggin’—”

“Friggin’?”

“Friggin’ awful!” 

“What?”

“Good grief! How can you call this coffee?! This… This is an insult to coffee itself, you know! Are you sure it’s even safe for people to drink? Huh? Didn’t this stuff expire?”

“But I worked hard to brew it for you…”

“I just said find me any random packet of mix coffee and fix it up! Who on earth would ask you to fetch beans in this apocalyptic world and brew them like that?!”

“That’s a luxury only someone like the Great Witch of the Samcheon World is worthy of enjoying.”

“It tastes terrible… so terrible… unbelievably hellish. It’s more horrific than the mud cookies I used to eat when we were starving. I can’t believe coffee could taste worse than those sugarless mud cookies… How…?”

“Hm. That bad, huh?”

“Yeah, you taste it! You idiot!”

“Guild Leader.”

“Huh, h-huh?”

“To make up for my last failure, I’ve brought my trump card coffee this time. Please give it a try.”

“Eeek! Poison! Poisoning attempt! Everyone, the vice guild leader is trying to poison me! Save me!”

“If I succeed to the leader seat, the first thing I’ll do is standardize our uniform, so I imagine they’ll actually side with me.”

“Bah! So I raised a dog, not a tiger cub…?!”

“Isn’t that usually the other way around?”

“…”

“Well?”

“This is… surprisingly drinkable.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Yeah. But Vice Guild Leader, I’m not sure this is coffee so much as coffee-flavored liquid poured over vanilla ice cream.”

“In professional terms, that’s called an affogato, Guild Leader. And it’s definitely in the coffee family.”

“Right, sure. Except for the fact I think it would’ve tasted better without the coffee, it’s a perfectly decent affogato.”

“Well, still.”

“This is the best coffee you’ve made for me so far. Yup.”

So it happened.

“Here you are. Your affogato.”

Dang Seo-rin looked noticeably flustered as she faced the coffee cup set with a clink before her.

Which is to say, she was deliberately showing me that she was flustered. Displaying her feelings. The most basic kind of joke.

“…I can’t say I expected you to brew the coffee yourself. I just assumed you meant going to some café for a cup.”

“Mm. There were two difficulties with that.”

“What are they?”

“First, recently, the number of cafés still in business has dropped drastically. No one’s left in this area at least.”

“Ahhh,” she mused with a nod. “Well, that’s pretty much how it is nowadays.”

“But honestly, even if there were a café open, I wouldn’t have taken you there.”

“Huh? Why not?”

“Because nobody brews coffee better than I do. I am the man who makes the best coffee in the world.”

Dang Seo-rin burst into laughter then. It was a small laugh, but it was also her first laugh since we met at the crosswalk.

“I should’ve realized it from the moment I saw you in the barista uniform. Were you originally a café owner?”

“I’m just that kind of person.”

I smoothly produced a business card I’d prepared in advance. Dang Seo-rin took it in her hands. On that pearl-paper card, written in an archaic brushstroke (my penmanship surpasses any printing press), were these words:

Café Azit

~Undertaker the Barista~

World’s Best · Earth’s Strongest · Universe’s Greatest Coffee Master

“Pfft.” Her smile deepened. “Wh-what is this?”

“As you can see, my business card.”

“Seriously? You mean you wrote it in earnest, not as a gag?”

I cleared my throat dramatically. “A true master lets the flavor do the talking. What more need be said? Please, savor it at your leisure.”

Her laughter trailed off into a bemused chuckle as she lifted the spoon in her hand.

A porcelain cup, but in an East Asian style instead of European, focusing on shape rather than pattern.

The affogato within. One spoonful, ice cream soaked in coffee.

A taste upon her lips.

Dang Seo-rin’s eyes lit up like traffic signals. “This is delicious!”

“Isn’t it?”

“Yes! Wow, really… this is amazing! Hey, how is coffee this good?”

One spoonful, another, and another.

Chocolate stripes were drawn across the ice cream. Of course, I had a hand in making that chocolate too. And the main ingredient as well. It was real vanilla bean ice cream, not just flavored with “vanilla essence.”

No wonder it was delicious.

“Waaah! Really, your business card wasn’t lying—this is the real deal. At least among all the coffee I’ve tasted, this is absolutely the best!”

“World’s Best?”

“Earth’s Strongest!”

“Universe’s Greatest Coffee Master, indeed. Thank you.”

Her laughter was bright as she said it next.

“By the way, I’m Dang Seo-rin.”

“Miss Dang Seo-rin.”

“Yes. My name’s a bit unusual, right?”

“I’m not that different, if you think about it. I lost my real name when I encountered these Anomalies, so I’ve been living under the alias Undertaker.”

“Ah.”

I already knew. This was her first time meeting this strange barista—and also the first time she had smiled since burying her family ten days ago.

“Forgive me for asking, but how old are you?”

“I forgot that too. All that remains in my heart, in these careful hands, is the fact that I’m the greatest coffee craftsman in the world.”

A huff of laughter.

She gave me a playful once-over with her eyes. “Still, I bet we’re not that far apart in age…”

“I feel the same way.”

“Huh. Well then.” She propped her chin up on her hand. “Shall we—”

“Yes.”

“—Drop the honorifics?”

That was how we first met.