I’m an Infinite Regressor, But I’ve Got Stories to Tell - Chapter 365

Chapter 365

WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

Editor: LiteraryGirl

Chapter 365

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The Missing XVII

Allow me a moment to pose you a question.

Let’s say you thought the story was galloping toward a happy ending. But then out of nowhere, somebody channels a shaman and proclaims, “Guys, we’re doomed! Even if we hammer away at this trash game a couple hundred more times, we’ll never clear it! Anyway, have fun!” Cue them dumping spoilers all over the place.

So, how do you react?

Naturally, the answer will vary from person to person. Some will despair at having to grind that already-rage-inducing game hundreds of times more. On the other hand, if you’re the depraved type—names withheld to protect the guilty—you might actually grin at the fragrant stench of a forever-broken game and truthfully claim to love it.

As for the student council president’s elder sister, AKA the reigning champ of the Regressor Alliance’s yearly poll for “Most Sinister Personality” and the person famous for the face that screams “betrayal incoming”, Miss Cheon Yo-hwa…

‘I come from the 999th cycle, and from a certain angle, you could even call it the 1000th.’

To her, a spoiler from a returner merely marked the level’s difficulty.

Yes, that’s right. Difficulty.

It was something altogether different from embarrassment, which carried with it the necessity of emotion. Yo-hwa felt no frustration, irritation, anger, despair, sadness, hurt, or puzzlement. Her reaction was not embarrassment but acknowledgement of a conundrum. Like a gamer facing a puzzle that must be solved, she sensed only the raw difficulty level.

“Those innate blank spots you have, sunbae. The amnesia cut-off at the 4th cycle. We’ll paint causality on that empty canvas in ways that favor us. I love it—it’s very me. Smells of tricky and deviousness, which is right up my alley. But it’s a razor-thin line,” said Yo-hwa.

Was it because her five fingers blocked my sight? It went beyond her face. Even her voice rang out from different places, from and through the tiny worlds cut by those fingers, all at once.

With one hand still covering my eyes—how, I cannot guess—she was guiding me somewhere step by step.

“As you said, this is both the 173rd and the 1000th cycle. The others may be able to bear the consequences, but I walk the razor’s edge. As a human, I—Cheon Yo-hwa, your beloved student—must exist in the 173rd cycle. Conversely, in the 1000th cycle, I cannot exist.”

Exactly. Her fate is to swallow the Mastermind and be hit with a Time Seal. So by the 1000th cycle, the human Cheon Yo-hwa can no longer appear.

“Yet as an estranged god fused with the Mastermind, my position flips. In the 1000th cycle, it’s fine for me to meet you. However small the space, I’ll be in that divine realm sealed by Time Seal. But in the 173rd cycle, I mustn’t appear.”

That was the dilemma Cheon Yo-hwa faced. Human or Fallen Outer God, one side of herself must commit a temporal contradiction.

Ah-ha, Yo-hwa laughed. “Of course I could just say, ‘Screw the time paradox,’ but I feel it too.”

Finally, I asked back, “Feel what?”

“Your gut telling you that we mustn’t casually commit a Time Paradox. If we toy with the cosmic order called ‘time,’ the debts we defer will someday crash down at once. I feel that too.”

Hence the conundrum.

The first thought she had upon hearing the Regressor’s confession was simply that this would be hard. Yet from birth, she has solved every problem, no matter how hard—love’s puzzle aside.

“I brooded a bit and saw the answer.”

This time was no different.

“‘Oh? So I just have to die, right?’”

The solution was simple.

“As a human, I exist fully in the 173rd cycle. I’m a weak Awakener, yes, but I am also a non-romantic who lives by brain and strategy. And as the Mastermind—”

I need only exist in a dream.

“Specifically, your dream, sunbae.” Her lips curved. “Right? The original Time Seal is no different from a dream only you can experience.”

After a long pause, I said, “I see… So you waited until I entered the dream via a Dream Demon.”

“Yep!” she exclaimed, her smile deepening. “And sorry, but I evicted my sister and the fairy. If they perceive the current me, it’ll be trouble.”

So that was why the two who’d dived with me were gone. She’d hidden this from them.

Truly, she commits the outrageous with a straight face.

“Well, someone had to serve as the corridor to Hecate. Now, sunbae, please trample my corpse and go!”

I chose not to grace that with a response.

“Aw, don’t make that face. By the way, how did I die? My memory ends with the night sky falling on Utopia.”

“Your sister kicked your head off.”

“Eh? Ah-ha? Ahahaha!” Her palm shook the planes of my vision as she remarked, “Wow. I did tell her, you know. ‘If sis goes bad, kill her.’ Still, to die by her foot! Born earlier, die earlier, I guess.”

“Did you egg on the Saintess too?”

“Yep. Told her, ‘Fall if you must.’” She noticed my silence then. “I know the frozen world of Time Stop is hell to you. Sorry. But your feelings don’t matter much.” That faint smile stayed put, its edge dipping into shadow as she concluded, “Mine don’t matter either.”

“You…”

“I’m weak, unlike our gifted comrades. So all I know is how to pay with my life.” I tried to scold her, but her next words stopped me. “Same as you. That’s what a regressor is.”

I had no response to that.

“Ah. We’re close. Brace yourself.”

A solemn footstep sounded out.

My limited view made judging distance hard—each gap between her fingers showed a different scene.

Focusing under her thumb, I inferred that we were descending stairs.

“Where are we headed?”

“The Void. The Abyss.”

Step. Step. Step.

Down into darkness we sank.

“A dream deeper than dream. The realm you named Dream-within-Dream, the Unconscious World. Heh heh. Each flight down wears me out a bit… but I’ll try my best.”

“You okay?”

“I’m fine. But may I ask one favor?”

Step. Step. Step. Step.

Footfalls clicked in varying pitches within the fragmented view.

“Please don’t move my hand until the very end.”

Many sounds overlapped the steps—her breathing, a small grunt, a giggle.

“Sunbae.”

The sounds echoed.

Downward, further, still deeper.

The deeper we went, the thinner Yo-hwa’s breaths became.

“When I died, what face did my sister make?”

Step. Step. Step. Step.

“Aha. Figures. She would think that we weren’t parting forever. What’d be the point of feeling sad? She’s always been like that… She believes our twin souls are linked. Too much of a romantic, honestly.”

Step. Step. Step. Step.

“I wonder. When I have the Mastermind in my grasp and vanish, what face will she make? She likely won’t be able to even conceive of the reality of it, yet she’ll still believe our souls connect. That girl…”

Step. Step. Step. Step.

“I’ll confess only to you, sunbae. When the Void first dawned… I almost went mad when I heard my sister was trapped at school. But after you saved her, I was glad.”

Step. Step. Step.

“See, I’m always bored. It’s dull. Successor to a cult—an exotic title, perhaps, but one that’s dull to me. Too many sights too young. My dopamine system’s fried. Maybe it’s just childish bravado.”

Step. Step.

“Would you close your eyes for a moment? Yes, just like that. Just a moment… There.”

Step.

“Sunbae… Sunbae. I trust you.”

“Yo-hwa?”

Silence.

“Cheon Yo-hwa?”

I opened my eyes.

The darkness was gone.

The fingers that had gently shielded my sight, the Final Curtain rather than the Mastermind, were gone.

Yo-hwa was nowhere.

Silently, I looked down. In my palm lay a lone black hair tie.

She said she trusted me. In that last instant, what exactly did she trust? Even disappearing, how did my disciple conclude it was pure faith, not resignation?

“Been a while since I came here,” I muttered.

The Unconscious World. A place you reach only after dreaming within dreams, when time melted away like candle wax. The drain. The Void all humanity shares—the very first Void.

The guide who led me safely here was gone.

“Don’t worry.” I squeezed the black hair tie she left me. Whether driven by instinct or impulse, I didn’t know, but I deliberately spoke to keep my own continuity. “I fully grasp why you brought me here.”

And so, I took a step.

In the Void of Dreams-within-Dreams, space and time lack coherence. Chaos was the Void’s nature, and this realm jumbled even loops. Next to Haeundae’s beach unfurled a snowy field—the Nenet tundra, an impossible sight in the 173rd cycle. Under rubble lay the shadows of Old Man Scho and Adele flickered, visions unseen even by the me of the 1000th cycle. In a desert, Ha-yul played with a doll of me while Ah-ryeon sprouted from a fruit and melted like slime.

“Not now.”

They were residues of time, echoes eroded from piled-up residues. Phantoms no longer real.

“Now’s not the time to think about them.”

White sand crunched underfoot. Not sand ground by the Water of Life but sand vomited by the Void, called White Night. In it, many things were half-buried.

A broken pole. A traffic light frozen forever on red. Petals. Glass shards. Big Ben’s hands.

Beyond them lay the Beginning: the Busan Station concourse, nicknamed “the starting village” by Dok-seo.

If the world truly blooms and withers with each loop, that joke can’t be laughed off.

One step I went into the half-ruined shell. I walked into the wreckage where the shapes of loops I recalled and loops I forgot overlapped. The concourse roof gaped open like Rome’s Pantheon as light and shadow mosaicked the space through broken beams.

And beneath them sat Go Yuri.

“Welcome, Guild Leader.”

She wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes were closed, her face tilted to trace the contours of shattered sky and shadow.

She spoke.

“Sit beside me? It’s a bit cramped…”

I sat.

“The sunlight here feels wonderful. You can zone out, empty your thoughts… I’ve loved this spot for ages.”

White dust motes drifted in the ruins, buoyed by the silence. So it was between us. Specks that could never become seeds glimmered in the sun then vanished into the shadows.

“It took exactly one year,” Go Yuri said.

“One year?”

“Yes. Three hundred sixty-five days.”

“…Doesn’t feel like a small time.”

“From your viewpoint, Guild Leader.”

Her eyes were still closed.

“You know well how time’s sensibility varies from person to person… Imagine erasing every scrap of time in a life that leaves no trace in memory.”

Her voice sounded somehow light.

“The breath you took yesterday. The Tuesday you played with a friend whose name and face you’ve lost. Erase it all—and fill time only with scenes truly remembered.”

“…”

“Then, looking back at death’s door, how much of eighty years remains?”

“…It’s hard to fill up even one full day’s worth of time.”

“Yes. That’s normal for humans.”

She raised the back of her hand. A mote brushed her nail.

“To live a lifetime yet collect only a single moment, clutching mayfly-length memories, and still lose even that blink.”

“…”

“I filled all three hundred sixty-five days.”

A breeze blew.

Th𝚒𝓈 𝒸h𝘢p†𝕖r ḭ𝗌 pɵ𝐬ṯєḍ b𝗒 𝗞𝑖ṯє𝙣𝑜ⱴ𝓮ḷ

The mote vanished beyond shadow as Go Yori turned toward me.

Our eyes met.

“So for me, this moment is number three hundred sixty-five, Guild Leader.”

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