Chapter 120 - The Brainwasher II

3

And so the two black holes collided, bringing the solar system to an end... Unfortunately, that was not how things turned out.

The world was perfectly fine. Go Yori and Yu Jiwon’s encounter unleashed no storms upon the macroscopic world.

As one could tell from the way it stubbornly held out for decades despite being colonized by countless anomalies, this universe was surprisingly sturdy.

"... ..."

"...? ... ..."

The two were talking in the distance.

They were too far away for even my hearing to reach, so I couldn’t eavesdrop. Besides, Go Yori’s [Perception Manipulation] would have distorted the conversation itself.

Go Yori bowed deeply, then handed over something I couldn’t quite make out—a business card, perhaps, or a letter. Jiwon accepted it and bowed her head in return.

A little later, Jiwon returned as though nothing had happened. I hurried over to her.

"What did you talk about? What impression did Go Yori make on you? Did you start liking her, or feel an inexplicable urge to do what she said? Anything like that?"

"Yes? No?"

Jiwon uttered a sentence that perfectly exemplified the subtleties of Korean.

"We simply had a conversation. She was very easy to talk to."

"Ah...!"

I lamented. Was a mere psychopath no match for Go Yori’s power after all?

"... I see. Good work. Still, I imagine this was a very special experience for you. Surely this is the first time you’ve ever felt even the slightest goodwill toward another human being? When will you ever get another chance like this?"

"Hmm?"

Jiwon tilted her head.

"Forgive me, Your Excellency, but I don’t understand what you mean. I felt no affection toward the target."

This time, it was my turn to tilt my head.

"What are you talking about? You just said she was very easy to talk to."

"Pardon? Yes, she was."

Then, with an utterly expressionless face, she recited the following as though it were perfectly obvious.

"Why should someone being easy to talk to constitute a reason to like them?"

?

"Your Excellency. The feeling one experiences when someone is easy to talk to is convenience. To describe it more precisely, it means not having to waste excessive amounts of conversation to improve mutual understanding. In short, it is the satisfaction of having saved time. When you need to go to school, taking the subway is much faster and easier than walking. But I imagine you don’t feel personal affection toward a subway car."

"..."

"Ah. My apologies, Your Excellency. Everyone has different tastes, after all. Do you, perhaps, feel affection toward subway cars?"

Of course I didn’t. Dang Seorin alone was more than enough in the category of people with a bizarre attachment to railways.

But her long-winded explanation made me realize something.

‘This might actually work! Against Go Yori! With this once-in-a-generation psychopath, the miracle of escaping [Perception Manipulation] might just be possible!’

Unable to contain my excitement, I grabbed Jiwon’s shoulder.

"Jiwon."

"Yes, Your Excellency."

"From now on, use any means necessary to get close to ‘She Who Must Not Be Named.’ Become her friend, or whatever it takes to establish a special relationship. Observe her every move and report back to me. Can you do that?"

"Of course, Your Excellency. Leave everything to me. However..."

"Yes, yes, don’t worry. I promise to pass your last wishes on to you in the next run."

"I pledge my loyalty, Your Excellency."

We exchanged a look of perfect understanding.

Then the Saintess, who had been silently watching events unfold, murmured,

["Undertaker. I’ve been debating whether I should point this out, but right now... Wouldn’t anyone looking at this say you’re stalking this Go Yori woman?"]

The observation wasn’t worth a moment’s consideration.

Was I insane? Why would I stalk someone who ran a soup kitchen for ordinary people without pay, served meals in a green Romance of the Three Kingdoms apron, and smiled politely at everyone? Did I, the Undertaker, look like that sort of person? Absurd.

That very day, I launched Operation Contradiction.

The Korean Peninsula’s strongest shield. A cancer cell who would make the warning [※This character is a tertiary-tertiary-tertiary heroine and can never be romanced] appear in any work she featured in. I had planted her right in the middle of Daejeon.

That’s right. Jiwon settled in Daejeon and made contact with Go Yori every day. Go Yori had to come to the soup kitchen every morning and evening, after all, and had no way to prevent Jiwon from approaching her then.

Nothing unusual happened on day two. Outwardly, the two merely exchanged friendly small talk.

Nor on day three.

Nor on day four.

Finally, day five.

["Undertaker. I think something unusual has happened around Miss Yu Jiwon."]

At last, something was nibbling at the bait.

"What sort of unusual occurrence?"

["... Something strange. It’s difficult to explain, but whenever she leaves her lodgings and starts walking, complete strangers approach and strike up conversations."]

"Hmm. Jiwon’s facial skin is Hermès-grade, at least. Aren’t people just being dazzled by a luxury item?"

["I’ve never heard anyone describe good looks that way... Hmm, no. It really is strange. It would be quicker if you came and saw for yourself."]

So I did.

I tailed Jiwon without letting anyone notice me.

"Oh, Jiwon! I lucked into some honey-sweet apples. Here, try one. Hmm? Goodness, what do you mean, pay? Just take them and eat! I just adore you every time I see you!"

"Thank you. I’ll enjoy them."

"Wow! It’s Jiwon! Hey, Jiwon, play with us again today! Come ride the swings with us at the playground!"

"Yes. If I have time this evening."

... Just as the Saintess had said, it was a peculiar sight.

Whenever Jiwon walked down the street, all sorts of people approached and spoke to her.

As I’ve mentioned several times, she was as beautiful as a crystal sculpture carved from eternal ice. With her perpetually expressionless face, that sculpture always carried the chill of permafrost.

Would it really be easy to walk up to someone like that and casually strike up a friendly conversation?

Even if you did, all you would receive in return was a voice without inflection and an utterly emotionless gaze from behind her glasses.

In short, being nice to her wasn’t rewarding.

Yet the residents kept approaching her, as though talking to her were the greatest fun imaginable.

"Saintess, please connect me to Jiwon through Telepathy. I need to check her mental state."

["Understood. ... You’re connected. I’ll repeat what Miss Yu Jiwon says, so please speak freely."]

"Thank you. Hey, Jiwon. Are you all right?"

["I’m fine."]

Jiwon’s words, reproduced in the Saintess’s voice, were utterly unconcerned.

"From what I can see, Daejeon has already fallen into Voldemort’s hands. At the very least, everyone talking to you has definitely been bewitched by Voldemort. They’re fawning over you to win your goodwill somehow and keep you in this city."

["Hmm. I had also concluded something was strange. But if this is an attempt to win my goodwill, it is remarkably shallow."]

"What?"

["They’re annoying."]

"..."

["I am the sort of person who finds it annoying when I visit a restaurant and the owner recognizes me and strikes up a conversation, though I don’t show it. Right now, this street feels like nothing more than an enormous neighborhood restaurant."]

The next day.

The entire city of Daejeon fell quiet.

"..."

Jiwon emerged from her lodgings, but no one spoke to her.

The woman who had heaped apples upon her yesterday, the neighborhood children who had begged her to play—every one of them walked past her expressionlessly, as though she were a stranger.

I couldn’t help being terrified.

["This is a little more comfortable, at last."]

Jiwon was utterly unshaken.

Her reaction amounted to little more than, say, feeling lucky that a window seat happened to be free when she entered a café.

Even though the city’s residents, so obsessed with her until yesterday, were suddenly giving her the cold shoulder, she showed not the slightest anxiety or confusion.

But naturally, this meant... Jiwon had won.

After all, without conversation or any other interaction, there was no way to bewitch someone!

That was when it began.

The city started going absolutely berserk.

"Aaaaagh!"

A resident came running and slammed into Jiwon, losing their balance and falling.

At that moment, a truck sped past right in front of them with a screech of brakes and crashed into a building. The resident sprang up and seized Jiwon’s hand.

"Oh, thank you! Thank you so much! If I hadn’t bumped into you, that truck would have killed me! You saved my life!"

"Yes. Take good care of your life."

"..."

The moment Jiwon entered a bakery, the employees lined up on either side and set off party poppers.

"Congratulations, valued customer! You’re exactly our one hundred thousandth customer since we opened! As a special promotion, starting today, you can choose up to five items every day for free—"

"Ah, I’m sorry, but I don’t care for promotions like that. Please offer it to the next customer. I’ll buy a baguette if you have any left."

"..."

Everywhere Jiwon went, lives were saved from ‘chance accidents’ and good fortune arrived against ‘incredible odds.’

She completely ignored every last encounter.

["Why did I ignore them? Because following Your Excellency Undertaker’s instructions is overwhelmingly more profitable than establishing friendly relations with those people."]

["It’s not as if they’ll take responsibility for my next run, is it?"]

With the funds I supplied, Jiwon ate whatever she wanted and bought whatever she pleased, merely visiting the square twice a day to speak briefly with Go Yori.

In short, she lived in abundance, doing everything she wanted in this apocalyptic age.

By contrast, though it might have been my imagination, the residents’ faces grew more gaunt with each passing day.

BANG! BANG, BANG! BANG!

Around day thirty, a gunfight broke out near Jiwon’s lodgings.

The following scene is reconstructed from the account she later gave me.

Apparently, immediately after the gunshots rang out, a man with a bullet wound in his forearm pounded on her door.

"H-help me! Please open the door! I promise I’ll repay you!"

Before the room’s occupant could say anything, the door opened on its own.

Jiwon, who had been reading a Latin book by the window, merely twitched an eyebrow in annoyance.

"What is it this time?"

"Ah. I-I’m the leader of the greatest guild in this city. One of my bastard subordinates just stabbed me in the back. But... Even with a surprise attack, he failed to kill me. My boys will come running and make him pay."

"Haa."

"If you hadn’t opened the door, I would’ve died in the hallway. Thank you. If you wish, I’ll give you everything in this city...!"

Jiwon put down her book and walked over.

For the record, she was the Operations Director serving the commander of the National Road Management Corps, and in the runs when we were battling Meteor Strike, she had proudly taken command of Team One among the twelve teams of our suicide squad.

In other words, her skill at wielding aura was second only to mine.

Naturally, a mere warlord with a bullet hole in his forearm was no match for her. She lifted the guild leader in one hand as easily as picking up a chicken.

"Huh?"

Then she opened the door and hurled him into the hallway. The guild members playing the part of traitors flinched at the sight of their target.

Jiwon addressed the assassins.

"What are you doing? Aren’t you going to kill him?"

"..."

"Then I’ll go back inside and finish reading. Please don’t disturb me."

The door slammed shut.

That concludes the scene reconstructed from Jiwon’s recollections.

No gunshots came from the hallway.

4

That night.

Bizarre sounds echoed through the dark skies over Daejeon.

OOOOOH... OOOH...

EE-HEE-HEE, EE-HEE-HEE-HEE! EE-HEE-HEE!

They sounded like the cries of beasts, resembled the growling of a tiger, and seemed like the laughter of countless children. All the sounds mingled and echoed at once.

An inexplicable phenomenon even I had never experienced.

"Saintess, can you observe what’s happening in the city?"

["I’m sorry. I can’t see anything. I don’t know whether all the awakened currently in Daejeon have fallen asleep or whether there’s another cause, but all I can see is black."]

"..."

["If you give me permission, I could observe Go Yori—"]

"No."

I answered immediately.

I had a certain intuition.

This was not an ending reached through the ‘correct strategy.’

To use a gaming analogy, it felt more like unlocking an ending with a cheat code.

The problem was that this would certainly not be a happy ending. Whatever ‘something’ we had forcibly awakened would be furious.

"Go Yori—or the anomaly hanging over her—can bewitch and control an entire city’s residents. Confirming that information alone is the best result we could ask for. Further contact would be dangerous."

["Yes. Understood."]

"What about Jiwon?"

["Pitch-black. Just like the other awakened."]

The eerie wailing continued throughout the night.

Jiwon’s whereabouts became clear after dawn. At seven in the morning, she woke up and walked out of her lodgings as though nothing had happened.

I immediately entered Daejeon and met her. Then I asked whether she had heard any strange sounds last night.

"Sounds?"

Jiwon tilted her head.

"I’m not sure, Your Excellency. I’ve worn a sleep mask and earplugs to bed since fourth grade."

The wailing wasn’t the only thing that vanished with the dawn.

Every last resident of the city had disappeared, too.

The Saintess’s [Clairvoyance] still revealed nothing. Jiwon was the only awakened she could observe.

We immediately spread out a map and tried activating Jiwon’s [Minimap], but the result was the same. Not a single awakened in Daejeon registered—not even Go Yori.

As though they had evaporated in an instant.

From that day until the end of the run, neither Go Yori nor the citizens of Daejeon ever appeared again.

"Oh, right."

Jiwon took something out of her clothes. A letter.

It would also provide the epilogue to this episode.

"Your Excellency. Please take this."

"What is it?"

"A letter from Miss Go Yori to you."

"..."

"To be more precise, she asked that, if she could no longer run the soup kitchen, I give it to [the first person I met after waking up that day]."

Hesitantly, I accepted the letter.

I opened the envelope. An intensely sweet apple scent wafted from the paper.

- Man proposes; Heaven disposes.

- It is people who devise plans, but Heaven determines whether they succeed.

"..."

Man proposes; Heaven disposes. It was a passage from Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Similar in meaning to ‘Do all that is humanly possible, then await Heaven’s decree,’ it seemed at first glance like an aphorism one might offer anyone.

But the fact that she had specifically quoted Romance of the Three Kingdoms made my heart stir uneasily.

‘Doesn’t this make it sound as though she knew all along that I was the one who sent Jiwon?’

... Above all, I knew Go Yori’s handwriting. Naturally, since she had once been a member of my guild.

The handwriting in the letter before me was clearly different from hers back then.

Perhaps the words in this letter were the first glimpse I had ever caught of the real Go Yori.

The first trace that hadn’t passed through the filter of [Perception Manipulation].

I turned the letter over to read the back.

- The butterfly of the typhoon and the butterfly in the dream are different beings.

My whole body prickled as though with static electricity.

The blue morpho butterfly of the ‘butterfly effect’ anomaly. And the butterfly that had appeared at the end of the ‘Logout Game.’

The words alluded to those two beings.

It was a message only I could recognize in this world... and, at the same time, one of the pieces of information I had most wanted to know back then.

How much did Go Yori know? Or was this, too, merely reflecting back the information I wanted to see, like a mirror?

At what point had I been bewitched?

"... Jiwon. When did you get this letter?"

"Ah. When we parted after meeting on the first day."

"..."

"She promised that as long as I delivered the letter, she would never harm me directly, no matter what happened. It was an acceptable offer."

Jiwon tilted her head.

"Does it say something strange, Your Excellency?"

"..."

I kept my mouth shut.

I merely folded the apple-scented letter and thought once again:

When you pit the strongest spear against the strongest shield, a draw really is the only possible outcome.

- The Brainwasher. End.