Chapter 144 - The Fortunate One VI

9

They say there is no paradise wherever you flee, but Saipan’s scenery was as beautiful as paradise. Clear, jade-colored sea. Grains of beach sand that curled softly around the soles of our feet.

Noh Doha muttered, "The sunlight is too strong..."

"Indeed. It’s a little too beautiful."

Those were our first impressions.

For reference, I was dressed as a café barista. Noh Doha had roughly thrown a white coat over a T-shirt. The white doctor’s coat fluttered in the sea breeze. In short, our outfits actively denied that this was a world-class vacation destination. Given a choice, Saipan probably wouldn’t have wanted tourists like us either.

"This view is utterly unsuited to me, the Undertaker, who must now squeeze every last drop of misfortune out of life, right down to a rich bone broth."

"Hearing you put it that way is making me nervous agaaain..."

More. I had to become more and more miserable. Therefore, I decided to personally remodel the island’s scenery.

To digress for a moment, in an apocalypse stained by the void, nothing matters more than the beauty of form. A story whose introduction, development, turn, and conclusion fit neatly together. The cliché of opening your eyes and muttering, "An unfamiliar ceiling."

These are forms of a sort. A grammar. And depending on what grammar, what worldview you adopt, anomalies react in different ways.

In other words, even upon arriving at a vacation spot, if you shout, "Wow! It’s summer! A beach! The sea!" then fling off your outer clothing and charge toward the waves, there is a very high probability you will encounter anomalies based on Japanese manga.

Fundamentally, it’s no different from middle and high school students turning off the lights at night and chanting, "Bunshinsaba, Bunshinsaba."

In the apocalypse, every gesture and every word a person utters can summon all manner of anomalies.

"Workshop Master Noh Doha. I will now read an excerpt from <The Final Years>, a work by an author named Osamu Dazai."

"Huh...?"

"You’ve heard of <No Longer Human>, haven’t you? He wrote that."

I carried Noh Doha on my back to a coastal cliff. Landing lightly at its edge, Noh Doha slipped both hands into the white coat’s pockets.

"Hmm. And why, exactly, must you hold a cheap little reading the moment we arrive on Saipan...?"

"For a former civil servant, you clearly didn’t study world history properly, Workshop Master Noh Doha. Saipan was one of the places where the Japanese military suffered defeat at American hands during the Pacific War. It has a painful history of many civilians being caught up in the fighting and dying as well."

"Hah? And your point?"

"This coastal cliff where we’re standing is precisely where the Imperial Japanese military held its talent show."

"Talent show...?"

If I had to pick two specialties of the former Imperial Japanese military, they would naturally be declarations of war and mass suicide. The second talent was displayed to the fullest here at the northernmost tip of Saipan Island as well.

"Even the cliff’s name is killer. It’s Banzai Cliff. According to one account, as many as ten thousand soldiers shouted ‘Banzai’ and demonstrated some magnificently pathetic water entries off the cliff."

"No. Seriously, what am I supposed to do with that...?"

"And if we’re listing Japan’s most famous people to commit suicide by throwing themselves into the water, we can’t leave out Osamu Dazai."

I took out an empty notebook.

"Watch closely, Workshop Master. This is the textbook method of casting an anomaly-summoning incantation."

The clear voice of the reading that had abruptly begun atop the cliff rang out over the waves.

"Ah, an evening beneath the full moon. Amid waves that glittered and collapsed, surged and shattered, heaved and convulsed, when I could no longer bear the hand that clung to mine lest we part, and deliberately shook it off, the woman was instantly swept into the waves and cried someone’s name aloud. It was not mine—"

SHHHHH!

The waves broke.

At that moment.

"Long live His Majesty the Emperor!"

SPLASH!

A shadow person passed beside us and dived straight off the cliff. It was an impressive display. Such a shame that they had been a soldier rather than an Olympic athlete, unable to show off that personal talent during their lifetime.

"What the fuck...?"

Noh Doha jumped in shock. Naturally. Shadows that had not existed mere moments ago had suddenly appeared behind us.

"Long live His Majesty the Emperor!"

"Long live the Empire of Great Japan!"

"Long liiiiiive!"

SPLASH! SPLASH!

Fortunately, even if there were no Olympics, there was a marathon. Thousands of shadow people set off together, rushing toward the horizon. They had no substance. They ran through our shoulders, sometimes straight through our torsos, pouring past us one after another. Curiously, despite lacking physical substance, they somehow vividly reproduced the effect of falling into the waves.

SPLASH! SPLASH!

The waves artificially generated by humans were defeating nature’s waves in real time.

Yes. The Imperial Japanese military’s true principal enemy had always been nature itself, not the Americans. And nature encompassed not only environments such as jungles and seas, but human nature as well. The imperial military wasn’t losing. It was winning.

"Fuck. What the hell is this...?"

"As with human affairs, summoning anomalies rests upon the mysteries of heaven, earth, and humanity."

I chuckled like the Sword Marquis.

"The Japanese conception of mass suicide is heaven; this land, where the Imperial Japanese military committed suicide en masse, is earth; and Osamu Dazai, that icon of suicide by plunging into water, is humanity. Alas, what sorrow! When these three conditions align so exquisitely, how could even an anomaly refuse to obey the incantation?"

"... I’m asking you seriously, Awakened Undertaker. Aren’t you already the big boss of all anomalies? Huh? What human being sits around popping out anomalies like this...?"

"Come now. Call me a special-grade sorcerer."

"What a load of fucking bullshit..."

In fact, Osamu Dazai had been a leftist who had even joined an anti-imperialist student league, but what did that matter? Unless they were tutorial fairies, anomalies had little interest in human political leanings.

Ah, of course, the void called the ‘Korean Central Intelligence Agency’ residing on Namsan in Seoul took a great interest in people’s ideologies, but let’s discuss that in a future episode.

"If you’re really skeptical, try doing the reading yourself next time, Workshop Master Noh Doha."

"Next time...?"

"Yes. Besides Banzai Cliff here, there’s another place that encouraged mass suicide, called Suicide Cliff."

"No, fuck, wasn’t this place supposed to be a vacation spot...? Hey. You came here specifically to pull this shit, didn’t you? Huh? Do you really want to die?"

At the next site, Noh Doha recited the incantation as I instructed. Sure enough, the ‘shadow people’ appeared.

Having exclusive magic that only you could use, like Dang Seorin, was amateur stuff. A true archmage devised a magic system that allowed anyone to produce an eight-hundred-degree-Celsius ball of flame simply by shouting, "Fireball."

Having just completed enrollment at my mage tower, Noh Doha murmured blankly, like a student casting Wingardium Leviosa for the first time.

"This actually works...?"

"Generally, anyone can do it if they satisfy the conditions of heaven, earth, and humanity. That’s what a strategy guide is for. Do you think I call myself an anomaly expert for nothing?"

"Awakened Undertaker. What exactly are those shadows? Human souls...?"

"Ah, probably not. They’re likely nothing more than beings made from people’s crude memories and fantasies. Literally shadows. To give them a more complete substance, we would need an incantation from someone who actually experienced the Pacific War."

"..."

"Look closely at how they run together shouting ‘Banzai.’ There’s no detail. If they were real, there would be people shoved off by others, people trying to disembowel themselves, people forcibly sacrificed, all with different faces and poses."

For that entire day, I traveled around with Noh Doha, bringing ‘unhappy memories’ back into being throughout the area.

BOOOOM!

The sound of naval gunfire shook the beach. Only the sound. There wasn’t even a single fishing boat on the sea, much less a battleship. The engine noise of fighters darting about echoed eerily through the sky. Somewhere, children were crying too. Their cries had no nationality.

The ‘Battle of Saipan’ had not ended. Nor did the number of shadows jumping off the cliffs show any sign of dwindling. In an eternal hell, the insubstantial shadows died and killed. That was what the void had always been.

"..."

Between working on my prosthesis, Noh Doha kept looking toward the cliff.

As I mentioned last time, I had lost my left leg during the dramatic escape from Busan. Noh Doha was making me a prosthesis from wood roughly scavenged nearby.

"Ah, Workshop Master. Tighten that screw a little more. I’ve found that suits me better."

"..."

This wasn’t the first time Noh Doha had made limbs for me over my 590 runs, so I helped the Workshop Master at just the right moments. Normally, I would have been snapped at with, "Then make it yourself," but for some reason Noh Doha was quiet throughout the work. As though immersed in a profound question.

"What a strange world..."

Only then, kneeling on one knee while fitting my left-foot prosthesis, did Noh Doha murmur quietly.

"Humans clumsily try to forget, while anomalies awkwardly try to remember."

Noh Doha turned toward me. Slowly.

"And you are a peculiar human being too..."

10

Our strange and peculiar ‘vacation’ continued. Now I bore the full weight of contempt and hatred from my beloved companions, and every dawn I awoke to screams and sobs.

'Surely I can consider myself quite miserable by now?'

At least for me, my present misfortune weighed more heavily than the good fortune brought by things like the Sword Marquis’s return from old age to youth or the aliens’ Great Wall. Those were merely the sort of blessings that were nice to have, but no loss if absent. Even without the Sword Marquis or the aliens, I knew how to maintain the front in my own way.

OOK-EEK!

The Monkey’s Paw seemed to agree. Just as the world has outsiders to balance its social butterflies, someone always tries to even things out. The Monkey’s Paw, which governed the scales of fortune and misfortune, seemed to feel threatened. It began pouring out good fortune more blatantly.

"Awakened Undertaker. Did you happen to bring the Sword Marquis here too...?"

"Pardon? No."

"When I went out this morning, there were bananas hanging in bunches outside the house..."

Food appeared on its own even when we did nothing. For starters, the weather was spectacular. The sea held an emerald hue, and the shade cast by the trees gleamed sapphire. An environment that made you want to put on a swimsuit and jump into the sea without thinking.

BOOOOM!

Amid that scenery, the naval gunfire remained grand. The shadows jumping off the cliffs were still going strong too. The weather was so excessively sunny that they really did look like competitive divers now.

Noh Doha offered an assessment.

"What a fucking surreal landscape..."

Indeed it was. The misfortune I had created and the good fortune generated by the Monkey’s Paw had begun fighting in earnest. My heart swelled with awe. The rivalry between Naruto of Good Fortune and Sasuke of Misfortune grew fiercer by the day.

One day, that contest reached the pinnacle of intensity when I was walking along the beach and discovered Cheon Yohwa collapsed in the sand.

"... Uh. Yohwa?"

"Tea... cher..."

Cheon Yohwa seized my hand.

"I-I’m sorry. A little while ago, I, I came back to my senses. But what I... Ugh! What on earth did I do to you, Teacher...!"

Tears welled in Cheon Yohwa’s eyes. Her orange hair swept in the sea breeze, and sand and grit clung to her cheeks.

"I had to apologize to you, Teacher, so I just set out to find you, even if I had to do it alone... When the boat capsized, I thought I would die, but I survived. I survived, and I’m so glad I could see you... Oh my god. Your leg, what happened to your leg? Ah. It was because of us after all...? Ugh. I’m sorry, Teacher. I was wrong. Please forgive me..."

A shudder ran through me.

'So this is your move, Monkey’s Paw!'

As you well know, I had used the hate potion to forcibly premiere a miserable tale of misery fiction. That was my move: ‘Check.’ And the Monkey’s Paw had answered, ‘Countercheck.’

What, traditionally, was the most delicious part of misery fiction? It scarcely needed saying. The scene where the people who had despised and hated the protagonist realized the truth—that the protagonist had done nothing wrong—and regretted their mistakes...!

[I misunderstood the protagonist] [It was my fault] [I was morally wrong, and the protagonist was right] [Therefore, I must apologize to the protagonist and repay them]. Such truly insidious self-fulfillment...!

Yes. Following the conventions of misery fiction, the Monkey’s Paw was trying to feed me a cathartic payoff.

"Yohwa."

"Yes...?"

"It’s all right."

If that was the Monkey’s Paw’s move, my response was decided too. I smiled with boundless benevolence.

"Of course I forgive you."

"...!"

Yes. The satisfying development the Monkey’s Paw wanted was surely for the protagonist to shake off the other character’s hand here and murmur, ["It’s already too late"] ["You had countless chances, and you threw them all away"] ["Apologizing now won’t change anything"]. Thus the protagonist became happy, and everyone else became miserable. A cliché of misery fiction.

But.

"No, you never had anything to be forgiven for in the first place. I have never once been disappointed in you."

"Teacheeer...!"

My chosen strategy was the ‘forgiving’ protagonist! Whether the people around me had cut off my leg or not, I would forgive them unconditionally. No matter how many posts they made cursing me on Undertaker Trash-Talk Net (renamed from SG Net), I would accept it all. Not allow even a single drop of catharsis. This was the masterstroke that countered the Monkey’s Paw’s schemes.

OOK-EEK-EEK, HEEK, EEK-EEK-EEK!

Whatever tricks the Monkey’s Paw pulled were meaningless to begin with. The very phenomenon of my companions being controlled by an anomaly called the Monkey’s Paw without even realizing it, like Cheon Yohwa before me, was a painfully bitter misfortune for me.

'After all, wasn’t I the one who put my companions in danger by testing the Monkey’s Paw?'

It was a disaster I had brought upon myself. How could I blame anyone else? If anyone needed to ask forgiveness later, it was me.

While taking Cheon Yohwa back to the Korean Peninsula, I also donated my right leg to the awakened of Busan before returning. This time, I deliberately let Dang Seorin get me. The highlight was her tossing my leg away after cutting off my right foot and muttering, "Tch, I was aiming for his heart...!"

EEK-EEK-HEEK, OOK, OOK-EEK-EEK!

The Monkey’s Paw convulsed at my carefully curated frustrating developments. Dinosaurs perfect for use as cavalry mounts appeared and performed cute tricks for me; Inunaki Tunnel was remodeled to connect every city on the Korean Peninsula. It resorted to all manner of means in an effort to bring me good fortune and happiness.

So next time, I donated my left arm to the Saintess and my right arm to Lee Hayul. Undertaker daruma doll: complete.

EEK-EEK-EEK-EEK-HEEK-HEEK!

I could feel the Monkey’s Paw foaming at the mouth somewhere in the air. It had choked on sheer frustration and fainted. Noh Doha was foaming at the mouth too.

"You really are... No. Never mind. Fine. It’s you, so I’m sure you’ve thought it all through. No, you don’t need to spell out what you’re thinking. Come back with just your head left and I’ll make you limbs somehow, so just shut up... Oh? You’re smiling? You can smile right now...?"

Left foot. Right foot. Left arm. Right arm. My body, whose genre had abruptly shifted to limb-amputation fiction, was plastered with Noh Doha’s custom prostheses.

The battle between the Monkey’s Paw, determined to gift me good fortune, and myself, determined to deliver misfortune, was enough to make one’s heart swell just watching it. But like every battle, this one had a time limit.

Year ten.

'It’s finally here.'

The closing act of my 590th run loomed close. At last, the deadline I had imposed on the Monkey’s Paw had arrived.

And on that very day, to start things off lightly, the Japanese archipelago was destroyed.

11

When we awoke in our beach hut, Noh Doha and I looked out the window and immediately knew that the Japanese archipelago had fallen.

"... Awakened Undertaker. That."

"Yes. I see it too."

In novels with a Korean cast as the protagonist, the fate of the Japanese archipelago is always grim. Of course, nationality and race mean little to me. Once your lifespan passes into four digits, your values change in many ways. Even how you see the world.

Manyoneko, Armless Sword, Uehara Shino. And the ‘High Shrine Maiden,’ chair and First Seat of the Magical Girl Council, whom I had not yet mentioned and would prefer never to discuss if possible. They were all precious comrades-in-arms.

I knew well what lives they had led, and where they hoped to go. Volunteers who had risen from nothing to save those around them in this era of fallen nations and collapsed governments.

["I’ll declare this land a cliché zone for magical-girl stories overflowing with hope!"]

["What kills demons isn’t majestic sorrow, but lighthearted laughter! Tragedy doesn’t suit us! Everyone, smile!"]

Those were the aims around which the Magical Girl Council had formed.

But there were two kinds of magical-girl stories. Stories where justice ultimately triumphed alongside one’s companions: the Political Faction. Torture spectacles where one watched magical girls sink into despair and grief and get torn to shreds: the Demonic Cult. Every single day, a war between the political and demonic factions raged across the Japanese archipelago.

And unfortunately for the magical girls, this world’s genre had always been evil from the start.

"What on earth is that...?"

Red flesh. On the horizon greedily drinking in the morning sunlight, red flesh had suddenly risen like a single colossal tower. North of Saipan. In the direction of the Japanese archipelago.

The distance from here to Tokyo was approximately 2,400 kilometers. Across that vast distance, beyond the horizon, the great tower of ‘red flesh’ displayed its inherent majesty.

I murmured, "It’s Go Yori."