Chapter 161 - Potato II

4

As you all know, the Saintess took being a shut-in seriously. You would think loneliness alone might have driven her to expand her social circle a little, but she formed no personal relationships whatsoever apart from the one she had with me.

She did not even hang out on forums. She watched what was happening on SG Net, but never wrote any posts or comments herself. There was a reason her SG Net username had yet to make an appearance.

When I asked whether she was lonely, this was her answer:

["Everyone dies, Mr. Undertaker."]

["At the moment of death, even if your family surrounds your deathbed, in that final 0.01 seconds before your consciousness truly falls into the abyss, no one can share your death with you."]

["We are all moving toward those 0.01 seconds. A moment of stillness and silence that no human word or concept can embellish."]

["If that is loneliness, then our everyday lives are a gentler form of that ultimate loneliness. I wish to accept that atmosphere as it is."]

I nodded along with an "Oh," but also tilted my head. Didn't that ultimately mean she was lonely?

In any case, the Saintess was not a shut-in by circumstance, but by choice—and an ideological shut-in at that. Becoming close to anyone else would be extraordinarily difficult for a person like her.

But what if, instead of a person, a potato appeared?

"H-hello, Lady Potato...! G-good morning!"

In the hideout lobby, Sim Aryeon bowed at the waist in greeting.

The Saintess-potato, seated in her robot, leisurely moved a mechanical arm to return the greeting.

[Yes. Good morning, Ms. Sim Aryeon.]

"H-hehe... Yes!"

It wasn't just Sim Aryeon.

"Hi. Good morning. Pretty potato sprouts."

[Yes. Good morning to you too, Ms. Lee Hayul.]

"Wow, Saintess! Your potato skin looks especially smooth today! Looking good!"

[Thank you, Mr. Seo Gyu.]

Everyone living in our hideout greeted the Saintess-potato with bright faces and sunny smiles.

Meanwhile, my jaw hung so far open it was ready to bungee-jump into Newton's gravity at any moment.

What on earth was going on?

"Oh, Saintess. The SG Net Pet Plant Club is having a meetup. You should come too! Everyone will be delighted!"

[Yes, all right. Though I will have to conceal my identity.]

"S-Saintess, let me give you some water with this watering can...! Ehehe. Y-you like this, right?"

[Thank you. It feels wonderful.]

"Saintess, I'm going out drinking with Commander Noh Doha today. Could you come too?"

[Gladly.]

The hideout rang with lively chatter. All the guild members gathered around the Saintess-potato, fiercely waging a middle-school-style psychological turf war: "I'm closer to her than you are!" "Huh? What are you talking about? I'm way, way closer to her!"

Yes.

I had no idea how it worked or why it had happened, but, astonishingly, the robot-potato-Saintess was enjoying immense popularity.

Unlike when she had been bound by her frail human flesh, as a potato she was adored and loved by everyone.

Why on earth?

"Oh. You didn't know, Boss?"

"Didn't know? What?"

"The Saintess recently decided to launch a new constellation service."

Seo Gyu showed me a document file. It read as follows.

――――――――――

[Announcement]

Starting today, the constellation 'One Who Understands Anguish' will provide psychological counseling to the awakened.

These are harsh times in the apocalypse.

Psychological suffering is as severe as physical pain, yet when you speak of the stress weighing on your heart, all you hear from those around you is, 'You're alive, aren't you? How can you worry about something so trivial when you have it so good?'

Are you unable to share your suffering with those around you for fear of appearing weak or ridiculous?

Rely not on a human, but on the constellation 'One Who Understands Anguish.' A constellation will never exploit your weaknesses or mock you.

Please do not hesitate to inquire about counseling.

――――――――――

"..."

"This is a draft. The Saintess is beta-testing it on us right now. Wow, she's really good at counseling!" Seo Gyu said.

Thank goodness I was a regressor who would never have to worry about dentures, no matter how old I got. If I'd been wearing any, they would have fallen out just then.

"Psychological counseling...?"

"Yes."

"By whom?"

"Huh? The Saintess. I just told you."

Had they gone mad?

The Saintess could offer advice on the extraordinarily subtle, delicate currents of stress arising from human relationships?

Impossible.

At most, the Saintess could offer a consultation on 'An Inquiry into the Correlation Between Kant's Forms of Sensibility and Understanding and Schopenhauer's Principle of Causality.'

What the hell does that mean, you ask?

My point exactly.

The Saintess's consultations were at least 2.2 million light-years removed from psychological counseling in the ordinary sense.

"Seo Gyu, you... You're satisfied with this, uh, counseling?"

"Yes. Completely satisfied. I think she'll probably start offering it to the awakened at large next week."

"No... Guys. Get a grip. There's no way this will succeed!"

It succeeded.

"What the fuck?"

It was a tremendous success, at that.

-Anonymous: Honestly, I've been really depressed lately. But after getting counseling from 'One Who Understands Anguish,' I felt so much more at ease.

└Anonymous: Same, yeah. When everyone here kept telling me to try counseling, honestly I wondered what the hell was wrong with these assholes. Then I tried it myself and was bawling my eyes out within an hour.

-Anonymous: I guess everyone was struggling, whether we knew it or not.

└BookishGirl: Honestly, struggling is normal lol. The world's gone to shit and people go for walks and come back as sunflowers. How could you not struggle?

└Anonymous: So true lmao

-[National Road]Historian: Hmm...

-Goryeojang: Your big bro doesn't usually say things like this, but just give 'One Who Understands Anguish' a shot and get some counseling, yeah. Worst case, you've been fooled. They're on a whole different level from inferior humans, yeah.

I was aghast.

Could this be an anomaly? Well, of course it was an anomaly.

Still, only her outward appearance had become a potato. Inside, she was still... All right, her insides were potato too, but hadn't her self and consciousness remained those of the Saintess?

Even Dang Seorin became thoroughly absorbed in the counseling offered by 'One Who Understands Anguish.'

"Oh, Undertaker. Sorry. Let's just eat and part ways today. I have an appointment."

"Hmm? It's unusual for you not to drink. What sort of appointment?"

"Today's my counseling day. My counselor, 'Understands,' says it's important to have regular sessions. Lately, we've been discussing why I became so attached to railways and witch hats."

"..."

"It turns out I had more childhood wounds than I realized. Oh, why don't you try it too? About Romance of the Three Kingdoms."

The world had gone mad.

I hurried to see the Saintess.

Having moved from Yongsan to our hideout café, the Saintess-potato-robot was sitting in the lotus position in the middle of her private room.

Yes. The potato-shaped Saintess aboard a robot sat on a cushion in the lotus position, apparently deep in meditation.

The scene itself boasted an intensely surrealist aesthetic.

"Saintess. We need to talk."

[Quiet.]

SQUEAK.

A robotic arm moved into a shushing pose.

Given that potatoes have no lips, this too was surreal. Even Zenyatta would have looked human compared with the robot-potato.

[I'm in a counseling session with Ms. Dang Seorin. Please wait fifty minutes.]

"..."

Just what on earth were she and Dang Seorin discussing in these counseling sessions?

Deep in the pit of my heart, lava called curiosity bubbled furiously, but I barely managed to contain it.

Privacy. Privacy.

[All right. The session is over. But I have another appointment in ten minutes, so I would appreciate it if you made this quick. What is it, Mr. Undertaker?]

"... Saintess. I truly hate to say this, but I have no choice. This is an abnormal situation."

[An abnormal situation?]

"I'll get straight to the point. Saintess, you dislike humans. How did you end up counseling other people?"

[I have transcended my human shell.]

???

[As you pointed out, Mr. Undertaker, my misanthropy was deeply rooted. But once I shed my human flesh, strangely enough, humans began to look like 'a different species from me.']

"A different species?"

[Yes. I suppose you could say I no longer have any reason to fixate on the human form. It feels rather like looking at pets. Or observing insects.]

She was an anomaly after all!

Damn it, Noh Doha had been right again. The robot-potato-Saintess was an anomaly through and through. I could only worship the insight of the commander of the National Road Management Corps.

"Saintess, I'm sorry, but I'm going to need you to submit to subjugation now..."

[But paradoxically, precisely because of that, I think I can finally love humans.]

What.

[Ultimately, I hated humans all this time because I considered myself the same species as everyone else.]

[Now that my species has changed, I can see them more objectively and compassionately. Like looking at adorable animals.]

[Mr. Undertaker. You probably consider me an anomaly. But even if I have become one, would that necessarily make me dangerous? I am only a potato.]

[A potato that loves humans, at that.]

"..."

[I am very happy right now.]

"Good heavens."

I cradled my head in my hands.

Yes. If the Saintess had fallen and become the 'Judge,' naturally she would need to be subjugated immediately, but the 'robot-potato-Saintess'... Frankly, she wasn't particularly threatening!

In that form, she was far too weak. Unable to use aura, her combat capabilities had obvious limits. Even combat weaklings like Sim Aryeon or Noh Doha could subjugate her in one hit.

Above all, I did not want to subjugate the Saintess when she had begun to discover her love for humanity for the first time ever.

[And there is something I wanted to ask you when you came, Mr. Undertaker.]

"What is it...?"

[Please dice me.]

What the hell was this now?

[Mr. Undertaker. Do you know how potatoes reproduce?]

"... You cut them up and plant them. Preferably making sure each piece contains an eye."

[Yes. That is one way potatoes reproduce. This is only a guess, but I think I may be able to 'make more copies of myself' the same way.]

Great.

Now we were getting properly anomalous.

"I'd really like to object on a great many fronts, but let me ask this first. Why do you want to make more copies of yourself?"

[The reason is simple,] said the Saintess-potato.

[The number of awakened I'm accepting for counseling is growing far too rapidly.]

[I'm managing somehow with Time Stop, but honestly, it's getting harder and harder to focus on each individual. Even just now, when I was talking with Ms. Dang Seorin, I was actually counseling six people at once.]

"Ah."

[Besides, I'm playing other constellations as well as 'One Who Understands Anguish.' I'm overworked.]

[I believe making more copies of myself now and dividing the roles among us would make the work go much more smoothly.]

"..."

She... had a point!

The Saintess-potato-robot rose with a series of creaks, her legs still in the lotus position. Then she rested a slender mechanical arm on my shoulder.

[I considered trying to dice myself, but even I hesitated at cutting my own body into several pieces.]

[I want to entrust it to you, Mr. Undertaker.]

[Even looking like this, can I still be your comrade?]

The sly woman had even used a cheat code!

"Saintess. If dicing you actually ends your life..."

[Don't worry. Even if such a tragedy occurs, I will never blame you, Mr. Undertaker.]

What could I do when she went that far?

I drew Doha and approached the robot-potato-Saintess. Then I carefully made incisions, slicing her into pieces.

"Do you feel any pain?"

[No. None at all. The sensation is rather strange, but beyond that I detect nothing wrong.]

"That's a relief..."

Even as I said it, I wasn't sure. Was this really a relief? I had no idea either.

I moved the seed-potato pieces into the greenhouse and planted them separately. SwordEmpress had walked through that greenhouse, so the soil's quality was assured.

A few days later, the potatoes had successfully grown in the greenhouse. I put them in a basket and took them to Noh Doha.

"..."

Noh Doha gave me a silent glare.

Then, just as silently, he built identical robots for the remaining potatoes.

CREEEAK.

The squadron of five Saintess-potato-robots turned toward us and spoke in chorus.

[Thank] [you] [Mr. Undertaker] [and] [Mr. Noh Doha too] [I'm not sure] [which one] [is the true me] [No] [Every one of 'me'] [is the real me]

"..."

"..."

Noh Doha glanced at me.

"So, you aren't anomalies...?"

It was summer.