Chapter 178 - Diver X

12

Let us talk about bugs for a moment.

Chung.

A word meaning “bug.”

And a term of abuse.

Isn't that rather peculiar, when you think about it? Since ancient times, people have built their pyramid of life in the order of plants, animals, and humans. The farther down you went, the more you were treated as a low-level newbie in the ecosystem.

Yet never once in the history of human society have expressions like “you little tree bastard” or “you rice-seed son of a bitch” caught on as insults. At most, “weed” might be put forward as a candidate, but as the Korean word for the common people—literally “grass people”—shows, even that contains a measure of admiration for tenacious vitality.

If you still have doubts, just compare the nuances of “You're as hardy as a weed!” and “You're as hardy as a cockroach!”

Thus, in every age, the place reserved for the most contemptible creature has always belonged to the “bug.” The long history of contempt and persecution directed at bugs is neatly documented in any Korean dictionary.

-Someone who causes harm? Yep, a harmful bug. A pest.

-A useless loser who does nothing but eat and shit? Yep, an eating bug. A freeloader.

-Indecisive, with neither principles nor opinions? A bug without a backbone. A spineless bug.

-A psychopath like Yu Jiwon? A bug without blood or tears. A bloodless bug.

-An aspiring friend of the woodland nymph who merely echoes what others say? A bug that repeats other people's words. An echo bug.

What a dazzling lineup of insults. Even a tiger's alternate name was “great bug.” In other words, literally “that big bug bastard.”

(A posthumously honored Tang emperor happened to have the character meaning “tiger” in his name, so a new word was coined to avoid the naming taboo. A truly slapdash choice.)

In short, the ancients indiscriminately attached “bug” to any beast with legs. But it would be a mistake to trot out the “modern people are geniuses” theory and claim that people back then lacked the biological knowledge to distinguish bugs from mammals. The ancients simply understood, as well as modern people do, the truth that when you want to insult another being, adding “bug” to the end of a word is quite enough.

The lowliest creature. Contempt and disdain for life. The metaphor and symbol humans reached for most readily when they wished to curse something else. And therefore, the most basic spell.

Anyone, anything, could become a bug.

With the arrival of anomalies, humanity's status fell to that of bugs. Just as a dragonfly gliding through the air could be caught for an elementary school child's summer homework and have its wings torn off, a human strolling along a river could, at any moment, lose their limbs and face and be reduced to a potato.

How beautifully that dragonfly could fly, how noble that human had been—none of it mattered to an anomaly. What was so important about the fate of a single bug?

To regard a being as something whose manner of death did not matter, one first had to turn that being into a “bug.” That was how thorough the anomalies' language-based spells were.

But anomalies, too, could be somewhat hasty. As Chairman Netero pointed out, in every worldline, enemies bent on exterminating humanity made the same mistake. They grossly underestimated “humanity's bottomless malice.”

Indeed. If the law of anomalies was that when you gaze into the void, the void gazes back into you, then the stern principle of human history was this: when you treat someone as a bug, you must be prepared to be treated as a bug yourself.

13

GROOOOOOOOAR!

Leviathan howled.

Like a certain strongest dragon in history, Leviathan had a transparent body. It was also fucking overpowered, the strongest of all dragons. But what Leviathan faced now was neither a god, nor a demon, nor a Balrog, which copyright law prohibited using in the first place. Those were all, in any case, no different from the expendable goons in a Kamen Rider show, introduced with defeat already written into their fate.

The enemy of anomalies was always humanity, the slaughterer of Earth's ecosystem.

GROOOOOOOOOOOAR!

Thus, apart from rupturing the eardrums and corneas of a few awakened on the battlefield, Leviathan's howl accomplished nothing. As for Cheon Yohwa and me, who could be considered the awakened's representatives, we suffered no damage whatsoever.

The water bugs that had lunged at us as if ready to tear our limbs off stopped moving and began to scream. In fact, Leviathan's howl had not erupted from its mouth. It was closer to a discordant chorus spewed out in unison by the incalculable number of water bugs composing its body.

A death cry poured out through its entire body.

“Ugh, ngh! It's so loud...!”

“Don't stop! Keep reading <The Metamorphosis>, Yohwa! This is working!”

“Ah, ngh. O-okay!”

“Saintess! Please recite the German original as well, not just the Korean translation!”

[“Yes.”]

“Yohwa, it doesn't matter if you don't understand it. Just imitate the Saintess's pronunciation as closely as you can!”

“Y-yes!”

Originally, the Saintess had not spoken German. But over the past few years of study sessions with me, she had naturally found herself enrolled in a maestro-level German course. For the Saintess, who could read Kant's <Critique of Pure Reason> in German, Kafka was child's play. She and Cheon Yohwa continued reciting the powerful “bug spell.”

GRRRRRGH, GRRRRGH!

Leviathan's body was crumbling. The force that held together H₂O that could spill at any moment and swarms of bugs that could scatter at any moment in the “shape of a dragon” was rapidly weakening.

Cheon Yohwa and I were still floundering beneath the eyelid curtain made of aura, so we could not tell exactly what was happening. But merely watching the water bugs convulse and thrash was enough to tell us that we had discovered an effective strategy for defeating it.

[“Undertaker! It worked!”]

DRIP.

Rain fell.

[“The dragon's scales are falling off!”]

It was not rain falling from the sky. The dragon's membrane, its flesh, its organs, its cells—the water bugs composing all of them burst, one after another, and streamed down like rainwater.

RIBBIT.

RIBBIT RIBBIT RIBBIT RIBBIT.

RIBBIT, RIBBIT, RIBBIT RIBBIT.

The water bugs struggled desperately. Frogs were heralds of rain. Beings that foretold it and drew it in. Thus, the frogs loudly insisted that this rainfall remained entirely within their domain, that it was no unexpected development at all. But even if their croaking filled people's skulls, it was not enough to halt the collapse that had already begun.

RIB... BIT.

DRIP. DRIP.

I looked up. A couple of droplets struck my cheek. As always, those first few drops of drizzle were merely a preview of the downpour to come.

RIBBIT, RIBBIT.

PATTER-PATTER-PATTER.

Countless bugs burst apart.

The unprecedented typhoon that had once measured ten kilometers high and 1,200 kilometers across—the anomaly that had driven all of East Asia into terror of water—was pouring rain into the sea off Busan. That rain was Leviathan coughing up blood.

It was the sea dragon's corpse.

'We did it.'

There was no longer even any need to keep the eyelid blindfold over the anomaly. The dragon's eyes themselves were crumbling and sinking like whirlpools.

'We defeated it! The Great Monsoon! With so little damage—with truly minimal losses—we even discovered how to beat it!'

I was not the only one cheering. If anything, I was among the more restrained.

“It's going down! That bastard is going down!”

“Rescue the people in the sea first! They'll drown if they get caught in that rain!”

“Aaaaaah!”

“We won! We won!”

The Three Thousand Worlds members who had kept circling outside the typhoon on broomsticks, the Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School members who had fought atop the sea dragon's body, the awakened who had kept feeding aura into the arks all this time—I could vividly feel the breaths they released as they sensed victory.

“Teacher!”

Cheon Yohwa, apparently certain that it was over now, threw her exhausted body into an embrace.

“We survived!”

She had even considered dying together along the way, albeit half in jest, so it was hardly surprising that this victory sent dopamine flooding through her. I, too, gave her back several vigorous pats.

“You did wonderfully! Everything worked out because you struck the eye of the typhoon!”

“Ah, ah, ah—heehee. Yes!”

Cheon Yohwa giggled at my back-smacking. Even a single strand of orange hair plastered wetly to her cheek looked endearing.

And so we entered the happy ending's epilogue—if only I could say something so simple. In truth, there was one more scene I had to describe before proceeding to the aftermath. And I had never told anyone about it.

A secret I am finally revealing only in this tale.

At the time, apart from me—and, later, Oh Dokseo, who would overhear my secret—everyone believed that the Great Monsoon had been slain. That Leviathan had fallen thanks to Noah’s Ark, Lee Hayul's puppet strings, the awakened's supporting aura, Cheon Yohwa's assistance, and finally the spell employing “Painting a dragon and dotting its eyes” and “The Metamorphosis” that I, the Undertaker, had miraculously thought of.

But I saw it.

STEP.

As I watched the sea dragon's end with Cheon Yohwa clinging to me, a truly strange sight caught my eye. Go Yori was walking toward Leviathan as it was about to collapse into the sea.

No one noticed. Understandably so, for no one was moving, as though time had stopped.

“...”

I could not even move my lips. A sensation that made it difficult to distinguish dream from reality enveloped my consciousness.

STEP. STEP.

In a world where my gaze alone remained as observer and witness, Go Yori walked demurely along. She stepped on the water's surface as if it were perfectly natural. With each step, her lips moved slightly.

“You mustn't do that.”

A soft whisper. Strangely, her voice seemed to reach me not from far away but from right beside my ear—perhaps from inside my head. Yet the whisper was not directed at me. Go Yori was smiling brightly at Leviathan as it gradually scattered into raindrops.

“We respect one another's domains. Mr. Dragon, wasn't that our agreement? At least, that was how I understood it...”

Then something astonishing happened. In that seemingly frozen world—no, in that dreamlike atmosphere severed from the real world—the sea dragon responded.

GROOOOOOAR.

Leviathan replied not in human language, but through the gestures of an anomaly. The sea dragon's scales, which had until now been helplessly crumbling, suddenly sharpened again.

They blinked, blinked, blinked. Countless scales transformed into “eyes.”

“...!”

I recoiled without a sound.

Leviathan's body was no longer composed of beautiful, transparent scales. Like Argus of Greek mythology, every scale, from head to toe, was covered in eyes. As though, if humans sought to defeat it by covering its eyes, it need only create millions, tens of millions more.

Yes. Bosses had always been capable of multiple transformations. The typhoon form was Phase One. The sea dragon form was Phase Two. The Great Monsoon anomaly now intended to begin Phase Three.

'Are you telling me we have to defeat that thing all over again?'

Overwhelming horror dragged at the very feet of my consciousness.

Go Yori wore a slightly troubled smile.

“Really. I told you, you mustn't.”

With tens of millions of eyes watching her from right in front of her, Go Yori instead gently closed one eye. Then, shushing it, she brought a finger to her lips.

“It will merely take a little longer now. Your gamble failed. You couldn't accept everyone. Shouldn't you accept the outcome, then? No, I suppose there's no longer even any reason to address you as ‘you.’”

GROOOAR, GROOOOOAR.

“Quiet.”

A strange sound reverberated through this dreamlike world. It sounded like the cry of a beast, resembled the growl of a tiger, and also sounded like the countless laughs of innocent children. All the sounds mingled into an eerie echo.

'This is...'

Déjà vu struck me. A run from long ago. Wasn't this the very same sound I had heard on the night all the citizens of Daejeon vanished, in the run when I conducted my “experiment” pairing Yu Jiwon with Go Yori?

Go Yori whispered.

“Become one.”

At that moment, Leviathan's tens of millions of eyes melted.

No flowery language was necessary. Having revealed its true form at last, Leviathan melted and flowed away without struggling even once, as though it had been nothing more than a drop of water from the beginning. Its melting eyes mingled with the rain that had long been falling and vanished.

It was dead.

“...?”

Suddenly, Go Yori turned this way. When her eyes met mine, they widened in surprise. She moved to take a step toward me. But her toes immediately faltered.

“...”

Go Yori gazed down at the top of her foot for a long time. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I sensed a hint of perplexity. A moment later, a fresh smile colored her lips like paint.

“I see. This, too, is a matter of our respective domains.”

What did she mean?

Go Yori lightly gathered the sides of her long skirt and lifted them. Then she bowed gracefully, like an aristocrat in society.

“Please rest assured.”

“...”

“I will not touch you.”

PATTER-PATTER-PATTER.

The instant Go Yori finished speaking, the rain suspended in midair resumed its descent. The Great Monsoon's final rain was so dense that even Go Yori vanished behind the mist. The stopped time, the world overlaid with illusion, had begun to flow again.

“Waaaaaaaah!”

“I-it really died!”

“We killed it!”

The awakened's cheers, briefly suspended, swept across the sea off Busan. From their perspective, Leviathan had never entered Phase Three, nor had tens of millions of eyes blossomed. The sea dragon had merely turned into ordinary rain and poured down, and then finished pouring down. Nothing strange had occurred in between.

“Long live Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School! Long live Cheon Yohwa!”

“Long live Dang Seoriiiiin!”

“Thank you, constellations!”

“Undertaker! Undertaker! Undertaker!”

“...”

While everyone praised those who had distinguished themselves in the operation, I silently gazed beyond the sea mist.

The rain that had seemed as if it would continue forever subsided. The mist settled, too. On the coast, after the sea dragon's corpse had received its burial at sea, Go Yori was nowhere to be seen.

“Saintess.”

[“Yes.”]

“Did you happen to see that just now?”

[“Pardon? What do you mean by ‘that’?”]

“... It's nothing. Thank you for all your hard work again.”

I firmly stroked the back of Cheon Yohwa's head as she continued clinging to me like a koala. The arks' decks opened, and the people who had been confined inside for nearly ten days began emerging. The cheers across the sea grew louder still. Yet for a while, it was the fruity scent of apples, rather than the smell of saltwater, that lingered beneath my nose.

Anomaly: Great Monsoon

Aliases: Leviathan, Water Bug, Sea Dragon, White Dragon, Frog Dragon, Frog Rain, Jormungandr, Eye of the Typhoon, Argus

Threat Level: Lv.4 Ocean-class (Five Oceans)

Patterns: Phase One “Typhoon,” Phase Two “Sea Dragon,” Phase Three “Reverse Scales Open Their Eyes”

Estimated Damage If Not Defeated: Japanese archipelago sinks, Korean Peninsula submerged, Chinese mainland flooded

Defeat complete.

14

There is an epilogue. Having discovered how to defeat the Great Monsoon through all manner of hands-on struggles, I completed far more meticulous and thorough preparations the following run's summer.

“From now on, your name is Noah.”

“Are you serious...?”

Naturally, Noh Doha was renamed Noah in this run as well. The arks were sturdier. This time, rather than taking Lee Hayul free diving inside the typhoon, I securely bound the ark fleet together with puppet strings from the outset. I even had the Saintess and Cheon Yohwa memorize the German original of <The Metamorphosis>.

We were fully prepared in every sense.

'This time, I'll defeat you in a single day! Come on, then! Great Monsoon!'

It did not come.

“...?”

No matter how long we waited, not even an ordinary monsoon made landfall, let alone the Great Monsoon. The sea off Busan was peaceful, filled with the arias of seagulls.

“Huh?”

Frowns rained down on me.

Noh Doha, who had invested funds and manpower in building arks on Geumjeongsan; the passengers who had solemnly boarded them; Cheon Yohwa, who had struggled to memorize German; and everyone else. They all looked at me the way people looked at the Korea Meteorological Administration. In their eyes, regressor coin was entering a bear market and crashing hard.

“Uh... Shall we wait a few more days?”

It still did not come.

“...”

“Hey. Mr. Regressor. You wanna fucking die...?”

Noh Doha ripped off the nameplate reading “Noah” and threw it at me. A strike right through my heart.

'No, this can't be right.'

But the Great Monsoon really had vanished without a trace. I personally took a flying boat all the way to the North Pacific, yet found no sign whatsoever of the anomalous typhoon forming.

The Great Monsoon did not appear in later runs, either. Never again was Busan swept away by a tsunami and forced to begin reconstruction. Wasn't that enough to baffle even a ghost?

[“Undertaker.”]

However, another being appeared in the sea off Busan every summer instead.

[“The ‘pink entity’ you warned me to be careful of last time has appeared in Haeundae.”]

“Pardon?”

[“Don't worry. I haven't used Clairvoyance on it. I'm cautiously observing it through the eyes of another awakened in Haeundae.”]

Go Yori. Whenever monsoon season approached, she invariably appeared by the sea in Busan.

“What on earth is she doing there?”

[“Outwardly, I haven't detected any unusual signs. She's taken off her shoes to splash in the water, and she's strolling along the beach alone.”]

[“Oh, now she's crouching down and playing in the sand.”]

I furrowed my brows.

“... Playing in the sand?”

[“Yes. You know the song, ‘Toad, toad, I'll give you an old house, give me a new one’? She's singing it while repeatedly building and demolishing sand houses. She looks very happy.”]

[“What should we do, Undertaker? Leave her alone? Or intervene using other awakened?”]

“...”

I remained silent for a long time. My neck still throbbed where Noh Doha had strangled me.

“... No. Leave her alone.”

[“Are you sure?”]

“Yes. There's no need to disturb a sleeping tiger.”

According to the Saintess's report, Go Yori spent about sixty minutes on Haeundae Beach before abruptly returning to Daejeon. After waiting until the pink entity was well clear of Busan, I immediately visited Haeundae to inspect the very spot where she had played in the sand.

At the precarious boundary between sea and land, where the waves barely reached, these words were written in sand so wet it had turned the color of soil:

-Grrrowr!

Seriously. What on earth did it mean? Perhaps she had left this little prank knowing I would come—I was shaking my head at the thought when it happened.

My gaze suddenly caught on the shore beneath the waves as well. “Characters” were written there.

Tiger.

The character meaning tiger.

“...”

Even if something had been written there, it should have long since been submerged by the waves, its grains of sand washed away. Yet somehow, the underwater bottom was densely engraved with characters.

It was not merely a few characters that had happened to survive the waves. Tiny as bugs, the characters stretched endlessly beyond the horizon.

Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger Tiger.

“...”

As I barely managed to begin opening my mouth, a clear wave swept across the beach. Then every character that had unmistakably covered the seabed into the unfathomable distance vanished without a trace.

-Grrrowr!

Only that sound, which Go Yori must have playfully written, remained at my feet.

“...”

Hmm.

... It was autumn.

-Diver. End.