Chapter 2 - Companion II

The same thing happened again in runs twenty-four and twenty-five. I had to experience no fewer than three timelines in which Old Man Scho was dead.

The only difference from the other runs was whether or not I had a single companion. Yet the difficulty felt five or six times greater. It brought home just how much I had been relying on Old Man Scho in so many ways.

At last, the twenty-sixth run.

“I'm sorry.”

Old Man Scho handed me a coffee the moment he saw my face.

There was a café in the former Baekje Hospital building. Apparently anticipating that I would come running, he had commandeered the deserted café and even brewed some coffee.

The café au lait he made was genuinely delicious. Had it been the eleventh run? He must have owed his skill to the barista who taught him back then.

“Look up, old man.”

I spoke in German. By the twenty-sixth run, even I could manage a little eloquence in a foreign language.

“Do you forgive me?”

“Seven, seven, seven.”

“...?”

“Do you know what those numbers mean?”

“... A casino slot-machine jackpot?”

“No. They're the years I lasted in each run without you. Twenty-one years altogether. Fuck, it's been over twenty years since I saw you. I'm starting to forget your face. Let's look at each other when we talk.”

“...”

Old Man Scho seemed at a loss for an answer.

I sat opposite him and drank my coffee. At this point, you could walk into any café and loot its coffee beans, but by year five, there were none left to drink.

For someone who had just lived seven years and died in the previous run, it was naturally a welcome luxury. Drinking real café au lait for the first time in ages, rather than an imitation cobbled together by alchemists, was a pleasure like no other.

Regression wasn't all bad, as this showed. Coffee. Draft beer. Cigarettes. Friends and companions who hadn't died yet... Being able to experience them all again, alive and vivid, meant a great deal to me.

“Twenty-one years... How strange. From my perspective, it hasn't even been an hour since I last saw you.”

Apparently, Old Man Scho didn't feel the same way. More precisely, the most precious thing was missing from his list of things he could experience again, alive and vivid.

“But I understand. I haven't seen my wife's face in over a hundred years either. I know exactly how it feels.”

“...”

“I can see her face in photographs. I can hear her voice by replaying the few videos I've saved. But even so, there's something inside me like a dry well that never fills.”

My ominous premonition proved right.

If this had been like any other regression story, Old Man Scho would have held himself together, I would have discovered some miraculous solution within the time limit, and the elderly couple might have reunited across more than a century.

“I want to see my wife in person.”

But as I said, my story wasn't a tale of success. It was merely an epilogue to a series of failures.

Old Man Scho's mind had crumbled. He had taken his own life three times to speak to his wife for less than thirty seconds. I had no way to save him.

“You understand me, don't you? You, at least. So use your ability on me—”

“No.”

I refused firmly.

Just as Old Man Scho possessed a natural talent for swordsmanship, I had several abilities besides regression. There would be opportunities to explain them one by one.

The one he had just mentioned was Time Seal. And I had absolutely no intention of using it on the companion sitting before me.

“You know what happens, old man. Once your time is sealed, that's it. It's over. No matter how many times we regress, the seal won't break.”

“Yes. But at least I could speak to my wife in a dream.”

“You'd only repeat the same day forever.”

“How the hell is that any different from our situation now?”

This time, I was the one at a loss for an answer.

“... Still, I can't. I can't lose my strongest ally like this.”

“Then let's do this.”

Had he anticipated my response? The moment I rejected plan A, Old Man Scho presented plan B.

“Keep trying as many times as it takes to find a solution. Until you can save the people in Seoul within one minute of regressing. Or until you admit it's all impossible and give up, like me.”

“What about you?”

“I'm tired. Truly... utterly exhausted. So until you reach a conclusion, I'll rest for a little while.”

That night, Old Man Scho took his own life. That was the “rest” he had spoken of.

“... My God.”

As an awakened who had reached the realm of the Sword Star, Old Man Scho could easily blow his own head apart with a simple burst of aura. It must have been a painless death.

Nothing changed in runs twenty-seven, twenty-eight, or twenty-nine. Old Man Scho was found dead on the rooftop of the café building that had once housed a hospital.

Whenever I visited the café after clearing the dungeon at Busan Station, a cup of café au lait was always breathing warm steam on the table where we had talked. Beneath the cup lay a note.

-Isn't it about time you gave up, my friend?

I smiled bitterly.

“... I've somehow become a regular at a café I visit once every ten years.”

I tried imagining my comrade's life.

For Old Man Scho, a lifetime now must have consisted of roughly ten to twenty seconds on the phone with his wife, followed by ten minutes making café au lait for the old companion who would come looking for him.

That repetition had not changed even now, with the twenty-ninth regression long since giving way to the 1,183rd. One corpse on the rooftop. One cup of café au lait on the table.

I couldn't say which regressor was crazier: the one who repeated his life over a thousand times without taking it even once, or the one who relentlessly took his own life over a thousand times.

There was one thing that changed as the runs accumulated, though: the conversations between Old Man Scho and his wife.

「My God! You've finally answered!」

「Emit? What's going on? I'm at the conference—」

「I love you. Adele. I love you. I'll love you forever.」

Was it so he could listen to the call over and over before ending his brief life? Old Man Scho always recorded his conversations with his wife. Thanks to that, I could listen in on what the elderly couple had said each time.

「I love you, Adele... I love you.」

For the first ten or so regressions, little changed. Old Man Scho desperately devoted all his efforts to conveying his love to his wife.

But after the thirtieth run, the conversations began to change little by little.

「Adele, the truth is, I'm repeating my life. The world is going to end. But I still love you.」

「Good heavens. Have you been drinking? Why are you acting like a child? Hm? Wait, Emit. There's a strange noise in the sky—」

Regression.

「Do you remember? Turin, twenty years ago. I went under that bridge and picked you some yellow flowers. What were those flowers called?」

「What? You called me now just to ask that?」

「Please answer me, Adele. I'll die if you don't tell me.」

Regression.

「Sorry. What was your younger brother's name again?」

「Maximilian, but why—」

「Ah! Right! Maximilian! Haha, I'd forgotten! Thank you!」

「Oh... You're impossible. Huh? There's a noise in the sky—」

It was a curious thing. As the regressions continued, Old Man Scho's calls with his wife gradually shifted from one-sided declarations into something more like, well, genuine conversations.

Of course, each call lasted twenty seconds at most before being cut off. But strung together, they really seemed to constitute a conversation.

「I've never liked that bastard Maximilian.」

「What? Where did that come from?」

「He doesn't value family at all! His whole attitude is rotten. He only pretends to listen when you're around.」

「Emit? Wait. Something's wrong. There's a noise in the sky—」

「Darling, remember that Christmas? Your brother brought someone along and introduced her as his girlfriend. Answer me honestly. That boy Maximilian is actually gay, isn't he?」

「What? Where did that come from? Why would you call me now just to ask— Wait, Emit. Something's wrong. I hear a noise in the sky.」

「I knew it! My instincts are never wrong. Adele. Your brother really was gay!」

「My God! Emit, what are you talking about all of a sudden?」

「No, I have no prejudice whatsoever. I'm just hurt that you and your brother kept it a secret all this time, as though you'd decided I couldn't possibly accept something like that.」

「This is driving me mad. What are you— Wait, hold on. Let's talk about this in person later! There's a strange noise in the sky.」

「Adele. We need to be a little more open-minded with each other! I'm not a narrow-minded old man like your father!」

If you overlooked the fact that the elderly couple's lives were “paused” at intervals, what they were having was a two-way conversation by any measure.

“You had a point, old man.”

In the end, I had to admit it. Just as Old Man Scho had said, this truly was a “rest.”

With each successive run, as the conversation grew longer, his voice became livelier, and memories of the past he had long since forgotten returned. Now even the fact that this world would end seemed to matter little to him.

And yet Old Man Scho never stopped taking his own life. No, to describe it from his perspective—he never stopped talking to his wife.

Eventually, around the five-hundredth run, I stopped listening in on his calls. They were becoming so intimate that an outsider had no business snooping on them.

I assure you, I had absolutely no desire to learn the old man's sexual preferences.

He probably couldn't even imagine that I had been listening to every word of his calls.

But I never failed to stop by the building for a café au lait at the beginning of each run.

Emit Schopenhauer. A companion who had been with me “briefly” in a past that was now unimaginably distant.

The café au lait he made had become something of a ritual for me—a rite of passage that strengthened my resolve: right, let's give this run our best too.

That remained true even now, on my 1,183rd regression. There was still a note beneath the coffee cup.

-Still haven't given up, my friend?

Well. To be honest, I had.

But I didn't want to meekly confess that to this young brat (by now, I was overwhelmingly older than him). Sure, I'd tell him someday, but for the moment, I wanted to be spiteful.

I'd spent thousands of years alone. Surely I was entitled to this much spite.

'... Come to think of it, what is he talking about with his wife these days?'

Curiosity suddenly struck me. For the first time in a very long while, I decided to retrieve Old Man Scho's smartphone and listen to the recorded call.

When I pressed the play button, his characteristically lively voice burst out.

「Darling! I tell you every day, if you're going to drink lemon-lime soda, make it sugar-free! Sugar is bad for your health!」

「What?」

I took a sip of café au lait as their argument filled the café like background music.

It was delicious coffee.

- Companion. End.