Chapter 207 - The Antipode IV

7

We were not rattled by the enemy's offensive—an anomaly we suspected was probably God of Alienation-class.

And not just me. The entire Regression Alliance, the power behind the scenes that currently held an oligopoly on power across the Korean Peninsula, remained unperturbed.

Of course we did.

"Another virus?"

"Those anomaly bastards have no imagination. Apparently they don't know how to fuck humanity over with anything besides goddamn epidemics..."

"So are they stronger than COVID?"

Exactly.

The Korean Peninsula had accumulated far too much experience to start freaking out over an epidemic and wailing about the end of the world now.

Through Constellation Talk, SG Net, and other channels, we issued an announcement along the lines of: "An unidentified virus is currently spreading. Citizens are asked to respond with their usual expertise."

The citizens responded swiftly, too. Keeping their distance, isolating neighborhoods by district, creating and sharing schedules to keep their routes from overlapping, and so on.

But this particular "regression virus" was different enough to make a mockery of the peninsula's long-established epidemic-control practices.

"And how, exactly, do you expect us to stop symptoms that spread through dreams...?"

Noh Doha's remark neatly summed up the difficulty.

"With diseases that spread in reality, we can at least think of something—quarantine them, beat the shit out of them, whatever. But with this, isn't infection determined entirely by whether I appear in the dream of someone you've put under [Time Seal]...?"

"For now, I've spoken to the tutorial fairies and dispatched them into the dreams of people showing symptoms."

"And those squeal dispensers can stop diseases...?"

"No. Buying time is probably the best they can do."

In short, quarantine was impossible.

However cool and composed the peninsula's leadership might be, the situation itself was burning hot.

Unless their mastery of aura had reached its absolute pinnacle, people could not go without sleep for long.

Everyone fell asleep. Everyone became infected through dreams.

The uproar on SG Net after just a single day made the severity of the situation plain.

-Anonymous: [Epidemic] I'm losing it; every time I close my eyes, I keep seeing how I died in previous runs

-Anonymous: [Epidemic] The world repeats, and this life is merely one of countless copies

-Anonymous: [Epidemic] Members who aren't sick yet, read this for reference.txt

-Anonymous: [Epidemic] This is hell

Pleas from infected people kept pouring in.

I met with some of them in person for interviews.

Their accounts of the "symptoms of the regression virus" were largely consistent.

"Th-the world is repeating! I'm certain! Look! Even this scene, me talking to you right now—I know it's happened before!"

Symptom one: intense déjà vu.

Mild symptoms amounted to a faint sense of déjà vu, but that feeling intensified as the disease grew worse.

"Please calm down. We've never met before. Even if there were such things as previous runs, the two of us have never had a conversation like this."

"N-no. You just haven't realized it yet. Yes. You're only acting so relaxed because you haven't realized the world is repeating!"

"..."

Never in all my life had I imagined someone would lecture me about regression.

As I entertained that novel yet peculiar feeling, the patient trembled and bit their nails. Their eyes were already unfocused.

"That expression on your face... Those eyes, too. I've seen them all before. It's all pointless. We're going to die again. Repeat again. Live the same life again, as though nothing happened... No, I don't want to die. I don't want to live..."

"Hmm."

Symptom two: extreme fear of regression.

Considering that most people wanted to become regressors and coast through life on easy mode, symptom two was exceedingly strange.

In fact, this trait stemmed from symptom one.

If you actually became a regressor from a work of fiction, you would enjoy carving out a path completely different from your previous life.

But the regression virus was different.

The most vicious part of this epidemic was that it made you feel everything you thought and did had already been "repeated thousands, tens of thousands of times."

It did not matter how novel your chosen action seemed.

Even when playing a newly released game or reading a new novel posted by an author they truly loved, patients felt they had experienced it all countless times before.

Without exception. Regardless of any choice they made, overwhelming déjà vu descended upon them.

In other words:

'Perhaps it would be more accurate to call this a déjà vu virus than a regression virus.'

Above all, this did not actually make them aware of regression the way I was.

One patient, for instance, pointed at me the moment they saw me during our interview.

"Undertaker? Weren't you... a woman?"

"Pardon?"

"Why are you a man in this run? Oh. Right. Yes, there were plenty of runs where you were a man, too."

Utter bullshit.

This was the regression virus's third characteristic.

In short, rather than granting actual awareness of regression, it merely gave patients the delusion that they had regressed countless times.

Even when pressed about the events they had experienced in past runs, patients could only list inaccurate information.

Asked about the future, they merely rambled.

But we could not let our guard down just because it was pure delusion.

When I came out after finishing the interviews, Noh Doha was standing against a wall.

She looked at me.

"As of today, we've found 136 people who killed themselves. The number we haven't found will be much higher..."

"..."

"People who catch the virus fall into one of two groups. Either they become extremely violent, or they complain of severe lethargy. The former kill others, the latter kill themselves. What kind of fucking idiotic disease is this...?"

Noh Doha tugged her black leather glove tight.

Under the dim light, the long outlines of her five fingers stood out clearly as the leather tightened around them.

"So, what do you intend to do...?"

Noh Doha's question carried two meanings.

One, naturally, was a genuine question about what we would do.

However uncanny the tutorial fairies' abilities, protecting every patient's dreams was difficult. The day when all three million or so survivors left on the peninsula saw their symptoms worsen was probably not far off.

The other, hidden meaning was:

'Will you give up on this run?'

For now, the Regression Alliance members' symptoms were relatively mild, but they would probably grow rapidly more severe within days.

Then I might be forced to witness people I cherished murder someone or take their own lives.

'If you don't want to see that shit, I could kill you.'

As she had several times before.

In certain runs I have not bothered to disclose, I had indeed sometimes been killed by Noh Doha in this fashion.

"We must not surrender."

But not this time.

"This isn't the kind of anomaly that becomes easier to defeat if I start a new run. It's closer to the exact opposite."

"The exact opposite...?"

"The hosts of this epidemic are none other than the dreams of the people I erased with [Time Seal]. And [Time Seal] is immune to changes in runs. However many times I regress, the crystal gravestones containing sealed time remain exactly where they are."

Noh Doha's eyes widened slightly.

"Even if you regress, the epidemic will remain inside those gravestones...?"

"Yes. Probably."

I nodded.

"There's even a possibility that the regression virus itself didn't suddenly emerge in this run. It may have been steadily accumulating and mutating ever since the crystal gravestones appeared—in other words, since run four—and only erupted in this run."

"Which run did you say this was...?"

"Run 267."

"Fucking hell..."

Exactly.

If my hypothesis was correct, the "virus" had found the only safe zone that persisted continuously in this world of repeated runs.

The interior of [Time Seal].

A point a regressor could never alter, no matter how desperately they struggled. A point of no return.

Just as the pink entity named Go Yori had, for that very reason, coiled herself deep down in my unconscious...

The virus, too, had firmly established its own Maginot Line against my regression.

"Seriously, if you're a regressor and regression is useless, what's the point of your existence? Your halfway-decent face and dead-fish eyes...?"

"I make good coffee."

"Don't need it...?"

"I bestow the peninsula's power, prestige, and money on an assistive-device technician who used to be a grade-seven civil servant."

"Fuck. I really don't fucking need that...?"

"I can mediate when Dang Seorin and Cheon Yohwa fight. Not just anyone can do that."

"They wouldn't have anything to fight about if you weren't around, you fuck..."

"Hweeeek!"

The person—or rather, being—who interrupted Noh Doha's endless parade of venom was, surprisingly, the tutorial fairy.

Fairy No. 264 popped into existence in midair and made a fuss, waving its wand wildly.

"Comrade General Secretary! Trouble! Big trouble!"

"What? Did you run out of Cheonhajangsa sausages?"

"It isn't quite that terrible, but this is still a very serious situation...!"

First, I tossed one of the sausages to the fairy addicted to them.

Fairy No. 264 happily munched on the apricot-colored sausage without even removing its wrapper. To put tutorial fairies to work, you had to manage their loyalty as naturally as breathing.

"Hweh! While we were keeping a close watch on the carriers' dreams, as you ordered, Comrade General Secretary...! We discovered something astonishing, we did!"

"What is it?"

"Seeing once is better than hearing a hundred times! Field inspections are a core duty of Communist Party officials! Comrade General Secretary, come along!"

8

Any place a fairy might invite me to would be either a tutorial dungeon or a dream.

Since every tutorial dungeon on the peninsula had closed down, our meeting place naturally became a carrier's dream—specifically, the illusory realm of the soccer player Kim Jucheol.

"Under your strict orders, Comrade General Secretary, we've been taking especially good care of this human's dream!"

The fairy fluttered about.

On my previous visit, rioters had roamed the entire neighborhood holding a festival of arson. Now it was quite peaceful.

The stadium was intact, too.

The spectators and soccer players alike were all fast asleep, with "zzz..." speech bubbles drifting above them.

This was the power of the dream demons, specialists in the world of dreams.

"Here's the method we devised to stop the symptoms from getting worse! First we put every inhabitant of this world to sleep, then entered their dreams and put them to sleep again, then entered the dreams inside those dreams and put them to sleep yet again!"

"... That's similar to the method for entering the unconscious world."

"Hweeh! Exactly! As expected of our Comrade General Secretary!"

The fairy buzzed excitedly through the air.

"If you keep dropping an ordinary human into dreams within dreams, their shapes get so distorted and transformed that you can hardly call them dreams anymore! The space where the virus can run wild melts away, dripping like candle wax! That's how we've been carrying out epidemic control!"

Oh, incidentally, it was possible to leave tutorial fairies inside [Time Seal] unattended.

A human abandoned like that would disappear forever, but for some reason, tutorial fairies could enter and leave relatively freely as long as I gave them "permission."

When I asked how that was possible, they said:

["Hweh! You call this place a graveyard, Comrade General Secretary, but to us it doesn't feel very different from a dream!"]

Fairy senses truly were mysterious.

"But here, here! Come into the dream of the entity named Kim Jucheol with me!"

I did.

Kim Jucheol was sleeping soundly in the middle of the soccer field's grass. I took the fairy's hand and entered his dream—after hearing that bizarre lullaby yet again.

Then:

"Did you watch the Olympics yesterday?"

"Everyone! Believe in the goddess! Believe in the goddess and live in heaven!"

HOOOONK!

"Seriously, Dad. I told you not to talk about politics!"

A teeming crowd.

Countless pedestrians walked busily to and fro, chatting away.

It had been so long since I'd seen it in reality that I had forgotten, but when I recalled it later, that was the scene outside Seoul Station.

"Where is this...?"

People walking around using smartphones. Cars honking on the road. University students climbing the steps of Seoul Station.

A scene that made me think: perhaps this was what everyday human life looked like before the world ended.

"... Is this really Kim Jucheol's dream?"

I meant no disrespect to Kim Jucheol himself.

As the fairy had explained before we entered, the unconscious could not produce such an "intricate and coherent" scene.

Even for me, with my [Perfect Recall], a vast desert stretched out the moment I stepped outside Busan Station in the unconscious world.

But what about this place?

Everything felt far too real to be a mere illusion conjured by Kim Jucheol's unconscious.

Even the acrid smell of exhaust drifting from the asphalt road had a distinct texture.

It rivaled reality. No.

It was exactly like reality.

"Hweh! It's very difficult to define whether this is a dream, but for now we're defining it as the [Reverse World]! One thing is certain!"

"What's that?"

"The Reverse World is as large as the Korean Peninsula, and it's still expanding in real time! With a little more effort, it can beat the real world! You can do it!"

The fairy spoke.

"And it isn't just the entity named Kim Jucheol! Pick pretty much anyone, and they're connected to this place!"

"... What?"

"Everyone infected by the virus in the real world—every last one of them—has been abducted into this Reverse World!"