Chapter 216 - A Person Without Ties II

3

The Undertaker of run 1, whom I myself—the person in question—could not remember at all.

For convenience, I would call him the Original Undertaker, Undertaker: The Beginning, or Undertaker the First.

"Teacher. You said you were making it easier to refer to him, but haven't you just made it sound really grand...?"

The person who chided me wore her orange hair in a ponytail. Her outfit was a white sailor uniform. Her signature accessory: Jordan basketball shoes.

Why hide it? She was Cheon Yohwa, Student Council President of Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School, the VIP specially invited for this Original Undertaker hidden-picture hunt.

"Anyway, I desperately need your help to reconstruct the Original Undertaker, Yohwa. To be precise, I need Gapless's assistance."

"Eww."

Cheon Yohwa looked openly displeased. One curious thing about this girl was that her facial muscles could be this honest without particularly hurting the other person's feelings.

"Gapless? Why that thing?"

"The Undertaker Origin who appears in other people's dreams is, how should I put it... low-resolution."

I personally took Cheon Yohwa through several dreams and showed her the blurry silhouettes presumed to be the Original Undertaker.

"Oh! You're right. It's like, what's the word? A really old black-and-white photo that hasn't been restored."

"Right?"

"Yes! But even with this crappy resolution, you can tell he's suuuuper cute! So you wore a furry hat when you were little, Teacher. Heh. Hehehe."

Cheon Yohwa had been slightly appalled to hear she'd been summoned because of Gapless, but the instant she saw my childhood self in person, her mood brightened as though she'd never been upset.

She made a racket of "Wow! Wooow!" as she inspected my silhouette from front, back, left, and right, savoring and scrutinizing it from every angle.

I cleared my throat.

"... For now, we've found thirteen dreams in total featuring the Original Undertaker. This dream has the youngest version of him. Generally, the Original Undertaker appearing in these dreams is younger than college age."

"Ooh. Look at those cheeks! He's so, so cute! Teacher, Teacher. Can't we take a video in a dream and save it somehow?"

"You're planning to rub it in Dang Seorin's face, aren't you? Please restrain yourself."

"Aww."

Cheon Yohwa's cheeks evolved into a hamster's.

"Anyway, call Gapless out for a moment. I'm going to try restoring the resolution using the data Gapless has built up in the world."

"Hmm... I hate loosening that bastard's leash even a little, but, well. If that's the price of seeing you as a child in person... All right. Just give me a moment!"

Cheon Yohwa closed her eyes.

Then, smoothly, the hair tie holding her ponytail came undone. Her orange hair spilled down.

A blink.

Her eyes reappeared between the strands of hair. The boundaries between pupil and iris had suddenly vanished. Only a dark, deep red stared back at me.

"Hi, senior."

The red wells narrowed slightly, spilling amusement.

"It's been a while. Did you miss me?"

"It has. Let's not pretend we're close."

"Oh? But you're the one holding my hand right now, not the other way around."

That was true.

Whether in a void or a dream, it was best for traveling companions to hold hands so they wouldn't lose one another.

I snorted and let go. Cheon Yohwa—or rather, Gapless, the God of Alienation imprisoned with Cheon Yohwa's outward form as its sealing vessel—shrugged.

"You're so cold. Whatever you might think, I fell for your scheme and was formed from this girl's personality, you know? It hurts to be treated this way by someone I like."

"Thank you. I'll express my indifference more actively from now on. Getting to the point, you know why you were called out, don't you?"

"Yes. I've been watching the whole time."

Gapless tapped its lips.

"But even I can't easily wield the power I had in my prime. Just listing the seals you've put on me, there's [Doppelganger], [Split Personality], and [Enemies Who Weaken When They Join the Party]. That's three already, isn't it?"

"You brought it on yourself."

"Come on. Whatever else you might say, [Split Personality] was entirely your scheme. Give this girl a new name, thereby demoting me to a mere second personality. Only someone like you could dream up a strategy that vicious."

"..."

"Of course, I'm not particularly unhappy with my current state. You know how they say it's better to get dumber than smarter if you want to be happy? Self-awareness is fun in its own way."

I sighed.

"Gathering data on my childhood should interest you as a God of Alienation, too. So cooperate with me."

"Oh. That's true. Sure, all right."

The agreement came more readily than I'd expected.

With the fingertip that had been stroking its lips, Gapless lightly touched the Original Undertaker's furry hat.

BZZZZZT

The surroundings filled with noise in an instant.

The faces of pedestrians passing the supermarket and the sizes of the streetlights lining the road were changing. Fine blood vessels sprouted on the trunks of the roadside trees.

"Just a moment. Whew. This didn't happen back when I used to boss the dream demons around as my minions. It's a little difficult thanks to a certain someone."

"Shall I make it more difficult?"

"No, thank you. Oh, there we go. This is the limit."

As it spoke, the details in the scenery sprang to life, as vivid as reality.

Only the colors were a little murky, perhaps. It felt as though a brown-toned filter had been laid over everything.

The childhood Undertaker's face, previously no more than an indistinct silhouette, became perfectly clear as well.

"..."

It was an ordinary child's face.

Apart from his rather large, oddly shaped furry hat, the little boy had almost no distinguishing features. An elementary-school boy.

He hadn't the slightest inkling that a destiny spanning thousands upon tens of thousands of years awaited him.

"... Is this really me?"

"Who knows? That's what the dream demons said, right? They must have at least done a rough check of his real name and identifying information."

"Hmm."

"If you really don't trust them, you could let me access the dream demons' data for a moment. I'll check it myself."

I ignored that bullshit.

"More importantly."

"Yes?"

"The woman walking hand in hand with this boy. She looks like my family—my mother, most likely."

The elementary-school boy was walking along briskly, holding his mother's hand. So after checking the Original Undertaker's appearance, I intended to identify his mother's face right away.

That had been my intention.

"Why can't I see her face?"

There was no face.

More precisely, for some reason the "noise" Gapless had spread to restore the dream's resolution hadn't disappeared from my mother's face.

In the center of the noise floated the words [404 - Not Found]. Presumably Gapless had put them there.

"Hm?"

Gapless tilted its head at my question.

At some point, it had perched on the railing along the walkway and was swinging its legs back and forth.

"Are you asking because you're genuinely curious, senior? You already had a suspicion, didn't you?"

"..."

"She disappeared through [Time Seal]. There's no data on her. Actually, her clothes should be covered in noise too, not just her face, but I roughly pieced them together in Photoshop."

So that was it after all.

I wasn't particularly disappointed anew. What reason was there to grieve the loss of memories that no longer even existed?

"Understood. Then let's move on to the next dream."

"Yes, my dear senior."

Using Gapless, I drew closer and closer to the Original Undertaker.

Beyond the thirteen dreams we'd already found, I identified new figures in the dreams whose resolution we'd successfully restored, then unearthed their dreams as well.

For the first dream's owner, the Original Undertaker was nothing more or less than an extra passing a distant storefront.

But as I traced the relationships within the dreams one by one, the Original Undertaker came to occupy a position "closer" to the dream's owner.

"A customer who came to the shop and ate hamburgers with his friends" → "A child from the same apartment complex who joined in a snowball fight" → "A student in the next classroom when I became a third-grade homeroom teacher" → "Not a close friend, but a friend of a friend we sometimes hung out with"...

However.

"Hm?"

Just as we were about to advance from "friend of a friend" to "close friend," Gapless faltered, as though it had caught on something.

"Senior. This one's been deleted, too."

"Deleted... You mean subjected to [Time Seal]?"

"Yes. Look. Your high-school friend."

The friend walking home from school beside the Original Undertaker was rendered in noise, just like my mother.

Unlike my mother, this time not only the face but the whole body crackled with noise. Gapless had been too lazy to bother with that considerate touch.

In a space every bit as vivid as reality, an unnatural label floated only where the friend stood:

[404 - Not Found]

In effect, the Original Undertaker wasn't walking home from school with a friend.

To anyone watching, he might as well have been laughing and talking to himself while looking at "empty air."

"Hmmm."

"..."

"Somehow, I think I know what's going to happen next."

The same thing repeated over and over.

Whatever route I chose, I could reach a "friend of a friend," an "acquaintance of an acquaintance," or a "neighbor's neighbor."

But every time I tried to take that crucial final step, a [404] error occurred.

No matter how meticulously I restored the dreams, no matter which chain of relationships I followed, the result remained unchanged. At the final step, the Original Undertaker was smiling at "empty air."

In other words.

"Wow. You really were thorough about getting rid of everyone around you, senior. How did you manage that?"

It was impossible to approach the Original Undertaker beyond a certain boundary.

He had no family. No relatives. No friends. No acquaintances.

Only remnants of relationships that could just barely be classified as "extras" remained, like vestigial organs.

Turn that around, and it meant that to the people of this world, too, the Original Undertaker was nothing more than an extra.

No bonds.

No ties.

A person without ties.

He wasn't merely a person without ties in the legal sense. Truly, objectively, the being called "the Undertaker of run 1" had been excluded from the web of human relationships on earth.

So completely that one could only marvel at how such a "perfect extra" could exist.

"Ah. Ahh. I see. So that's why my power was especially ineffective against you when I was a God of Alienation."

A hospital corridor.

Cheon Yohwa stood leaning against the wall as scattered patients wandered through the corridor.

This was presumed to be the place where my birth mother had worked. Of course, it hadn't provided much information.

I'd inferred that my mother had been a nurse, but here, too, a [404] error had blocked my way.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I was an anomaly of data governing all matter, remember? But compared with other humans, you effectively have no data at all. From my perspective, that makes your behavioral patterns difficult to calculate."

"Hmm."

"And on top of that, that weapon you carry... Doha, was it? It feels similar, too. Seriously, this is a terrible matchup. Isn't that cheating?"

I stood beside Gapless in the hospital corridor. Arms folded, I murmured,

"... Something is a little strange."

"Hm? What is?"

"If I truly erased my relationships this thoroughly through [Time Seal], crystal gravestones belonging to those people should exist here and there."

"Crystal gravestones...? Oh, those things only you can see, which no one can enter without your permission?"

I nodded.

"I've searched almost all the crystal gravestones on the Korean Peninsula, but none of them belonged to my family, my friends, or my acquaintances. Isn't that a little strange? Having searched this far, at least one should have turned up."

"Hmmm..."

"And it's strange in the first place that I have no memories whatsoever from before run 4. Even if I erased my mother through [Time Seal], I, at least, should still remember her."

"That was thousands of years ago, wasn't it? Isn't it natural to forget?"

"No, it isn't."

I made my aura like black ink and scrawled words in the air.

"I acquired [Perfect Recall] in run 4. And at that point, I wouldn't yet have completely forgotten my mother. Not much time had passed."

"Hmm. True?"

"Then all the memories I had at that point should have been fixed in place by [Perfect Recall]. My mother's face, which I saw in the dream. My memories of my family."

I frowned.

"Meaningless memories might be another matter. But it makes no sense for me to have forgotten even memories this important, all of them, one hundred percent."

"... Huh?"

An intrigued look entered Gapless's eyes.

"... Oh, you're right. From where we stand now, it's thousands of years in the past, but for you in run 4, it would've been only a few years ago, wouldn't it? However poor human memory might be, you couldn't completely forget your family and friends..."

"No, I couldn't."

My eyes narrowed.

"There must be another reason why the first run of the regressor called Undertaker was erased so completely."