Chapter 217 - A Person Without Ties III

4

Let me make one thing clear here: the hierarchy between Gapless and me was absolute.

In short, there would be no cliché along the lines of, “Gapless, supposedly sealed away, had actually been patiently enduring humiliation and gathering strength, only to betray Cheon Yohwa and me one day!”

There simply wouldn't. It did not exist.

“No, no. Come on, senior. Couldn't you at least allow me a 0.02% chance? A heroine destined to lose no matter what? That makes my life—no, my anomaly life—waaay too sad.”

“Who said you were anyone's heroine?”

“Well, I'm yours, senior. The hidden personality of a split-personality heroine? Isn't that the sort of trait that could earn a cult following in certain fandoms?”

“Leaving aside your claim that Yohwa is a heroine, Gapless, did you perhaps... drop this?”

I took a piece of paper from inside my clothes and handed it over.

Gapless accepted the paper, which read ‘Self-Awareness,’ with a peculiar expression.

“What the fuck? Why the hell are you carrying around a piece of paper like this?”

“Why do you think?”

“Who knows? Because you're a lunatic? Because you're planning to take a Korean proficiency test and carry a vocabulary notebook around to study? Or because you... knew I'd say something like this someday?”

Gapless's expression twisted further midway through her reply.

Her outstanding computational abilities had led her to the answer.

“Exactly.”

Every God of Alienation had a specialty. A strength.

Naturally, they had weaknesses, too.

Even compared to the other Gods of Alienation, Gapless was vulnerable to Regression. For all her claims to be the incarnation of random numbers, she could only perform the same actions in the same circumstances.

What's more, the Saintess of run 267 had frozen Nut's domain herself, making my Regression even more secure.

Gapless, at least, could not break through it.

“Damn it, this is unfair! Regressors are so fucking broken!”

Gapless stamped her feet.

That, too, was a pattern I'd seen many times, so it left me unmoved.

What more was there to say when even the tempo and speed of her stamping matched what I'd observed in previous runs without the slightest deviation?

Still.

Watching her do it in Yohwa's form didn't sit quite right with me.

“Change your clothes.”

Gapless tilted her head at my abrupt remark.

“Hm?”

“The white sailor uniform is the symbol of Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School. You're not a person who belongs there. Wear something else.”

“Huh? ... Wait. That's why I undid the hair tie, isn't it?”

“Just do it.”

“Come ooon...”

She muttered, “Aren't you being way too strict?”

But despite her grumbling, Gapless, that pathetic water-rocket God of Alienation, tapped her uniform.

A faint layer of static spread across the sailor uniform.

A moment later, the distinctive white uniform of Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School turned pitch-black.

A black sailor uniform. The exact opposite color of the school's ‘white flowers.’

“Yes, yes. Will this do? You're seriously too much...”

Gapless pouted.

The way her voice trailed off and even the angle of her protruding lips were identical to what she'd shown in a similar situation in some previous run.

That made mistaking Gapless for a human impossible, at least for me with my Perfect Recall.

Cheon Yohwa and I were merely forcing that being to ‘act like a human.’

“So, my friendless loner senior Undertaker, with no family, relatives, or friends? How do you intend to proceed now that every route is blocked? I'd love to hear the esteemed opinion of the king of humans.”

“We'll follow my memories back to run 4.”

I pointed toward the bank of the Han River.

There was a bench just right for lying down on. With no one maintaining the area, the vegetation had grown waist-high, but we could still lie down.

“We'll enter a dream and rewind the runs I've lived through. Run 250, run 200, run 150, and so on.”

“Huh? Why? Can't we just jump straight to run 4?”

I sighed.

“Gapless. Suppose, however unlikely it might be, that I'm ‘a being that suddenly dropped out of the sky in run 4.’ That sort of anomaly.”

“Okay.”

“Then what guarantee is there that I'm not an anomaly that suddenly came into existence in run 266?”

“... Huh?”

Gapless blinked.

I explained.

“Of course I have all my memories through run 267 intact. But that could just be a misconception on my part. I could be an anomaly that only began to exist in this very run, with fabricated memories of everything through run 267.”

“Oh...? Oh.”

“If I, a regressor—or an anomaly that believes itself to be a regressor—could suddenly appear in run 4, then by the same principle, I could suddenly appear in any run. I need to check that possibility, too.”

“Aha.”

Gapless looked impressed.

“You're right, aren't you? Exactly the same possibility. A brain in a vat? The five-minute hypothesis? Hmm.”

“Looks like you dropped this, too.”

After accepting a slip of paper labeled ‘Intelligence,’ Gapless tore it to shreds and flung them in my face.

“You fucking lunatic! You're the one who swiped my intelligence! In computer terms, my brain only has 64 MB of RAM right now!”

“That should run Romance of the Three Kingdoms III.”

Wasn't that enough? She wanted too much.

We lay side by side on the bench.

Strictly speaking, we weren't ‘side by side.’ I lay on the bench, and Gapless provided her lap as a pillow.

White fingertips beneath a black sleeve touched my forehead like the point of a compass.

“You're pretty funny yourself, senior. You go on about how precious the bonds you've built are, and how sincerely grateful you are to the Saintess of run 267, yet you're also entertaining the idea that all of it is fake?”

“Move your hand.”

“Oh, sorry. Did I scratch a nerve?”

I tightened my grip on my sword cane.

The white mockery in the shape of a fingernail withdrew from my forehead.

“Scary. I'll hurry up and dive into the dream, then. Close your eyes, senior.”

I did.

And we entered the dream.

Our destination was run 250.

Gapless, the dream demons' former master. Me, their current master.

With that dangerous combination forming a temporary alliance, targeting exactly the dream we wanted was child's play.

And so, the moment we entered the lucid dream...

“Hm?”

A man turned toward us.

It was the Undertaker of run 250.

He was sitting on a bench on Jamsu Bridge, reading a book. <Phenomenology of Spirit>. A book I'd read with the Saintess around this time.

“Yohwa? And... me?”

The Undertaker cocked an eyebrow.

“A doppelganger?”

“No, Undertaker of run 250. This is a lucid dream, and you're a person within it. The being with me isn't Cheon Yohwa, but Gapless.”

“Oh?”

The Undertaker's lips curved.

Ink-black eyes without a single glimmer.

Wells like black holes lurked in those eyes, reflecting no light no matter what angle the sun struck them from.

They were ominous eyes, every time I saw them.

Much as listening to a recording of your own voice feels terribly awkward, facing the Undertaker in person made me feel an inexplicable disconnect.

“You're claiming I'm a person in a dream? An interesting hypothesis. Very well. If you're truly the Undertaker, give me the passwords first.”

“Café au lait.”

“And?”

“Schopenhauer, you son of a bitch.”

“And?”

“I look forward to our time together, my companion through time.”

SNAP.

The Undertaker closed his book.

Before the sound had even faded, he drew Doha and lunged at me.

It happened in an instant. His ink-black aura collided with mine.

――――!

Ripples spread across the surface of the Han River beyond Jamsu Bridge. A restrained wave. Considering the collision of auras, our surroundings were surprisingly intact.

My aura had overwhelmed his, largely neutralizing its force.

“So it's true.”

The Undertaker nodded, his blade caught in my hand.

A test of sorts.

If I really had come from a ‘future run,’ then naturally I had to be stronger.

The Undertaker's pitch-black eyes looked at me.

“What do you want?”

“First, tell me what run this is.”

“Run 250. You?”

“Run 268.”

“Not that far ahead.”

“No.”

I nodded.

“Now kill yourself immediately.”

“But my class isn't Lancer.”

Despite the complaint that escaped his lips, the Undertaker in the dream took his own life at once.

Without any hesitation.

Gapless laughed beside me.

“You really are a lunatic, senior.”

“It's merely a protocol I established beforehand.”

THUD.

The moment the Undertaker's body crumpled, the world went dark.

I didn't simply mean the lights had gone out. It was literally enveloped in darkness where nothing existed.

The dream had ended.

“Gapless. I'll permit you to use the dream demons' data for this one question. Here and now, do you sense any existence other than us?”

“Give me a moment. ... ... ... Nothing. It's a void. And by void, I mean there's truly nothing here. Empty space.”

“You don't sense a God of Alienation, either?”

“Not at all. I only sense you.”

Gapless frowned deeply.

“... But what on earth are you growing inside your skull? You're a literal human black hole.”

“I've never grown anything. Next.”

Run 200, run 150, run 100, run 50.

The subsequent Undertakers were much easier to subdue. Since we all shared the same protocol, the Undertakers in the dreams willingly made the decision.

There were no problems at all.

For me, that is.

“Bleeuuuurgh.”

The problem was Gapless.

Her expression worsened as we traveled into the dreams of earlier and earlier runs, until, at run 50, she suddenly dropped to the ground and vomited.

“Blergh! Urp, pweeurgh. Hweh! Bleeergh.”

As befitted a God of Alienation's vomit, it was rendered as rainbow-colored static.

That would evade censorship on any platform. A genuine relief.

“... What are you doing, making such a spectacle of yourself?”

“I-I think I'm going to die, senior. I don't think I can take any more. Bleeuuurgh.”

For a long while, Gapless expelled her own existence in the form of vomit.

That wasn't a metaphor. The lumps of rainbow vomit turned into tiny Gaplesses the moment they hit the ground. They ran with all their might, then softly dispersed.

It was a sight that felt like it could drive you mad just watching it.

Gapless herself was shaking her head in circles, looking as though she was the one about to go mad.

“What... kind of dream is this? It only borrows the appearance of a dream. It's completely different.”

“Hm.”

As expected of Gapless.

For all her failings, she had once been a God of Alienation. It seemed she'd seen through this place's true nature, something the tutorial fairies hadn't even noticed.

“Unlike you, it doesn't cause trouble for people. Nobody gets hurt unless they deliberately intrude here.”

“No... Urgh! Wh-what? I feel like my HP and MP are plummeting just from breathing, and you're saying this is normal...?”

“I'll pick them up for you.”

I took a notebook from inside my clothes, wrote ‘HP and MP,’ and handed the paper to Gapless.

She looked at me as if I were insane, but didn't refuse it.

Only when we clasped hands with that sheet of paper between them did her breathing begin to return to normal.

A little later, Gapless parted her lips.

“Senior... Let me ask you one thing.”

“What?”

“Is this really a dream?”

Gapless scrubbed at her mouth with her black sleeve.

The static infected her clothes, too, making them crackle.

“This place... isn't a dream. It's just your domain. When you defeated me—before you defeated me, the divine domain I set up at Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School. Isn't this exactly the same as that?”

“...”

“It resembles a dream endlessly, but it's entirely different. Just as there's a void that imitates a school, this is nothing less than ‘a void imitating a dream.’ So, if my analysis is correct...”

Still holding my hand, Gapless looked up at me.

My image appeared in her red eyes.

Reflected there was a human who looked exactly like the Undertakers I'd made kill themselves as we crossed the dreams.

“Senior. Have you ever dreamed, even once?”