Chapter 218 - A Person Without Ties IV

5

"Have you ever dreamed even once?"

Gapless's question was half right.

I, the regressor Undertaker, never experienced what other people commonly called dreams. The only things that visited me were “dream-anomalies” imitating the outward appearance of dreams.

In fact, I had hinted at this several times in my stories.

For instance, [Lucid Dreams].

Even ordinary people could try lucid dreaming. But I went far beyond that level, walking through dreams as though they were reality.

For instance, [Prophetic Dreams].

Just before Nut, the goddess of night, brought about the end of the world, Kim Jucheol visited me in a dream to warn me of the coming crisis.

Readers with good memories must already have sensed something off about that. After all, Kim Jucheol himself had no awareness whatsoever of having warned me.

Thus, it had not actually been Kim Jucheol. The phenomenon called a prophetic dream—probably an anomaly of that kind—had merely spoiled a future crisis for me.

For instance, humanity's [Collective Unconscious].

In academia, the collective unconscious was originally no more than an unproven hypothesis. But in this world, it existed.

There, I encountered Go Yori and the Sword Demon. I also met Cheon Yohwa and Lee Hayul after the world's destruction. I even saw Kuro, endlessly rolling her head at Seongsan Ilchulbong on Jeju Island, and the original owner of The Monkey’s Paw.

In other words.

"I do experience something like dreams. But my dreams come in only two forms. Either they're lucid dreams that reproduce reality exactly, or..."

I looked at Gapless.

"They're nightmares featuring anomalies. In fact, if we count lucid dreaming itself as an anomaly, you could say my dreams are anomalies in their own right."

"Good heavens. Could it be an aftereffect of [Perfect Recall]? Or a side effect of [Regression]?" Gapless muttered, brows drawn together.

I shrugged.

"Either way, if something different from reality appears in my dream, that alone proves an anomaly has invaded it."

A kind of litmus test.

That was why I couldn't ignore Kim Jucheol when he appeared in my dream making a fuss.

Other people could dismiss their nightmares as meaningless dreams without any trouble. In my case, however, a nightmare was very likely connected to a dangerous anomaly.

"That's why I brought you along, Gapless. If there are anomalies parasitizing my dreams, your powers should be able to track them down. Why not do a little cleaning while we're looking for Original Undertaker?"

"Excuse me. Could you please not use a God of Alienation as a vacuum cleaner...?"

"A former God of Alienation. More importantly, if you've stopped throwing up, hurry and follow me. We need to go make the next me kill himself."

"Oh, sure. I have absolutely no objections to that. In fact, I'm all for it."

And so, stepping over my corpses, we finally reached the last boundary.

The Undertaker of run 5.

The earliest point for which [Perfect Recall] had collected memories in their entirety, from beginning to end.

As we approached, the Undertaker, who was handling Three Thousand Worlds guild business at the train station in Busan, turned around.

Our eyes met.

"..."

His eyes were dingy black.

The Undertaker's eyes were equally ominous in every timeline, but those from the very earliest runs, such as run 5, were on another level.

Dead eyes. Pupils burned to death.

An aura less like a person casting a shadow than a shadow taking the shape of a person.

"What are you?"

The shadow opened its mouth. Like his eye sockets, the opening of his mouth was shrouded in pitch-black darkness.

I smiled wryly. Astonishingly, this was what he looked like after meeting Dang Seorin and becoming a little more human.

"I'm you, visiting from the future, Undertaker."

"What?"

"This is a dream, and you're nothing more than a character in it."

"..."

The Undertaker stared at us without expression.

At this point in my life, I had not established any passwords. I had never considered that I might one day revisit my past through dreams.

Naturally, then, the run-5 Undertaker had to be suspicious of me.

"I don't want this to come to blows. You should be able to tell just from the amount of aura I possess. I'm far stronger than the likes of you can even fathom."

"... And what brings my esteemed future self here? Are you planning to tell me how to subjugate Tenlegs?"

"Pfft."

Gapless laughed beside me. When I squeezed our interlaced hands hard, an apology promptly followed: "Sorry! I'm sorry!"

I turned back to the Undertaker. His brows were slightly furrowed.

"Undertaker of run 5. There's something I want to ask you. Do you remember meeting Dang Seorin for the first time in the previous run, run 4?"

"Meeting Dang Seorin?"

"Yes. From your perspective, it was only a few years ago. Besides, you've now acquired [Perfect Recall]. Logically, the memories still in your head should have been preserved intact, allowing you to recall them freely."

"..."

The Undertaker opened his lips, then closed them.

He looked like someone opening a drawer of memories to retrieve something utterly ordinary, only to find it empty, then opening and closing that drawer over and over.

"... Why?"

For the first time, a faint emotion appeared on the run-5 Undertaker's face, whose default setting was expressionlessness.

Bewilderment. Confusion.

"I certainly met Dang Seorin. As you say, it wasn't even that many years ago. And yet the memory is... strangely hazy."

"..."

Just as I thought.

I sighed inwardly. Until now, I had believed that some memories had simply faded naturally over hundreds and thousands of years. But it was strange that even the run-5 Undertaker couldn't remember clearly.

"That makes no sense. It's impossible. The day I met Dang Seorin was unquestionably a turning point in my life. My memory couldn't possibly be this hazy—"

SLICE

My strike severed the Undertaker's head. At the same moment, the scenery comprising the dream of run 5 collapsed.

In utter darkness, I asked, "Gapless. You can't sense any trace of an anomaly in this dream either?"

"None. I've scanned everything from run 250 to run 5, but I haven't detected a single one. Only your presence is terrifying."

"Then the possibility that an anomaly manipulated my memories is extremely low."

"Yes."

That left only one conclusion.

"... I've come up with a hypothesis for why my memories from before run 4 are so vague."

"Ooh. What is it? What is it?"

"[Time Seal]."

A long, lamenting sigh escaped my lips.

"I, too, lost my memories of the people I erased with [Time Seal]."

6

As you all know, when someone falls victim to [Time Seal], every memory of that person vanishes completely from the world.

Their very existence is erased.

With just one exception: me, the Undertaker, who used [Time Seal].

"But what if the reason I alone escaped that erasure from memory... was a secondary effect of [Perfect Recall]?"

"Huh?"

Gapless blinked.

"What do you mean?"

"Everyone subjected to [Time Seal] has their existence erased. I wasn't exempt from forgetting them either. But by chance, I was given [Perfect Recall], and the two abilities came into conflict."

"... Oh!"

[Time Seal], a skill that erased existence.

[Perfect Recall], a skill that remembered existence forever.

My two abilities were perfect opposites.

"Ultimately, their conflict produced a peculiar result. Every person on earth forgot those who vanished through [Time Seal], but—"

"Only one person—you—could remember them!"

Exactly.

That was how the crystal gravestones came to be.

Until now, I had thought the crystal gravestones were solely a product of [Time Seal]. But the truth was the exact opposite.

[Perfect Recall] had forcibly revealed the locations of the missing people whom Time Seal wanted to keep hidden to the very end.

"Thinking about it..."

My lament continued.

"I always wondered why those gravestones looked like crystal, of all things. It's a rather incongruous form. But when you think about it... memory is an act of reflecting yourself. In other words, a mirror."

"So they weren't actually crystal, but..."

"Mirrors. They were gravestones made of mirrors, not crystal."

"Aha," said Gapless.

"Then you couldn't see the crystal gravestones from the beginning. Originally, you were just like everyone else. You couldn't remember anything about the missing people subjected to [Time Seal], either."

"Right."

"But in run 5, ta-da! You happened to acquire [Perfect Recall]. Only then did you begin to see the crystal gravestones!"

I nodded.

"My hypothesis is this. I have no trouble remembering the people I erased with [Time Seal] from run 5 onward."

"Yes."

"On the other hand, I have no memories of the people erased before run 5, either."

Here, I raised a finger.

"And I... the Undertaker before run 5, was very actively erasing his relationships."

"Yes."

"Try imagining someone who has had almost all their relationships erased, including their family."

For example, what would happen if [Time Seal] erased your memories of your mother alone?

That would still be manageable. As we could see from the soccer player Kim Jucheol and his son Kim Sieun, losing one family member did not suddenly cause a person's mind to collapse.

They would merely feel an inexplicable emptiness.

But what if it wasn't just one person—what if your memories of every family member were deleted?

What if your friends were erased as well?

What if not only your friends, but every close acquaintance also fell victim to [Time Seal]?

What if I, the Undertaker before run 5, had found myself in that situation?

"Amnesia...!" Gapless said.

I nodded.

"Exactly. Your memories become no better than an abandoned game of Jenga."

"True. Your memories of the family who made up most of your childhood, your friends from adolescence, and the acquaintances you met afterward would all, every last one of them, be gone. That would do it."

"Right. So the only memories left would have been of the survivors I met in the Busan Station tutorial, at best. And people whose relationships with me were utterly unimportant."

Those trivial memories would have faded naturally over the years before I acquired [Perfect Recall].

That was the truth as I inferred it.

In conclusion, I, the Undertaker, was an “extra” with no ties to this world, seemingly dropped out of the sky—and at the same time, an “amnesiac” unable to recall anything about his past.

In short, whether I wanted it or not, I had become a person endowed with quintessential “protagonist traits.”

... No wonder the God of Alienation [Operator of All Things at Play] had taken an interest in me. Anyone could see that those traits were practically shoving me forward and telling me to be the protagonist.

"Wait. Then why couldn't the run-5 Undertaker remember Dang Seorin very well? You didn't use [Time Seal] on her."

"... There was probably someone near me."

"Huh?"

I closed my eyes and recalled my first meeting with Dang Seorin.

The scene that remained dimly, crackling with static at an indistinct resolution.

["There's venom alive in those eyes."]

["You're that person, aren't you? Almost the only survivor of Busan Station. The eccentric who goes around asking people strange questions all day."]

A moment later, I opened my eyes.

"... When I first met Dang Seorin, there must have been someone standing beside me, or beside her, whom I can no longer remember."

"Oh."

"That someone... let's call them X for now. X was probably incredibly precious to me. Precious enough that their disappearance left a huge hole in my memories. So... the data of my first meeting with Dang Seorin suffered partial damage, too."

Who could it have been?

Someone who survived and escaped the Busan Station dungeon with me? Or someone Dang Seorin brought to the place where she recruited me?

I couldn't know. I couldn't remember.

“The deleted person X.”

X must have been a crucial part of who I was before run 5. Thus, when X was subjected to [Time Seal], my memory must have suffered a considerable blow.

"However..."

"However?"

"Some of my memories concern people I sealed in run 4. A soccer player named Kim Jucheol, for instance."

My memories of Kim Jucheol were hazy, too. Perhaps X had been beside me when I sealed him as well.

In any case, I could recall Kim Jucheol from run 4, however imperfectly.

Despite having sealed him without [Perfect Recall], I could still remember a little.

"Without my hypothesis, I should have forgotten Kim Jucheol completely as well. I sealed him when I didn't have [Perfect Recall]. But I remember him."

"Oh..."

"Why can I remember Kim Jucheol, yet remember nothing about myself, my family, or X? That part remains unexplained."

As a test, we also entered the dreams of runs 4, 3, 2, and 1.

Of course, we achieved very little.

[404 - Not Found]

[404 - Not Found]

[404 - Not Found]

Thanks to a certain mad regressor who had erased all his relationships, not even a handful of coherent memories remained.

"..."

A bitter taste filled my mouth.

Why had my past self sealed away so many people precious to me?

The question of whether the Undertaker had been an anomaly from the beginning had received a clear answer, but another mystery had emerged.

[404 - Not Found]

This was my starting point. My origin. My birthplace.

Perhaps I could somehow subjugate the void spread across the outside world.

But would the day ever come when I could traverse this void lodged within me?

Silently, I gazed for a long time at my own origin, buried beneath error messages.

7

There is an epilogue.

"Oh! Wait a moment!"

As I was about to leave the dream, Gapless caught hold of my collar.

When I gave a look that asked what trick was being plotted, Gapless laughed, "Ahaha," imitating Cheon Yohwa's smile.

"Come on. Don't look at me like that. Well, even though I'm an anomaly that used to be a God of Alienation, you treated me pretty kindly, didn't you?"

"I treated you well because you share a body with Yohwa. Otherwise, I wouldn't have shown you any mercy."

"Any! Way! What I'm saying is, after spending every day in Cheon Yohwa's head enduring abuse and torture, I found your attitude rather touching!"

I frowned. Touching, my foot.

Of course, Gapless probably could feel touched. It would work something like: “This is a situation in which I should feel touched, so I feel touched. To react to this emotion, play one of the following three poses.”

I shook my head to dispel the stray thoughts and asked, "And?"

"And so, I've prepared a little present."

Cheon Yohwa struck an ahem-like pose and snapped her fingers.

The scenery around us, plastered with [404] messages, abruptly changed into a hospital corridor.

It was a place we had visited in a dream a little earlier.

"... Isn't this the hospital where we think my mother worked?"

"Yes! That's right. Even while you were moving on to other dreams, I kept bringing all the dreams together and analyzing the data."

"Hmm."

I didn't object to that.

From the outset, Gapless and I had been operating on give-and-take in this “hidden-picture hunt.” We had made a contract to exchange what each of us wanted.

"Thanks to that... I restored this, too!"

CREAK

Gapless opened the door to a hospital room.

My presumed mother worked in obstetrics and gynecology. Unlike her son, who would come to bear the alias Undertaker, her profession brought her into the place where life was born.

Inside the room, my mother lay propped at an angle on a hospital bed, her entire body covered in static that made both her face and clothing impossible to discern—and in her arms lay an utterly tiny newborn baby.

"That's you."

"..."

"Probably."

Gapless laughed, "Ahaha."

"I'm not certain. You erased your relationships so thoroughly. Still, that woman has the highest probability of being your mother, and I found this material from around the time she would have given birth to a child your age."

"... You restored this?"

"Yes. Didn't I do well?"

My presumed mother performed no actions. She merely held the baby in her arms.

It had been impossible to restore what she had actually done at that moment.

The same was true of the newborn.

I felt no sense of recognition that this was me. There was a small patch of static in the middle of the baby's face, too.

"..."

Even so, I could only gaze at the mother and son for a long time.

"True enough."

I thought of Busan Station.

"Even if my memories are covered in [404] messages, that place couldn't possibly be my starting point."

I realized it anew.

Even if I had no memory of my origin, how could that interfere with defining me as human?

No human remembered the moment of their own birth in the first place.

Even with a blank at the beginning of my memories, the fact that I, the Undertaker, was human remained clear.

The scene before me—the “hidden picture” discovered in a regressor's life—proved that fact.

"Well? Do you like it?"

I looked at Gapless.

Gapless was striking a triumphant pose. Without the slightest deviation, like the automatic idle animation of a character in a game. The rhythm of the toes tapping the floor while awaiting my response was equally flawless.

Yet, for some reason, that sight no longer grated on me as it had until a moment ago.

I said what needed to be said.

"Thank you."

Gapless grinned.

"Then, hey, hey! For the sake of your junior with such a wonderfully kind heart, what do you think about granting me control and dominion over the tutorial fairies again, at least?"

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

Pouting, Gapless chewed up the paper marked “No,” then spat it out.

End of epilogue.

-A Person Without Ties. End.