Chapter 4 - Watcher II

"..."

"You are, aren't you?"

I didn't answer immediately.

To be honest, I was a little surprised. Intrigued, too. There had been occasions when I volunteered that I was a regressor, but so far, only one person had ever figured it out first: Old Man Scho.

"What makes you think that?"

"I thought a regressor would come looking for me eventually. For one thing, you killed those monsters at an impossible speed. But... judging by that question, this must be the first 'run' in which we've met?"

I leaned a little farther forward.

SCREECH

The convenience store's green plastic chair scraped against the ground. At first, I'd only been curious about the constellations themselves. Now, however, my interest was increasingly shifting toward the human being before me.

"That's right. I've wondered about the constellations' identities for some time, but this is the first run in which I've seriously investigated them."

"If you... if you really are a regressor, Undertaker, I believe we absolutely need to establish a working relationship going forward."

"A working relationship?"

"Yes. But at the moment, I still can't be certain whether you're a regressor. Not from my perspective."

The woman spoke cautiously. She seemed very tense, but her tone never wavered.

'She has at least some backbone.'

My eyes narrowed.

"Interesting. Why can't you be certain I'm a regressor?"

"Because the exact same situation could arise if you had the gift of prophecy rather than regression, or if you could read my mind. So..."

She bowed her head.

"I'm sorry, after you've gone to so much trouble to come all the way to Seoul. But I can't disclose everything yet—the constellations' identities, how much I know, what my abilities are, and so on."

"Hmm."

Just the right amount of courtesy, and an appropriate measure of caution, too.

Was this a lottery ticket worth scratching?

"Very well. If you can be certain I'm a regressor, will you answer all my questions?"

"... Yes."

"Then there's a simple solution."

She raised her head. I switched on my smartphone.

"We agree on a password."

"A password?"

"Choose words or sentences I could never know unless I were a regressor. It doesn't have to be a keyword. A particular action would work just as well."

This was a trick Old Man Scho and I had used before. We'd already verified that it worked back in the seventh run.

"Whatever you choose, I'll carry it out exactly in the 'next run.'"

"Oh."

She understood immediately.

"That's an excellent idea. Hmm. Then, in the next run, come here and spread a red T-shirt out on the table. Just stay put for ten—no, about fifteen minutes. Write [Moral Law] on the shirt in large letters."

"Hmm."

"If you do that, I'll contact you first."

A neat solution.

"Understood, Saintess."

"Oh... I'm sorry, but that nickname is a little..."

"All the awakened have childish nicknames anyway. I left mine alone, thinking they'd come up with something impressive eventually, and ended up being called Undertaker. Saintess is pretty tame by comparison."

"How on earth did you end up being called Undertaker...?"

Uh-oh. I quickly rose from the table.

As I've said, I absolutely loathe my epithet. There may eventually be an opportunity to explain how I acquired it, but I hope that opportunity comes later—in the very distant future. Better still if it never comes at all.

"I'll be going now, Saintess. See you next time."

"Oh, yes. See you next time. It was nice meeting you, Regressor."

There was a gap of roughly one world between the 'next time' I meant and the 'next time' she had in mind.

We parted like streams of water that meet easily and just as easily diverge.

From that day on, the 'constellations' stopped sending me messages.

Honestly, I missed them a little. Someone who had reacted to every one of my exploits was gone. Their absence felt greater than I'd expected.

Of course, my objective wasn't to curry favor with the constellations. It was to prevent the end of the world. I quickly pulled myself together, body and mind, and threw myself at the world of the thirty-fifth run.

And failed like absolute shit.

If I'd succeeded, I wouldn't have made it all the way to run 1,183.

'She said a red T-shirt, didn't she?'

My thirty-sixth world, my thirty-sixth life, began. I immediately set about fulfilling the promise I'd made in the previous world.

First, I cleared the Busan Station gate in short order.

[The 'Saintess of National Salvation' is astounded by your exploits!]

[The 'Lord of the Red Horse' feels a competitive urge at your strength.]

[The 'Conqueror of the Alps' takes note of your actions.]

[The 'Chancellor in the Red Cloak' is wary of your skill.]

Just as before, messages from the constellations came pouring in. It was nice to see them again after so long, but I ignored them for the moment.

Following the route Old Man Scho had developed, I headed north to Seoul as quickly as possible. I also made sure to stop at a clothing store that hadn't closed yet and buy a shirt.

[The 'Saintess of National Salvation' questions your actions.]

The constellations kept talking to me throughout the journey.

I reached the convenience store near Jamsu Bridge, sat at a table under a parasol, and spread out the shirt. The instant I scrawled 'Moral Law' on it with a marker—

[...]

[...]

The constellations, so noisy until then, all fell silent.

I leaned back in my chair and drank convenience-store coffee. This store hadn't been looted yet, so its stock was intact.

Before long, someone approached the store: a woman carrying a hiking backpack. The 'Saintess of National Salvation,' whom I'd met in the previous run—or twenty years ago, measured in elapsed time.

I felt no fresh surge of delight at seeing her. To live long as a regressor, you had to grow very accustomed to farewells and reunions.

The only difference was that this time, I was the one waiting to greet her.

"Excuse me, I'm sorry, but are you...?"

She studied my expression with extreme caution. I nodded.

"Yes. I am a regressor, Saintess of National Salvation."

"...!"

The Saintess drew in a breath. She stood motionless, her fists clenched tight. I couldn't tell what thoughts were occupying her.

After a long while, she finally managed to speak.

"Please follow me."

At last, it was time for the truth about the constellations to come to light.

4

The Saintess lived in Yongsan.

Now that the entire Gangnam area, along with Yeouido, had evaporated in one fell swoop, Yongsan was effectively the front line bordering the gate. It was currently one of the most dangerous places in Korea.

"You can come in."

It was an old low-rise apartment building in Dongbinggo-dong. I looked around. Unlike its shabby exterior, the interior was tidy.

No—to be more precise, it went beyond tidy. It was bleak.

Four computer monitors cast a bluish glow through the dark living room. Their light faintly outlined the cardboard boxes scattered everywhere. Cases of canned food. Water containers. Bathed in the monitors' blue light, they looked less like objects on land than things submerged underwater.

A large metal bookcase stood against the wall, but only a few books were scattered across its shelves. In the spaces where books should have been sat fifteen- and twenty-centimeter cube aquariums.

Dozens of water-filled glass tanks were packed tightly together.

Aquariums. Aquariums. Aquariums.

The room was surrounded on every side by ramparts built not of brick, but of water. It looked like an underwater temple.

"It looks as though you've been preparing for this situation for quite some time."

"Yes."

The Saintess seated me on the sofa, then pulled over a computer chair for herself.

"Should I call you Regressor?"

"Whatever you're comfortable with. My epithet is Undertaker."

"All right, Undertaker. How many times have you met me now?"

"This is the second."

"The second," she murmured softly.

"Then this is effectively our first meeting. I wouldn't have explained anything to you in the previous run. Is that right?"

"Exactly."

"It seems I probably have a great deal to explain... Where should I begin?"

"I'd like to ask about the constellations first. What exactly are they? Are they genuinely transcendent beings? Are you a constellation's representative?"

"..."

The Saintess's lips moved slightly. Not as though she was reluctant to answer, but as though she wanted to choose her words carefully.

At last, she spoke.

"The constellations... don't exist."

"They don't exist?"

"No. The Saintess of National Salvation, the Conqueror of the Alps—all of them are nothing more than characters I created by myself."

That surprised me somewhat.

I'd given ample consideration to the possibility that the constellations were fictitious. But I'd never imagined that the person before me was acting out all those constellations entirely on her own.

I'd expected a team of at least five or six.

"Why did you do it?"

"..."

The monitors' blue glow spread hazily through the living room. Fish opened and closed their mouths in the little aquariums.

"I awakened about twenty days ago. My hair began changing color, and I started having nightmares about monsters. They were so... vivid that I couldn't possibly dismiss them as mere fantasies."

I nodded. Countless awakened around the world had experienced the same thing just before the gates erupted. A sort of prophetic dream, you might say.

"For some reason, I was certain those things would actually happen. So I considered what I could do. Not preparations like buying canned food or stockpiling water, but something only I could do."

The Saintess looked straight at me.

"Regressor. No, Undertaker. Will the awakened really continue to uphold social order after obtaining their powers?"

"Pardon?"

"The awakened have incredible abilities. I alone gained two—no, three powers that defy common sense. Can people granted such powers really cooperate readily, do good, and exercise enough restraint to at least avoid committing crimes?"

Fish shadows drifted across the living-room floor. Her voice seeped into the shade.

For an instant, I was seized by a sensation like the one I'd felt as a child, recklessly diving underwater at the bathhouse. With her gaze, she was lowering the water level here.

"I concluded they wouldn't."

"..."

"If someone with immense authority appeared and united the awakened, that would be fine. But that would take countless trials and errors, and time. Until then, the awakened would splinter into competing factions, and ordinary people would be caught in their power struggles and sacrificed without a second thought. Naturally, the more divided humanity became, the less capable we'd be of dealing with the gates."

Her prediction was correct. In fact, most nations had followed that very course to destruction.

Korea was unusual in holding out for so long.

'Wait.'

At that moment, a possibility flashed through my mind like lightning. I stared straight into the Saintess's pitch-black eyes. Eyes that looked as though they wouldn't blink even underwater.

"Don't tell me...?"

"..."

She gave a small nod.

"Undertaker. When do people hesitate to do evil? When they think someone is watching them."

"... The constellations."

"Yes."

My eyes widened in shock. The Saintess continued.

"People readily break the rules if they're confident they can conceal their crimes or cover them up. But once the belief takes root that a being beyond them is watching them anytime, anywhere, even the awakened have no choice but to hesitate before doing evil."

"Good God."

"That's why I created the constellations."

It felt as though I'd taken one mental punch after another.

It was surprising enough that the constellations who had watched over me through the long years leading up to my thirty-sixth run—especially the 'Saintess of National Salvation'—were a lie. But the fact that all of them had been born from one person's meticulous plan was downright astonishing.

"But how exactly did you create them?"

"Through my abilities. I can use [Clairvoyance] and [Telepathy]."

Her explanation of those abilities could be summarized as follows.

1. Clairvoyance: Can observe awakened within a radius of 1,000 km whenever she wishes. Can also hear their voices.

2. Telepathy, or Text Transmission: Can transmit her voice to targets she is aware of. Can also send text, though messages are limited to 140 characters.

... Both abilities had endless applications.

I looked at the person before me with fresh eyes. Given the right conditions, she had the makings of a leader capable of heading guilds like [Three Thousand] or [Hundred Flowers], which would later become the most prominent in Korea.

"Remarkable. With abilities like those, you could have taken a more public role and rallied the awakened yourself."

"I considered that, too... But I'm really not good at stepping forward and doing things in front of people."

"Ah."

"I think this was the best of the things I could do. I don't know what will happen from here... but I intend to keep doing it as long as I can. Unless I die."

Her words brought back memories of previous runs.

Even just before the world ended, the constellations never stopped sending messages to the awakened in Korea. Four years, seven years, ten years—the constellations remained steadfast.

I thought of the hardships the awakened before me must have endured to maintain that appearance.

There must have been countless difficulties. [Clairvoyance] and [Telepathy] were excellent abilities, but they offered little direct help in combat. And Yongsan was a contested area right on the doorstep of an enormous gate, a strategic location where countless factions would vie for power.

"... How did I do, Regressor?"

The awakened who must have overcome all those hardships and always survived to the very end was now looking at me with anxiety and apprehension in her eyes.

"Did I fulfill my role to the end?"

"..."

I unconsciously clenched my fist. All manner of thoughts soaked through my mind.

After a brief silence, I answered.

"Yes. Perfectly. You completely fooled even me, a regressor."

"..."

"Thanks to you, crime rates among the awakened were exceptionally low in this country. It was also relatively easy for the awakened to cooperate in responding to gates. Your efforts weren't meaningless, Saintess."

Though they hadn't prevented the world from ending.

Neither then nor now have I ever told the Saintess about the hundreds of ways our world meets its end.

At the very least, because she was here, awakened supremacism never ran rampant in this land. Cults like the New Buddha and the Church of Resurrection had comparatively fewer opportunities to wreak havoc, too.

"... Thank goodness."

At my answer, the Saintess sank back into her chair. I heard a little sigh of relief.

For some reason, it sounded to me like a goldfish that had been swimming underwater for a very long time, finally rising to the surface to release a bubble.

Afterward, we discussed in detail how we would cooperate.

I believe the nature of our relationship was largely established then. From run thirty-six to run 1,183, the Saintess almost always had my back as a dependable ally.

"What should I call you? Calling you Regressor... might accidentally expose your identity."

The Saintess rested a hand on her chin.

"Hero?"

I immediately waved the suggestion away.

"No, Hero is a bit... Please just call me Undertaker."

Quite apart from whether I found the title Hero embarrassing, there was a particular mental illness associated with it that made me recoil. Let's discuss that peculiar illness separately in a little while.

"All right. From now on, I'll call you Mr. Undertaker."

"That's more comfortable. Oh, one thing."

Just as we were about to part, I asked a question.

"Incidentally, wouldn't it be impossible to play the constellations using only Clairvoyance and Telepathy? You have to observe multiple people and send messages simultaneously. Do you perhaps have another ability?"

"Oh, that's..."

The Saintess hesitated, then smiled faintly.

"Well, it's a secret. I'll tell you later."

Unfortunately, the 'later' she spoke of didn't fall within the timeline of my thirty-sixth run.

It would take many more runs before I could uncover her final secret.

5

This story has an epilogue.

Starting with run thirty-six, forming a united front with the Saintess as soon as I regressed became my standard tech tree—a sort of opening move in Go.

Outside the earliest stages of a new regression, the constellations effectively stopped sending me 'countless requests for a handshake' as they once had.

One day, as I was passing the time feeling a little wistful about that fact, a message window appeared before me for the first time in ages. It was around run 134.

[The 'Operator of All Things at Play' announces an upcoming new event.]

I blinked. The constellation's name was utterly unfamiliar.

All things? Did that mean 'the one who manages the enjoyment of everything'?

'The Saintess must be bored and playing a prank.'

Thinking that even the strangest things happened sometimes, I dismissed the message without making much of it. In any case, it came only once.

When I met the Saintess a few days later, I asked her about it. Not because I was seriously curious—I merely tossed out the question to break the ice during a strategy meeting.

"Oh, by the way, why did you suddenly impersonate some strange constellation a few days ago?"

"Pardon?"

"A week ago. You sent me a message under the name Operator of All Things at Play. I was a little surprised to learn that even you make mistakes. Did you accidentally send me a message meant for another awakened?"

"...?"

The Saintess tilted her head.

"I've never sent a message like that."

"What?"

"I've never created a constellation called the Operator of All Things at Play in the first place."

A chilling current ran down my spine.

Whether or not she noticed my reaction, the Saintess's expression remained calm. At the very least, she didn't look as though she was lying.

For some reason, I had the illusion that the temperature around us had dropped.

"Could you have misread it, Mr. Undertaker?"

"..."

Suddenly, I had the illusion that a deep sea had opened beneath my feet, and an enormous shadow had glided past below.

... It seemed this world still held many unknown mysteries.

- Watcher. End.