Chapter 62 - The Manipulator V

There is a somewhat lengthy epilogue to this story.

Granted, my entire tale is one long epilogue to begin with. To tell the truth, I originally intended to title these memoirs something like A Regressor’s Epilogue.

"Huh? Mister, are you insane?"

And I really would have, if the web-novel geek Oh Dokseo hadn’t interfered.

"Why? Isn’t it good?"

"What’s good about it? These days, a title like that won’t even hook the people who practically live on SG Net’s serial-fiction board."

"Hmm... Then how about The Infinite Regressor’s One-Day Café?"

"What?"

Oh Dokseo looked as though she had heard something no human being should have to hear.

"What did you just say?"

"Making coffee is my hobby, isn’t it? Whenever I go see Old Man Scho’s corpse, I make myself a café au lait, too. So I thought I’d use the word café..."

"You really are insane, aren’t you? Completely fucking nuts?"

I could sense the sincerity in her words.

Of course, I knew a geek’s sincerity was no guarantee of truth. Astonishingly, however, this time I sensed truth as well.

Hmm. Was it that bad...?

"How to Fail Through Infinite Regression?"

"Rejected."

"I Am a Regressor."

"Rejected."

"The Regressor Gives Up on Salvation."

"Bullshit."

"The Regressor’s Epilogue."

"Fuck off!"

"Romance of the Regressing Kingdoms."

"Oh, please! Mister! Come on!"

"..."

Why?

Was this a generation gap? No. Impossible. Having cultivated my artistic sensibilities for thousands of years, my discerning eye had already transcended the human level. I had reached a realm where I could greet Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, or Goethe with a casual, "Hey, long time no see."

For twenty minutes, I poured out every potential title I had thought of, and Oh Dokseo turned every last one away at the door.

Even if my character was on the level of Gautama Siddhartha’s, this tyranny had gone too far.

In a fit of temper, I said,

"If you’re so brilliant, come up with one yourself."

"Fine! But whatever title I pick, you absolutely don’t get to interfere! Later—and I mean much later—I’ll read everything you’ve written, consider it all together, and give it a title!"

"All right. Let’s see what you can do."

"Deal!"

"Deal."

Looking back now, I should never have made such a foolish promise.

What on earth about Oh Dokseo had inspired me to entrust her with the title?

Her fifty-thousand-won baseball cap? Her jeans full of holes? The gum she could never blow a bubble with? I would sooner trust Jeong Sang-guk’s patriotism.

In the end, I still don’t know what title my tale has been given. You can probably tell from the fact that I only ever call it my "tale."

What a paradox. Unable to call one’s father Father... No, that wasn’t right. I didn’t even know the name in the first place. Oedipus, who failed to recognize his father as his father, would be a more apt comparison.

I don’t know how things look from your end. If you can see not only my tale but its title, please understand at least this much: it was not a title that I, the Undertaker, devised myself.

But I digress.

Let us return to the epilogue of Puppeteer, Lee Hayul.

Jeong Sang-guk was dead.

The former mayor of Busan was dead. The incumbent Prime Minister of the Second Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea was dead. The president of the Fukuoka Korean Association was dead. Busan’s representative was dead.

None of those descriptions fit. None of those things were why Jeong Sang-guk had died.

If we were to consider the cause of death and lend some accuracy to the death certificate, the following description would make the most fitting funeral coffin to lay over this death:

Lee Hayul’s biological father was dead.

Though I did not agree with Freudian psychoanalysis, I enjoyed drawing analogies with the terminology it had pioneered.

A child had murdered her father. But Lee Hayul was not Electra. Nor was she Oedipus.

For a child, the death of a parent ought properly to be called a prologue rather than an epilogue.

It was cruel.

And now I intended to do something cruel.

"Lee Hayul."

"Yes."

She answered by moving the housekeeper’s lips, rather than those of Jeong Sang-guk, whose head had already been severed.

"Don’t do it."

Hayul tilted her head.

"What do you mean? This man’s dead. Too late. Can’t stop it."

"I wasn’t telling you not to kill Jeong Sang-guk. I meant don’t kill yourself."

"..."

She froze. The red circles in her eyes widened.

There was no need for further conversation. Her every breath was a language. The girl was flustered.

"How?"

"You killed your parent. What’s done is done. Why follow him into death? You have talent. The talent to kill people and the talent to save people are the same thing. If you have the resolve to kill yourself, turn the blade of that resolve around and stab anomalies to death instead."

"..."

"This world needs awakened. Humanity’s survival is in jeopardy. Korean or Japanese—distinctions like that mean nothing. Whether Jeong Sang-guk died here or not, everyone you’ve ever known will eventually die at the hands of anomalies."

"..."

"Help us. I will help you so that you can."

Silence followed. Half of it flowed from the gaping maw of Jeong Sang-guk, lying sprawled on the concrete floor.

Was it my imagination? Every doll packed into the basement seemed to be staring at me.

"If I follow you?"

"..."

"Can you stop it? The world, ending."

"No. I can’t guarantee that."

"Your alias, what did you say it was? Sorry."

"Undertaker."

I had introduced myself several times already, but only then did her mind seem to properly register my alias.

She probably hadn’t given it any consideration before. Someone on the brink of death had no reason to remember a new acquaintance.

Hayul murmured,

"The Tenlegs campaign. Swordmaster’s companion."

"Yes."

"Dang Seorin’s boyfriend."

"That’s fake news."

"Really? It’s on the radio, every day."

"Fake news. I’ll swear on anything. Except Jeong Sang-guk’s patriotism."

"..."

Silence again.

Hayul raised her index finger.

"A condition."

"Tell me. I’ll accommodate it as far as I can."

"Lies. I hate them."

"It sounds like you’re asking me not to act like your father. That much I can certainly promise. Believe it or not, I’m committed to never marrying."

"...?"

"I have no intention of having children. Which means I’ll never become anyone’s father. A perfect solution for fulfilling your condition."

"..."

Hayul gave a little laugh.

There was no sound.

That, too, was an expression I had never seen before.

"I’ll follow. You."

In the many runs after the nineteenth, I recruited Lee Hayul as my subordinate quite often.

That fate remained unchanged even after Old Man Scho went on "vacation," effectively closing Freiheit Academy.

At the front and in the rear, Hayul met countless cruel deaths at the hands of anomalies.

The only thing I could promise her was that I would meet a slightly earlier, slightly crueler death.

Of course, many things changed as well.

"Oh. Hayul."

"..."

"Want some coffee? You like espresso con panna, don’t you?"

"..."

"All right. Give me a moment."

First, I learned sign language. Now I could understand her immediately, even without her controlling a doll.

Even now, Hayul woke on the sofa in the guild hideout and let out a long, soundless yawn. She stretched, too.

She looked this way and that.

After surveying her surroundings with sleepy eyes, she spotted the housekeeper. At a light snap of Hayul’s fingers, the housekeeper doll sprang into action.

"Where’s my wheelchair?"

"You left it with Workshop Master Noh Doha yesterday."

"Oh."

"You’ll have to put up with a little inconvenience today."

"Okay."

Originally, I had intended to leave her with the Saintess rather than at my guild hideout. Both were expressionless. Both were shut-ins. Their abilities were support-oriented, too. Didn’t they seem rather alike?

But after briefly living together in the twentieth run, the Saintess requested a return.

["Our personalities are too different."]

["Pardon?"]

["Miss Lee Hayul is... to put it in simple terms, a social butterfly."]

["Pardon?"]

["She’s a different type of person from me, Mr. Undertaker. More importantly, please refrain from assuming that just because we’re both rear-support personnel and neither of us shows much expression, we’ll get along like sisters. Two of my fish tanks broke."]

["..."]

["I prefer being alone."]

Apparently, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, she and the Saintess had experienced an MBTI clash.

What could I do? Like Sim Aryeon, Hayul became a permanent member of my guild. Her aptitude as an awakened was indisputably A-grade anyway.

Above all, as I had seen in the Dollhouse, her talent specialized in establishing a hideout. Thanks to Hayul, I was able to build an impregnable hideout of my own.

Let’s save that story for another episode.

Around the fifty-fourth run, Hayul’s everyday life reached a small turning point.

What made the fifty-fourth run special? It was the momentous run in which I brought Noh Doha aboard as commander of the National Road Management Corps.

In short, this was also when Noh Doha and I really began to grow close.

"Workshop Master Noh Doha. It’s been a while. This chestnut-haired girl here has returned from Japan. Could you possibly make her some prosthetic legs?"

"Sorry, who are you...?"

"..."

"I’m joking, Awakened Undertaker. It’s just that the sight of you scares the hell out of me. Honestly, you keep giving me a start, so if possible, please don’t enter my field of vision without using your turn signal..."

"..."

"Anyway, is there some law that automatically moves Koreans up the hospital waiting list if they’ve been overseas? My workshop has a fuckton of work..."

"Oh."

"I’ll book you in now. Come back in a month. I’m busy looking after the neighborhood grandpas today, too. Honestly, why are the roads in this blasted Busan so damn uneven...?"

Hmm. Yes. In truth, Noh Doha and I weren’t particularly close on a personal level.

There wasn’t anyone who shared an emotional bond or friendship with her in the first place. It was only because it was me that she booked the appointment for a month later. Any other awakened would have had to wait at least three months.

A month later, Noh Doha examined Hayul.

"Your legs have been wrecked in a remarkably thorough fashion. Hmm. They weren’t merely torn off physically; you have three overlapping curses. Unhealable, constant poisoning, hallucinations—you’ve really collected the whole set. If you don’t mind my asking, where did you so generously donate both your legs...?"

"Never had them."

The housekeeper answered. Although this must have been an unfamiliar experience, Noh Doha didn’t so much as twitch an eyebrow.

"Hmm. Then you just happened to get cursed? Well, I have heard Japan is full of that sort of thing. Do you happen to get phantom pain at least once every three days...?"

"Yes. How?"

"I have ways of knowing. Nasty. Quite nasty. Hmm..."

As she spoke, Noh Doha kept measuring Hayul’s body with a tape measure.

The peculiar part was that she even measured the lengths of the legs Hayul no longer had.

"...?"

Hayul looked a little unsure whether she was being insulted.

But Noh Doha had no intention whatsoever of humiliating her.

Of course, her wicked nature meant she could seize any opportunity to tease someone with uncanny speed.

Yet in my entire life of regressions, I had never once seen her mock a patient.

"Could you move your body a little, imagining that you’re moving your legs...?"

"Okay."

"Good. Very good. Now imagine walking in place. Ah, could you try running a little? Just bouncing your hips is enough. Hmm. You’re doing well..."

It seemed that Noh Doha could truly see Hayul’s legs.

Not just the muscles, but the bones, joints, and nerves as well. That kind of "vision" was part of her ability.

The skill Noh Doha had awakened was [the ability to observe and replace the body parts another person had lost].

An extraordinary ability indeed, but it had no particular skill name. That was her own wish.

No, she refused not only a skill name, but even an alias for herself.

["A lowly civil servant making a name for herself is of absolutely no use to anyone."]

That was Noh Doha’s firm belief.

And I was the one who had recruited someone like that to serve as the commander of the National Road Management Corps.

For these reasons, her ability was simply called something along the lines of [Assistive Device Crafting]. Even [Restoring What Was Lost] would have made a fairly stylish name.

"Right, all the measurements are done..."

Noh Doha scribbled some complicated numbers in her notebook.

"It generally takes one to two weeks to make an assistive device. Is this beanpole here your guardian, Miss Lee Hayul...?"

"Yes."

"Do you have a preference between wood and iron...?"

"What’s the difference?"

"Wood needs replacing rather more often. That means the inconvenience of regular trips to our workshop. Iron lasts longer between replacements, but it may creak and squeak whenever you walk. It rusts, too. Quite a few patients find that bothersome."

"..."

"Well, if you bring in some other material yourself, I can use that instead of wood or iron. In any case, you should think of prosthetic legs as something you’ll be using for life. You can consider better materials when you find them. There’s no need to go crazy trying to find premium materials right this moment..."

Hayul considered the choice.

I could sense the deliberation of a doll expert.

"Iron, then."

"Do you dislike clockwork springs...?"

"No."

"Does hearing a clock tick make you feel as though you’re going insane, make your hair stand on end, and fill you with a compulsion to smash it immediately...?"

"No."

"Do you generally prefer operating in secret, and are you ever assigned missions to assassinate other people...?"

"No."

"Good. I’ll make them as quickly as I can, but it may still take fifteen days or more. Once they’re finished, I’ll send someone to your lodgings to let you know..."

Despite what she said, fewer than five days passed before Noh Doha called us back.

When giving someone a deadline, some people factored in their own wishful thinking, while others distrusted it. Noh Doha’s default level of self-distrust exceeded a factor of two.

"These are your prosthetic legs, Miss Lee Hayul..."

"..."

With hollow eyes, Noh Doha handed over a box. The long, straight wooden box was clean and neat despite its lack of decoration.

In one corner, she had carved the name and date of manufacture: "Lee Hayul, xxxx-xx-xx." The numbers varied with each run.

It was in Noh Doha’s nature to take that extra step of packaging a finished product in a box before giving it to her patient, rather than simply handing it over bare.

By now, you can surely imagine why not even the worst scoundrel could treat her lightly.

If anyone so much as laid a hand on her, more than a few awakened would personally grab clubs and assemble a death squad.

"Since this is your first visit to our workshop, would you like to try them on here? If anything doesn’t fit, I’ll adjust it..."

"Yes. Please."

"Then, Awakened Undertaker, please turn around..."

I obeyed the assistive-device technician’s instructions.

Quiet noises came from behind my shoulder.

CLACK, CREAK, CREAAK.

Between the sounds of metal knocking together, Noh Doha continued her explanations: "This goes like this," and "If it doesn’t work, don’t get angry. Stay calm and try once more."

At last.

"All done..."

I turned around.

"Shall we try standing up...?"

"..."

Hayul shifted in her wheelchair.

Even during the journey home from Japan to Korea, whatever else happened, she had been intensely particular about her wheelchair’s setup—the angle of its cushion, how plump the cushion was, and so on.

Like someone suddenly leaving a rented room she had expected to live in for the rest of her life, Hayul was a little dazed, full of worries and a little anticipation.

"...!"

She made a sound without sound. I couldn’t tell whether it was a cry of exertion or a challenge, whether she was directing it at the world or suggesting something to herself.

And she stood on two feet.

For the first time since she was a newborn.

"..."

"How does it feel? Any pain, stabbing sensations in your nerves, sharp aches in your muscles—anything like that...?"

"None."

That word, "none," carried an especially heavy mechanical undertone.

"How. This. There’s none, at all."

"Heh."

Noh Doha tapped Hayul’s "legs" twice with a flagpole. The iron machinery rang with a metallic sound.

But the material didn’t matter.

"They feel like real legs, don’t they...?"

"Yes. My toes move. The feeling. Really. I’m walking. My feet are walking."

"Yes, they’re real. As you can see, I’ve fitted clockwork springs here. They serve absolutely no engineering purpose. I just added them to look cool. The faster you run, the faster the hands on the spring-driven clock spin, but that’s also just there to look cool. It has fuck-all practical use. I wish I could make you vocal cords as well, but that just isn’t working out. So. Are they to your taste...?"

"Yes."

Hayul cried. She wiped her tears with the back of her hand.

The tears kept coming, choking her own mouth, but through a mouth that wasn’t hers she could speak without interruption.

"Thank you."

"Heh."

Noh Doha smiled faintly.

"Then I’m glaaad..."

Depending on who saw it, that smile might have seemed gloomy or sinister.

But I could call it a kind smile without the slightest hesitation.

Here was someone satisfied with her life simply by replacing the body parts her patients had lost. The greatest ambition she had ever harbored was to build a direct, single-lane road from the home of her most mobility-impaired elderly patient to her workshop. For dragging such a person into the dust of worldly affairs and saddling her with the title of commander of the National Road Management Corps, I have always carried a measure of guilt in one corner of my heart.

"Thank you."

Hayul turned to me.

"Thank you, big brother."

Even afterward, Hayul often used her wheelchair. She was so accustomed to controlling it with puppet strings, and she liked the sensation of the housekeeper pushing her from behind.

But I saw it.

"..."

One summer, on a day when shooting stars rained down from the night sky.

I saw Hayul rise from her wheelchair onto her two feet and reach toward the starlight.

I saw her gaze up with blank golden eyes, her thoughts utterly unreadable, at a star shining as golden as her own eyes.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

In the end, at birth, everyone had no choice but to accept something belonging not to themselves but to someone else as their own heart and flesh.

We were all born as dolls.

But Lee Hayul—a certain Puppeteer—would surely die as a human each time she met her hundreds, her thousands of deaths.

Listening to the lullaby of starlight.

- The Manipulator. End.

End of Chapter 62