Chapter 95 - The Trailblazer IX

17

After patrolling the school once with Cheon Yohwa, we reached a conclusion.

“It's... a peaceful world.”

A world where humanity had not perished.

Voids called “gates” were appearing here and there, but the situation was nowhere near as serious as in reality. True to their name, all the voids here looked like gateways. Left alone, they disgorged “monsters” in relentless streams.

Conversely, successfully sealing a gate kept the damage to a minimum.

—A gate appeared around Sadang Station in Seoul recently, didn't it? With crowds gathered for the morning commute, heavy casualties were anticipated.

—The Fourth Exploration Team has finally succeeded in clearing the Sadang Station gate. Expedition leader Dang Seorin, who rescued most of the missing people...

—Meanwhile, calls for the government to take responsibility for the incident, whose death toll of 212 sets a new record for gate casualties...

Newspapers, news broadcasts, YouTube, and social media were flooded with stories about gates day after day.

Civilization had not collapsed. “Gates” were merely a brief new entry on the list of disasters humanity had endured since ancient times: typhoons, tidal waves, earthquakes, crop failures, and epidemics.

Humans still proclaimed themselves the lords of creation. Some feared gates and monsters as omens of the end, but having experienced the actual “end” and returned, we could only see things differently.

“... I'm jealous. I wish things in our world had only been this bad.”

“The fact that Gapless hasn't shown us a completely peaceful world reveals just how cunning it is.”

“Huh? Why?”

“Anomalies have already left us traumatized. In a world that was too peaceful, we'd only become more conscious of how abnormal we were, obsessed with the idea that the world might end at any moment. ... But here, monsters appear in numbers we can handle. In this world, you and I can live as ‘normal people.’”

“Oh... Wow, it even thought of that?”

“Yes. It's a God of Alienation-class anomaly. No easy opponent.”

And that was hardly all.

In a completely peaceful world with no anomalies whatsoever, Cheon Yohwa's awakened abilities and mine would be no better than alien tumors.

But in a world where monsters actually existed?

All the abilities, knowledge, and instincts we had accumulated would translate directly into results. Countless guilds would come clamoring to shake our hands and recruit us.

“A world where we can climb all the way to the top of the pyramid, our very selves endlessly affirmed rather than denied. And where we can still believe our success comes entirely from our own talent, effort, and free will—not some favor bestowed by the anomaly called Gapless. This is a miniature garden designed solely for the two of us.”

“...”

Cheon Yohwa's shoulders hunched.

“... Anomalies are terrifying.”

“They are. But look at it another way: that's how far we've pushed Gapless.”

Four steps. The distance from the other shore to this shore. Our strides across that infinite instant had certainly not been in vain.

Gapless was unmistakably crumbling.

Dang Seorin's travels. Noh Doha's seclusion. The Saintess's contemplation. We had trampled the routes containing their respective eternities.

However sweet the illusions Gapless had carefully selected, our determination to return to reality had rejected them.

“Yohwaaaa!”

“Come play basketball with us!”

Students on the distant field waved at us.

Cheon Yohwa stopped short and briefly held her breath. Only after some three seconds did she cup her hands around her mouth and shout, “Sooorry! I'm sitting this one ooout!”

Out, out, out...

Wings sprouting from the bark of the summer wisteria shrilled fiercely with cicada cries. Leaves rubbed against one another in the wind. The children's laughter and the cicadas' calls rang across the school field, that imitation sandy desert.

“Friends of yours, I take it.”

“... Yes. Classmates. Roommates.”

A sigh drifted downward, too faint a breath to reach the desert.

“They both died a week into School Ghost Stories.”

Cheon Yohwa tapped the field with the toe of her shoe. The weight of one human being knocked against the Earth.

“Hmmmm. Mister. Something just occurred to me. Actually, I've been thinking about it for a while, but I'm only asking now.”

“Go ahead.”

“Why can't we stay here? No, I'm not saying I want to. I'm genuinely asking out of pure curiosity. It's just... there's not much waiting for us back there, is there?”

“...”

“We have to check for ghosts every time we use the bathroom. Pick out every piece of meat so we don't eat human flesh. Whenever we wake up, someone is always missing. From what you've told me, it isn't just our school that's ruined—the whole world is completely wrecked... How can you say so firmly that we have to return to reality?”

“Hmm.”

“For example... what if we invited everyone else into Gapless, not just us? Then this place would become reality. Or do you think a world that isn't true has no value, even then...?”

“No. That isn't why.”

“Then why?”

“My alias is Undertaker.”

Cheon Yohwa turned toward me.

“Just as you have the ability to brainwash your targets, I have a few abilities of my own. One of them is Time Seal... Personally, I also call it a funeral.”

“A funeral.”

“I can make the day a person felt happiest repeat for them forever.”

“...”

“Strictly speaking, it isn't even repetition. The person never realizes that their day is being replayed endlessly. This ability is why I came to be called Undertaker.”

The cicadas in the trees, the bouncing ball on the basketball court, the long blare of a truck's horn somewhere beyond the school wall.

“Yohwa. Do you think this world has no unhappiness?”

“... No.”

“That's right. It must have plenty. Even yesterday, 212 people died while they were sealing a gate. However well Gapless has optimized this setting for us, it's still a long way from making every human happy.”

The traffic lights at the crossing outside the school gate blinked at regular intervals.

“The reason I won't entrust my life to Gapless is very simple. It's a matter of comparative advantage. As a final hell to settle for, this world is a little... unconvincing.”

“...”

If the world is hell, people ultimately live to find a hell they can accept. Until then, they can defer their lives.

After a long silence, Cheon Yohwa nodded.

“... Yes. I understand. You're a terminal people can return to at any time, Mister.”

“Somehow, that's what I've become.”

“Then the only question I really need to ask myself is whether I want to give up and rest now... Yeah. I'm all right. I'm not tired yet.”

Our gazes met.

The sunset embraced the desert. Orange was the color of sand mixed with red. Cheon Yohwa's hair, too, held equal parts the scent of the desert and the fragrance of oranges.

“Tell me what I need to do, Mister.”

18

I followed the strategy the Saintess had proposed on the surface of the moon to the letter.

Steal control of Hundred Tales from Gapless—the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, comprising a total of one hundred ghosts.

If we could put that strategy into practice, Gapless, which had manifested as one hundred ghosts, would undoubtedly be drastically weakened.

“For this operation, Yohwa, you have to brainwash every ghost in Hundred Tales, one by one.”

“Brainwash anomalies.”

“Yes. It doesn't matter how long it takes. In the end, you just have to make the ghosts follow you instead of Gapless.”

“Okay. I'll try.”

I captured the Thump-Thump-Thump Ghost and tossed it to her. To keep it from striking its head against the floor, I looped a rope around its neck and hung it from the ceiling.

Cheon Yohwa shut herself away in the student council room as if undertaking secluded training, and began spending her days alone with the ghost.

Brainwashing an anomaly rather than a human.

It had never happened once in any of my runs, but I was certain: Cheon Yohwa could do it.

A day, two days, three days, a week passed, and still Cheon Yohwa could not brainwash the ghost.

The ghost's stench filled the student council room with a putrid reek. Cup-noodle containers, cans, and other garbage from the meals she ate during her seclusion spilled down in one corner.

“I'm fine.”

Cheon Yohwa's eyes gleamed like a madwoman's.

“I think I can do it. It's summer break anyway... I want to concentrate on my own for a while, so you don't need to clean up for me.”

While the Korean Peninsula's only necromancer continued her secluded training, I took a brief trip around the country.

In Busan, Mayor Jeong, professional traitor to his country, was going about his official duties as though nothing were wrong.

His secret daughter, the Puppeteer, Lee Hayul, had graduated early and joined a major guild.

Dang Seorin led an exploration team with her three younger siblings. Even if only from a distance, I got to see the faces of the family I had always only heard her talk about.

At Hongik University, Sim Aryeon, lacking any friends to eat with, was tackling a bowl of shoyu ramen—with extra bean sprouts—alone at a ramen shop.

Noh Doha walked out of the rehabilitation hospital's assistive-device center precisely at quitting time.

In Yongsan, the Saintess stayed home all day except for her once-daily evening walk.

A world where humans, not anomalies, still called themselves the lords of creation.

... An old man who had accompanied his wife from Germany on a visit to Korea for her academic lecture was also alive and well.

“Excuse me. Do you happen to know where the auditorium written here is?”

Old Man Scho.

Dressed in a casual suit, he addressed me in English in the middle of Seoul National University.

It had been a very long time since I had seen Old Man Scho with his head properly seated atop his neck rather than as a dullahan.

I was torn between the contradictory desires to punch that bearded jaw and to wrap my arms tightly around his shoulders.

“... You can ask me in German, sir.”

“Oh? Well, now. I had no idea you spoke our language so fluently, young man! Was my English that obviously German?”

“I majored in German language and literature, so I have a few German friends. I was just heading to that auditorium myself. Please follow me.”

“Oh, thank you. My wife is giving a lecture here today. Perhaps you've heard of her? Adele Schopenhauer...”

“Wow. As it happens, I'm on my way to hear her lecture.”

“Oh! What a happy coincidence!”

That day, I saw Old Man Scho's wife at Seoul National University's Cultural Center. I had seen her in photographs a few times, but never in person.

Naturally, the expression on Old Man Scho's face as he embraced her with a radiant smile after her lecture was another first for me.

So that was the sort of person he was.

It was good evidence that when Gapless created illusions, it not only stole my personal memories but also used its own accumulated data about the world.

“Oh, Adele. There was a kind young man who helped me find my way when I got lost here... Huh? What? How strange. He was right here with me a moment ago—”

Without a word, I left one route behind there and returned to school.

No one questioned my comings and goings, thanks to Cheon Yohwa having “defined” me as a security guard who had worked at Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School for years.

And the instant I set foot in the old school building's wooden corridor, the world flipped upside down without warning.

“...!”

Midair. At the top of the old building.

I immediately spread aura in every direction. Another awakened would have been appalled at the waste, but for an infinite regressor and former support who had no combat skills and had to make do with aura, it was an eminently rational tactic.

Gray ripples spread through the air.

Echolocation. After centuries of honing, my senses had become specialized in perceiving objects' outlines through aura, like a dolphin mapping its surroundings with ultrasound.

Those senses detected something amiss. As I fell through the air, my eyes met Cheon Yohwa's as she stood by a window in the building.

Cheon Yohwa was smiling.

“—”

Her lips moved.

"Stand it upright."

The sky flipped again. The feeling of floating evaporated, and an instant later my feet were on the corridor floor of the old school building.

Cheon Yohwa smiled before me. She held an hourglass in both hands, and there was something inside its glass.

It wriggled.

It was a ghost. Shrunken to a tiny size, it dangled inside the hourglass with a rope around its neck.

An hourglass. I marveled inwardly. Could there be a more fitting spell for a prison in which to seal and confine ghosts?

Imprisoning a world and placing it in one's grasp. Pouring a vortex of time over a desolate pile of sand while holding it entirely under one's own control.

Sunset streaming through the corridor windows struck the hourglass's glass.

As though showing off a new pet—or abusing it—the Student Council President of School Ghost Stories playfully shook the hourglass and spoke.

“What do you think, Mister?”

“Nice hourglass. Can I touch it?”

“Ahaha—yes!”

Humanity's first subjugation of an anomaly.

By the end of summer break, Cheon Yohwa had successfully brought a total of forty-three ghosts into obedience.