Infinite Regressor, Chapter 411 - I’m an Infinite Regressor, But I’ve Got Stories to Tell

1 ――I don’t remember my first life. My memory isn’t as good as the doctor’s. Oh, I did have the opportunity to improve it. But, of course, I refused. Perfect recall? Ha ha ha. Who in the world would want such a curse? …Hardly anything really. The only vague memories are of two things. There used to be a playground in our neighborhood. A sandy playground. Yes, an old one. In the daytime, I gathered there with kids whose names and faces I didn’t know, and we parted ways by evening. Then the void came. As civilization was crumbling, a thought struck me. 『The kids I played with at the village playground during my childhood... They must all be dead by now.』 But, as it turned out, that wasn’t true. I joined the resistance in Busan. I wasn’t a combatant, just a support unit. Oh. By the way, at that time, there was no such massive organization like the 'National Road Management Corps.’ There were no Awakened ones either. Strategies like the ones we have now hadn’t been discovered yet... People with mysterious abilities hadn’t been found either. However, a man, who was leading part of the resistance at the time, paused when he was about to walk past me. The man had a much higher rank than me. I was support, while he was a combatant handling the most dangerous reconnaissance unit. The man said, 『Aren’t you from the □□□ village?』 I don’t remember the exact words. As I mentioned― my memory is terrible compared to the doctor’s. But I probably said something like this: 『Yes, I am. How did you...?』 『Oh. I thought so. Don’t you remember me? It’s me. We used to roam the apartment complexes and have snowball fights whenever it snowed.』 『Ah...』 Honestly, I was baffled. Who remembers a childhood like that? I guarantee that people have more friends before the age of twelve than after. Just playing together once at the playground and then parting. Kicking a soccer ball around the field and then parting. Throwing snow after a winter’s snowfall and then parting. It’s just that I can’t recall their faces or names. 『Your name?』 『So-yeon.』 I just smiled awkwardly. 『It’s So-yeon, Captain.』 『Captain? Just call me by my name.』 『Ha ha ha...』 It was an era where we couldn’t be casual. Finally, the horde of anomalies, though we just called them monsters back then, reached Busan, and everyone fought desperately. I lost an arm too. Or was it a leg? Maybe both. As my heavy eyelids were about to close, in the midst of countless monsters converging from afar, That man, who had claimed to know me from the same village, was fighting valiantly, bleeding all over. As I closed my eyes, I wondered, 『We’re going to lose anyway.』 『We’re going to be wiped out.』 『Why does he fight so fiercely?』 That was my first life. The scenery I no longer remember. And. 2 “――That man was the doctor.” For a moment, I was at a loss for words. “What?” Go Yuri smiled softly. “So we were actually ‘childhood friends.’ Ha ha. Isn’t that funny?” “......” “The second life was a bit delayed in timing. By the time I was born, lo and behold, the void had already arrived, hadn’t my parents fled to Busan?” Despite my interjection, Go Yuri quietly continued her story. As if not blaming a child who couldn’t keep up with her footsteps, slowly. “My parents owned a bakery.” Busan. A bakery. “But the world was so broken. There’s no leisurely running a bakery under such conditions. My father, like me in my previous life, went off to war as a combatant, and my mother as a support... Both of them didn’t return.” Go Yuri’s expression was varied. She sighed, she smiled, and she touched her cheek with her hand. A night gallery. In the exhibition hall filled with hundreds of chapters, a solo monologue flowing softly. “I, too, like all the other children in Busan, went off to war as a child soldier.” “…Jeong Seo Ah.” I said, as if coughing it up. “The bakery owner’s family births a different child every cycle. And one of them...” “Yes, it was me.” She smiled sweetly. “There was no special meaning to it. Even though I was reborn, as I mentioned, it was too late.” “......” A world born too late. An era that had lost hope even for salvation. “Showing combat prowess no different from my first life, I failed. Ha ha. It’s embarrassing... I’m unfit to be a reincarnator.” Was it her first deployment? Go Yuri, no. ‘Jeong Seo Ah’ died in battle. Just before her eyes closed. She saw it again that time. Someone fighting bravely at the far end of the final defense line, amidst a battlefield dyed red with bullets. The man who had been a ‘childhood friend’ in the previous life and an ‘unattainable superior’ in this one, was pierced through the chest by a tentacle and died. She suddenly thought. Why am I living a life like this? What is life? 3 From the third life onward, my memories started to become uncertain. “I tried hard to take notes and such to never forget the 1st and 2nd, but from the 3rd, well, hmm-. It became hard to find meaning.” Go Yuri said. “I continued to be born as a different child to different parents.” Reincarnation. Born in Japan. Born in Germany. Reincarnation didn’t discriminate by nationality. But the timeline was relatively fixed. Even if I reincarnated as soon as possible, it was 20 years before the void arrived. Go Yuri didn’t know why she kept reincarnating. To treat herself as Buddha or the Dalai Lama, she hadn’t found enlightenment. She simply kept living. “Anyway, shouldn’t we try to prevent the world from ending?” She vaguely set a life purpose. “I mean, though ‘Jeong Seo Ah’ died, when I reincarnated and went back to Busan, my parents were still alive.” Of course, Jeong Seo Ah’s parents didn’t recognize her. In the spot she once occupied, there was another child, a new ‘Jeong Seo Ah.’ Yet, to her, they were still her parents. “With each reincarnation, the number of people who were my parents, my family, my friends increased.” Their nationalities were different. Their statuses varied. The kind and degree of love they gave her differed too. “Still, they were all incredibly precious people.” “…….” “Did you know? I once was born as Noh Do-hwa’s younger sister.” “What?!” Go Yuri covered her mouth with her hand. Uhu-hu. A sound of a laughter, full of joy, escaped her. “That seems to surprise you the most.” “Oh, no. But. I’ve never heard that Director Noh Do-hwa had a younger sister...” “Of course, doctor.” Go Yuri tilted her head slightly. “When you're reborn, reincarnated, the ‘you’ from the previous life disappears.” “…….” “Noh Do-hwa was really gentle. Though she was quite cold to others—she became an orthotist for me, her younger sister who had been disabled from birth.” “What...?” “When I was the child of Adele and Emit.” The shocks kept coming, like waves. “I felt a bit guilty.” “Old Man Scho’s child, you said? They didn’t have...” “Even as an adopted child. Both of them showered me with an overwhelming amount of love when I was little. But during that time, I was obsessed with preventing the world from ending.” “…….” “I was confident.” I had reincarnated hundreds of times. Go Yuri mastered numerous languages. She reached a knowledge realm and experiential domain that ordinary humans could hardly attain. “Gathering funds was easy. So was gaining power. I dedicated all available resources to prepare for the end.” “…….” “My parents... Emit and Adele were worried. But I persuaded them to let me head to the Korean Peninsula alone. I died trying to prevent the advent of the foreign god ‘Taeguk.’” Go Yuri looked up with a distant gaze. At the painting titled 『Ten Tribes』. “In the subsequent lives I checked, Emit and Adele... never adopted another child.” “…….” “For some reason, whenever the time for Taeguk’s advent approached, they often took business trips to Korea.” A small murmur. “As if their lost daughter was there.” “…….” “Strange, isn’t it? Both of them couldn’t possibly have memories of a past life.” Go Yuri said. “The Schopenhauer couple started to come to Korea. Noh Do-hwa lost her younger sister, and the reason to become an orthotist was gone. Yet, from the next life, she always became an orthotist.” “…….” “Under different conditions at different times, with different genders perhaps, the name might have changed had a child been born. But the bakery owners always named the child Jeong Seo Ah.” Go Yuri turned this way. “What do you think the reason is, doctor?” “A... hole in the heart.” I managed to say. “Emptiness.” “Yes.” Go Yuri nodded. “I was someone’s most precious child. Someone’s most precious sister.” “…….” “When I was alive, when I was an unparalleled confidant and family to them, those people were happy because of me. Including Sim Ah-ryeon, who lies on the doctor’s lap.” A smile drew across Go Yuri’s lips. “I’ve been born with cerebral palsy quite a few times. At that time, Sim Ah-ryeon was my sister.” “…….” “I couldn’t speak well. I couldn’t express myself. I couldn’t move my body. So, Sim Ah-ryeon would always draw pictures in a sketchbook to show me and play with me.” 4 I was happy. The fact that I had wielded considerable power behind the scenes of the government in a past life didn’t matter much. There’d be another life anyway. “Ta-da, ta-ta-daaa......” Before my eyes, my sister— Though if we were to count the actual years lived, she was just a child much younger than ‘myself.’ Anyway, in this life, the person who was my sister, held up a sketchbook and laughed cheerfully. “So, how is it?” I liked it. I couldn’t speak. When I made a sound that was closer to crying than a voice, something like “Uh-oo-uh”, Sim Ah-ryeon smiled sheepishly. A slightly teary look. “Do, do you like it? I, I wish... I could understand you without needing words... I really do...” You had talent. Having lived through hundreds, no, thousands of lives where counting the numbers now seemed meaningless, I could assert it. This sister of mine had tremendous talent. It wasn’t mere flattery. I had never seen someone who drew as well as you. At least among the artists and aspiring artists still alive, you were the best. But even someone like that could die. Everyone dies someday—this wasn’t just humanity’s destiny and lesson. Monsters that no one could currently imagine would appear, wielding violently unjustifiable power, killing everyone. “Haaa. I, I wish I could just take your pain... I’m so sorry. That only I’m okay...” This—is a bright talent. An artist who could become greater than anyone. ...would run straight to the hospital, right after school, to show drawings to her sister who lay alone, without a single friend, on a hospital bed for life. And then, she too would die. As, eventually, would I. “……!” In the distance, I heard a voice. My sister was crying. Severe cerebral palsy. Adding to that, the numerous complications I endured. Surviving up to this point was due to the superhuman mental strength of a ‘reincarnator.’ “...Do, doctor! My sister, my, my sister. Please, please......!!” A life that was too short. As I felt the sensation of it slipping away, I could faintly hear my sister's sobs and thought to myself. Ah. I wanted to save kids like you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, sister. For not being able to save you. I'm sorry for being born like this. 5 “Doctor.” “…….” “Have you ever wondered? Why some people, who lead ordinary lives, suddenly feel the urge to paint?” Still. Go Yuri was gazing at the painting. “With all these incredible talents. Despite having the capability to organize citizens and operate an extensive government in an apocalyptic world, why would someone choose the path of an orthotist?” “…….” “Why do people, while living an average life, often feel like they've lost something? Why do they feel devoid of precious someone by their side? Why do they feel they've lost life’s treasure, even while having it?” “…….” “Why have they awakened with the ability to sense other people's emotions without words?” Go Yuri turned to look back. Our eyes met. “Doctor. According to some myths, there's a destiny in choosing one's profession. Regardless of what you do in this life, there’s a theory that what you become ‘obsessed’ with is already determined.” “…Karma.” “Yes.” Go Yuri smiled. “Karma. Cause and effect. Usually, it’s about what one did right or wrong in a past life that determines this life. But... I think it’s the opposite.” In a past life. What did you lose? What kind of hole was left in your heart? □. “I am the sole reincarnator.” She was someone’s loss. “I am the life before people decide what they love and what they despise. The starting point of all routes.” She was someone’s precious person. “I am.” She was. “The catalyst that awakened the Awakened.” The first Awakened. ---TL NOTE: Well shiiii, I didn't expect them to drop Go Yuri's real name like that. Hhhhh, more work for me I guess. As of the time of translation, there is zero info about Go Yuri's past name on the wiki. Looks like I have the privilege of giving her the first translated name then. You, the one with pink hair, She Who Must Not Be Named, I shall rend the heavens and shatter the abyss to bestow upon you a name: Jeong Seo-ah.---