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The Tormented One

1

Let me share a brief story about old man Scho, something I haven’t talked about in a while.

“Hey, Embalmer.”

“……”

I’ve mentioned before, but Scho frequently called me “Embalmer.” This was because my alias, “Undertaker,” came from my job of embalming bodies.

The phrase “same thing, different words” fits perfectly here.

By simply changing the vowel in “Embalmer” to “Embalmer,” Scho’s advanced Korean pronunciation added an undertone of “sick” to the word.

This proved that Scho’s mental state hadn’t progressed past infancy. By giving people nasty nicknames and calling them such in front of others, he aimed to assert his power over them.

In the eternal election between the belief in human goodness and human wickedness, this was another moment where the latter secured a valuable vote.

“Embalmer. Why aren’t you answering? Did you cut off your tongue and give it to a beggar? Hey, you! Even if they are a beggar, you shouldn’t mock them like that.”

“Damn it…”

“Hey, Embalmer. While I’m quite pleased to see you reflecting the Parthenon temple’s maxim of ‘know thyself,’ why do you demean yourself so? Do you claim to be a regressor with such self-deprecation? All people have equal value. Although you may be damnable, you’re an embalmer, not damned.”

Who taught this old German guy such fluent Korean?

He must have been taught by an incredible language instructor. I’d love to find out their identity and pay them a respectful visit—with a sword.

“So, what is it this time? What’s the new trouble you’re planning?”

“You have a better memory than I do, so you’d know more precisely. That kid over there.”

Scho pointed to someone.

A girl about five years old was playing among a young couple who ran a bakery in Haeundae, Busan.

Scho said, “In the last turn, it was a boy.”

“……”

“As the turns change, so do the couple’s children. The child meant to be born to them has vanished. Isn’t that right?”

It wasn’t just that. Although I hadn’t mentioned it to Scho, I remembered it clearly. The couple’s child changed with each turn.

In the 18th turn, it was a boy, and in the 17th, another boy but with a different appearance. In the 11th turn, they even had twins. The timing of the pregnancy and birth always varied subtly. There was never a child who looked the same throughout the turns.

“So what? Why bring this up now?”

“Think about it, Doctor.”

When he was serious, Scho would call me “Doctor” instead of “Embalmer.”

“Doesn’t this mean that every time we return, the children from the previous worlds, the newly born humans, disappear completely?”

“…Not all of them.”

“Right. Those unaffected by our butterfly effect remain. But since the extermination of the Ten Clans, I’ve felt it more keenly. There are more lives I’ve never seen before.”

“That’s expected, given that many people now feel it’s safe to settle in Korea.”

“Why are you pretending not to understand? That’s not my point. What I’m saying is, there are children who vanish completely because of our returns! Their memories, their existence, all of it! Except for you, with your extraordinary memory!”

“……”

“I’m worried that the unintended ripple effect of my actions is cruelly impacting those little lives.”

Scho’s old brow furrowed with an indescribable guilt.

It wasn’t until much later that I learned Scho and his wife had lost a child to miscarriage. Scho was projecting his wounds onto the ‘vanishing lives’ with each turn.

Perhaps Scho’s decision to take a ‘vacation’ had something to do with this?

Erasing his presence. Refraining from interfering with the lives of those yet to be born, to prevent their existence from being pointlessly erased.

“Hmm.”

“…What is that irritating expression for?”

“Nothing. Just…”

But my thoughts were a bit different. Not just my thoughts, but my feelings as well.

Maybe it was at this point that Scho and I started to part ways.

Because I didn’t feel any guilt toward the ‘vanished lives.’

Of course, I felt regret and sadness.

For instance, the child Scho had pointed out followed her parents to make glutinous rice donuts, and since they made too many, she even gave me some as a gift.

“Oppaaa! Ah-ah!”

The child’s laughter, the small hand putting a donut in my mouth, the stiffness in my back as I bent down to receive it, the stickiness of the sugar that clung excessively to the surface of the glutinous rice donut, my reaction of, “Wow, this is really delicious!” and the shy greeting from her parents—all these memories remained with me.

Yes, I admit it.

I would never again receive a sugar donut from the little baker, Jeong Seoah, the five-year-old from the Haeundae bakery who admired her parents so much that she wanted to bake like them.

But Jeong Seoah was just one of many who left a mark on my heart like grains of sand. Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of losses clung to the years of a regressor.

Shadows exist not only in space but also in time, and we call those shadows memories. For someone like me, who has lived the longest, the darkest memories cast the deepest shadows.

But the emotions that my heart felt were sadness, sorrow, and longing.

I can say with certainty that guilt was not among them.

In the first place, the targets of my guilt were limited.

It was mainly for the gravestones for which I held funerals through [Time Seal]. In other words, guilt only accumulated for those whom I had buried forever with my own hands.

“Old man, didn’t I mention this before?”

“Hmm? What?”

“You know, when we return, the children born are subtly different. So, every time we return, it’s like we’re annihilating existences.”

“Huh? When did I ever say that…? Oh, that?”

Scho glared at me.

“What a crazy bastard.”

“…?”

“You damn fool! That was something I mentioned more than three turns ago! Why are you acting like we talked about it yesterday? You, you bastard, you’re doing this on purpose to make me look like a forgetful old man, aren’t you?”

Scho fumed, and it took me three minutes to calm him down.

So I couldn’t even joke, “Didn’t you once tell me not to use such language? Why change your tune now?” When dealing with someone much older, you had to make many concessions.

“Doctor, if you don’t fix that nasty habit, you’re going to be in big trouble one day.”

“Indeed. Hearing that from you, who is riddled with mischief, suddenly makes me feel cautious.”

“Why is this brat getting more and more sharp-tongued? Embalmer! Where has your old innocent self gone?”

“Who knows? Maybe it got dragged off by a German and gassed to death.”

“You racist bastard! My family has been supporting the Social Democrats since the Imperial Diet era! My ancestors were arrested too!”

“Sure, no matter how much a white person frames it as racism against Asians, it doesn’t work. Anyway, old man, I thought about what you said. I disagree.”

We were walking along Haeundae beach.

The sand, once a symbol of vacations in Korea, seemed to sparkle with the blue of an emerald, as if all the jewels called civilization lost by humanity had been stolen here.

“If children disappear every time we return, isn’t it also true that new lives, which couldn’t have existed before, come into being because of us?”

“…Hmm?”

“If there were no returns, the people born at this moment would be predetermined. But the stronger and farther our butterfly effect spreads, new possibilities, even if brief, come into being.”

“……”

“Of course, it’s not a particularly good world. Every generation complains they were born in the worst time in history, and except for the Ice Age, this is indeed the worst era. Still, I think it’s better to exist even briefly than to remain in the abyss of nothingness.”

Crunch. The sand of the Hangha Desert crunched under my shoe.

“And do you think we return because we like it? It’s the fault of those damned anomalies. They should be the ones feeling guilty for the world’s destruction, not us.”

“Sigh.”

“Old man, in my opinion, we don’t need to feel guilty for the lives that have passed or take credit for the new ones. Just our determination to prevent the world’s end weighs heavily on our shoulders. There’s no need to add undue responsibility and break our backs.”

“……”

“If you feel compelled to feel guilt, I won’t stop you, but equally, you should feel joy for the new lives.”

“……”

“As I’m not a great person, I can’t handle both emotions. So, I choose to feel neither guilt nor joy for the new lives.”

For a long time, only the sound of waves, sand, and our footsteps filled the beach.

So I had just advised Scho not to be too sad.

“The boy who couldn’t understand a single phrase from the Analects has grown so wise.”

Scho’s sigh echoed like the old sea spitting out waves.

“Yes, having the courage to possess something is difficult, but even more difficult is the courage to let go. Doctor, you might be more suited to being a regressor than I am.”

I couldn’t easily agree with that soliloquy.

However, one thing I was certain of was that my words probably didn’t provide much comfort to Scho. As is well known, Scho eventually went on vacation with his beloved wife.

I still didn’t agree with Scho’s assertion.

Only when I saw Sim Aryeon reduced to a 1-bit graphic, smiling, did I briefly wonder if I was perhaps doing something bad to other children.

“Mister!”

It was then, as I was walking along the beach.

“Hmm?”

“Ah-ah!”

A little boy came running up to me, holding out a glutinous rice donut. Looking over the boy’s shoulder, I saw a familiar bakery couple smiling cautiously.

I instantly understood the situation.

“Ah-ah!”

“……”

In this turn, I compared the boy in front of me to Jeong Seoah, whom I had encountered thousands of years ago.

They looked completely different.

But surprisingly, when I bit into the glutinous rice donut, even the sweetness of the excessively coated sugar tasted remarkably similar.

My eyes widened. I couldn’t help but savor the taste of the donut.

“How is it? Is it good?”

“…It’s delicious. Really, it’s very good. You could become a bakery owner.”

The boy giggled, his laughter ringing out as he ran back to his parents. The bakery couple, knowing I was the main force behind the annihilation of the Ten Clans, bowed their heads slightly.

The sight of the sand grains scattering under the boy’s footsteps was vividly imprinted in my mind.

As the waves of the sea rushed in, brushing against my feet, they seemed to wash away the last remnants clinging to my heart.

‘If Scho erases all traces of his existence through suicide, I should rather survive to the end, so that the newly born lives can walk the earth a little longer. Anyway, time will tell which of us was wiser.’

As I was about to leave Haeundae with a light step, a strange sense of incongruity caught my attention.

‘Wait. Didn’t the kid in the 19th turn call me oppa?’

In fact, if I compared the time purely in terms of chronology, I was a year younger now than I was then.

‘So why did he call me mister…?’

Hmm.

…Now that I think about it, Jeong Seoah’s glutinous rice donuts might have been tastier after all.