Ttuk—.
The Reincarnate’s One Thousand and One Nights ended there.
The midnight exhibition hall, which had been displaying a thousand deaths, was once again engulfed in silence.
Like a portable radio whose battery had run out mid-broadcast.
“Go Yuri? Why did you suddenly stop talking?”
“……”
Go Yuri lifted her head.
A gentle smile curved at the corners of her lips.
“No. It’s just… the A-ryeon in your arms seems to be starting to have a nightmare.”
“Ah.”
“This place is a temple built for you, Doctor. Thanks to that, you managed to receive my voice successfully. But since you’ve heard my story up to ‘this point,’ from now on, the reception sensitivity outside will also have improved.”
“Reception sensitivity.”
“Yes. You could call it the thod of tuning into the radio channel that is .”
The hem of her violet skirt slid down.
Go Yuri stood up. As though she had just surfaced from the depths of sleep, shedding the night air instead of droplets of water.
“The prologue ends here.”
She was looking down at .
“Please take A-ryeon back to her lodgings, Doctor. She held such a wonderful art exhibition for us—it’s sad to let her sleep on a hard floor.”
“You…”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Shhh.
Go Yuri’s finger crossed her lips. One eye playfully winked.
“Please don’t ask where. When it’s ti for us to et—at the place where we must et—we’ll reunite.”
“…You expect to just sit quietly and wait after hearing all that?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. Mm, it’s not that I want to trouble you, Doctor. It’s just that, to continue beyond this point, you’ll need your own resolve.”
Resolve.
If there was one thing I believed myself stronger in than anyone, it was that.
But the one before was a reincarnator who had lived through billions of lifetis.
I couldn’t help but pause at the weight that single word carried.
“When we et again, we won’t be able to stop anymore. We won’t be able to turn back or retreat.”
“……”
“So please, Doctor. Take a long ‘vacation.’ Enjoy it until no regrets remain.”
“What’s going to happen to ?”
“My salvation.”
Go Yuri’s eyes curved into a smile.
“The promise will be fulfilled.”
“Promise…?”
“Enjoy your final vacation. Ah, and don’t worry about . I’m very used to waiting.”
“How am I supposed to—after hearing that—”
“Ahaha. Believe . Mm, even though by sheer number alone, you’ve barely surpassed your thousandth round, so you can’t be compared to yet… Even so, I think you’re the only one in this world who can understand my kind of familiarity.”
“……”
“Then, farewell. Until we et again.”
Step.
Go Yuri took a few steps backward, then, like a noble lady, gracefully lifted the hem of her skirt and bowed.
And without adding a single word more, she left the exhibition hall alone.
Step, step, step… step.
I held Sim A-ryeon in my arms and followed imdiately behind Go Yuri. Truly imdiately.
So if I turned the gallery corner, I should’ve seen her figure still not far ahead.
But she wasn’t there.
Neither in the corridors of the exhibition hall, nor at the exit, nor anywhere in the darkened city under the night sky.
Only the faint cries of crickets and other insects flowed through the air.
“……”
“Mmm… Guild Leadeeer…”
The soft, sleepy murmuring of a young girl wriggled closer into my arms, as if there were a hollow shaped precisely for her there.
I had always been surrounded by children whose seasons were perpetually winter.
I stroked the child’s head.
7
Go Yuri had disappeared.
Even when I inquired with the Saintess, not a trace of her whereabouts could be found.
[Sorry. All this ti, following the Undertaker’s orders, I made sure never to peek at that area—not even by accident.]
[It seems she’s vanished even from the free soup kitchen that was being operated in Daejeon. No witnesses. I have no excuse.]
“No, it’s fine. I’m the one who gave the order not to monitor Go Yuri at all. I apologize for the sudden confusion.”
Where could she have gone?
If I searched the entire world, would I be able to find her sowhere?
‘No. Impossible.’
Go Yuri was a reincarnator. I was a regressor.
Between us, the word “disappearance” didn’t carry only a spatial aning.
Temporal disappearance was entirely possible too.
‘Next round.’
“I’ll be waiting,” she had said.
Until when?
‘Until I’m satisfied. Until I’ve enjoyed this world with no regrets left.’
Even if it took a hundred years.
Even if it took a thousand—it wouldn’t matter to her.
‘Because Go Yuri has already waited until I could receive her voice.’
Could it be that my entire life was soone else’s waiting?
“……”
“Huh? What’s with that face, mister?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Aha~ You fell for my fatal charm, didn’t you? Well, I get it. It’s natural to have fantasies about a great author like . But, uh, don’t get too close, okay? You’ll lt away like Icarus’s wings.”
It was a strange feeling.
Until now, I had been the one waiting for others—never the one being waited for.
Because I was a regressor.
I had known, half-omnisciently, who they were and what futures awaited them.
That’s why I knew so well.
“Oh Dok Seo.”
“Hm?”
“How’s the writing going?”
Thud-thud-thud-thud—
Oh Dok Seo clapped both hands over her ears and bolted off sowhere. The mont I said the word “writing,” she had already taken a cheetah’s stance.
I gave a wry smile.
‘I can wait. As long as it takes.’
Still—
‘I’d be happy if you caught up sooner rather than later.’
Of course, I was strong.
I could wait forever if I had to. I had built the resilience to endure waiting.
But no matter how well-constructed a building, even steel rusts.
Even if you called that rust “patina” and praised its beauty, the fact that the iron silently corrodes beneath cannot be denied.
‘Go Yuri was waiting for .’
Indeed, she had been right.
Among all who lived on earth, there could only be one regressor who truly understood the agony of a reincarnator’s waiting.
“Alright, alright. Oh Dok Seo.”
“Uwaaaah! I can’t hear you! I can’t hear anything! Respect the author’s rights! Respect them! Respect them! The author is not public property but a private human being! A human! A human!”
Normally I’d have pinched her cheek and said, “Readers are private humans too, you know,” but—
This ti, I only reached out and gently patted the back of Oh Dok Seo’s head.
“……?”
Like a hedgehog with its quills raised, Oh Dok Seo peeked up at , confused.
“Huh, mister?”
“Mm.”
“What’s wrong?”
As she looked up at my face, her expression grew more uneasy. Her red eyes wavered, unable to find focus.
“Are you… going sowhere?”
As expected. Sharp as ever.
I crouched down to match her eye level. And smiled.
“I’m not sure myself.”
“……”
“After living this long… there are still so many things I don’t know. But you know that I care a lot about you, right?”
“Don’t go.”
“Take care of Ha-yul for .”
“……”
“And A-ryeon. And Yo Hwa. And the others too. If I’m ever not here, you have to be the one to hold everyone together. Can you do that?”
“Why… why are you saying this? You’re not really going away, are you? Right?”
A child.
Such young children had died more than a thousand tis. Perhaps billions. Perhaps billions of tis more.
I had to save them.
It wasn’t sothing grand. There are many people who, when a child is in danger before them, would risk their own lives without hesitation.
‘To give these children a continuation to their stories.’
That was the essence of what I did.
‘Even if it’s a bitter world, that’s fine. That can be dealt with later. But dying to sothing senseless—sothing like the Void, or so abomination—’
‘They can’t die for that.’
The world was full of such deaths.
‘Then it’s the world that’s wrong.’
People called such a world nature, reason, the Dao, the Way.
Otherwise known as the Route.
Now, I could completely understand what Go Yuri had once told .
—Why should a single human not be able to change that Way?
I agreed.
That was why, in the next round—the 1,085th—
Go Yuri wasn’t at Busan Station.
Right after clearing the tutorial dungeon, I cut contact with the Saintess and headed to Onyang in South Chungcheong Province.
Go Yuri was in room 202 on the second floor of an old inn in Onyang, its dull beige paint flaking like dead skin.
“……”
As I stepped through the open door, Go Yuri’s eyes widened in surprise.
In that inn room—where an unknown mother and child had once withered away like dead trees—Go Yuri had been gazing up at a red flower just monts earlier.
“Oh.”
A voice of genuine surprise.
“How did you find in just one round?”
“When I thought about you and , the problem unraveled easily. You, the reincarnator, chose . And my title, by coincidence, happens to be the Undertaker.”
“……”
“In the end, you were thinking of a way to die. But for beings like us, death isn’t a simple end. To truly reach the conclusion—to reach the end of the Route—our abilities themselves must be erased.”
“Excellent.”
Go Yuri smiled.
“Yes. That’s right. Therefore—Udumbara. The ‘reset button’ that deletes all the awakened’s abilities.”
“So that’s why you appeared when A-ryeon held her exhibition. A-ryeon has the sa ability as Udumbara. Your visit to that art show itself was a hint.”
“Ah, wonderful.”
Her smile deepened.
“Even at the fastest, I thought you’d take three rounds. Honestly, I expected you to miss it for ten. But to think you’d reach the answer in just one… as expected of you, Doctor.”
Go Yuri crouched down on the floor.
Then she stretched out her hand and gently touched the wrist of a child who had starved to death. Around it hung a slightly oversized rosary, large for a newborn’s wrist.
Clack, clack.
“They were originally twins.”
“……”
“One of them was .”
On the bodies of the mother and child blood red flowers, like higanbana—red spider lilies.
Like the riverbank of the afterlife.
“Of course, Mother tried to feed us both equally. But even as a newborn, I had reason. I refused, stubbornly.”
“……”
“Then the other child should at least eat, right? She had no choice. She kept trying to get to eat, but the child… she acted as if she had to sacrifice herself for the two of us to live. In the end… she died first.”
“I see.”
“Yes. As you can see, we would’ve died either way, even without .”
Heave-ho—Go Yuri straightened her knees.
“Strange, isn’t it? If only she had eaten sothing. If she didn’t like porridge, or milk, or tap water, then at least she could’ve eaten her mother’s thoughts—her love, her worry.”
“……”
“And then, a tree was born. A tree that could consu life and ability alike. As for why it was a tree—hmm, maybe because I envied the kind of life that could live on sunlight and water alone.”
As she said this, Go Yuri wore a smile both bitter and satisfied—like a theater director showing the audience the backstage of a play.
A grader giving a perfect score to the student who reached the destination without a single mistake.
Like a professor looking at a flawless thesis.
However—
“There’s sothing that’s always…”
“……?”
“…felt strange to .”
My explanation wasn’t finished yet.
“You might not rember, but when I first t Oh Dok Seo, you were part of our party too.”
“Oh, I rember. It wasn’t that long ago, was it? Maybe I can’t recall as perfectly as you can, Doctor.”
“Back then, I barely managed to convince Oh Dok Seo to kick you out of the party.”
Go Yuri gave a small laugh.
“A party expulsion—what a nice cliché. Now it’s ti for the doctor who drove away to regret it and grow obsessed, right?”
“It was a hill road.”
“Hm?”
“After you were expelled, you went down a hill. It was a one-way path. So if I waited a bit, I should’ve seen you climbing up the next hill—but you never appeared.”
“……”
“After going down that hill, you vanished. There was nowhere else to go. You just disappeared, like a mirage.”
It had been the sa last ti.
Sim A-ryeon’s exhibition hall was located right at the center of Busan, in the Babel Tower Plaza. There was no way I wouldn’t know that place’s geography.
And yet, after rely turning one gallery corner, Go Yuri had completely evaporated.
How?
Because she was a being that walked through dreams? Because she was an anomaly? Because she could brainwash humans into not perceiving her?
But Go Yuri wasn’t a brainwashing ability user. According to the truth we’d uncovered, she was rely a person who had lost everything human beings could lose.
Go Yuri was human.
Then the conclusion was simple.
“You were… a teleportation ability user, weren’t you, Go Yuri?”
“……”
“That’s why you disappeared down the hill. That’s why you vanished from the exhibition hall. And sotis the Saintess’s clairvoyance couldn’t detect you—because you teleported beyond its range.”
The inn fell silent.
“I ran here right after clearing the tutorial dungeon at Busan Station. And yet, you were already here before .”
“……”
“There’s only one correct answer. The ability that Old Man Sho so desperately searched for—the one capable of teleportation—it was you.”
Silence.
“Perfect.”
Go Yuri’s lips slowly opened.
“Yes, Doctor. I am the awakened one you were all looking for—the one with the power of teleportation.”
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