The Massive Bomb #046
The drinks had finally arrived in all their variety. From the most ordinary local soju to Captain Q from the twisted underworld…?
“What the hell? Why is this still around?”
“Oh, you know it?”
“It’s so infamous that not knowing would be weirder.”
“That kind of drink, yeah. Looks pretty strong—should we just remove it?”
I nodded. Even if our mental ages were adult, our bodies were still underage. It was smarter to avoid anything beyond a prospective high schooler’s level. The truly lethal bottles got shoved into a corner. With only the relatively normal drinks left, Cheon Mari grabbed a beer bottle upside down. My anxiety shot up five hundred percent at the sight. Sure enough, she took a full swing at the bottom of the bottle, trying to pop the cap in one go.
Amazingly, the cap flew off. But she lost her grip on the bottle. The beer that slipped from her hand caught on her shirt and dumped its entire contents all over her clothes.
“Hiek! Hic?! Ack, it’s cold!”
“Idiot…”
A pathetic fool of a regressor who couldn’t even handle one drink properly. She was clearly trying to look cool, but it was obvious she had zero real experience. In the end, I demonstrated the proper technique. I held the bottle upside down over a glass, gave it five solid whacks, and both popped the cap and poured the beer.
“Whoa… You’re not new to this? How do you know how?”
“Just picked it up by watching.”
It was a lie. Cheon Mari watched with sparkling eyes, so I poured her a glass too. And just like that, the alcohol intake began. We drank in silence, simply pouring it down our throats. Every time I finished a bottle I opened the next one using a different method. Mari watched in admiration and tried to copy me. The results… were disastrous. We had to keep grabbing towels to clean up the mess.
I don’t know how long we’d been drinking and cleaning by the time we heard the sound of pouring rain outside. We sat by the window, watching the raindrops revealed between the shabby streetlights in the darkness.
“Hold on.”
She must have had something she wanted to say. Cheon Mari brought the drinks and bottles over and sat right beside me, also facing the window. She rolled her tongue around in her mouth, clearly wrestling with her words.
“…Sian. What’s the farthest place you’ve ever been?”
“The picnic to the ruins. I’ve barely ever left Sariwon Gwangyeoksi, so that was the farthest I’ve gone.”
The problem was that said farthest trip ranked in the top ten worst moments of my life. She nodded, her face flushed with alcohol. I, on the other hand, took another casual sip as if it were no big deal.
“Want to know the farthest I’ve been?”
“Hmm. America? England? Africa?”
Those were the answers that came to mind when I thought of her only as a spoiled third-generation chaebol. If I factored in the regressor part, the range could widen—maybe South America on the opposite side of the Korean Peninsula, or some obscure nation tucked away in Shareltea.
“The Pleiades Star Cluster.”
Her answer was so out of left field that warning bells screamed inside my head. Get out of here right now. And never think about what she just said again.
But this was Cheon Mari. She was the type to spit out whatever she wanted faster than light.
“It’s a star cluster about four hundred and forty light years from Earth.”
The massive bomb had dropped. Her words were faster than me getting up from my seat. I was forced to confront just how utterly mysterious this person was.
“Ah…”
The only word that came out was that she was insane. Why the hell was she dropping a spoiler like that on a friend she’d only known for nine years? I had no idea how to handle it or even how to process it. Seriously, punching her in the face seemed like the best available option. Or maybe smashing her with the beer bottle next to me. At least if she lost her short-term memory, everyone could be happy. Of course the moment of impact would be pretty miserable for her, but from a utilitarian standpoint it was clearly the correct choice.
“It was only possible by concentrating the full support of the First World and Nartika’s resources. After excavating ancient technology from Shareltea and building a deep-space vessel, we finally reached it.”
Do you know how beautiful that place was? Separate from the beauty, do you know how utterly insignificant it felt? Do you know what it’s like to flee from destruction only to find zero hope waiting for you?
“In the end, the ship was destroyed there and I died. That was the farthest I’ve ever gone.”
Listening to her story actually made my chest tighten a little. Just how much stress had she been carrying to end up telling even me something like this? Then again, thinking about it differently, I was usually the one getting stressed out. This bastard had no reason to be the one suffering.
Whether she knew what I was feeling or not, Cheon Mari started gulping straight from the bottle. Her posture, expression, and appearance formed a perfect scene worthy of a photoshoot. She looked like a middle-aged laborer worn down by life; if this were a movie, she would have taken home the Best Actress award.
“Life really is fleeting.”
She was right. The emergency national security meeting currently taking place inside my head was pretty fleeting too.
“…Must have been one hell of a dream.”
That’s why I decided to treat her words as nonsense. The moment I officially acknowledged any of it, there was no telling how twisted my life would become.
“Dream…”
I could vaguely guess why Cheon Mari had suggested drinking in the first place. Alcohol let you comfortably vent about a dark, lengthy past. And if you blacked out, you could pretend none of it had happened. The possibility was more than enough. At the very least, I judged that Mari had approached this with rational thought.
“Does it really look that way to you?”
“Yeah.”
So please, just stop talking. I don’t want to know how you’ve lived as a regressor. All I wanted was to get revenge on Lim Hana, repay my aunt’s kindness, stay friends with this girl, and live comfortably like this. I had no desire to get tangled up in anything more.
There were plenty of ways to earn a fortune. I also had enough knowledge to avoid situations that could get me killed. Besides, in this world the game protagonist would save everything… right?
She ran away to avoid destruction?
But what if the game protagonist doesn’t save the world? I would definitely live a long life, but could I really live it comfortably? No answer came to me.
And right then, Cheon Mari openly revealed her red eyes.
“I’m actually a regre… mmph!”
I reflexively covered her mouth. At the same time, I realized the doubt could never be denied. Just like the path she had fled before, this timeline’s world could also walk the road to destruction. For my own sake, the fact that she was a regressor had to be actively used.
It was a radical conclusion that betrayed friendship. Still, I didn’t think it was wrong.
I lowered the hand that had been covering her mouth.
“You. Shut your mouth and follow me.”
Instead, I grabbed Cheon Mari’s hand and headed somewhere. That somewhere was the bathroom.
“Wait, this is the men’s restroom—”
“I know that too. Just get inside already.”
I shoved Cheon Mari into the men’s bathroom. With a click, I locked the door. Then I pushed her into the relatively clean stall. Her face turned bright red and she displayed an extremely flustered attitude. That wasn’t my problem. Shamelessly, I entered the same stall and locked the door once more.
Our bodies pressed close. I could feel her alluring curves. The familiar scent of her body mixed with the smell of alcohol filled my nose. I sat her down on the toilet and pressed down on both her shoulders so she couldn’t stand.
“U-uh, Sian? In my opinion, a place like this isn’t—”
“Mari.”
I faced the reality that could no longer be avoided. She seemed determined to say it this time anyway.
“You were about to say you’re a regressor. Someone who dies and lives again.”
“Huh… You knew? I only got the first syllable out.”
“You were practically begging me to notice earlier, and honestly I’ve suspected you were a regressor for a long time now.”
“Wait, for a long time? Not just today? How?”
“Think about all the things you’ve said and done while living with me until now.”
“Wait, that’s not the issue—you’ve been…”
“I was pretending not to know on purpose. Even when you did things that went beyond suspicious and became outright certain.”
The way she kept leaking evidence everywhere. In the game, that behavior got her tracked down by the protagonist and killed. If it had been anyone else, she would have been dragged to the police dozens of times over.
“Of course, you won’t be able to do that anymore.”
I added the remark. She stared at me with an expression that said she couldn’t believe it. Honestly, I couldn’t blame her. She was the all-knowing regressor, yet here she was being toyed with by a prospective high schooler.
I leaned my upper body forward and looked down at her intently.
“I’ll ask you one thing. What were you thinking, suddenly revealing that you’re a regressor?”
“……”
“If you had just kept quiet, we never would have ended up in this situation.”
“……”
That was what I was curious about. She had leaked plenty of evidence before, but those had been closer to unconscious actions. Today’s behavior after drinking, however, was clearly the result of careful thought. There had to be some gain or purpose behind this sudden outburst. It couldn’t just be about stocks.
“Just… because I needed you.”
The words finally slipped out after a long pause. Her voice was remarkably calm.