The Regressor and the Blonde Girl
Something I couldn't understand had just happened.
Well—given how short my educational résumé is, there's a lot more I don't understand than I do.
Anyway!!
I picked the lock on Ju Eunseong's place and went in with Tatiana. Eunseong was nowhere to be found in any of the rooms.
Where the hell did this bastard go?
Closet? Nope.
Under the bed? Not there either.
Toilet tank!! …Yeah, right.
Did he dive into the screen to go find his wife?
Come on. This isn't some possession novel.
Common sense said the most likely answer was that he'd gone out to the convenience store for beer.
"Hic… huuuh…"
And then, out of nowhere, Tatiana burst into tears. Not just crying—she was shaking her shoulders like the whole world had collapsed on her.
For fuck's sake, explain.
Some secret of her birth?
That didn't track—Tatiana was a year older than me and Ju Eunseong.
I had no idea, so I figured I should just comfort her first.
I wrapped my arms around Tatiana's shoulders from behind.
"Hic—sorry. …For showing you something so, so ugly, huuh."
"People are ugly by nature. Me included."
"Is that… hic… supposed to be comfort?"
I held her and soothed her for a few minutes. Eventually Tatiana stopped crying.
"So why aren't you letting go?"
"…Did you hate it? Sorry."
"It's a reward. It is a reward, but."
We weren't anything to each other, and sitting pressed together in a face-to-face hold like this was going to start generating feelings I didn't need.
Time to change the mood.
"Tatiana. So you like Ju Eunseong after all?"
"………What?"
"No, it's just—that reaction. I hope it works out. I'll cheer— mmph."
Tatiana clapped her small hands over my mouth, her expression deadly serious.
"Never say anything like that again."
"Mmph?"
"First: Ju Eunseong was never my type in the slightest. Second! I genuinely despise incest! Third!!"
Her voice kept climbing—then suddenly shrank down tiny.
"…The person I have in my heart is, well… someone else. Yeah. A g-good person. Yeah, yeah."
"Mmph… whew. Don't know who it is, but I'm jealous."
"………What??"
Why was she looking at me like that again.
Was I screwing up that badly?
Tatiana's face went damp and gloomy all at once, like a humidifier left on too long.
"…998. Do people tell you you have no sense of reading the room a lot?"
"Oh. How'd you know. Yulha says it all the time. Says if I keep this up, someday someone's going to cave my skull in with a brick and kidnap me."
"That is not a compliment!"
"Is that so…"
I wilted.
Tatiana looked at my face and huffed a little laugh. Watching her wipe at her still-wet eyes made me feel a bit sorry for her.
"998. I'll be honest. After everything you've done to help me, lying to you would be wrong."
"Going to tell me some secret of your birth?"
"Yes. Ju Eunseong is my father."
??
Is this woman insane?
Ahh! I get it!
"So that's the lore—"
"It is not lore. It is real. Feel free to treat me like a crazy woman."
"Yeah, you're completely out of your mind."
Was I failing to understand because I was a middle-school dropout? Did I need to sit for the high school equivalency exam??
Haa.
Tatiana let out a long breath and sat on the edge of the sofa. She patted the cushion beside her, gesturing for me to sit.
"Ju Eunseong was an extremely important person to me. I only just realized that. It's hard to explain, but…"
"Is that so. Understood."
"…You're not going to doubt me? Not even going to treat me like I'm crazy?"
"If you say so, then that's how it is. What does my judgment matter?"
So he'd been as precious to her as a father. Small world.
Softly.
When I laid my hand over the back of hers, Tatiana leaned into me a little.
It struck me again how small she was. Barely a little over five-two, if that.
"…998. I came from very far away."
"Germany?"
"Much, much farther. It's difficult to say exactly where. …Ten years ago, when I first came here, I spent the worst days of my life. I was kidnapped by a child trafficking ring. In a single day, my whole life fell into hell."
I listened without interrupting.
This wasn't lore or acting. She was telling me what she had actually lived through.
"I was beaten and raised like a dog. I tried to kill myself several times, but they forced me back to life. I didn't know it then, but I think I was scheduled to be used as other materials."
"…Materials?"
"Yes. I was meant to be delivered to the Transcendence Workshop. The place where Cardinal Cromwell—whom we met—serves as representative. …That bastard didn't even remember me."
What a wretched life.
More than anything, hearing that a child had been abused like that sent a slow, seething rage rising from deep in my gut.
"Tatiana. You were thirteen then, weren't you."
"Yes. You look quite frightening when you get serious. …Heh. Thank you for getting angry on my behalf. I'm all right now. After that, I met my benefactor."
A flicker of longing passed across Tatiana's face as she said it. Before I knew it, a soft smile had settled there.
"A life that had been thrown into the gutter was saved in a single day. The time we spent together was short, but he taught me that the world was still worth living in, in its own way."
"Was he an adult?"
"He was. A very good adult. To me, he is as precious as Ju Eunseong. …Like you."
She muttered something very quietly after that.
Given the mood, asking her to repeat it felt wrong, so I let it go.
"What did this benefactor do for you?"
"Just…"
Tatiana paused for a moment, as if looking back on that time.
"Just… he held me. Over and over. Like everything was going to be all right. …And he gave me back everything that had been taken from me. Dreams, hope, warmth—things like that."
That guy.
He must have gathered up a wounded child and held her. Whoever he was, he deserved every blessing coming to him.
"Is that the end of it? What happened to him?"
"I don't know. One day he was gone. He had been wearing a gas mask; when I pulled it off, there was noise over his face. He was probably an anomalous entity. He was dressed in Management Bureau gear."
"With that setup, isn't he the ninja from the ninja-massacre ending?"
A soft snort.
Tatiana smiled faintly and added one more thing.
"I am still waiting for my benefactor. I have to return the warmth he gave to someone who shared not a single drop of his blood."
"That's a good story. But how do you plan to find him?"
"I was young then. Naïve. …We set a code phrase. A code phrase only the two of us know."
Tatiana cleared away the shattered glass on the floor and stood.
"…Let's leave it there. I got far too pathetic. It must have been a boring story—thank you for listening. …Hup?"
I simply held Tatiana for a moment.
The way that benefactor must have held her, ten years ago.
"Y-your frame is too big… I can't breathe…!"
The way her arms flailed was cute.
Transcendence Workshop.
The groans of living sacrifices echoed from every direction. Human flesh clung and pulsed between machinery and gears.
Tick-tick-tick-tick— click!
The Workshop's representative, Cromwell, sat upon the altar, deep in thought.
About a week ago, he had met Lee Shin in this place. That man, possessed of transcendent anomaly, had cast a riddle with his superior intellect.
— It's quitting time. I have to go feed the kids.
— Thank you. Golden Goblin.
"Hmmm."
Cromwell hummed through his nose. For a full week he had deciphered the riddle by every method imaginable.
Anomalous engineering, the Barnard–Lichtmann equation, special solutions involving tachyons under discontinuity of the continuum—every approach he could scrape together. He had just reached his conclusion.
"As I thought, it seems to be a metaphor for a temporal singularity. The point in time is ten years ago. …Is that right? Good heavens—traveling back ten years to receive the answer to the riddle. How beautiful!"
He had gotten it completely wrong, of course.
Just as genius and idiot are separated by a single sheet of paper, superintelligence and super-stupidity are separated by a single dot.
A woman in clerical robes approached Cromwell's side. She bowed politely and spoke.
"Representative. Preparations are complete."
"Thank you for your hard work, Agatha. How is the material collection progressing?"
"Numbers are insufficient. Serial child disappearances have raised the alert level of security agencies in every country. The Management Bureau is hunting us with pathological intensity as well."
Cold eyes glinted beneath deep navy hair.
The Selector of the Transcendence Workshop, Agatha.
A woman who also served as a bishop of the Serpent Religion.
Her role was to "select," by various means, the humans—especially children—who would be used as materials for the Workshop, and bring them in.
"We've already selected quite a few in the present timeline. Agatha, I'll need you to go back ten years. Securing materials is secondary—please provide an answer to Lord Lee Shin's riddle."
"Understood. However, the Management Bureau will detect the temporal singularity."
"It's fine. As you know, the Management Bureau's technology is inferior. They don't truly know how to handle temporal singularities. Of course, there is one great masterpiece even I would acknowledge…"
"You mean SIN-007, Representative."
"Exactly. That civilizational regression device was truly beautiful. The idea of unifying theology and science—two disciplines that at first glance seem opposed—at their outermost edge is simply… ah, I've drifted off topic."
Cromwell cleared his throat.
"We can't use SIN-007. It has no remaining activations. The last one was when it prevented the containment failure of SIN-002 in the previous worldline."
"Then… the Management Bureau won't be able to follow. May I be aggressive?"
"Just don't damage the materials. As you know, organ damage is unacceptable. Everything else is at our dear Agatha's discretion!"
With the Representative's approval secured, she might as well enjoy herself while she was at it.
Selector Agatha made no effort to hide the sadism in her heart.
When she stood before the solitary gray door in a remote corner of the Workshop, Cromwell himself turned the handle for her.
Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack—
Gears meshed with exquisite precision beneath the threshold, and with a solid click the door opened—
and raindrops from ten years ago splashed through from the other side.
"Agatha, think of it as a vacation. Bring back plenty of good materials, and refresh yourself a little."
"Thank you. As for the honored guest you mentioned, Lord Lee Shin…"
"I will personally and most courteously escort Lord Lee Shin into the past. It should be a point several months after Agatha's arrival."
"His Lordship will be satisfied with the Representative's answer."
Agatha bowed once more with perfect courtesy and stepped through the door.
Agatha walked freely through the 82nd Wide-Area Containment Zone of ten years prior.
In other words: the heart of past Seoul.
A light flick of her hand changed her clothes to match the era and atmosphere. No one would suspect her.
Ten years ago.
What had she been doing then? Probably the same thing she was doing now—selecting and processing materials. Where was it… the Principality of Monaco?
So in this timeline, there are two of me.
Whatever. That could wait.
First, the groundwork.
She stepped into a suitable abandoned building, and the homeless men there tried to throw their weight around.
"Hey, miss. You know where you ar— aaaghkkk!!?"
"Urgh? Gyaaagh?"
Flick, flick.
She waved her hand casually and reduced them to pulp. She'd have to rinse that down the sewer.
Being ten years in the past made the difficulty even lower.
The police? The Management Bureau itself couldn't wipe out the Transcendence Workshop—what could a mere public security agency possibly do?
Anyone who grew suspicious, she either memory-wiped or killed.
A few hours later, staff from the Transcendence Workshop began arriving one by one. The facility was completed in no time.
"Selector. We'll place the rearing cages here."
"Good. I've already cultured the human jelly for feed, so all that's left is…"
The moment she had been looking forward to most.
Material selection.
"Slurp."
Agatha licked her lips and headed down a back alley. Cromwell had given her the location himself; the target would appear there.
Late afternoon. Rain still dripped steadily from a sky clogged with dark clouds.
Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap.
The sound of rain striking an umbrella was thoroughly ominous.
At the mouth of the alley, Agatha stopped.
"…What do I do. What do I do. …Mom, Dad."
In the middle of the alley, a little blonde girl was curled up on herself. She looked roughly early teens, and from the pure white dress she wore, she might have been some noble young lady.
Muddy water had splashed all over it, ruining everything.
Blood dripped from the child's fingers. Her nails were broken—she'd struggled, then. Maybe she had clawed desperately at the alley wall, trying to get back home.
"…Pff."
Imagining those futile little gestures made Agatha's sadism boil over.
Let's see.
The Representative's request had been perfectly clear.
That girl was the target.
— There will be a child with golden hair. Groom her carefully, just short of damaging her. Castrate her sense of self until she obeys only commands, like a dog, and strip every last warmth from her life.
— What is that child to Lord Lee Shin?
— Ten years from now—in other words, from the present—the child becomes part of the Management Bureau's Special Containment Task Force. She made a contract in order to return to her home world. Rather naïve, isn't it?
— Pathetic. Then what Lord Lee Shin desires is…
— Yes! It will align with our aesthetics! To dismantle and reinterpret what is called humanity, piece by piece, and create a masterpiece with nothing left but despair!
— Postmodernism, then. Understood, Representative.
Well then.
Time to begin the first meeting sent from the future.
After all, first impressions decide everything.
As Agatha approached, the little girl lifted her head. Rain traced paths through the dried tear tracks on her face.
Her shoulder-length blonde hair was soaked through, and her wilted green eyes trembled without rest.
"W-who are you?"
"Mm. Just someone passing by. Are you lost?"
"Yes. …Yes! Please help me. I don't know where this is. I have to go home… waaah…"
"Oh dear. You must have been so scared. Here—want to hold Auntie's hand? I'll take you to your mom and dad."
"…Okay. …Hic."
When she took the small hand, a faint warmth came through.
Squeeze.
Perhaps because she had met an adult, the child stared up at Agatha as she was helped to her feet.
A child who, until moments ago, had received the world's warmth in full was now fallen in the mud, losing that warmth.
So now I'll drive you all the way to the very bottom.
Agatha barely restrained her sadistic impulse and asked the child,
"What's your name?"
And the child answered brightly, with shining wet eyes.
"I'm Tatiana. Tatiana Karstein!"
The time she had been given was roughly several months.
She was going to tear this child's life to shreds.
After that, Representative Cromwell would appear with the honored guest, Lord Lee Shin. And Agatha would proudly present Lord Lee Shin with the completed answer.
A work called "Tatiana," in which humanity had been dismantled and reinterpreted, piece by piece.
I do hope you're pleased, Lord Lee Shin.
Agatha had no idea what kind of aftermath was about to come crashing down.
A middle-school-dropout orphanage director hated child abuse with every fiber of his being.