(Revised) A Woman Unbound by Fate
"This is a scam!!!"
An old man's roar of fury split the air, and it echoed through the entire gambling den.
I savored the sound as I quietly lifted my coffee and spoke.
"A scam, you say?"
I took my time enjoying another sip before answering.
"Got any proof?"
"Proof?! You must've used an ability, that's what!!"
"If I had, they'd have hauled me out of here ages ago. What's the matter — does the head stop turning once you're old?"
I flicked a glance at the dealer.
"Mr. Dealer — was there any trace of me using an ability?"
"None, sir."
"You heard him, I trust?"
Ability use was absolutely forbidden inside the den. The moment anyone drew on Ether, the relic crystal ball would react, and security would come running.
The old man's face went crimson — he refused to accept the result. Watching him, I let a smile curve my lips and answered with deliberate lightness.
"Well, if I did cheat... then I suppose my only crime is having far too much luck."
"You little bastard!!!"
The old man tore out a gun and tried to shoot me, but the den's guards wrestled him back — and that was the end of it. He was dragged out the door.
"Well then, good sir — shall we continue the game?"
"No... after a commotion like that, the mood's gone sour. Let's call it here."
And with that, I walked out of the den. Not that there was any reason to stay — I'd already bled the old man dry, and there was nothing left on the table worth taking.
No fool in that room actually believed I'd won his fortune on sheer luck. Even the dealer was probably chewing it over inside — how did he cheat? And yes. I cheated. But not a soul would ever work out how.
I hadn't left so much as a trace. Why was that?
Foresight Eye
Through it, I could see the future — and it leaked no Ether at all. That was how I'd crushed the poker game with knowledge of things yet to come, and how I'd done it without being caught. Of course, the price was a future in which the old man's gang comes to kill me for it. A small problem, really. This village is fated to collapse before long.
There was nothing I could do about that. If fate could be rewritten... then perhaps I could have gone home.
For a moment, I let myself look back.
Yesterday, my comrades disappeared. No — perhaps they died. Let me go back to before they vanished. We were bound for Utopia. Home itself. Only the last few steps remained...
And then a madman who called himself the Hero took every one of them away.
Hyung and I were the only ones who managed to escape him alive.
Afterward, Hyung drank with a smile on his face.
Did I resent him for that? No.
Hyung smiled to soothe me — to make me forget, even for a moment, the despair pressing down on us. And because I had the Foresight Eye, because I could see what was coming, I said nothing to him at all.
"..."
"Well, that's the bottle finished. Shall we head back to the inn?"
Having drained it dry, Hyung made to leave for our lodging.
"..."
I answered with silence.
"I know it's hard. You're so quiet you won't even speak — that alone tells me everything... But come on, I bought the liquor, didn't I? Haha. Forget it fast and move on toward what comes nex—"
"You're going to kill yourself, aren't you?"
The question left me in a trembling voice.
"What?"
"When we get back to the inn, you're going to kill yourself. Aren't you?"
"..."
This time it was Hyung who answered with silence.
According to the future I had seen — no... according to fate — if he walked on like this, Hyung would die by his own hand.
"Sapi... so what are you going to do about it?"
Even if I stopped his suicide now, it would only come for him later. Going on living would be torture for Hyung.
Gaining a power made you stronger — but it carried a side effect: that same power could turn you into a monster. Monsterization.
And Hyung's was already underway. Every day he had left would be pain. His one and only goal had been to reach Utopia — to see his wife and son again. But with the corruption spreading through his body, he was being eaten alive by the fear that even if he made it home, no one there would recognize what he'd become.
So I looked Hyung dead in the eyes and said it straight.
"Let's just say our last goodbyes properly, Hyung."
"..."
He was quiet for a long moment. Then—
"I'm sorry..... You hold on and get through it on your own, Sapi... even without me."
"Yeah. I'll be fine. Don't carry the guilt — just keep moving forward."
"Thank you...."
I had spoken in a tone unlike anything I'd ever used with him before. It was my resolve, too — the resolve to cut away whatever lingering attachment I still had to Hyung. Hearing it, he said his thanks and walked away, a lonely figure dwindling down the road.
I stayed where I sat. Alone.
Of course, I could have stopped him. That future existed too.
"Then don't go back to the inn."
"Stay up and drink with me till morning."
"We'll hang in there together."
...and so on.
Any of a hundred different words could have bought him a little more time. But sooner or later, he would kill himself all the same. That was fate. And even that sliver of borrowed time — I was too afraid to reach for it, so I simply let him go.
I seized my head in both hands. And then—
"AAAAAARGH!!!"
I screamed, until I could taste blood in my throat.
The future can be changed. Fate cannot. Maybe the scream was rage at myself — fury at my own helplessness, at being unable to stop Hyung from dying.
And I had a duty to carry word of their deaths to the families they left behind.
But I had given up on that a long time ago — I understood, finally and absolutely, that fate could never be changed.
—Thud.
I collided with someone, and the brooding scattered out of me.
"Ah — sorry about that."
Apologizing, I moved to slip away — and felt something come flying at my back.
I turned and caught it out of the air.
"Gold?"
The coins rained down into my palm.
"How much even is this..."
"There's something I'd like to hire you for..."
It stank of trouble, but I decided to hear what the job was before judging.
"What kind of job?"
"Tourism."
"Tourism?"
"You'll guide me around."
She paused for a beat, then added:
"And keep me safe, too."
None of this had been in any future I'd seen. The futures number in the hundreds of millions, and I don't see them all — not every branch my own actions could spawn. So I simply accepted.
"A commission, hm... and what exactly would that be?"
"I came to see the sights of this village, and I need a guide-slash-bodyguard to keep me alive while I do. What, is the pay not enough?"
"Hm... no, it's plenty. And what should I call my honored client?"
"Lebetri. Just call me Lebetri."
She was a woman who'd be dead soon anyway. All I had to do was take the money and be done with it.
Thinking that, I watched her walk on ahead of me.
"I'm hungry."
"Then what will you have, Miss Lebetri?"
"Someplace that gives big portions."
"..."
"You've gotta fill your belly before a fight, after all."
'Before a fight?'
The question itched at me, but I decided to swallow it down deep.
Most tourists want something glamorous — fancy cuisine, pasta, that sort of refinement. But a client's word was a client's word. I led Lebetri along and stopped in front of a restaurant.
"This is the place where you can eat an entire cow. Fair warning — it'll cost you."
"Don't care."
My client strode inside ahead of me, ordered, and out came an entire cow. The smell of beef flooded every corner of the restaurant — and then she started cramming that mountain of meat into her mouth by the fistful.
"Hey, blondie. You eat too."
"What?"
"You need to eat your fill before a fight, too."
"Hold on — before a fight?"
I checked the future. The old man's gang wasn't coming for me yet. Nobody else was moving against us, either. But the reason this village falls — if she meant the monster's attack, then this was a very different conversation.
"Just who are you, exactly—"
The instant I tried to pry at what she was, the sky went dark.
"Whoa, when did it cloud over like that?"
So saying, the restaurant owner went to switch on the lamps. And then—
—CRASH!!!!!
The ceiling came down, and a colossal tentacle — curling itself into the shape of a hook — punched straight through the owner's heart. Then it hauled him up into the sky.
"Ah, damn...... and here I wanted to finish eating before the fight."
So spoke my client, and then she turned toward me and bellowed.
"Blondie."
"What?"
"Cover me."
"You're going to fight that thing? Are you insane?"
"The commission fee!"
So 'Blondie' was to be my name now, was it. Tch... by rights, running was the correct play. I had a way or two to survive this monster. But there were also things I wanted to know about this girl called Lebetri.
And the moment I stepped out of the restaurant, there it was: a monster shaped like a colossal flying saucer, smothering the entire sky. Its single enormous eye fixed on us as it flung tentacle after tentacle down.
My client drew her beam saber and fell into a rhythm — carving tentacles apart, then slipping past the ones she didn't. But there was something deeply wrong with the way she moved.
It was closer to... dodging what she already knew was coming. Not dodging by feel. Not dodging by sight.
And there was something stranger still. In every future I had seen, no matter how Lebetri moved, she died — skewered through by that laser. Yet she kept evading it. Just what in the world are you?
I drew my pistol and showed it to her.
"Cover me. I'm riding a tentacle up to get close to the main body."
"..."
She gave the order; I answered with a silent nod and laid down covering fire, and Lebetri used the thrashing tentacles as stepping stones, climbing fast.
The monster's great eye swiveled — and locked onto Lebetri alone. A storm of massive tentacles came screaming at her. But—
—TATATANG!!!
I blew nearly every one of them out of the air with my gun. The ones I left, I left on purpose — any tentacle she could slice through or sidestep with ease, I didn't waste a bullet on.
Hewing her way through the rest, Lebetri drew close to that enormous eyeball. And then she stabbed it?
"You absolute lunatic—?!"
With that, I bolted from the village at full sprint. Of course I did... I'd seen the future. Touching the eye was the trigger — the instant it was touched, the eyeball would fire a laser and lay the entire village to waste.
But—
"?!"
The laser never fired. And the colossal saucer monster plummeted from the sky.
—KABOOOM!!!
The impact buckled the earth. But the survivors were alive. A fate in which every last one of them should have died — and it had been changed.
Fate does not change. That is why I could never save the people I wanted to save — why I could only watch, over and over, as they died in front of me. And yet now, fate had turned.
Anyone could wave it off as simple — just one more future among the countless, a branch where the laser simply never came. But fate is absolute. Once it is set, it finds you no matter what you do. And this time, in the future itself, fate had been rewritten.
Then what was the variable? This woman. This woman I had never once laid eyes on in any future. Which meant... if it was her — could she kill that Hero? The one man fate itself refuses to let die?
Climb inside the eyeball and sever the tendons, and the laser never fires.
It took twenty-one deaths to figure that out — and to actually see it through.
Yeah... I'm Lebetri.
And a Regressor — one who has lived the same stretch of time dozens of times over.