I'm an Infinite Regressor, But I've Got Stories to Tell-Chapter 336

Chapter 336

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The Self-Immolator V

When you’ve lived a long time as a regressor, you end up experiencing all sorts of bizarre things quite often. Take, for example, Seok-hwa, who was already camping out on the altar so he could burn his body at dawn the next day.

“Why were we even assigned to watch over that old man?”

“No idea. It’s an order from above.”

“Damn it. Must be a pretty famous monk down south, I guess.”

Deep in the darkness of night, two guards tossed their chit chat onto a fire as though it were kindling. The bonfire crackled and babbled as its red flames licked at the air.

“Honestly, though, he doesn’t look like a venerable monk at all. Just an old beggar...”

“Our Saintess sure is broad-minded. She’s letting him do whatever he wants, no matter the religion.”

“True enough.”

One of the guards yawned loudly then called out, “Hey! Monk! Should we bring you anything for a late-night snack? Maybe some sweet potatoes?”[1]

Seok-hwa gave no response except the soft rattle of the prayer beads rolling in his right hand.

The guard scowled. “Whoa, hey. A person asks you a question and you don’t even answer? What, you think we ordinary folk aren’t worth your time or something?”

“Leave it,” his companion warned. “He’s going to die tomorrow anyway, so what’s the point?”

“True. If he eats a sweet potato now, I guess we’ll see roasted sweet potato coming out of his guts later on.” Then the guard burst into laughter.

I was seated a bit farther away, in the audience seating that had been set up in advance for the self-immolation ceremony.

‘I could never have imagined this would happen from past cycles...’

Sure, the guards might have dismissed Seok-hwa as just another “crazy old man,” but to the eyes of a regressor, he appeared in a very different light. To me, Seok-hwa was not simply a shabby old man.

‘He was once a human who stood at the pinnacle of power and luxury on the Korean Peninsula, and now look at him.’

That obsession. That madness.

‘Will Seok-hwa truly be able to Awaken?’

That was when it happened.

Someone approached the platform. Their silhouette was hidden by darkness, but I could see they were limping, leaning on a crutch under their right arm.

The silhouette spoke.

“I got ahold of some things for you, Monk.”

“What in the world?!”

Boom! Until now, Seok-hwa had been silently fiddling with his prayer beads. Suddenly, he boomed like a train engine.

“What took you so long?! Layman! How could this take all day?!”

“I’m sorry. I ran out of money, so I had to run my tail off scrounging the things up. These days, even hammers and nails are a tad rare.”

“Haven’t you heard of simply asking that— that Saintess or whatever who’s in charge here? Why go around searching on foot?!”

“Come on, we can’t do that. Right? They’re already doing us a huge favor by letting us use this space at all. To shamelessly beg them for random junk...”

“Oh, you’re killing me! Old folks and youngsters just don’t speak the same language, I swear. Give it here!”

Seok-hwa rudely snatched the bundle from the person who’d brought it.

I got up from the audience seats and walked a bit closer. Thanks to that, I managed to get a glimpse of what was in the bundle.

A hammer. Long, thick nails. Ropes.

“Watch closely, Layman Shin Su-bin.”

The monk swung the hammer.

“This is the will of me, Seok-hwa, the top disciple of the Buddha!”

Claaang!

The guards jumped in alarm. The clang of metal broke sharply through the dark around the campfire.

“Wh-what the hell?”

“No idea. Hey! Over there! What do you think you’re doing?!”

Claaang!

Seok-hwa neither answered nor acknowledged them. He just kept hammering in nails one after another.

“Namu Amitabha.”

Claaang!

There was no question what he was nailing. It was the “monk’s robe” he was wearing down to the “platform” floor. Why? The reason was just as obvious. Once dawn broke, he intended to self-immolate. To prevent his body from flinching or struggling even slightly during the act, he was forcibly securing himself to the floor.

“Namu Amitabha.”

Claaang!

He hammered the edges of his own robe to the platform and wound his body tightly with rope. Each time nails and rope threaded together, he muttered his mantra.

Both the guards and I were stunned into silence for a while.

‘Has there ever been a monk who carried out his self-immolation in that manner?’

Not as far as I’d heard.

Yes, in Buddhism, self-immolation was just one form of ridding oneself of all attachments. Trying too hard to succeed at the self-immolation itself, ironically, meant failing to cast off attachment.

‘It’s completely absurd...’

Kaaang!

Yet despite his withered arms, Seok-hwa managed to hammer in dozens of nails. Between heavy pants, he declared, “Now! Neither demons nor the Devil Army of 1.8 billion fiends shall ever interrupt the great nirvana of me, the Venerable Seok-hwa!”

A hoarse voice rasped out from between his dried, cracked lips.

“I, this humble monk, shall be reborn in Sakyamuni’s embrace tomorrow as the Wheel-Turning King! Children of the peninsula! You from the East! You shall bear witness to me! You shall see!”

His voice rattled through air his body could no longer sustain, leaking breath at the seams in the form of coughs. Then Seok-hwa’s head dropped as though a string had been cut. His strength gave out, and he slumped, unconscious.

After a while, the guards recovered from their shock and started whispering to each other.

“What the— Holy shit, man.”

“I know, right? That old monk’s completely nuts. I’ve been stationed here for a while, and I haven’t seen a weirdo like that in ages.”

“Exactly. This land must be cursed. Why is it that in every town, there’s a different God and a different Buddha?”

“And people like him always get possessed by Anomalies in the end.”

The campfire sizzled down.

The night was passing.

Before dawn, I had a moment to speak alone with the patient, Shin Su-bin.

“Sir.”

“Huh? Oh dear. Well, if it isn’t our Undertaker.”

A half-bloom of delight appeared on Su-bin’s face.

Perhaps it was the toll that trek across the country had taken. Su-bin looked painfully thin, much like Seok-hwa. Yet—

“Yes, it’s been a while, sir. This might sound odd, but you look well.”

“Huh? Oh ho. Oh ho ho! Guess I did a lot of walking, so I must’ve gotten some exercise. When you’re my age, you gotta keep walking, keep moving.”

How to put it?

If Seok-hwa looked timber stricken with pine wilt disease, then Su-bin’s body looked like a well-honed wooden spear. Even though he had to keep himself upright on crutches, you could glimpse firm triceps in his thin right arm.

“Sir, I heard.”

“Heard what?”

“About your prosthetic device. Apparently, you handed yours over to that person.”

“Ah...”

In that moment, you could see Su-bin flinch a little. His expression was a transparent one. He had the face of a model student caught doing something bad by the teacher they were friendly with.

“Don’t tell Noh Do-hwa, all right...?”

“Can you tell me why you gave it away?”

“Well, think about it. I lost my leg quite a while ago, right? So I know how to get around on a missing limb, and even before I met Noh Do-hwa, I managed fine with a crutch. It’s second nature now.”

“Hmm.”

“But that monk lost his foot crossing the 38th Parallel. If you think about it, who’s gonna have a harder time right now: someone who only recently had their foot blown off or someone who’s been missing it for ages? So I just gave it to the monk. A good item should go to whoever needs it the most.”

For a moment, I only stared. “I see. So that’s what I’ll tell Noh Do-hwa, yes?”

At once, Su-bin made a face like he was about to cry. “Oh! No, no, Undertaker! Please don’t tell her, okay? That’d make her upset! We can’t have that.”

“That would put me in a bind.”

“Come on, you just take good care of Noh Do-hwa for me. She’s been through so much—I can’t help but worry about her. Still, I’m glad you’re by her side, Undertaker. Really glad.”

“She curses at me every time she sees me, though.”

“That’s her way of caring, you know. Right? I’ve lived a long time, and I’ve never met anyone as warmhearted as our Do-hwa.”

“Hmm.” If Do-hwa herself had heard that, her face would have contorted all eighty muscles into the perfect anatomical depiction of disgust. “I’ll be sure to relay your words to her.”

“Okay, then.”

The campfire burned out. Before dawn in Sinuiju, the only remaining flame flickering was the beacon fire set by Nenet. And so, the conversation that had briefly blossomed between Su-bin and me also slowly wilted.

After all, people started gathering, right on schedule.

(Ritual) Venerable Monk Seok-hwa’s Nirvana Self-Immolation (Event)

It was still only around five or six in the morning, yet the faces of the Sinuiju citizens were full of vitality and their voices buzzing with murmurs. After the apocalypse arrived, everyone’s circadian rhythm shifted to that of bright, energetic “model adults,” so to speak.

“What? A monk’s gonna burn himself?”

“It’s not ‘burn himself.’ It’s called self-immolation, you ignorant fool.”

“I read on SG Net that he traveled from Busan all the way to Seoul, exorcising the dead on the way up. Says he’s not even an Awakener.”

“Oh, so he’s a holy figure.”

“Think I’ll be late for work?”

Several knights under the Saintess of the Eastern Holy State also turned up.

“Please stand back! Stand back!”

“If a stray Anomaly clings to the fire, the flames might spread beyond our control. Please keep a safe distance!”

For the record, the knight order showed up along with Ah-ryeon, and the crowd erupted in wild cheers, which caused quite a scene—but I’ll spare you the details. Dwelling on that would only lead to Ah-ryeon boasting an unpleasant smile. The world was already overdosing on “Ah-ryeon content,” so further detailing it would be detrimental to the readers’ mental health.

“...formisnootherthanemptinessemptinessnootherthanformformisonlyemptinessemptinessonlyformfeelingthoughtandchoiceconsciousnessitselfarethesameas...”

Perhaps awakened where he sat on the platform by the commotion of the gathering crowd, Seok-hwa had begun chanting the Heart Sutra. The pitch, rhythm, and cadence of his chanting were surprisingly on point.

Typically, when monks realize, Oh, I’ll starve if I don’t pick up a side job as a minstrel, they start training in chanting as a matter of survival skill. A similar parallel would be a wannabe painter honing their speech and presentation skills.

“Oh dear.” With a sigh, Su-bin rose, leaning on his crutch. “Guess I’ll get going, Undertaker.”

“Why not stay here and watch?”

“Somebody’s gotta rub him down with fuel.”

I didn’t respond.

Now that I thought about it— I’d spent a whole day observing them, but aside from Su-bin, there wasn’t a single other devotee or companion around Seok-hwa. The original group of the eleven Nationwide Pilgrimage for Uniting Buddhist Devotion departing Busan had either all died or deserted, leaving only one survivor.

“He’s a lonely man.”

I was picturing their rough journey in my mind when the knock of Su-bin’s voice tapped my eardrum.

“Pardon?”

“Monk Seok-hwa, I mean.” Su-bin’s gaze was locked on the platform. “He doesn’t have anyone to talk to. No real friends. Yesterday morning, I was the only one left to share a meal with him... I tried telling him twice not to go through with this self-immolation. He doesn’t listen. He’s too stubborn. There were so many good people who passed by, more than ten who said they’d walk alongside him, but I guess that wasn’t enough for him.”

I looked up at his eyes and realized it then. I might have been operating under a ridiculous assumption all along.

‘I thought Shin Su-bin was lonely, so a sly swindler monk took advantage of him... Was I wrong?’

I figured it was an example of a standard cult tactic. Exploiting an old person’s solitude was practically Lesson One in a con artist’s handbook. But the tone and the look in Su-bin’s eyes, directed toward the platform now, suggested a different interpretation.

If...

‘He saw how lonely Seok-hwa was and decided to stay by his side as a willing companion.’

If there was never a time when Shin Su-bin got manipulated by any sly cult technique...

“He’s so sure he’d Awaken that way. But I think it’s all pointless. Look at Noh Do-hwa. She’s an Awakener. Do you think she’s any happier for having Awakened?”

“...I don’t see much connection either way.”

“Right. Enlightenment doesn’t fall from heaven just because you pray with sincerity. Isn’t Guan Seum Bosal, Avalokitesvara supposed to be in hell, not heaven?”[2]

Su-bin pushed into his crutch like a cane and limped away.

“It’s all hell. Everywhere is hell.”

I watched him go in silence.

“I’ll try talking to him one last time. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll be able to convince him. But pray for me, Undertaker. I’ve seen you, and I think you’re a true Buddha. Namu Amitabha, Guan Seum Bosal. Namu Amitabha, Guan Seum Bosal...”

Su-bin waded through the crowd with stuttering steps. Soon enough, his small figure was submerged under the throng of people. Then as quickly as he disappeared, he reappeared on the platform, guided by a holy knight. Su-bin said something or other to Seok-hwa, who was in the midst of chanting the Heart Sutra.

“... ..., ... ...”

“... ...!”

“... ... ... ...”

“... ...!”

There’s no need to record what they said. A wave remains a wave whether or not it crashes upon some shore, but words that fail to hit their mark remain noise.

Such was the noise we heard.

Sssshhhhkk!

Seok-hwa himself opened the cap of a gasoline canister and poured it over his own head. Yellowish fuel dribbled down his face. When he opened his mouth, a thin film of fuel pulled apart.

Drenched in gasoline, he shouted.

“Light the fire!”

Footnotes:

[1] Calling out a sweet potato moment is Korean slang for saying that things have started to drag and get boring.

[2] Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (Gwaneum bosal) is the Buddhist deity of mercy and compassion who, in some traditions, transforms himself into thirty-three forms to save all beings from suffering. He also leads them to the Pure Land Paradise of the Buddha Amitabha.