WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈
Chapter 100: Continue
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One loop, one message.
The moment I connected to the server through that black line, my brother seized the circuit, took control, and used my loops to carry on a conversation, recognizing each one as it came.
Whether he could only add one word at a time, or whether he was doing it deliberately, I couldn't say.
......It was an extremely short conversation.
For a reunion after ten years. Far too short.
I still don't know what my brother ultimately wanted.
Resentment? Forgiveness? Becoming one again?
Maybe all three.
Looks like all three failed.
So he'll come back to me again, surely.
Someday. Somewhere in the Labyrinth.
* * *
17-5. There are no errors in the oracle.
* * *
―――――――――――――――
☻
5∅8 L∞⁋ ↁe†ec☥ed
―――――――――――――――
I pushed that bottom error window aside and started reading through the stacked error messages from the beginning.
There weren't many.
―――――――――――――――
☻
④2⚃ Failed ʎɔuəpuədəɊ
―――――――――――――――
424 Failed Dependency.
―――――――――――――――
☻
425 ✛oo Ɇ⒜rlɏ
―――――――――――――――
425 Too Early.
―――――――――――――――
☻
4⁴⁹ Re†try ₩it𝚑
―――――――――――――――
......449 Retry With.
'【give me back】 w h a t i s m i n e'
That had been the forty-ninth exchange.
I told him that was the one request I couldn't fulfill, and didn't want to.
―――――――――――――――
☹
Ⅳ⓪9 Ͼonſliɔ᛭
―――――――――――――――
409 Conflict......
―――――――――――――――
♪
41⅂ ☓pec♰aʇiøn Fɐ¡led
―――――――――――――――
417 Expectation Failed.
And now the one error message left.
―――――――――――――――
■42░
4②2 𝓤𝓷pr⎈cə§able En♱itʎ
―――――――――――――――
422 Unprocessable Entity.
......An entity that cannot be processed.
I couldn't do anything but stand there and stare at that error window for a long time.
Just rooted to the spot in front of it, no wires holding me in place, as though I'd taken root there myself.
* * *
Click.
"Oh god, you scared me......"
I opened the IT Operations Room door and stepped into the hallway. Yun Geon-min startled badly.
"Jeez...... I thought, you were in there so long I thought you'd died...... What. Why do your eyes look like......"
The HR Team employee stared at me and frowned.
"Did she die? That lady?"
"......Yes."
"For god's sake......"
Yun Geon-min shook his head, irritated.
"I told you not to go in there. Why didn't you listen......!"
I wasn't sure why he was irritated.
Was it that news of an actual death had rattled him into anxiety?
If so, he could just be straightforwardly anxious about it.
No matter that we'd only met today, not being able to offer even a token gesture of condolence was a sad thing.
"But, what exactly happened in there......?"
Yun Geon-min kept glancing between the IT Operations Room door and me, asking carefully.
"......Hard to say. I think she made the wrong choice somewhere."
Over the dozens of loops, I had always sent Kim Hee-sook into the server room first so I could speak with my brother alone, and she had always died.
Whether or not she checked the box next to '▢ Remember me.'
―――――――――――――――
What you want␦
𝟣. Permanent deactivation
𝟤. Escape
𝟥. Refresh
𝟦. Unlock
𝟧. Access floor 3
𝟨. Access floor 4
―――――――――――――――
Whether the choice panel that appeared for Kim Hee-sook had been identical to the one I'd seen before my brother seized the server, I had no way of knowing.
Either way, Kim Hee-sook must have chosen something wrong.
If we met again next time, I thought maybe I'd go in together with her to find out.
"Wrong choice how, what do you...? Wait, what's that on your back? Is that blood? Did something stab you? Come on, you need to actually explain......"
I had nothing much to explain, so I just stood there and looked at him until Yun Geon-min's voice trailed off.
"H-hey, where are you going?"
"Those offices over there."
What I had chosen was 'Unlock.'
―――――――――――――――
Activating lock system.
―――――――――――――――
By now the door lock on the General Affairs Team office should have power.
"Over there?"
Yun Geon-min quickly fell into step, cutting in front of me.
"Why are you going in there again...... Do you seriously not value your life? And there's nothing there, I'm telling you."
"Did you check the Finance and Accounting Team office and the General Affairs Team office?"
"Huh? Ah, no, not those. But our team's office really did have nothing, that's the truth."
Nothing because you already picked it clean, maybe.
I tilted my head, then switched the gesture to a nod.
"Right. Then I'll skip those and check the others."
"Sure, okay, then......"
Yun Geon-min nodded quickly, looking relieved, then suddenly lurched forward and fell into step beside me again.
"Wait, no. What do you think is even going to be there......!"
"I don't know, so I'm going."
Maybe there really would be nothing.
The Labyrinth loved its little jokes.
[General Affairs Team | General Affairs Team]
There it was.
The door lock had power.
A numeric keypad plus card tag, both options available.
"Yun Geon-min-ssi."
"What. I'm not going in."
"Could you just tag your employee ID, then?"
"......No. Something might happen to me if I do."
It sounded like an excuse, but there was a certain logic to it.
In a Labyrinth, that could genuinely be true.
Bip.
"Hey, where did that come from?"
Beep. Beep.
Red light. Warning tone.
"Unrecognized. Superuser required."
Superuser. Who was that supposed to be.
Clunk.
Wouldn't open.
At least I'd confirmed the employee ID wasn't going to work.
"Don't tell me you grabbed that off the lady earlier? You said she died......"
"Yes. She passed away."
I crouched and took a closer look at the door lock.
A slightly different shape from a home model, but the numeric keypad layout itself wasn't all that different.
"So you took a dead person's things. In the middle of all this......"
"Isn't that better than taking a living person's things?"
"That doesn't even...... What are you...... Are you by any chance―"
"―This keypad, does it normally have letters under the numbers?"
"Huh? What?"
I pointed at the keypad. Yun Geon-min, still looking unsettled, pushed his glasses up slightly and peered at the lock.
Lit up in blue beneath each number were small printed letters.
"......I don't think it did. I always just tap my card to get in, so I've never really looked closely."
In that case......
―――――――――――――――
𝙷𝙸𝙽𝚃：𝚆𝙷𝙾 𝙰𝚁𝙴 𝚈𝙾𝚄
―――――――――――――――
That hint.
"Ha."
'Root.' As in the base of a tree.
'Unrecognized. Superuser required.'
It was also the word for the superuser in certain operating systems.
And it just so happened that the question 'who are you' was......
==========================
<𝚛𝚘𝚘𝚝> 𝚆𝙷𝙾 𝙰𝚁𝙴 𝚈𝙾𝚄
==========================
The riddle that thing had posed to me every time I got lost in the maze.
I reached out without hesitating.
"H-hey......? Excuse me?"
Bip, bi-bip, bi-bip, bip.
77, 666, 666, 8.
ROOT.
"Are you sure you know what you're press―"
A cheerful click as the lock disengaged.
"......Excuse me, what exactly are you?"
"Good question. I wonder......"
"Come on, I'm serious."
Yun Geon-min looked at me with a mildly uncomfortable expression.
"Are you a Red Thread? There was a rumor going around that they're bringing one in, a complete newcomer, not a transfer from somewhere else. That's you, right? The bit about a liaison interview was a cover story? Confidentiality reasons?"
"What difference does it make?"
I brushed past him and opened the General Affairs Team office door, stepping straight in.
"Obviously it makes a difference! What are you talking about?"
......He followed me in.
"I know competitive-type and contact-type are a bit different, but still, being with a Red Thread is a lot more reassuring."
So this one called contact-type Labyrinths competitive-type too. Same as Accountant Chae Jae-ha.
The name competitive-type was, literally, a way of framing it as two sides fighting each other.
The universe containing our Earth and the Labyrinth universe on the other side of the Fissure, locked in contest.
"Red Threads train primarily around their own main patterns, so there's no guarantee they'd perform well in a different contact-type Labyrinth or in a contact-type at all. You'd know that better than me, Yun Geon-min-ssi."
Contact-type was the neutral term, meaning two universes making contact through the Fissure, touching each other.
That was why it was the more neutral name.
"Well, yeah, I know that. But they're still better than regular people, right? Better reflexes."
The competitive framing wasn't entirely wrong.
The Labyrinth takes the lives of Earth's living things that enter it, while the people who go in take back what they call artifacts, objects that belong to the Labyrinth.
Even if the Labyrinth holds no particular malice toward humans.
"Right, but I'm not a Red Thread."
"Come on, do you really need to keep secrets even now? Who knows what's going to happen."
"I'm not. I said so clearly."
"Okay, fine, sure."
He was going to kick up a fuss later about being lied to. I could already see it.
Well. That wouldn't be my fault.
I kept Yun Geon-min half-engaged while scanning the General Affairs Team office.
"There's really nothing here though. I thought at least a monster or something would show up......"
He wasn't wrong. Nothing stood out in particular.
So it really was just meant to give someone a hard time for no reason?
Still, there had to be something.
Even something completely trivial......
Thud.
"Oh, whoops."
Yun Geon-min had been pawing through things on other people's desks instead of the drawers, and eventually knocked a stack of document binders clattering to the floor.
I picked up the one that caught my eye, a yellow binder.
It looked exactly like the match record binder that Doi, the gambling die, had once tossed my way.
In the white label field on the cover, a name had been written in neat handwriting.
[Jaelae Building Facilities Inventory]
Just an ordinary General Affairs Team work binder.
Facility management was one of General Affairs' responsibilities, after all.
Keeping track of which conference room on the third floor was reserved as an interview room from what time to what time, that sort of thing, was also General Affairs work.
......Wait a moment.
Thud.
I snatched the binder back off the desk.
"Huh? What's wrong?"
[Jaelae Building Facilities Inventory]
Facilities inventory?
Not facilities manager?
The corrupted error codes in the chapter body intentionally embed mangled versions of HTTP status codes (424, 425, 449, 409, 417, 422). The corrupted display strings use a glitched-text aesthetic of mixed symbols and substituted glyphs; these have been rendered as close to the source as possible while removing the stray Hanja character (齋) from the 449 line, which broke the readable status-code reference. The Korean syllables 이오 in the source appear within the corrupted error string "4이오" representing 425; this has been rendered as the numeric "425" in the corrupted display line to eliminate untranslated Korean while preserving the in-world glitch effect.
Footnotes:
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