WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 107: Mido (██)

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Aunt was a terrible woman.

"I spent my whole life cleaning up after your dad, being forced to give up my dreams, my life, everything. And now you're telling me I have to take responsibility for that bastard too? Your Father really is awful to me right to the end. Even dead, he's still raising hell because he wants to ruin his sister's life even more! ...That parasite. Why should I feed and raise something like you? Do I have to look after someone else's kid now? What did I do so wrong? Don't you feel sorry for me?"

Aunt was a pitiful woman.

Strangely, those two propositions were truths that could coexist within a single soul. Maybe they were even one and the same.

"Why... Why do I have to live like this...? Why does everyone only do this to me...?"

The person who pitied Aunt more than anyone in the world was Aunt herself.

"Why am I the only one who has to live like this? Why...!"

Aunt always thought of herself as pitiable.

She pitied herself for becoming the head of the household as a young girl in a poor home. She pitied herself for being unable to attend college because she was a daughter. She pitied herself for having to pour the money she earned working at a factory, because she was uneducated, into living expenses and her younger brother's tuition. She pitied herself for failing at the married life everyone else managed just fine. She pitied herself for suddenly having to take in her dead younger brother's child, her life bound to that child.

That pity became an animal's teeth, never blunted, and tore everyone apart.

In the end, Aunt became someone who could only keep biting at flesh and making wounds fester, never licking anyone's scars clean. Not even her own.

That was the kind of person she was.

A single pure mass, made by condensing self-pity into one point.

I learned from Aunt that when a feeling became extremely pure, no matter how ugly it was, it could be beautiful in a way so strange it was grotesque. I still remember the warmth of tears falling onto my cheeks.

"You wish I'd just drop dead too, don't you?"

I pity Aunt.

I pity Aunt, who became the head of the household as a young girl in a poor home. I pity Aunt, who couldn't go to college because she was a daughter. I pity Aunt, who had to spend the money she earned at a factory, because she was uneducated, on living expenses and her younger brother's tuition. I pity Aunt, who failed at the married life everyone else managed just fine. I pity Aunt, whose life became bound to her dead younger brother's child after she suddenly had to take that child in.

And I pity Aunt, who forgot how to love because she pitied herself so terribly.

"You think I don't know? I know everything..."

I pity you, who know nothing.

Some things are certainly Aunt's fault.

"No. Aunt, that's not true..."

But not everything is Aunt's fault.

That fact made me angry.

It disgusted me, frightened me, and tormented me.

In the end, it made me lonely.

"What do you mean, it's not true? You've even got that from your father..."

Not for a single moment was I ever “me” to Aunt.

Aunt always saw her younger brother in me.

My Father, whom you hated so much.

My dad, whom I can no longer remember.

To Aunt, I was only a “something” that resembled my dad. Small, young, weak.

Aunt never looked at me properly.

Not even when she poured everything she had into me and looked into my pain-stained eyes.

After Aunt entered my life, I became a lost child whenever I stood before her.

Feelings that had lost their way toward Aunt always wandered inside me.

"You should've died with him that day."

I couldn't just hate her. That was the path that would kill me.

"Hey, do you think I'm a joke too? Do you want to make me out to be a fucking bitch that badly? Just study, and quit doing useless crap. I'll cover your first semester's tuition later, but after that, you're on your own. Go do construction work or whatever the hell you want. Just get out into society and see. People treat you like dirt if you don't even have a college diploma."

I couldn't just pity her. That was the path that would kill Aunt.

"Hey, you! Why didn't you answer your phone? They said a Fissure opened around here, so I was so... I really, I... If you... Then what am I supposed to do...?"

I couldn't just love her. That was the path that would kill us.

"I'm sorry. I was wrong, Aunt..."

So where could I go?

"I'm here. So..."

I was tied down, bound, trapped.

Inside the Labyrinth called Aunt.

When the phenomenon that began thirteen years ago was given the name “Labyrinth,” I was finally able to understand what Aunt was.

I felt a release, as though I had found a corner piece of a puzzle.

Some Labyrinths were people.

Some people were Labyrinths.

For years, I held that tiny puzzle piece close like a coward, as if it were some great treasure.

"...Aunt."

That day was my birthday.

My nineteenth birthday.

My last birthday before becoming an adult.

"What? Spit it out. Stop dragging your feet."

"No, it's just... I was wondering if you'd be eating dinner before you came home today..."

"Hey. Do I look like I have time for that? You think eating out is cheap? Your school lunch fees went up again this year, too. It's not like they feed you anything special, but they still take every last cent."

"...Oh, then..."

"Ah! I'm out of time! If I leave now, I'll miss the bus! Why'd you have to start talking to me about something so pointless...!"

"...I'm sorry."

"God, seriously. Anyway, don't go wandering around. Stay home. I'll come straight home after work."

"...Okay. Have a safe trip."

I decided I had to kill Aunt.

If I killed Aunt, I could be free. I could get out of there and go outside. I could escape the Labyrinth.

I had to kill Aunt.

"Hello? ...What?"

That day, Aunt really did die.

Not by my hands, which had waited for her to come home, but between pieces of metal at the factory that treated her as less than a machine part.

Then what about me? Me, who had even lost the chance to kill Aunt? Me, who had missed the chance to end her with my own hands? Me, who had lost the chance to escape Aunt? What was I without Aunt?

I could no longer escape, be free, or be saved. Not until I died.

Aunt had locked me inside herself, smashed the door, and left. At the very moment I reached for it.

Cruel woman! Filthy woman! Vicious woman! Damned woman! A woman who deserved to die! A woman I could chew up and still not be satisfied!

I knelt before that woman's portrait and cursed her all night.

The truth was, almost none of my memories from then remained.

All I remembered clearly was staring blankly at the cremation furnace through a window after a brief blank.

Then, after another brief blank, I was back home.

Holding Aunt's remains, now small enough to fit in my arms.

It was just burned garbage. Not Aunt or anything else. Nothing but cold, lifeless dust.

Aunt had been far heavier than that, far hotter, far more... alive.

That was why I couldn't shake her off so easily for so long, couldn't dare touch her, couldn't bring myself to kill her.

Then another very long blank followed.

The day that year when my final winter break of high school began.

I gathered the fragments of an urn that barely retained that woman's name and boarded a train.

A long-sleeved T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers.

I dressed lightly because I had to climb a mountain.

I wanted to bury that name in Aunt's hometown.

In the place where that woman's terrible, pitiful life began.

...Right.

Dalumul Village. That was its name.

* * *

"Why is The Executioner’s Stage here...? This is an invasive-type Labyrinth. Why would there be a competitive-type...?"

I forced the old memories away and looked at Jeon Yeong-gwang.

I wasn't sure whether it was surprising or only expected that he called it competitive-type instead of contact-type.

"Perhaps because the Red Thread team is in charge of Red Threads, and Red Threads are the people who deal with contact-type Labyrinths."

"No, but..."

Kim Hee-sook spoke up, confused.

"Red Threads don't go into The Executioner’s Stage, do they...? Like invasive-type Labyrinths..."

That was right.

That was exactly what didn't add up.

Unlike other Labyrinths like the Dollhouse and the Prisoner's Dilemma, which had been appearing for thirteen years, The Executioner’s Stage had only begun appearing relatively recently.

Though even “recently” meant six years ago.

"This is that one... Someone has to torture and kill that person, no, that thing..."

Those vicious rules were what put this newly emerged Labyrinth into the hall of infamy among Labyrinths.

Exactly one of the trapped people became the “Executioner,” and the Executioner painfully killed the “prisoner” provided onstage.

In other words, The Executioner’s Stage was a very unusual Labyrinth, one that did not kill the humans trapped inside through its rules.

The prisoner wasn't human.

...There was an argument that they were human, of course, but discussing that would eventually lead into metaphysical questions that went back to antiquity. For now, they were classified as monsters rather than humans.

No one knew what the prisoner's original form was, or perhaps who it was.

The prisoner was perceived differently by each person.

According to survivors of The Executioner’s Stage, the prisoner was perceived as “the person you most wanted to come back alive.”

There were many ways people described it, such as the person they missed most or the person they wanted to see most but could never see again. In the end, though, it came down to two conditions.

First, they had to be dead.

Second, among the dead, they had to be the person you most wished would return alive.

"Then, to get out... we'll have to carry out the execution... right?"

Rattle. Rattle.

The theater doors were locked, as expected.

"I think so. We have to... carry out the execution."

The three of them looked as if they themselves had just been sentenced to death.

"Ah. Ah... Suheon's dad..."

"M-Mom..."

"God... What the hell..."

I quietly watched the middle-aged internist standing between Kim Hee-sook, who was calling for her husband, and Yun Geon-min, who was calling for his mother.

Something about the way he sighed and covered his face as if washing it bothered me.

He said it looked like a schoolgirl. Not his daughter, then? An older sister or younger sister who had died long ago?

Well, that wasn't important right now.

"We need to choose the Executioner. As you know, that is just... a doll. It's not a person."

"Who doesn't know that...? Then do you think all those people killed themselves because they didn't know that...?"

What was the problem if it was a Labyrinth where no one died?

That was exactly the problem.

The Executioner’s Stage boasted the highest survival rate of any Labyrinth, along with a proportional rate of suicide among survivors.

How many people could torture someone else and carry out their execution, then remain completely fine?

How many could sit in the audience and watch someone else being tortured to death, then remain completely fine?

Especially if that target took the form of the person they most wished would come back alive.

"I, I can't do it. Ah... What do we do...?"

Kim Hee-sook turned away, tearful.

"Me neither, ugh..."

Yun Geon-min started dry heaving, as if even imagining it was unbearable.

That left only Jeon Yeong-gwang and me.

"Ha... I don't want to do it either. Not at all. This, no matter what, this is... Seon Yu-han, what do you think...?"

I quietly looked up at the prisoner's profile, barely visible from below the stage.

"I..."

Just...

* * *

I was ashamed.

I was deathly ashamed that I hadn't killed that woman.

I wanted to kill someone, become a criminal, and be locked away.

I wanted to get blood on my hands and be freed from that woman.

The small room where I should have been confined. The freedom I should have gained there. The numbers that should have become my name.

I was ashamed that all of it had been taken from me. By that fucking machine, of all things!

I hated my “clean” hands, hands that had committed no crime.

I hated myself for not even being able to become a criminal.

What remained if my hands were clean? If the price of not breaking the law was never being free from this pain, what great meaning was there in a life without a single criminal record?

Just because society, the law, and the state considered me innocent didn't mean I could become a good, decent, normal person.

I wanted people to see me.

The real me.

The me who could never be good, decent, or normal.

I wanted them to tear through my skin until it rotted away, dissect the organs exposed so plainly before them, untangle the mess inside me like a ball of thread, and finally...

I wanted them to erase me.

From this world.

Like you.

Forever.

Me.

Footnotes:

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