How to Die in the Office Labyrinth - Chapter 11

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 11: The Culprit Is Someone in This Reading Circle

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"Hmm..."

The librarian murder suspect made a serious face.

"What if we time it so we slip out right as someone else opens the door?"

"That won't work."

The rules of a Labyrinth are absolute.

Tricks like that don't get through.

Unless, of course, a rule exists that looks like a trick.

"But can't we at least try?"

"You'll end up back inside either way. And honestly, that's the optimistic scenario. Any body part that sticks past the door might just disappear."

The woman in the three-piece suit widened her eyes.

"For real?"

"It's possible. You always have to assume the worst with a Labyrinth."

The woman's fox-like eyes narrowed.

"Are you a Red Thread?"

"No, I'm just a job applicant who came to interview at Uiwi today. My name is Seon Yu-han."

The woman made a brief, sympathetic sound.

"My name is Hwang Ju-yeon. I, um... I do magic shows on the side. My main job is teaching piano at an academy. Today I had a magic show here at the daycare."

The daycare?

Then Hwang Ju-yeon could get into Uri Saennal Daycare too, couldn't she?

She wasn't an employee like the librarian, but unlike me, she wasn't a total outsider either.

The fact that she was a suspect in the librarian's murder was what nagged at me.

I let my gaze drift quietly toward Kim Gil-yeong.

"Oh, I, I'm Kim Gil-yeong. I work here as a librarian."

The librarian extended an employee ID card with no blood on it.

"Yes, hello. I'm..."

Chae Jae-ha, certified public accountant at Hoewol Accounting Firm on the sixteenth floor of Jaelae Building, produced another business card and finished the round of introductions.

While that happened, I was thinking about a murder that hadn't occurred yet.

"Were there only the two of you here originally? Before this became a Labyrinth?"

"Hm? Yes..."

Kim Gil-yeong nodded.

"We don't get many visitors at this hour. Everyone from the offices is busy working. But then the power suddenly cut out... and we could hear things collapsing outside... I tried to leave but the door was locked and wouldn't open. I tried calling the management office but the phone wasn't working either..."

The rest wasn't particularly important.

So if no one else had come into this library, the person who killed Kim Gil-yeong last time was Hwang Ju-yeon, the piano instructor and freelance magician.

"The time for the reading circle has come."

"What, who's there?"

No, it was certain.

"No additional participants will be accepted until the reading circle concludes."

"What is that, where is it coming from?"

"That's not just me hearing this, right?"

"Who's speaking!"

"It seems the Labyrinth is trying to start something. Stay calm for now."

3:50 PM.

Under the supreme rules of the Labyrinth, Chaekbang Ollae had become a perfect locked room, with no way in and no way out.

Kim Gil-yeong's killer was Hwang Ju-yeon.

"Participants of the reading circle gather comfortably in the reading area."

That present-tense sentence was a command wearing the mask of a statement.

"I think we should do what it says."

"And if we die doing that?"

Hwang Ju-yeon asked, eyes narrowed.

"You could also die for not doing it. You'd be lucky if it only killed you. If you're confident in that outcome, I'm not going to stop you."

"Oof, that's terrifying. Hard to argue with."

The freelance magician raised her eyebrows and made a backing-off gesture.

"Sorry for being difficult right off the bat. I didn't mean to get so prickly."

"No. I understand."

Genuinely, that was a mature response for the situation.

Even admitting your own state and apologizing for it, without any prodding, is hard to do in ordinary circumstances.

How had someone like this ended up killing Kim Gil-yeong?

"It's an extreme situation. I'm sorry for snapping back so hard myself."

"Participants of the reading circle gather comfortably in the reading area."

"Yes, okay. I'll sit. Let's all sit, shall we. No idea what it'll ask of us, but at least we won't die while we're doing what it says, right?"

We each picked a sofa and settled into awkward seats around the circle.

It was the same circular space where a single book had been lying on the floor last time.

Kim Gil-yeong sat on my left and Chae Jae-ha on my right.

I tried not to stare too much at the piano instructor sitting across from me.

The motive behind Hwang Ju-yeon's killing was unknown.

Given the nature of a Labyrinth as a space, it was possible she had simply suffered a rapid mental deterioration.

A Labyrinth makes people irrational.

I just hoped it wasn't because she thought killing everyone inside would let her escape.

That was something you couldn't do without genuinely losing your mind.

It wasn't entirely wrong as a premise, of course, since a Labyrinth resolves when all internal parties are dead, which means you'd have to die yourself in the end.

And killing everyone here wouldn't be easy to begin with.

But motive aside.

There was one thing that worried me.

Time.

Last time, I had wandered around in a daze after the interview and arrived at this library around 4 PM.

Right now, roughly ten minutes before that, the relationship between Hwang Ju-yeon and Kim Gil-yeong looked nothing like one on the verge of murder.

"The reading circle has begun."

Maybe the reading circle was...

The kind of dangerous event that could make someone kill within ten minutes.

* * *

"One life is one story. This is the theme of today's reading circle."

A voice drove itself straight into my head, and a single book dropped into each of our hands.

I turned the pure-white hardcover over in my hands, looking it over.

Thicker than one knuckle, thinner than two, the width of an average standalone novel.

Nothing was written on the cover. No title, no author, no publisher.

"Participants of the reading circle each read their own book."

In a Labyrinth, you do what you're told.

I opened the book without fuss.

[Chae Jae-ha was born the youngest of three siblings.]

What is this.

[His eldest brother, who was much older, felt like an indifferent father figure, probably because of that subtle gap and distance between them. When Chae Jae-ha got into trouble, he would just say, "That's the age for it. Don't be too hard on him. He won't do it again." And that was the end of it.]

What did I just read.

I blinked, doubting my own eyes for a moment, and looked up.

Chae Jae-ha was staring at Hwang Ju-yeon with the exact same expression as mine.

Hwang Ju-yeon was looking at Kim Gil-yeong with the exact same expression.

And Kim Gil-yeong was looking at me with that same expression too.

"Could it be..."

"You too?"

"You as well?"

"One life is one story. This is the theme of today's reading circle."

We were going to be reading each other's lives.

"But..."

I started to say something, then leaned toward Kim Gil-yeong.

"Is there any rule against talking in this library?"

Others had already spoken aloud with no consequences, but I lowered my voice carefully just to be safe.

The librarian shook their head.

"No, not really... A library is a place for reading, not for keeping a vow of silence. People from the offices here have reading circles in this space all the time, actually."

Kim Gil-yeong spoke in a voice that was neither too loud nor too soft.

"As long as it's not too noisy, it's fine... But that would be true anywhere, not just a library."

"That's fair. So, Kim Gil-yeong-ssi, are you reading my story? I received a book with Chae Jae-ha-ssi as the main character."

"Wait, really?"

Chae Jae-ha winced.

"I got Hwang Ju-yeon-ssi's."

"Mm, I have Kim Gil-yeong-ssi's."

"It looks like everyone received the book of the person to their left."

I was reading Chae Jae-ha's story, Chae Jae-ha was reading Hwang Ju-yeon's, Hwang Ju-yeon was reading Kim Gil-yeong's, and Kim Gil-yeong was reading mine.

"Read it and then what, exactly..."

"Participants of the reading circle each read their own book."

"Oh, let's just read for now. It's nudging us again since we stopped."

At Hwang Ju-yeon's words, I turned my eyes back to the book.

[His sister, five years his senior, was the opposite of his eldest brother's indifferent-father quality. She was more like a strict mother. When Chae Jae-ha got into trouble, she would scold him sharply so he wouldn't pick up bad habits. Chae Jae-ha's sister seized any chance she could to trail after her younger brother, nagging that you shouldn't do this in this situation, you shouldn't do that in that situation.]

I had no real interest in reading a biography of Chae Jae-ha.

But a reading circle was ultimately an activity where you read a book and then shared your impressions, wasn't it?

So I had to read. Even if I didn't want to.

If that was the rule.

[Chae Jae-ha cried a lot because of his sister, and he spent years hating her. But that was exactly what family was. If not his sister, who else would have shaped Chae Jae-ha into a person? His parents, already burnt out and detached from raising two children before him? His eldest brother, who had so little investment in a sibling that much younger than himself that he ended up spoiling him instead?]

The book described Chae Jae-ha's life in considerable detail.

Memories of gathering with cousins the same age at their grandfather's funeral to eat ice cream.

Winning awards at math competitions every year across all six years of elementary school.

Picking up swearing after starting middle school, getting thoroughly scolded by his sister, and dropping it again.

It was exactly what it said it was, a book containing Chae Jae-ha's life, and most of it was ordinary, everyday things that didn't seem important at all.

Life is like that. Your own story is interesting and meaningful to yourself, but to anyone else it's just a tedious, pointless tale.

[Chae Jae-ha, who had been buried face-down in his blanket sobbing, suddenly sat up and began writing a letter in crooked handwriting no one else would be able to read.]

Why did I need to know about a middle school boy's love story, the kind that would break Chae Jae-ha's heart but just make me cringe?

Still, the fact that it hadn't crossed from cringe into something actually ugly was proof that his sister had done a decent job raising him.

["Hey. Where do you think you're going at this hour?"

A cool voice struck Chae Jae-ha squarely in the back as he came out dressed and ready to go, set on showing up at the door since his letter, written with every ounce of feeling he had, had done nothing. It was his sister.

Chae Jae-ha flinched, then mumbled out the situation in a voice thick with aggrieved tears. He couldn't lie to his sister.

After hearing the whole story, his sister didn't raise her voice at him. She let out a long sigh.

"Hey, that's just how it is with friends and with people you like. If one person holds on, the one holding on gets a sore hand, and the one being held on to goes numb where they're grabbed."

Saying that, his sister reached out and stretched both of Chae Jae-ha's cheeks with a pinching pull.

"Ow, ow ow! That hurts!"

"Does it hurt? Me too, you little brat."

"Ow, it does not! I hurt more, okay? Let go, would you!"

His sister let go of his chubby cheeks cleanly.

"Right? The one being held hurts more, doesn't it? So if you can't accept getting rejected and you go crawling to her anyway, then you become the one hurting her now. Is that how I raised you?"]

The childlike quality in Chae Jae-ha and his honest personality were evidence that he had grown up in a fairly good environment.

More precisely, an environment where people loved him.

[Thanks to his sister's lesson and a whole chicken by way of comfort, Chae Jae-ha finally came to terms with the heartbreak. Though he did still spend a few more days alone in his room playing breakup songs and crying, for which his sister smacked him on the back.

Not long after, he found someone new to like.]

I leaned back against the sofa for a moment and stared blankly at the ceiling.

The unsolicited supply of someone else's private life was severe.

It was hard to believe I hadn't even made it halfway through.

My restless eyes drifted naturally to the librarian sitting to my right.

Kim Gil-yeong had their face buried in the book, apparently unaware of my gaze.

Watching that, I thought about why the librarian had to die.

Maybe Hwang Ju-yeon had killed Kim Gil-yeong because her own life had been laid bare, word by word, in print.

I glanced over at the accountant reading the story of a piano instructor and freelance magician's life.

If Hwang Ju-yeon would kill someone for being forced to let them peek at her private life, this time the target would be Chae Jae-ha.

So even as I kept reading through the book about Chae Jae-ha, I stayed on guard, ready to pull him back at any moment.

"[Corrupted string omitted]!"