WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 111: Mi-je (██)

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"Why is a competitive-type here?"

"I think it's because this is a Red Thread team office. Aren't there Red Threads assigned to Team 2 who specialize in the Corridor of Unforgettable Memories?"

"Huh? Oh, uh... that's right."

Yun Geon-min nodded, looking bewildered.

I'd heard enough from Yun Geon-min in the last loop to have a rough idea.

The Corridor of Unforgettable Memories had been one of the possibilities, too.

I'd just prayed it wouldn't be this one.

"Oh, that Red Thread who used to be a clinical psychologist? I saw them on TV. They were pretty and seemed nice enough."

"Ma'am, don't trust that stuff too much. I saw them once when I stopped by headquarters. They gave me the creeps."

...It sounded more like the person he'd met in private hadn't matched the image he'd formed, and he'd decided they were creepy because of it.

Still, maybe he'd genuinely sensed something.

It would be hard for someone whose job involved personally experiencing other people's trauma to be much like an ordinary person.

Not that I'd ever expected people working as Red Threads to be normal in the first place.

"Excuse me, could you two keep it down a little? We might not hear the phone."

"Oh, goodness. Sorry."

"It wasn't even that loud..."

"Seriously. You're like a child."

Kim Hee-sook lightly smacked Yun Geon-min's arm, and silence finally settled over the hallway.

Jeon Yeong-gwang had been quiet this whole time.

Was he nervous?

This was the kind of Labyrinth where it would be harder not to be.

The solution to the Corridor of Unforgettable Memories was simple, in a way.

Ringgggg...

First, a telephone rang somewhere inside one of the rooms.

"Sounds like Room 2."

Then we had to find the room the sound was coming from and enter it.

Within someone's unforgettable memory, we had to find an old rotary phone and tell the entity on the other end that we wanted to "check out."

"Let's all go in together. There's no time to hesitate."

Before the ringing stopped.

If the phone stopped ringing, a phone in another room would begin to ring.

And if we failed to answer the phones in every room...

There was no need to say what came after that.

Click.

I opened the door to Room 002.

* * *

"Good lord... This is a Labyrinth too, right? It looks exactly like the real world..."

A high, blue sky. People passing by in light long-sleeved clothes. Cool air filling my lungs.

Autumn.

At least, it didn't seem to be my memory. The memories that could have become my room would have taken place in spring or winter.

...That didn't mean I had no memories of autumn.

This was a neighborhood I didn't know, anyway.

"Whose memory is this?"

As it turned out, I didn't need to ask.

When I turned to look at the others, one person was visibly unsettled.

"That day... It's that day..."

Yun Geon-min.

"Fissure Day..."

The Labyrinth phenomenon had first appeared in the world thirteen years ago.

Thirteen years ago, on that very day, Fissures had appeared all over the world at once, as though heralding the beginning of a new era.

There was an official name for it, but people commonly called it Fissure Day.

It would be a day nobody could easily forget.

If it had appeared in the Corridor of Unforgettable Memories, though, there was a good chance he'd lost someone close to him then.

...Had he lost his mother that day?

That was what made the Corridor of Unforgettable Memories so vicious. It dragged memories that had somehow begun to heal, even if they could never truly be forgotten, right before your eyes and wormed into the cracks of the wound, tearing them open again.

It even brought back memories completely forgotten through defense mechanisms born from severe trauma.

It forcibly turned them into memories you could never forget.

Ringgggg...

The distant sound of an old rotary phone came from somewhere.

Only the four of us could hear it.

"Yun Geon-min, we need to find the phone."

I grabbed both his shoulders.

An experienced Red Thread could leave the person whose memory it was behind in the hallway and follow the sound alone, but we had no such Red Thread here. It would be faster to get his help.

"Where's the place you least want to go?"

Yun Geon-min's tightly clenched lips trembled.

"...Home."

"Home? Where is that?"

Smack.

Yun Geon-min knocked my hands from his shoulders and immediately began running somewhere.

"Hey, Yun Geon-min. You can't just go off alone!"

"If you two can't keep up, stay here. I'll go with him."

Leaving Kim Hee-sook and Jeon Yeong-gwang behind, I immediately chased after Yun Geon-min.

"Yun Geon-min!"

Two men were in the middle of a chase, but nobody looked at us strangely. We were outsiders in this memory, something like invisible people, so those here couldn't recognize us.

After we ran through an intersection lined with shops and kept going for some time, we reached a quiet residential neighborhood.

"Hah..."

Yun Geon-min slowed a little. Judging by the way he was panting ahead of me, he was clearly exhausted.

Even so, he kept running for dear life without giving up, which made me uneasy.

He wasn't the kind of person who'd show that much determination just to go somewhere he didn't want to be.

...Don't tell me.

Ringggg...

But the sound was definitely closer than before.

Tap, tap!

Yun Geon-min ran into a small discount mart at the end of an alley.

Ringgggg...

Yet the sound came from farther away.

"......"

My suspicion was becoming a certainty as I followed him inside.

"Hk, sob, Mom... You can't be here. Get out, hurry... Mom..."

Yun Geon-min, already drenched in tears, was clinging to a middle-aged woman who looked conflicted, pleading desperately.

Ah, seriously. I knew it.

He hadn't gone where he didn't want to go. He'd gone where he wanted to go.

The two places must have just happened to be in the same direction.

Of course, it wasn't as though I couldn't understand how he felt.

It just would have been nice if my life hadn't been on the line.

"Please, Mom, please. I was wrong. I shouldn't have said that. That shouldn't have been the last thing I said. I'm sorry, Mom... I'm sorry. So please..."

His voice couldn't reach his mother.

"Yun Geon-min. Where do you really not want to go? I'll go alone."

"Sniff, sob..."

"Tell me. Where were you that day?"

Yun Geon-min only began sobbing even harder.

"Ha. Fine. I'll figure it out myse-"

"-A PC cafe."

His congested voice came out.

"I was at... a PC cafe. If you go out and, sob, keep going, there's a convenience store on the main road, and above it..."

Tap.

I ran out immediately.

A PC cafe above a convenience store on the main road...

The faster I ran, the louder the ringing became.

Convenience store... not that one. PC cafe... that one's on the first floor.

Ah, there.

A PC cafe sign hung above the convenience store on the corner.

Tap, tap.

"...Ah, that fucking bastard..."

I ran breathlessly up the stairs and opened the PC cafe door. The loud chatter of middle and high school students pierced my ears.

Ringgggg...

Amid that noise was the incongruous sound of an old landline phone.

"...I don't know. They always talk shit..."

"...That bastard's out of their mind with the family insults..."

There he was.

A familiar face, but far younger than the one I'd just seen.

Ringggg...

Just as I reached for the rotary phone in front of Yun Geon-min, wearing his school uniform.

Click.

Bang!

"Ah, shit..."

"Mm...?"

"Huh? We're back? Oh my, Yun Geon-min. Goodness, what happened? Are you okay...?"

The ringing stopped abruptly, the room door closed, and we were back in the hotel hallway.

[𝟘𝟘𝟚]

[𝐃𝐎 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐁]

A Do Not Disturb sign hung from the firmly closed door of Room 2.

[𝟘𝟘𝟙]

[𝟘𝟘𝟛]

[𝟘𝟘𝟜]

Three chances remained.

Until the sound began again, I silently looked at my three companions.

"Oh, dear... There, there. It's okay... No, even if you're not okay now, someday... it'll get a little better..."

Yun Geon-min was still crying quietly, and Kim Hee-sook patted his back.

Jeon Yeong-gwang leaned against the wall, his eyes fixed on them as though he were thinking about something else.

Was he wondering what would come from his own room?

'Excuse me, student? Why are you sitting there like that?'

'No, how does that look anything like an uncle, or a female student...?'

Could it have something to do with the female student Jeon Yeong-gwang had seen in The Executioner’s Stage?

"......"

Again.

Something kept scratching at the back of my mind. That irritation still hadn't gone away...

Ringggg...

As Yun Geon-min's crying subsided, the ringing began again.

"It's coming from Room 4."

In front of Room 004, I turned to the three of them.

"If there's somewhere you want to go, be honest about it. But be honest about the places you don't want to go, too. Someone else can go instead. Okay? You understand, right? If we don't answer the phone, we all die."

"Mm, okay."

"...Yes. Let's do that."

Ah. What a half-hearted response.

Click.

Swallowing a sigh, I opened the door to Room 4.

Thinking it might be better if it was my room instead.

* * *

That didn't mean I wanted it to actually be my room.

"Ah. Ah..."

Deep blue darkness filled my vision.

Cold air filled my lungs.

I was out of breath.

I couldn't breathe.

My breathing quickened.

"Oh my, why is it so dark? Is this a mountain?"

I was on a mountain now.

"I don't think this is my memory... Could it be yours, Doctor? Or yours, Seon Yu-han?"

"...It's my memory."

It had to be Cheongwol Mountain.

The mountain with the deep pond called Dalumul.

The mountain where, at some point, humans had gathered in the well instead of the moon.

Were they there? Had they already died? Were they dying now? When was this? Where were they? Where was I?

"Then... where do you want to go, Seon Yu-han...? Where don't you want to go...?"

I didn't know where to go.

No, I truly had no idea. All I knew was that it was nighttime, and I had almost no good memories of this mountain.

I couldn't even guess where the people I wanted to see were, or whether they were somewhere here at all.

Ringgggg...

"Let's head down first. The sound is coming from below. Be careful on the way down."

Rustle, crunch.

The sound of our feet descending the mountain path and the ringing of the rotary phone were the only things that echoed through the dark mountain.

I didn't want to talk, and honestly, it took all I had just to keep a clear head.

"Still, this must be a pretty tall mountain... Seongun Peak, 2.1 kilometers...? What's this mountain called, anyway? Seon Yu-han? Hm? Seon Yu-han?"

"Ah. Ah, Cheong..."

Wait.

My feet stopped.

Dirt rolled beneath my soles with a soft crunch.

Slowly, I turned to look at Kim Hee-sook.

"Hm? Why...? Oh my. I was being thoughtless again... I'm sorry, Seon Yu-han. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to..."

More precisely, I looked at the trail marker Kim Hee-sook had just read.

[← Seongun Peak 2.1 km]

Seongun Peak?

"......"

There was no peak by that name on Cheongwol Mountain.

Don't tell me.

This wasn't my memory?

Then this was...

I shifted my gaze farther to the side, focusing on one of the silent men.

Our eyes met.

Gray hairs gleamed here and there in the moonlight. The man looked down at me from higher up the slope with a complicated expression, his exaggerated composure seeming to hide pain, anxiety, and relief.

That unpleasant sense of wrongness crawled through my mind like an insect again.

The irritation I'd felt from Jeon Yeong-gwang ever since The Executioner’s Stage.

Ringgggg...

Clink.

As the cold mountain air brushed the back of my neck, something began to assemble in my mind as though time had stopped.

"...Jeon Yeong-gwang."

Mountain. Female student. Unidentified. Death. Labyrinth. Punishment. Fifties. Snake. Physician. Twenty years ago. Car. University student. Skeletal remains. Cross. Sin. Name.

"Do you happen to know someone named Bae Seo-woo?"

Footnotes:

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