WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 112: The Sound of Mercy

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Click.

A kind of treasure hunt played out in this Labyrinth's B5 parking garage.

"Ah, it's nothing much, but I found these strange skid marks."

Skid marks that looked like the aftermath of a traffic accident.

If you found a vehicle with matching tires, a delivery box with a Samadhi Delivery shipping label would appear on its hood.

"Ah, this is one of those things you hang from a car's rearview mirror."

Inside the delivery box was a cross pendant.

"Yes. A crash test dummy. See that round yellow-and-black mark near its temple?"

"I think it was hit by a car. Badly."

When you opened the delivery truck's cargo hold, there was a crash test dummy twisted horribly, as though it had been hit by a car.

"Huh? O-over there, sir, Seon Yu-han...! There's a snake...!"

If you followed the snake beneath the delivery truck...

"That car brand's logo originally has a snake on the right and a cross on the left... Well, that's not important."

You found a car bearing an emblem with a snake and a cross.

Click.

And when you got inside that car...

"Hello, listeners of <On a Moonlit Night>."

An old radio broadcast from over twenty years ago began to play.

"...Today's message. 'Hello, Jeongdi! Tomorrow, I'm taking a trip alone with my girlfriend. I'm going to forget all about grades and everything else and have some fun.' Oh, you must be so excited. 'We're going for a drive, hiking, eating good food, and visiting my vacation home,' Oh! A vacation home too? How wonderful. Ahem. 'I'm going to show her the vacation home, too. Jeongdi, do you know any places near Youngun Mountain you'd recommend?' Ah, Youngun Mountain..."

Youngun Mountain.

Part of Youngun Mountain had become an invasive-type Labyrinth five years ago, resolved only after everyone inside was wiped out.

"From what I heard, the remains were so badly damaged that DNA couldn't be properly extracted. Still, they somehow gathered the remaining fragments and estimated the body's shape. I think they concluded it was a girl around middle or high school age."

The mountain where, while recovering those bodies, they found the old skeletal remains of an unidentified woman.

"There's a catalog. A car catalog."

A car catalog sat in the passenger-side glove compartment of the vehicle playing that radio broadcast.

A note had been tucked between its pages. If you found the car on that page and opened its trunk...

"It's an urn."

There was an urn inside.

"The late "

An unnamed urn, with chrysanthemums inserted into it.

Creak.

If you followed the license plates on the vehicles that had held clues so far, the urn owner's name appeared.

GO1020.

Bae 9502.

Seo 8102.

Woo 9356.

"The late Bae Seo-woo..."

I knew the name of the girl who had died that day.

"The late Bae Seo-woo."

I knew the name that should have been written on that urn.

So I asked.

"A girl named Bae Seo-woo went missing twenty years ago. Back when I was in middle school."

I asked the internal medicine doctor, who would have been in medical school twenty years ago.

"I went to the same church as her. Only for a little while."

I asked the churchgoer who might have prayed alongside Hwang Ju-yeon and Bae Seo-woo one Sunday whether he knew the name Bae Seo-woo.

"...What?"

On the mountain path where his crime had been buried, Jeon Yeong-gwang could only ask that.

He looked as though his sin had come back to life.

Splash.

Just like then.

Just like the moment he stepped onto The Executioner’s Stage, looking as though he'd seen a ghost.

That man had probably expected, at most, a question about whether this room's memory belonged to him.

"Isn't this Youngun Mountain?"

The man could only choke out broken sounds, ah, um, uh, as though his voice were dying.

Honestly, I didn't need an answer.

I just wondered how he'd react.

He must have run through it in his head for twenty years.

Countless times.

Clank.

The first thing Jeon Yeong-gwang should have done was probe how much I knew.

"H-how... What are you...?"

Not say something that was practically a confession.

...Disappointing.

He wasn't as thorough as I'd thought.

"It seems you've been lucky, to have gone undiscovered this long."

He'd been born into the right era and the right family.

There probably hadn't been as much CCTV twenty years ago as there was now, and a medical student with a vacation home in the mountains had to come from a good family.

"Um..."

Kim Hee-sook, who still hadn't caught up with the situation, looked between Jeon Yeong-gwang and me in confusion.

"Youngun Mountain...?"

Yun Geon-min, who had kept his mouth tightly shut since breaking down after seeing his late mother, looked much the same.

"You, wh-what, that... that girl... Did you come to get revenge for her..."

"That's enough. I only need to answer the phone now."

Riiing...

Creak.

I turned around again.

In darkness almost indistinguishable from the mountain's shadow, I could make out a pale straight line.

There was a road.

We were almost at the bottom.

Bae Seo-woo and the younger Jeon Yeong-gwang were probably there.

"I, I repented...!"

Jeon Yeong-gwang, who had been standing blankly behind me, shouted as though wrenching the words out of himself.

"I repented! For twenty years! I prayed, and I was forgiven!"

His pitiful cry became an echo that seeped through Youngun Mountain.

"Yes, I imagine that must feel wonderful."

If he truly believed that, he might have at least been laughable.

But he wasn't even laughable.

God must be pitiful too.

If Jeon Yeong-gwang truly believed it, if he had truly repented, this memory would never have appeared in the Corridor of Unforgettable Memories.

Jeon Yeong-gwang would have had no reason to perceive Bae Seo-woo as a prisoner, no, as the true Executioner.

...Coward.

If he hadn't had the courage to accept the punishment he deserved, if he had insisted on taking his crime to the grave, then he should have at least been honest with himself.

How could someone be such a coward even toward himself?

Riiing...

Rustle, thud!

All at once, I heard someone hurrying down behind me.

Ah, don't tell me.

"......"

Thud...

I didn't turn around.

"Ah, ngh...!"

Swish, crunch!

"Doctor! Oh my, what do we do...!"

A dark figure tumbled down the mountain path.

Clatter.

I stepped aside, covering my mouth as I watched him roll away.

"Ha. Hahaha!"

I burst out laughing.

"No, Seon Yu-han, right now..."

Ah.

Honestly, wasn't it funny?

He tried to shove me off the mountain, only to topple down there himself.

"Urgh..."

Jeon Yeong-gwang's groans came from below, mingling with the ringing phone.

Then again, it wasn't high enough for a fall like that to kill him.

Click.

If you wanted to die on a mountain, this wasn't enough.

You had to go deeper, higher...

Rustle, step.

At last, black asphalt replaced the mountain's dirt path beneath my feet.

Squelch.

"Oh my, why is there a car over there...? I can hear the ringing from over there, too..."

I stared briefly at the dirt-covered man sprawled before me, then slowly raised my head.

I saw very familiar skid marks.

Following those dark, vivid tire tracks with my eyes, I found a sedan stopped at their end.

Click.

A young man with his shoulders tightly hunched climbed out of the driver's seat.

"Ah... No..."

I looked back at Jeon Yeong-gwang.

Click.

"That's right. You can't."

I crouched in front of him, looked him directly in the eye, and whispered.

"It isn't a life someone like you is allowed to kill."

...Especially not on a mountain.

"What...? No, I, back then. I had no choice..."

Ah. I'd been talking about my own life.

I decided to let him misunderstand.

That girl's life wasn't one Jeon Yeong-gwang had been allowed to kill, either.

Riiing...

"U-um, Doctor... What did you do...?"

"Don't tell me it was a hit-and-run...?"

Kim Hee-sook, who had reached the car first, stepped back, while Yun Geon-min frowned and muttered.

Splash, squelch.

The younger Jeon Yeong-gwang was fidgeting in front of it.

Click.

As I opened the passenger door, I glanced at the body collapsed in front of the car.

It was in exactly the same position as the crash test dummy I'd seen inside the delivery truck.

"You did something worse than a hit-and-run."

Riiing!

An extremely old, grimy rotary phone sat in the passenger seat.

"You buried her. So no one could even find the body."

Click.

「Welcome, valued guest.」

The moment I put the receiver to my ear, a cheerful mechanical voice spoke from the other side.

「For a connection, press 1.」

I'd heard that connection wasn't the kind that put you through to a customer service agent.

「For self-termination, press 2.」

"......"

「For a dream state, press 3.」

"......"

「For a breath, press 4.」

"......"

「For resolution, press 5.」

That resolution wasn't the kind of Labyrinth resolution we hoped for, either.

「For other inquiries, please press 6.」

This was it.

Whirr.

When I turned the dial to 6, a bizarre connection tone sounded briefly, then stopped.

「......」

Faint breathing.

Not a mechanical sound, but the breath of a living being.

"Room 004. I'd like to check out."

「......」

Click.

「Thank you for staying at our hotel. We hope it became an unforgettable memory. Goodbye.」

The cheerful announcement ended.

Bang!

"Eek, what was that...!"

We had been thrown back into the hallway with the sound of the room door closing.

A sign hung from Room 004's handle.

[𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐔𝐏 𝐑𝐎𝐎𝐌]

"Uh, there's a door over there..."

Yun Geon-min timidly pointed toward the end of the hall.

A door that hadn't been there when we first entered had appeared.

[𝐄𝐗𝐈𝐓]

An exit.

"Please go ahead."

"Y-yes..."

Kim Hee-sook and Yun Geon-min watched us cautiously, then left through the door one after the other.

Clatter, click.

"Aren't you leaving?"

Only Jeon Yeong-gwang, curled up on the floor, and I remained in the hallway.

"It was an accident... It really was an accident..."

"Ha..."

I was sick of this.

"Didn't you take Bae Seo-woo to your vacation home? A girl who hadn't even graduated high school. How does an accident like that happen at the foot of a mountain?"

"That was..."

"She must have run away. Isn't that right? Because you did something that would make her do that."

Jeon Yeong-gwang closed his mouth.

"You don't call that an accident."

Cowardly to the very end.

"Get up."

I grabbed Jeon Yeong-gwang's arm and helped him to his feet.

"Ah... I, I... I'd rather stay here..."

"Get. Up."

I gritted my teeth and glared down at him until he staggered upright.

Jeon Yeong-gwang's face twisted. He must have sprained his leg when he rolled down the mountain path.

"Why... me... For her..."

"Bae Seo-woo. 'That girl' had a name, too."

"Hadn't you come to take revenge on Seo-woo's behalf...?"

"Please stop being ridiculous."

I walked through the Corridor of Unforgettable Memories, supporting a murderer.

Click.

I didn't like it.

I didn't particularly like this kind of resolution.

But what could I do?

Splash.

This wasn't a rule I could defy.

"Jeon Yeong-gwang. Before we leave, there's one thing I want to tell you..."

I took hold of the exit's handle and turned my head.

I see a sinner.

I see someone who has broken the law.

I see someone with blood on his hands.

I see someone who has never been imprisoned despite it all.

"This Labyrinth has accepted you as a problem that needs solving."

I can see the Labyrinth's problem.

"...What does that mean?"

"Someone once said Labyrinths are graveyards for unresolved problems. And those problems wait for someone to solve them."

Creak, creak.

"Haven't you heard it all this time?"

The sound of mercy approaching.

"The World-Honored One is waiting for you."

Footnotes:

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