WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 12: And Then There Was No One

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I pulled the librarian toward me a half-second too late, and Chae Jae-ha grabbed Hwang Ju-yeon.

"Are you insane! What do you think you're doing! You're crazy!"

"[CORRUPTED TEXT]"

"Ugh...! Hah!"

Thud.

The would-be killer screamed words no one could understand, flailing wildly, until the accountant shoved her backward and her skull cracked against the sharp corner of a bookshelf. She crumpled to the floor.

I looked back and forth between two attempted murderers and two unconscious bodies, and found myself wondering.

How exactly would this scene be written down?

That I hadn't stopped it in time?

Or...

"They're not dead, right? Seon Yu-han-ssi, what do we, what are we supposed to do?"

"Kim Gil-yeong-ssi doesn't look like they were stabbed deep, so I think they'll be fine. The fainting is probably just shock."

A blunt ballpoint pen is not a fountain pen with a sharp nib. Stabbing someone once or twice through clothing, into the chest, is not easy to do lethally.

Unless you drove it straight through an eye and deep enough to reach the brain, or aimed precisely for the carotid artery.

"Hwang Ju-yeon-ssi is... I'm not sure. It looks like a concussion, and the back of her head is badly split open. Hwang Ju-yeon-ssi. Hwang Ju-yeon-ssi!"

I tucked a cushion under her head and checked for a response, but there was no sign of her eyes opening.

I could manage basic first aid. Treating a concussion was beyond me.

A concussion wasn't automatically a death sentence, but Hwang Ju-yeon's condition looked genuinely bad. Unconscious and bleeding.

The only thing I could actually do right now was barely manage to stanch the wound at the back of her head.

Even that was rough, makeshift work.

A proper first aid kit would have helped.

"I just, I just wanted to stop her, I didn't even push that hard, I didn't mean to... ugh."

"I know. This isn't your fault, Chae Jae-ha-ssi. Please don't worry too much."

I patted the accountant on the back. He was pacing, dry-heaving.

The last thing I needed was for him to lose his head over it and do something reckless.

"Hwang Ju-yeon-ssi was trying to kill Kim Gil-yeong-ssi, and you were trying to stop her. That's self-defense. You protected someone."

Whether that would actually hold up in a courtroom was another question, but it wasn't the thing to say to Chae Jae-ha right now.

Besides, what happened inside a Labyrinth was hard to litigate by any normal legal standard.

"Chae Jae-ha-ssi, let's get some water first."

There was a water cooler inside Chaekbang Ollae.

He walked toward it in a half-daze, shuffling, and took a long drink.

While he did that, I pushed two sofas together and laid the unconscious librarian down across them.

I moved Hwang Ju-yeon to a spot where she was still in my line of sight but as far out of Chae Jae-ha's as I could manage.

But why had Hwang Ju-yeon tried to kill Kim Gil-yeong in the first place?

And with that look on her face. Like something had terrified her.

I stared down at the book cover she had dropped.

The only clue I had was Kim Gil-yeong's storybook, the one Hwang Ju-yeon had read.

Maybe Kim Gil-yeong had done something unforgivable. Something too awful to name. Or maybe she was the daughter of someone who had once taken everything from Hwang Ju-yeon.

Or maybe something else entirely.

Had Hwang Ju-yeon decided Kim Gil-yeong deserved to die?

If I read it, would I understand why?

"Reading circle participants read their own books."

The moment I reached toward someone else's book, the voice came again, telling me to hurry up and read my own.

"Chae Jae-ha-ssi, I know it's hard, but please open your book. You need to read at least one sentence."

"But those people, what are we supposed to do about them..."

That was a good question.

What would happen to the two people lying there unconscious?

Neither of them was in any state to read.

"Chae Jae-ha-ssi. Please sit down."

"But..."

"There's nothing more we can do for them right now."

The librarian had simply fainted, so with any luck they'd come around on their own.

Hwang Ju-yeon, though. If she was lucky, she'd survive with lasting damage. If she wasn't, she'd die.

"Reading circle participants read their own books."

Either way, even if we risked breaking those rules to intervene, nothing we did would change the outcome dramatically. Not unless we could channel the spirit of some ancient physician.

"There's exactly one thing we can do right now. One thing we should do."

Follow the rules.

I pressed down on Chae Jae-ha's hunched shoulders and guided him into his seat.

"Reading circle participants read their own books."

"Please read your book."

My voice was swallowed by the library's proclamation, which rang out like a divine decree.

Chae Jae-ha seemed to understand. He stared up at me with a blank expression for a moment, then bowed his head low.

I sat down beside him and opened my book.

[Around the time Chae Jae-ha sat his first midterms in his third year of middle school, Chae Jae-ha's older brother married the partner he had been dating since university. Since his brother had been living on his own ever since becoming a salaried employee, the marriage didn't feel like much of a change. It was only later, when news arrived that a niece or nephew was on the way, that it finally felt real.

Chae Jae-ha's brother was seventeen years older than him, and had been an adult for as long as Chae Jae-ha could remember. Someone who had always felt like a distant figure. And now that person was going to be a father.

His brother felt further away than ever. At the same time, oddly close.]

I found myself wondering whether his sister had gotten married by now.

I was a little curious how she must have reacted back then.

"Reading circle participants read their own books."

[The house without his sister was very quiet. Chae Jae-ha came to understand that some silences have nothing to do with peace. His sister had gone somewhere very far away.]

What?

"Reading circle participants read their own books."

[He had assumed it would be nice not to have someone nagging and hovering over him. At least until she was actually gone. But once she left, the house stopped feeling like a home. It felt strange.

"What are you doing? Have you eaten dinner?"

"Yeah. I'm about to head to tutoring. What about you, noona?"

"I had lunch. But what's wrong with your voice? Did you catch a cold?"

"No, I mean, yeah..."

"Is it no or yeah? Give me a straight answer."

"Yeah. Sorry. I think I might be coming down with something."

If she'd been able to see her little brother's face, she would have known right away. Chae Jae-ha hadn't caught a cold.]

That was a relief.

His sister hadn't left this world. She'd just left Korea.

That was the first time I'd felt my chest tighten reading this book.

It had its own kind of suspense.

"Reading circle participants read their own books."

I wondered how long that voice was going to keep repeating.

How long would the Labyrinth wait for those two.

It wasn't a warm place, the kind that would make allowances for people who couldn't follow the rules.

"Mm... mmh..."

A small sound broke the silence of the reading circle.

I looked up.

"Kim Gil-yeong-ssi. Are you with me?"

"Ah, yes... ugh."

The librarian winced and pushed up from the sofa, clearly feeling the pain in their chest.

"I... this, why am I..."

"You were unconscious. Do you remember what happened?"

"Um, I... no, not really..."

Kim Gil-yeong had no memory of who had stabbed them in the chest with a pen.

The shock had wiped it clean.

The human brain did that sometimes. Charming, in its way.

Horrifying, maybe.

Either way, Kim Gil-yeong didn't know who had done it.

"Reading circle participants read their own books."

"I know it's hard, but please sit and read your book."

"Yes, yes..."

Only once I confirmed the librarian had started reading did I turn back to my own book.

[Kim Gil-yeong was born at 7:32 in the evening on September 16th.]

Hm?

Something felt off.

[Kim Gil-yeong's father used to lie flat on the floor with his young daughter perched on his back, reading newspapers or books. Reading was the most natural, ordinary thing in Kim Gil-yeong's world.]

Why had the culprit failed to kill Kim Gil-yeong this time, when they hadn't the last?

Had they heard us coming and run?

I glanced to my left.

Ah. I was getting confused.

Had the culprit heard me coming and hadn't been able to finish before fleeing?

Still. Twice now, consistently targeting Kim Gil-yeong.

There might be a personal grudge here that had nothing to do with the Labyrinthification.

["Children of Munrim Elementary, who will write the pages of history!"

The days of standing in assembly listening to the principal's dull speech, then singing the school anthem. The days when some Saturdays had school and some didn't. The days of splitting cup tteokbokki and slushies for five hundred won, buying ddakji from the stationery shop. The days of racing to see who could climb the jungle gym first, who could swing highest.]

Something was still off.

Hadn't the rules said no one could leave the library while the reading circle was in session?

So how had the culprit escaped?

Had it happened before the Labyrinthification?

No. No, that couldn't be right.

That didn't add up.

Was there something I didn't know?

Well, obviously there was plenty I didn't know. But this felt different.

Like I was missing something important. Something I shouldn't be missing.

What was it.

[Kim Gil-yeong won an award at the school essay contest.

'After reading this book, I thought that dreams don't only happen at night. Because we have days at school where we suddenly feel huge and then small again, and days where we're running with the clock afraid we'll be late. And sometimes I can't tell if something a friend said was real or if I dreamed it.

When Alice woke up at the end, I felt a little sad. Because it would be nice to go on living in a place that strange and wonderful, and if it were me, I don't think I would have come back.

But Alice came back, and she went right back to her ordinary life as if nothing had happened. That felt somehow ordinary and sad at the same time.

This book was fun, and a little scary, and confusing. But when I thought about how all of it might have been real, it felt like the country in the book actually existed.

So after reading this book, I opened my wardrobe door a little every night before bed.'

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland became Kim Gil-yeong's favorite book.]

Wait.

If I read the last page of this book, couldn't I find out who the culprit was?

This book recorded the librarian's life in chronological order, so the most recent events would be near the end.

Unless it stopped at whatever point Kim Gil-yeong stopped being conscious to remember, in which case there was nothing to be done. But it was worth trying.

Flip.

[Kim Gil-yeong]

At the sound of turning pages,

[Kim Gil-yeong, with a puzzled look,]

looked at me,

[Kim Gil-yeong looked at Seon Yu-han with a puzzled expression.

"Seon]

Yu-han-ssi...?"

"One life is one story. This is the theme of this reading circle."

"Damn it."

"A gaze that flows from left to right strikes a blank space and plummets from top to bottom. The gaze flows again, left to right. Again it hits a white wall and falls. It scrambles desperately back to the top. Then rushes again toward one final point, and

[moves on to the next page."]

The fact that the library's proclamation, or whatever it was, suddenly started up again was a good sign I had made another mistake.

[Like a prophecy that cannot be refused. Like a poem that cannot be interpreted.

"To repeat that endlessly, and then one day stop at a period. That is the rule of a story."]

If one life is one story, then the rules of a story are the rules of a life.

"Seon Yu-han broke that rule."

Skip straight to the last page and instantly get branded a heretic.

["Seon Yu-han-ssi...?"]

The librarian's voice, tangled with confusion and fear and worry, reached both my eyes and ears.

The last thing I registered before my memory cut out.

A stray, absurd thought flickered through my head.

She read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. So why did she open the wardrobe?

* * *

7. During a reading circle, do not skip ahead when reading a book.

Footnotes:

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