WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 128: Within Us
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Chae Jae-ha's eyes as he glared at me wavered somewhere between fear and anger.
"What are you?"
That was a difficult question.
"My niece goes to cram school now. The private tutor who taught her until the year before last was a college student, much younger."
Ah.
"Did I say I was a private tutor? Then next time, I'll say cram school."
Oh, was that all?
"...What?"
I'd figured he'd find out soon enough anyway.
Chae Jae-ha was straightforward, but he wasn't an idiot.
Next time, I'd just introduce myself honestly, like I always did.
I'd learned what I wanted to know, so that was enough.
Chae Jae-ha didn't know much about this floor. Chae Jae-ha also didn't tell pointless lies.
"You... How do you know Minha? How do you know me? Why are you making up bullshit about being her teacher? Don't tell me you came here because..."
The imaginative accountant clenched his fists and glared at me.
We were about the same height, but he was bigger, so he looked fairly intimidating.
I started thinking up a long, boring story that might convince him, then gave up.
"I have a little psychic ability."
"Hey, you piece of shit, are you kidding..."
"H-hey! I don't really understand what's going on, but let's talk this out, please...!"
In the end, when Chae Jae-ha grabbed me by the collar, Kim Hee-sook hurriedly stepped in to stop him.
Kim Hee-sook's subtle attitude was interesting. She seemed more wary of me than Chae Jae-ha, and more worried about Chae Jae-ha than me.
As if she'd decided that I, whom she'd been with for hours, was more dangerous than Chae Jae-ha, whom she'd only just met.
...A wise person.
"Ha."
At Kim Hee-sook's intervention, Chae Jae-ha sighed. His hand trembled as he reluctantly let go of my collar.
"So what the hell are you, you crazy bastard?"
It had been a while since I'd heard that. It was oddly nostalgic.
"Hey, asshole. Is this funny to you? Are you seriously some kind of stalker?"
In the end, he grabbed my collar again.
This time, Kim Hee-sook seemed confused. She stood frozen and did not stop Chae Jae-ha.
"Answer me!"
I felt him seize my clothes even more roughly and looked at Chae Jae-ha again.
What would he say?
If I told him that he had an older brother and sister, that his brother's daughter was Choi Minha, that Choi Minha looked remarkably like her paternal aunt, and that he had a soft spot for a niece who resembled his sister.
What would he do?
To form an unequal relationship with the living.
That was what death did.
Equally, to all of us.
"If I said I wasn't, would you believe me?"
I wouldn't, if I were him.
"Try it."
"...What?"
"Find out. See whether I believe you or not."
His eyes were like iron pokers heated in a fire.
'Then... why did you let Ji-ho die? If you've died that many times and lived that many times. Huh? What about Hwang Ju-yeon? Lee Jin-su? My arm... Why did it all end up like that? Why are we like this right now?'
My collar was clenched so tightly that it choked me.
'So you're just going to let people die? You really are a psychopath, aren't you? You don't even intend to try harder, do you? You won't save anyone, no matter who dies? If you really could turn back time, the first thing you'd think about would be saving as many people as possible.'
I felt as though I might throw up, and eventually closed my eyes.
"...I."
When I opened them, I saw an unfamiliar ceiling.
"..."
There was no other way to explain it.
Just now, I'd closed my eyes in some white room with Chae Jae-ha gripping my collar, and opened them on a bed in an unfamiliar room.
There was no way for me to know whether there had been a gap between those two actions, or whether there'd been any gap at all.
...For now, Chae Jae-ha and Kim Hee-sook weren't here.
Was I now experiencing the same phenomenon through which Yu Mi-rae had suddenly disappeared?
The kind of phenomenon that could make me return dead, like Yu Mi-rae?
Maybe this was a space separated in time from the Sales and Marketing Team office that had become a white prison.
Chae Jae-ha had said Yu Mi-rae vanished suddenly and returned as a corpse only seconds later, but there was no telling how much time had actually passed in between.
Rustle, swish.
I slowly got out of bed and checked my body first.
Nothing felt wrong.
Of course, it was pointless. The Labyrinth might have damaged my cognitive functions.
Still, nothing felt uncomfortable, so that was enough.
I lifted my head and looked around again.
Colorful wooden furniture in faded shades. Decorations with a strong retro feel. Cozy lighting and wallpaper with vintage patterns. A soft rug spread wide across the floor.
It was a room carefully decorated in an antique style.
It was so flawlessly furnished that the spacious room felt cramped.
Picture frames, vases, a turntable. There were far too many small ornaments and decorations.
It felt like a room that existed purely to provide a momentary sense of aesthetic satisfaction, without the slightest consideration for the work required to clean and maintain it.
Wouldn't a bed, bookshelf, desk, chair, and dresser be enough?
"...Ah."
Then I realized.
The one thing missing from this room, where every imaginable object had its own place...
A window.
There was no window.
That was probably why it felt so suffocating.
At least there was a door.
Swish.
I cautiously walked over and grasped the handle.
Click.
Surprisingly, it wasn't locked. The handle turned easily.
The door opened with a creak...
"Ha."
I sucked in a breath at the sight before me.
The first thing that overwhelmed me was the sky.
A sky black and blue beyond measure, without a single star, green and purple light swirling through it like an aurora.
A sky that lit the whole land as brightly as day, too bright to dare call a night sky.
And beneath that sky stretched a vast green meadow.
No trees, no scarecrows, no buildings, no people. Nothing but blades of grass showing off their fresh green color.
Far away, so very far away, a horizon where the strangely colored sky met the earth.
A field stretching endlessly, endlessly, endlessly...
It was so, so vast.
It made me feel as though I couldn't breathe.
"Ha. Ha..."
I was clearly trapped in this Labyrinth.
I knew that fact down to my bones.
Yet that visible, unfathomable freedom.
The feeling of release filling my lungs.
The void beyond the world's limits.
It felt as though it would swallow me whole...
"Ugh, blegh..."
After vomiting, my mind cleared a little.
What kind of place was this?
"..."
The unfamiliar room where I'd awakened seemed to be a one-room house.
If something like this could be called a house.
From outside, it looked more like a box.
There was only one door in an otherwise blank white wall.
It didn't even have a roof.
A flat ceiling simply covered it, like the lid of a box snapped shut.
A white, box-like house set between a sky and meadow so vast they made me sick just looking at them.
Nothing could be more discordant.
It looked exactly like a set.
That was what bothered me.
My initial guess had been that, since this Labyrinth was in the Sales and Marketing Division office, it would be related in some way to buying and selling.
And if that guess wasn't wrong...
Maybe this field, that sky, the space outside this house, weren't important at all.
I looked at the white house, shaped like a cube.
Past the wide-open door, at the cozy interior so unlike the exterior walls.
So I was...
At that moment.
Blink.
The world blinked.
No.
Blink.
The sky blinked.
No.
Blink.
I looked up at the sky.
No.
Blink.
It wasn't the sky.
Blink.
That was...
That thing, black and blue beyond measure, without a single star, green and purple light swirling through it like an aurora.
Blink.
An eyeball.
Blink blink blink blink blink blink blink blink blink blink blink blink blink blink blink blink blink blink blink blink blink
The world tears apart the sky that isn't the world tears apart the eyeball that isn't the sky that isn't the world tears apart the thought that isn't the eyeball that isn't the sky that isn't the world tears apart
"Filthy thing."
A dizzying sensation took over my head.
If my skull were opened, there would be a small nest inside. Something that hatched from an egg and coiled there as though it were home. Something that had grown steadily by sucking up my brain matter. It shed its skin and beat its wings wildly, stirring up my mind.
When insect-like things crawled up from my toes, trampled over my spine, and finally planted a flag at the crown of my head to declare their conquest, a chilling sensation ran through me, making my whole body tremble.
Like that day in childhood when, for the first time, I saw Aunt above me instead of the ceiling.
At last, I shuddered.
"Sacred thing."
Ah.
Its name was...
* * *
When I opened my eyes, I saw a ceiling that wasn't quite so unfamiliar.
...Why could I see it?
I'd definitely tried to gouge out my eyes.
Had I been forcibly stopped and moved to the bed?
I'd definitely seen it...
Something rose from my stomach, something writhed in my head, something whispered in my ears, something twisted at the corner of my vision, I had a body, or perhaps I had no body, this was a body that thought, or perhaps a broken toy...
Thud!
After slamming my head against the wall a few times, I felt a little better.
Still, I could feel my whole body trembling as though I had chills.
"Ugh, ngh..."
The feeling of having seen something so perfect in itself that I should never have dared look at it.
I tried to imagine a being with an eye so vast I had mistaken it for the world.
"Cough, hah..."
It was an act not permitted to a petty creature.
I tried to imagine the world seen through an eye so vast I had mistaken it for the sky.
"Hah, ngh..."
It was an act not permitted to a petty creature.
I forced myself to shake my head and looked around again.
A square, one-room house decorated with all manner of ornaments, without a single window.
A square box that functioned as nothing but decoration, with neither food nor a bathroom.
Pop.
Pop-pop.
A strange sound like bubbles bursting suddenly reached me.
I looked at the cute wooden table on the rug.
More precisely, at the food tray that had magically appeared on top of it.
Pop, pop-pop-pop, pop!
Then the picture frames on one wall slid aside in an instant, and a door appeared in the space they left behind.
Clunk.
With legs still trembling, I staggered over and opened the new door.
"Ha."
An antique-style toilet, bathtub, and sink came into view.
A bathroom.
In other words, food and a bathroom had appeared.
The moment I'd thought, 'A square box that functioned as nothing but decoration, with neither food nor a bathroom.'
In other words, I was this Labyrinth's...
"..."
Product.
That would be the mildest term for it.
But I knew a more precise one.
Pet.
That was the most accurate way to describe me.
Footnotes:
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