WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 13: The Magic Trick of Getting Into Daycare

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"If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Seon Yu-han-ssi?"

"I'll tell you exactly what I would do, just this once. Please remember it carefully."

The Interview Administrator nodded along, matching the gravity of my voice.

I took a deep breath and opened my mouth again.

"I won't run or stop for too long on the stairs, I won't take the elevator, I won't be in an interview room past four o'clock, I'll answer honestly if anyone asks me the time, I'll follow all the guidance announcements at the theater, I won't go barging into the in-building daycare as an outsider, I'll pay in full at the merch store, and I will absolutely never skip around while reading a book in the library."

"Oh. Oh..., I see. Having lots of detailed plans is a good thing."

"Yes, Interview Administrator-nim. This place has become a Labyrinth. And I intend to follow every one of those plans."

"Pardon?"

"Please ask the Red Threads you manage to spread the news on social media that the Jaelae Building has undergone Labyrinthification. So no one accidentally enters this place. Now stand up."

"Oh, uh, yes...? Seon Yu-han-ssi, just a moment..., you're serious."

"Yes."

As I led the Interview Administrator out of the room, a thought crossed my mind.

Come to think of it, if news spread on social media like that, might the fire department hold off on entering even if the call button on the fire hydrant cabinet went off?

If we were lucky, maybe at least the people on the first floor could get out.

Of course, being in the first floor lobby didn't guarantee escape, and that was nothing more than wishful thinking on my part.

Ah. I genuinely didn't know.

What if the blaring alarm drew unnecessary attention from some hostile entity and got people killed instead?

I could barely manage my own life as it was.

I didn't have the capacity to weigh the lives and deaths of this many people.

It was a little different from the usual trolley-problem kind of dilemma, where you sacrifice one or two for your own sake.

If I did nothing, nothing would change. The ones who would live would live, and the ones who would die would die.

But if I pressed the button here.

Someone who would have died might live, but someone who would have lived might die.

Good intentions didn't always lead to good outcomes. Especially not in a Labyrinth.

Of course, malice almost certainly led to bad outcomes, so choosing good intentions was the wiser call, but...

"Seon Yu-han-ssi, are you all right? You don't look well all of a sudden. If there's anything you need, please say so."

"I..."

The Interview Administrator's eyes held genuine concern.

Something about that look felt reliable.

That, I supposed, was exactly the kind of quality a Red Thread needed.

So before I knew it, I found myself pouring out the dilemma.

That pressing the button on this fire hydrant cabinet might save someone thanks to the alarm, or might get someone killed because of it.

"What on earth am I supposed to do in a situation like--"

Click.

Driiiiiiiiiiiiing!

"Oh?"

"What do you mean, what are you supposed to do? If it goes wrong, blame me. And naturally, if it goes right, that's thanks to me."

The Interview Administrator's voice had a deliberately casual tone to it.

But it didn't feel entirely forced.

Driiiing! Driiiiiiiiing!

The alarm was a sharp, metallic screech, loud enough to leave my ears ringing, and I stared blankly at the Interview Administrator through it.

"What are you...?"

"I just did what I was supposed to do. You looked like you were carrying something heavy. I took a little of it off you."

The words barely reached me through the noise.

But why.

That voice felt like it was cutting straight down the center of my chest, following some invisible seam. Like the edge of a blade on one side of a scale.

"A Labyrinth is meant to be somewhere you wander. It's only natural that you can't see an inch ahead, whichever path you choose. But in the end, you can't know what's there until you walk it. What's waiting at the end."

The Interview Administrator lowered the hand that had pressed the button, naturally and without ceremony.

I said nothing, watching, and pretended not to see the trembling at the tips of those fingers.

The face of someone who was afraid, and who still knew exactly what they had to do.

The face I hated most.

"I'm going to stop by the daycare on the second floor first. Would you like to come?"

"Ah..., there's going to be a blackout soon and the elevators will stop, so I was going to try to get the people trapped inside out. Please go ahead, Interview Administrator-nim. Don't wait for me. You remember what I told you, right?"

"Yes, I remember. Then I'll see you again later, Seon Yu-han-ssi. Please be careful."

Driiiiiiiiiiiiing!

After parting ways with the Interview Administrator, I pressed the elevator call button and stared anxiously up at the panel.

Even knowing the full sequence of events that had set off the alarm, the alarm itself had a way of making your heart shrivel up in your chest.

8... 7... 6... 5... 4...

The elevator seemed to be coming down just a little slower than usual.

Surely not.

3... Ding!

"The doors are opening."

Chae Jae-ha wasn't there.

He had apparently gotten off on his own, without me saying a word. He must have heard the fire alarm.

A strangely complicated feeling.

Impressive, or just baffling, I couldn't quite decide.

But what was that man going to do on his own.

I had no idea what was happening on the other floors.

Knowing him, he'd probably be dead in no time.

That said, I had no desire to go back up to find Chae Jae-ha and help him.

I wasn't that good a person.

However beloved he might be to someone as the late-in-life youngest child or whatever, his life wasn't worth more than mine.

Driiiiiiing!

Hmm. Not that I actually knew whether Chae Jae-ha was the youngest child, late-in-life or otherwise.

But something about the way he acted made it seem likely.

Bang, boom, crash!

Clang!

Crack, thud!

Around the time I reached the stairwell, the six-elevator consecutive drop event happened.

Then.

The fire alarm that had been drilling into my ears like an ice pick cut out.

Strange.

A fire alarm should keep running independent of the building's power.

I thought about it, then shook my head.

By that logic, the elevators shouldn't have fallen either.

This was a Labyrinth.

A place where you couldn't know what would happen, and had to take whatever did happen in stride.

Clunk.

I pushed through the second-floor emergency exit door and was greeted by a scene that was, by now, achingly familiar.

I had been heading toward the Uri Saennal Daycare corridor again to get to Chaekbang Ollae, but I paused.

A passing thought: wouldn't it be better to stop at TARAE first and pick up an emergency kit and a tumbler?

But my feet didn't want to move.

My legs felt heavy.

Wait, if they weren't moving, did that make them light?

How did you do it again? Move your legs? When you walked?

1.03. Could I search for it online? Oh. Why isn't the internet working. So what am I supposed to do? 3.42. When did I start having legs? I calculated it, didn't I? No. I didn't steal anything. 7.56. I gave back the feet. I gave back the calves. I gave back the thighs. 12.01 kilograms!

Why are they still here?

What if they come back to take them?

Why are there so many fingers?

What if they think I stole them?

Oh!

If I got rid of them again, would they believe me?

"Ha, second floor again..."

Clunk.

An unfamiliar voice cut through the fog in my ears.

I turned toward the sound.

Someone was standing in front of another emergency exit, not the one I'd come through.

A woman, mid-thirties, wearing a three-piece suit, long hair pulled back in a single tail.

Her face was flushed, like she was running hot, and there was sweat on her forehead.

"Oh?"

She spotted me and let out a sound that did not bode well.

This time I didn't close my eyes.

"Oh, wait, you too?"

"Sorry? What do you mean, me too...?"

"I mean no matter how far I go down the stairs, it comes out on the second floor!"

"Ah."

I stood there for a moment, just moving my eyes around, then blinked several times.

My eyes felt oddly dry.

"Yes, same for me. I went all the way down to B1 and still came out on the second floor."

"Right?! This place is so strange. I think..."

The woman, with eyes narrow and sly as a fox's, bit her lip.

I knew what she wanted to say. What she didn't want to say.

"Yes. It seems to have become a Labyrinth. An invasive-type."

"Ha, seriously, of course, ha..., what do we do, really..."

She crumpled and sank into a crouch, spent about thirty seconds rattling off grievances in a rapid, concentrated burst, then jumped back to her feet.

"I... I'm not going to die here. And you'd better stop zoning out this early too. You weren't writing a will on your phone or anything, were you?"

"Ah, no, I wasn't. I don't plan on dying either."

If I died here.

If I ended up dying in this Labyrinth after everything.

How utterly pointless all those deaths would have been.

In that moment, everything tangled up in my head sorted itself cleanly into place.

My goal was not to solve a locked-room murder.

It was to survive and escape the Labyrinth.

That, and nothing else.

"I'm Hwang Ju-yeon. I do freelance magic performances sometimes. I came here for an event at the daycare, and now this happened."

Daycare!

I kept my expression in check.

"I'm Seon Yu-han. I came to Uiwi Guild for a job interview."

With her here, getting into the daycare might actually be possible.

I ran back through every route I'd taken so far.

My original plan had been to explore every location at least once, looking for a clue that might let me get off the second floor.

The main auditorium, first.

There, I'd watched something that was either a documentary or a snuff film about the Seonghwa High Labyrinth.

Then the daycare.

Where I got turned away at the entrance for being an outsider.

Then the merch store.

I'd gone to TARAE both to find a staff member who could get me into the daycare and to buy the Jaelae Diary I'd seen advertised, and then one two three four five yes fingers are five on each hand and legs are supposed to get lighter and lighter.

Then the library.

The first time, I found the dead librarian and brought them to the daycare, and the goose plush had the nerve to say something about bringing an ugly doll while throwing me out.

The next loop, I went back to the library and found the librarian had been attacked by someone again.

And now I was back here, the present.

Going around and around, and at last, finally, I had found a living human being I could bring with me into Uri Saennal Daycare.

After everything it took to get here, and only now!

"I was thinking of stopping by the daycare first. There might be a clue there about how to get down. Would you like to come along, Hwang Ju-yeon-ssi?"

Hwang Ju-yeon.

With her here.

A freelance magician invited to perform at Uri Saennal Daycare wasn't a pure "outsider."

That meant it might actually be possible to get past the plush security at the entrance without being turned away.

Whether I could get in alongside her was another question, and I had to stay alert to the possibility that she might be the one who had attacked the librarian, but still.

"Sure, why not? I don't exactly have a special plan of my own. Two is better than one. And it'd be good to check if there are any children still in there. The quiet is making me uneasy."

Last time I'd stopped by the daycare, the shoe rack suggested there was one teacher and one child still inside.

The rest of the children might have vanished somewhere without warning, like the Interview Administrator.

"But could we just break a window and climb down?"

Hwang Ju-yeon pointed at the floor-to-ceiling corridor windows that looked out onto the maze garden in the Jaelae Building's courtyard.

I hadn't tried it because I knew a trick that simple wouldn't work, but Accountant Chae Jae-ha had.

"Someone tried it. Didn't work."

"Figured. Of course..."

Hwang Ju-yeon accepted that without much resistance.

As long as you knew this was a Labyrinth, that was the normal reaction.

If escaping that way had been possible, the danger rating of an invasive-type Labyrinth would have dropped sharply.

Just as contact-type Labyrinths had come to be treated like traffic accidents, as patterns were gradually identified and Red Thread activity grew.

Wait.

Had Chae Jae-ha actually done that?

I didn't remember it.

Why did I have this image of Chae Jae-ha hurling a fire extinguisher at a window, foaming at the mouth.

Well, either way, what didn't work didn't work.

"Let's go in."

Hwang Ju-yeon nodded.

I carefully opened the door to Uri Saennal Daycare.

Please, please, don't let this turn into another "then why did you come? drop dead!" situation.

"Oh my!"

"Ah, you startled--! What on earth?"

The toys, ranks assembled with the goose plush at the front.

Hwang Ju-yeon stumbled backward, but the door was already locked behind her.

"Are you Hwang Ju-yeon the magician?"

"Don't be too flustered, just answer honestly."

I whispered quickly to Hwang Ju-yeon, who was sputtering.

"Oh, yes. That's me..."

Hwang Ju-yeon looked down at the goose plush with a dazed expression and answered.

"We loved your performance earlier! The children adored it!"

The toys, expressionless in the way inanimate objects were, seemed to wriggle with something like pleasure.

"But..."

The goose plush's bright, lively voice shifted, smooth as a key change from major to minor.

"Who might this person be?"

Two black, barren periods came to rest on me.

Footnotes:

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