WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 130: Pet
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“If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Seon Yu-han?”
As though every cell in my brain were sizzling and burning away, popping like bubbles, I thought.
Even if I went back, I'd do the same thing.
Because I'd realized it would never abandon me.
* * *
[⏫ 𝗟𝗮𝗯𝗧𝘂𝗯𝗲]
[#UiwiGuild#Jaelae#Visitor#Mukbang｜• Live]
[⚉ Delicious｜⚇ Not Delicious]
[Currently 1,332■ watching Streaming began: 0 minutes ago]
I met Kim Hee-sook, Yun Geon-min, and Hyeon Je-won again before arriving at Haruda Dining.
I looked more closely through the streaming site, hoping to find a clue that could resolve the human petification incident, but nothing useful turned up.
In the end, we safely finished our meal with Nectar and arrived at the Legal Affairs Office without learning much.
“Hello, Representative. I'm Seon Yu-han.”
“Huh? Why are you speaking formally to me?”
I met Yu Mi-rae again as well, after Yu Mi-rae had received a sentence for assisting Manager Kim's suicide.
“Right. Open those, everyone.”
Once introductions were over, Yu Mi-rae handed out the document envelopes containing the verdicts as though Yu Mi-rae were the one giving them to us.
Thud.
―――――――――――――――
JUDGMENT
Case
Defendant Seon Yu-han
Verdict
The defendant is found not guilty.
―――――――――――――――
I was found not guilty again.
The same went for Hyeon Je-won.
“What? Not guilty? That's a pretty boring result.”
The problem was the offenders sentenced for theft and attempted theft, who had received sentences of fifty-eight and twenty-one minutes, respectively.
At least Yun Geon-min had only gotten fifty-eight minutes for plain theft, since I had stopped him from breaking the vending machine.
Of course, that wasn't much of a problem for a thrill-seeker.
That was the real problem.
“Anyway, then we...”
“Representative, we'll head upstairs first.”
I beat Yu Mi-rae to it.
Before Yu Mi-rae caused trouble.
I made the first move.
“W-what did you say?”
Yun Geon-min asked as if he doubted his own ears, and I made sure he knew he hadn't heard wrong.
“Mr. Yun and Ms. Kim, I think the two of you should wait until your time is up before coming upstairs. Think of it as a chance to rest.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?! Rest for what? You're just leaving us here and going without us!”
“Yes. Did I say otherwise?”
“...What? You crazy, mmph.”
I immediately grabbed Yun Geon-min by the face, shoved him against the wall, and covered his mouth.
So he couldn't trigger Yu Mi-rae.
So Yu Mi-rae wouldn't think of Yu Mi-rae's father, Yu Hyun-jae, or home.
So Yu Mi-rae wouldn't burst into tears, fly into a rage, and hurt Yun Geon-min.
“Besides, there's no guarantee it'll be safer if you come upstairs with us. Staying here might be much safer.”
“Ghh... You bastard, let go!”
“Yes. Honestly, even trying to reason with you like this is a waste of time.”
I looked at Yun Geon-min, his face red as he fumed, then turned my gaze away.
Kim Hee-sook, who had received a sentence of barely twenty minutes, looked ashamed.
“Y-yeah!”
Noticing my glance, Yun Geon-min shouted as though he'd found some brilliant escape route.
“You're leaving that lady behind too? You can't even wait for her? Huh? Don't you have any fucking conscience, or...?”
Yun Geon-min's shrill voice suddenly faded.
He was staring at my face.
With the eyes of someone looking at something they couldn't understand.
Ah.
I must not have kept my expression under control.
“We'll meet upstairs later. Both of you, get some rest.”
I quickly smoothed the corner of my mouth and turned away.
Yu Mi-rae stood right in front of the office door, looking this way with a bored expression. Beside Yu Mi-rae, Hyeon Je-won paced back and forth restlessly, as frantic as a dog that needed to piss.
“...Shall we go?”
“Yeah.”
“B-but...”
Hyeon Je-won's eyes darted around.
“Representative Mi-rae, Seon Yu-han, if we just wait together a little longer...”
I didn't care.
I immediately opened the Legal Affairs Office door and walked out.
“...Hey! Hey, you sons of...!”
I slipped past Yun Geon-min, the thief, who came to his senses a beat too late and tried to stop us.
* * *
“Hyeon Je-won.”
I checked on Hyeon Je-won, who stood blankly in place, trembling faintly.
“Are you all right?”
“I... don't like things like this...”
Situations like this were difficult for people like Hyeon Je-won to endure, situations that forced them to break rules they had decided they needed to uphold.
“What are you doing? Let's get upstairs already.”
Yu Mi-rae, meanwhile, strode toward the emergency exit the moment Yu Mi-rae entered the hallway.
“Hyeon Je-won, let's go for now. If you don't want to, go back into the Legal Affairs Office.”
“...What?”
I gestured toward the tightly shut door.
“Choose. Follow the Representative and me now, or wait there with those two and follow us afterward. I won't blame you either way, as long as you don't stay stuck here.”
Because I thought that would be cowardly.
When I added that, Hyeon Je-won looked at me with bloodshot eyes before quickly lowering them.
“...”
With their head deeply bowed, they nodded uncertainly.
“Good choice.”
Only then could Hyeon Je-won and I catch up to Yu Mi-rae before it was too late.
Clunk.
“What do you think we'll find on the next floor?”
Yu Mi-rae's clear voice echoed through the emergency stairwell as though nothing had happened.
“...I'm not sure.”
Checking every so often that Hyeon Je-won was still following, I watched only the toes of Yu Mi-rae's shoes as Yu Mi-rae walked ahead.
Running shoes that didn't suit the elegant dark green suit stepped lightly up the stairs like feathers.
Clunk.
“Huh? What? The layout changed completely.”
The ninth-floor hallway had turned into an I shape.
Far in the distance, I could see the merged Sales Team and Marketing Team offices.
I remembered the white room beyond that door.
And Yu Mi-rae, dead inside it.
“Sales and marketing, huh... Maybe they'll sell our organs? That's the most obvious possibility.”
If possible, I hoped Yu Mi-rae had lived an interesting life.
But still...
“I hope something interesting happens, anyway.”
Dying wasn't interesting.
* * *
“Oh.”
When we entered the Sales and Marketing Team office, Chae Jae-ha was the only one there in the empty white room.
“Uh... Uh...? Y-Yu Mi-rae... Representative?”
“Yeah. Why?”
Yu Mi-rae strode up to the flustered Chae Jae-ha.
Then, without a word, Yu Mi-rae stared directly at Chae Jae-ha. Just stared.
That alone made Chae Jae-ha stammer as though he'd been stabbed with a knife.
“Uh, um, h-hello... I'm Chae Jae-ha. I, um, work at Hoewol, on the sixteenth floor...”
“Ah, I see.”
Only then did Yu Mi-rae turn away, apparently having lost interest.
It seemed Yu Mi-rae had simply wanted to hear Chae Jae-ha introduce himself, with no particular reason for it.
Then Yu Mi-rae should've just said so.
The more I saw of Yu Mi-rae, the more admirable that dead secretary seemed.
“Hello. I'm Seon Yu-han. We came from downstairs...”
I treated Chae Jae-ha as though we were meeting for the first time and exchanged introductions.
I didn't explain everything we'd been through, only the rules of the Legal Affairs Office on the floor below.
There was nobody else who could do it.
Yu Mi-rae was busy examining the white room, while Hyeon Je-won wasn't exactly smooth in ordinary conversation to begin with and was even less so now.
“Ah, then maybe this place is something like that too.”
Chae Jae-ha sounded somewhat relieved.
“Honestly, I was worried. Like the room might start shrinking, or blades and sulfuric acid might come flying out from somewhere.”
“...Have you seen a film like that?”
“Huh? You saw it too?”
Forget it. Let's not talk.
I swallowed a sigh without letting it show and turned toward Yu Mi-rae.
Then I saw a fucking unfamiliar ceiling.
* * *
It was like a prison made of stone.
There was no bed, no window, nothing but dust.
Though not even a sliver of light could enter, an eerie glow illuminated the space.
Everything inside was different, but its dimensions were exactly the same as the house Ppyok-Ppyok had prepared for me.
No, wait. Was this really a prison?
I looked down at myself.
The suit I'd worn for the interview was gone, replaced with gray clothes somewhere between a prison uniform and monk's robes.
One thing was certain.
This “owner” had completely different tastes from the last one.
Maybe that was a good thing.
This “owner” didn't seem interested in treating a pet kindly, and the less interested it was, the more likely it would be to abandon me.
Keeping that in mind, I looked around again.
Strangely, each of the four walls had a door.
Something about that bothered me.
No matter how I looked at them, none seemed likely to lead to a bathroom.
In the end, just as I chose one door and approached it.
Scrape.
My body froze in place.
Scrrrape, scrape.
Slowly, I turned toward the sound.
Scrape, scrape...
Something was scratching stone.
From beyond the wall to my right.
My first question, naturally, was, Who was that?
The second was, Why not use the perfectly good door?
Scrrrape, scratch.
If it wanted to break in, it could just open the door right next to it and come inside.
There was no need to scratch at a stone wall.
Was the door locked?
But if it wasn't...
There was a high chance that whatever was beyond it lacked the cognitive ability to open a door.
And the simpler it was, the more likely it was to be violent.
“Ha...”
In the end, I had no choice but to open the door on the right.
Tap.
I grabbed the doorknob.
Click.
When I opened the door...
“Huh?”
Yu Mi-rae turned toward me, dressed exactly like I was.
And this simple, violent being held the stone shard Yu Mi-rae had just been using to scratch the wall.
Why the hell...?
It was so absurd, beyond simply incomprehensible, that I could only stare blankly at Yu Mi-rae without saying a word.
Yu Mi-rae stared right back at me without a word.
“...”
Something about the way Yu Mi-rae's gaze traveled from my head to my feet felt strange.
As though Yu Mi-rae had forgotten me.
That couldn't be true.
Yu Mi-rae was someone who couldn't forget...
Ah.
I got it now.
“Representative, it's me. Seon Yu-han.”
Yu Mi-rae was bad at recognizing faces.
That was why Yu Mi-rae had only stared at Chae Jae-ha earlier until he introduced himself first.
In case Chae Jae-ha was someone familiar.
In case people discovered Yu Mi-rae couldn't recognize someone familiar.
A light came into Yu Mi-rae's black eyes.
“You catch on fast. Not many people notice that.”
Fortunately, Yu Mi-rae didn't seem upset.
Apparently, it wasn't a secret Yu Mi-rae struggled desperately to hide.
“I've spent a long time learning to read the room.”
“I can tell. Anyway, it isn't face blindness. I have an incredibly good memory.”
Yu Mi-rae spoke like a child proudly puffing out their chest.
“If someone suddenly changes their style, I can't recognize them even if I just saw them. Sometimes even a small difference makes them seem like a completely different person. Because the way they looked before is so vivid.”
As it happened, we had been changed into different clothes when we were sold from the white room of the Sales and Marketing Division to this prison-like place.
“I like it when people have scars on their faces. Like Manager Kim. Makes them easy to recognize. I almost never get confused about people I'm close to, though.”
Almost never meant that Yu Mi-rae sometimes got confused even about people close to them.
“And this is a secret...”
Yu Mi-rae stepped closer with a mischievous smile.
“Sometimes I can't tell the people I saw in dreams from the people I saw in real life.”
All I could do was quietly look at that bright face.
“That's part of it too. I don't know whether the people I've seen, the people I'm looking at right now, are real or not.”
I couldn't imagine it at all.
“So there are probably still a lot of things I have wrong. I can't compare every single thing and figure out what's right and wrong.”
A world where, because Yu Mi-rae remembered everything, everything could paradoxically only be unknown...
“Aren't you afraid?”
I couldn't even imagine how terrifying it must be.
“It's okay. Better than knowing everything.”
I turned that answer over in my mind.
The word “okay” tasted bitter and metallic.
“...”
The taste lingered on my tongue, and I couldn't bring myself to speak.
Then it happened.
Beep, beep, beep!
An alarm loud enough to make every hair on my body stand on end rang out.
Hiss...
Pale smoke began rising from somewhere.
Footnotes:
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