WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 140: Nameless
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"Seon Yu-han...? Are you okay? Your expression suddenly looks awful."
"Ah."
Hwang Ju-yeon's voice pulled me out of my thoughts.
"I was just thinking about what we should do now."
"Ah. This isn't the time to catch up."
Yu Hyun-jae spoke as though waiting for the opening.
"I found some strange skid marks earlier. Follow me."
As I looked at the back of Yu Hyun-jae's pitch-black head, I thought of Yu Hyun-jae's younger sister.
Maybe Yu Mi-rae had simply found a resemblance between the face of a middle school classmate in her memories and that of an adult nearing thirty.
Yu Mi-rae was confused because she remembered everything, not because she had forgotten it all.
That explanation made more sense, at least compared to the possibility that Yu Mi-rae had known about my name change.
Because even thinking about that possibility was too...
Creepy.
How self-absorbed I was.
"Why don't we look for a car with tires that match these skid marks?"
Shaking my head to clear it, I pointed to the long tire tracks on the floor.
"Ah. Good idea."
"And it might not have been a scream, but a heartbeat. Considering what happened to the escort earlier."
I decided to focus on solving the Labyrinth.
* * *
There were things I only came to understand after a very long time.
Things I could only realize after looking at them again with new eyes.
"Ji-ho, don't your legs hurt?"
I quietly watched Yu Hyun-jae walking ahead of us.
Yu Hyun-jae's large hand gently held a child's hand, leading the child along.
'Seon Yu-han, breathe slowly.'
When we first met in this parking garage.
When I had an attack after seeing Hwang Ju-yeon and Jeong Ji-ho's corpses.
Even until the moment my chest split open and my heart was taken, Yu Hyun-jae had held my hand.
'Ah, so you heard it after all. About two minutes...'
Yu Hyun-jae had been taking my pulse.
It did not feel particularly surprising now.
Not at this point.
'Just because someone has an unrevealed purpose doesn't mean their revealed purpose is fake, Seon Yu-han.'
Yu Hyun-jae was simply an extremely efficient person.
Someone who held the hand of a person dying alone while making sure their death did not go to waste.
"Ah. I think it's this car. Go 1010."
I stopped paying attention to Yu Hyun-jae and pointed at the tires of a black sedan.
"Huh? There's a box on it?"
Hwang Ju-yeon pointed at the hood.
"Samadhi Delivery..."
A box that led to the next clue, the delivery truck.
"Come to think of it, wasn't there a delivery truck earlier..."
Without thinking much of it, I picked up the box.
Plop.
The moment I lifted it, I knew something was wrong.
It was noticeably heavier than usual.
Far too heavy for a box that had always contained nothing but a cross pendant.
Splat.
I simply could not catch the bloody mass that spilled from beneath the box in that brief instant.
"Ah...!"
"It's nothing."
Still, I was capable of doing a rough cleanup.
Thud.
I immediately covered the scarlet heart on the floor with the empty box.
"It's nothing. The Labyrinth set it up to mess with us. It just wants to scare us."
I blocked Jeong Ji-ho's view as well.
Yu Hyun-jae, who had been holding the child's hand, had already covered his eyes first.
"Was that, earlier..."
"Yes. Don't imagine too much. Take deep breaths."
Hwang Ju-yeon's expression tightened.
The grotesque, unexpected gift had clearly startled her, but she calmed down quickly.
It was not as if she could not stand the sight of blood itself.
"God, so this is how it is. It's not even some courage test..."
Hwang Ju-yeon was not the type to get overly worked up unless her own life was in danger.
I checked Yu Hyun-jae one last time.
"...Representative?"
Yu Hyun-jae was not someone I needed to worry about, but the subdued look in those eyes as Yu Hyun-jae stared blankly at the box bothered me.
"Are you all right?"
"...Ah."
Yu Hyun-jae nodded slowly, as if waking from a dream.
"I wondered if it might have belonged to Driver Kim."
"Ah..."
I supposed Yu Hyun-jae could think that.
My thought was a little different.
A heart.
This was the first time a heart had been inside a box that always contained a cross pendant.
Then the owner of this heart was...
'...Jeon Yeong-gwang. Do you happen to know someone named Bae Seo-woo?'
Jeon Yeong-gwang.
The doctor who had killed Bae Seo-woo.
Jeon Yeong-gwang had probably already received Prajna's mercy and had his heart taken.
This was the first time I had come to this parking garage after realizing Jeon Yeong-gwang's identity, so I had not known a change like this would occur.
"Um... Then..."
There was no need to blurt out such a candid truth.
"Should we take it and leave it by the escort?"
"No. It's fine. Let's leave it here, just as it is."
As I tried to put the ownerless heart back in the box, Yu Hyun-jae raised a hand to stop me.
"We don't know for certain whether it belongs to Driver Kim. And even without a heart, we can still commemorate and mourn someone."
We could commemorate and mourn someone without a heart...
I turned those words over in my mind for a long time.
Until I found an urn with four chrysanthemums in it.
[The Late ]
Looking at the empty urn, I thought of a memorial service from long ago.
That day, I had no right to act as chief mourner, no right to tell anyone how they had died. I slipped in among unfamiliar mourners who had come to pay their respects, left behind a single chrysanthemum, and fled.
'The Late Kim Je-yu.'
I thought of the person among those I had cremated and buried, the one who did not even have a body to cremate.
Compared to that, how fortunate this was.
That it was only missing a heart...
[The Late Bae Seo-woo]
That it could be resolved...
"..."
Breathing in the scent of burning chrysanthemums, I covered my mouth.
If I did not, I thought I might let it all spill out.
I thought I might laugh.
At myself, for thinking it was fortunate while remembering a child who had been exploited and died unjustly...
I thought I might throw up.
* * *
After the basement level five parking garage came the fourteenth floor, home to the game company Neosoft.
【Lost In HAPPYLAND】
【ENTER】
"I'll go first."
I moved Lee Jin-su's already-dead body aside and started the game.
【There's the 'Happy Swing'! Grab the pole spinning round and round at the top of the hill, then move forward one space at a time! Be happy!】
【▶ Become happy】
【▶ Become unhappy】
It still was not difficult.
【Become unhappy!】
All I had to do was become unhappy.
【Don't worry! It will hurt. A minor curse will make you unhappy：Hand】
Even without happiness, I still had luck.
"Ah, ugh, ngh..."
"Seon Yu-han!"
Honestly, I thought I would die a few more times here.
Getting off with just one wrist was a small price.
"Th-the kit..."
"Ah! Yes, here...!"
"I'll handle it. Hwang Ju-yeon, please watch Ji-ho."
Click.
Yu Hyun-jae sat down in front of me and opened the first-aid kit.
"Want something to bite on? Maybe gauze?"
"I'm fine."
"Are you?"
What an irritating little Zen riddle.
Yu Hyun-jae was suspicious of me. My reaction was only this much, even after my wrist had been cut off.
"I'm used to pain... ugh."
Without warning, Yu Hyun-jae pressed down on the wound to stop the bleeding.
This bastard...?
"Being okay and being used to it are different things."
"...I'm fine, even if they are."
Yu Hyun-jae laughed, sounding like a soft sigh, and silently focused on treating the wound.
I watched the two hands wrapping a bandage around my wrist.
Fingers with thicker joints than Yu Mi-rae's.
A silver ring on Yu Hyun-jae's pinky.
"..."
Beneath Yu Mi-rae's ring, there had been a thin stitching scar, fine as a thread.
Then was there an identical scar beneath Yu Hyun-jae's ring too?
"You can glare all you like, but I can't give you my ring."
"I don't need it..."
I could not ask that question to someone joking around like that.
Whether they were all right.
Whether they, not me, were the ones used to pain.
What exactly had happened to them.
'Our father was like a Labyrinth. In that he was good at trapping people.'
Had they been freed from their own Labyrinth?
* * *
After passing the eleventh floor with the gambler's dice, we arrived on the fifteenth floor.
[Singyae Daily｜Singyae Daily]
Yu Hyun-jae, Jeong Ji-ho, Hwang Ju-yeon, and I stood in front of the small news office.
Each of us had a mannequin from the Moment O'Clock supply room tucked under one arm.
Swish.
I opened the door.
"Huh?"
Click.
A woman with bleached hair was holding a mouse awkwardly in front of a laptop and staring back at us.
"Uh, um... I, well..."
"Ah."
Damn it.
The moment I saw that guilty expression, like a puppy that had made a mess, I realized it by instinct.
We had come in at the exact moment Lee Na-hyun clicked either the edit or publish button.
This was my mistake.
It had been so long since I came down here that I missed the timing.
I should have arrived much later instead.
Thud.
I rushed over and checked the laptop screen.
[Worker falls with construction-site annex in ▓▓ District, two pedestrians crushed to death]
Of all things, she had to pick this one.
I had never entered this article even once.
Why was it so difficult just to get to the arcade one time?
[Publishing begins. Seon Yu-han, Yu Hyun-jae, Lee Na-hyun, Jeong Ji-ho, Hwang Ju-yeon.]
Publishing began?
She had clicked Publish instead of Edit.
Then I had to make the article's contents come true▓
* * *
Cool midday air beneath a wide blue sky.
I stood still and looked at the scene in front of me.
This was...
『What are you doing?』
At that moment, someone poked my arm along with soundless letters.
When I turned my head, I saw someone dressed as though they had come out for a walk, their long hair tied back in a single ponytail......
▓▓▓▓▓??▓▓8▓▓▓[E?ꠖ%▓?▓▓R▓▓I?▓▓
A mass of broken letters was visible.
"...Nothing."
For some reason, I knew who this was.
'Well, what if all of you kill yourselves?'
The nasty customer at the restaurant where a gas explosion had been planned.
'Teacher. Why is there a bomb at school...?'
The student of mine who had tried to kill every student and staff member at Singyae Middle School.
'...It's been a while since you forgot Father too.'
The child who had been B, my younger sibling who killed Father and tried to die alongside their sibling.
'▓▓▓.'
One of the two monsters in charge of the Singyae Daily Labyrinth.
Since I did not know their name, it seemed best to call them B.
『Why? You're not in the mood today? All of a sudden?』
What mood?
'Worker falls with construction-site annex in ▓▓ District, two pedestrians crushed to death.'
The mood to be crushed to death by a person?
I was not in that mood.
"...It's not that."
『If not, then what's wrong? Are we just going home?』
"No. It's not that."
I could not run away.
Since I had entered after choosing Publish rather than Edit, I had to make the article's contents come true.
Even if I became the person who died in that article.
'A Labyrinth is only called that when it has an exit.'
'Right. So let's get out of here, together.'
Last time, the moment I left the house with B instead of dying together with them, the article had failed to publish.
Still, it was fortunate that I had this role instead.
My companions were probably wandering nearby in other bodies.
Clang... Bang...
A construction site stood in the distance.
Did this child know where we were going?
That if we continued on like this, we would be caught in the fall and die?
If they knew, how did they know?
Were they simply a Labyrinth monster designed to kill whoever published the article?
『Then why do you keep looking around?』
"No, it's just. Something..."
...It could not be helped.
The clothes people wore, their mobile devices, even the store signs gave the scene a somewhat mixed sense of time.
But I was certain.
This was the neighborhood where I lived.
It would have been stranger not to recognize it.
I had lived in the same place continuously since I was seven.
『Ah. You noticed too?』
The black face made of letters nodded up and down.
『That one is definitely chasing us.』
What?
『Eight o'clock.』
Footnotes:
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