WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 141: A, B, and S
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At eight o'clock?
At first, I thought one of the people who had entered this article had spotted me and was following me.
So I turned my head slightly and glanced over my left shoulder.
"......Who is that?"
Someone I didn't know.
『I don't know. I don't remember them. They're too far away to see their name, but judging by the color of the Nameplate, they're probably a third-year.』
Another mass of text in a Singyae Middle School uniform.
Of course, Singyae Middle School wasn't far from here, so there was nothing particularly strange about it......
Still, wasn't it strange?
Out of all those Draft articles, two were set in the area where I lived and the school I attended.
Could all of this really be a coincidence?
I thought those articles were incidents that might happen in the future.
'Malfunction in the cooling system at Gangwon's Saegang Nuclear Power Plant, followed by hydrogen explosion... evacuation order issued for all residents.'
'All students and staff at ▓▓ Middle School found dead, police launch large-scale investigation.'
'Unidentified toxic gas enters rush-hour subway... "Mass suffocation disaster."'
There were articles about things that could have happened someday, like the gas explosion in the cafeteria. But there were also plenty that definitely hadn't happened in the past.
As far as I knew, nobody had ever been crushed to death in an accident around here, either.
......Of course, there had been ordinary construction-site falls.
Ka-ga-gang......
The distant sound of construction suddenly made me frown.
It brought back an unpleasant memory.
It wasn't a good memory, yet I remembered the date exactly.
It had been the day before Fissure Day thirteen years ago, the day a new era began.
Still, I didn't want to call the final day of the old era quiet or peaceful, like the calm before a storm.
People had died as they did on any other day, even the day before Fissure Day.
I had been at the scene.
* * *
It was a night when I couldn't sleep.
I ended up staying awake all night, then dozed off in class without realizing it and woke screaming.
I think I had cried.
Before I woke up, I must have been whimpering in my sleep.
'Are you okay? If it's too hard, you can leave early. Missing one day won't hurt your grades much, so don't worry about it.'
That was probably why my teacher, who had been about to scold me, had instead let me leave school early out of concern.
'As for contacting your guardian... right. We don't need to, do we? Go home carefully so she won't worry, and get some rest.'
Thinking back, the teacher had been perceptive. They had even said they wouldn't contact Aunt.
They gently asked whether I wanted to stay for school lunch, but I left without eating.
If I had eaten, I would have thrown it all back up.
After leaving school, I wandered the quiet streets on a weekday afternoon with nowhere to go.
I took roads I usually never used and went to neighboring areas.
After wandering around for a long time, I finally found myself lingering around the neighborhood where I lived.
Clang, crash!
That was when the accident happened.
There were still plenty of workplace accidents these days, but back then, safety measures had been even more inadequate.
"Ugh......!"
I was probably the closest person there.
At the very least, I was the first to see what had fallen out of the construction site.
The object that struck the road with a deafening noise, and......
At first, I hadn't even realized a person had fallen.
My mind went completely blank.
I just stood there and watched.
I couldn't go any closer, and I couldn't even shout for help.
It wasn't because I had been shocked by the fall.
The reason I couldn't do anything was an almost purely selfish conflict.
What if I called 119 and had to go to the hospital as the person who reported it? What if adults asked me every little detail to figure out what had happened? What if that made me get home late? What if they told me to contact my guardian because I was a minor?
What if Aunt found out I had left school early?
In that instant, I must have gone back and forth over it thousands of times.
But still.
If I could help......
Even so, when I finally moved toward that person.
"......Over here......!"
By then, the other workers were already coming outside.
"......Hurry......!"
I remembered staring blankly at the scene as the situation was brought under control, then running home.
I knew they hadn't needed me anyway......
But I also knew I had done something utterly horrible and disgusting.
'On my way here, I saw that construction site by the intersection, you know? They said someone fell to their death there. Some steel beams fell too.'
In the end, Aunt never found out that I had left school early that day.
Thankfully.
'At least nobody else got hurt.'
The sleepless nights continued.
Then, while I was still awake the next day, small black-hole-like things appeared all over the world at once. They swallowed people, then soon spat out their corpses.
That was the day when the names Fissure and Labyrinth had not yet been coined.
Fissures appeared in the area where I lived, too.
Some of them had opened in places I had passed while wandering around the day before.
Sometimes I thought that if I had left school just one day later, I might have been trapped in a contact-type Labyrinth and died.
To tell the truth, I still thought that sometimes.
If only I had left school one day later......
* * *
I shook my head and forced the old regret away.
That wasn't important.
I returned to what I had been thinking about before.
I didn't think it was just a coincidence that two articles were set in the area where I lived and at my old school.
Then, did it want me to stop them somehow? Someday?
"Why?"
『▓▓▓.』
The stone-like letters answered my thoughtless murmur.
Startled, I looked at B's black face, whose features I couldn't make out.
Judging by the direction of B's head, B seemed to be staring straight at me too.
『You lost your memory again. You should've said so earlier. Why hide it?』
"......Was it that obvious?"
I answered calmly.
It was better this way, since B had misunderstood on their own.
『How could it not be? You're asking such a stupid question.』
"What's stupid about it......?"
『How is it not stupid to ask why someone from our school is following us? It's stupid that you don't even realize you're being stupid right now.』
Ah.
B had taken my "Why?" that way.
I had been wondering why these articles seemed to be targeting me.
No, but it was fair to wonder why someone was following us.
Did that really make me stupid......?
『Wow. You seriously don't know? Ah, should we ask them, then?』
"Ah, no-"
『-Let's go!』
Letter-shaped laughter tickled my ears, and the hand-shaped mass of text that grabbed me and pulled me along was soft.
It was an unexpected situation.
『Friend!』
......It must have been unexpected for the student who had been following me, too.
The Singyae Middle School student's body stiffened as we got closer.
『Yeah! You!』
I couldn't see the student's face, but somehow I felt like I knew their expression.
"No, slow down a little......"
Feeling like I was being dragged along by an uncontrollable large dog, I arrived in front of the student who had been following us.
I decided to call this student Student S.
For stalker.
『Ah. You're ▓▓. I remember you. You're in Class ▓, right?』
B seemed to recognize Student S.
Naturally, I couldn't even pretend to know them.
[▓▓▓]
Even on the Nameplate, the name was garbled. Their entire face was made of black, broken letters.
Even if it had been intact, I wouldn't have recognized them. They were a student from the future.
Fortunately, I didn't need to force myself to pretend otherwise.
『Uh, yeah...... That's right.』
Student S seemed sufficiently flustered just because B recognized them.
That short sentence trembled nervously.
『What are you doing here?』
B's sentence, on the other hand, swayed lightly.
B was probably smiling.
『Ah, just. I was wandering around......』
『Yeah. Wandering around?』
『Um, I saw you two......』
『Yeah. You saw us, so why?』
Student S was starting to look pitiful.
Still, I didn't stop B.
I honestly wanted to know why they had followed us.
『Um, I was just...... curious.』
『Yeah. What were you curious about?』
『Just, what you were doing...... I mean, you weren't wearing uniforms. I wondered if you hadn't come to school today.』
B tilted their head.
『Didn't you skip school too? It's still a long way from dismissal time.』
『No, I......』
Student S stopped there, as if they had closed their mouth. No more sentences appeared.
『Do you like me?』
Student S froze at B's direct question.
『......What?』
"Huh?"
I froze too.
No, why hadn't I considered that?
It was the most obvious scenario.
So that was why B had called me stupid.
Because I hadn't noticed something so obvious.
『No? Then do you like this one?』
B jerked their chin toward me.
Thinking about it, that was possible too.
『Uh......?』
『Ah! You like both of us! It's okay. You're not the only one.』
I looked up at the sky as I watched that bright, cheerful sentence.
I wanted out of this conversation by now.
What was I even doing here?
I had come to publish the article.
"......Let's go now."
I lightly took B's arm and glanced toward the construction site.
『Should we?』
Whether it was unfortunate or fortunate, B readily agreed and waved to Student S.
『Then see you tomorrow, ▓▓. I'll be off.』
See you tomorrow?
At that moment, I wanted to see B's face.
Did this monster really not know they were about to die?
Really?
Was it different from the article where B had killed Father and tried to die with me?
Was that simply not part of this article's setting?
I was supposed to let this child be crushed to death beneath a person and steel beams?
......No. No.
This was a monster.
This was the Labyrinth.
None of it had happened.
It was just a fake world that didn't even exist.
If I didn't die here, the real me and the others would die.
"......Bye."
I watched the mass of letters in the school uniform for a moment, then turned away.
That was a monster too.
Don't think about it.
Not about this child I was planning to die with.
Not about the regret some child would have after we died.
If I hadn't followed those two from the beginning.
Or if I had spoken with them for even a few seconds longer......
『Um. Excuse me. Wait!』
A sentence suddenly shot out from behind us, urgently blocking our view.
It was Student S's sentence.
And the moment the sentence that had blocked our view disappeared.
"......Uh, Seon Yu-han......"
Far away in front of us, I saw several small, flesh-colored faces.
Yu Hyun-jae, Lee Na-hyun, Jeong Ji-ho, Hwang Ju-yeon.
Unfamiliar faces I recognized as people I wanted to remember me.
B, Student S.
Black faces whose names, let alone appearances, I couldn't know.
I looked at all of them in turn.
"......"
Once again, I began doing something utterly horrible and disgusting.
Footnotes:
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