WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 162
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(OVERLAP)
Footsteps descend into the basement room. In the darkness, something can be heard touching and feeling its way around.
The sounds stop.
Girl: The woman saw everything. Though she was blind, she could see it all. The smell, the texture, the shape...
Footsteps ascend from the basement room. Something rattles.
Girl: (kneeling, curled up, pounding the floor with her bare hands) Bang!
The lights come on.
The sound of nails being hammered can be heard.
Girl: (continuing to pound the floor in time with the sound) Bang! Bang! Bang!
The black stains on the sack over the girl's head deepen.
Girl: (gasping as she continues) Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
The sounds stop.
The girl stops.
Girl: (looking at us, calmly in a woman's voice) There was nothing there.
The girl spreads a blanket on the floor and sits on it. After an uncomfortably long silence, she speaks.
Girl: (leaning forward as though whispering to us) The blind woman didn't see anything. (pause) She didn't have eyes to see with!
The boy and girl clutch their stomachs, their shoulders shaking.
Everyone bursts into laughter.
Girl: (brightly) And so, the blind woman and the hunter had a second child the following year and lived happily ever after! The end!
Boy: The Shell didn't come out. Only the Nail did.
Girl: (shaking her head, dejected) It couldn't be helped. She said she didn't see it, so what could I do? (to the woman) What did you think? Was it scary? Was it like a real Nail Shell Story?
Woman: Yeah. I liked it.
Girl: Hmph. What's the point? You don't die even after hearing it.
Boy: Now it's you two's turn to tell us a story.
Woman: Two? (looking around) But I'm the only one here.
Girl: Don't worry. Big brother's on his way back too.
Boy: Let's take a break, then start when he gets back.
The lights slowly dim.
―――――――――――――――
Blackout.
I hesitated for just a moment.
Creeeak...
As I entered the mansion, the door slowly closed behind me.
I began climbing the stairs again.
The stairs of a mansion where everyone was spending the night wide awake.
―――――――――――――――
Intermission
An old, narrow attic.
Creak, creak. Wooden stairs groan.
A man appears.
Man: (to the woman) Boss.
Woman: (rummaging through a box) Find anything interesting?
The man glances somewhere. There is nothing there. I don't know why he is looking in that direction.
Man: (quietly handing the woman the Gardener's final diary page) Well, there was something. Those kids...
The lights come on.
―――――――――――――――
Act Three begins.
I stopped what I was about to say and quietly looked at the sacks the two children wore like masks.
The dark stains aligned with their eyes, noses, and mouths...
The boy and girl, who had been frozen like dolls, began moving again as if nothing had happened.
“You tell yours first, sis. We said we'd tell scary stories.”
“Well. What should I choose?”
Holding a page from the Gardener's diary, the woman whose left and right sides were reversed stared into empty space for a while.
This mirror image had a fatal limitation.
Every sentence she spoke had to be seven Korean characters or fewer. And every sentence had to make sense on its own.
In other words, she had to tell a scary story within those conditions.
I didn't know whether that was possible.
The woman, who had been silently considering something, opened her mouth.
“I'm scared of that.”
Her voice was calm.
“Nobody dying.”
She tapped her temple with the hand wearing a ring.
“Being alive here.”
Everyone held their breath as they watched her.
“Father won't die.”
Her pitch-black eyes, with left and right reversed, seemed to be looking somewhere far away.
“He died, for sure.”
As though she were seeing a distant past rather than this place.
“I killed him, for sure.”
The woman's brief monologue ended.
The boy and girl clutched their stomachs, their shoulders shaking.
Their laughter was high and sharp, like that of children.
Amid that shrill laughter, I stared blankly at the woman before speaking as though exhaling.
“Is there no escape? Even if we die? Even if we kill?”
The woman's gaze settled on me.
“That's the Labyrinth.”
The children abruptly stopped laughing.
“But that isn't a scary story. Who told you to tell a funny one?”
The girl's voice sounded angry, as though she were holding that anger back.
The woman paid her no attention and glared coldly at her.
“What does it matter to you? I said I'm scared.”
I considered stopping the woman, then decided against it.
I needed to see what would happen if someone failed to tell a scary story.
“We weren't scared!”
The girl sprang to her feet, huffing, while the boy quietly rose and stepped closer.
“You said it was obvious, remember? Earlier. When you wondered what kind of story the real Nail Shell Story could be, if everyone who heard it died. You said it then.”
The boy spoke.
“‘That's obvious.’”
It was the exact same voice, creepy enough to make it seem as though he had devoured the woman whole.
Even so, the woman paid no attention. Still sitting there, she smiled faintly and repeated herself.
“That's obvious.”
Then, facing the boy and girl as they stepped closer, she added in a whisper.
“The narrator killed them.”
Riiip. The Gardener's final diary page tore in the woman's hands.
The boy and girl beamed.
―――――――――――――――
Boy: Good. We needed a new Gardener anyway. We found a butler earlier.
Girl: We need a cook too. (pause) And a mom and dad.
Boy: (stroking the top of the girl's head) We can't find a mom and dad. We don't need to. (pointing at me) Let's hear big brother's story too, then decide who will be the Gardener and who will be the cook.
Girl: Okay! (to me) Tell us a scary story.
Everyone looked at me.
―――――――――――――――
A scary story...
Could there be one scarier than the woman's?
What were we supposed to do?
Where were we supposed to go?
If there was no escape, no matter what we did...
I shook my head, casting off the thoughts clinging to me like shadows.
I looked at the two children in their cloth sacks, then slowly began.
“How about a story about children who don't die, even when they die?”
The woman quietly looked at me.
The boy and girl sat down.
“Go on.”
There was tension and anticipation in the girl's voice as she tilted her head.
“This happened at a mansion in the forest.”
At that, the woman beside me lifted her head slightly, as though she had realized something.
“Is it them? The children who don't die? Do they go back in time too? Is that their setting?”
“...Please just listen.”
“Okay. Go on, then.”
The woman clasped her hands and stared at me without blinking, as though she meant to listen closely.
I didn't know where she had put the diary page she had just torn.
My gaze lingered on the woman briefly before shifting to the boy and girl.
“There is a boy and a girl in that mansion who cannot die. Are they siblings? Yes, let's say they're siblings.”
The children did not react. They simply sat side by side, tightly holding each other's hands as they listened.
“The boy and girl aren't the only ones in the mansion. There is a butler, a Housekeeper, a coachman, a footman, and a maid... Were the Gardener and cook dead?”
Where had the mansion's married owners gone?
I couldn't remember.
“The adults in that mansion cannot sleep. But they all pretend to sleep... Trembling in fear. Because...”
Who were they truly afraid of?
I probably wasn't the being that had driven them mad.
“The boy and girl they killed come back alive every day. No matter how often they kill them. No matter how often they bury them.”
I knew the heart of someone digging into the earth to bury the dead.
...I thought I might be glad.
If the things I had buried and burned came back to me.
Just as something I had never even been able to bury had come back to me.
“The people in that mansion kill and bury children who are not even half their size, every day.”
Did they kill because they had gone mad?
Did they go mad because they killed?
Or because they could not kill?
“Is that the end?”
I nodded at the girl's question.
“Yeah. What else does it need?”
The boy sighed and shook his head.
“It started well.”
“Right. Why end it there when it was going so well?”
“Then how should it end? This story.”
If they told me, I could do better next time.
But the boy and girl did not answer my question.
They merely rose slowly and stared at the woman and me.
―――――――――――――――
Boy: Who should be the Gardener?
Man: Me. (smiling) I've grown trees before.
Girl: Really? Then big brother can be the Gardener! (to the woman) Sis can be the cook!
Woman: (taking her hands from her pockets) I can't cook.
Boy: That's okay. Nobody will care.
The boy reaches for the woman, and the girl reaches for the man.
Boy, Girl: It's time to return to your places.
The woman takes the boy's hand, and the man takes the girl's.
The lights go out.
Creak, creak. Wooden stairs groan.
The cook and the Gardener exit.
―――――――――――――――
The Gardener woke from a long dream.
Still half asleep, the Gardener looked out the window and saw that it was still early dawn.
“Ah...”
The Gardener felt a tingling in the left hand.
Without realizing it, the Gardener had been clenching a fist tight.
It must have been a nightmare that lasted all night.
“Hmm?”
Carefully relaxing and opening the fist, the Gardener found something in the palm.
A crumpled scrap of paper, soaked in sweat.
“Why was I sleeping while holding trash?”
The Gardener could not remember.
Puzzled, the Gardener unfolded the rough-textured scrap of paper.
Written on it was a very short sentence, as if hurriedly scrawled in reddish-brown ink with a nib as thin and sharp as a nail.
『We need to enter the forest』
How to Die in the Office Labyrinth <Family Month Questionnaire>
★ Children's Day
1. What was the biggest trouble you ever got into as a child?
“When I was in first grade, I didn't go home and someone reported me for lying down on a road in the next neighborhood. Apparently I wasn't sick or passed out, I was just lying there with my eyes open. I don't remember it, honestly. I only remember getting in huge trouble afterward. I think I thought it was the scene of an accident from when I was seven, in my own way. It wasn't somewhere a child could walk to, though.”
2. What scared you most as a child? Does it still scare you now?
“The sound of someone opening the door and coming in. It doesn't scare me now. I live alone now, after all.”
3. If you could give your childhood self one perfect day, what kind of day would you make for them?
“Just with Aunt... I don't know. Whatever we did that day, I would want it to be a day when I could look forward to tomorrow coming.”
★ Parents' Day
4. Is there something you have never been able to say to your parents, or caregivers?
“There are too many things. But if there's something I absolutely should have said... that you're my family? Despite everything.”
5. What is the biggest misunderstanding your parents, or caregivers, have about you?
“I think they thought that one day I'll leave them forever and live happily. They really don't know anything... I'm not Father.”
6. If you were giving carnations on Parents' Day, who would you want to give them to?
“Aunt. That woman made me. And Auntie and Uncle. In my brother's place. Ah... Right. My parents too. I should give them some as well. They did give birth to me, after all.”
7. Is there an object or something someone in your family, or someone like family, gave you that you still keep?
“...A home? I bought the jeonse apartment I lived in with Aunt and still live there. So it's a little hard to say I received it directly, but I did add the inheritance I received to the money. The workers' compensation settlement was fairly large too.”
8. If you could become someone's family, what kind of presence would you want to be?
“Something like a home. A place that holds both good memories and bad ones. A place to return to no matter how long you've been away. A place where it's all right to come back anytime...”
9. If you were born again, what kind of family would you like to live in? An only child, or with siblings?
“I wonder what it would be like to have siblings. Three siblings. It sounds nice. Still, I wouldn't want too large an age gap. So we could bicker a little.”
10. If you had to be reborn as a colleague or friend's sibling in your next life, whose family member would you want to be?
“It would feel like I was butting in and breaking something, so excluding the companions who already have siblings... Lee Na-hyun? I think she would have been a wild child who got into a lot of entertaining trouble. I would like to clean up after her each time and help her grow up into who she is now. Honestly, I think it would be fun just watching her. There wouldn't be a dull day.”
★ Teachers' Day
11. If you became someone's teacher, what would be the first thing you would teach your student?
“If you're prepared to accept the consequences, never hesitate.”
★ Coming-of-Age Day
12. When did you first feel that you had become an adult?
“When I no longer felt only dislike for people who seemed to live without shadows.”
13. What was the first grown-up thing you did, or wanted to do, after becoming an adult?
“I wanted to spend a night away without asking my guardian's permission, after giving them only unilateral notice. I never got the chance.”
14. When did you first drink alcohol? Please tell us your alcohol tolerance and drinking habits, if you have any!
“I first learned to drink on New Year's Day, the year I turned twenty. It wasn't really a situation worth celebrating, but I think someone was trying to make a good memory somehow. I could drink about five or six glasses, but it's probably gotten worse. After that, I only drank exactly one glass on my birthday. Other people think I can't drink at all. As for drinking habits... I don't know if this counts, but whenever I drink, I always make rolled omelet. For some reason, I crave it.”
15. If you received one of the three traditional Coming-of-Age Day gifts, perfume, flowers, or a kiss, which would you choose? Why?
“Flowers. They're nice to look at. They don't disappear immediately, but they don't last too long either.”
16. What does being an adult mean to you now?
“Someone who knows that they must eventually accept themselves? Both the good and the bad, without denying either... I think knowing that you should do that is enough to make you an adult. If you know where you need to go, getting lost isn't a problem.”
Footnotes:
“Nail” in “Nail Shell Story” sounds like part of the Korean phrase for “couldn't see,” which is the basis of the children's joke.
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