WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 170: Final Act
──────
A tense air hung over the hallway.
...At least, it seemed that way to Kang Jun-gyeom.
Wearing a grave expression, Kang Jun-gyeom looked at me while cautiously scanning every direction with his peripheral vision.
“I can’t see anything. Could it be a monster or some kind of anomaly? Or maybe someone who didn’t come to the dining room.”
I watched him for a moment, barely holding back a smile, then lightly tapped his back.
“Just ignore it. If it’s human, we win unless they set us on fire and lock us up. If it isn’t human, there’s not much we can do anyway.”
“Well, strictly speaking, those employees aren’t human either. But I understand what you mean, Gardener.”
Click.
Kang Jun-gyeom opened the door to the room at the end of the hallway instead of me.
It was a small, shabby room piled with clutter like a storage closet.
In one corner stood an old, narrow wooden staircase leading to the ceiling.
Then.
Bang!
The door shut on its own.
“...”
It was not even surprising anymore.
Kang Jun-gyeom carefully took hold of the doorknob.
Click, creeeak...
“Oh, it opens again at least. There’s nobody out there...”
The Labyrinth Management Bureau agent stuck his head out to check the hallway, then strode back to the attic stairs and looked at me.
“I’ll go up first, so Gardener, watch the situation and follow me, or run... No, excuse me, but can your eyes get any deader than that?”
“I think I told you not to say it if you know it’s rude...”
“Oh, right. Sorry about that.”
The way he gave a playful smile and bowed his head was really...
He really had an irritating personality in some ways.
“...Anyway, what if you go alone and die, Mr. Kang Jun-gyeom?”
“That’s why I’m going first. Don’t worry about me too much, and if something feels wrong, run immediately. I’d appreciate it if you took my glasses and wore them, but you don’t need to push yourse-”
“No, I’m fine with you dying, Mr. Kang Jun-gyeom.”
“Huh?”
“It would be a problem if I didn’t know why you died.”
“Ah. Ah...”
Kang Jun-gyeom blinked silently for several seconds, then promptly nodded.
“Yes, understood. Shall we go together, then?”
He seemed to have accepted it unexpectedly easily.
“...What exactly did you understand?”
I asked as I followed him up the stairs.
Creeeak, creeeak. The wooden steps creaked.
“Hmm...”
Kang Jun-gyeom stepped into the attic first, then gestured for me to come up.
“You need to check it for yourself, whatever it is. That must have helped you survive until now.”
Without replying, I climbed into the attic.
“...The children aren’t here.”
“Yes. That’s why I told you to come up.”
The old, narrow attic held neither the boy nor the girl.
There were no boxes full of things, either.
Only stale dust and dead bugs.
“Maybe we can only meet them again once it becomes night.”
“Maybe we need to meet them before night comes.”
Tap, patter...
A sound like a child lightly pattering about came from the floor above.
From a floor that did not even exist.
I glanced toward the ceiling, then headed back down the stairs.
“It seems like they want to play hide-and-seek.”
All kinds of things happened while we searched for the children.
Thump!
As we walked down the hallway, tiny hands appeared outside the window and pounded against it hard enough to shatter it, then vanished.
“Hm? The handprints are on the inside.”
Scritch, scrape.
When we lifted the blanket swelling like a little hill, as though a child were hiding beneath it, writhing insects burst out with a pile of gnawed-up rat corpses.
“Hmm. Those look like human tooth marks.”
Aaaaagh...
A scream rang out from somewhere.
“Ah, that must be those employees from earlier. They must have failed to keep to their roles.”
Drip, drip.
A sticky liquid, whether rusty water or blood, dripped from the ceiling...
“Would you like me to wipe that off?”
But the Labyrinth Management Bureau agent who had once been in the special forces seemed too steady to be startled by every little surprise event.
“No, thank you.”
...And too much had happened to me as well.
Enough that I started feeling sorry for the children, who were trying so hard to play tricks on us.
Thump!
“Good grief...”
When a hand suddenly shot out from under the bed and grabbed his own ankle, Kang Jun-gyeom made a halfhearted startled noise and checked under the bed.
“Yep, no one there. I knew it... Where could they be hiding...”
At this point, we were practically just playing with the children.
“Honestly, when I think about how those employees must go through this every day, I can understand why they bit their own tongues off. They may be monsters, but their basic setting seems to be that of ordinary humans.”
Kang Jun-gyeom covered his mouth slightly, leaned toward me, and whispered as though sharing a secret.
“By the way, where do you think the children’s real parents are? There aren’t even any bodies. They must be the master and mistress of this house.”
“I wonder.”
I thought of the spacious, old-fashioned room that showed no signs of use.
The children did not play tricks in that room.
‘We need a Cook too. And Mom and Dad.’
‘You can’t get Mom and Dad. And there’s no need to.’
The girl and boy had exchanged words like that before.
They could not be found, and there was no need to find them.
“They were already dead before the children died. Or the children or the employees killed them so thoroughly that nothing remains... Either way, they must be dead.”
“Maybe... Ah, it’s almost time to set the table. Lunch will be soon.”
And so, we finished our game of hide-and-seek without much to show for it.
In the end, it looked as though two random men had broken into a house, tied everyone up in their dining room, robbed the place, then crawled back into the dining room to make themselves food once it was mealtime...
“You people... are devils.”
None of that mattered.
I was about to ignore the Housekeeper, who was tied up alone in a corner and still relatively intact, but I looked up.
“Where can we go to meet the children properly? They won’t let us catch them.”
The Housekeeper’s expression twisted.
I silently watched until she spoke again.
It took a long time before she finally opened her mouth.
“Finding the way out is the duty of those who can leave.”
She meant that she would not tell us.
Or perhaps she could not.
“...That isn’t wrong.”
“Gardener, shall we go into the forest?”
The Cook proposed it.
“You said there was a cabin or a storage shed there, didn’t you? That’s where the children died. If they follow us there, perhaps we can catch them. It is a vulnerable place.”
It was a grim thought, but it made sense.
“What do you think? It’s a good idea, right?”
“Hmm, perhaps it was not a good idea?”
Kang Jun-gyeom looked up at the sky.
The moment we stepped outside the manor.
Tap.
The sky went dark, as though the lights on a stage had been turned off. The sun disappeared.
“...No, it is not. Follow me.”
I went back inside the manor.
Then I immediately started climbing the stairs.
“The children might be in the attic now. Like last night.”
“Ah.”
“Since we are inside a book, perhaps it can skip over time however it wants.”
Now that I understood the outline of the story, I had to tell the children.
I had to let them know that I understood their story now.
And ask them to let us out of here.
Creeak, creeeak...
When we entered the attic, the boy and girl were there with yellowed cloth sacks over their heads.
The sound of wind and rain filled the air.
“Are you ready to tell a scary story?”
The boy asked.
I nodded.
Two pairs of black stains, shaped like eyes, stared at me.
The girl slowly nodded.
“Then that’s enough. We already heard it.”
Perhaps some stories only need to be witnessed.
Perhaps simply knowing that such a story exists is enough.
“Now, then...”
The boy and girl each took a yellowed sack from a box. I had no idea when the box had appeared there.
The two children approached us carrying the sacks.
“Are you ready to hear a scary story?”
The girl asked.
We could not refuse.
We were no longer in the attic.
We were in the basement room.
A hidden place beneath a small cabin in the forest.
“Yes, good. It’s all right... Don’t be scared. It will only take a moment...”
A sack was pulled over my head.
Blackout.
―――――――――――――――
A narrow, old basement room.
That man and the man kneel in the center.
Adults gather around them as though surrounding them. They are all exhausted or mad. Each adult holds something, a torch, rope, a shovel, a pitchfork, a hammer, nails.
That Man, trembling all over: Please, stop even now. Stop. Father will definitely come back...
Butler, after a pause: Young master, the master will not return.
Man, in a voice filled with rage: Liar! Untie me! I said untie me! (bursting into tears) Mom, Dad...!
So they will not have to lower or turn away their heads any longer, the adults pull yellowed cloth sacks over the two people’s heads like shells. Their world goes dark. The adults have work to do.
Thud, thud. The sound of nails being hammered echoes.
The sound of tearing screams echoes.
Dark stains spread across the sacks.
As though eyes, a nose, and a mouth have been drawn there.
Shadows sway beyond the torchlight.
The sacks tied with rope tighten.
Hack, hack. Choked, gasping sounds echo.
The black stains on the sacks grow darker.
No voices can be heard.
The sound of wind and rain fills the air.
The torch goes out.
Blackout.
Curtain.
―――――――――――――――
Rustle.
I heard the sound of a page turning.
“Huh, ngh... Ha...”
A man’s ragged breathing could be heard.
“Mr. Kang Jun-gyeom. Mr. Kang Jun-gyeom, look at me.”
Holding Kang Jun-gyeom’s shaking shoulders and hands, I carefully called him back to reality.
“Breathe slowly. Yes, here. Can you see the table? Here, we are sitting in chairs right now. Myeongil Books, remember? We are back.”
After some more time, Kang Jun-gyeom’s seizure subsided.
“I have really done all kinds of training, you know...? I have even trained to endure pain close to torture. But...”
Kang Jun-gyeom clenched and unclenched his hands, then gave a slight smile.
“I have never trained to die. Near-death experiences should have been part of the curriculum.”
That made me laugh a little.
I quickly wiped the smile off my face and looked at the next page of Nail Shell, which had turned by itself.
―――――――――――――――
Commentary
Nail Shell is a play based on the classic ghost story of “a story that kills you once you hear it,” and (...) its third act ends by showing the tragic events that happened to the boy and girl before the first act.
Depending on the edition, the following comic epilogue is added, creating a bookend with Act 1.
―
The boy and girl enter an empty stage.
Boy: Have you heard the Nail Shell Story?
Girl, strangling the boy: Neck Shell?
Boy: No! He strikes the top of the girl’s head with a hammer. Nail Shell!
The girl’s shell turns a dark red. The boy gasps for breath inside his shell.
The boy and girl collapse, clutching their stomachs and shaking with laughter.
Laughter is heard.
Curtain.
―
(...) Though editions differ, the prevailing interpretation is that the boy and girl’s parents, the master and mistress of the manor, died in war and an epidemic.
It is said that some editions vividly portray the final scene of Act 3 as though the audience were experiencing it firsthand...
―――――――――――――――
If I had skipped ahead and opened the book to read it beforehand, I obviously would have died.
Something impossible even at Chaekbang Ollae could not possibly be possible here.
Thump.
I shut the book and stood.
“Let’s go up now. We need to check whether we can get through without stopping by Ho-wol, too.”
“Ah, yes.”
Considering how many floors remained, the electrical room might appear soon.
Thinking that, I went out into the hallway and opened the emergency exit door.
33. Remember. This is the story of children who cannot die, even when they die.
―――――――――――――――
Once upon a time, a brother and sister lived in a manor. The children died in the basement long ago. Then they came back to life...
―――――――――――――――
Clunk.
“...”
Floor 13.
I checked the nearby directory.
GaroMarket is a peer-to-peer marketplace platform...
“Mr. Kang Jun-gyeom, do you know what this company does? It looks like they sell supplements or something.”
“Ah, yes. They sell health supplements and things like that. It is a foreign company.”
Kang Jun-gyeom briefly explained the two companies.
Apparently, before being sent into the field, he had roughly looked into the facilities inside this building.
“Let’s start on the left.”
I pointed toward the hallway where GaroMarket was located and led the way.
Swish.
The moment I opened the door and stepped inside.
Ding!
“Hmm...?”
My phone turned on by itself, and the GaroMarket app, which was not even installed, launched.
―――――――――――――――
The path closest to you
A local market where you find value
GaroMarket
―――――――――――――――
The loading screen with its catchphrase disappeared, and the app’s main screen appeared.
“The UI is almost identical, but the tabs at the top are different...”
Kang Jun-gyeom pointed at the screen.
I began reading through the listings in the “Wanted” tab from the top...
“Oh, Seon Yu-han?”
In the end, I burst out laughing.
The very first line was absurd.
Footnotes:
“Neck Shell?” recreates a Korean mishearing between “Nail Shell” and “neck shell.”
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