How to Die in the Office Labyrinth - Chapter 18

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 18: Welcome to a Place Like This.

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Kill... I have to kill, right? This is wrong, I have to kill, kill, killing? If I don't kill...... should I kill? Do I have to kill? This is wrong, if I don't kill...... is it okay to try killing? Would it be okay not to kill, kill? This is wrong, I have to kill......

Right. Kill.

This thing.

"Seon Yu-han-ssi......? What's wrong?"

What I'm looking at right now.

"Please don't worry."

Kim Gilyeong.

"It'll be over soon."

Is not human.

* * *

["Children of Munlim Elementary, writing a new page of history--!"]

["You went to Sanglim Elementary, didn't you?"]

A different elementary school name could have been explained away as something that changed after a transfer.

[Kim Gilyeong was born on September 16th at 7:32 in the evening.]

[Kim Gilyeong stared blankly out the window. Pure white snow was drifting down like flower petals. As if celebrating her birthday.]

But how could snow be falling in September?

["Looks like you and me are the only ones in our class from that elementary. Let's eat lunch together later!"

Dark, warm skin. A mouth that split wide enough to show her uvula when she laughed. Footsteps that always seemed to bounce. Hong Dong-hee became Kim Gilyeong's favorite friend.]

['What is the name of the friend you were closest to in elementary school?'

Kim Gilyeong recalled the memory as clearly as if it were yesterday. A friend with a dimple that appeared now and then when she smiled, a face so fair it looked like she'd never seen a day of sunlight. Hong Dong-hee.]

The name that appeared as the friend she was closest to in elementary school was actually someone she'd grown close to in middle school. And their appearance was completely different.

['(excerpt) And so, after reading this book, I would crack open the wardrobe door just a little every night.'

《Alice's Adventures in Wonderland》 became Kim Gilyeong's favorite book.]

[Kim Gilyeong stopped in front of an empty spot on the shelf and slid in the C. S. Lewis novel. A librarian's privilege was to quietly take out and read, for herself alone, the books she'd loved most as a child but that the in-building library's patrons no longer had any interest in.]

And then there was that Alice's Adventures in Wonderland business.

So it really was wrong.

It wasn't a case of mixing up Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with The Chronicles of Narnia as a kid, or of a favorite book changing later in life.

The same book appeared as both, in different places.

On top of that, there were other details scattered throughout that didn't add up.

They were subtle enough to miss if you weren't reading carefully, and the placement was deliberate.

'I had a question while reading, about whether the book Kim Gilyeong loved most as a child was 《Alice's Adventures in Wonderland》 or 《The Chronicles of Narnia》--'

'--Seon Yu-han-ssi, that must be a spoiler. I'm not sure what to say. I think we don't need to talk about that part.'

Every one of those contradictions was evidence that the librarian was a monster. Of course the inconsistencies would be censored as spoilers.

'Who on earth is the crazy person dragging some hideous, worthless doll across the floor into my daycare?'

At some point, the goose teacher at the daycare had said that, standing over Kim Gilyeong's body.

'And with something this defective, no less?'

To a living, moving doll-monster, Kim Gilyeong was probably the defective one -- fine on the outside, but something cheap and random stuffed inside.

'Oh right. The Dalumul Labyrinth. No survivors there either, so no one knew what happened. I wonder if something like a body snatcher was there too...... Like those things at Seonghwa High that pretended to be students and attacked teachers......'

As Chae Jae-ha had said, both films showing in the main auditorium featured similar types of monsters.

Monsters that take the shape of a person, deceive people, and trap them inside the Labyrinth.

One of those monsters was here too.

Right in front of me.

The moment I realized it.

A humiliation settled over me, like someone had pulled every vein from my body and wound them into a skein, woven them on a loom into thick cloth, stuffed that cloth with all my organs like cotton, then threaded the leftover red ends of string through a needle and sewed, stitch by stitch, a doll that looked exactly like someone I could never meet again, and held it out proudly for me to see.

I wanted to die. If only I could.

But I couldn't.

So I had to kill.

* * *

This is taking longer than I expected.

That was the thought I had right before I blacked out.

"Ngh......"

The moment I sat up, the world spun.

The back of my head and my forehead both burned like I'd been scorched.

"Seon Yu-han looks down at the floor."

What?

Even through the confusion, my body obediently followed the library's directions.

"There was a body there."

Seeing the clear marks on the librarian's neck, memory crashed back into me all at once, like a flood reversing course. What I had done.

"Seon Yu-han examined the body of the librarian lying face-up toward the ceiling."

"Ugh, ngh......"

I barely forced down the nausea rising with it and took a slow breath.

The senses that had been sleeping beneath my awareness surfaced, and my whole body started shaking again.

I couldn't bring myself to keep my eyes open and look at it, so I squeezed them shut.

An insult and a mockery of everything living.

Even now, the urge to tear that thing apart and burn it was twitching beneath my skin.

I hated it.

Things that weren't human, wearing a human shell.

I was terrified. Deeply.

That disgusting fear came before any guilt over making a child see something they shouldn't have.

"Seon Yu-han, averting his eyes, spotted four books that had fallen to the floor and a small child's backpack left behind."

Hwang Ju-yeon must have been too thrown off to stop me right away.

And it seemed she'd decided that instead of restraining me, she'd buy even a few seconds to take the child and run.

Honestly, I couldn't blame her.

If a man you'd met today suddenly went out of his mind and killed a woman you'd also met today? While already trapped in an invasive-type Labyrinth?

Of course the smart move was to hit that man in the back of the head and run. The smarter move might have been to make sure he was definitely dead before leaving, but......

From my position as the one who survived because of it, I was glad she hadn't killed me.

I picked up the book I'd dropped.

[Kim Gilyeong]

A story written wrong.

Like a collage, pieces of different lives cut away and stitched together.

"Seon Yu-han has come to understand it at last. That the librarian was the monster of this Labyrinth. That he could not truly escape the library without killing the librarian. That the Labyrinth could not be resolved without killing the monster. That the story could not end without someone dying."

But I'd only caught it because of the loop, reading it over and over until it became familiar......

I thought back to the run where I'd first found Kim Gilyeong's body. The hesitation and panic that had marked the wounds.

Unless there was some third person I didn't know about, Hwang Ju-yeon was still the only one who could have killed the librarian.

Which meant Hwang Ju-yeon, with no memory of any prior run, had noticed the contradictions in the librarian's story from a single reading circle session and acted on them.

Hm.

I absolutely could not afford to make her an enemy.

I held my phone screen up like a rough mirror. My forehead had split open.

It wasn't that I'd been knocked unconscious from the blow to the back of my head -- I'd been hit from behind, pitched forward, and smashed my forehead hard enough to black out.

"Ah?"

The moment the dark screen I'd been using as a mirror lit up bright, I almost violated the no-"Huh" rule.

[4:14]

Something felt off, so I unlocked it and looked again, but the time was the same.

[4:14｜SOS｜86%]

The clock on the library wall showed the same thing.

4:14?

Had I gotten a bad concussion?

The reading circle had started at exactly 4 o'clock.

Only 14 minutes had passed?

And if I subtracted the few minutes I must have been unconscious......

Ten minutes.

The reading circle had ended in barely ten minutes.

I'd derailed it partway through, but considering how much we'd read by then.

At least thirty minutes should have gone by.

......Come to think of it, I hadn't thought to check the time even once since the reading circle started.

The thought just hadn't come to me. Not at all. Not even once.

Even though I should have been scrambling to escape the Labyrinth as fast as possible. I'd been sitting there, leisurely reading.

Quite literally, without realizing how the time was passing.

"Seon Yu-han grasps the power of the story."

Ha.

Warping time is nothing, apparently.

Well. Given that I'd been dying and coming back over and over.

At the end of my exhausted stare, Kim Gilyeong came back into view.

"And some stories can only reach a true ending when the main character dies. Isn't that right?"

Fractured memories like shards of broken glass carved through my head.

Bloodshot whites, no longer white. The confusion inside irises that had driven into me like a spike. A breathing pattern that connected and cut off like some unintelligible Morse code.

The choking, the retching, the strangled sounds......

Like.

Why.

Why......

"The bloodshot eyes, which had had no time to close, seemed almost to be looking at Seon Yu-han."

As if asking the reason.

As if unable to even guess why they had to die.

As if believing, to the very last breath, that they were truly human.

"Monster."

I ran.

"Is that not exactly the monster of a Labyrinth?"

To shake off that gaze, which clung and would not let go.

* * *

I headed straight for the emergency exit the moment I stepped out of Chaekbang Ollae.

There was no sign of anyone else in the second-floor corridor.

The main auditorium was in the middle of a screening, so the doors wouldn't open from inside or out -- Hwang Ju-yeon and Jeong Ji-ho, who had fled from me, wouldn't have been able to get in either.

The merch store -- whywouldIgothereanywayIdon'toweanyoneanymoreanI'mnotbuyinganythingsogoinginwouldbeabothertotheTARAEkeeper -- would have no one in it.

The daycare, they wouldn't have gone in, at least not with Jeong Ji-ho.

Hwang Ju-yeon and Jeong Ji-ho had gone downstairs. That was the only answer.

Killing the librarian really did seem to be the right move.

Clack.

Gripping the emergency exit handle, I turned back without thinking.

The elevator bay came into view.

I thought of a certain large, easily frightened accountant.

What floor he was on now, whether he was still alive.

He was the type who would have been trapped and killed in the elevator from the start if not for me. By the time he'd heard the alarm and gotten out on his own, he might have already used up his luck and be dead somewhere for some ridiculous reason.

He was a bit simple, but he wasn't a bad person.

Still. I couldn't die for someone whose location, let alone survival, I couldn't confirm.

......Right. That's what a Labyrinth is. That's what I am.

There was no going back now.

Click.

The alarm had sounded, and the door opened.

* * *

"Ha."

The moment I pushed open the first-floor door, I breathed in without meaning to.

That wretched second-floor corridor was nowhere to be seen.

I had finally escaped the second floor.

"Ha ha."