How to Die in the Office Labyrinth - Chapter 19

WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 19: The Representative in the Dark

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It was dark enough to blind you.

I tapped the flashlight button, and white light cut straight ahead.

This place was...

A place with hundreds of windows and doors.

Hundreds of windows and doors that must never be opened without permission.

"Basement five..."

A parking garage.

B5.

I stared blankly at the large characters painted on the wall.

If you can twist time, you can twist space. That much was obvious.

"Ha..."

So the floors had all gotten jumbled together. I'd half-suspected as much.

It made sense now. Those Jaelae Diary ads going on about floor-by-floor information weren't just filler.

I quickly scanned the floor directory at the front of my Jaelae Diary.

...

[3F | Main Auditorium, Conference Rooms]

[2F | Main Auditorium, Uri Saennal Daycare, Chaekbang Ollae, TARAE]

[1F | Lobby, Cafe Saero, Maze Garden]

...

The second and third floors were probably exceptions since they'd always been connected through the main auditorium. Which was why it made sense that I'd initially assumed the floor below 2F would be 1F.

Either way, the floors of this building were all scrambled now, with no way to tell what was where.

That was bad.

Still, if I was going to find something even slightly reassuring in all this...

I could get out by reaching the first floor.

Well, to be precise, there was now a strong chance the Labyrinth's exit was on the first floor.

My gut said it was.

Labyrinths are built to make people wander for a long, grueling time. If the exit were on some random floor instead of the first, people would already be lost for ages without any need to scramble the levels. Which meant the floors were probably mixed up precisely because the exit was on the first floor, to make the first floor itself hard to find.

Of course, there was a small chance the exit wasn't on the first floor even after all the scrambling, but...

Honestly, I didn't believe the Labyrinth would go that far.

Because the Labyrinth is kind.

Difficult, yes. But not so difficult you'd give up before you even began. It would plant in you a goal to push toward and a hope to hold onto. It would pull you from the front and push you from behind, keeping you alive just a little longer so you could wander further, wander more.

That was the Labyrinth's way.

Because the Labyrinth is ruthless.

Though that wasn't the only reason I thought so.

The Labyrinth respects doors.

"...Third-years wore lip-shaped masks. So there appear to be three separate masks, one for each year group. These masks don't attack teachers first, and they don't seem to enter the faculty room..."

At Seonghwa High School, for instance, the same kind of building-turned-Labyrinth as Jaelae Building, the basic masked monsters couldn't cross the threshold of the faculty room door.

A door is what separates one space from another.

Step through a door and you enter a completely different world from the one you left. At least, that's the understanding we all share, isn't it? The agreement we all live by?

Even if it's the same concrete floor throughout, cross this threshold and it's a hallway; cross that one and it's an office.

The Labyrinth absorbs that rule of doors and makes it its own.

So the door on the first floor, the one considered the building's entrance before Labyrinthification, had a strong chance of leading out of the Labyrinth entirely when crossed.

Of course, not every Labyrinth takes the form of an enclosed building like this one.

Some Labyrinths have exits with no door at all.

Maybe that was why.

Getting out never quite felt like getting out.

"..."

I shook my head to clear it.

I didn't move my feet yet. I scanned my surroundings carefully.

Underground, where not a single thread of natural light could reach. Even with the power out, it was a completely different atmosphere from the upper floors where sunlight still fell through glass windows. The cool, faintly damp air of a basement parking garage crept inside my clothes and sat there, oddly grating.

"Ngh, ugh..."

Then, from somewhere in the distance, a small sound.

Every muscle in my body locked up.

I barely managed to kill the flashlight and held my breath, listening.

Something dripping and spattering. A tight, shallow cough. A low moan that spilled out like weeping.

Oh.

I'd made sounds like that myself, back in the main auditorium.

"Excuse me, are you all right...?"

Someone was retching.

Or coughing up blood.

I raised my arm toward the sound and switched the flashlight back on, angling it to reach as far as possible.

"Ahem."

Far ahead, a silhouette straightened up from a hunched position, quickly composing itself.

"I'm fine."

The distance was considerable, but the voice came through clear and steady. A young man's voice, firm and precise.

At least it seemed to be plain vomiting. Nothing worse.

"Turn off the light."

The phone flashlight wasn't particularly strong, so I could only barely make out the shadowed contours of a face. But there are people in this world who make even a tiny flame look like a halo, and once I heard the voice, I had a decent guess as to who this was.

"Ah, yes."

So I turned off the flashlight without argument.

"Is having a light on dangerous?"

Besides, it never hurts to listen to someone who's been on this floor longer than you. Whether what they say is true or false, there's information to pull from it either way.

"Yes. In my estimation."

For instance, the fact that this pitch-black darkness was advantageous.

At least to him.

"Stay where you are. I'll come to you."

And the fact that he didn't want me coming his way.

If we'd both started walking we could've met in the middle. So what was over there?

Maybe he just didn't want me seeing the mess he'd made. That was possible.

But if it wasn't something that trivial...

"Understood."

I shifted slightly and felt along the nearby pillar and a parked car, mapping out an escape route with my hands in case I needed to move fast.

Click, click.

The low sound of dress shoes on concrete, getting closer.

Whether it was the dark so complete that closing your eyes made no difference, or just the circumstances, every step came with hesitation, slow and uneven.

Still, turning off the light hadn't been purely to his advantage, it seemed.

Click, click.

When the footsteps finally drew within two or three paces of me, I spoke first. Quick and clean, like drawing a line.

"Good to meet you, Representative."

The founder of Present Sports Agency. Co-representative of Uiwi Guild. Owner of Jaelae Building, which had become a Labyrinth overnight.

Yu Hyun-jae.

"My name is Seon Yu-han."

"Oh. Ah. Nice to meet you. Sharp eyes. You couldn't have seen much."

There was a faintly embarrassed note in his voice, though it was too dark to see what expression he wore.

"Are you by any chance an employee of ours? I'd feel bad if I didn't recognize you..."

"No, I'm not."

But somehow I could guess what expression Yu Hyun-jae was making, and that loosened something in my chest a little.

This wasn't a company with fewer than five employees. If a co-representative actually recognized a random staff member on sight, the employee would be the one having a heart attack.

There was no way he'd gotten a proper look at my face from that distance, and I wasn't even an employee.

"I came for an interview today. First time in this building."

"I see. I heard there was a meeting today to bring in a new Red Thread, though I'm not sure what time it was scheduled. Might that be you? I haven't had a chance to check the details."

"No. Nothing like that."

"Then you're from the support side? A Red Thread Liaison applicant?"

"The liaison... ah, the Red Thread Liaison Department. Yes. That's right."

I was quietly surprised. The fact that a co-representative would know the details of a schedule like that was remarkable, even for something as significant as a Red Thread recruitment meeting.

"You found that unexpected, didn't you."

"Well..."

Was I supposed to be honest about that, or deny it?

I had no idea what answer he wanted.

Actually, before any of that.

Did you really have to do professional social navigation even inside a Labyrinth?

With Yu Hyun-jae, who was my potential superior in a Schrodinger's-cat sort of way since the interview results were still unknown?

"I take a great interest in people. Especially in the people who are about to become mine."

Wait.

The moment I heard that, every useless thought got swept away at once.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

"Representative."

Hwang Ju-yeon and Jeong Ji-ho.

"Have you by any chance seen anyone else here?"

Where were those two who'd come down before me?

"Anyone else?"

"Yes. A kid and a woman. Two people. They should have come down here."

"Are they family?"

There was something mildly worried in his voice.

"No, nothing like that. I ran into them upstairs and... I lost them."

Better not to explain how I'd lost them.

"Do we need to catch them?"

What?

"No, that's not what I meant... I'm worried about them. Obviously. I came down and the people who were here before me aren't anywhere in sight."

"Ah, right. But there are only the two of us on this floor right now."

At least as far as humans go. Those words followed in a voice that turned faintly bleak.

I hadn't expected there to be nothing non-human in a Labyrinth. That part I didn't question.

"Is... that so."

What mattered was Hwang Ju-yeon and Jeong Ji-ho.

I couldn't tell whether he was lying about them or not. With no expressions or body language to read, just a voice in the dark, it was hard to know.

Turning on the flashlight carelessly could genuinely be dangerous.

Of course, that was all under the assumption that Yu Hyun-jae was telling the truth with no intention of misleading me.

"Ah, right. I imagine you already know this building has been Labyrinthified... You came from upstairs, so."

"Yes. Though the floors seem to be all mixed up. I came down from the second floor, opened what should've been the first-floor door, and ended up here..."

If Yu Hyun-jae was telling the truth, Hwang Ju-yeon and Jeong Ji-ho might have arrived on an entirely different floor. The scrambling of floors in this Labyrinth might not be fixed, but variable, shifting depending on timing or the person.

But if he was lying...

"Have you been here alone this whole time, Representative?"

Very carefully, I curled my hand into a fist and eased one foot slightly back, shifting my weight without making a sound.

"...In a manner of speaking."

Why does he talk like that. So deliberately vague. And that pause before it.

"In my case, someone who was with me right until the moment the building became a Labyrinth disappeared not long after it happened. Did that not happen to you?"

"Ah... Actually, Driver Kim, ah, my personal driver, was with me."

Yu Hyun-jae's voice broke off for a moment.

"Ah, this isn't the time for that."

Then his voice came back, measured and sober.

"Seon Yu-han-ssi. Listen carefully."

Close enough to touch if I just reached out. Impossibly close...

"Don't be startled."

The instant I realized that.

Every inch of my skin went cold.

This crazy bastard.

When the hell did he take off his shoes?

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