WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 2: The Clock is a Watch

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Thud!

I grabbed the door handle and threw my full weight forward, like a relay runner snatching the baton and sprinting.

Luckily, I managed to keep the door from swinging open.

Rattle, thud! Clatter, thud!

What the hell, the strength on this thing...

Definitely not a kid.

And definitely not an ordinary human, either.

"Right now. What time. What minute."

I couldn't reach into my pocket for my phone while I was holding the door shut.

Barely keeping the thing on the other side from shoving through, I strained to turn my head and scan the inside of the interview room.

Ah. There's a clock.

Thank god. On the wall behind where I'd been sitting during the interview, an analog clock hung.

Click, clatter.

"Ugh -- three o'clock! Three fifty-seven...? No, fifty-eight! Three fifty-eight!"

Through the sliver of gap where the door had cracked open, I could make out a dark shape. I shouted at it.

"Thanks."

With that one word, the handle stopped its frantic rattling, and the crushing weight on the other side of the door vanished like smoke.

Thud.

The door closed.

"Currently three fifty-eight. Communication error? Requires follow-up verification. Apologies. Rooting for your interview."

Screech, squeak, creak.

The hair-raising friction sounds slowly faded away.

"Ha..."

Only after they were completely gone could I finally catch my breath.

I'd kept my mouth shut because answering felt like a bad idea.

But it just wanted to know the time. Would've passed right by if I'd told it.

All that effort for nothing.

My legs gave out completely.

I sat down for a moment to think.

Anyway. Was it safe to go out now?

I couldn't just stay in here forever.

Should I head back down to the emergency stairwell?

I mentally retraced the route to the emergency stairs.

If that thing was still on the third floor, I'd need the fastest escape route possible. I couldn't afford to get turned around.

This time, I had to make sure I didn't trip.

I was carefully running through it all in my head when, all at once --

Bang.

The door swung open. No warning. No sound of approach.

Everything happened at once.

"Time is stagnant."

Darkness.

Outside the door, darkness pooled like a flood. Not the corridor with sunlight filtering through the windows even during a blackout. Complete, blinding darkness.

"Time flows."

Wind.

Wind poured through the doorway like a waterfall. Not the kind that brushes your hair and tickles your ears. The kind that makes your legs buckle.

"Usage period has ended. Time exists."

Fwooosh!

That darkness began drinking in the air like a vacuum cleaner.

And I was nothing but dust.

"Must not exist. Time does not exist."

Starting from my toes, squeezed and wrung out like the last of a flattened toothpaste tube, and just before everything finally burst at the crown of my head --

The last thing I saw was the paper posted under the nameplate on the interview room door, which read "Conference Room A."

[Uiwi Guild New Employee Recruitment
Interview Room
10:00 AM - 4:00 PM]

Damn it.

It was 4:01.

* * *

3. Please observe the interview room usage hours.

* * *

"If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Seon Yu-han-ssi?"

You're asking me.

I swallowed those words and pulled out my phone with a trembling hand.

My head was pounding and my whole body felt like it was crumbling apart, but that was an illusion.

[3:29 | 5G | 87%]

Still getting internet at this point?

Strange.

Either way, for now...

"I'd have to leave. Alive."

"Pardon?"

"I'm sorry. Excuse me."

I stood up and took the Interview Administrator by the arm.

"Oh."

A guileless smile spread across their otherwise blank-looking face.

"Is this a roleplay? It's been a while since an applicant answered by actually showing me."

I ignored that and led the Interview Administrator out of the room.

They came without any resistance.

Apparently taking this as my answer to "what would you do if it were possible to turn back time," they watched me with bright, curious eyes.

If I got the job, this person would be my boss.

"Is it normal for the corridor to be this empty?"

"It tends to be, yes. The third floor is just the auditorium and the conference rooms, and today there aren't any events besides the interviews."

Come to think of it, it had been quiet here even before my interview started.

"Ah. There."

I spotted a fire hydrant cabinet on the corridor wall near the restrooms.

In a few minutes the power would go out again, and the internet with it.

I reached for the red call button.

Setting off the fire alarm now would at least put everyone in the building on alert. Give them a chance to prepare.

With any luck, it might shave even one person off the elevator headcount.

"Seon Yu-han-ssi."

Tap.

Just as I moved to press the button, the Interview Administrator caught my arm.

Stronger than they looked.

The business smile stayed in place as they started talking.

"We promised there would be no interview penalties, but going this far is another matter open to debate. Answering with actions is certainly within the expected range, but having that action affect the entire company building is a bit of a problem. It's not just us in this building -- there are executives here too. You understand, right? And a false alarm on top of that... the firefighters would have to respond, and that's not good. Is it?"

Listening to it, I had to admit they had a point.

Not because of the executives' feelings or a false alarm charge.

The problem was more people coming into this building.

My best guess was that this place...

Maybe I hadn't actually died and come back to life, and all of this was just happening inside my head.

But it felt real to me. So I had no choice but to treat it as real and act accordingly.

In the end, there was only one kind of place where something this absurd could happen.

A Labyrinth.

"Interview Administrator-nim, this building. It's become a Labyrinth."

"Are you still doing the roleplay..."

The Interview Administrator stopped mid-sentence. Their lips pressed shut and their eyes narrowed.

"You're being serious. Not that a Labyrinth appeared, but that it's already 'become' one."

Sharp instincts made sense -- working with Red Threads, who tended to run on nerves and adrenaline, must have kept them on their toes. Though no matter how sharp those instincts, taking my word without questioning was a different matter. Maybe they were just naturally trusting.

"Yes. It's an invasive-type Labyrinth."

An ordinary Labyrinth exists in its own separate space-time, not on Earth. A "fissure" -- something like a crack in the universe -- appears suddenly somewhere on Earth and pulls nearby people in, acting as the gateway to the Labyrinth.

That kind is called a "contact-type Labyrinth" in neutral terms, and the vast majority of Labyrinths fall into that category.

There are exceptions, though. There always are.

In very rare cases, a specific space on Earth itself becomes a Labyrinth.

This is called "labyrinthification," and a space that has undergone it is known as an "invasive-type Labyrinth."

"Oh no. This is bad."

The Interview Administrator ran a hand through their hair and took a slow breath.

"It's too late to get out now, isn't it?"

"Yes. I think so."

The point when labyrinthification begins, as far as I could tell, was 3:29 -- right when this whole absurd loop had first started.

It was just turning 3:32 now.

In a few more minutes, the building would lose power and the elevators would fall.

"I'm sorry, Seon Yu-han-ssi. It sounds like I'm the one who wasted your time."

"Please don't."

I turned away. I didn't want to look at the Interview Administrator's face while they were apologizing to me.

"With an invasive type, it's right that the fire department doesn't come. My thinking was too narrow."

Invasive-type Labyrinths almost always end in the total annihilation of everyone inside.

That's the condition for the Labyrinth to be resolved.

All the humans who entered the Labyrinth die.

There are other conditions besides that, of course.

The trouble is that nobody knows what those other conditions are -- or, even if they did, meeting them is another story entirely.

Contact-type Labyrinths, even though they exist in a completely different world rather than on Earth, mostly follow a structure where a few limited types repeat with random variations. That means Red Threads can draw on years of accumulated knowledge to resolve them.

Invasive-type Labyrinths, on the other hand, occur at an extremely low frequency, and a specific space on Earth has simply become a Labyrinth out of nowhere.

In other words, a completely unprecedented Labyrinth environment has been created.

On top of that, nine times out of ten, the Labyrinth resolves naturally when every person inside dies without any survivor left to give testimony, and the labyrinthification of the space is lifted.

Data collection is nearly impossible.

So what happens is entirely unknown, and anything at all could happen. An uncharted space-time.

That is what an invasive-type Labyrinth is.

"Let's head down to the first floor for now. If there's anything that counts as an exit, it'll be in the lobby. No elevators."

The Interview Administrator nodded and took the lead toward the emergency exit.

"Interview Administrator-nim, what would be the fastest way to get word out to as many people as possible that this building has been labyrinthified?"

Invasive-type Labyrinths are even harder to expect outside rescue from, given their nature.

"We need to make sure no one wanders in by accident. The Red Threads won't be coming to resolve it, anyway."

No Red Thread would risk their life entering a Labyrinth with no idea how to get out.

And even if one wanted to, their contracted agent and their guild would stop them.

"Oh, right. I should report it to the Labyrinth Management Bureau right now, even just as a start. It's usually used for contact-type reports, but..."

Bang.

The moment we pushed open the emergency exit, every sound came echoing back at us.

"No, not the Labyrinth Management Bureau. They receive the report and go through a verification process before they start any containment. People outside won't know anything until then. Right now, as many people as possible need to know immediately."

I stepped down one stair at a time, carefully. Not missing my footing this time. Easy does it.

"In that case... Oh!"

The Interview Administrator's troubled expression lifted.

"There's a really easy and sure-fire wa--"

I stopped dead.

The Interview Administrator's voice bounced off the walls like an echo, then faded out like something from a dream.

Why.

Why did this person keep disappearing like that.

Where on earth were they going.

Bang!

A sound like the earth cracking made my whole body flinch.

Boom, crash, crack, bang!

Hearing that, I finally remembered the man who had ridden the elevator with me.

Crack, thud!

That man, unlike the Interview Administrator, hadn't seemed to disappear.

Which meant, with him...

There might have been a way to save him, somehow.

My breath came short. I gripped the railing.

What was wrong with me.

Stupid. Self-centered. Always realizing things too late.

Why was I still like this.

What was I, even.

Thwump.

"Whoa--?"

My foot suddenly dropped lower than expected.

That dizzy feeling when you think you've reached the last step and discover there's one more below it.

"Aaah!"

I fell straight down.

Into a hollow that was cold and deep as a well.

Down and down.

I reached up uselessly toward the top.

Toward the single, faint light bleeding through the pitch black.

The light was rectangular.

The landing I'd been standing on had crumbled away, leaving a gaping hole.

Well. It looked like my chance to save the man from the elevator was going to come back around sooner than expected.

Damn it.

The chapter title 시계는 와치 is a Korean pun: 시계 means "clock" or "watch," and 와치 is the English loanword "watch" written in Korean. The joke is that both words refer to the same object but one is native Korean and the other is a borrowed English word. The title plays on this bilingual tautology. An exact English equivalent is impossible since both words are already English, so the registered title "The Clock is a Watch" is used to reflect the deadpan humor of the wordplay.

Footnotes:

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