WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 27: Scarfire

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Crackle, static......

Yu Hyun-jae and I went quiet and met each other's eyes, agreeing wordlessly that the radio sound wasn't a shared hallucination.

For a while the music came through laced with noise, like someone fumbling with a dial, and then at last the sound cleared a little.

"Good evening, listeners of Moonlit Night. This is your host, Jeong-di."

A long-running program, one that had been around as long as the station itself.

"......Today's letter. 'Hello, Jeong-di! Tomorrow I'm going on a trip with my girlfriend, just the two of us. I plan to forget all about grades and just have fun.' Oh, how exciting! 'We're going to go for a drive, hike a mountain, eat delicious food, and I'm going to show her my villa,' Oh! A villa, even? How impressive! Ahem, 'show her my villa. Do you happen to know any good spots near Youngun Mountain?' Ah, Youngun Mountain......"

Youngun Mountain?

Someone was going on a trip there?

"......Wishing you a wonderful journey, and now, a song from the lovely mixed duo who have been rising in popularity lately......"

The song came through in the low-fidelity quality typical of radio.

Rising in popularity, it said, but even being generous, this was a song from the early 2000s.

"Must be an old broadcast."

"Seems like it."

That made the letter make sense, at least.

"Does Youngun Mountain bring anything to mind for you, Seon Yu-han-ssi?"

I watched Yu Hyun-jae steadily.

That wasn't the expression of someone who didn't already know.

I had no idea why the question was even worth asking.

"It does."

Yu Hyun-jae's eyes widened, as if to say, go on.

"It was Labyrinthified. A few years back."

Five years ago, to be exact -- part of Youngun Mountain had become an invasive-type Labyrinth.

The area was sparsely traveled, but a small road had been included in the Labyrinthified zone, and every vehicle passing through that stretch vanished.

"My understanding is that a forest fire broke out a week after the Labyrinthification became public knowledge, and the Labyrinth disappeared with it."

Whether the fire started by accident, or whether the people trapped inside set it on purpose.

Either way, they were freed from the Labyrinth. Through death.

"You know it well. There is one more thing worth knowing, though."

I looked at them, waiting. Yu Hyun-jae glanced toward the silent radio and continued.

"Beyond the bodies of the people who'd been trapped in the Labyrinth, fragments of an unidentified skeleton were found. Someone who had been buried in that mountain for a very long time."

"Unidentified......? Ah, I remember."

Now that I thought about it, I'd been following the Youngun Mountain Labyrinth news closely at the time, and then the public's attention suddenly shifted to those bone fragments, which meant I'd never gotten a proper read on the Labyrinth itself.

"From what I heard, the damage was so severe that DNA extraction failed. Still, they managed to piece together what fragments remained, and based on the shape of them."

The co-representative of Uiwi Guild stroked his jaw like he was pulling up a memory, then frowned.

"The conclusion, if I recall, was that it was a female, somewhere around middle or high school age."

"Shi."

t......

Without any intention on my part, my mind had already started fitting pieces together.

Twenty-odd years ago. The early 2000s.

Some grown man had taken a middle-school or high-school-aged "girlfriend" on a trip near Youngun Mountain.

Something had happened out there. The girl must have been hit by a car going at full speed, her body broken entirely. Like the crash-test dummy in that delivery truck.

Then she was buried somewhere on the mountain.

About fifteen years after that, five years ago.

Part of Youngun Mountain became an invasive-type Labyrinth, was resolved through the annihilation of everyone inside, and during the recovery process, fragments of a young girl's bones were discovered.......

"Ha......"

"Even knowing this much, we still don't know that child's name. Perhaps the answer is here."

Yu Hyun-jae tilted the car catalog in hand and spread it open for me to read alongside him.

I started turning through it slowly, looking for anything that might stand out as a mark or a clue.

Flick, flick.

The thin pages turned one after another.

"Ah, this must be it. There's something tucked in like a bookmark."

Yu Hyun-jae stopped at a page and pointed to a deep-green SUV.

My eyes, though, had snagged on the slip of paper tucked between those pages.

"Seon Yu-han-ssi?"

I reached slowly toward the note.

Strangely, my fingertips looked like they were shaking.

"What is it, all of a sudden?"

"The drawing. There's a drawing......"

On the paper, drawn as if in red pen, was a picture of a hand.

And a set of weighing scales, tilted to one side.

Clatter.

The moment I dropped the note -- like I'd been burned --

Crackle, static......

The radio switched back on. Static-laced music drifted out, gradually sharpening.

The intro finally ended.

"I'm on my way to you"

The song began in earnest.

* * *

"You be there, my dear"

I know this song.

Know it so well, know it so painfully well, that it feels like blood is draining from every opening in my body -- no, no, no, no, that's wrong, that's not right, no matter how much bleeds out I can't die, not until equilibrium is reached.

"Seon Yu-han-ssi, are you seeing something strange right now?"

I don't see anything -- no, nothing's there, I paid it all back, all of it.

"Try squeezing your fist tight, then letting go. Breathe slowly. One, two......"

No, that's wrong, there are too many, and the hands. Do I have to cut them off?

"One hundred and five seconds."

Someone grabs my shoulders and shakes them hard enough to rattle bone.

"The average of one minute thirty seconds and two minutes is one hundred and five seconds."

What -- where did that come from?

"You were muttering 'somewhere between a minute thirty and two minutes' a little while ago. After Hwang Ju-yeon died. You were timing how long it took from the snake bite to the monster arriving, weren't you."

Right. Hwang Ju-yeon died. Because of me. Or was that not right? Was that the last run? The one before that?

"Seon Yu-han-ssi. Set aside death and everything else. Focus on the rules. If we understand the rules, we can get out of the Labyrinth. That's all you need to think about right now."

Rules, rules, rules. But if I don't know them, how do I get out?

"For those one hundred and five-odd seconds, Hwang Ju-yeon-ssi's heart rate almost never dropped below 110. Which means, put another way."

Put another way -- if a heart rate of roughly 110 or above is sustained for about 105 seconds, the monster comes.

"And that monster."

And that monster impersonates a Buddha, crudely. Tells you to free yourself from earthly desires.

What does 105 seconds mean? What does a heart rate of 110 mean?

Around 105 and 110. Somewhere between them.

105, 106, 107, 108......

Clank.

The Buddha statue entity's footsteps rang out, faithless and mournful, and as if reaching sudden enlightenment I felt its voice spread through my head.

'You cannot perceive for yourself that your mind is bound by the hundred and eight earthly desires -- so how shall you sever them, and how shall you break free of them to attain perfect awakening.'

One hundred and eight earthly desires.

"108."

"That does seem to be the answer. There's some margin of error, but it took about that long just now as well...... I want you to understand, though, that I had no intention of using you as an experiment. I didn't know things would go this way."

No need to make that face.

I don't think what you did was wrong.

"I'm sorry I couldn't be more helpful."

Crunch, grind.

The sound of the car frame buckling and the windows shattering.

* * *

10. Free yourself from the hundred and eight earthly desires. The World-Honored One is listening to your heart.

* * *

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

"......"

Well, it would have been nice to tell me the rule once you'd figured it out.

......Though of course there had been no certainty and no room to breathe, and knowing it ahead of time probably wouldn't have done much to calm my heart anyway.

"Seon Yu-han-ssi?"

"Interview Administrator-nim. This building has been Labyrinthified."

Let's please find a way out this time.

* * *

"Aaaaaaah!"

"Wha, what the -- you! Are you insane......?"

In the parking garage, I'd gone ahead and cut off any concern about screaming from the start.

Loud voices and a loud heart rate. One problem is better than two.

That said, I didn't mention anything about the specific figure of 108 seconds or 108 beats.

I hadn't measured it precisely myself, and I had no way to make anyone believe me.

"Wow, this dark green is actually pretty nice."

All five of us finally made it to the vehicle we'd seen in the car catalog.

Plate WU9356, deep-green SUV, zone D09.

Getting here had been its own special kind of ordeal.

When Hwang Ju-yeon caught a glimpse of her old piano teacher lurking under the black sedan at D11, plate GO1020, she screamed.

When Jeong Ji-ho spotted something inside the white delivery truck at E02, plate BAE9502 -- a vision of his mother, maybe -- he couldn't even cry properly, just hunched over and made choked little sounds.

And Chae Jae-ha, inside the red sports sedan at A11, plate SEO8102......

Never mind. The fact that he was still alive was miracle enough.

"All right, let's open it up and look."

While Chae Jae-ha, Yu Hyun-jae, and Hwang Ju-yeon checked the driver's seat, passenger seat, and back seat, I took Jeong Ji-ho's hand and headed for the trunk.

"Chae Jae-ha-ssi, pop the trunk on your end, please!"

"Oh, sure, hold on."

Click.

The trunk opened, and I stopped short.

"Seon Yu-han-ssi, anything in the trunk? Nothing much over here......!"

There was something.

Five white chrysanthemums in a vase.

......As it happened, there were exactly five of us.

I'd rather we were the ones offering the flowers. Not the other way around.

"Hey, no answer. What is it?"

"Ah."

My gaze drifted to the vase.

For a vase it was low and wide, a bit rough-looking, but the white porcelain was rimmed with gold and painted with graceful orchids in an old-fashioned style.

Oh, this is.

I flipped it around quickly to see the other side.

A Chinese character was engraved in the center.

[Deceased　　　]

As I thought.

It wasn't a vase.

"It's a funeral urn."

"What?"

"...A funeral urn?"

Everyone crowded around to look at the urn with the chrysanthemums tucked inside.

Empty except for the flowers.

The chrysanthemums smelled of incense.

"There's no name written on it. I think this is something we need to figure out."

"The letter we heard on the radio, and the skeletal remains found at the Youngun Mountain Labyrinth. Those would be our two clues."

"But how are we supposed to figure out the name of someone we don't even know from just that......?"

I had a surge of the same feeling myself, but.

"We probably can. The Labyrinth doesn't set problems that can't be solved......"

As long as you're alive, a Labyrinth can always be solved. In theory.

The trouble is dying in the middle of solving it.

A Labyrinth that's genuinely impossible even after dying and coming back?

That would most likely mean a clue the Labyrinth had provided was missed somewhere along the way.

I pulled out my phone and went through everything I'd been photographing and memorizing in this parking garage, each time through.

GO1020. Black sedan. D11.
BAE9502. White box truck. E02.
SEO8102. Red sports sedan. A11.
WU9356. Deep-green SUV. D09.

These were the only pieces of information I had from this parking garage, so the answer was likely in here somewhere.

[Deceased　　　]

And whatever name went into this urn, it was four syllables at most, in Korean.

So if I took the four license plates containing Korean syllables -- GO, BAE, SEO, WU -- and stripped away the incidental numbers.

Go, Bae, Seo, Wu.

"The late Bae Seo-woo......"

The name of the deceased.

[Deceased Bae Seo-woo]

The moment I said the name, three characters were neatly engraved into the urn, and --

"Oh, Bae Seo-woo...... Seon Yu-han-ssi! The flowers are smoking!"

"Oh, uh......?"

"Hey, put it down, quick! It's going to catch fire, it's on fire!"

Flames bloomed from the five chrysanthemums and consumed them in an instant, gone.

"......"

All that remained in the urn was the ash of the flowers, trailing an incense smell.

Like the remnants of cremated bone.

Staring down into it, a memory surfaced.

"What day?"

The moment that voice reached me -- that voice I missed with a ferocity that should have been unbearable --

"The day you dumped my ashes down a drain?"

My breath stopped entirely.

Footnotes:

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