WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈
Chapter 28: The Hand Is Quicker Than the Eye
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"Seon Yu-han-ssi?"
"Where are you going all of a sudden! Hey, what is wrong with you!"
"You can't run! Your heart rate...!"
I had to get away. Somewhere, anywhere.
I had to escape. Somehow, anyhow.
"Ungrateful thing."
A voice I couldn't ignore.
I just... couldn't bring myself to... go against it.
"Filthy animal that doesn't know the hand that fed it."
"Please......"
I bit down on my lip and ran without looking back.
I knew my heart couldn't slow down any further. Not as long as that voice kept reaching me.
I knew it would rip my heart out. Unless I got off this floor.
So there were exactly two things I could do right now.
First, hope that returning the name "Bae Seo-woo" to the urn had been the condition for escaping Basement 5.
Second, assuming that hope had been fulfilled, get out of the parking garage fast, before One Hundred and Eight seconds were up.
An emergency exit, where was the emergency exit...
"Look at you, scrambling around like you want to live."
Found one.
Clunk!
I'd been sprinting hard enough to feel my lungs scraping the back of my throat. The moment I spotted the emergency exit sign, I threw myself in without a second thought and started down the stairs.
"Seon Yu-han-ssi, that emergency exit...!"
Wait.
Yu Hyun-jae's urgent shout came from behind me, and at the same moment, a question surfaced.
I was going down?
This was the bottom floor, wasn't it?
"There's a small emergency exit down here that I'd never noticed before. I opened it, and all that was there was a staircase going further down. This is definitely the lowest floor, basement 5. I did think the floors must have shifted somehow."
So this was the exact emergency exit Yu Hyun-jae had mentioned.
Damn it.
In the split second between planting one foot and reaching for the next step, my mind raced.
There was no time to stop and think. If I stood on a step for more than five seconds, I'd fall.
Should I turn around, go back up, and use the emergency exit I'd first come down from to reach the second floor?
Did I still have enough time before the One Hundred and Eight seconds ran out?
What if I ran into trouble on the way to that other exit?
......And if I had to hear that voice again.
Clunk.
Decision made.
I opened the emergency exit door with no floor number on it.
* * *
What I saw the moment I opened the door was an ordinary corporate hallway, early evening light slanting in through the glass windows.
I'd escaped.
Out of a parking garage where not a single ray of light had reached.
The first thing I checked was the floor number above the closed emergency exit door behind me.
14th floor.
Second floor, then Basement 5, then the 14th floor.
I already knew, but it was still a complete mess.
Before moving anywhere, I pulled the front page of the Jaelae Diary from my inside pocket and checked the information for this floor.
[14F | Neosoft]
A software company?
Either way, it looked like a floor leased by an outside company, the same way Hoewol Accounting Firm, where Chae Jae-ha worked, had a floor in Jaelae Building.
Wait.
I stopped while putting the diary away.
I'd only ever taken it out to check the floor directory on the front page, but now that I thought about it, if I wrote notes inside, would the contents still be there even after dying and coming back?
The diary itself had been on me every time I started over.
If the written contents carried over too...
Had I wasted all that time memorizing the license plate numbers in the parking garage for nothing?
......Hmm.
I made an effort to settle down and wrote out the actual floor order first.
[3, 2, B5, 14]
I thought it was a good thing I'd packed a ballpoint pen for today's interview, but then I thought that if I hadn't come for the interview in the first place, none of this would have happened.
I pushed down the nausea rising again and moved the pen.
[Bae Seo-woo]
I stared at the name for a while, and then a question hit me from behind, late.
So who exactly was the culprit?
Did it not matter who had killed Bae Seo-woo?
Was it really just a matter of finding the name of someone who died unjustly and honoring their memory, and that was enough to close it?
Usually you'd need to find the culprit before calling something solved, wouldn't you?
"......"
If, as someone once said, unsolved problems are out there waiting for someone to solve them.
Then maybe I'd be the one to solve this one. Right here, in this Labyrinth.
That strange premonition came over me, carrying with it an odd, lingering unease.
Clunk!
The emergency exit behind me swung open and the four of them tumbled out in a rush.
In order: Chae Jae-ha, Hwang Ju-yeon, Jeong Ji-ho, Yu Hyun-jae.
"Wha, where is this now? Huh? The 14th floor?"
"Wow, we actually got out of the parking garage. Thank goodness......"
"You're here too, Seon Yu-han-ssi. Good. I waited but you didn't come back, so I figured you must have ended up on a different floor."
"Right, yeah. Seon Yu-han-ssi. What was that, just taking off like that? I thought something had happened again and nearly had a heart attack."
"Ah, I'm sorry. I had a pretty disturbing hallucination."
I apologized right away and Chae Jae-ha's expression cleared like he'd already forgotten the whole thing.
That uncomplicated nature of his, I liked it.
"What, so you can actually get scared? I honestly thought you were some kind of cyborg. You said screaming wouldn't bring the monsters over and then just started yelling, bold as anything. Didn't even flinch."
"Anyway, Seon Yu-han-ssi."
"Yes."
I didn't bother answering Chae Jae-ha and looked at Yu Hyun-jae instead.
"What's that notebook?"
The owner of Jaelae Group tilted his chin toward the Jaelae Diary in my hand.
"Ah, I just picked it up here."
Lies are all about confidence.
"Looking at it, I thought it'd be useful to keep notes of what I know, so I was writing some things down. If you need it, I can tear out a few pages and share them."
"Before that, could I take a quick look."
Either way, this diary would return to me whenever I wanted it, wherever I was. Even if someone took it, I had nothing to worry about.
"Ah, yes. Of course."
I handed over the reddish-brown leather diary without any fuss.
Yu Hyun-jae turned it over carefully in every direction, like a jeweler appraising a gem, then flipped through it page by page with the deliberate attention of someone reading a rare manuscript.
"You said you just picked this up here."
"Yes. It was lying on the floor."
"Hm."
Had he seen through the lie?
My mind kicked back into gear fast.
Should I insist it wasn't a lie, and if so how to make that convincing, or should I explain why I'd lied, and if so whether to go with the truth or another lie, and if the truth, what would happen then...
All that effort was wasted, though. Yu Hyun-jae handed the Jaelae Diary back without a fuss.
"Keep this with you from now on, Seon Yu-han-ssi. If you want to give it to someone, transfer it in full. No tearing or separating pages."
"Oh, um...... Understood?"
I hadn't been particularly worried to begin with, but things were going even more smoothly than expected, which left me a little dazed.
"Do you know what this diary is, Seon Yu-han-ssi?"
Does this person know something?
"Hm, a Jaelae Group diary...... isn't it? That's what it looked like inside."
The co-representative of Uiwi Guild smiled quietly.
"I was asking whether you knew it was an artifact from the Labyrinth."
"An artifact...... is it? This thing? But how did you know? It looks completely ordinary from the outside."
Of course I already knew.
The Labyrinth had practically run its own advertisement for this thing in the main auditorium, calling it a limited special-sale item. Something that follows you even in death once you buy it, and clearly nothing but an artifact.
"Because there's nothing like this in our diary line. Not across any year we've produced."
Ah.
So that was how he'd caught it.
"If production is running a little ahead of schedule, the designs for next year might have been narrowed down to a few candidates by now. But I don't recall getting any reports on it, so I doubt samples would even be at the production stage yet."
In other words: since there was no possibility of a physical diary with this design existing, this must be an artifact.
"Ah......"
The more I saw of him. A remarkable person is a remarkable person.
Not everyone can pull together the information they already have and apply it quickly like that, in exactly the right place at the right time.
And by not carelessly damaging or taking an artifact of unknown properties, he minimized his own risk while naturally earning goodwill in the process.
"I wouldn't have caught that without you. I'll be careful with it."
"I trust you will."
Chae Jae-ha, Hwang Ju-yeon, and Jeong Ji-ho cast glances that suggested this might be their first time seeing a real artifact up close.
"Well then, shall we get moving. If there are people on this floor, they'll be this way."
Yu Hyun-jae pointed down the left corridor.
Glancing over, the 14th floor also appeared to be a square layout, the left half occupied by Neosoft's office space, the right half currently vacant.
[Neosoft]
We stopped in front of the door.
To the right of the company nameplate was a logo arranging the letters of "NEOSOFT" into a grid of squares, like a crossword puzzle.
"So what does this company do......"
Yu Hyun-jae stared hard through the frosted glass door at the unseen interior, then said one thing.
"A game company, from what I know."
Damn it.
A bad feeling was already settling in.
I looked around at the group and weighed whether it was fine to go in all together, or whether to split up.
Dying somewhere I could see.
Dying somewhere I couldn't.
"......Let's go in."
I had known for a long time that the first was better.
* * *
The inside of Neosoft was dark and quiet.
"Nobody h..., wait, is that someone over there?"
A small monitor glow seeped out from one corner of the unlit office.
Someone was there.
There was an atmosphere that was gloomy yet paradoxically peaceful, like someone who had stayed behind alone to finish work after everyone else had clocked out.
"Excuse me......"
We walked forward slowly, one careful step at a time, and the face hidden behind a partition came into view.
"Oh......"
A bald man in a hoodie soaked through with sweat was staring into the monitor, his face pale.
His neck was stretched so far forward it looked like he might get sucked in at any moment, into the sea or into the screen.
【A clerk wearing a raccoon mask is selling ice cream. It looks delicious. You cannot suppress your hunger.】
【▶ Eat it】
【▶ Resist】
Simple pixel art, text prompts, and choices.
The monitor showed nothing but what looked like a text-based game.
"Are you all right?"
"Excuse me, are you okay?"
"Uh...... huh......"
We called out a few more times before he pulled his neck in and turned to look.
"Do you happen to know that this place has been Labyrinthified?"
I gave a brief explanation of the route we'd taken and our current situation.
While I talked, the man blinked his bloodshot eyes a few times and began tapping away at his phone on the desk.
I followed the text appearing rapidly in his notes app.
[the company suddenly lost power and everyone disappeared except me and one coworker
i tried to leave the office but it seems like i cant leave unless i clear this game
oh the reason im not talking is because my tongue disappeared i chose the wrong option
the no hair thing is from that too anyway my coworker also died so i put them in the break room]
The tone was bizarrely light and calm given the content.
"Ha, so it really is locked...... I wasn't even hoping anymore......"
Chae Jae-ha had darted over to check the door and came back with a sigh.
He seemed to have been toughened somewhat by the experiences at Uri Saennal Daycare and the parking garage.
The bald man was about to type something more.
Ding!
A pop-up appeared on the game screen.
【Hello, binary! It looks like you're happily playing our Labyrinth Software title, "Lost In HAPPYLAND"! Shall we invite some new friends to share the fun?】
【▶ Invite】
"Happyland...? What the, hold on!"
The moment I'd read through that ominous message and reached out to grab him.
【Invitation complete!】
The man's hand had already clicked the mouse.
Footnotes:
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