WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 3: I Am Ground

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

"Interview Administrator-nim. This building has become a Labyrinth."

I didn't hesitate. I grabbed the Interview Administrator and pulled them to their feet.

"Wh, what, pardon?"

The Interview Administrator was dragged out with a bewildered look, like they couldn't figure out what expression to make, but their face hardened before long.

"You mean that sincerely."

A remarkably unsettling ability to take me at my word.

Maybe when you spend enough time managing Red Threads, you get good at reading someone's emotions and sincerity on the spot.

"Yes. And is there any way to spread the word right now, as fast and as wide as possible, that this building has become a Labyrinth, so that no one else comes in? Without going through the Labyrinth Management Bureau, I mean."

Last time, the Interview Administrator had been about to tell me that method before disappearing.

Fortunately, they didn't take long to think it over.

"I can ask my team's Red Threads to post about it on social media. My assigned agent alone has nine million followers."

Ah. So that was an option.

Very on-brand for a Red Thread liaison.

The head of Red Thread Liaison Department Team 4 fired off a concise group message from their smartwatch, then opened their mouth with the look of someone who'd made up their mind.

"Seon Yu-han-ssi."

A bit of a scatterbrained impression at first glance, but seeing this side of them, this wasn't someone who'd be easily pushed around.

"I'm going to the second floor. There's a daycare there. I won't force you to help, so please get out first."

Why was there always someone like this everywhere I went?

I couldn't stand people like this. I really couldn't.

"No. I'm heading to the elevators. The building's going to lose power soon, and anyone who can get out needs to get out before that happens."

"Understood."

The two of us had to split up here.

Pressing the elevator button on the third floor didn't require two people, and I couldn't abandon someone I might still be able to save just to follow the Interview Administrator.

Of course, even so, I couldn't save everyone.

I knew that well enough. The Interview Administrator probably did too.

A Labyrinth wasn't that kind of place.

"Stay safe, Seon Yu-han-ssi."

"You too, Interview Administrator-nim."

We each headed off quickly in our own directions, one toward the elevators and one toward the emergency stairwell.

Oh, right.

"Interview Administrator-nim!"

I spun around and called out to the back of the Interview Administrator's head as they grabbed the emergency exit handle.

"If anyone asks you what time it is, just answer them honestly! And watch your step going down the stairs!"

The Interview Administrator tilted their head, then waved to say they understood.

"Huh..."

I turned back and jogged to the elevator bay and pressed the button.

"All of them except one..."

As expected, all three of the other elevators, aside from the one I'd taken and fallen in, were up on the upper floors. They were physically too high up to stop midway, no matter how fast I ran up the stairs.

6... 5... 4... 3... Ding!

"The doors are opening."

That man was inside again.

Dark brown hair, looked to be in his mid-thirties, clean business casual, laptop bag in hand.

"Not getting in?"

He asked with a slightly blunt edge, then pressed the close button without waiting for an answer.

What a piece of work.

Clunk.

"Please step out. There's going to be a power outage soon."

I rushed into the elevator, wedged my leg in the door, and pulled the man out.

"What, what are you doing! Let go!"

The man shook his arm violently and threw me off. He nearly clocked me with the laptop bag in the process.

"Who the hell are you?"

"My name is Seon Yu-han."

"Not your name! Shouldn't you apologize first?"

The man seethed.

He moved toward me like he was trying to intimidate me, but he didn't seem like the type to throw a punch without thinking.

"Yes. I'm sorry. This building has become a Labyrinth and the power is about to go out. Please come with me to the stairs."

"What do you mean laby-- hah... forget it. My fault for running into a lunatic."

He got his apology, but it didn't seem to satisfy him.

The man scratched the back of his head and reached for the elevator button.

"Please trust me. This place is about to become danger--"

"--Hey, get your hand off me. I'll seriously call--"

His sharp words cut off unfinished.

Bang!

A thunderous crash shook through the building hard enough to feel it in your bones.

Boom, crack, crash, bang!

"Aaaah! Earthquake, it's an earthquake!"

Crack, thud!

The man grabbed his head and jumped back.

"Stay calm and come down the stairs with me. It's not an earthquake. An elevator just fell."

"What? Just now? For real?"

"Yes. You can see the power's out. Follow me."

"You've got to be kidding..."

Completely thrown, the man followed me in a daze.

"Wait, so I almost died?"

I died, so yes, you would have too.

I didn't say that. Instead, in the short stretch between here and the emergency exit, I explained again. This building had become an invasive-type Labyrinth.

"That doesn't make sense. I'm trapped in a Labyrinth? No. No way. There's no way that's real. The odds of an invasive-type are lower than getting struck by lightning!"

"A Labyrinth is a place where things that don't make sense happen. And someone does actually get struck by lightning every now and then."

Not just once, either.

"Stop talking nonsense. I don't buy it."

I understood why it was hard to believe.

I probably wanted to believe it even less than he did.

I swallowed a sigh, pushed open the emergency exit door, and stopped with just my right foot on the landing.

1... 2...

"Wh, what. Why are you just standing there."

"One moment. I need to check something."

I had a vague sense of what happened the first time, stumbling in a panic and tumbling down and breaking my neck. But I still needed to figure out why I'd been standing still and ended up falling the time after that.

And I could use the opportunity to shake this man's grip on reality a little.

3... 4... 5...

The moment a bone-deep, sickening sensation surged up my spine, like the ground had dropped out from under my foot, I lifted my right foot and stepped back.

"What the hell. What is this?"

The man standing behind me sucked in a sharp breath at the sight that had unfolded in front of us, or rather, vanished.

Both of us peered over the edge, just our heads poking out, staring down into a square hole with no visible bottom.

"Hmm..."

Come to think of it.

"Is there another emergency stairwell somewhere in this building?"

I should have gone all the way down and checked first.

* * *

1-1. Do not stand on the stairs for five seconds or more.

* * *

"Ha..."

Whether the reality of the Labyrinth was finally sinking in, the man let out a sigh deep enough to cave the floor in.

A bit late for that, though. The landing had already caved in.

"There's another emergency exit. Over on that side."

I followed the man to a nearby secondary emergency stairwell and started down.

"Watch your step. Don't trip."

"Rich coming from the guy who just collapsed the stairs. What exactly were you checking for anyway..."

His grumbling echoed around my ears in surround sound.

I didn't waste the energy and kept my mouth shut.

Second floor...

Passing the second-floor emergency exit door, I thought of the Interview Administrator.

Had they made it to the company daycare on the second floor all right?

Or had they vanished somewhere again?

If they vanished, could they still be saved?

Could someone who had vanished come back?

"Labyrinth or whatever, once we're out we're out."

Wham.

"We made it!"

The man threw open the first-floor emergency exit with a confident shout.

"Huh?"

I was starting to think I'd develop a conditioned aversion to that word before this was over.

Whether it came from me or from someone else.

Still, this time it was understandable.

"Didn't we just come out on the first floor?"

We had walked out onto the second floor.

The two of us stepped back inside and checked the floor number written on the wall.

"What. Why does it say second floor?"

It had definitely said first floor before we came in.

Damn.

I pushed down the heat rising inside me.

"As I mentioned... this is a Labyrinth."

Whether it was a contact-type that you entered through a Fissure or an invasive-type that seeped into the earth itself, there was a reason Labyrinths were called Labyrinths.

The Labyrinth of Greek myth was a prison. Built to contain the Minotaur.

"It seems we won't be getting out so easily."

A Labyrinth didn't let people it had swallowed just walk out.

"Shut it! Don't go tempting fate. Aren't some Labyrinths supposed to be easy?"

The man ground his teeth and plunged back through the emergency exit to head down further.

He was trying to go one floor lower.

It seemed pointless, but you never knew, so I followed after him.

Clunk.

Pointless, as expected.

"Ha, it's the second floor again!"

Not just the first floor, but even the basement-level door opened onto the second floor.

"It seems like we can only descend one floor at a time."

"Then what am I supposed to do! And you!"

The man had been groaning to himself, but he spun around and grabbed my shoulder.

"You've been completely calm this whole time. Are you a Red Thread? I've never seen a Red Thread from Uiwi who looked like you."

Calm, my foot.

I was barely holding back the urge to be sick.

"No, I'm not."

I hesitated to come out and say I had died and come back and known this building would become a Labyrinth.

Even I found it hard to believe, let alone anyone else.

And I had no idea how long this phenomenon would keep going.

Whether I could keep coming back endlessly, or whether there was a limit.

No way to know how many chances I had left.

Maybe this was the last one.

At the very least, I had to move as though it was.

"But I did save you just now, so I suppose there's not much difference either way."

The man, who had just barely avoided dying in the elevator, finally closed his mouth, just a little.

"Ahem. That, well, yeah, I owe you one. So, uh, what did you say your name was? I'm Chae Jae-ha, I work as an accountant at Hoewol up above here..."

Chae Jae-ha rummaged around in his jacket's inner pocket and pulled out a business card.

Trapped in a Labyrinth and still thinking to exchange cards. Impressive, honestly, in all kinds of ways.

I glanced carefully around us and gave the card a quick look.

[Hoewol Accounting Firm, Certified Public Accountant, Chae Jae-ha]

The address showed his office was on the sixteenth floor of this building.

Jaelae Building was the headquarters of Uiwi Guild, but several floors were leased out to other tenants. The sixteenth floor was apparently one of them.

"Ah, yes. Nice to meet you. I'm Seon Yu-han, and I don't have a card to give you. I'm a job-seeker who came to Uiwi for an interview today."

"Ha."

"Yes, I know my life is a mess. So let's think about what we're going to do from here, Chae Jae-ha-ssi."

I led Chae Jae-ha into the main auditorium.

The third floor was one thing, but the second floor also felt completely empty of people, which gave me a bad feeling. Standing still in the corridor made me uneasy.

I also needed somewhere quiet to talk.

The auditorium was chilly and dim the way only a big empty room can be, and it felt unsettling.

"What do you mean do. Is there even anything we can do?"

Chae Jae-ha snapped.

Honestly, this was a remarkably mature response, all things considered, for someone who had already almost died once and might die again soon.

"Invasive-types don't have Red Threads coming in either, right? Different from contact-types."

He was calling contact-type Labyrinths "competitive-type."

If contact-type was the neutral term, competitive-type was the more politically loaded one, value-laden and assertive.

I got a little more of a sense of who Chae Jae-ha was.

"That's true. There's no way to know what's going to happen inside. Still, we can make some guesses."

"Yeah? Like what?"

"If we can't skip from the third floor past the second to get to the first, it means there's some condition we have to meet on the second floor before we can go down to the first.

It's not just limited to this floor. At a larger scale, that's how a Labyrinth is structured.

Contact-type or invasive-type, it's the same.

Meet the condition, and the Labyrinth resolves.

A very simple rule."

"So what's the condition?"

Of course, the problem was not knowing what that condition was.

"That, I don't know either. Stay on the second floor for a set period of time, maybe. Enter and exit every room on the second floor. Find the other people on the second floor and travel together. Take down something on the second floor. It could be something completely absurd, too."

There were many paths.

And those trapped in a Labyrinth had to wander through a countless tangle of forks.

Choose wrong, and what waited at the end of the path was death, crouching and ready.

Thwack!

"Huh?"

The lights on the stage came on.

Footnotes:

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