WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 36: Please, No

──────

To give you the result first: my liver seems to have been spent on something worthwhile.

Whether that's fortunate or unfortunate, I honestly couldn't say.

If anything, wouldn't it be better if this was a floor we could clear without going into Neosoft? In the long run, I mean.

Even if I ended up dying here, at least I wouldn't have to play that game again.

But in that moment, my brain had just kind of short-circuited.

"Um, you said the right side was an empty unit, right?"

First I got up with some help and walked straight past the left-side corridor where Neosoft was, heading right. Long, steady strides.

Then I threw open the door with no nameplate on it.

"Oh, shi-"

Found it. Standing in the bare empty unit, facing the wall, was someone. Or something.

"Salutations."

Thunk.

"Ha......"

Not even remotely surprising: the door wouldn't close.

I looked through the half-open gap at it. Them. Whatever it was.

It slowly turned its body toward me.

At least it wasn't coming closer.

"Is, is that a person...? No, right?"

Chae Jae-ha had followed me and was now pressed against my back, whispering.

It did look human. The silhouette, at least.

"Probably not, I think......"

It wore a thick ashen coat, the kind you'd normally pull out a month or two later in the season, with a fedora pulled down low and a scarf wound so thick around it that there was no face to be seen.

Height somewhere between 160 and 170 centimeters. The frame was hidden under all that layering, and it even had gloves on.

Every inch of exposed surface covered. No way to guess age or gender.

If it wasn't human, the distinction was even more meaningless.

Nobody had any idea what was underneath those clothes.

"It's holding scissors."

"L-let's go....... Let's run, all of us, let's go......"

Yu Hyun-jae noted it quietly. Chae Jae-ha grabbed my jacket and pulled.

"Chae Jae-ha-ssi....... There are a few things you should know."

Three important points worth covering here.

First.

There are plenty of monsters and anomalies in the Labyrinth that can kill a person without bladed weapons, but that doesn't mean they won't use bladed weapons to kill a person.

Second.

The Labyrinth isn't like a game. Running into a monster or an anomaly doesn't automatically mean we're on the right path.

Third.

The problem is that it's also not impossible that it does mean we're on the right path. You don't know until you try.

"What about fourth? There's no fourth? You left out the part where we could die trying......"

That was too obvious for even Chae Jae-ha, who had no interest in the Labyrinth, to miss, which is exactly why I didn't include it as a fourth point.

"Oh- it, it, it moved!"

The moment the unknown entity slowly began raising its scissors-holding hand, Chae Jae-ha had already fled all the way to the Neosoft entrance.

Yu Hyun-jae and Hwang Ju-yeon stepped back with Jeong Ji-ho into the part of the corridor where the empty unit's interior wasn't visible.

"What are you doing, why aren't you coming...!"

While one particular man was apparently about to die of frustration, I fixed my gaze on the tip of that hand as the entity stood against the far wall.

"It seems to be pointing at me."

I stepped left and right a few paces in the half-open doorway, and it became even clearer.

It was pointing at me. Specifically.

Was ignoring it the right move, or would ignoring it immediately get me sent straight to the underworld?

No way to know.

That was exactly the problem with the Labyrinth. Well, the Labyrinth itself was the problem, but still.

"I'm going in."

"What? Going in where......"

There was another round of back and forth about whether going in was possible, advisable, or sane, whether all of this was somehow because of my liver, and so on, but in the end I went in.

"You're actually insane......"

With Chae Jae-ha's voice as background noise, I walked toward it. One step, two steps.

The closer I got, the lower the tip of the scissors pointed. Head, chest, stomach...... slowly dropping.

At first I thought it was pointing at my liver.

But its arm kept going down.

I followed the line of it and dropped my gaze to my waist.

Right hip? Femur? Aorta?

What was it after?

And then I was finally right in front of it, standing just at the brim of that hat.

I understood what those sharp scissors had been pointing at all along.

The right pocket of my trousers.

Swish......

The Happyland commemorative photo that was in there.

The red roller coaster with its paint peeling off. Six empty seats with no one sitting in them. Rust-bitten rails that smelled of iron. Shadows of a night sky bleeding through the gaps.

One corner of the moments when I had been happiest.

"You want this?"

It nodded its head. Or what I assumed was its head.

The height difference still made it impossible to see under the brim of the hat, and I had no desire to crouch down and peer inside.

No. I couldn't look inside.

Instinct screamed that at me.

"Here."

Snip, scrape.

It took the A4 sheet that had been folded into quarters, smoothed it flat, and started cutting.

Looking closely, I could see it was trimming the margins to match the shape of the photo.

[Seon Yu-han's One of the Happiest Moments]

Including that caption. Neatly.

Smooth scissorwork even through thick knitted gloves.

When it finished cutting, it stood still holding the photo for a moment, then suddenly stepped a few paces to the left, stretched its arm up, and pressed the photo flat against the wall.

I had no idea how it stuck without tape, or what was significant about that particular spot.

There seemed to be some system of its own that I wasn't privy to.

"......"

I half-expected something to happen, but nothing did.

It turned back toward me and tilted its hat with a look that seemed to say, oh, still here?

"You're telling me to go?"

It nodded, or did the equivalent of that, and gave a little wave, like goodbye.

I turned and slowly walked back out, still dazed.

The unhappy event of it suddenly hurling the scissors into the back of my skull did not occur.

What was that.

What was that, exactly.

"I would guess that handing over the photo was the condition."

Yu Hyun-jae, who had been waiting outside, settled my confusion.

If letting the entity take the commemorative photo from the Happyland game and put it on the wall was the condition for moving to the next floor, then all the terrible things that had happened during that game had not been for nothing.

"Ah. So now we can-"

"-Seon Yu-han-ssi. We need to sit down and rest a moment."

I'd been about to rush down to the floor below to check, but I was firmly sat down on the floor instead.

Now that I looked, the other three were already lined up with their backs against the corridor wall.

"It's not just your condition. We have a child with us."

At that I quietly leaned against the wall and accepted the bottled water and snacks being held out to me.

Apparently while I'd been in the empty unit offering up the photo, Yu Hyun-jae had slipped into Neosoft and raided the break room.

"Why did you go in again when you could have been trapped?"

"It worked out, didn't it, since I wasn't."

The secretarial staff must really have it rough.

I thought that, looking at that maddeningly calm face.

I turned my head and looked at the child sitting sandwiched between Chae Jae-ha and Hwang Ju-yeon.

"Ji-ho. Hey, how old are you again......"

There were too many things I hadn't thought to ask yet.

Ji-ho seemed to want to say something, waffling for a moment, then folded three fingers down.

Seven years old.

Starting elementary school next year.

"I see...... Words still aren't coming easily, are they. It's scary."

Jeong Ji-ho nodded.

"Hey, was the teacher who used to take care of Ji-ho......"

I only got that far and already understood.

Just from that expression.

Inside the partition wall near the daycare lockers, there had been someone "tidied away" inside a toy chest.

That person had been a daycare teacher, and Jeong Ji-ho had watched what happened to them.

Of course those words wouldn't come.

'So they don't cry and make noise, or whine and throw tantrums, or run around causing chaos, or twist and squirm their bodies around, or mumble so you can't understand a word they're saying.'

The goose doll's conditions for being 'a child who is loved.'

Too afraid to break those conditions.

Even after leaving the daycare behind.

Even watching all the adults around talking freely without dying for it.

The voice just wouldn't come the way Ji-ho wanted it to.

"Mm. Your mom works at this company, right? It was your mom? Ah, right, your mom. Do you remember what the magician teacher said earlier?"

Round eyes looked up at me.

"If we treat this place like a game, then we're one team, and the people who aren't here are busy clearing the game somewhere else."

It seemed Ji-ho vaguely remembered the instance dungeon explanation from earlier.

"So even if you can't find your mom in here, don't worry too much. You'll be able to see her when we get out."

An expression caught between belief and doubt.

Honestly, that was the right call.

Even if Jeong Ji-ho made it out alive, Ji-ho's mother might come out dead.

But as I kept rambling on, Ji-ho's expression brightened a little.

"See, look at us. We're still doing okay. Ji-ho's mom will be too."

Maybe not. Maybe she was already dead.

Would this child resent me for that later? Ask why I'd deceived them? Why I'd given false hope with a lie?

But I wanted Ji-ho to keep going. Even if it meant false hope. Even if it meant cruelty disguised as comfort.

I wanted Ji-ho to walk out of this Labyrinth. Alive.

"Hey, Ji-ho. Do you have a phone? I heard kids have them even from kindergarten these days."

Chae Jae-ha's out-of-nowhere question pulled Ji-ho's attention away, and next to me, Representative Yu Hyun-jae turned his head toward me.

"Seon Yu-han-ssi."

"Yes."

"What did you answer at the end?"

"Pardon?"

The representative looked at me with flickering eyes, asking a question with all the context stripped out.

"The last question in the interview."

"Ah."

The final question that Jaelae Group, including Uiwi Guild, was said to ask in every hiring interview without exception.

If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do?

Technically you weren't supposed to share interview questions, but this one was unusual enough that it had become an open secret online.

Career forums had started joking about it as the "regressor screening question."

"I believe sharing it is prohibited."

"Do you know who I am?"

Yeah, I did.

Yu Hyun-jae, co-representative of Uiwi Guild.

And there was no way a question like that could exist in interviews without the representative's approval.

"I can find out everything about Seon Yu-han-ssi's interview whenever I want. If I felt like it."

"You should save that for after we're out. What you need right now, Representative, is water and food."

"Going a day without eating is nothing."

The conversation had lurched in a strange direction.

Just eat what's in your hand, I thought.

"So. What did you answer at the end?"

Persistent.

"Why does it matter to you, Representative? Not just my answer specifically, I mean why ask something like that in an interview at all?"

"That's a little unfair, isn't it. Seon Yu-han-ssi hasn't answered yet. Why should I tell you that?"

The strange man's eyebrows dipped slightly.

"Ha...... You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"No. I'll just tell you. Life is unfair to begin with."

Was this person genuinely out of their mind?

A company representative really shouldn't be saying things like that.

Did they actually want to know what real unfairness looked like?

"Asking something like that in an interview is really just a personality assessment. If you make absolutely clear there's no penalty for honesty, you get more candid answers. Some people actually give quite interesting ones. But."

Yu Hyun-jae continued with a smile.

"Separate from all that, I believe it's possible for time to flow backwards in the Labyrinth."

"Time...... flowing backwards. You genuinely believe that."

"Yes."

I had been hoping, desperately, that the answer would be no.

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried