WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 38: Gambling Addiction Hotline: 1336

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What a scam.

Win the game and it'll let us out of here, it says.

"When you say 'here,' exactly where do you mean? Don't tell me just the eleventh floor. If that's all, winning barely breaks even."

At my question, Doi spun with a brisk, rhythmic whirl, and all twenty-one of its eyeballs scrunched at once, creasing with what looked like amusement.

It was laughing. Without a sound.

"You would make a fine gambler."

It thinks that's a compliment right now.

"Of course, I mean this very Jaelae Building. I intend to let you out of the Labyrinth in which you are all trapped."

"What?"

"What did you say... for real?"

"Really?"

The scarlet cube tilted to one side. Like a head cocking in curiosity.

"You doubt me?"

"Obviously. You're going to let us out of the Labyrinth just like that? That's too good to be true."

Like it couldn't possibly be real.

"What is too good to be true demands that everything be wagered on it, and because everything has been wagered, it becomes true."

A gravity settled into the blood-red dice's eyes and words.

"That is what gambling is."

Doi's pupils gathered toward me.

"And. When did I say I would let you out 'just like that'?"

A voice that pulled you in, edged with fierce, sharp anger.

"The only stake any of you can place against me is your life. I do not, ever, take a life lightly, and so I do not enter a match lightly."

Which meant we were expected to do the same.

Stake our lives.

Not even funny.

The moment we'd gotten trapped in the Labyrinth, we'd already been forced into a gamble with our lives on the line.

"Of course, if you are unwilling, you are not required to participate."

"Wait...?"

"We don't have to play?"

"If you don't play, can't you leave anyway?"

"Not at all."

Doi's pupils clicked left and right like a pendulum. The way a person shakes their head.

"You may open that door and walk out right now, if you wish."

No way. That can't be right.

It wouldn't let us go that easily.

"However, should you choose not to face me."

Right. In Korean you always have to wait for the end of the sentence.

"In exchange, I will take one instance of good fortune that you would have otherwise received."

"Taking our luck means..."

"It means a misfortune will occur, with certainty, that luck would have otherwise spared you from."

In a Labyrinth, even minor bad luck could mean death.

But... that was still a question of probability.

There was a chance it wouldn't necessarily lead to anything fatal.

"The game type."

Yu Hyun-jae raised his left hand calmly and spoke first.

"I should be the one to choose, shouldn't I."

That makes me nervous.

"Representative, perhaps it would be better to think this over a bit more."

"Why? Isn't it worth a shot? Besides, I happen to be very lucky."

That's exactly why it makes me nervous.

Yu Hyun-jae had a track record of saying exactly this kind of thing and then dying moments later, every bone in his body gone.

This person is not lucky at all.

"Still, given who we're up against, choosing the game type myself seems the only fair arrangement."

"I will grant you the right to choose. The specific rules, however, will be subject to some negotiation."

To summarize, it came down to this.

Each person could choose their own game type for a one-on-one match against Doi.

Lose and you die.

Win and you escape the Labyrinth.

Or, if you forfeit, you walk out of the office right now unharmed, but a stretch of bad luck will find you later, guaranteed.

"Could it be that the reason there's no one here is because they all escaped already...?"

I heard Chae Jae-ha whisper to Hwang Ju-yeon.

"It told us a moment ago that we were its first customers," she said.

"Oh. Right...? Oh, I see..."

He looked troubled.

Understandably so.

With no way to know how much further they'd have to go before escaping on their own, being told that one win meant immediate freedom was a lot to sit with.

"I'll do it. I will."

How could I pass this up.

"Wait, seriously? You're going for it? Just like that?"

"Isn't this a little fast...?"

"It's fine."

I let the startled looks slide off me and turned toward the dice.

"I'm in."

"Then enter."

Doi rolled its eyes toward me, then spun around sharply and drifted inside a separate private office.

"All right, I'll be off then. Ji-ho, too. Take care."

"No, this is, this is too sudden... You have to win... We'll meet again outside, okay."

"...Do well, Seon Yu-han-ssi. Either way, you've done a lot for me. Thank you."

"Win and come back. I'd love to see you again. It was a pleasure, Seon Yu-han-ssi."

Why are they doing this?

Honestly, getting a proper, sincere goodbye felt almost absurd.

These people would see me again when I died, after all.

"Ah."

Right. For them, this was the first time saying goodbye to me.

And of course it would be the last.

Something churned in my stomach.

That sudden, obvious realization hit me like a series of kicks, one after another.

Something boiled up from somewhere inside.

"Yes. I... thank you, too..."

I forced the words out.

Come to think of it, I'd never properly said goodbye to any of them either.

It had always been sudden.

My deaths, their deaths.

"I hope you all make it out."

Hoping this would be the last goodbye, I stepped into the gambling hall...

"You have no right to take part in my game."

"Wai-"

Looked like I was about to die before we even started.

"What, why? So I should just die?"

The gambling hall's owner let out a hollow laugh at the complaint.

"Die, you say. Can you even do that?"

Ah.

"You know. That I can't die."

"I do not 'know' it. I see it. What use is a gambler's eye that cannot read the worth of the stake on the table."

Doi's eyes stopped, boring into me like they could see straight through.

"A life is singular. In the world that is 'I,' the suffering of birth and death comes only once, always once. That is how the gamble called living holds together. You are breaking that rule. The most sacred rule of all."

I'd half-expected that some beings would be aware of my regression.

The Happyland commemorative photo I'd received this round had included my appearance from a previous loop, after all.

"If a life can be lived more than once, how can one be said to have wagered 'everything'? If there is always a place to retreat, how can one call it a cliff's edge?"

Now I understood.

"So that's why you don't like me."

I am a being incapable of placing my life on a single, unrepeatable wager.

As long as I die and come back.

"That is right. I dislike you. Your very existence is a desecration."

A true purist of the gambling world, apparently.

"So what you're saying is, even if I beat you, you won't let me escape, because I can't actually stake my life?"

"The weight does not balance. Death for you is as light as breath, while escape weighs on you like guilt."

The scales again.

I was thoroughly sick of scales.

"...Then what if I wager someone else's escape instead of my own?"

The three faces of the dice frozen in midair regarded me steadily.

The fact that it didn't immediately refuse was a good sign.

"Jeong Ji-ho. The kid outside. What if you let that kid escape when I win?"

"Negotiations begin."

Only then did Doi guide me to a white table with a single chair.

"Ah. Before that, I need to confirm something. If I die and come back after the kid escapes, what happens to the kid? Do they come back too?"

If so, this wager would be meaningless.

"No. They will not return."

I sat down and looked up at the dice. Doi drifted to the other side and came to a stop.

"My rules are not so light. This Labyrinth would not dare interfere with one who has stepped beyond its reach."

Rules are sacred.

Among all the countless things the beings of the Labyrinth whisper, if there is a single category worth believing without question, it is anything they say about rules.

Even if they hide things, they do not lie. Not about rules.

"Or, say the kid makes it out, but turns out to be dead on arrival?"

"My. rules. are. not. so. light."

"Okay. I'm just asking."

So then, even if I regressed, Jeong Ji-ho would remain alive outside this Labyrinth. A fixed point.

That was enough.

"More to the point, should you lose, you must first consider what that means. You would be taking the life of that quiet, young opponent."

"...Can't I just have myself die instead? Even if I can undo it, dying is still dying. I really, really hate dying."

It is not easy to read the expression of something that is nothing but flesh and eyeballs.

Doi closed its eyes for a long moment, rotating slowly, then opened them again.

"Accepted. Should you lose, only you will die."

"Permanently?"

"Is that possible?"

"It's not?"

"Certain rules take precedence over mine."

"...Okay. But are you really sure that's enough? I appreciate you agreeing, but you said you didn't like me because I couldn't put my life on the line for real."

"Do you truly not know? Or do you not wish to know?"

I stared up blankly, and all twenty-one eyes scrunched inward, laughing again from somewhere behind those irises.

"Your death is sufficient. You will come to understand."

* * *

"One thing must be made clear. The opportunity to face me with that singular life on the line is something you will only have once. I may not remember meeting you, but I have eyes that can read the worth of a life."

So Doi couldn't recognize me from a previous loop, but it could read the value of my life.

Which meant I couldn't trick Doi into playing again in another run.

"Also, the game you play will be the one I decide."

That didn't matter.

I'd planned on letting it choose from the start.

Given what I was up against, the odds would be roughly the same no matter the game.

"Now then. Let me explain the game you will be playing. The name of the game is 'Judgment's Breath.'"

The moment Doi finished speaking, two objects appeared on the table.

First, a pitch-black toxin mask of the kind that didn't cover the eyes.

The design looked like something out of a near-future science fiction film.

Second, a die.

A genuinely ordinary cubic die this time.

Not made of flesh like a certain someone. Instead of eyeballs, small round red dots marked all six faces. A very small, very light ivory die.

"Is that everything? A toxin mask and a die?"

"If life and death could not be decided by the absurd arrangement of dots on a cube, how could it be called gambling?"

By that logic, calling life itself a gamble made a strange sort of sense.

Life is deeply absurd.

At least mine is.

"Put it on."

I followed the instruction and put the toxin mask on.

It covered the lower half of my face, and I expected it to feel stifling.

It didn't, actually. Not heavy either.

"Judgment's Breath. The name is grand, but the game itself is simple: judge whether your opponent's statement is true or false. Truth and falsehood are..."

Like breath.

Things invisible to the eye.

Things with lethal poison hidden inside.

"So if you fail to judge correctly, you will eventually pay the appropriate price."

...This toxin mask.

I had a feeling it wasn't meant to block toxins. It was meant to release them. Toward me.

"The number is always read from the top face."

At that, the small die rolled on its own across the table.

"When the die is cast, one of six incidents occurs, each with a one-in-six chance. A one may appear."

The die stopped. A single red dot stared up at the ceiling from the top face.

Drr.

It rolled again.

"A two may appear."

This time, a pair of blood-red dots.

"A three."

Three dots at the points of a triangle.

"A four."

Two pairs of dots tilted at a slant.

"A five."

A red cross, waiting for the condemned.

"A six."

Holes that could never form the Star of David.

"When one of these six 'incidents' occurs, I, as the witness, will give testimony about the incident. Shall we try a demonstration?"

Clack, rattlerattle.

The sound of the die tumbling across the table, then silence.

Top face: six.

"An incident has occurred. Testimony begins."

At that moment, a white A4 sheet appeared in front of me.

[Incident Ⓝ - 6 Statement]

[Testimony x:　　　]

Then.

"Kyaaaaaah!"

Suddenly, a young woman's shrieking voice poured out from Doi.

"What I witnessed was the very first number that is complete!"

I flinched and looked over at Doi.

At the same time, text appeared on the statement.

[Testimony x: "Kyaaaaaah! What I witnessed was the very first number that is complete!"]

[Adopt｜Verify]

So that's how it works.

The number of the incident was six.

Calling six "the very first number that is complete" would be because six is the smallest perfect number.

In other words, this was a kind of riddle game.

A game about whether the number behind an incident matched the testimony describing it indirectly.

It could be endlessly simple or endlessly difficult, depending.

"One thing, though. You're not going to swap out the statement or the die midway through, are you? No tricks like that?"

"No gamble exists without tricks."

This thing was openly saying it would cheat...?

"However, tricks that undermine the fundamental basis of the game's rules are likewise not permitted."

"Ah."

"Therefore, the supreme rules of the Labyrinth will guarantee that what is true is always true, and what is false is always false."

So there would be no dirty tricks like changing the dots mid-roll or walking back its words. That was the reassurance.

In that case...

I might actually be able to win this.

A laugh slipped out before I could stop it.

Gambling. Maybe it really was worth trying.

Footnotes:

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