WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 40: Lost Boy the Last Boy

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[Incident 3 - Statement 4]

[Testimony c: "Hey, you know I really thought of you as my own little brother, right? Mom and Dad felt the same way. They said it was like getting another son, that it made them feel so much more at ease. So if someone had asked me how many people were in our family before things ended up like this, I'd have said exactly this many."]

Bang!

[xx | (verify)]

A red stamp of doubt burned into the white paper.

"Do not doubt."

One, three, six, ten, fifteen, twenty-one pairs of beautiful eyes looked at me, itching itching itching itching itching itching as they smiled.

Another breath of Judgment's Breath seeped into me.

"Gh, ugh...!"

Everything went red.

The whole world swayed like a red haze. I had seen a scene like this once, when I was very young. The world turns upside down. My parents are dead. I am bleeding too much.

Everything went white.

When I collapsed onto the cold floor, a white ceiling came into view. On some days it was my aunt instead of the ceiling. A woman who smiled sometimes, cried often, got angry frequently, and was pitiful every single day. I stared up into that blinding light.

Everything went black.

I closed my eyes for just a moment. Twenty-one faces on the dice. Or maybe I slept through a long, deep nap. After the time I woke up screaming in the middle of a nap at school, I stopped letting myself doze off. I opened my eyes.

At last. I could see nothing at all.

"Ha, ngh, ugh...!"

I kept laughing.

My eyes were gone. My lungs felt packed with blood instead of air. My gut felt like someone was jabbing it with a fire poker. Another death was creeping toward my fingertips.

And I kept laughing.

That they had died still thinking of me as family, right up to the very end.

That in that brief stretch of time, they had counted me as one of their own.

That people who could be that foolish no longer existed anywhere in this world.

That all of it was because of me.

I couldn't stand it. It was too absurd. Not even close.

"The incident has been closed."

Even Doi's strange, ageless voice wasn't really reaching me anymore.

Something warm was trickling from my ears, leaving them muffled and dull.

"Hh, ugh..."

With great effort I pushed myself up and sat back in my seat.

Thud, clatter!

The dice rolled across the hard table and slowly came to a stop.

Obviously my ruined eyes couldn't read the number on the top face.

"Can I check... with my hands."

"Permitted."

Ah. How tender, and how cruel.

Doi must have known it would come to this.

That I would willingly keep choosing to verify, over and over, chasing the truth, and end up losing my sight in the process.

Which meant that if Doi had forbidden touching the dice beforehand, my victory would already be secured at this point.

Obviously I would have kept choosing "adopt" the whole way through.

If I don't know the number showing on top, then no matter how much I want to verify a testimony, verifying it tells me nothing, since I have no number to connect it to anyway.

In other words, Doi wants me to know the number of the incident tied to this roll.

Only then would I want to find out whether the testimony connected to that number is true or false.

Only then would I go ahead and verify, even at the cost of my life.

"4...?"

I ran my fingers slowly, carefully over the surface of the dice and counted the pips.

"Oh. Five."

Top face, 5.

"An incident has occurred. Testimony begins."

The document in front of me probably read something like this.

[Incident 4 - Statement 5]

[Testimony d: ]

"Oh, I'm waiting for you on the floor that matches this number of pips."

A voice that reminded me a little of Doi, but far more masculine, with a smooth and unhurried way of speaking.

"I've prepared plenty of games to keep you entertained. The final game, though, does require a minimum number of players to enjoy together. It's less upsetting to me if a quarter of the friends playing my game die, rather than half."

That's a matter of ratios. In the end the absolute number of people dying is the same either way, isn't it?

"So if you want to play all the way to the end, you'll need to bring more friends. That way you lower the odds of the friends you care about, even a little, dying during the game. Of course you probably think it doesn't matter as long as only you make it out, but even so, you do think it would be nice if you could save someone."

A long testimony.

But no need to overthink it.

Truth is always truth, and a lie is always a lie.

Truth and falsehood cannot coexist within a single testimony.

If even one sentence in it is true, then everything else is true as well, and if even one is false, every other sentence is false too.

"Adopt."

And among those sentences, I already know at least one thing that is true.

Bang!

The sound of a stamp hitting the document.

[(Adopt) | xx]

That was probably what the adopt and verify columns on the document looked like right now.

"The incident has been closed."

Good.

I had been worried another testimony might come up that I absolutely had to verify.

Come to think of it, this was the first time I had adopted a testimony since the main game of Judgment's Breath began.

It would be nice if the two remaining incidents could go the same way.

Though wherever floor five actually is, it sounds like I'll have to play another life-or-death game there.

And I'll need to save more people than I have now.

"Gh, ugh..."

Even when I held still, a cough tore through me and blood came up with it.

I was so tired.

The whole world was dark.

Maybe I was just sleeping deeply with the help of some drug, and all of this was nothing but a terrible nightmare...

Crack!

"Ngh, ah...!"

Stay focused.

Close all six incidents, then six minutes.

Even in a body this wrecked, if I could hold on for just six minutes, I could get Jeong Ji-ho, that kid, out of the Labyrinth.

"Hurry... move on."

"A match against a spirited opponent is a pleasure."

Thud, clatter.

The small dice rolled and came to a stop.

I stretched my hand out again and ran my fingers over the dice, counting the pips slowly.

"2... no. 3."

Top face, 3.

"An incident has occurred. Testimony begins."

A soft rustle.

The sound of a new document being placed in front of me.

[Incident 5 - Statement 3]

[Testimony e: ]

That was probably what it said.

"This is the weight of death you have loaded onto your own name."

This time it was just Doi's voice.

Neutral and beautiful, the kind of voice that might bewitch you if you listened too long, the kind that gave you no image to fix in your mind from sound alone.

"You shouldn't have done it."

"Don't... lecture me."

"This is a testimony about an incident that befell you. You are trying to live while carrying at least this many lives on your name."

The voice carried the tone of someone looking at something deeply pitiable and foolish.

What line were the corners of Doi's eyes tracing right now?

"My cowardly and foolish adversary. Even without the twisting of time, you would have no right to sit at my table. There is not a single portion of your name that belongs to you. I know, as you do, that your life holds no value as a stake."

"...Adopt."

Bang!

The sound of a stamp pressing into the document.

What was that creature going on about with all that useless nonsense?

Had Doi given up on actively stopping me from adopting testimonies?

I only needed to close one more incident safely and hold on for six minutes, and I would win.

Did Doi think I would just fall apart and die on my own, since I had already swallowed two breaths?

"The incident has been closed. Only the sixth incident remains now."

Or... was there one last blow still coming?

"If you close the incident the same way you just did, you can send that small, young one out of this Labyrinth. You won't live long yourself, but six minutes is not so long a time. It won't be difficult."

Thud, rattle...

A creeping unease crawled up from the soles of my feet as the sound of rolling dice came to a stop.

I stretched out my hand and ran it slowly over the top face.

One pip sunk into the surface, two...

"Two."

Top face, 2.

"An incident has occurred. Testimony begins."

The rustle of a document marked "Incident 6 - Statement 2" appearing in front of me.

And then.

"The number of people I want desperately to kill but cannot kill."

My own voice, sounding somehow unfamiliar.

Two people.

Wasn't one enough? Or was two still not enough? Would two be satisfying?

I didn't know.

Whether that was true or not didn't matter.

I had to adopt, close the incident. No matter what.

"Ado--"

"--The number of people who did not die in the Dalumul Village Labyrinth ten years ago."

"...What?"

What does that mean.

"What, ugh, what does that mean...?"

I tried to scramble to my feet and my legs gave out completely.

I could barely feel pain anymore.

"Didn't, didn't die, that there were two of them, what does that mean. Say it again. Keep talking..., ugh, I said keep talking...!"

Only silence came back from wherever Doi was.

"Me. Other than me... someone who survived. Back then... I'm sure that day, the bodies..."

One body was missing.

His body was missing.

More precisely, right after he had ended up in a situation where death was certain, that person disappeared.

It was something I couldn't understand, but a Labyrinth was originally a place that couldn't be understood.

But if he hadn't died.

Of course I was no longer young enough to be fooled by the Labyrinth's wordplay.

Medically speaking, he was certainly dead.

But if in some sense he was still alive.

'Do you remember? Have you forgotten?'

The voice that had woken me in Happyland, at the moment I had been happiest, was maybe.

"Really. Is it really...? Is it true?"

"I said it before. What matters is what you choose to believe, and what you don't."

Doi was no longer imitating my voice.

"Ah, ah..."

Everything went quiet all at once, like the whole universe collapsing into a single point.

The temperature of the blood running down below my throat. The pain of the mucous membranes burning inside me. The ringing pounding through my skull.

All of it converged into one small point, like a pip on a die.

Inside that single-point world there was only me, and the truth I had to face. Nothing else.

There in the dark where I couldn't see an inch ahead of me, I was finally able to look squarely into every one of Doi's eyes.

"Verify."

I.

I... want to know the truth. I have to know.

Even if I stake that seven-year-old child's future on it.

No, if I could, even if I stake the futures of every single person here on it.

"Do not doubt."

And so I gave up the child's future in exchange for the truth.

"Ha."

And I willingly breathed in the last breath.

* * *

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

One thing was certain.

I would never be forgiven.

Footnotes:

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