WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 44: through our veins

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"Hey, can you see this?"

I pointed to the mannequin sitting in the exact same position behind me and to my left.

The mannequin followed along and pointed to its own left side, mirroring me.

『Mmhm.』

"Hey. Look at me when you answer."

I grabbed B's shoulder. They were lying with their back to me.

The sensation was unpleasantly ordinary. Just a normal person's shoulder.

Even though what filled that body under the T-shirt was a writhing mass of strange letters.

"Can you see it, I asked."

『I can't see anything, you idiot. Are you hallucinating now too? Pick one thing to fall apart over, just one. It's only you and me here. If there's anyone else besides us...... you know. That's the scariest thing there is.』

"What about Father?"

The word slipped out before I could stop it.

Not Dad. Not Appa. Father.

Like a habit carved into the tip of my tongue.

『......It's been a while since you forgot about Father too.』

B sat up and straightened.

I looked toward where their eyes would be in that face, rippling with cracked, pitch-black letters.

『Was last night really that bad? Well, you do look absolutely awful.』

"Something happened last night."

『If you don't know, leave it that way.』

"Why. Tell me."

『Why should I? If you want fair, you go first. Tell me everything you've been keeping from me all this time. Then we're even.』

I shut my mouth.

There's no way to tell someone something you don't know yourself.

『See. You're not sharing either.』

"......So where is Father right now?"

B was quiet for a moment, watching me, then spoke.

『Sleeping. After another big episode.』

"In the master bedroom?"

『Yeah.』

"Do you know what time it is?"

I asked, calling the article to mind.

'According to the ▓▓ Police Station and ▓▓ Fire Department, among others, a fire broke out at approximately 3:10 a.m. at a detached house in ▓▓-gu, ▓▓-dong.

(excerpt)

Among the family, teenage children A and B were found in the living room with stab wounds to the neck.

C, the father, in his forties, was found in the master bedroom with his arms and legs bound and stab wounds covering his body.

(excerpt)

Police stated they believe the perpetrator threatened and killed C, then killed A and B as witnesses, before setting the fire to destroy evidence, and announced they intend to investigate with the possibility of a premeditated act motivated by personal enmity in mind.'

Going by the article, the sequence of events was this.

'Father C bound and killed, witnesses A and B killed, fire set (approximately 3:10 a.m.)'

Given that there were signs of torture, allowing for a comfortable margin of time, the perpetrator must have already been inside the house roughly thirty or forty minutes before the fire.

『Right now? Hmm...... Two-thirty? Something like that.』

"Ha."

Right now was exactly when the perpetrator would have broken in.

Should I prevent the family from dying? Or make sure it happens?

Which one does the Labyrinth want from me?

"Let's get out."

Either way, I needed to get out of this basement room first.

『Why.』

"Father is going to die."

『You mean, 'I'm going to kill Father,' don't you?』

I felt around for the door, relying on the moonlight coming through the small window.

Locked.

It looked like the kind that locks from the outside with a key.

The lights must have gone out too. Flipping the switch did nothing.

"Someone is going to kill Father. And kill us, too."

『Oh, really? God, I hope so.』

"I'm not joking."

『Do I sound like I'm joking?』

B's sentences bled into the shadows, making clear they had no desire to leave.

Oh. Could it be.

'Edit' and 'publish.'

I had pressed 'publish.' Because it needed to be 'published.'

But editing is the process of revising an article before it goes out, and if that applied here in this Labyrinth too.

Which meant skipping 'edit' and going straight to 'publish' meant.

I was supposed to let the family's deaths happen.

Exactly as that saved draft described.

So it could be published correctly.

A rule that was pure Labyrinth through and through.

How many people could walk straight toward their own death, knowing exactly what was coming?

'Among the family, teenage children A and B were found in the living room with stab wounds to the neck.'

Then I would get B out of here. No matter what.

Because we had to die by stabbing in the living room.

* * *

『So we're all going to die together today? Stabbed by some robber? And you read this in an article?』

B followed me around, watching me tear through the basement room to see if I could rig some kind of lockpick.

『I didn't know you were having such happy dreams. Should've left you sleeping.』

B's laughter, rendered in sentences, grazed past like hands closing around a throat.

『But seeing you all blank-eyed and scrambling like this, it kind of reminds me of old times. It's funny.』

No intention of believing me, and no will to cooperate.

『Still......』

Saying that, B walked over to the metal storage cabinet I'd been prying at and pulled out one of the drawers.

『Don't do it too often. Hold on a little longer.』

I thought it was some kind of magic trick.

B stood the drawer on its end, stepped down on the inside face with one foot, and wrenched the front panel off.

Clatter. A thin strip of metal fell loose.

『I can't do it alone.』

My sister picked up the strip and said it.

『Same as you.』

Was it a smile on that face, or something sadder?

Somehow I thought it was a shame I couldn't see the expression.

"But that strip. Was it already in the drawer?"

B bent the end of the metal strip with practiced ease, shaping a makeshift lockpick.

『No. Elementary school, I think. You slipped it in there back then.』

"I did?"

『You were still in your rebellious phase. Sneaking chopsticks and wedging them in that window frame up there.』

B glanced back toward the half-basement window as they eased the lockpick into the door handle.

『And then you got caught by that little rat. Spent a whole week getting loved on by Father. You don't even remember that? Anyway. Father tore this room apart looking and somehow missed it. After that, well.』

Click.

The basement room door swung open with a grating whine.

『We stopped thinking about getting out at all.』

Even though it could open just like that, and we could walk right through. My sister's murmur fell letter by letter into the dark.

......Wait.

The moment I stepped out of the basement room behind B.

A sudden wrongness made me turn my head slowly to the left.

This mannequin.

Wasn't it copying me a little faster than before?

『What are you doing. Seeing things again?』

Not my imagination.

The speed at which it mirrored me had picked up slightly.

At first it was obvious, unmistakably a beat behind my movements.

Now it was closer to half a beat, like a video running just out of sync.

What happens if it gets faster from here?

What if the mannequin starts moving in sync with me?

"......No. It's nothing."

I followed B up the stairs.

I tried to step quietly, but B walked comfortably, careless of the noise.

They didn't seem to believe anything I'd said about someone coming to kill us all.

『I don't really get the feeling anyone broke in.』

B's sentences rippled with barely suppressed laughter.

Like they wanted to tease me.

And sure enough, the first floor was wide, dark, and quiet.

An ordinary-looking detached house. The kind you'd see in a drama.

Hard to believe there was a basement like that underneath it.

Hard to believe there were young children kept inside it.

『You said you were going to the master bedroom, right? If you're worried, grab a kitchen knife or something.』

Without waiting for an answer, B walked into the kitchen and came back with an actual kitchen knife.

"I don't really need it. And I'm not going to the master bedroom."

My goal was for Father to die in the master bedroom exactly as the article described, and then for us to be killed in the living room.

『Not going? There's literally a robber out there who's going to kill Father and then come for us?』

They sounded genuinely entertained.

『We should go. To see who dares to kill our ▓▓▓. We'll need this for that. Probably.』

"Hmm."

Would it work if we ran into the perpetrator in the master bedroom and fled to the living room before getting caught?

"Alright."

『Okay. Then, let's.』

Shh. B pressed the kitchen knife to their lips and gestured.

I watched those feet move silently toward the second-floor staircase.

Steps so careful they allowed not even the faintest creak from the floorboards. Not just quiet, but practiced.

I could see the churning stream of broken letters that made up that body.

One step, then another.

With each step up the stairs, something like that same current stirred beneath my own skin, rippling and rising.

『Hold it.』

The sentence slipped out soundlessly, and the kitchen knife came into my hand and fit there just right.

Like it belonged to me.

B used the makeshift lockpick from the basement room to work open the master bedroom door.

The door swung inward.

On the wide bed, Father lay with his head of badly fractured sentences above the covers, sound asleep, scratching at his leg.

His arms and legs were nowhere near bound.

『Definitely.』

B nodded, standing at the foot of the bed.

『Anyone could kill him and he'd never know. Right?』

In that moment.

A cold truth ran through my whole body like electricity.

No one else was going to walk into this master bedroom.

No one except us.

Only us.

The three of us.

Were here.

The ones who would kill us were ourselves.

I gripped the kitchen knife handle tight.

I wasn't sure who the main perpetrator was.

But it seemed we had bound Father and killed him, then stabbed each other in the throat.

I stepped toward the bed from the doorway of the master bedroom, one slow step at a time.

Slowly.

And then B opened the nightstand drawer.

『The fishing line is probably here,』

...██. ██.

Father woke up.

"Aaaah!"

Father grabbed B by the hair. Dark hands seized an arm. Frail letters thrashed and flailed. The tangled sentences surged toward me.

███. ██ ████?

Thud, something cracked against my head.

Clatter, the knife hit the floor.

Slam, hands closed around my throat.

█! ███ ██.

Why won't Father let us go.

As if that were the only rule that mattered.

███.

"▓▓▓! Ugh, what are you doing......!"

My sister was in Father's grip.

And gripping Father in return.

"Is this why you came here? To get knocked around like this--"

--██. ███ ██ ███ ██████.

No. No. I don't want this. I don't want it.

I.

Came here to kill you.

Because today is the day we die.

█, ██!

I threw off something dark and filthy with everything I had.

Grabbed something sharp and pointed.

And swung.

██, █! █! █...... ██!

Once. Twice. Three times. Four times. Five times. Six times.......

Dark letters flew from the dark body. They soaked my palm like a curse.

Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.......

█, ██......!

I know that this is the moment I've been waiting for.

For a very long time.......

* * *

『See. I told you it was 'going to kill Father.'』

B's voice woke me.

When I lifted my head, I realized something was directly behind me.

『What's wrong. Did Father's ghost attach itself to your back?』

My white mannequin.

Close enough now that a slow turn of my head to the left wasn't enough to see it fully.

It was standing directly behind me.

And it was no longer copying me.

It was moving at exactly the same time as me.

Like a twin. Simultaneously.

I tried to feel relieved that nothing else had changed, but the relief lasted only a moment.

A creeping unease ran down through my veins.

If this didn't stop here.

If it started moving ahead of me, before I moved.

What would happen then?

Footnotes:

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