WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 47: Old Boy

──────

"Ah, ugh..."

My head felt like it was splitting open.

Where was I... inside a car?

Why was I lying down.

"Ah. You came around fast. Thank goodness."

Right. This lunatic had hit me under the jaw.

"Wh, mmph..."

Thud.

Something rough and cottony was sitting in my mouth. I spat it out.

A faint metallic taste lingered on the tip of my tongue.

"Sorry. I had to knock you out in a hurry. Looks like you bit your tongue. I had a gauze pad in there."

"What are you, ugh..."

It felt like someone had frozen my skull and was shattering it with a hammer, and my stomach rolled so badly I could have thrown up any second.

Struggling through the god-awful concussion symptoms, I looked around.

I was lying in an ambulance. Arms and legs bound.

"I was yelling that someone had collapsed, begging for help, and people came running over."

Wouldn't it be nice if the world were only full of people like that. The faceless terrorist muttered, dripping with false warmth.

"Thanks to them, I had time to call the ambulance."

"...We're not heading to a hospital, I take it."

"Obviously not. Renting one of these only costs a few bucks. The world really is something, isn't it."

The terrorist sat back and kept talking, perfectly relaxed.

My head hurt too much and my body had nothing left. I had no energy to deal with them.

"By any chance, is your name Seon Yu-han? Probably not your real name, though."

"What...?"

How did they know my name.

"I was carrying you out when a colleague of yours came over from the next car looking for you. Asking where Seon Yu-han-ssi was. A little longer and I'd have been caught right there."

My head wasn't working.

How on earth had I ended up tangled in something this absurd.

My luck really was rotten.

"Ah, damn."

Was this my bad luck kicking in?

If I'd gotten a paper cut sooner and dodged it in time, maybe my companions would have shown up at just the right moment and the kidnapping never would have happened.

No, bad luck was one thing.

But getting kidnapped by a terrorist was something else entirely.

"Anyway, what's your exact organization? No communicator on you. Is there maybe something implanted somewhere that I missed? Like a secret agent in the movies?"

Ah.

Of course they couldn't be sane, but they really, truly weren't.

Going on about secret agents. The delusions ran deep.

Though from a terrorist's perspective, I supposed thinking that way about the people who'd known about the attack and tried to stop it wasn't completely without logic.

"We haven't been able to make inroads on that side yet. I was just thinking it would be nice if this chance let me figure out where to dig in."

"Is the evacuation... all done?"

I ignored the rambling.

"Should be. About five minutes have passed since we got out."

Then why was I still inside this article's world.

If all the subway passengers had evacuated and the mass casualties from the attack had been prevented, I'd have thought the "edit" was complete.

Was there some other condition I'd missed?

"You don't look relieved. You don't seem to know about our backup train. Is there something else you're worried about?"

"Backup train...?"

"Just in case, I rigged the ventilation system on that one too. Worked out fine. Our train stopped, so the one behind it stopped too. Spray it in the gap and it's over."

The figure glanced down at their wristwatch, letters broken black across the face.

"Takes effect within three minutes. So by now, probably..."

The man tilted his head lightly.

"Yeah."

The words came out flat and easy.

"They're all dead."

Thirteen years ago, when an inexplicable phenomenon appeared in the world and people named it the Labyrinth.

The first thing I felt was a kind of release.

Like the moment you finally find the answer to a problem that wouldn't yield.

Like finding a puzzle piece you'd given up for lost.

Like a word on the tip of your tongue finally surfacing.

The Labyrinth has no malice.

It traps people without malice. Kills people without malice.

"Why... why in the world?"

I know that a person can become a Labyrinth in their own right.

"Yeah. Why, I wonder."

They cage us for reasons we can never understand, and we wander through them forever without finding a way out, lost in▓

* * *

"Oh? You're back!"

"I guess the passengers all got out and it's resolved!"

"But, Seon Yu-han-ssi. Where were you? We looked everywhere."

"More importantly, the mannequins have all moved again, as expected."

"One moment."

I pushed through the group and checked the laptop.

[Failed]

"We... failed."

"What?"

"Why?"

[Unidentified toxic gas floods morning commuter subway... 'Mass asphyxiation disaster'
| 20▓▓.▓▓.▓▓. 15:01 saved
| Published 15 minutes ago: FAILED ('Kim Young-ho')
| Published 1 minute ago: FAILED ('Seon Yu-han, Yu Hyun-jae, Lee Na-hyun, Jeong Ji-ho, Chae Jae-ha, Hwang Ju-yeon')]

"I was, um, briefly kidnapped by the terrorist."

"What? What did you say?"

"What? Kidnapped?"

"What did the terrorist tell you?"

"It looks like there was a Plan B. They gassed the train right behind the one we were on."

Ah, damn it all.

The mannequins turned as one.

We all turned the same way.

"......"

Tap, tap, tap.

All I could hear were six puppet-people walking, unable even to open their mouths.

The only thing left I could do was close my eyes.

Look away from the sight of my companions forcing their own clothing down their throats.

* * *

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

* * *

【Don't worry! It's going to hurt. A minor curse will bring you misfortune: heart】

* * *

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

* * *

【Don't worry! It's going to hurt. A minor curse will bring you misfortune: hand】

* * *

The fingers available to cut had dropped from ten to nine, but this time I successfully cut my finger on paper before arriving at Singyae Daily.

[Drunk driver crashes into utility pole, causing damage... 2 students electrocuted, 'DUI penalties must be strengthened'
| 20▓▓.▓▓.▓▓. 20:45 saved
| Editing in progress ('Lee Na-hyun')]

Two knuckles of my left ring finger had been sliced off at an angle, so between wincing over the pain and dealing with first aid, Lee Na-hyun had already gone into the article and was gone.

That at least gave the others a chance to look through the Draft articles one by one.

"We need to pick one of these and either edit or publish it, right?"

"Yes. Editing probably means changing the content, and publishing probably means leaving it as is."

"But how exactly do we..."

Hwang Ju-yeon snapped her mouth shut. Her already narrow eyes grew narrower.

"This Kim Young-ho who failed to publish, and Lee Na-hyun who shows as editing. Neither of them is in this office. Could it be that they're not in some other Labyrinth, but rather..."

It was convenient when sharp people didn't need the Diary's help.

Thanks to that, I could lay out what I half-suspected about this floor without it feeling forced.

"But why are all these articles so grim."

[▓▓ Middle School entire student body and staff found dead en masse, police authorities launch major investigation]

[(Photo)
On the ▓▓th, an incident occurred at ▓▓ Middle School in Seoul in which the entire student body and staff were found dead.]

I glanced to my right.

"Ah. Here."

Yu Hyun-jae had been studying the exterior photo of the school attached to the article, and spoke.

"Looks like it might be my old school."

"What? Your old school, Representative?"

"Yes. Nothing like this ever happened there, of course."

"Then could it be... mi-, I mean, could this be something that happens someday...?"

Chae Jae-ha asked with visible unease, and Yu Hyun-jae's brow furrowed.

"I'd rather it weren't."

Yu Hyun-jae leaned in with the focus of someone trying to memorize every word.

Watching that, I had a feeling I knew what was coming.

"Ji-ho, should I read you the article."

Reading through it, I found there wasn't much information yet since the investigation hadn't properly started.

"Going by the condition of the bodies, most of them seem to have been poisoned... ingested something toxic, basically. Something wrong with the school lunch, apparently."

And if it was "most of them."

That meant not everyone.

"Excuse me."

Yu Hyun-jae looked up from the laptop screen and spoke.

"I'd like to edit this article. Would that be all right."

I'd seen it coming.

"I'm not forcing anyone. I can go in alone."

Sending Yu Hyun-jae into this article alone made me uneasy.

"I'll go with you. It's too dangerous alone. With two of us, stopping the students from eating the lunch might not be as hard."

"Hmm... I understand what the Representative wants, and I understand what Seon Yu-han-ssi is saying."

Hwang Ju-yeon spoke up.

"Still, wouldn't a smaller-scale incident be easier to edit, all things considered?"

"I, I think so too. It is life-or-death after all... and Seon Yu-han-ssi, maybe you shouldn't push yourself too hard either. Your hand is already like that..."

Chae Jae-ha backed her up, though with some hesitation.

Only Ji-ho, the child who said nothing, kept glancing back and forth between the two camps of adults.

"That's why I said I'm not forcing anyone. I'll edit this article myself if I have to go alone."

The co-representative of Uiwi Guild held a professional smile at the corner of his mouth.

The kind of stubbornness nobody could ever bend.

"Hwang Ju-yeon-ssi, Chae Jae-ha-ssi. The restaurant gas explosion article and the construction site fall article look like the smallest-scale ones."

I called the two of them over and pointed at the screen.

"I'll go in with the Representative to edit the middle school article. The two of you take Ji-ho out into the corridor and come back in after. You might get pulled in with us if you stay."

"Ha..."

The piano teacher let out a long sigh.

"Seon Yu-han-ssi, if you're just worried about the Representative, you could always let me go instead-"

"-No. What am I in any position to be worrying about anyone else. I want to fix this case myself too. I'll fix it and come back out, I promise."

Hwang Ju-yeon sighed so deeply she might have sunk through the office floor, then finally nodded.

"All right. Fine, go on."

"Then please all be careful, and if you come out before us, go straight downstairs. Don't wait."

So Hwang Ju-yeon, Chae Jae-ha, Jeong Ji-ho, and their mannequins filed out of Singyae Daily.

"Thank you for coming in with me."

Yu Hyun-jae moved the cursor toward the Edit button and said the words.

"Not at all. Two is better than one."

"I think so too."

Click.

Yu Hyun-jae tapped the touchpad, and the screen began to fill with broken, fractured characters.

"If it had been just me, I definitely couldn't have▓

* * *

Gray marble floors. Scuffed ivory walls. "2-1," "2-2," "2-3"... green plaques lined up on every door.

A school corridor, exactly as I remembered them.

I looked at my left hand first.

This wasn't my own body, so all five fingers were intact, and there was no heat or pain anywhere.

The moment I checked my wristwatch, fingers and everything else stopped mattering and I ran.

2:50.

Late enough that every student in the school could have gone through lunch twice over.

Clatter!

I sprinted to the nearest classroom and threw the door open.

"Ah..."

Black-haired heads. All of them.

Every student slumped forward over their desks.

Not sleeping. They weren't sleeping.

The teacher was sprawled across the platform at the front of the room. Pink foam at the corner of their mouth.

"Why..."

Of course I'd assumed I'd arrive before the poisoning.

Looking back, that was a staggeringly naive assumption.

The Labyrinth isn't that "kind."

Take the subway gas attack article, for instance. It turned out that stopping the attack on the first train just meant the second one got hit.

The intent to prevent an easy edit was obvious from the start.

So with most of them already poisoned, what I needed to do now was...

"Teach, teacher! What do we do, here too...!"

Thud!

Someone grabbed the open door and stumbled in.

A girl with her hair neatly tied back, wearing a uniform skirt.

[▓▓▓]

No face, and no name either, as expected.

Even her nameplate showed only broken characters.

"Teacher, everyone, everyone is...!"

The words trembled like something on the verge of tears.

"The lunch! It must have been the lunch... I ate bread from the school store today. I didn't like the menu... You didn't eat either, did you, Teacher! Right!"

Short sentences broke apart between the quick, gasping breaths of someone who'd been running.

"...Yeah."

"Teacher?"

And I.

Had not heard a single footstep in the corridor.

Footnotes:

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