WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 5: You Can't Stop the Camera

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"What the hell! What is this, damn it!"

"Kyaaaaa!"

"Get out! Through the back door, go!"

"Wha, what's..."

"Get up and run!"

Frantic shouts and shrieks, the thunder of feet across marble floors, the sharp crack of shattering glass, groans from someone who slipped in a pool of blood, sobbing at the sight of a classmate's half-gone face, the sounds of someone getting knocked around, going down, and heaving their guts out.

"Huu-ung, the door won't, hic, open! What do we do..."

"Everyone, move! Just break it!"

Students and teachers were packed in front of the school's main entrance like a street market crowd.

Bang! Crash!

"Why won't it..."

Even hurling a fire extinguisher with full force, it bounced back as though it had hit a steel door instead of glass.

"Aaargh, run! That thing's coming down!"

Rattle, crash!

Every student and teacher in the building panicked and scrambled into any room they could find.

"Hey, open the door! Let me in!"

Someone always gets left behind.

"Open the door! You're really not opening it? I saw all your faces. Go ahead and survive, great. I'll round every last one of you up and hand you straight to that mask freak."

The male student with roots badly in need of a touch-up hid in the central stairwell leading from the first floor down to the basement.

The unidentified mask came down to the first floor, looked around, then turned and walked off down the first-floor corridor without descending further to the basement where the student was hiding.

The student seized his chance and bolted up to the second floor.

Clunk.

He tried the first door he spotted, the faculty room, but it was locked.

"Son of a..."

He forced his voice down. He seemed to realize making more noise was a bad idea.

Just as he turned to look for somewhere else.

"W-who's there...?"

A small, timid girl's voice came from inside the faculty room.

"Who cares. Open the... door."

He caught himself and softened his tone at the last second.

There was some muffled murmuring from inside, and soon the door clicked open.

"You're a... person, right?"

"Are your eyes decorative?"

"Oh, no... I'm sorry..."

The short-haired girl looked up at him, nervous.

"I thought you were the mask at first, so I couldn't open it right away... I'm sorry..."

"Ugh, forget it."

He swept his eyes around the faculty room.

She wasn't alone.

A teacher who seemed unable to walk. A male student who might have been dead or unconscious. A long-haired girl hunched in a corner, crying.

With him, that made five.

The scene of them introducing themselves passed quickly.

The foul-mouthed male student was a third-year.

The short-haired girl who had opened the door was a first-year.

The teacher with a hastily improvised splint on a sprained ankle was the Korean language teacher.

The glasses-wearing male student who had been unconscious and had just come to was a second-year.

The haggard-looking girl with long straight hair was a third-year.

"You're saying there are three of those mask things?"

"Yes. The one I saw had only the left eye socket. But this second-year sunbae said the one they saw had only the right eye socket."

The mask the third-year male student had seen had nothing but the curve of a faint smile at the corners of its mouth.

"So each mask handles a different year?"

"Seems like it."

They talked for a long time, swinging between agitation and uneasy calm.

What about the other teachers, why had this happened, was this place seriously a Labyrinth now, an invasive-type Labyrinth was somewhere even Red Threads avoided so how could they possibly get out, how long did they have to stay, and why the hell did it have to be this school of all places?

"But nothing's happened for a while now. Do you think it's gone?"

"We should check."

"Check how? What if it's right there the moment we open the door?"

The third-year pushed back against the second-year.

The second-year flinched but didn't back down.

"We have to go out eventually. We don't know how long we'll be trapped, so we need to go to the cafeteria for water and food."

"...Sharp, aren't you? But here's the problem. Who opens the door first? You're ready to go yourself, right? That's why you brought it up?"

The glasses-wearing second-year looked at the third-year's face for a moment, then let out a quiet sigh.

"Yes, I'm planning to go--"

"--No, everyone. I'll do it."

The Korean language teacher, who had found painkillers in a colleague's drawer and taken them, stepped forward with a limp.

"Either way, those masks seem to go after the students before the teachers, right? Couldn't that be why they're not coming into the faculty room? Even though they were smashing through classroom doors."

"That's, true, but..."

"Then it makes sense for me to go."

The Korean language teacher finished making rough preparations and opened the faculty room door.

Rattle.

"Oh."

"Damn."

A white mask with a hollow black left eye socket was standing right outside the door.

The short-haired first-year squeezed her eyes shut.

"Hey. Open your eyes."

The third-year tapped the first-year's shoulder.

Thankfully, the Korean language teacher had not been torn apart.

They were simply standing there, fingertips trembling, staring the mask in the face.

"Guess it really doesn't touch teachers. Not even trying to force its way in."

"Ha, haha..."

The Korean language teacher let out a sound, eyes reddening, somewhere between a sigh of relief and a laugh.

"Then I'll go get what we need. Stay quiet. Don't fight."

Rattle, click.

The Korean language teacher slipped out carefully, making sure not to brush against the mask, and limped away from the faculty room.

"Three hours. We have to accept they're gone."

And never came back.

"Even with a hurt leg, three hours to go to the cafeteria and back doesn't make sense."

"Then does that mean the teacher... passed away..."

"We have to operate on that assumption."

I sensed, too, that the Korean language teacher was not going to reappear before this film ended.

Not alive, at any rate.

The Labyrinth is no forgiving place.

If there was a hostile entity assigned to students, it was only right to assume there was one assigned to teachers as well.

The Labyrinth is impartial. Unfair, but impartial.

If a rule does not apply to one person, a different rule simply applies to them instead.

But it was not the fault of those kids for not realizing that.

The Labyrinth, and an invasive-type Labyrinth in particular, is an unknown space and time.

On top of that, there was no way they could think clearly when the people closest to them were dying in horrific ways.

"Then let's go to the broadcasting room like we decided, sunbae-nim."

"O-okay."

"Don't be too scared. If something happens, just use me as bait and run. Getting sunbae-nim to the broadcasting room is what matters."

The glasses-wearing second-year and the long-haired third-year moved to the broadcasting room on the same floor.

Fortunately, nothing happened.

While the second-year kept watch by the door, the third-year worked the broadcast equipment. Whether from being in the broadcasting club or just natural ability, they handled the equipment with practiced hands even as those hands shook.

Beep.

Sound came from the speakers.

"This broadcast is a recording I made, now playing in front of the broadcasting room microphone. I will return to the second-floor faculty room the moment this broadcast begins..."

The two heard the first sentence air safely, exactly as stated, and ran straight back to the faculty room.

"...Third-years have the mouth-shaped mask. We have confirmed there are three masks in total, each assigned to a different year. These masks do not attack teachers first, and they do not appear to enter the faculty room..."

In the middle came an account of how the Korean language teacher had disappeared, and a request for anyone who knew what had happened to them.

"...We intend to work together to bring food from the cafeteria. Anyone still alive, please gather at the faculty room..."

I know how this film ends.

Those kids, everyone in that school, dies.

Watching this, the last living record of them, knowing that...

"Ugh..."

Surely I won't die over a dirty seat, right?

Then they should have let people use the bathroom during the film.

I pulled my gaze from the seat next to me, which had become somewhat damp and heavy.

"Everyone, a whole day passed and the school store actually restocked! We don't have to worry about food anymore!"

"Teacher, if you spot a student in a skirt, run or hide right away, okay? Remember? None of us are in skirts anymore."

"Those masks basically have set patrol routes, but their patterns shift sometimes depending on nearby reactions or changes in the environment."

The members of Seonghwa High, holding together, learned the Labyrinth's rules day by day through hard experience.

"No! Let go!"

"We have to go, unni. If we don't go now, you'll also..."

One by one, people dwindled.

As time passed, the light went out of the survivors' eyes.

"If you've got the nerve to slam a door in someone's face and abandon them, at least have the decency to actually survive. Useless to the very end."

Seonghwa High School's rooftop became both crematorium and graveyard.

"Kids. You all know our Seonghyeon, Kim Seonghyeon? Second-year class three, Kim Seonghyeon. My son. Seonghyeon, where, where is he?"

"Yerim! Where's my Yerim? Third-year class one, Lee Yerim! It's dad! Where's my daughter!"

Ah.

Come to think of it, it must have been around a month after Seonghwa High School became a Labyrinth.

Public interest in the tragedy at a small rural high school with fewer than two hundred students had been slowly dying down. I remember it caused an uproar when a handful of parents snuck inside by taking advantage of a gap in the loose perimeter around the Labyrinth.

"How did you all get in here? What are they saying outside? Did you come in on your own? What about everyone else? The Red Threads? Is there a rescue team or something?"

"Can't you tell from how they look? None of that is coming. They've given up. Though when have they ever sent people into an invasive-type Labyrinth."

Unlike contact-type Labyrinths, invasive-type Labyrinths are places the government strictly blocks entry to.

No matter how seasoned a Red Thread you are, someone who has resolved contact-type Labyrinths multiple times, they shut it down first and ask questions later.

In a situation with no understanding of how to respond, the fallout from letting citizens enter a space with a ninety-nine percent chance of death would be enormous.

To formally enter an invasive-type Labyrinth, you first had to undergo multiple rounds of psychological evaluation and counseling, then prepare and submit a mountain of complicated paperwork covering injury and death contingencies, and then go through another review.

Usually by the time you finished that drawn-out process, the invasive-type Labyrinth had already been resolved. By total annihilation.

Meaning it was a place that not only highly trained agents but even Red Threads, people who made their living resolving contact-type Labyrinths, would turn down. Civilians had no business going in.

"Hunh-huh, Seong-Seonghyeon... Oh no, my poor baby..."

But there is apparently no stopping parents.

That urge to do something reckless no matter what.

"Seonghyeon's mother, where are you... What is that! Ma'am! Come over here right now!"

"Oh, my darling... Where have you been... Mama's here. Let's go home now. I'll make japchae and braised ribs, the ones you love, okay? Come on, let's go..."

"Ma'am! That's not Kim Seonghyeon! You have to get a grip! This is insane. That thing doesn't even have a head!"

"Kim Seonghyeon is dead, ma'am! That thing is the Labyrinth trying to lure you to your death!"

A new hostile entity appeared in the Labyrinth, one that primarily targeted parents, and several more people were lost because of it.

"I can hear rain."

But humans adapt.

"Yeah. Let's hang an umbrella by each classroom later. What day was it today, anyway?"

Waking at a set time, gathering food along a set route, combing for clues that might resolve the Labyrinth, then sleeping again at a set time. A monotonous rhythm of days.

"Wednesday."

"Then we can't run on the stairs at lunch."

At some point, they stopped dying from unexpected attacks by the masks.

"Hey."

Still, more nameplates appeared on the roof.

"What else do we have to do to get out of here? What more are we even supposed to do? Maybe we really do all have to..."

"If that's all you've got to say, go shut your mouth and eat some bread. Your brain's misfiring from a carb deficiency."

"How am I supposed to eat bread with my mouth shut..."

Time passed like that.

The screen settles on the desk calendar in the faculty room.

December 31st has a circle drawn around it.

"You said we might be able to leave on the last day of school! You said we could all go home together! Aaaaah!"

That day, most of the few remaining kids fell apart.

"Please, please don't. Let's hold on just a little longer. Okay? There's the closing ceremony too. Okay? Please..."

"And if we still can't leave then? Then what? That's what scares me more. How much longer do we have to rot in this hellhole?"

The rooftop was where the kids who wanted to leave and couldn't eventually ended up.

Time passed again.

The third-year male student, whose hair had gone fully black because there was no longer any root to touch up, opened his locker one day and went completely still.

[Congratulations on your graduation, Yun Haejun!]

Inside the locker was a graduation card and a school letter with the ceremony schedule, a jet-black graduation gown and a square academic cap, and a bright, lavish bouquet of flowers.

That day was February 5th.

The day of Seonghwa High School's 26th graduation ceremony.

Footnotes:

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