WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 50: Avoid These Two!

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"......Both of them are gone."

Yu Hyun-jae lowered his eyes.

He didn't seem particularly bothered by the faint red mark on his right cheek where the child had hit him.

"Ji-ho."

He cupped Jeong Ji-ho's hands gently in both of his and held the boy's gaze.

"Because of my stubbornness...... I couldn't help either of them."

There was no way to know what had actually happened.

We hadn't been there, and Jeong Ji-ho wasn't talking.

Even if we'd all gone into that article together, there was still a chance they would have died.

Whether their deaths were truly our fault for not being there, I couldn't say.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Even so, Yu Hyun-jae apologized to the grieving child.

"Hh, ugh......"

The boy had been glaring at Yu Hyun-jae with blame in his eyes. Finally he squeezed them shut and broke down crying, lips pressed tight the whole time, trying to hold it in.

"Let's move over there."

After a long while, once Yu Hyun-jae had managed to calm Jeong Ji-ho down, he tilted his head toward the left.

A row of franchise restaurants lined the left side of the corridor. It looked like a section leased out to outside vendors.

"Still, the structure of floor five doesn't seem to have changed drastically."

Floor five.

Now that I thought about it, the fifth floor meant......

'Oh, I'll be waiting for you on the floor that matches this number of eyes.'

I thought back to the one and only gamble I'd ever played with Doi, in the merged Future Strategy Budget Planning Team space on the eleventh floor of the Strategic Planning Division. Judgment's Breath. The game of sorting true testimony from false. The bet where I had given up Jeong Ji-ho's chance to escape, all to learn the truth.

'I've prepared plenty of games to keep you entertained. Though the final game has a minimum number of players required to enjoy it together. It bothers me less when a quarter of the friends playing my games die than when half of them do.'

Among the testimonies I had judged to be true at the time, one had contained information about the fifth floor. The top face of the die had shown a five.

'So if you want to keep playing until the very end, you'll need to bring more friends. That way there's at least some chance that the friends you care about a little more won't die during the game. Of course you probably think it doesn't matter as long as you alone make it out alive, but even so, you still think it would be nice if you could save someone.'

The voice had been soft-spoken and closer to male than female, though I couldn't place whose it was.

"Representative, what's on the corridor across the way?"

"A lounge and an arcade."

An arcade? That's already a bad sign.

Floor five was where life-or-death games were played. And one of those games apparently required a minimum number of players. I didn't know the exact number, but I was sure it had to be more than five, the number of us who had been there at the time.

"Ha......"

Right now we had barely three people, let alone five.

My head was already starting to throb.

I had no idea how many of us would die on this floor, or how.

* * *

Ding.

The three of us stepped carefully into the convenience store.

Nobody was there, as expected.

"Good, they sell bandages too. I was thinking it was about time to change Seon Yu-han-ssi's dressing."

We swept up a generous haul: easy-to-eat energy bars, water, and a solid stock of medications and non-prescription supplies.

The register was working just fine despite the power being out, which made it obvious we'd be dead if we tried to walk off without paying.

On top of that, a certain bourgeois individual apparently never carried cash or a card, so I paid with mine instead.

"Your payment has been processed. Please remove your card."

I looked down at nine fingers, technically nine and a quarter, and did my best not to think about a certain blood-red scale.

No more fingers were getting taken here. I had no debts.

"Sit here, Seon Yu-han-ssi. Hold this. Ji-ho, would you mind looking over there for a moment?"

The boy's mood hadn't fully cleared yet. He chewed on an energy bar with a sulky expression that wasn't exactly warm. Still, he obediently turned himself around in his seat and covered his ears.

He hadn't forgotten how loudly I'd complained back at Neosoft.

"Ugh, mmh......"

"The bleeding seems to have stopped at least. Bear with it just a moment. This won't take long."

"Ah, ngh......!"

Why does disinfecting a wound have to hurt so much.

If anything, getting hacked apart felt like it hurt less than this.

"There. All wrapped. You did well."

I had almost punched Yu Hyun-jae myself. Genuinely impressive that I didn't.

I spat out the gauze I'd been biting down on and knocked back a painkiller.

"Hey, Ji-ho. You can draw it or write it out, whatever feels easier."

Once the pain had settled down a bit, I bought a notebook and handed it to Jeong Ji-ho, then asked him to tell us what had happened to Chae Jae-ha and Hwang Ju-yeon.

Better to have as much information as possible, just in case.

"Mm."

Scratch, scratch.

[2 guests in restaurant found uncle and teacher said "please leave no smoking" then the really dark face got angry]

Was that red thing kimchi stew? Pork stir-fry? Jjamppong?

The two of us studied the lopsided, free-spirited handwriting alongside the somewhat abstract drawings and worked at piecing it together.

There was a green leafy thing that looked like lettuce, so maybe pork stir-fry after all.

"So, following the article, they found a restaurant with two guests, and Chae Jae-ha and Hwang Ju-yeon told the restaurant owner no smoking was allowed. And then the owner got angry and attacked them? Is that what happened? The restaurant owner?"

The child shook their head, sniffling, and wrote one short word and added another drawing.

[the guests]

"The guests...... did that."

[uncle and teacher told me to go outside]

Jeong Ji-ho stopped there and couldn't write any more.

I stared quietly at the drawing of the guests in the notebook.

Two figures filled in solid black, with horns above their heads. The long-haired one held what looked like a trident fork; the short-haired one held what looked like a broadsword knife.

"......Sorry, Ji-ho. Just one more thing."

Something about that drawing gave me a strange feeling I couldn't shake.

"These two people. Did they look more like an older brother and sister, or more like a grown man and woman?"

The main figures in every article we had been through so far.

The girl B in the basement room.

The male subway attacker.

The pair of a female student and a male student.

The male and female guests at the restaurant.

Wasn't it all a little too similar?

Every single one of them utterly comfortable with killing?

[more like older brother and sister they were a little shorter than the teacher]

......Almost as if they were the same person.

"Representative. Those two we saw at the school."

"Yes."

"I think they might be the same beings as these two guests."

"Ah. Now that you mention it."

The co-representative of Uiwi Guild nodded.

"If we treat those two as the monsters responsible for the Labyrinth within the Singyae Daily articles, then thinking of them as the same entity actually makes more sense."

Like an urban legend where people who had lucid dreams all reported seeing the same person inside their dreams, even if that turned out to be false.

That unhinged girl and boy seemed to appear as hostile entities in every single article.

......If I ended up running into them again someday, I hoped this information would be useful.

I didn't want to run into them again, though.

* * *

16-1. If you have decided to edit the article, beware of the male and female teenagers. They do not want the article to be edited.

* * *

"I think we can get moving now."

After resting for a bit, we got back on our feet.

We came out into the corridor and walked past the remaining restaurants, but nothing in particular stood out.

"Shall we try the lounge first."

"Yes. Is the lounge something like a break room?"

"Similar. It's a space set up so employees can eat freely."

Normally, people would gather there to eat takeout from the restaurants next door, delivery food, or lunches brought from home, he said.

We turned a corner, and through wide floor-to-ceiling windows, the interior of the lounge came into view.

"......Someone's in there."

Something that looked like a person was standing on the other side of the glass.

The reason I was certain it wasn't a person: ordinary humans don't stand calmly in a Labyrinth with a quiet smile on their face, watching others.

They don't bow a leisurely, welcoming nod either.

"I'll go in first."

Swish.

I opened the door and stepped inside, and the strange not-quite-human figure came into clearer view.

"Nice to meet you, Seon Yu-han-nim."

The same soft, measured male voice Doi had been mimicking.

"I've been waiting for you."

Dark black hair pulled loosely back, strong broad features, dark skin.

The appearance was something like Latin American or Middle Eastern.

Not that judging that sort of thing made much sense for a being with horizontal rectangular pupils, but still.

Apart from the goat-like eyes, the rest was ordinary enough. More or less.

A loose button-down with frayed, worn-through cuffs, a white undershirt beneath it, jeans scuffed at the hem, sturdy sneakers.

The clothes were unremarkable, but the cane was unusual.

A wooden cane, longer than a person's leg, with the top bent into a hook.

"I am the host. Please call me 'Hosoo.'"

Hosoo.

At least it felt like a more considered name than "Doi."

At any rate, the host didn't seem to have any hostile intent, so I gestured for Yu Hyun-jae and Jeong Ji-ho, who had been waiting by the door, to come inside.

"Nice to meet you, Yu Hyun-jae-nim and Jeong Ji-ho-nim. I am the host. Please call me 'Hosoo.'"

"What do you host?"

"Games, of course."

"What kind of games."

The host Hosoo's strange horizontal pupils settled directly on me.

"I host all games that require a host."

"You don't mean we have to play every single one of them. What do we need to do to get out of here?"

"You aren't able to enjoy the final game yet. If you want to enjoy the final game, you'll need to bring more friends."

Ah. That final game.

It meant we had to play that game to leave this place.

"How many? What's the minimum?"

Hosoo smiled gently.

"You'd need at least seven to make it fun."

"Ha."

Yu Hyun-jae let out a short, hollow laugh.

"Is there anyone else on this floor besides us?"

"No. Right now, you three are it."

"Right now?"

"Yes."

That sounded like people had been here before and were now dead and gone.

"If we can't play the final game, we can't leave this floor?"

"Yes. That is the most important one, the final game."

Hosoo nodded toward Yu Hyun-jae.

The co-representative of Uiwi Guild rubbed a hand over his face and exhaled.

"That's a problem. No telling when anyone else will show up."

While they spoke, I was quietly counting in my head all the people I had met on each floor coming down through the building.

Floor three. Chae Jae-ha, 1 person.

Floor two. Hwang Ju-yeon and Jeong Ji-ho, 2 people.

Floor B5. Yu Hyun-jae, 1 person. The escort I never met alive, so excluded.

Floor fourteen. Lee Jin-su, 1 person.

Floor eleven. Nobody.

Floor fifteen. Lee Na-hyun, 1 person. Kim Young-ho I never met alive, so excluded.

Add me at the end, and that came to exactly seven.

In other words, I had to keep every single person I had ever encountered alive and bring them all here.

"Ha......"

"That said, if you give up already, I'll be very sad."

The host Hosoo drooped into a faint look of distress and went through each of us one by one with his gaze.

The tone was impossibly gentle, but it landed like something far worse than a threat.

"Please enjoy the other games I've prepared while you wait for your friends to arrive."

Hosoo stretched the hand not holding his cane toward the wall.

In the direction of the arcade.

"The more you win, the more good things will come your way."

"And if we lose?"

At that, the host spread his mouth wide open, teeth top and bottom fully visible, uvula and all, and shook his shoulders like he was watching some ridiculous clown act. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Not a sound came out.

I took a step back without thinking.

I could have sworn I heard laughter, but the host hadn't made so much as a breath of noise.

Then, as if nothing had happened, the host furrowed his brow and said exactly one thing.

"Sad things will come your way."

* * *

17. The minimum number of players required to enjoy the host's final game is 7. Until 7 players have gathered, you must enjoy the other games and win them.

Footnotes:

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