WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 64: Someone Poisoned My Tea

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"A man opened a refrigerator door and then closed it again. A few minutes later, he was dead. What happened?"

I had been overcomplicating it.

It was a ridiculously easy problem.

"Could it be......"

Lee Na-hyun's mouth opened slowly.

"Is the man inside the refrigerator?"

Hosoo's lips curved into another arc.

A smile so generous it was almost unsettling.

"Yes."

The man had climbed inside the refrigerator, shut the door, and suffocated.

"Haaa...... Idiot idiot idiot idiot...... Such an obvious trick......"

Lee Na-hyun groaned and knocked her own forehead with her knuckles.

"Ugh...... But if it wasn't even his house, then, hmm......"

Hosoo had said the man had not died in his own home.

Which meant he had climbed into someone else's refrigerator and died there.

You could imagine any number of scenarios, but given that this game mainly drew on crime-related incidents...

"Was the man kidnapped, or being chased by someone?"

"Yes."

"Right answer......!"

With three questions still remaining, Lee Na-hyun called it.

"Yes, Lee Na-hyun-nim. Please give your answer."

"The man was kidnapped or being chased by someone, and...... he felt like he couldn't escape anymore? So he climbed inside the refrigerator and ended his own life!"

The host's head tilted slightly.

Those rectangular black pupils stayed perfectly level with the floor.

"There are a few gaps, but I'll count it as correct. Lee Na-hyun-nim has solved the first incident."

"Yes! Thank you! You're seriously so flexible. So what was the real answer?"

Gone was the person tearing her hair out. She bounced back immediately and flipped the card over.

"Huh? Oh, he was already inside from the start. He opened the door and came out, then saw there were more refrigerators...... Ugh. Is this something that actually happened? Not in this country, right? This was ages ago, right?"

"......"

Hosoo closed his mouth and smiled faintly.

"Second. I won't answer questions that are unnecessary and unrelated to solving the problem. Staying on topic is an unchanging virtue. I know the truth, but I cannot tell you."

Sneaky.

"Lee Na-hyun-nim. Would you like to continue and solve the next incident? Or would you prefer to stop enjoying True Stories here?"

"How big a Fragment of Life can I get from solving just one?"

"I cannot tell you until the game is over."

"That's so unfair."

Lee Na-hyun stuck out her lower lip and exhaled heavily, then shook her head.

"Whatever. Might as well go for it."

I had thought she was the cautious type.

At the Singyae Daily she used to spend close to an hour alone agonizing before publishing an article.

But when it came down to it, she came through. Maybe she had some confidence going now.

She clearly had experience with this kind of game, and she had just gotten one right. That was reason enough.

If I were in her position, I think I would have stopped here.

"Good thinking."

If something in a Labyrinth seems easy to solve, you should be suspicious.

The next problem would probably be a completely different difficulty level, or the reward from this game was small enough to balance things out from the start.

Either way, I still had no intention of stopping Lee Na-hyun at this point.

I did not know whether the rules allowed a spectator to interfere with that decision, and for my part, more information was always better.

"Now, the second incident!"

Even if she died, it would be fine.

As long as she did not die somewhere I could not see.

Knowing why she died would make sure it never happened again.

[Problem: A woman drank the same tea every single day. One day she drank a different tea for the first time and then killed herself. Why? (Questions remaining: 3)]

The card showed a teacup filled with red tea and a woman hanging from a rope tied in a bowline knot around her neck.

No background, just the teacup and the woman drawn separately, so the image alone made it hard to see any connection.

"Huh? Why are the questions...... oh no."

[(Questions remaining: 3)]

So the questions carried over. They did not reset with each new incident.

Well, it made sense. The system rewarded more correct answers with a larger Fragment of Life, so there was no way it would give unlimited chances.

Everyone stared at Lee Na-hyun's pale face, her reddened eyes, her tightly pressed lips.

"Lee Na-hyun-nim. Ask your question."

When the silence stretched on, the host warned her in a mild tone.

The game had to continue.

"Um, uh...... uh, uh...... S, so, was there poison in the tea the woman drank every day, or in the different tea she tried for the first time?"

Lee Na-hyun somehow managed to get a question out.

It was probably the result of desperate thought, trying to crack the incident in just three questions.

"No."

That meant the woman had been drinking ordinary, unpoisoned tea every day, and the tea she drank on the day she died was also free of poison.

"Ah...... Then...... did the woman already know the tea had changed, before she drank it?"

Hosoo smiled.

"No."

The woman had not known the tea was different until she actually drank it.

That meant the very fact of switching to a different tea, after drinking the same one every single day, was directly connected to her death.

One question remaining.

Lee Na-hyun stopped even pulling at her hair.

"Lee Na-hyun-nim. Ask your question."

"...... Was the tea the woman drank every day connected to someone close to her?"

The last question.

It laid out the direction of Lee Na-hyun's reasoning.

If the tea the woman drank every day was tied to someone close to her, then the change in the tea might have meant something significant had happened to that person, or to the woman herself. Enough to make her end her own life.

"Yes."

The direction of her reasoning was not wrong.

The basic shape of the incident was taking form.

It would have been nice to have more questions.

Now it was Lee Na-hyun's turn to declare an answer.

"Lee Na-hyun-nim--"

"--The answer......?"

Just before the host issued a third warning, Lee Na-hyun made her declaration.

"Yes, Lee Na-hyun-nim. Please give your answer."

"Um, the tea the woman always drank was connected to someone close to her...? And one day she noticed the taste of the tea had changed, and realized something had happened to that person...... and the shock of it made her kill herself......?"

That was probably the best she could do.

There was not enough information to get specific, and guessing wildly wrong would be a disaster.

But vague as that answer was, it did not seem likely to be counted as correct either.

"Lee Na-hyun-nim."

The host's mouth opened wide. Like a silent burst of laughter. Disturbingly wide.

"Wrong."

The words fell like a death sentence.

"Oh. Oh......"

Lee Na-hyun flipped the card over with trembling hands.

[A woman was trapped in a Labyrinth and soothed her longing each day by drinking Nectar.]

Nectar.

The Labyrinth artifact that shows the drinker the taste of what they miss most.

[The Nectar the woman drank had always tasted like the tea her husband used to make for her. Then one day, when she drank the Nectar as usual, it tasted like an entirely different kind of tea instead of her husband's. The woman had been trapped in the Labyrinth so long that she realized she had let go of her will to live to the point where she could no longer even long for her family, and she finally took her own life.]

"This...... how is this even fair! How was anyone supposed to get that right!"

"......"

The host did not answer.

"If I'd had enough chances, I could have gotten it!"

Lee Na-hyun had every right to be furious.

In the first incident she had confirmed whether a Labyrinth was the setting.

This time, she simply had not had enough chances to do the same.

And that was what a Labyrinth was, in the end.

A place where anything could be accomplished, if only you had enough chances.

And a place where you could never have enough.

"Please wait a moment."

Hosoo, unbothered, stood and walked out of the arcade at a composed pace.

We all exchanged uneasy glances and quietly followed.

He made his way to the lounge right next door.

We did not dare go in after him. We watched through the floor-to-ceiling windows to see what he was doing.

Hosoo placed a cup in the coffee machine along one wall and pressed a button.

Beep, bip, bip-beep.

Hot steam billowed up as the drink was dispensed.

The color was not coffee, and not plain water.

Clear and bright, with a faint amber tint.

"Oh no, is that...... Oh no, he's going to make me drink poisoned tea, isn't he......"

Lee Na-hyun grabbed Hwang Ju-yeon's arm with a visibly frightened look.

Whoosh.

Hosoo came back out of the lounge carrying the teacup, smile still in place.

"I didn't expect you all to be waiting out here to greet me. Lee Na-hyun-nim. Please drink."

He looked straight at Lee Na-hyun and extended the teacup toward the loser.

"I, I don't want to drink it!"

And Lee Na-hyun turned and sprinted in the opposite direction.

"Lee Na-hyun-nim. Please drink."

"No no no! I won't drink it! I don't want to!"

She was a genuinely admirable and fascinating person, in many ways.

"Lee Na-hyun-nim. Please drink."

"I! Don't! Want! To!"

Lee Na-hyun ran along the square loop of the corridor, and the host walked after her without any change in expression.

His strides were not especially long. His pace was not especially fast.

Yet the distance between them never increased.

It was not shrinking either, if anything it was closing.

The surface of the tea inside the cup Hosoo was carrying was eerily still.

"Lee Na-hyun-nim. Please drink."

"Hey, just a second......"

"I said I'm not drin-- aaah!"

I stepped into the middle of the chase and waved a hand. Lee Na-hyun let out a startled scream.

"Wh, what? Why!"

"You stop for a second too."

I also blocked the path of the host, who had closed the distance right behind her.

"I can use this now, right? Lee Na-hyun-ssi is still alive."

One coin of "life" I had not been able to use on Chae Jae-ha earlier.

Not that I particularly wanted to save Lee Na-hyun at the cost of going this far.

The gold coin was already useless for the final game anyway, so I was spending it to gather information.

Besides.

"So it can be used on someone who is still alive."

Yu Hyun-jae had taken the assumption I had kept to myself and said it out loud, quietly shifting the atmosphere in the room.

The kind of shift that pointed toward me obviously needing to spend the gold coin when a moment like this arrived.

Not that he had said it directly. But that was exactly why it carried more force than if he had.

Yu Hyun-jae had simply made one single fact known to everyone.

"Seon Yu-han can use a gold coin to save someone who would otherwise die."

And that factual statement naturally converted itself inside everyone's heads into the following moral imperative.

"Seon Yu-han must use a gold coin to save someone who would otherwise die."

I looked around with what I hoped was a neutral expression and glanced at Yu Hyun-jae.

...... Honestly. That one really makes life hard for himself.

Yu Hyun-jae was watching me with a faint smile.

As if he found me impressive.

Footnotes:

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