WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 7: Why Did You Come to Our Daycare?

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A small town where the mountain ridgeline sits closer than any tall building.

A peaceful scene. Residents going about their ordinary days.

"You... who are you?"

No, it was just that no one had noticed yet. The peace of that village had already cracked.

"My mom... doesn't feel like my mom. She looks exactly the same, talks exactly the same. But something..."

Tense background music played as the faces of grim-looking residents cut back and forth.

"Doesn't something seem off? People have been coming into this town, but... nobody's been leaving."

"Why isn't anyone finding this strange? An entire neighborhood has come to this, right now!"

"It seems like they're disrupting communications with the outside world...!"

"Snap out of it! That's not your daughter!"

The noise faded out, and the screen cut away.

The camera, which had been filming a winter mountain from far off beside the village, slowly crept closer. The soft crunch of footsteps filled the silence.

Somewhere in that mountain valley was a place too modest to call a lake and too beloved to call a mere pond, a spot everyone called Dalumul.

"Ha..."

A lone figure climbed the dark, leafless winter trail, seen from behind. Dressed far too lightly for the weather and the place.

Through a gap in the branches, the young face of that strange hiker flickered into view, and then the screen went dark.

[COMING SOON]

Given the subtitle, it must have been a teaser clip for a sequel.

Click.

The stage lights came on, flooding the main auditorium with brightness.

"The, next, film, will, screen, at, 6:30, PM."

My stomach was churning so badly I couldn't bring myself to stand.

"To, min-i-mize, dis-com-fort, dur-ing, screen-ing, please, be, sea-ted, 10, min-utes, be-fore, start, time."

"Let's go. Now."

Chae Jae-ha rushed over and shook my shoulder.

He had been sniffling somewhere behind me again, as always. His eyes and nose were red.

"What are you just sitting there spacing out for! Move!"

"Oh, right, yes..."

The accountant hauled me up out of my seat like pulling a radish out of the ground.

"God, who calls this a movie. Labyrinth or not... those kids died like that. See if I ever come back here."

I stumbled out of the auditorium in a daze, my head tangled up the whole way.

I wasn't sure whether I needed to watch the next film.

If the film from Seonghwa High's Labyrinth, along with those two films, held the hints needed to escape the second floor, then there was even less reason to watch the next one.

Because either way...

"But that thing in the after-credits just now, that was also an invasive-type Labyrinth, right? A really old one, almost from the very beginning. What was that place called..."

"Muwon Township, Cheongwol District, Dalumul Village."

"Ah, right. The Dalumul Village Labyrinth. No survivors there either, so nobody ever knew what happened. Were there body snatchers too? Like the ones at Seonghwa High that pretended to be students and attacked the teachers..."

Chae Jae-ha trailed off muttering, then snapped his head toward me.

"You know, Seon Yu-han-ssi, you have a surprisingly good memory."

"It's not that my memory is good. It's that people forget too easily."

He opened his mouth like he had something to say to that, then just pursed his lips and dropped it.

"Anyway, let's check on the daycare. I'm worried about the kids."

"Same."

6:03 PM.

Coming out after the film, the sun had started to sink, and the power-cut corridor was far darker than it had been when we first arrived.

We passed the outer wall of the daycare, its accent panels in cheerful yellows and lime greens and oranges, and stopped in front of the entrance.

[Uri Saennal Daycare]

The vinyl decals on the glass door blocked the view inside.

I felt a knot of unease at the complete silence from within and pushed the door open.

"Excuse me. Is anyone..."

Thud.

Something hit my foot the moment I stepped inside.

I lowered my gaze slowly.

"Whoa. What are those?"

"Shh. Step back."

The reason Chae Jae-ha recoiled and I went on guard: countless toys and dolls, gathered together and arranged like soldiers ringing a fortress wall.

A train and its tracks formed the rear boundary line.

In front of that, robots and dinosaurs, bear and animal plushies of all kinds, a magical girl, all manner of toys mixed together into a front line.

"The door... locked?"

Not surprising anymore.

The toys stayed perfectly still, as toys do, but felt like they might spring to life at any moment.

"Oh my!"

Oh my?

I turned toward the sound of that bright, cheerful voice.

"Hello!"

There lay a goose plushie with an impressively vacant face, sprawled on the floor.

The one I had just kicked.

"Might I ask what brings you in today?"

I stared at the goose plushie for a moment, baffled. It was about the length of my arm.

Those eyes with not a trace of intelligence. That beak, stitched firmly shut and not moving a hair.

No matter how you looked at it, this was not a living creature.

"Could it be that you two are here about enrollment consultation?"

And yet the goose plushie talked just fine.

"Ah, no, that's not it."

I squeezed my eyes shut and opened my mouth.

Labyrinths have a fickle quality, like an unreasonable superior impossible to please, where doing one thing gets you killed and not doing it gets you killed too. Some will come at you the moment you answer their questions, and others will fly into a rage because you didn't. If it had been a contact-type Labyrinth, there would have been some accumulated strategy data to draw on, but in an invasive-type Labyrinth like this one, everything was new. No patterns to read.

"Oh, is that so."

Not the 'so why are you here? die!' outcome, then.

I quietly let out a breath at the goose's response.

"Could it be that you're guardians of our children?"

"Ah, no."

"Oh, is that so. As I thought."

Good. Still no 'so why are you here? die!'

"I didn't recognize you, and none of our parents had mentioned that another guardian would be coming by on their behalf."

Wow. If we'd lied, we'd have been dead.

"But you are both employees of the Uiwi Guild, yes?"

"Hmm. That's not quite..."

I let my voice trail off uncertainly.

Chae Jae-ha was from a completely different company. And I was just an applicant, not an actual employee.

"Oh, is that so. Hmm."

Rather than snapping into 'so why are you here? die!' mode, the goose plushie went quiet.

Though of course it had been quiet the whole time, in a way.

For a few seconds, the only sound in the daycare entryway was Chae Jae-ha's breathing.

During those seconds my eyes locked onto the shoe cubby.

Every slot had a footprint-shaped sticker on it.

I could read the names written on those stickers, because the shoes that should have been sitting above them were gone. The whole rack was empty.

Except for two slots.

One pair of sneakers that looked like an adult's, and one pair that looked like a child's.

I didn't know why there were only two pairs, but it was possible the others had disappeared the way the Interview Administrator had.

Either way, at least two people were still here. One child and one adult.

"So then."

The goose plushie's gentle voice broke the silence.

"Adult males from outside, who are neither employees of the Uiwi Guild nor guardians of a child enrolled at Uri Saennal Daycare."

The white neck lying limp against the floor rose slowly, and those black button eyes settled on us like a period at the end of a sentence.

"Why exactly have you crept into a daycare to have a look around?"

Behind it, the small cheerful toy soldiers guarding the rear finally twitched and stirred awake, like creatures that had just received the kiss of a god.

"Uri Saennal Daycare prohibits entry by outside visitors."

It was the 'so why are you here? die!' outcome after all.

Damn it.

* * *

5. Do not enter the daycare as an outsider.

* * *

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

"I'd need to find the employees..."

"Pardon?"

I shook my head to clear the sensation of having been bitten all over.

"Interview Administrator-nim, this building is a Labyrinth right now. Around 3:33, communications will cut and the whole place will lose power. Yes, I'm serious."

Watch your step on the stairs, this and that; be careful about who asks you the time; something or other about going into the main auditorium; this and that about social media through the Red Threads...

I added a section on the daycare at the end. That part was especially important, since the Interview Administrator would be heading there.

I wasn't sure what would happen to them after they disappeared, but just in case.

"The dolls in there... seem to take security very seriously."

It had meant getting bitten all over and whacked with a magical girl's wand and jabbed in the eye by a robot arm and a dozen other things besides.

Still, the princess with the scissors had landed a clean hit to my artery, so at least it had been quick.

"I think you'd probably be fine since you're an employee, but..."

Dying for being an outsider felt a little unfair.

Honestly, if this had been outside a Labyrinth, getting kicked out was exactly what you'd expect, so the rule itself was reasonable enough.

"Understood. Please take care of yourself, Seon Yu-han-ssi. See you on the other side."

"Yes. Please be careful."

I saw the Interview Administrator off to the stairwell and headed for the elevator.

5... 4... 3... Ding!

"The doors are opening."

The doors slid open, and I came face-to-face with the accountant.

"Oh? Chae Jae-ha-ssi?"

Taking last time as a lesson, I performed my best surprised expression at the coincidence.

"What timing! How did we end up here like this... Actually, there's something I wanted to tell you. Could you step out for just a moment? It'll only take a second."

"What? I mean, what's--"

No working adult can simply ignore someone who recognizes them in an office building, and so the sharp-eyed accountant was caught helplessly in my little scheme.

"Excuse me, I actually have a client meeting right now, so I do need to get going, but what's this about...?"

Power would cut at 3:33.

I decided to run out the clock until then. It wouldn't take long.

"Well, the thing is, ah... are you by any chance interested in rock festivals?"

"Hm? Out of nowhere? What for? Actually, I can't quite place where I've seen you before, so could I get your name?"

"Oh, I should have introduced myself first."

I placed a hand on my chest politely and put on the smooth smile I used in interviews.

"My name is Seon Yu-han. I'm an applicant who came in for an interview at the Uiwi Guild today, and today is the first time we've ever met."

"What?"

Chae Jae-ha stopped like a broken clock.

But this sharp accountant had already self-repaired and produced the correct response.

"What kind of crazy bas--"

Bang!

"Agh!"

Boom, crack, crash, bang!

"What is that! What's happening!"

Crash, thud!

"An earthquake!"

The certified public accountant of Hoewol Accounting Firm enjoyed, to the fullest, the wholly unplanned honor of watching a rock festival from the front row.

"No. That was the elevators falling."

Falling is a kind of rocking too.

* * *

"So what's the plan?"

Once the accountant had accepted that this was a Labyrinth and there was no going straight down to the first floor, he asked, sulking.

He had started talking informally to me from the moment he decided I was insane.

"I'm planning to start from the merch store, circle all the way around, and come back here."

The merch store, the library, the daycare, back in front of the main auditorium.

I planned to go around the second floor in the opposite direction from last time and explore.

"I don't know where the clue to getting off the second floor might be, so I'll stop by each place."

The merch store and the in-building library would probably have staff in them.

Whether those people also counted as employees remained to be seen, but at minimum they would be less of an outsider than me.

"And also..."

There was something I might need to buy.

I stopped short of saying that and closed my mouth.

"Just for one day! The merch store 'TARAE' on the 2nd floor of the Jaelae Building is holding a special sale event where the Jaelae Diary is available for purchase by general customers outside of employees!"

The Jaelae Diary advertisement that had played right before the film started in the main auditorium.

A Labyrinth is made of rules, and every rule has a reason.

That reason isn't necessarily something a human mind can grasp.

"By the way, the very first page has the floor-by-floor directory for the Jaelae Building!"

Still, this case was fairly obvious.

In that sense, this Labyrinth was on the friendlier side.

So. If I, having assumed I could get from the second floor down to the first and find a way out of the Labyrinth, actually needed a "floor-by-floor directory,"

There were only two possible answers.

Option one: there's no exit on the first floor.

Option two: the floor below the second floor isn't the first floor.

Footnotes:

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