WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 83: Horseman

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I held my breath and crept forward.

Toward the spot past the car where the headless torso was visible.

"......"

The moment I finally reached that car and checked the space right beside it, I had to press a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing.

A massive horse stood perfectly still, draped in what looked like a cloak of black tires.

On its back sat the torso of Chae Jae-ha, head and limbs cut away.

It was unmistakably Chae Jae-ha's body. The suit shirt with both sleeves torn off, the necktie, confirmed it.

The scene looked as though the unnamed corpse's legs and Lee Jin-su's legs had been attached to Chae Jae-ha's torso.

Like a headless, armless knight mounted on a horse.

So the monster wasn't collecting legs at all...

"Ha......"

A hangman.

Not a hangman descending from head to legs, but one building upward from legs to head.

When complete, the result would be a figure seated on the monster's back.

Like a rider. Or a knight.

Click.

I took a photo as quietly as I could and immediately turned around.

No telling when the alarm might go off.

......Come to think of it, that fire alarm.

A thought surfaced without warning, and my feet stumbled without meaning to.

I set it off. Every single time I restart.

So what if I hadn't triggered the fire alarm on the third floor?

Would the monster have stayed asleep forever?

"......"

More than possible.

The Labyrinth is a place where you can die because of a stranger's trivial choice, made by someone who isn't even in the same room as you.

If that was the case, then technically they died because of me.

The unnamed person who lost a left leg.

Lee Jin-su, who lost a right leg.

Chae Jae-ha, reduced to a torso.

I killed them. With one button.

The thought came over me all at once: I have killed too many people.

That the time I have lived is equal to the time I have spent killing.

That the people I have killed outnumber even the times I have died...

But grief is not mine to hold.

I cannot shed tears for these people, cannot pray for their souls.

It was too far away.

The time for that would have to wait.

"Oh, Yu-han-nim, you're back."

"Thank goodness. Nothing happened, right?"

When I returned to the group, everyone looked better than before.

"Yes. Is everyone all right? And the representative?"

"I'm fine too. Ji-ho's woken up as well. The monster was still asleep?"

"Yes. And that monster, I don't think it was only collecting legs."

I angled the phone screen away from the child and showed them the photo.

Hwang Ju-yeon drew a sharp breath. Yu Hyun-jae lowered his eyes and let out a slow exhale.

"Ah, you scared me...!"

Lee Na-hyun squeezed her eyes shut at the photo suddenly thrust in front of her, shaking her head like she was trying to fling the image away.

"Could you maybe warn me before showing something like that, Yu-han-nim...? So I can brace myself......"

Showing them was the warning.

Because this might be coming for us soon.

"Anyway, it seems to be building upward one piece at a time from the bottom. Like a hangman game played in reverse."

"Ha....... So Seon Yu-han-ssi, you think the head comes last? In that case...... it would be more like a knight than a hangman."

"Wait, then don't we need to do something before it's complete? In hangman, when you finish the body the game's over......"

The question now was how to get off this floor.

"Right. So I think we either need to deal with the monster before it's finished, or find something. One or the other."

"Oh....... Sort of like the B5 parking garage before?"

"Yes, except with a time limit added, I think."

There was actually one more option coming to mind right now.

Completing the monster's rider.

The possibility that finishing it was the escape condition was something I had to keep in mind.

As long as it wasn't the torso or the head, that was something.

Honestly, legs were dangerous too.

Pain I could push through somehow, but aortic bleeding was outside anything I could manage on my own.

The way it seemed to cut by practically burning through the flesh, that would cauterize to some degree, but still.

"If we need to find something, we'll have to split up."

"But what if it's not that, and we actually need to kill the monster? The thing that totaled a car?"

"I've been thinking about trying to floor it and ram it with a car properly this time. Hit it from both sides a few times and there might be a chance."

Even as I said that, the simulation of completing the rider kept running in the back of my head.

Even if losing a leg was survivable, losing an arm was better.

Unless this was the last floor, there were likely more floors ahead, and climbing stairs on a single leg would be brutal.

In Happyland I'd lost pieces from the lower half in every combination, foot, calf, thigh, and the loss of mobility hit as a more fundamental penalty in this Labyrinth than it had there.

The group had helped me each time, but I couldn't count on that goodwill holding forever, and I didn't want to keep accepting it anyway.

As long as I avoided shock and infection, I'd be fine.

If completing the rider was the escape condition, I needed to confirm the exact sequence of limbs and accept losing an arm as the best-case compromise.

Better still if I didn't have to be the one at all.

"There's one point I'd like to raise."

The man who had been quietly resting with the child this whole time finally spoke.

"I don't think the head is necessarily last."

"Pardon?"

He was still thinking about completing the rider?

We'd already moved on to how to stop it before completion.

"Please explain."

But it was worth hearing.

This man wasn't simply dangerous the way a reckless person was. He was as capable as he was dangerous.

"It might be a headless knight. Like the fairy in Celtic mythology."

"......Ah."

The Dullahan.

"Wait, then the time until it's complete gets even shorter......"

"With Labyrinths it's better to assume the worse outcome."

He was right.

But if completing the monster's rider was the escape condition, that was actually good news.

Two arms, one torso, two legs.

Excluding the head, only five people needed to be sacrificed in total.

One had already been taken care of long before we arrived on this floor. The unnamed person.

Which meant of the seven of us who had made it down here, including me, only four would be claimed for the puzzle.

"Hmm......"

I rubbed at the corner of my mouth as if thinking it over, keeping my expression neutral.

All things considered...

I found myself leaning a little further toward the possibility that completing the rider was the escape condition.

The floor before this had killed people for not bringing enough bodies. Now it had let everyone through alive, only to butcher half of them?

That was exactly the sort of thing a Labyrinth would do.

This rotten Labyrinth.

Tr-r-r-r-r-r-r-ring!

It went off without warning.

The siren, announcing death.

"Wh-what do we do! We haven't decided anything yet, what are we going to...!"

Let's find out.

What happens when it's complete.

"Run for now! I'll carry Ji-ho! I don't think we'll have time to break into any cars!"

While the alarm was off, there had been room to think. The moment it started, everything became very simple.

So simple there were no rules worth analyzing on this floor.

Just run.

That was all.

A slightly violent game of tag, nothing more.

"Ji-ho, hold on tight! Don't let go!"

And that game of tag might be the most difficult thing of all.

If everyone runs, then what decides who gets caught and killed comes down to...

"Ah, ugh...!"

The tag is entirely the monster's choice.

"Ahh......"

An intense heat slammed into my left shoulder, searing and then somehow going cold, sharp enough to feel like the opposite of warmth, and my entire body was wrenched sideways.

On instinct I thrashed and tried to pull free, but all that did was sharpen the sense of my arm being torn away from the socket.

Ji-ho had tumbled from my arms and was staring at me, frozen.

"Go...! Hurry, ngh!"

The bitter, acrid smell of hot melting tire.

The smell of my cheek and hair cooking where those black strands made contact.

The slow, thick smell of blood seeping as the shoulder caught in those iron-dense jaws behind the tire-hide was severed piece by piece, unhurried and grinding.

"Hh, ngh......"

The dizzy sensation of everything going dark while simultaneously going white.

The sensation of noise so loud it should burst my eardrums and yet a deadening quiet at the same time.

That very familiar sensation of being left alone in the world with nothing but pain.

"......Ah."

And finally, the sensation of a body heavy with blood and sweat becoming, at the same moment, exactly the weight of one arm lighter.

I collapsed onto the ground and looked up at the monster through spinning vision.

It seemed to have lost interest in me. It took my left arm in its mouth and moved away.

Calm and unhurried, as if it hadn't just charged at full speed and torn into a person moments ago.

Tr-r-r-r-r-r-ring!

Whether it was the noise of the alarm or whether the monster simply never made a sound, I couldn't tell.

I wanted to follow it. I had no strength to get up.

The world was still tilting in slow circles.

I'd wanted to watch how the body was assembled.

"......"

The energy had drained from every part of me and my eyes were falling shut on their own.

Still, I didn't think I was going to die.

Really, if something has to be cut, an arm is the best option...

Tr-r-r-r-r-ring!

Tr-r-ring.

Before long, the alarm cut out.

Shortly after, the faint light of a phone flashlight drew closer, accompanied by the measured click of dress shoes.

"Seon Yu-han-ssi?"

I managed to push myself upright and look. It was Yu Hyun-jae, as expected.

"You were alive."

Did that mean it was surprising, or that he'd known I would be?

"I'm glad."

......Ah.

It could also just mean he was glad I was alive.

"The wound......"

The co-representative of Uiwi Guild examined my left arm and frowned slightly.

"I'm not sure what more can be done for it."

The flesh had been seared and torn away in ragged strips, skin and vessels and muscle all cooked and fused together, and the cut end of the arm bone had lost its natural white, turned brown.

"Only an ER and a hand surgeon would know the answer to that."

Half-joke, half-truth. The co-representative of Uiwi Guild gave a tired, weak smile.

"Just rinse off the grit and dust with the saline you used on your hand earlier, and wrap it with gauze."

By the time that basic treatment was finished.

"Oh, Yu-han-nim...!"

"Yu-han-ssi...!"

Lee Na-hyun and Hwang Ju-yeon came hurrying over.

Ji-ho was with them, which was a relief. They must have found each other on the way.

"Are you okay? Oh no......"

"I feel a little like throwing up, but I'm fine. I'm alive."

"Your face got burned too...!"

"Here, take this."

"Keep it damp and press it against your face at intervals. You're supposed to use running water, but there's no bathroom on this floor."

Hwang Ju-yeon handed over a water bottle and anti-inflammatory painkillers. Yu Hyun-jae passed a dampened handkerchief.

Trying to take medication with one hand was deeply inconvenient.

Though the remaining right hand was hardly in perfect shape either, missing the ring finger from Happyland.

The gone left arm hurt so overwhelmingly that I'd stopped caring about that entirely.

"Let's move you between those pillars over there so you can rest a bit more."

Yu Hyun-jae helped me to my feet.

"The monster probably won't hunt the same person twice, and I can't push you any harder. Is there anything you can tell us about it?"

Let's see.

My guess that completing the monster's rider might be the escape condition?

What would happen if I told them that?

If it was a headless rider, one more person. If it had a head, two more people would have to be sacrificed.

In this situation, what would they do if I shared my theory?

How would these people act if they were trying to survive?

I wasn't entirely sure, but one thing was certain.

"I don't dislike people who try to survive, you know. Don't you feel the same?"

That person was almost certainly thinking the same thing I was.

Footnotes:

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