WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 84: Mirror

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"Looking at how the alarm shuts off not long after the monster takes a body part, it probably stops once it's done assembling the knight. The timing isn't fixed."

"Ah... though the time it stays off does seem pretty consistent..."

"Right. Around fifteen minutes?"

I agreed with Hwang Ju-yeon and sorted through my thoughts.

I didn't think the monster would use the same parts to assemble a second knight.

In practical terms, I was safe now. Nothing left for it to take from me.

Put another way, I was a bystander in this survival game of tag. No need to compete.

Which meant there was no real reason to keep hiding my theory, the one about completing the knight being the condition for escape.

Not from someone like me, whose arm had already been used as a component.

"And besides killing the monster or finding some other clue, there's one more thing I've been thinking..."

"What is it?"

Don't they deserve to know what's going through my head?

Don't they deserve to fight hard with every possibility in mind?

"Whether the completed knight ends up with a head or without, there's a chance this floor requires the knight to be finished before anyone can escape."

Don't they need to think the way the Labyrinth thinks, that someone has to die?

"Sorry? So what you're saying, Yu-han-ssi..."

"Is that someone has to lose an arm. Or at worst, a head."

"Yes."

Wasn't this better than recycling half-believed guesses about searching for clues while the monster slept, or killing it outright? Those childish theories I didn't even believe myself?

Wasn't this closer to the truth?

"You're not just saying this because you've given up, are you? Like, since your arm ended up that way, you want the rest of us to go through it too..."

Oh.

I suppose it could come across that way.

"Of course not. I'm not saying I want it to happen. I'm saying it might happen. And as the representative said, it's better to plan for the worst."

"...She's right, Na-hyun-ssi."

Hwang Ju-yeon, her expression heavy, tried to calm Lee Na-hyun down.

"And I understand the feeling, but please don't say it like that. Yu-han-ssi's fingers, you know."

Hwang Ju-yeon pointed to my short ring finger, wrapped in bandages, and continued.

"I told you before Na-hyun-ssi joined us, remember? That on another floor, he was the first to volunteer for a game and got cut."

"Right..."

"So if Yu-han-ssi were the type to act like he shouldn't be the only one to suffer, we wouldn't have made it this far. Isn't that right?"

Lee Na-hyun nodded, her face miserable, and Hwang Ju-yeon patted her shoulder gently, like she was proud of her.

Like a teacher.

Oh, right. She is a teacher.

Piano instructor.

Maybe dealing with children all the time, whether as a tutor or a magician, had something to do with it. She had a practiced ease about the way she talked people down.

"I'm sorry, Yu-han-nim... for talking like you were some kind of bad person... I just say whatever comes to mind without thinking..."

"No, it's fine."

Honestly, hiding a suspicion I'd had for a while and then presenting it as if it had just occurred to me wasn't something a "good person" would do either.

And even if I hadn't said it out of any feeling that I shouldn't be the only one to suffer, the fact remained that I wasn't the only one suffering.

"I think I'd have thought the same thing in your position."

A brief silence.

"Still, we can't rule out other possibilities, so it might be worth trying to get into one of the cars. Easier to fight from, easier to run."

"H-how do we get in? Do you know how?"

"No."

I'd never broken into a car by force.

I'd searched bodies and houses for keys before, used them to open other people's cars. But that was different.

And it hadn't come up often.

"We'll have to smash a window with a fire extinguisher, probably. I should have helped with this sooner."

"Ah... no, come on. Don't say that."

"I'll take care of breaking the window. Shall we get moving? Let's leave Seon Yu-han-ssi to rest."

"Ah, yes. Okay."

"Head that way. The monster went this direction."

And so the others left me alone behind a pillar, tucked into the narrow, sheltered gap between two cars, and went to break into one.

There was a chance that forcing open someone else's car could be treated as a rule violation, but in a situation like this, not even trying wasn't an option.

Tap, tap, tap.

Trudge, trudge.

Their footsteps faded.

"...The fire extinguisher from before..."

"...There's one on that pillar..."

"...Move over that way..."

"...Not much time left..."

Their voices dropped to a murmur.

Thud!

Then the dull sound of something very heavy bouncing off something solid.

Wham!

Crack!

The fire extinguisher hitting the same spot on the car window, again and again.

Crunch!

Brrring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring!

The moment the window finally gave, the alarm started up, announcing the beginning of tag.

"...Just get in fast..."

"...If something goes wrong again..."

"...Maybe just run..."

The others' shouts, swallowed by the alarm, came through as little more than mumbles.

Brrring, ring, ring, ring!

Hot air rolling in from the direction the monster had disappeared, carrying the smell of burning rubber.

Whoosh!

The monster blurred past me, fast enough that I felt it in the air.

"..."

There it was. My left arm now neatly joined to Chae Jae-ha's shoulder. The knight was missing only its right arm and its head now.

Who would provide the right arm?

Did the monster have a clear method for choosing its prey?

It seemed to pick whoever was closest.

Lee Jin-su had been standing at the back of the group when the monster came from behind and took him. Chae Jae-ha had been sitting in the driver's seat when it came head-on. And I had lingered two or three steps behind to look after the child before it got me.

Brrring, ring, ring, ring!

"Ugh, ah..."

A man's stifled scream broke through the alarm at last.

Surprising.

Honestly, I'd half-expected him to use the child as bait and run.

It wouldn't have been difficult, in any number of ways.

...Maybe my expectations of this person's morals had just dropped too low since the shepherd incident.

But looking back, he was decent enough under ordinary circumstances, anything short of an extreme like that. Better than me, by a wide margin.

"Ugh..."

I got up to go check on Yu Hyun-jae, and my left shoulder throbbed again.

Suppressing the urge to just sit back down, I walked slowly.

Brrring, ring!

The alarm was still going, but with a target already chosen, the monster wouldn't be attacking anyone else, and it certainly wouldn't come for me a second time.

The way it had passed straight by me earlier was proof enough.

"Ah, ugh..."

By the time I arrived, the monster had just finished tearing Yu Hyun-jae's entire right arm off and was walking away with it, unhurried.

"Representative. Yu Hyun-jae-nim?"

I went to Yu Hyun-jae rather than follow the monster.

A sharp, charred, metallic smell hung in the air.

I tapped his left shoulder lightly. He grimaced and opened his eyes.

Still conscious, it seemed.

"...You held on well."

Honestly, a stubbornness like that was something else.

Losing an arm didn't guarantee survival. One bad moment and it was death by shock.

Where did that kind of will even come from?

"..."

Yu Hyun-jae's mouth was moving weakly, but the alarm drowned out whatever he was trying to say.

I looked down at his face, streaked with blood and sweat and tears, burn wounds weeping beneath it all.

Why hold on this hard?

Even if he escaped the Labyrinth, wouldn't it just mean a wretched life ahead?

Having to live with all the brilliance of yesterday stripped away.

Having to hold his position under even more blame, more criticism, more distrust than before.

People who didn't even consider what they picked at to be a flaw, who knew it wasn't a flaw, still poking at him endlessly.

Him, who had permanently left the track they called "normal."

They would chip away at him endlessly. Break him. Shatter him.

"Because I want to live."

Come to think of it, there was a time during the Happyland game, after losing his left arm, when I asked why he kept going. That was what Yu Hyun-jae had said.

"Because I want to get out."

I wiped his face clean. Carefully, so as not to aggravate anything.

I really don't dislike people like that.

People who want to live badly enough to go through all of this...

"Ah."

Then something clicked.

"This wasn't a coincidence, was it? Getting taken just now."

I wasn't sure my near-whisper would reach him.

"You let it take your arm on purpose. Because the knight might still need a head. Better to lose an arm than a head."

Yu Hyun-jae had been staring at me in silence, trying to read my lips. He opened his mouth again.

"..."

"I can't hear you. Here, take this."

About the time I held out the leftover anti-inflammatory painkillers and some water.

Brrring, ring, ring, ring!

Brrring... ring.

The alarm finally stopped.

"Ha..."

The co-representative of Uiwi Guild drained the water bottle completely and let out a long breath.

"How are you feeling?"

"The same amount of pain you went through. Exactly."

The voice that had always carried weight sounded drained of it now.

"You held on well."

I wanted him to hear that one properly.

"You held on well too, Seon Yu-han-ssi."

Something in my chest went sour, and I changed the subject.

"What were you saying before? Couldn't hear you over the alarm."

"Ah, right."

Yu Hyun-jae gave a weak shake of his head.

"Nothing much. Just kept asking for water. Lost so much blood my mouth was bone dry. What were you saying?"

"Oh, nothing much either. Just checking whether you could move, whether you could see clearly. General condition. I guess you didn't hear me. I wasn't speaking very loudly, I think. Running low on energy myself."

Yu Hyun-jae made a brief sound and nodded.

Anyway.

I braced my right arm against him and helped him sit up, keeping my expression carefully neutral.

Every word out of my mouth is a lie.

"Let me wrap that for you."

The same way Yu Hyun-jae had done for me earlier, I rinsed the exposed cross-section that had touched the parking garage floor with saline, gently, then wrapped it in bandages.

"Yu-han-ssi...! Representative...!"

Hwang Ju-yeon and Jeong Ji-ho arrived first, and a moment later Lee Na-hyun came sprinting in from another direction, breathless.

Lee Na-hyun had been pressing her hand over her mouth as if to hold back a scream, and her expression looked like she'd just seen a ghost.

"E-everyone, come over here, just a moment..."

"What's wrong? Did something else happen?"

"Yes, yes, yes, yes."

Lee Na-hyun's head bobbed up and down without stopping.

"The monster, it's not sleeping...!"

"What?"

"It's walking around over there right now...!"

Footnotes:

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