WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
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◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈
Chapter 87: Regressors Lie Fast
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There were two facts I had overlooked.
"Seon Yu-han-ssi......!"
First: Yu Hyun-jae was not someone to be trusted blindly, no questions asked.
"Ugh, ngh......"
Second: the world is not kind enough to make things work out just because they have to.
Though for this particular death, I could probably set the first fact aside.
The fault lay mostly with my body, which had failed to keep up with Yu Hyun-jae.
* * *
20. There are two paths on the seventh floor.
20-1. Go to Team 3. Do so if you are with someone you cannot trust.
* * *
"If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Seon Yu-han-ssi?"
Maybe use the bathroom.
And not pull the fire alarm.
* * *
So what happens when you don't pull the fire alarm?
"The time for the reading circle has come."
The reading circle begins.
That's what happens. Hwang Ju-yeon, who had always caught the alarm by a hair and slipped out of Chaekbang Ollae just in time, stays put and gets trapped inside.
"No additional participants will be admitted once the reading circle has begun."
"What is this. I'm not the only one hearing this, right? Right?"
"No, I can hear it too......"
The result: a cozy little reading circle, four of us total, Chae Jae-ha and Hwang Ju-yeon and Kim Gilyeong and me.
It had been a very long time.
"Participants in the reading circle are to gather and be seated comfortably in the reading area."
"Reading area?"
"Over there, that's the reading area...... where the sofas are......"
Right now we were in the explanation phase.
"Just a moment."
I had to lay the groundwork while casual conversation was still allowed.
"Hmm? Why? Is something off?"
"No, it's not that......"
I paused deliberately, glancing at Kim Gilyeong as though choosing my words carefully, then went on.
"As far as I know...... there shouldn't be a librarian in this library. It's a self-checkout system."
"Huh?"
"What?"
Chae Jae-ha and Hwang Ju-yeon both echoed back as though they hadn't quite followed.
"Well, I did mention that I had an interview with Uiwi Guild today."
"Right, you did......"
"It came up during the talk about in-house perks, and I said I liked that there was a library in the building. The Interview Administrator gave me a brief rundown at the time."
I let my voice waver faintly and glanced over at the librarian.
"Self-checkout system, no librarian on staff......"
Everyone went quiet.
Finally. A satisfying silence.
"What do you mean, what does that even......"
The one who broke it was the librarian.
"I really am the librarian here!"
Genuine disbelief and indignation, raw in her voice and face.
"Right here! Look at my employee badge......! Kim Gilyeong! My face! You recognize me!"
She was probably an entity set up to be exactly that.
And she probably truly believed it herself.
That she was the librarian at Chaekbang Ollae, the in-building library of Uiwi Guild.
"Hmm......"
"The employee badge does look real......"
Faced with Kim Gilyeong's earnest expression, Hwang Ju-yeon and Chae Jae-ha both responded with visible uncertainty.
"There is nothing an invasive-type Labyrinth cannot fabricate."
"Y-y-you, Seon Yu-han-ssi, you're the one with some kind of ulterior motive......!"
"Pardon? Kim Gilyeong-ssi, what would I possibly gain from lying about there being no librarian?"
I shifted my gaze directly to Hwang Ju-yeon.
"Was there a librarian here before the Labyrinthification? If so, that's actually more unsettling to me."
"Oh, um...... now that I think about it, no. When I first came in, no one was at the desk, and then later when I came back after hearing the fire alarm, someone was there. I just assumed they'd stepped away for a moment. Naturally."
That was exactly the exchange we'd had.
"Hwang Ju-yeon-ssi, was it? You said you've been here the whole time."
"Oh, yes......"
"Was Kim Gilyeong-ssi here when you first walked in? She didn't just appear out of nowhere?"
Hwang Ju-yeon stared at Kim Gilyeong for a long moment, her eyes a mix of suspicion and trust, then flinched as though pricked by a needle.
"Come to think of it...... oh, she wasn't. Not when I came in. I just figured she'd stepped out for a bit......"
With each word Hwang Ju-yeon added, Kim Gilyeong's pupils wavered.
"Kim Gilyeong-ssi, did you step away at any point earlier?"
That question drove the nail in. The librarian's expression collapsed.
"Ah. Ah."
Like someone whose every root had been torn out from under them.
No, more like someone who had just realized there had never been roots to begin with.
"A single life is a single story. That is the theme of this reading circle."
"Ah."
The librarian crumpled to the floor.
"Are you okay......"
"Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah."
The same syllable poured from between the librarian's lips, over and over.
"And some stories can only reach a true ending when the main character dies."
Beneath the library's pronouncement, the librarian's two eyes, which had been moving grotesquely in separate directions, came into alignment and fixed on a single point.
......On me.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"
"Wh- what the hell!"
"Both of you, step back!"
Thwack!
The introverted, teary-eyed librarian came charging with the same gentle face as always.
Like a robot that had forgotten the three laws.
"Ngh......"
My back slammed into a bookshelf with a thud.
Books rained down around me.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"
I was locked in a grapple with the librarian, being pushed back inch by inch.
"Ungh......!"
I clenched my teeth as hard as I could.
As if this was actually a struggle.
How many times had I killed this thing.
I was just waiting.
"Seon Yu-han-ssi, duck!"
For this moment.
Crack!
The librarian in front of me crumpled.
"Hah, haah......"
Chae Jae-ha, gripping a red fire extinguisher, was gasping for breath, his face flushed. His hands were shaking so badly it looked like he might drop it any second.
Hwang Ju-yeon had a pen clutched tight in her fist, ready to join the attack if it came to that.
"......Chae Jae-ha-ssi."
"Oh. Yeah, uh, yeah......"
I eased the extinguisher from Chae Jae-ha's stunned grip and took both of his pale hands in mine.
I needed to give him something else to focus on, not the fact that he had just killed something that looked like a person.
"Thank you. Genuinely. You just saved my life. I nearly......"
Things like: he had saved someone's life. The warmth of hands right in front of him.
"You too, Hwang Ju-yeon-ssi. I know you were ready to help. Really, thank you."
Even so, neither of them would ever forget this moment.
You are both my accomplices now.
I could only hope this would be the foundation of a good, trusting relationship between us.
* * *
"......Could I use the restroom for a moment?"
Skipping the fire alarm had one critical downside.
There was no natural opportunity to "find" the Jaelae Diary.
If I had pulled the alarm, I could have killed the librarian alone and told them I'd picked it up on my way out of Chaekbang Ollae.
I needed to reveal the Jaelae Diary eventually, to keep Yu Hyun-jae's suspicion of me from hardening into certainty.
Keeping it at suspicion, not conviction, was the goal.
"Sure, go ahead."
"Chae Jae-ha-ssi, are you all right?"
"Oh, I'm...... still, not really......"
So I decided to use the excuse of needing a moment alone and check out the Labyrinthified bathroom.
These people would have to use it at some point, and getting the information ahead of time was worth it.
"I'll be right back."
Click.
The bathroom had the exact same layout as the one on the seventh floor.
Four urinals divided by partitions, three toilet stalls across from them, a sink and mirror beside those.
The sink area was probably fine.
Yu Hyun-jae and I had used water there for burns and never got trapped.
On the other hand, Hwang Ju-yeon, Lee Na-hyun, and Jeong Ji-ho had gone in to use the toilet itself and wound up stuck inside.
So the toilet stalls had to be the culprit.
Women's restrooms don't have urinals.
Creeeeak......
Carefully, I eased open each of the three stall doors one by one and checked inside.
Toilet, paper holder, wastebasket.
Nothing visibly wrong at first glance.
In the end I had no choice but to actually go in.
Creak, click.
[Please hold the lever for 3 or more seconds]
The notice next to the toilet lever was the first thing I saw.
Then I turned around and sat on the closed toilet lid, facing forward.
[Please dispose of used tissue in the toilet]
Like any public restroom, informational sticker notices were stuck at eye level.
On the right wall hung a large ivory toilet paper holder.
[A beautiful space makes even those who linger beautiful]
......Wait, what does that mean?
I almost walked right past it thinking it was some generic bathroom platitude.
The Labyrinth had definitely left its mark here.
What it meant, I couldn't say. It felt like a petty little joke.
I turned my head to the left.
[There is a small dot on the ceiling.
-Jaelae Building Building Manager]
The ceiling?
"......Ah."
Oh no.
I had almost reflexively looked up.
Without stopping to think about what that "small dot" might be.
I slowly brought my head, which had already tilted halfway up, back down.
[There are small dots on the ceiling.
-Jaelae Building Building Manager]
"......"
Dot"s"?
A new word had appeared.
The dots had multiplied.
[Please dispose of used tissue in the wastebasket]
......Hadn't it said to put it in the toilet?
[A person worthy of being human leaves a beautiful space behind]
That one changed too.
[Please hold the lever for 5 or more seconds]
The time had gone up as well.
If you didn't follow the instructions on these notices, something was going to go wrong.
[Please hold the lever for 4.5 or more seconds]
Instructions that shifted moment to moment, and you had to catch them at exactly the right time. No wonder people made mistakes and got trapped.
The most vulnerable space a person occupies, and most people don't read bathroom signs carefully.
[Please dispose of the used wastebasket in the toilet]
Come on.
You might as well ask me to fit an elephant in a refrigerator.
[There is a small line on the ceiling.
-Jaelae Building Building Manager]
Now it had gone from dots to a line.
The dots had apparently multiplied quite a lot.
I suppressed the strange urge to look up and shifted my gaze.
[A person worthy of being human makes even those who linger beautiful]
......I needed to leave.
Click, creak.
It opened without a problem.
As long as you didn't actually use the toilet, it seemed you could come and go freely.
There were no notices on the urinals outside.
Could those be used safely? Or did the same shifting instructions apply there too, only you would never be able to see them?
I had no interest in testing that.
Rustle.
I took out the diary to update my notes and went back over the previous records and the route ahead.
The method had changed a little, but I had still killed the librarian, so the plan was the same: get the child from the daycare, escape from the second floor.
"The late Bae Seo-woo."
On basement five, I had to be careful about everyone's heart rate and recover the name on the urn.
On the fourteenth floor, I had to clear the Happyland game at Neosoft.
The eleventh floor, Future Strategy Budget Planning Team, I could get through quickly without gambling. On the fifteenth floor at Singyae Daily, Yu Hyun-jae would handle those unhinged teenagers over the gas explosion article.
If all seven of us were still alive by then, the next stop was the 5F Arcade to collect gold coins and play The Silence of the Lambs.
Assuming we somehow survived all that, half of us would die on the floor after, basement three.
Someone had to donate their body and limbs to the headless horseman.
Then came the floor that forced you to do climbing with your arms and legs cut off.
"......"
Click.
I closed the diary and stepped back into the corridor.
"Oh, Seon Yu-han-ssi."
"Back already? You said you'd be a minute."
It hadn't even been five minutes. What was the complaint?
"I got worried the bathroom had turned into a Labyrinth too."
"......It had, actually."
"What?"
"Huh?"
"Then how are you back so fast?"
"I was going to come right out, but I heard something from the toilet stalls so I went in to check......"
I left out how I had ended up inside the stall and told them everything else honestly, exactly as I knew it.
"Anyway, both of you, take a look at this. There was a strange notebook on the toilet lid, so I read through it......"
That part I left out too.
"Oh my God, I mean, sorry. But if this is real, it means going down from here won't land us on the first floor."
"Hah...... seriously, why is it like this......"
They believed me without question.
"Still, if this information is accurate, we'll be able to escape much more safely."
Now all that was left was to keep these two calm and get them out alive.
I just hoped cutting the fire alarm would turn out to help.
* * *
21. There are notices in the bathroom. Disregard the building manager.
Footnotes:
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