WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 89: Not Glad to See You, Old Friend

──────

I felt like I'd been hit in the back of the head. My mind went blank.

"Have we met before?"

Creepy bastard.

"You look familiar."

He already knew. He knew everything.

He'd asked anyway. On purpose.

He'd known exactly who I was from the very beginning. From the moment we first met in the parking garage.

A man who even remembered that there had been no student named Seon Yu-han. There was no way he could have failed to recognize my face.

He'd brought it up deliberately. Right now, at this moment.

The moment when mutual trust mattered most.

Pulling out something I'd been keeping hidden, acting like it was some grave secret, making a whole production of it.

......It was a grave secret, actually.

"I had a name change," I said.

I answered right away, keeping my eyes from drifting anywhere else.

I couldn't afford to pause and invite pointless suspicion from Hwang Ju-yeon.

"Of course. Your name changed, after all."

This son of a bitch.

"I just found it a little curious. Changing your family name too -- that's rare, isn't it."

I hid my clenched fist behind my back. To keep my trembling fingers out of sight.

"That's--"

"--No, never mind. I'm sure you had your reasons. I overstepped. I'm sorry."

This crazy son of a bitch.

He'd cut off my explanation mid-sentence and offered a perfectly composed apology.

"......It's fine. It was just a family matter."

In a way, all of this was a "family" matter.

"I see......"

What exactly was this guy's problem?

Did he just want to screw with me?

......Or was he trying to confirm something?

That was usually why he pulled this kind of stunt, as far as I could tell.

"Ah, so, Representative-nim and Seon Yu-han-ssi went to the same school. Small world, right?"

Chae Jae-ha let out a strained laugh, trying to break the tension that had settled over the room.

Nobody laughed with him.

"Hwang Ju-yeon-ssi."

"Ah, yes."

Hwang Ju-yeon answered a beat late, like she'd been deep in thought.

I hoped she wasn't getting any strange ideas.

Like thinking I'd changed my name because I had a criminal record.

I was fairly sure name change applications got rejected outright if the offense was serious enough. But explaining that unprompted would only make things worse.

"Shall we go in, then."

"Yes."

Swish.

Just before stepping inside the curtained voting booth.

"Choose wisely."

The corner of that alumni's mouth was definitely curving upward. Like he was looking forward to seeing the result.

A bad feeling settled over me as the white curtain rustled shut behind me.

The inside of the booth was dim and snug. The table was narrow, with only a single thin stamp pen resting on it.

Slide.

I set the ballot on the table, and letters began filling in the blank spaces.

[ Wish Vote

|1| Revert your body to its state one hour ago | |

|2| Change your body to its state one hour from now | |]

My palms went cold.

"......"

I hadn't expected the problem to start here.

"Prisoner's Dilemma" was at least a Labyrinth that didn't deceive people with lies.

It only made people deceive each other.

So the Labyrinth would carry out whatever option won. The result would be real.

[|1| Revert your body to its state one hour ago | |]

My body from an hour ago.

I'd already lost my spleen at Happyland, but at least both arms had been intact.

[|2| Change your body to its state one hour from now | |]

My body an hour from now.

No way to know if I'd even be alive then.

"Prisoner's Dilemma" was a Labyrinth with a clear right answer, a defined better and worse.

By that logic, option one should be the good choice.

Personally, though.......

There was a documented case inside "Prisoner's Dilemma" where someone had de-aged physically by roughly ten years.

The price of betraying their partner, but still.

The catch was that their memories had also rolled back ten years. Because the brain is a physical organ too.

So it wasn't quite what people usually called "time regression."

Even so, the person it happened to became the envy of the entire world.

It naturally fanned the flames of those conspiracy theorists who fervently believed time regression through a Labyrinth was possible.

Either way, it had sent one person's time backward.

[ Wish Vote

|1| Revert your body to its state one hour ago | |

|2| Change your body to its state one hour from now | |]

If this wish vote worked the same way, option one didn't feel like a good choice at all.

Losing the last hour's worth of memories inside a Labyrinth could be fatal.

"But as far as I remember. There was no student by the name Seon Yu-han. Not at our school."

And I'd forget the fact that Yu Hyun-jae had known who I was from the start.

That was not something I could afford to lose.

Then option two was actually the better pick. For me.

It would be like getting a preview of the next hour's memories.

Assuming I was still alive an hour from now, of course.

"......"

Though I wondered whether Hwang Ju-yeon knew about that de-aging case.

Whether she did or didn't, option one probably looked better to her.

And it was the right answer, objectively.

Hwang Ju-yeon would assume I'd pick option one, right? To get my right arm back?

Because that was the "normal" thing to do.

Because she would do the same.

So Hwang Ju-yeon, expecting me to pick option one, would pick option two to minimize her own losses.

Slide.

I carefully picked up the stamp pen.

[|2| Change your body to its state one hour from now | |]

Then I'd pick option two as well.

Click.

I pressed the stamp carefully into the box next to option two.

A dark red print appeared against the white space, like a brand.

A maze?

Inside a red circle was a complicated maze design.

It looked almost identical to the maze engraved on the gold coin I'd received at the arcade -- the one marked "Life."

Did it mean something?

I took the Jaelae Diary from my pocket and stamped the same mark onto a blank page.

It might come in handy someday.

Or not.

Swish, rustle.

I folded the ballot twice and stepped out, and the first face I saw was that annoying representative's.

He looked calm on the surface, but couldn't quite hide the amusement in his eyes.

Chae Jae-ha's face, meanwhile, was broadcasting one clear question: why did that take so long?

Slide.

Hwang Ju-yeon stepped out of the booth right after me, and our eyes met.

"......"

She looked about as stressed as she had during Idle Hamster.

Strangely, though, there was something else underneath it. A faint, odd relief, like she'd gotten something off her chest.

Rustle, thud.

We slipped our ballots into the box at almost the same time.

"The Wish Vote has concluded."

A synthetic, TTS-like voice came through the black speaker mounted on the auditorium wall.

Everyone held their breath and looked up.

"Counting begins."

All this ceremony for two votes.

"Option one: 'Revert your body to its state one hour ago.'"

Hwang Ju-yeon glanced at my face.

"Zero votes."

"What? No, what? You voted for two?"

She nearly screamed it.

"Yes."

"Option two: 'Change your body to its state one hour from now.'"

"Two votes."

"Why......? Why? Why didn't you pick option one?"

"Well...... we were both supposed to pick the worse option for ourselves, weren't we. Did you really think I'd go for option one?"

That I'd end up being selfish after all?

"Yes...... obviously......!"

She'd read me correctly.

There was just a difference in how we each saw which option was actually worse.

"Why, seriously, why didn't you pick option one?"

She wasn't blaming me.

Maybe Hwang Ju-yeon had been prepared to understand me even if I had picked option one.

I'd simply wanted the result that option two would bring.

"How...... how do you not pick the option that fixes your body......"

I knew it wasn't the right answer. I knew it wasn't normal.

"I won't pretend I didn't think about it for a second...... but if I'd betrayed you and gone with option one, you'd have taken twice the loss. Who knows what might happen in two hours."

No need to volunteer the fact that option two was the more practical gain for me personally, and that I'd chosen it for my own reasons.

I could play the decent person as long as I needed to.

"Counting is complete."

When both parties pick the "bad" option, each of them takes the penalty.

No more, no less -- exactly what the option said.

"The results will now be enacted."

What was going to happen to me an hour from now.

"The bodies of voter 'Seon Yu-han' and voter 'Hwang Ju-yeon' will be changed to their states one hour from now."

An instant.

That tiny sliver of time you could divide a single blink into dozens of pieces.

Everything happened inside that instant.

I felt an hour's worth of memories pour into my head.

"Guh, ugh......!"

Like an impossible volume of water flooding in through my throat and airway and filling my entire body.

* * *

20-2. Go to Team 4. If you are with someone you can trust.

* * *

"If you could turn back time, what would you do, Seon Yu-han-ssi?"

......I'd have to be careful not to drown.

The fire alarm was going off the same as usual.

* * *

[B2 | Mechanical Room]

After killing the librarian alone in the library, I'd taken a moment to update my notes in the Jaelae Diary.

The Mechanical Room.......

The floor directly below the seventh floor was basement level two.

According to those memories I'd gained all at once.

"This floor...... I haven't been down here since I first bought the building."

In that time that had both happened and not happened, the co-representative of Uiwi Guild had said exactly that.

The Mechanical Room in basement level two was restricted to Facilities Management staff assigned specifically to that room. Other employees couldn't access it by elevator or emergency staircase.

That had been the case before Labyrinthification, anyway.

"There are pipes everywhere...... Water dripping on the floor too......"

"Hot water pumps, piping, that sort of thing. The HVAC systems are down here."

Countless pipes packed tight across that wide space. Enormous water storage tanks.

All that water that had been enough to drown me had come from right there.

A few things about the Mechanical Room stuck in my memory.

"Did you just hear something?"

For one, obviously, something strange was happening inside the Mechanical Room.

"Isn't the dripping getting worse?"

Whatever it was worked in the darkness where our eyes couldn't reach, sabotaging things -- busting valves, rupturing pipes.

"I, I don't want to die like this......! When the door opened earlier, I should have just......"

Up to a certain point, the water pressure had been weak enough that the emergency exit door could open, which meant our group could have had the option of falling down the emergency staircase instead.

"I'm cold...... I'm scared......"

In the end, no one had found a way to fight back before they all drowned.

"Ha......"

How do you fight something you can't see, can't hear, can't touch?

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried