WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

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◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 94: The Price of Well-Being

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First I checked the floor map posted on the wall near the elevator again.

According to the map, small and medium conference rooms A, B, and C were on the west side, and large conference rooms D and E were on the east side.

[Conference Room A]

Conference Room A was where I had my interview.

No need to go back in there.

[Uiwi Guild New Employee Recruitment
Interview Room
10:00 AM - 4:00 PM]

Nothing special inside to begin with.

'Don't know the time. What time is it? Want to know the time.'

And if I stayed in the interview room past four o'clock without leaving, something would come knocking at the door, something with a child's voice but a body big enough to brush the ceiling.

My best guess was that it was some kind of warning.

The moment four o'clock passed, the door would open on its own and I'd get pulled straight into a strange darkness.

Whether the thing knocking and that darkness were the same entity, I had no idea.

The time was 3:35.

Ideally I wanted to meet the escape conditions and get off the third floor within twenty-five minutes.

Before running into that thing, or those things.

For now I decided to walk past the interview room and do a full circuit of the corridor.

Conference Room B, Conference Room C...

This side of the corridor showed no visible changes on the surface.

[Conference Room D]

I crossed to the opposite corridor and stopped in front of it.

There was a sheet of paper stuck to the door.

[Special Seminar
〈The Secret to Well-Being〉]

A special seminar?

I turned over a conversation I'd had with the Interview Administrator a very long time ago.

"Is it normal for the corridor to be this empty?"

"It tends to be, I suppose. The third floor only has the auditorium and conference rooms, and today there are no events besides the interviews."

So what exactly was this seminar.

Click.

I laid a careful hand on the door handle of Conference Room D.

The door slid open.

"......"

Eyes met mine.

Thirty-odd humans sitting perfectly still at their desks, to be precise.

No, "humans" was probably wrong.

Not after seeing those faces, all identical, as though pressed from the same mold.

Roughly high school age, or early twenties at most.

Completely unremarkable features. Neither outstandingly pretty nor outstandingly distinctive, faces you'd forget the moment you turned your back.

All of their eyes were fixed on me.

"...s..."

Revulsion and contempt rose before anything else, pure instinct.

"...same..."

Not because they'd dared to imitate humans.

I knew better than anyone that humans weren't all that extraordinary.

This was just a problem between those not-so-extraordinary humans and the things imitating them, and not-so-extraordinary me.

A very old problem.

"Hello, Teacher!"

What? Teacher?

The foul creatures chorused in one voice and looked up at me with nauseating, bright, eager eyes.

Now that I thought about it, the way I'd walked in was exactly right for that.

The interior of the conference room was set up like a lecture hall.

Two-person desks arranged in rows of five, three sections in total, and the monsters wearing identical human skins sat still as students.

I was standing in front of a wide whiteboard at the front.

"Question, Teacher!"

Exactly like a teacher.

"Uh... what. The question."

Click.

I shut the door and turned to face the one with its hand raised.

Denying I was the teacher and running didn't seem particularly wise.

If the Labyrinth said I was the teacher, I was the teacher.

Even a teacher who apparently had to teach 〈The Secret to Well-Being〉.

Seems like it picked the wrong teacher.

"What's your name, Teacher?"

"...Seon Yu-han."

Scratch, swish, skritch.

I answered flatly and every creature simultaneously wrote something on a sheet of paper lying on their desks.

I stretched my neck to peek at what they were writing, but got nothing out of it.

[███████████]

Couldn't read a single word.

"I have a question too, Teacher!"

A different one raised its hand this time.

"What."

"Does everyone have a name, Teacher?"

A strange question.

"Not... everyone does."

I was going to leave it at that, but those glittering eyes made me feel, alongside the revulsion, like I had to explain further for some reason.

"Everything in the world just comes into existence without a name, and we're the ones who attach names to things. So sometimes something ends up without one."

Swish, scratch.

Writing something again.

Seemed like they'd do this every time I answered.

"Do you seem strange if you don't have a name, Teacher?"

I looked at the creature sitting on the border between adolescence and adulthood for a moment.

"You'd seem strange."

If it was determined to wear a human shell and imitate a person.

"Then can we give each other names, Teacher?"

"...Sure. Do what you want."

"Can we take your name and use it, Teacher?"

"No. You can't. I won't give it."

It was mine and could not be given to things like these.

"I have a question, Teacher!"

"Yeah."

"When's your birthday, Teacher?"

Running a census now, are we.

"...April 1st."

Scratch, swish.

I lied and they all scribbled something down just the same, no issue.

Either the truth or falseness of it didn't matter, or it would become a problem later.

"I have a question, Teacher!"

"Yeah. What."

"When's your death anniversary, Teacher?"

Unsettling things.

"Don't know."

"Why don't you know, Teacher?"

"Because I haven't died yet."

...Depending on your perspective, that was open to debate.

"If you haven't died, then you don't know your death anniversary, Teacher?"

"Isn't that obvious? Who in the world knows exactly when they're going to die... well, some people do, but almost nobody."

Not unless you've set a date and are heading off to die.

"I have a question, Teacher!"

"Can't you just raise your hand one at a time and ask without getting permission for every single question?"

"......"

Suddenly every single student went dead-faced and stared at me.

Can't do that, then.

"All right. Ask your question..."

"When should we die, Teacher?"

"You can die right now."

"But we still want to live, Teacher?"

I didn't want to hear that. Not from a monster.

"Normally humans repeatedly alternate between an active state and an inactive state, and at some point become permanently inactive, so we'd like to know what an appropriate time for us to permanently cease activity would be, Teacher?"

Oh...

Were these things trying to blend in with humans?

Or were they just monsters with that built into them.

"There's no such thing as an appropriate time to die. Not in a country where people young and old kill themselves every other day. Just die at whatever time feels right to you."

What happened to monsters when they died was none of my concern.

"Who was your first love, Teacher?"

"Oh, they're dead."

Whether I'd answered with someone dead or not, the atmosphere didn't shift at all, and a new one raised its hand.

"I have a question, Teacher!"

"Go ahead."

"When you hear that someone has died, should you feel sad, Teacher?"

Something stopped in my throat right then.

"Is death something sad, Teacher?"

"Should we feel sad too, Teacher?"

"Is something wrong with you if you don't feel sad, Teacher?"

"That's..."

Those were things I'd wanted to ask.

Questions I'd had no one to ask, and no one to answer.

When my parents died, what I felt was fear and confusion.

When my Aunt died, what I felt was fear, despair, and anger.

When Uncle and his wife died and Brother disappeared, what I felt was...

I believe it was grief. That much, at least.

"If you don't feel sad... you don't have to force it. But if there's someone nearby who isn't you, and they're sad, you're better off pretending to be sad along with them. If you're the only one who's different, people will think something's off."

In one sense, it really was something being off.

Either way, you were deviating from "normal."

...No, why am I answering this so seriously.

"I have a question, Teacher!"

"Yeah. Go ahead."

"I want to have friends, a partner, family and so on, but how can I get them? Is it possible to trade something I have for them, Teacher?"

"Ha..."

Trade, of all things.

"People aren't things you barter for... With friends or a partner, you just tell the person you want to be friends or partners with that you want that. Honestly."

Of course, in this day and age, how many people actually become friends or couples that way, like something out of a fairy tale.

But these monsters didn't seem like they'd be able to work the social skills needed to get "naturally" close to anyone, so being upfront was probably the better bet.

"And family... family..."

I stood in front of the monsters like a child being punished and turned the word over in my mouth.

I chewed on what family meant.

Memories that couldn't be digested no matter how long I chewed.

"Honestly, I don't know. Whether we even have the right to have something like that..."

"Teacher!"

"Hm. Yeah?"

I snapped my head up at the sudden chorus.

The identical, stamped-out copies were staring straight through me. Creepily, unblinking.

"Do you want a family, Teacher?"

The students asked as one.

"I don't know."

"Would you like us to be your family, Teacher?"

What would that be like.

We might actually make a decent family.

If a good family means a peaceful one.

We would neither hurt each other nor be hurt by each other.

"No."

I just don't feel like that would be family.

How could that be family.

If we couldn't leave a single mark on each other.

If we couldn't leave a single trace of ourselves behind.

"We couldn't be family."

What my Aunt had taught me.

That you can't love without hating. That you can't understand without loving. That only the ones you hate and love and understand can hurt you.

And so we are family.

"Would you like to see your Aunt again, Teacher?"

"Yes."

More than anything.

"Shall we make that happen for you, Teacher?"

"How do..."

I was about to say I'd give everything I had if only it were possible.

Right before I remembered that I had never once said a word about my Aunt out loud.

"...would you even know about my Aunt?"

"......"

These infuriating things just shut their mouths and stared the teacher down again.

"Get lost. I don't need your help."

I'd nearly fallen for it.

Had to be careful around things that could read your thoughts or memories like this.

It meant they might be able to tamper with your mind.

"Don't you want to leave the Labyrinth, Teacher?"

"I do want to leave."

I answered warily, bracing myself.

They kept scribbling something on their papers regardless.

"......"

No more hands went up.

No more chorusing in one voice.

Honestly I'd expected a follow-up question here.

Something like, "Shall we help you leave the Labyrinth?"

The way they'd asked "Shall we be your family?" and "Shall we let you see your Aunt again?"

Drrrk.

Suddenly one of the creatures in the front row shot to its feet.

Then, like collecting an exam, they all passed their papers forward from the very back row.

The sheets they'd been busily writing on every time I answered eventually all gathered with the one now standing.

"You want me to read it?"

"Yes, Teacher!"

Rustle.

I took the stack of white papers.

At the top, in bold rounded script, was a title.

[seminar evaluation
〈The Secret to Well-Being〉: Seon Yu-han]

Ah.

This kind of pattern again...

The kind where whatever answer you gave comes back around to bite you. The kind where you can't even guess how, because it's not judged by human standards but monster standards...

Footnotes:

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