WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS

Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈

Chapter 96: An Unexpected Visitor

──────

"......"

I stood at the threshold of the IT Operations Room for a moment, taking in everything my eyes were telling me.

Cables. Snaking across the floor, up the walls, across the ceiling like vines, like roots, sprawling and tangled until they covered every surface.

"Ugh, good lord, what is all this?"

Cables.

Between the thick black ones, thin threads of red and yellow and white and blue branched out like blossoms.

"Oh my! Goodness......"

"Watch your step."

Kim Hee-sook, coming in behind me, caught her foot on a bundle of cables that had crept all the way to the doorway and nearly toppled over, but somehow caught her balance.

I pulled my reflexively outstretched hand back and looked around the blacked-out office.

The time was a little before four o'clock.

The sun hadn't set yet, so decent light came in through the windows.

In one corner of the dim office, a single monitor glowed. The only one on.

I was about to head there first.

"But, um, those cables...... they look like they're all coming from over there. Do we even need to check that first......"

Kim Hee-sook pointed at something.

Follow the cables sprawling madly across the floor and walls and they all converged at a single point.

A door set into the far wall of the office.

Wide open.

Cables crept out through the doorframe in tight clusters, packed so close together the passage had narrowed to barely enough for one person to squeeze through.

From the darkness beyond, a faint bluish-white glow seeped out.

Zzzz......

With a low hum of massive machines at work.

"Why don't we split up, then. I'll check this computer for a moment, so please take a look over there first, Kim Hee-sook-ssi."

"Ah, uh, should I......"

She seemed a little uneasy, but accepted it with surprisingly little resistance.

Maybe she didn't know much about invasive-type Labyrinths?

Was that why she had no fear?

I was sending her in first to find out whether going through that door meant dying or not.

"Ugh, oh dear, it's so hard to walk......"

She picked her way forward, stepping only where the floor had no cables.

"Ah, this is......"

Kim Hee-sook reached the door the cables were streaming from, leaned just her upper body forward, and checked the nameplate.

"The server room! It's the server room, Seon Yu-han-ssi...!"

"Ah."

The server room.

That explained why the office felt smaller than the IT Operations Room looked from the outside.

So the Information Support Team office and the server room were connected here.

It made sense. Even the cables made sense now.

"Hmm......"

Kim Hee-sook still seemed reluctant to actually go in, craning her neck past the threshold without crossing it.

I used the gap to check the one lit monitor in the corner.

Whether it was the Uiwi Guild's internal intranet portal or the Labyrinth's imitation of one, a single square window floated in the middle of the screen.

-----------------------

Name |

Employee ID |

Password |

[ ] Remember me

| LOGIN |

-----------------------

Ah. A mistake.

"Kim Hee-sook-ssi, just a moment, over here--"

"--Hueaaaaaah!"

I should have had her log in before sending her over.

"Aah, I'm, ugh, khk...!"

She must have stepped into the server room in the moment I was checking the monitor, because the second I looked up, her scream hit me.

Crackle.

"Hm?"

At the same time, an error message popped up over the login screen.

-----------------------

:-(

Sa403 Forb1dden

-----------------------

What's that supposed to mean......?

Oh.

403 Forbidden.

Connected to entering the server room without logging in?

"......"

The scream cut off.

Crackle.

Another error window flickered into view alongside a glitch.

-----------------------

:-(

410 Gone

-----------------------

410 Gone.

Kim Hee-sook was dead.

So there was definitely something inside the server room.

What a waste.

I should have thought it through more carefully.

Asking for an employee ID meant it probably required an actual employee.

Maybe the rule was that only someone who'd logged in could enter the server room.

The problem was I had no employee number. Obviously.

I hadn't even finished the interview, let alone been hired.

"Hmm......"

Still, the Labyrinth was a gentle and fair place, so there would be some rule in place for outside visitors too.

Something like being allowed in if you accompanied someone who'd already logged in.

The way Uri Saennal Daycare had permitted entry with an authorized person.

Or, if the criteria were a bit looser......

Click.

I turned and walked back out of the IT Operations Room.

If the standard for "someone who's logged in" was loose enough.

Stealing someone else's credentials might work.

"Yun Geon-min-ssi?"

Conveniently, there was one more employee still around.

* * *

"......"

Now where did he go.

The corridor was dead silent.

"Yun Geon-min-ssi?"

No answer. Only my voice bouncing off the walls in a low echo.

A full loop around the twelfth floor and there wasn't even a shadow of Yun Geon-min.

......He hadn't gone to the bathroom, had he?

Clatter.

"Anyone in here?"

The men's room was empty.

Well, if Yun Geon-min had gone in and something had gone wrong, the door would have been locked from the start.

Like when Hwang Ju-yeon and Lee Na-hyun and Jeong Ji-ho had gotten trapped in the women's bathroom that one time.

[Finance and Accounting Team | Financial Accounting Team]

Maybe he'd gone into one of the Management Support Division offices alone......

No, that couldn't be.

I stared at the Finance and Accounting Team door for a moment, then shook my head.

He'd peer in from outside the IT Operations Room, sure, but he wasn't the type to just wander somewhere on his own. Not a man who clearly valued his own life.

Still, if he had, that was a real problem.

"Ha......"

Now who was going to log in for me.

[Human Resources Team]

Maybe poking around the Human Resources Team office would help.

Oh.

Come to think of it, I should really bring an HR employee along for that too.

You really could always find a use for people if you kept them around.

Well, nothing to be done about it. I'd look into that next time.

Slip.

Still, I needed to check the HR office.

There was no point going back to the IT Operations Room to attempt a login when I didn't even know how many digits the employee ID had. That was just asking to die.

"Yun Geon-min-ssi?"

I called out just in case. Of course no one was there.

The Human Resources Team office sat empty and disheveled, the way an office looks at lunchtime. Pens and markers scattered across desks. Chairs shoved out at odd angles. Thin cardigans draped over seatbacks. Desks that hadn't been tidied.

The traces of people who'd vanished mid-workday.

"Hmm......"

Though surely they closed their drawers on a normal day?

I went through every desk on the chance that someone had written down their employee ID and password somewhere, and something struck me as off.

Why were so many drawers left not quite closed.

And the higher the rank, the worse it seemed to be.

"......"

Something didn't sit right.

The Labyrinth was a strange place by nature, sure.

But even its "strangeness" was usually strange in its own distinct way.

This was......

Petty was one word for it.

"Human" might be another.

I filed away the names on the desks with the open drawers and moved on.

I had a guess, but there was also a real chance this was just a Labyrinth anomaly.

Thud.

The break room here was much better than the one at Neosoft.

More variety in drinks and snacks. No bodies either.

Slide.

I opened the large refrigerator, pulled out a small water bottle and a can of sports drink, and shoved them into my pockets.

It had been nice having that kid's daycare bag to stash things in.

I briefly considered borrowing a bag from somewhere here, then dropped the idea.

After nearly ninety runs through this Labyrinth, I knew it didn't require hauling bulky items around.

Not when alone, at least.

Light, portable food and drinks, some painkillers, and bandages were enough for now.

Crinkle.

I unwrapped an energy bar and ate it while scanning the office again.

[Staff - Yun Geon-min]

Honestly, Yun Geon-min's desk was the strangest of all.

Clean. Unnervingly so.

The basics were there, sure, a computer, a phone, pens.

But not a single sticky note on the monitor, the desk, or the partition divider.

The drawers were empty except for some cables. No work planner, no documents. Nothing on the desk at all.

Not even a takeout cup with just the meltwater left.

He'd taken his personal items when he left earlier, fine.

But could a desk really have this little sign of a life lived at it?

A normal office worker's desk would have something. Yun Geon-min's had nothing.

It looked like a desk with no owner.

Was this one not human either?

But that seemed too......

I thought about the sullen-faced man and the commuter bag he'd been carrying.

In the middle of being trapped in an invasive-type Labyrinth, rifling through the desks of missing superiors was an entirely human thing to do, wasn't it?

A truly great act of humanity that no Labyrinth monster could ever hope to imitate.

If that had been a monster, well, that would be unsettling in its own right.

"......"

Strange, regardless.

That was all the Human Resources Team search had turned up.

Every computer was off, and no careless employee had left personal information lying around in the open.

Maybe the Human Resources Team was especially security-conscious.

That left the Finance and Accounting Team and the General Affairs Team.

Either of those would probably be just as careful about security as HR.

* * *

......No, even so.

How could there be nothing at all.

Who ran this company so tight that employees left zero traces.

I supposed data leaks were the last of their worries. Good for them.

Some of us were about to die because of it.

Granted, given the industry, with astronomical sums moving through Red Thread field contracts and artifact trades, it wasn't hard to understand......

Clatter.

[General Affairs Team]

And to top it off, the General Affairs Team door was locked, so I couldn't even get inside.

The Finance and Accounting Team and Human Resources Team had locks too, but neither had actually stopped me from entering.

This was more likely the Labyrinth's doing than a person's, so the right condition would open it.

Maybe the clue for unlocking the General Affairs Team was somewhere inside the IT Operations Room.

I gave up at the locked door and wrapped up my tour of the Management Support Division.

Nothing to show for it.

'Come down anytime you need help. You know best where to find us, Seon Yu-han-ssi.'

Technically, I could still go down to basement five right now and pry the CEO's employee ID out of him.

But I didn't want to go that far with my hand out.

Asking for an employee number would mean revealing the time regression first, and with no life-or-death urgency pressing me, telling that lunatic was a gamble. Who knew what he'd do.

Whatever was happening up here, I wanted to handle it up here. If at all possible.

I was heading back to the IT Operations Room with the thought that I'd try everything I still could, when.

Clang, boom......

My footsteps stopped dead.

What was that sound?

No, I knew what this sound was.

I also knew this sound had no business being heard right now.

Boom......

I turned around slowly.

This sound.

B5... 2... 3...

An elevator moving.

The very same elevator that Chae Jae-ha and I had fallen in.

Moving.

Coming up.

12... Ding!

"The doors are opening."

Footnotes:

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