WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ How to Die in the Office Labyrinth ◈
Chapter 99: Encounter with a Lost Child
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My breath stopped for just a moment.
Not only because of the current that had surged through me all at once, sharp and instant as a lightning strike.
It was because I knew the answer to that question.
Because I had been waiting for this moment.
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D o y o u R e m e m b e r M e ‽
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......Yeah. I remember. Of course I do.
Ding!
Another sound effect, and a new window appeared. As if the circuit of wires connected to my body had read my thoughts directly.
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☻
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In that instant.
The first thing cut off was my sight.
It wasn't that the monitor went dark.
My vision had been completely severed.
Next was hearing.
The irritating whir of the computer cooling fans was gone.
Next was smell.
The low, persistent odor of plastic that had been holding heat for a long time, sitting beneath the artificially dehumidified dry air, was gone.
Next was taste.
No matter how much I worked my lips against each other, all that touched the tip of my tongue was something faintly lukewarm, nothing more than water.
Next was touch.
The pressure of the wires coiled around me like a vise grew faint.
"Ah. Ah......"
No. I hate this. This, this kind of thing.
This, I......
I had been shut entirely inside myself. At last.
"Ngh, ugh......"
All that remained of me was the current flowing through my body along my spine.
Pain alone whispered that I was still alive. That I was still connected. That I was still not alone. That I was still touching the outside world.
"Hgh, ugh......!"
And that even that pain was under the control of something that was not me.
"......"
Not even a scream could make it out of my mouth anymore.
My heart began to beat in a wrong rhythm.
Electric signals forced into my body shoved my will aside and overwrote everything.
Some deaths have no sound.
A final signal arrived through the black wire......
And the phenomenon called "I" was forcibly shut down.
* * *
"If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Seon Yu-han-ssi?"
My brother, whom I had finally managed to meet again after such a long time and so many Labyrinths......
Had gotten a little mean.
* * *
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D o y o u R e m e m b e r M e ‽
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Yeah. I remember.
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𝙷𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚘, ■[Time]░!
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Hey.
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☻
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* * *
"If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Seon Yu-han-ssi?"
Let me correct that.
It wasn't a little mean.
A lot meaner.
* * *
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D o y o u R e m e m b e r M e ‽
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Sure, I remember.
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𝙷𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚘, ■[Time]░!
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Hey, Brother.
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D o e s t h e m a c h i n e r e m a i n o r g o I r e m a i n y o u a r e g o n e w h o a m I
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A message I had seen once before, in the place where I could have been happiest.
I read it letter by letter, blinking as I went.
Sometimes slow and pressing, like holding a hand over a wound. Sometimes quick and sharp, like jabbing one.
......Yeah. Glad you're calling me that. But I changed my name a long time ago.
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☻
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* * *
"If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Seon Yu-han-ssi?"
......If you're upset that I took your names without permission and made them mine, I can't help that.
Death is like that, in the end.
It forces an unfair relationship onto the living.
* * *
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D o y o u R e m e m b e r M e ‽
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Yeah. Always.
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𝙷𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚘, ■[Time]░!
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Hey, you too.
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D o e s t h e m a c h i n e r e m a i n o r g o I r e m a i n y o u a r e g o n e w h o a m I
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Yeah.
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a h . . . .
. . y o . . . .
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I know. That you're my brother. That you were my brother.
......When I got that text in the parking garage, I didn't believe it.
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☻
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* * *
"If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Seon Yu-han-ssi?"
* * *
One loop at a time, one new line at a time.
Our conversation grew a little longer with each.
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D o y o u R e m e m b e r M e ‽
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Of course I remember.
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𝙷𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚘, ■[Time]░!
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Yeah, hey.
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D o e s t h e m a c h i n e r e m a i n o r g o I r e m a i n y o u a r e g o n e w h o a m I
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Yeah. Why?
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a h . . . .
. . y o . . . .
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I know, that you're my brother.
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D i d y o u ▶ f o r g e t m e ‽
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How could I. I told you I remember.
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☻
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* * *
"If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Seon Yu-han-ssi?"
* * *
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D o y o u R e m e m b e r M e ‽
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The same question, repeating. The same answer, repeating. The same death, repeating.
But I wasn't tired of it. I didn't grow sick of it.
Someone trapped too long in the Labyrinth becomes part of it in the end.
My brother, who had been exactly my age now, had become a lost child forever.
A child who had lost his way, and so, a child of the Labyrinth.
You can't be angry at a child who has lost the place he was supposed to return to.
I didn't even have the right to be angry.
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D i d y o u ▶ f o r g e t m e ‽
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Not at all. I've never forgotten you.
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Then 【you too】 【die with me】
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"......Is that what you want?"
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☻
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* * *
"If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Seon Yu-han-ssi?"
What do I do.
I......
I can't grant even that simple request.
Not unless I make it out of this Labyrinth alive.
* * *
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Then 【you too】 【die with me】
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I'm sorry. I, me too......I want to. I want to do that for you.
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coldlonelylonelylonelyagonizinglonelylonelylonelymissinglonelylonelylonelysufferatinglonelylonelylonelyenviouslonelylonelylonelyscaredlonelylonelylonelypitifullonelylonelylonelydisgustinglonely
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I know. I know too. Me too. It's all my fault. I'm sorry. It's all my fault. If only it hadn't been me. If only I hadn't existed. Aunt was right. I should have died with you that day too.
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☻
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* * *
"If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Seon Yu-han-ssi?"
* * *
With every line that accumulated in our conversation, so too accumulated the deaths, nerve circuits burning out, blood vessels cooking and bursting, muscles crumbling.
But that was all right.
My brother kept asking me to die, and I kept failing to grant that simple request.
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☻
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If this eases even a little of that anger, I'm fine with it.
* * *
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▶ Seon Yu-han
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Yeah. But listen, Brother.
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【Give back your name】 g i v e b a c k w h a t i s m i n e
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You can't say that.
Not even you.
Not that. Not that one thing.
Have you forgotten?
My name is not yours alone.
"So......I'm sorry. I can't give it back. I don't want to give it back."
If even this answer isn't good enough for you......
I'll have no choice but to accept it.
That you......are simply mimicking their son, my brother, the way those monsters do.
That Kim Je-yu no longer remains inside you.
Diring, a sound effect that might have come from an old computer chimed out.
I closed my eyes to brace myself for the smiling face I would have to face again.
* * *
Ding!
What came instead of the Interview Administrator's voice was that sound effect I'd heard until I was sick of it.
Tiding!
"......"
I slowly opened my eyes.
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▓
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No more black laughter. No more black solitude. No more black death.
Pow.
The black server units packed into the server room.
The thousands of tiny indicator lights that had gone dark all began to light up at once.
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♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
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Tiring, ding! Tiding! Tiriring!
Old sound effects in different pitches poured from the monitors, and thousands of blue lights blinked in rhythm.
Like notes on a sheet of music, each shining with its own beat and its own pattern.
And together, becoming one, they sang.
It was the strangest......and most beautiful melody I had ever heard in my life.
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♪
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Diring......
The moment the last note ended.
I was already free.
I had been standing there in a daze, staring at the screen without having managed to do anything at all. Then, with a crackle.
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𝙷𝙸𝙽𝚃：𝚆𝙷𝙾 𝙰𝚁𝙴 𝚈𝙾𝚄
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A message window popped up and vanished. Like a joke.
Where that popup had been, the window that was there before all of this exchange had started was still sitting where it had always been.
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Activating the lock.
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A notice saying the door lock of the General Affairs Team office, which had lost power, would now be activated.
Was the hint about that door lock "WHO ARE YOU"?
"......Ha."
Give with one hand, take with the other.
Honestly. Gotten so much meaner.
I shuffled out of the server room, weaving through the black shelving units.
"Oh."
I was about to step into the corridor without thinking when a light from a monitor in the corner of the blacked-out office stopped me.
This is......
Error messages were layered one on top of another across the screen, as if they had all fired off in a row.
The same thing that had happened when Kim Hee-sook was in the server room, when error windows had popped up on this monitor in response to what was happening at the time, had apparently happened to me as well.
Click.
Starting from the bottom-most error message, I pulled them up one by one and checked each.
The error that had probably been generated first, at the moment my brother seized control of the server system.
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☻
5∅8 L∞⁋ ↁe†ec☥ed
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508 Loop Detected.
......Loop detected.
The string "아 ㅇ ㅇ / ㅇ ㅛ ㅡ ㅠ" consists of Korean vowel and consonant jamo fragments that do not form coherent words; they appear to be the corrupted, disintegrating remnants of speech from Brother's digital form, analogous to garbled data. They have been rendered as spaced dots ("a h . . . . / . . y o . . . .") to convey the sense of broken, partial utterance while removing the untranslated Korean characters. The "時" character (meaning "time") in "𝙷𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚘, ■時░!" has been rendered as "[Time]" to flag the Hanja without leaving untranslated CJK in the body text; the symbol functions as a corrupted or encoded placeholder in the original.
Footnotes:
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