WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
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◈ Surviving as an Office Worker at the Anomaly Management Bureau ◈
Chapter 27: The Rules of Musicals
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“Argh!”
I woke up rubbing my throat.
Even now, I could still feel Song A-rin’s hand wrapped around my neck.
As soon as I woke, I checked on Song A-rin beside me.
Her eyes were closed as though she were asleep.
I lightly tapped her shoulder, but she showed no sign of waking.
Had she survived?
What had that scream I heard before I died been?
“...”
What if the Red Lady had killed her?
‘From this point onward, audience members who have used up all their chances will join our lady.’
I recalled the announcement.
It had called them “chances,” which meant people would never die after just one time.
The problem was that I had no way of knowing how many chances we had.
“...”
For now, let’s think over the information we’d gathered.
I began thinking about the musical.
A musical without a script.
That meant the hypothesis that we could end the musical by destroying its script was currently impossible to put into practice.
Would it have been possible if Jang Chae-yeon had used Telekinesis to sweep this entire place away?
Probably not. This didn’t seem like something that could be solved through physical means.
I thought about the musical and the Red Lady.
To organize what had happened so far:
1. The Red Lady could not be seen.
This was different from information blocking or interference. I didn’t know why, but directly looking at the Red Lady caused fatal damage to my eyes, as though that were simply the natural order of things.
2. The changing locations and their cause.
When I spoke with that child at first, the location changed three times in total. The Red Lady had not appeared immediately, either.
In contrast, Song A-rin said the location had not changed even once. Then the scene suddenly changed.
3. We had more than one chance.
Being caught and killed by the lady once did not immediately make people’s bodies explode like those people’s had. In other words, if we failed again next time, I had to be the one to die.
Let’s set number three aside and focus on one and two.
This was neither another world nor a dream.
What if the place I was in was inside the musical?
What if Kim Jae-heon entered it as a character in the musical?
It made some sense if I considered the conditions for changing scenes in a musical.
The progression of a play was basically driven by dialogue between its characters. Musicals were especially so. Unlike pantomime, they were a genre centered on action and dialogue.
It was a rule of every play.
The story progressed through interaction, eventually leading to a resolution of the conflict or an ending within the play.
If that was true, then this musical was the nastiest of the nasty.
It was designed to require interaction, yet it deliberately put each audience member into the musical separately.
It wasn’t easy to advance a story through monologues when the story required interaction to move forward.
Then what exactly was the Red Lady?
What was it that ruined my eyes the moment I looked at it?
“...”
I still had no real answer to that.
For now, I had decided what to do next.
If I entered the play again, I would move it forward through as much dialogue and action as possible.
Then I would have to adapt based on the result.
Not being able to see was frustrating enough to drive me insane.
If necessary, I would even use the manual.
According to Song A-rin, for some reason, only my manual remained attached to me.
...It wasn’t cursed or self-aware or something, was it?
I looked at Song A-rin again.
She still hadn’t opened her eyes.
Before thinking of a way to end this play, I needed to think of a way to escape this place first. If it came to it, I had to get Song A-rin out before myself.
What would be the easiest escape method?
I tested the simplest hypothesis first.
I sprang to my feet, and as expected, an employee came to meet me shortly afterward.
“Guuueeest... perfooormance...”
“I need to use the restroom.”
“...Thiiis waaay...”
The employee pointed toward the exit, and I hurried in that direction.
I saw a sign that read Restroom, passed it, and quickly headed for the exit.
The theater’s glass doors came into view, and I opened them and stepped outside.
“...Damn it.”
I had definitely opened the outside door and walked through it.
Yet somehow, I was back inside the theater.
I opened the door and went outside again.
If going around and around on a Möbius strip felt like anything, this had to be it.
I looked at my reflection in the glass door.
Could there be a Critical?
[Critical: 0]
Not a chance.
I gave up quickly and headed back into the theater.
Song A-rin was still sitting blankly in her seat as though asleep.
“...Ugh.”
Soon, Song A-rin opened her eyes with a groan.
“Are you okay?”
She had killed me to save me. It sounded strange to say it that way, but she really had done exactly that, so I could only ask her cautiously.
“...Damn it.”
She lowered her head, one hand pressed against her forehead.
“Ms. Song A-rin?”
“...I’m fine.”
Her voice trembled.
“...What happened?”
“...”
She flinched at my question.
Soon, her body began to shake like an aspen tree.
“...Uh.”
“Yes?”
“...There’s no way to win.”
She lifted her head and looked at me.
Her expression was full of despair.
“No matter what I did, I couldn’t win. I kicked it, threw rocks at it, and even used my hidden trump card, but I literally couldn’t land a single effective hit.”
“...”
“It makes no sense. It was like it had been designed from the beginning so that it couldn’t be beaten...!”
“...”
I thought I understood how she felt. I had looked at it with my own eyes, only for my eyes to burst. I knew just how bewildering that was.
I began speaking to comfort her.
I was grateful that she had sacrificed herself for me, and I also felt sorry that I, the one with more life experience, had not been able to help her despite her being my senior.
I carefully chose my words and began speaking slowly.
“Let’s do better next time.”
“...”
“I’ve thought over a few things too, and I’ve come up with some decent ideas.”
“...”
“If anything happens next time, I’ll die. If we share the tickets, we’ll have more chances.”
“...”
“And thank you. I survived because of you.”
“...”
Comforting people was really hard.
Song A-rin raised her head and sighed.
“You should be grateful to me.”
“What?”
She looked at me.
“Since I can infer what you’re feeling right now, I can at least tell that you’re sincere.”
“Ah.”
Then why didn’t you just read my mind?
“That would ruin the fun.”
As though she had inferred my thoughts again, Song A-rin answered teasingly with a smile.
<Intermission begins.>
People woke up.
The same commotion as before. The same announcement as before.
This time, people began exploding again.
There were far more people than before.
It felt like not even thirty percent of the people remained in the theater now, let alone half.
Was it because the suicides had been stopped?
Then how had the others escaped? Did they still have chances left?
A bitter taste filled my mouth.
The words I had seen during the Dream of a Butterfly incident came to mind.
<Humanity’s Last Bastion.>
“...Ms. A-rin.”
“Speak.”
“Can you use something like telepathy?”
“...Do you think that’d work?”
She raised her head and looked at me.
“I don’t have an ability like that. I can only do a certain degree of brainwashing... No, I mean, I can give suggestions to other people’s minds. That’s all.”
“I think that’ll be enough.”
She stared at me.
“What are you planning?”
“It’s just a hypothesis, but hear me out.”
I explained the connection between the musical, the script, and the scenes. After hearing me out, she slowly nodded.
“I understand what you’re saying. It seems logical enough.”
“What do you mean, ‘enough’?”
“Common sense doesn’t apply here anyway. Fine. Maybe we really were sucked into a musical and became characters. All right. Next time, let’s make the story progress more dramatically.”
She looked directly at me.
“So what does that have to do with my ability?”
“Let’s give the people a suggestion.”
“To all these people?”
Her expression crumpled.
“What should I tell them?”
“Like I said, we’ll proceed under the assumption that this is a play. Tell them to monologue as much as possible.”
“...Will that be enough?”
“And since this is a musical, there might be other characters besides the lady.”
“That’s possible.”
“If things get difficult, let’s tell them to let those characters kill them.”
“...Like how I killed you.”
I nodded at her words. She looked around at the empty seats, and her expression hardened.
“So many people are already gone...”
“...”
“We have no choice. Wait a moment.”
Soon, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and began concentrating.
My migraine began to worsen.
Without realizing it, I pressed a hand to my temple. The expressions of the people who had been screaming or panicking gradually became blank.
Soon, Song A-rin exhaled heavily and opened her eyes.
In that short time, her complexion had turned terribly pale.
“You could use group hypnosis too?”
“I can. But afterward, it’s so exhausting that I feel like I’m going to die.”
Still, her expression was more hopeful than before.
“This should help more people survive, right?”
“Let’s hope so.”
<One minute remains until the end of intermission.>
It felt like the intermission had become shorter than before.
“Are you ready?”
“To be honest, I had it easy just now. Are you okay, Ms. Song A-rin?”
“I’m not.”
She answered while pressing her forehead.
“But I have to be. I’m an employee of the Management Bureau.”
<Intermission has ended.>
Soon, the announcement played, and my vision darkened again.
* * *
“All right, bring up a conversation topic.”
Song A-rin spoke as she looked at me in a wasteland without a single blade of grass.
She deliberately swung her arms widely as she looked at me.
Her purple hair glittered in the sunlight.
“Let’s see...”
What should I talk about?
“This is something that happened while I was inside the Cube...”
In the end, I was the one who had to tell the story again.
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