Chapter 15

Chapter 15. What the Hell, Give Me Back My Memories

“What shall we play today?”

The cheerful, humming voice snapped me wide awake.

Was it giving us a choice? What game to play?

“Ms. Hwang Juyeon, do you know any games that could tire kids out? Something not dangerous…….”

Hwang Juyeon and I quickly began a strategy meeting.

The child Jeong Jiho, still in my arms, kept their mouth shut, but I did not particularly want to burden them.

To begin with, an adult who cared for children might know more about this kind of thing than the child directly involved.

“I do meet children often, but I’ve never raised one myself, so I don’t really know……. It has to be something where they move their bodies a lot, right?”

“Yes. But no hide-and-seek or tag.”

Those kinds of games were out of the question.

They were perfect games for getting caught by the tagger and dying.

“Ah! What about that? You know the game where you keep a balloon floating for as long as possible without letting it fall to the floor. By blowing it from below.”

“Uh, I think that sounds good. They would have to keep moving, and blowing hard would probably drain their strength too…….”

“Oh my, what a shame. I am afraid that game will be difficult.”

That damned thing, which had only quietly watched without interfering in our plotting, cut in at the very end.

Its voice sounded genuinely sorry, and that made me furious.

“Our children do not know how to breathe, you see. Ah, except for Jiho.”

No, please.

Then what the hell are we supposed to do?

I understood that they did not breathe because they were toys, but honestly, by that logic, it did not make sense for those things to move in the first place.

While I grumbled inwardly, Hwang Juyeon carefully offered an opinion beside me.

“Uh, how about just a normal ball game? Is it a bit too narrow for that……. Then maybe kicking a balloon like jegi?”

That did not sound bad.

I rolled my eyes slightly.

The goose with black pupils was humming “Island Baby” under its breath.

What if that bastard rejected this one too, saying its children would have difficulty with it?

How could we tire out those “children”?

Could those things even get tired?

What was the standard for being tired?

Would they lie down and fall asleep like people…….

Wait.

A lullaby?

“Ms. Hwang Juyeon.”

“Yes?”

“Let us do action songs.”

“Pardon?”

“You know, dancing along with song lyrics. We do about four or five songs, then use a lullaby at the end to make the children lie down and sleep.”

My plan was to first drain whatever stamina they might or might not have with a few songs, then naturally put them to sleep along with a lullaby.

Hwang Juyeon glanced at the Goose Teacher, which was humming a lullaby, then nodded in agreement.

I pointed to the electronic piano placed on one side of the daycare center.

“I think you should handle the accompaniment, Ms. Hwang Juyeon. Since you can play the piano.”

“Ah, understood.”

Immediately afterward, I explained the game we would play to the Goose Teacher, and fortunately, it accepted it. Though it looked displeased.

Since permission had already been given for the child Jeong Jiho to leave, they did not participate and were able to sit near the entrance and rest.

“……Hands up, hands down, stretch, stretch…….”

“……Hop, hop, let’s jump, I am…….”

“……Jump, let’s all jump together…….”

And so, the clumsy, creaking show of toys and humans, unbearable to watch without tears, gradually neared its end.

Ding…….

As Hwang Juyeon slowly lifted her foot from the pedal, the last note of the children’s song scattered gloomily.

I gave Hwang Juyeon a look, meaning it was time to move on to “Island Baby.”

“Ms. Hwang Juyeon……?”

For some reason, Hwang Juyeon’s expression was dark.

It did not seem to be simply because the lights inside the daycare center were off.

“Mr. Seon Yuhan.”

“Yes.”

Not only I, but even the toys stood motionless and stared at the piano accompanist.

“Did I…… ever tell you I knew how to play the piano?”

What was she suddenly saying?

“Yes. You did. You said you taught piano for your main jo, b…….”

Ah, damn it.

The sweat gathered at the back of my neck seemed to turn cold.

“There is no way. No, that is true, but I never told you that, Mr. Seon Yuhan. I am sure of it.”

That was right. I had no memory of hearing that. None at all.

“Ms. Hwang Juyeon, that is not important right now. You need to keep playing—”

“—Oh my, goodness. Who might this be? Mr. Seon Yuhan is…… no longer the mage teacher’s colleague, is he?”

Something happened to me.

Last time. In the library.

“Uri Saenal Daycare Center prohibits entry by outsiders.”

At the same time as that lightning-bolt realization, the soulless pupils all fixed on me at once.

5-3. Do Not Draw Your Colleague’s Suspicion in the Daycare Center and Be Demoted to Outsider Status.

“If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Mr. Seon Yuhan?”

“Fu.”

Ck……, my whole body seemed to burn hot in every corner.

“Could you give me a moment. Please?”

“Of course.”

Choi Jaeha, too.

And Hwang Juyeon, too.

Strange information I did not even remember had wedged itself inside my head.

Until thoughts like Choi Jaeha seeming to be the youngest child in his family, or as if he had thrown a fire extinguisher at a corridor window, came to mind, I did not pay much attention.

They were not important in the first place.

If anything, I assumed it was an aftereffect of something similar to torture. Whether because of the regression, the golden scale, or whatever else.

A temporary disorder I could neither control nor fix right now.

I did not think much of it. It was not even the first time.

But seeing how my other memories were intact, and only information concerning people I had met inside the Labyrinth, such as Choi Jaeha or Hwang Juyeon, was getting mixed up, it did not seem like it was simply PTSD.

In terms of timing, it was after I had been forced to participate in the reading club with Kim Gilyoung last time.

No, now even the memory that I had been alone with Kim Gilyoung in that reading club was suspicious.

There might have been more deaths I did not remember.

……If there had been an important clue about the condition to go down to the first floor in Book Bang Ollae, and I had lost that memory.

“Mr. Interviewer.”

“Yes. Please speak.”

“This building has become a Labyrinth.”

“Pardon?”

“Excuse me. Please get up.”

The words came out smoothly now, like a counselor reciting insurance terms and conditions. At times like this, do this; at times like that, do that…….

Press.

While I was giving the interviewer various warnings, I pressed the fire hose cabinet the moment I saw it.

RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!

I turned my eyes away from the interviewer’s shoulder as they flinched at the sudden alarm.

It was not absolutely necessary to press it.

But if someone had to press it, that someone had to be me.

“Hold the handrail properly as you go down.”

This time too, Choi Jaeha would have heard the alarm and gotten off the elevator early, so I went down the emergency stairs with the interviewer.

Though it would only be for a short while anyway.

“Mm, thank you. Having you here makes me feel a little relieved, Mr. Seon Yuhan.”

At those words, I wanted to force myself to smile.

Me too, I wanted to say.

CRASH, RUMBLE, CRAAASH!

BANG!

CRAAASH, THUD!

A roar like the sky collapsing echoed through the emergency passage.

CLUNK.

I opened the second-floor emergency exit alone and stared blankly at the empty corridor.

That person. Could they still be alive somewhere?

I hoped they had not tripped from shock.

Well, I was probably the only person who would die that stupidly.

CLUNK.

Not long after, Hwang Juyeon came out from another emergency exit near the one I had used.

“No, why is it the second floor……. Oh.”

Hwang Juyeon’s eyes wavered when she found me.

“Uh, excuse me, but over there…… are the stairs a little strange?”

“Huh? Uh, yes! Exactly! You too?”

When I spoke first with a suitably awkward expression, wariness receded from Hwang Juyeon’s eyes, and relief rose in its place.

“The alarm suddenly started ringing, so I ran out in a panic and went down to the first floor, but no, I thought I was just still half-asleep. Just now, I opened the door to the basement first floor too.”

“I kept coming out here too, so…… I had just stopped for a moment to think about it. Though it is an ominous thought.”

“Ah……. Could that thought possibly be. Ah, wait. Do not say it. Ugh, ahhh.”

Hwang Juyeon clenched her fists, gritted her teeth, and for a while lost human language, only making ughhh sounds as she trembled.

Then she barely lifted her head.

“So this place is now a La……, La…… crazy. Gasp, no, I am sorry. I was not saying that to you.”

“Yes. I know…….”

In any case, we reached an agreement that this place had now become a damned Labyrinth.

“But, um. Ah. Come to think of it, what should I call you? I am Hwang Juyeon.”

“My name is Seon Yuhan.”

After Hwang Juyeon and I finished our brief introductions, we opened the door to Book Bang Ollae.

As expected, Kim Gilyoung was there, unable to escape, and before long, the reading club began.

“No, the contents of this…….”

After opening their books, Hwang Juyeon and Kim Gilyoung raised their heads with bewildered expressions.

Each of us ended up reading a biography where the person sitting to our left was the protagonist.

Kim Gilyoung read Hwang Juyeon’s story, and Hwang Juyeon read mine.

[Kim Gilyoung was born at 7:32 p.m. on September 16.]

I received Kim Gilyoung’s story.

[Kim Gilyoung’s father used to lie face-down on the floor with his young daughter on his back and read newspapers or books. Reading something was an exceedingly natural part of daily life for Kim Gilyoung.]

I tried hard not to skim through the early part I had read last time.

I did not want to be treated like a heretic and die again.

[“You went to Sangrim Elementary, right?”

After the middle school entrance ceremony ended, Kim Gilyoung had been sitting quietly, unable to easily join the noisy classmates around her because of her introverted personality, when someone cheerfully spoke to her. Hong Donghee. Kim Gilyoung glanced at the name tag to check.

“I guess you and I are the only ones from our elementary school in our class. Let’s eat lunch together later!”

Dark skin, a mouth that opened wide enough to show her uvula when she smiled, footsteps that always seemed to bounce. Hong Donghee became Kim Gilyoung’s favorite friend.]

After the elementary school section ended and the story moved to middle school, parts I had not read last time began appearing.

Ah.

But something was…….

“The reading club participants read their respective books.”

The moment my concentration scattered, a scolding poured out like a ghost.

[“Gilyoung, are you interested in writing? There is an essay contest being held by the city. If you are interested, you should try it.”

Kim Gilyoung was closer to the librarian, who was also the teacher in charge of the library club, than to her homeroom teacher. It was around this time that Kim Gilyoung began writing ‘librarian’ in the future dream column.]

I immersed myself in reading for a long while, then felt strange again and raised my head.

Something…… felt wrong.

Some unnamed thing seemed to be coiling in my head, hatching eggs.

Kim Gilyoung, who was beside me, seemed to feel my gaze and widened her eyes as if asking what was wrong.

Hwang Juyeon also looked this way.

Wait.

At last, the question broke through its shell and took complete form, making my whole body tremble as if with a chill.

My fingertips grew cold.

Why.

Why didn’t I go to the daycare center?