Chapter 17

Chapter 17. Exit Msic

“Why…… why can’t I get out?”

The three of us fell into confusion.

Hwang Juyeon and I could go in and out without any problem.

But only Kim Gilyoung could not come outside.

Even when we grabbed Kim Gilyoung and pulled, our hands lost hold of her at the threshold.

When she was dead, she came out just fine.

“What on earth is the problem…….”

Suddenly, my eyes went to Kim Gilyoung’s employee ID.

“Librarian.”

“Yes, sob, yes?”

“No, I was wondering if it might be because you are a librarian.”

“What does that mean?”

“There may be rules that apply only to librarians. Unlike ordinary visitors like us.”

Just as the students of Labyrinthized Seonghwa High School had to finish their graduation ceremony to leave the Labyrinth.

Just as the mask monsters in charge of each grade could not enter the faculty office.

Invasive Labyrinths sometimes reflected an individual’s personal information or the characteristics of an existing space in their rules.

“Then you’re saying there’s a separate condition for Ms. Gilyoung to leave? How are we supposed to find that…….”

When Hwang Juyeon let out a heavy sigh, Kim Gilyoung began crying in earnest.

“I’m sorry, sob, I’m sorry. I know saying this is really selfish, sob, but I don’t want you to leave me behind. Not here, leaving only me behiiind……! I’m, I’m really trash, huuung…….”

My breath caught in my throat.

I knew that fear.

The hopelessness of the one left behind. The helplessness of the one being weighed.

“I……!”

While I was only biting my lips, Hwang Juyeon hurriedly pulled the librarian close and soothed her.

“I’ll stay here with you. Don’t worry too much. I won’t abandon you. Okay? Stop crying. Mr. Seon Yuhan.”

“Yes?”

The freelance mage and piano instructor waved her free hand.

“You go ahead first. Who was it, Jihu? Jiho? Anyway, you said there was a child you knew.”

Hwang Juyeon let me go like that.

Go to the child as soon as possible. She did not even add the burden of telling me to come back.

“Understood. Then I will definitely…….”

At that consideration, shame and discomfort surged up in me before anything else, and I mumbled, lowered my head, and came outside as if running away.

Hwang Juyeon was probably that kind of person even before she read my story and came to know about me.

I forced the distracting thoughts away and ran to Uri Saenal Daycare Center.

The short distance from Book Bang Ollae to the daycare center felt horrifyingly long.

Slide.

At last, I opened the daycare center door and went inside.

“Oh my!”

The teacher, whose vicious personality was proportional to its worthless appearance, looked up at me with black pupils.

“Hello! May I ask what brings you here?”

Damn it. It seemed not to know me.

No way. Had I really skipped the daycare center?

That made no sense. There was no way I had.

“Perhaps you are here regarding an admission consultation?”

“No, I am…….”

“Perhaps you are one of our children’s guardians?”

Guardian.

At that word, my mind, which had stopped working for a moment, began turning quickly.

“Yes. Is the child Jeong Jiho not here?”

Yes. I had no doubt that, in this loop too, I had stopped by the daycare center with Hwang Juyeon before going to the library.

I had earned the right to be the temporary guardian of the child Jeong Jiho, and I had performed that action-song show to drain the toys’ strength. Of course, this time, without carelessly making Hwang Juyeon suspicious.

“I should definitely be a temporary guardian.”

At that, the Goose Teacher stood still for several seconds without saying a word.

Like an artificial intelligence taking a long time to load after receiving a request from a user that it could not understand.

“Mm. It seems there has been some misunderstanding?”

At last, the stuffed goose tilted its white neck and spoke.

“There is no child named Jeong Jiho enrolled at Uri Saenal Daycare Center.”

At the chilling sensation that felt as if my solar plexus had shriveled, I swallowed without realizing it.

Suppose, by some one-in-a-million chance, that I had gone to the library first for a reason even I could not remember.

But it was saying it did not know a child who definitely attended this daycare center?

A child whose name had been clearly stuck on a locker?

And that from a Labyrinth monster whose very rule involved tormenting that child?

“Perhaps you are an employee of Yuwi Guild?”

That control-freak library that gave penalties when one failed to follow its instructions.

It seemed that, as a penalty, it did not simply erase memories, but wiped away the very existence itself and manipulated all the memories and circumstances related to it.

“Since you are not answering, I suppose you are not.”

In other words, the child named Jeong Jiho had simply vanished whole? As if they had never existed here at all?

Then if the Labyrinth was resolved in this state, what would happen to that child? To that child’s parents?

“Then that means an adult male outsider who is not a Yuwi Guild employee set foot in our daycare center. Spouting nonsense about being the guardian of a child who does not even exist?”

It was only fortunate that, because of the loop, the memories of previous rounds remained with me.

Just imagining what might have happened if I had tried to leave the Labyrinth after completely forgetting that child’s existence was horrifying.

“Uri Saenal Daycare Center prohibits entry by outsiders.”

***

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

I familiarly explained the current situation and precautions to the interviewer, sounded the fire alarm, went down to the second floor, and met Hwang Juyeon.

From there, things proceeded similarly to the round where I had been disqualified from being Hwang Juyeon’s colleague after saying, “Since you can play the piano,” but more smoothly.

We discovered the child Jeong Jiho being punished under the guise of education at the daycare center, received permission from the stuffed goose to let the child leave early, and clumsily danced to action songs in order to play with the “children” until they got tired.

And from here on was new.

At least, according to my current memories, this was the first time.

“……The child remained alone…….”

We safely succeeded in making the “children” lie down with their arms as pillows and drift off to sleep to the lullaby.

“Oh my, the children have fallen fast asleep. They must have had so much fun playing.”

For the first time, the worthless-looking stuffed goose monster lowered its voice to a whisper.

It looked straight at me with its two black-bean eyes and slowly bent its white neck.

“Thank you for playing so well with our children. Then goodbye, guardians. Goodbye to you too, Jiho.”

“Mm.”

With the exhausted and sleeping Jeong Jiho in my arms, I vaguely passed it off with an answer that was not quite an answer.

Slide.

The entrance to Uri Saenal Daycare Center opened smoothly, as if it had never been locked.

“Ugh……. Oof, my hands are numb. I was more nervous than during a competition, seriously.”

As soon as the door closed, Hwang Juyeon leaned against the wall as if collapsing, shook out both hands, and massaged them.

“Mr. Seon Yuhan, you should sit and rest for a bit. Are you all right? You look completely drained.”

“No. Let us go down quickly.”

I lightly patted the back of the child using my shoulder as a pillow.

“Saving Jiho might have been the condition for going down to the first floor.”

“Ah, that could be true. Let us hurry.”

To state only the conclusion, I carried the child on my back and went down what might have been the stairs to heaven or the stairs to hell, but nothing changed.

Only my arms and legs trembled more.

That said, I could not wake the child, who was sleeping so peacefully and soundly, midway through.

Given the nature of these damned stairs, if I stopped midway, I would fall.

I had no idea how parents carried children on their backs.

“Ah, right! Come to think of it, there was a librarian, right? She cannot possibly still be trapped in the library, can she……?”

“Um, Ms. Hwang Juyeon, then I will…….”

Ah, damn it.

Just as I was about to say I would go to the library alone, I realized my mistake.

In the last round, I should have checked first whether ending the reading club was the condition for going down to the first floor.

Because I was in a rush, I had blindly gone to the daycare center first.

Nor could I tell Hwang Juyeon to wait outside with Jeong Jiho.

It might be that only participants who had finished the reading club could go down.

“Ah, no. Then let us go in. There might be a clue there about the condition for going down, so we can check that too.”

The current time was 3:54 p.m.

The three of us opened the door to Book Bang Ollae.

***

“It is time for the reading club.”

This time too, without fail, the voice that might have been the library’s revelation or narration rang out.

It was now four o’clock in the afternoon.

Another time, it had started at 3:50.

“No additional participants will be accepted until the reading club ends.”

Did it check for participants every ten minutes before the meeting began?

After the explanation about the reading club ended, a white book dropped into each of our hands.

“The reading club participants read their respective books.”

“D-Do we just need to…… read?”

“Yes. Let us read. Ah.”

At a sudden thought, I looked at the child sitting to my right.

How old exactly was this child?

Could they read a book of this thickness properly?

“Jiho, can you read Hangul?”

The child nodded with an uneasy expression.

That was a relief.

It seemed they could read to some extent.

There would still be words they did not know, so it would be difficult for them to understand the entire book. But adults did not necessarily understand every word they read either.

“Then read slowly, and if there is anything you do not know, ask me or the teachers here.”

I saw the tightly shut mouth and added.

“You do not have to ask out loud. All right?”

Only then did the child nod once more.

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

When we opened the books, everyone except me looked at one another with bewildered faces.

“No, this book…….”

Kim Gilyoung received Hwang Juyeon’s book, Hwang Juyeon received Jeong Jiho’s book, Jeong Jiho received my book, and I received Kim Gilyoung’s book.

[“Munrim Elementary children who will write a new history―!”

The days when they listened to the principal’s boring lecture in front of the command platform and sang the school song.]

Even though this was a book I had already finished reading last time, I was careful not to roughly skip through it 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.]

Hm?

Something…….

“The reading club participants read their respective books.”

I looked at the silent child to my right.

As expected, they looked like they were having trouble concentrating on a book full of uninterrupted text, without a single illustration.

Their pupils were aimed at the book, but they were definitely spacing out.

I seemed to have taken the right seat…….

“Jiho, even if reading is hard, you have to read. It is fine if you are slow.”

I said it while forcing away a certain thought crawling through my head like an insect.

I truly was a terrible adult.

“Hm? Is there something you do not know?”

As if the child had been waiting, they pointed to a certain passage in my book.

“Ah, this?”

“The reading club participants read their respective books.”

The moment I read from the book where I was the protagonist, the voice rang out as if warning me.

“Do we absolutely have to read only the book assigned to us…….”

I worked hard to control my expression.

“In any case, this is something similar to a guardian, mm, in other words, like a mother or father. If there is no mother or father, a close relative or another adult has to take on that role. That kind of person is called this.”

I had no sense of what level of explanation was appropriate for a preschool child.

In the first place, it did not seem like the kind of story a child that age should read.

“If there are words you do not know, keep asking. Mm, it seems briefly peeking at someone else’s book is allowed.”

The child’s expression darkened a little more as they nodded.

I turned my eyes back to the book.

[Kim Gilyoung won an award in the school book report contest.

‘After reading this book, I thought that dreams were not necessarily things you only had at night.

(omitted)

So after reading this book, I opened my closet door a little every night.’

《Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland》 became Kim Gilyoung’s favorite book.]

This was one of the parts that had been treated as a spoiler during the last reading club.

As expected, I still thought it was strange as I read it again, and I continued reading.

[Kim Gilyoung stared blankly out the window. Pure white snow scattered like flower petals. As if celebrating her birthday.]

……Wait.

Flip, flip.

I carefully turned forward. Came back.

[‘What was the name of your closest friend in elementary school?’

Kim Gilyoung recalled a memory as vivid as yesterday. A friend whose dimples when she smiled from time to time were charming, and whose face was so fair she looked like a child who had never seen sunlight. Hong Donghee. Kim Gilyoung entered the answer without difficulty.]

Flip.

Forward. Forward. Then back again.

[Stopping before an empty space on the shelf, Kim Gilyoung inserted a novel by C. S. Lewis. Secretly taking out and reading a book she had loved most as a child, but which no longer had any demand among the company library’s users, was a librarian’s privilege.]

Forward. Back again.

“…….”

My forehead, where cold sweat was flowing, itched, and the fingertips holding the pages twitched.

I forced myself to hide the trembling by pretending to scratch the back of my hand, then rolled my eyes.

My palms grew damp with sweat, and my mouth went dry.

I could not let them notice.

……That I had noticed.