Chapter 18

Chapter 18

“Welcome to a Place Like That.”

I have to kill…… I have to kill it, right? This is wrong. I have to kill it, kill, killing? If I don’t kill it…… should I kill it? I have to kill it? This is wrong. If I don’t kill it…… can I try killing it? Is it all right if I don’t kill it? Kill it? This is wrong. I absolutely have to kill it…….

Yes. Let’s kill it.

This.

“Mr. Seon Yuhan……? What is wrong?”

What I was looking at now.

“Do not worry.”

Kim Gilyoung.

“It will be over soon.”

Was not human.

***

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

[“You went to Sangrim Elementary, right?”]

The elementary school name could be brushed off as having changed because she had transferred schools.

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

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

But how could snow scatter in September?

[“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.]

[‘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.]

A friend she had become close to in middle school was appearing as the name of her closest friend in elementary school, and even the description of that friend’s appearance was completely different.

[‘(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.]

[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.]

And that damned ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.’

As expected, it really had been strange.

It was not that she had confused ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ when she was young, nor had her favorite book changed later.

There were other parts here and there where the front and back did not match.

Moreover, they were trivial enough to miss unless one read carefully, and their placement was cunning.

‘There was something I wondered while reading. Whether Ms. Kim Gilyoung’s favorite book as a child was 《Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland》, or 《The Chronicles of Narnia》—’

‘—Mr. Seon Yuhan, I think that is a spoiler. I cannot understand what you are saying. I do not think you need to talk about that part.’

Since all those contradictions were evidence that the librarian was a monster, it was only natural that the inconsistent parts would be censored as spoilers.

‘Who could this insane person be, storming into a daycare center while dragging a filthy, ugly doll that no one would take even if it were given to them for free?’

At some point, the Goose Teacher at the daycare center had said that about Kim Gilyoung’s corpse.

‘Do you think it can? Especially with this defective product?’

To the living doll monster, perhaps Kim Gilyoung herself had been a defective doll, one that only looked fine on the outside but had been crudely stuffed with whatever was available on the inside.

‘Ah, right. The Dalumul-ri Labyrinth. That village didn’t have a single survivor either, so no one knew what happened there. Did it have something like body snatchers too……? Like the ones at Seonghwa High that pretended to be students and attacked teachers…….’

As Choi Jaeha had said, the two films shown in the main auditorium featured similar types of monsters.

Monsters that took human form, deceived people, and kept them trapped inside the Labyrinth.

There was a monster like that here too.

Right before my eyes.

The moment I realized that.

A sense of insult stroked me, as though someone had pulled every vein out of my body, wound them into a skein, woven them into a thick cloth on a loom, stuffed every one of my organs into that cloth like cotton, threaded the leftover end of the red thread through a needle, sewn it stitch by stitch, and proudly shown me a doll that looked exactly like someone I could never meet again.

I wanted to die. If only I could.

But I could not die.

Then I had to kill.

***

This is taking longer than I thought.

That was what I thought right before I collapsed.

“Ugh…….”

The moment I raised myself, the world spun round and round.

The back of my head and both sides of my forehead were hot, as if burned by fire.

“Seon Yuhan looks down at the floor.”

What?

Even in my confusion, my body faithfully obeyed the library’s instruction.

“There was a corpse there.”

When I saw the clear marks left on the librarian’s neck, my memories belatedly rushed back like a reverse current. What I had done.

“Seon Yuhan examined the librarian’s corpse as it stared up at the ceiling.”

“Ugh, urk…….”

I barely suppressed the nausea that surged up along with it and took a deep breath.

As the sensations that had been sleeping beneath my consciousness woke and rose to the surface, my whole body began trembling again.

I could not bring myself to look at ‘that’ with my eyes open, so I squeezed them shut.

An insult and mockery toward every living thing.

Even now, the desire to tear that thing to pieces and burn it was throbbing beneath my skin.

I hated them.

Things that were not human, wearing human skin.

I was afraid. Horribly so.

That disgusting fear came before the guilt of having shown something a child should not see.

“Seon Yuhan, who forced his gaze away, discovered the four books fallen on the floor and the child’s backpack left behind by itself.”

It seemed Hwang Juyeon had been so flustered that she could not immediately stop me.

And rather than stopping me, she seemed to have decided to buy even a little time and escape with the child.

Honestly, that was not something I could blame Hwang Juyeon for.

What if a man she met for the first time today suddenly went insane and killed a woman she had also met for the first time today? While they were already trapped in an Invasive Labyrinth?

Of course it was wise to hit that man over the back of the head and run.

I did think it would have been wiser to kill me properly so there would be no trouble later…….

But from my perspective, since I had survived thanks to that, it was fortunate she had not killed me.

I picked up the book I had dropped.

[Kim Gilyoung]

It was a wrongly written story.

Like a collage made by cutting pieces out of several people’s lives and stitching them together.

“Seon Yuhan had realized it. That the librarian was truly the monster of this Labyrinth. That without killing the librarian, they could not truly escape the library. That without killing the monster, they could not resolve the Labyrinth. That without someone dying, the story could not end.”

But for me, it was only because I had read it several times through the loop and become familiar with it…….

I recalled the round when I had first discovered Kim Gilyoung’s corpse. The wounds that had been marked by the culprit’s confusion and hesitation.

Unless there was some third person I did not know about, the only person who could have killed the librarian was still Hwang Juyeon.

Then that meant Hwang Juyeon had noticed the contradictions in the librarian’s story and acted after only a single reading club, even without memories of regression.

Mm.

I definitely should not carelessly make her my enemy.

When I roughly checked my reflection in the phone screen, my forehead was split open.

It seemed I had not fainted because I was struck in the back of the head, but because I was hit in the back of the head, fell forward, and slammed my forehead hard.

“Huuuh?”

The moment the black screen I had been using like a mirror lit up, I almost violated the “huh?” ban.

[4:14]

Something felt strange, so I unlocked it and looked at the screen again, but the time was the same.

[4:14｜SOS｜86%]

The clock hanging on the library wall showed the same result.

4:14?

Had I suffered a worse concussion than I thought?

The reading club had started at exactly 4:00.

Only fourteen minutes had passed?

On top of that, if I subtracted the few minutes I must have spent unconscious…….

Ten minutes.

The reading club had ended in only about ten minutes.

I had disrupted it midway, but how much had we read in that time?

At least thirty minutes should have passed.

……Come to think of it, after the reading club began, I had not thought to check the time.

That thought simply had not occurred to me at all. Not even once. Not in the slightest.

Even though I was in a situation where escaping the Labyrinth as quickly as possible still would not be enough. I had leisurely sat around reading a book.

So, literally, “without noticing the passage of time.”

“Seon Yuhan realizes the power of stories.”

Ha.

So twisting time is nothing, is that it?

Well, considering I had already died and returned several times.

At the end of my disgusted gaze, Kim Gilyoung came into view again.

“And some stories can only reach a complete ending when the protagonist dies. Is that not so?”

Memories shattered like broken glass cut through my head.

The whites of the eyes were no longer white because the blood vessels had burst, and in the black irises stabbing into me like awls were confusion, and breaths that continued and broke off like Morse code whose meaning I could not know.

Keh, waagh, kheeek…….

As if.

Why.

Why.

Why…….

“The bloodshot eyes that had not even had time to close seemed to be looking at Seon Yuhan.”

As if asking the reason.

As if it could not even guess why it had to die.

As if it truly believed itself to be human. Until the moment its breath stopped.

“Monster.”

I ran away from there.

“Is it not truly a monster of the Labyrinth?”

To shake off that gaze that clung to me persistently.

***

As soon as I came out of Book Bang Ollae, I headed straight for the emergency exit.

There was no longer any sign of people in the second-floor corridor.

The main auditorium was in the middle of a movie screening, so the doors would not open from inside or outside. Hwang Juyeon and Jeong Jiho, who had fled from me, would not have been able to enter there.

As for the goods store, whywouldIgotherewhenIdonothaveanydebtanymoreandifIwentinsidewithoutbuyinganythingitwouldbeinconveniencingtheTaraeKeeper, so no one would be there.

They would not have entered the daycare center either, because of Jeong Jiho.

Hwang Juyeon and Jeong Jiho must have gone downstairs.

It seemed killing the librarian really was the correct answer.

Tap.

With my hand on the emergency exit handle, I unconsciously looked back.

I could see the elevator area.

I thought of a certain large, cowardly accountant.

What floor he would be on by now. Whether he was even alive.

If not for me, he would have died trapped in the elevator from the start, so maybe he had already used up all his luck the moment he heard the alarm and got out on his own, and died somewhere for an absurd reason.

He was a little simple, but he was not a bad person.

But that did not mean I could die for someone whose location, and even life or death, was unclear.

……Yes. A Labyrinth was that kind of place, and I was that kind of bastard.

There was no turning back now.

Click.

The alarm had rung, and the door opened.

***

“Ha.”

The moment I opened the first-floor door, I inhaled without realizing it.

That sickening second-floor corridor was nowhere to be seen.

At last, I had left the second floor.

“Haha.”

And that place.

Was not the first floor either.