Chapter 28

Chapter 28. The Hand Is Faster Than the Eye

“Mr. Seon Yuhan?”

“Where are you going all of a sudden? What is it? Why is he like that?”

“You’re not supposed to run! Your heart rate……!”

I have to run. Anywhere.

I have to get away. Somehow.

“Ungrateful thing.”

It is a voice I cannot ignore.

I can’t possibly……. I cannot defy it…….

“You filthy, ungrateful animal bastard.”

“Please…….”

I bit my lip hard and ran blindly.

I knew my heart could not slow any further. Not while that voice kept reaching me.

I knew my heart would be stolen. Unless I got out of this floor.

So there were exactly two things I could do right now.

First, hope that restoring the name ‘Bae Seou’ to the urn had been the condition for escaping B5.

Second, assuming that wish had come true, escape the parking lot quickly before 108 seconds passed.

The emergency exit, where is the emergency exit…….

“Look at you, flailing just to survive.”

Found it.

RATTLE!

Running until my breath rose to my chin, I saw the emergency exit sign and immediately charged in without looking ahead or behind, then began going down.

“Mr. Seon Yuhan, that emergency exit is……!”

Wait.

The moment Yoo Hyunjae’s urgent shout came from behind me, a question occurred to me.

I am going down right now?

When this is the lowest floor?

‘There happened to be a small emergency exit here that I had not seen before, so I opened it, and there were only stairs leading down. B5 should certainly be the lowest floor. I did think the floors must have changed somehow.’

So this was the very emergency exit Yoo Hyunjae had mentioned.

Damn it.

In the brief instant I stretched my foot toward the next stair, my thoughts spun wildly.

I had no time to stop and think. If I stepped on it for more than five seconds, I would fall.

Should I turn back now, go up, and take the emergency exit I originally came down through to reach the second floor?

Would I still have enough time before 108 seconds passed?

What if I was obstructed during the short trip to that other emergency exit?

……What if I had to hear that voice again?

RATTLE.

My hesitation ended.

I opened the emergency exit door with no floor number written on it.

***

What I saw the moment I opened the door was the ordinary scenery of an office hallway, with early evening light slanting in through the windows.

I had escaped.

From the parking lot where not a single ray of light entered.

I first checked the floor number written above the closed emergency exit door.

14th floor.

The 14th floor below B5, which was below the second floor.

I had known it already, but it really was a complete mess.

Before moving carelessly, I opened the front page of the Jaerae Diary from my inner pocket and checked the information for this floor.

[14th Floor｜Neosoft]

A software-related company?

In any case, it seemed like a floor where an outside company had moved into the Jaerae Building, like Howol Accounting Firm, where Choi Jaeha worked.

Wait.

I stopped while putting the diary back.

Other than checking the floor-by-floor information at the front, I had not taken it out so far, but now that I thought about it, if I wrote notes in here, would the contents remain even if I died and came back to life later?

This diary itself was in my possession when I started over.

If even the contents remained as they were…….

Was there no need to memorize the vehicle information in the parking lot?

……Hmm.

I forced myself to calm down first and wrote down the actual floor order.

[3, 2, B5, 14]

For a moment, I thought it was a good thing I had brought a ballpoint pen just in case because of today’s interview, but then I thought that if I had not come to the interview today in the first place, I would never have ended up in this mess.

I settled my stomach, which had begun to churn again, and moved the pen.

[Bae Seou]

After staring at that name for a long while, a belated question struck the back of my head.

So who is the culprit?

Do I not need to know who killed Bae Seou?

Was it enough to simply restore the name of a person who had died unjustly and honor her spirit?

Normally, isn’t a problem judged solved only after the culprit has been found?

“…….”

As someone said, if unsolved problems are waiting for someone to solve them.

Perhaps I would end up solving this problem. Right here in this Labyrinth.

Just as I had that premonition amid a strange uneasiness.

RATTLE!

The emergency exit opened behind me, and my four companions came pouring out.

In order, they were Choi Jaeha, Hwang Juyeon, Jeong Jiho, and Yoo Hyunjae.

“Hah, where are we now? Hm? The 14th floor?”

“Wow, we did escape the parking lot. Thank goodness…….”

“Mr. Seon Yuhan is here too. That is a relief. When you did not come back even after we waited, I did think you must have arrived on another floor.”

“No, well, yes. Mr. Seon Yuhan. How could you just bolt like that? I was startled, thinking something had happened again.”

“Ah, I’m sorry. I experienced a rather eerie hallucination.”

When I apologized immediately, Choi Jaeha’s expression relaxed completely, as though he had never been angry.

It was nice that he was such a simple person.

“What, so you do get scared? Honestly, I thought you were some kind of cyborg. You said the monsters wouldn’t come even if you screamed, then just shouted without fear. You didn’t even blink.”

“By the way, Mr. Seon Yuhan.”

“Yes.”

Without responding to Choi Jaeha, I looked at Yoo Hyunjae.

“What is that notebook?”

The owner of Jaerae Group jerked his chin toward the Jaerae Diary in my hand.

“Ah, I just found it here.”

A lie is all about momentum.

“When I looked at it, I thought it would be good to record what I know, so I was writing some things down. If you need it, I can tear out a few pages and share them.”

“Before that, may I examine it for a moment?”

This diary was said to be bound to me anytime and anywhere, as long as I wanted it.

Even if it was taken, there was nothing to worry about.

“Ah, yes. Of course.”

With an unconcerned attitude, I handed him the reddish-brown leather diary.

Then Yoo Hyunjae carefully turned the diary this way and that as if appraising a jewel, and cautiously flipped through it page by page as if reading a rare ancient book.

“You said you just found this here.”

“Yes. It was lying on the floor.”

“Hmm.”

Did he realize I was lying?

My mind began working quickly again.

Should I insist it was not a lie? If I insisted, how could I make it convincing? Or should I explain why I lied? If I explained, should I choose truth or falsehood? If I chose the truth, what would happen……?

However, as if rendering that effort meaningless, Yoo Hyunjae readily returned the Jaerae Diary.

“Mr. Seon Yuhan, you should continue carrying this diary. If you wish to give it to someone, hand it over whole. Without damaging it by tearing out or separating its pages.”

“Uh, um……. Understood?”

I had not been particularly worried from the beginning, but things went even better than expected, so I felt bewildered.

“Mr. Seon Yuhan, do you know what this diary is?”

Does this man know something?

“Hmm, is it not a Jaerae Group diary? Looking inside, it seemed that way.”

The representative of Yuwi Guild smiled quietly.

“I meant, do you know that this is a Relic of the Labyrinth?”

“A Relic……? This? But how do you know that? It looks ordinary on the outside.”

Of course, I knew.

A cursed object personally advertised and put up by the Labyrinth in the Main Auditorium as a special limited item, one that followed me even after death if I bought it once, could not possibly be anything but a Relic.

“Because there is no such thing among our diaries. Across every year.”

Ah.

So that was how he noticed.

“If production were proceeding a little early, this would be around the time next year’s design drafts were narrowed down to a few. But I do not remember hearing any particular report, so it does not seem to be at the sample stage yet either.”

In other words, because there was no possibility that a real diary with this design existed, this was a Relic.

“Ah…….”

The more I watched, really. An impressive man was impressive.

Not everyone could so quickly gather the information they knew and use it in the right place at the right time.

Moreover, by neither recklessly damaging nor taking a Relic whose properties he did not know, he minimized his own risk while naturally securing goodwill.

“If not for you, Representative, I might never have known. I’ll try to use it carefully.”

“I believe you will.”

Choi Jaeha, Hwang Juyeon, and Jeong Jiho seemed inwardly curious, as though this was their first time actually seeing a Relic.

“Then, shall we go for now? If there are people here, they will be on this side.”

Yoo Hyunjae pointed toward the left hallway.

With a glance, I saw that the 14th floor was also shaped like a ‘ㅁ,’ with the left half seemingly being Neosoft’s office and the right half currently vacant.

[Neosoft]

We stopped in front of the door.

To the right of the company signboard, there was a logo with the letters of ‘NEOSOFT’ arranged in square boxes like a crossword puzzle.

“What kind of company is this……?”

Yoo Hyunjae stared hard through the translucent glass door at the invisible interior and said one thing.

“As far as I know, it is a game company.”

Damn it.

I already had a bad feeling.

I looked over the faces of my companions, weighing whether it would be all right to enter with all of them or whether we should split up.

Dying somewhere I could see.

Dying somewhere I could not see.

“……Let’s go in.”

I knew the former was better.

I had known it for a very long time.

***

The inside of Neosoft was dark and quiet.

“There’s nobody…… Huh, isn’t someone over there?”

In one corner of the office with the lights turned off, a small monitor glow was leaking out.

It seemed someone was there.

It had a gloomy yet paradoxically peaceful atmosphere, as if someone had been left alone in an office after everyone else had gone home, handling work by himself.

“Excuse us……?”

As we carefully approached one slow step at a time, the face hidden by the partition was revealed.

“Uh…….”

A bald man whose hoodie was soaked with sweat was staring into the monitor with a pale face.

His neck was stretched out so far that it looked as though he might be sucked into the sea or into the monitor at any moment.

【A clerk wearing a raccoon mask is selling ice cream. It looks delicious. You cannot endure your hunger.】

【▶ Eat】

【▶ Endure】

Simple pixel art, narration, and choices.

Only some kind of text-based game screen was displayed on the monitor.

“Are you all right?”

“Excuse me, are you okay?”

“Uh…… mm……?”

Only after we called him several more times did the man pull his neck back in and turn his gaze.

“Excuse me, do you perhaps know that this place has been Labyrinthized?”

I briefly explained the route we had taken and the current situation.

During that time, the man blinked his bloodshot eyes several times and tapped rapidly on the phone on his desk.

I followed with my eyes as the contents were quickly written in the memo app.

[The company suddenly lost power, and everyone disappeared except me and one other colleague.

I tried to leave the office, but I think I can’t leave unless I clear this game.

Oh, if you’re wondering why I’m not talking, it’s because my tongue disappeared. I chose the wrong option. That’s also why I have no hair, but anyway, my colleague died too, so I moved him to the break room.]

Compared to the contents, the tone was strangely light and calm.

“Ha, it’s really locked……. Not that I expected anything else…….”

Choi Jaeha, who had quickly gone to try opening the door, sighed.

It seemed he had been trained in his own way by his experiences at Uri Saenal Daycare Center and the parking lot.

Just as the bald man was about to write something else.

DING!

A pop-up appeared on the game screen that had been in progress.

【Hello, binary! You are happily playing our Labyrinsoft game 《Lost In HPPYLN》! Would you like to invite new friends to share happiness with you?】

【▶ Invite】

“Happyland……? This fucking—wait!”

The moment I finished reading the ominous contents and grabbed the man.

【Invitation Complete!】

The man’s hand had already finished clicking the mouse.