Chapter 36

Chapter 36. Please, No

To get the result out of the way first: it seems my liver was put to meaningful use.

Though whether that's a misfortune or a relief, I couldn't say.

Honestly, if this was a floor I could clear without ever setting foot in Neosoft, wasn't that actually a good thing? In the long run.

Because even if I died, I wouldn't have to play that game again.

But in that moment, something in my head snapped.

"Um, did you say the right side was a vacant office?"

First, with someone supporting me, I got to my feet and strode off—not to the left, where Neosoft was, but down the right-hand corridor.

Then I flung open a door with no nameplate on it.

"Ah, fu—"

I found it. In an empty office with nothing inside, someone—or something—stood staring at the wall.

"My apologies for intruding."

Thunk.

"Haah......"

Not surprisingly in the least, the door wouldn't close.

Through the half-open gap, I looked at him, or it.

He, or it, slowly turned my way.

At least it didn't come any closer.

"Th-that thing...... it's a person, right? It's not, is it?"

Choi Jaeha, who'd trailed after me, pressed against my back and whispered.

It did look like a person.

The silhouette did, at least.

"I'd guess...... probably not."

It wore a thick, ash-gray coat—a touch early for this weather—a fedora pulled down low, and a scarf wound round and round, so its face wasn't visible either.

Height somewhere between 160 and 170. Its build was hidden beneath the bulky outerwear, and there were even gloves on its hands.

Every part of it that might be called skin was covered, so there was no telling its sex or age.

And if it wasn't human, such distinctions were all the more meaningless.

In other words, no one knew what shape lay beneath those clothes.

"It's holding a pair of scissors."

"L-let's go...... Let's, let's run, the two of us......"

As Yoo Hyunjae remarked lightly and Choi Jaeha tugged at my jacket—

"Um, Mr. Choi Jaeha...... there's something you ought to know."

There are three important facts to lay out here.

First.

A Labyrinth holds plenty of monsters and Abnormal Phenomena that can kill a person without a blade—but that doesn't mean they necessarily won't kill you with one.

Second.

Unlike a game, in a Labyrinth, running into a monster or an Abnormal Phenomenon is not, in itself, proof that we're on the right path.

Third.

But the trouble is, there's also no ruling out that it might be such proof—so you can't know unless you go and see.

"Wait, what about a fourth......? There's no fourth? Didn't you leave out the part where you might go and die......?"

That one is such an obvious fact that even Choi Jaeha, who had no interest in Labyrinths, could work it out—which is why it doesn't make the list as a fourth.

"Uh-uh, i-it, it's moving!"

The instant the unidentified being's scissor-holding hand began to rise—

Choi Jaeha had already fled all the way to the front of Neosoft.

Yoo Hyunjae and Hwang Juyeon, along with Jeong Jiho, had withdrawn toward the corridor, out of sight of the office's interior.

"What are you doing—why aren't you coming......!"

While a certain man looked about ready to die of frustration, I stared straight at the fingertips of the being standing before the far wall.

"It seems to be...... pointing at me."

When I shifted a step or two left and right from the half-open threshold, it grew clearer still.

That thing was pointing precisely at me.

Was ignoring it the right path—or would I be cast onto the road to the underworld the instant I did?

There was no knowing.

This was exactly the problem with Labyrinths. Of course, the Labyrinth itself was the problem, but still.

"I'm going to step inside and see."

But, as always, there was no knowing without going to look.

"What? Go in where......?"

There was another round of squabbling—should he go in or not, was he out of his mind or not, was this all because of his liver or what—but in the end, I went in.

"He's really lost it......"

With Choi Jaeha's voice for background noise, I drew slowly closer, one step, two steps.

The closer I got, the more the scissor tips that had been trained on me sank slowly downward—head, chest, stomach......

At first, I thought it was pointing at my liver.

But the thing's arm kept descending.

Following the tips, I lowered my gaze to my waist.

My right hip? Femur? Aorta?

What was it aiming for?

And at last, when I came right up before the hat-wearing being—

I realized what those sharp scissor tips had been pointing at all along.

My right trouser pocket.

Sliiip......

The thing tucked inside it—my Happyland visit commemorative photo.

A red roller coaster with its paint flaking away. Six empty seats, no one in any of them. Rusted rails that reeked of iron. And the shadow of the night sky, creeping into every gap between.

A corner of the happiest moments of my life.

"This—you want this?"

The thing nodded its head.

Though of course, I couldn't be sure that was really its head.

Because of the height difference I still couldn't see beneath the hat, and I had no wish to stoop down and peer underneath, either.

No—I mustn't look beneath it.

My instincts screamed.

"Here."

Snip, snik—

The thing took the A4 sheet, folded into quarters, smoothed it crisp, and set to cutting.

Looking closely, it was trimming the margins away to match the shape of the photo.

[Seon Yuhan's One of the Happiest Moments]

Neatly including even that caption.

Even in thick fur gloves, its scissor-work was smooth.

Holding the fully trimmed photo, the thing stood still a moment, then suddenly moved a few steps to the left, stretched its arm up high, and pressed the photo flat against the wall.

I had no idea how it stuck there without tape, and not the faintest notion what was special about that spot—

but it seemed to have rules of its own.

"......"

I thought maybe something would change, but nothing happened.

Turning back toward me, the thing cocked its hat as if to say, You're still here?

"You're telling me to go?"

The thing nodded its head-part and waved its hand, as though bidding me farewell.

In the end, dazed, I slowly turned and walked back out.

No unfortunate event befell me either—like the thing abruptly hurling its scissors into the back of my skull.

What was that.

What on earth had it been.

"I'd suspect that handing over the photo was, in itself, the condition."

Yoo Hyunjae, who'd been waiting outside, laid my confusion to rest.

If letting it paste to the wall the commemorative photo I'd earned for clearing the Happyland game was the condition for reaching the next floor—

then it meant all the far-too-many horrors that happened while I played that game hadn't been for nothing.

"Ah. Then now—"

"—Mr. Seon Yuhan. You ought to sit down and rest a moment."

I was about to rush downstairs to check, but I was forced down onto the floor.

Now that I looked, the other three were already sitting in a row, backs to the corridor wall.

"Your condition is one concern, Mr. Seon Yuhan, but there's a child with us, too."

Only then did I lean obediently against the wall and accept the water bottle and snacks passed to me.

Apparently, while I'd been offering up the photo in the empty office, Yoo Hyunjae had raided Neosoft's pantry for them.

"What would you have done if you'd gotten trapped, going in there again?"

"I didn't get trapped, so it's fine."

His secretarial staff must really have their hands full.

I thought it, looking at that infuriatingly unbothered face.

I quietly turned my head toward the child sitting wedged between Choi Jaeha and Hwang Juyeon.

"Jiho. Uh, how old were you again......?"

There was so much I hadn't asked all this time.

The child fidgeted, as if wanting to say something, then finally folded down three fingers.

Seven years old.

The age to start elementary school next year.

"I see...... The words still don't come easily, do they. It's frightening."

Jeong Jiho nodded.

"By the way—the teacher who used to look after you, Jiho......"

I could tell, just from getting that far.

From that expression alone.

Inside the partition near the daycare cubbies, there had been a person 'tidied away' inside a toy box.

That person had indeed been a daycare teacher, and Jeong Jiho had watched that teacher's final moments.

No wonder he couldn't bring himself to speak.

'So that you don't cry noisily, don't whine and throw tantrums, don't run around in a fluster, don't twist and squirm this way and that, and don't mumble so no one can understand you.'

The conditions for a 'beloved child,' as recited by the daycare's stuffed goose.

Because he was afraid of breaking those conditions.

Even after leaving the daycare.

Even watching all the adults around him speak perfectly fine and not die.

His voice still wouldn't come the way his heart wished.

"Hmm. Your parent works at this company, right? Was it your mom? Ah—it's your mom. Hey, do you remember what the mage teacher here said earlier?"

Round eyes looked up at me.

"Like, if we say this is a game, then we're one team, and the people who aren't here are off somewhere else, working hard to clear the game too."

Thankfully, he seemed to roughly remember the talk about the instance dungeon.

"So even if you can't meet your mom in here, don't worry too much. Once we're out, you'll get to see her."

He looked only half-convinced.

That was, in fact, the sound judgment.

Even if Jeong Jiho made it out alive, Jeong Jiho's mother might come out dead.

But the child's face brightened a little—perhaps won over by the story I kept rattling on with.

"See? Even we're still doing fine, like this. Your mom's probably the same, Jiho."

No. Maybe she was already dead.

Would this child resent me later, then? Ask why I'd deceived him? Why I'd handed him hope on a lie?

But I wanted this kid not to crumple. Even if it meant being tortured by hope.

I wanted him to walk out of the Labyrinth without giving up. Alive.

"Hey, Jiho. Don't you have a phone, though? I hear kids these days carry them around starting in kindergarten."

When Choi Jaeha's out-of-nowhere question scattered Jeong Jiho's attention, Director Yoo Hyunjae, seated beside me, turned his head my way.

"Mr. Seon Yuhan."

"Yes."

The Director's eyes glittered as he tossed out a question stripped of all context.

"What did you answer at the end?"

"Sorry?"

"I mean the final question of your interview."

"Ah."

The final question they supposedly always ask in the recruitment interviews of the Jaerae Group, Yuwi Guild included.

If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do?

In principle you weren't to share interview questions, but this one was so peculiar that it drifted around online as an open secret.

On job-hunting forums, people would joke about it as 'the Regressor Screening Question.'

"I'm aware it's not to be shared."

"You do know who I am, don't you?"

Yeah, I knew.

Yoo Hyunjae, co-CEO of Yuwi Guild.

And that an interview question that ludicrous couldn't possibly exist without the Director's blessing.

"I can find out everything about your interview anyway. If I put my mind to it."

"That's something you'd best save for after we're out. What you need to be having right now, Director, is water and food."

"Going a day without eating is nothing."

The conversation had veered somewhere strange.

Just eat what you're holding, would you.

"So—what did you answer at the end?"

Persistent bastard.

"But why are you so curious about that, Director? I don't mean my answer in particular—I mean, why ask something like that in an interview at all?"

"Now this is a touch unfair. You won't answer, Mr. Seon Yuhan—so why should I be the one to explain?"

The strange bastard's eyebrows drooped a little.

"Haah...... If you'd rather not, you don't have to tell me."

"No. I'll just tell you. Life is unfair by nature, after all."

Was he actually insane?

Should management really be saying that?

Did he want to find out what real unfairness felt like?

"Asking that kind of question in an interview is just something like an aptitude-and-personality test. Promise firmly that there'll be no penalty, and you can draw out slightly more honest answers. Some people really do give rather entertaining ones. That said."

Yoo Hyunjae smiled and went on.

"Quite apart from that—I believe a phenomenon in which time runs backward can occur inside a Labyrinth."

"A phenomenon where ti...me runs backward. You sincerely believe that."

"Yes."

I'd been praying it wasn't so.