Chapter 42

Chapter 42. [Gambling Team] Re: Disclosure of the Match Record

Lee Jinsu, Choi Jaeha, Hwang Juyeon, Jeong Jiho, me.

The order for entering the gambling den after Yoo Hyunjae was set.

I'd made it that way.

Once the persuading was done, Hwang Juyeon asked Lee Jinsu all sorts of things about the games.

Choi Jaeha muttered something and wandered around the office.

Distractingly.

Jeong Jiho is well-behaved, which is nice. Doesn't even talk to me.

I sat comfortably beside him and went through the Match Record again, carefully.

[Opponent｜Hong** (50s, Green)
Game｜Janggi
Result｜Victory
Remarks｜An instructive match where I got a good look at the opponent's organs]

[Opponent｜Kwon** (30s, Black)
Game｜Rummikub
Result｜Victory
Remarks｜Ihateaboringopponentmostofall]

[Opponent｜Cho** (30s, Blue)
Game｜Mercenary Chess
Result｜Victory
Remarks｜It is always entertaining to watch an opponent who doesn't grasp the concept of the '■■■ Formation' naturally build that very formation]

From the Match Record, it could be confirmed that some forty people had so far gambled with Mr. Do, each in their own Labyrinth.

Fewer than I'd expected.

Considering the number of people who must originally have been in this building.

Most of them would have been people who'd been on the eleventh floor since before the Labyrinthization, which meant the ones who'd actually survived on other floors and moved up to the eleventh were very few.

[Opponent｜Im** (40s, Indigo)
Game｜10×10 Trap Othello
Result｜Victory
Remarks｜Why do they believe they can win without losing anything?]

[Opponent｜Baek** (30s, Cream)
Game｜High Card
Result｜Draw
Remarks｜A result owing to a collision of trickery. Game change and overtime decided. Entertaining]

[Opponent｜Baek** (30s, Cream)
Game｜Blockade Backgammon
Result｜Victory
Remarks｜As a mark of respect, compressed the opponent to fit a regular dodecahedron mold and keep them in my collection]

I passed the time reading the Match Record with interest.

As time went on like that, around when it was nearly six o'clock—

the door of the gambling den opened and Mr. Do came out.

"The contest is concluded."

One more line had been added to the Match Record.

[Opponent｜Yoo** (20s, Red)
Game｜Sampal-Gwangttaeng Texas Hold'em
Result｜Victory
Remarks｜I should like to meet the deviser of this game]

Yoo Hyunjae had died.

Was this the second time?

He dies every time he gets tangled in an event decided by probability.

Truly, an unlucky man.

……Put another way, it meant he'd never once died by his own mistake.

Not a single time.

"Who is my next opponent?"

"M-me, uh, that's me……"

At Mr. Do's question, Lee Jinsu rose awkwardly.

The contrast between the man who'd lost an eye during the Happyland game and the lump-of-flesh die with twenty-one eyes in all was rather amusing.

"Please, you have to win…… Thank you."

"Ah…… sure."

Lee Jinsu came up to each of us, receiving Hwang Juyeon's farewell, and bobbed his head.

For a man on his way to die, he was bright with courtesies.

I gave a vague nod in greeting too.

"Yes. Do well."

Not that a passive death-seeker would do all that well at a game.

It was advice I gave with Lee Jinsu's interests in mind, in my own way.

From the record, Mr. Do didn't seem to much care for unmotivated opponents.

His end wouldn't be a pretty one.

Well, that was his to handle.

"Come in."

The door of the gambling den closed.

***

"The contest is concluded."

Content was added to the Match Record again.

[Opponent｜Lee** (30s, Navy)
Game｜Muk-jji-ppa
Result｜Victory
Remarks｜After tying 913 times, they came to want to live, just a little]

The moment I saw the Remarks box, I covered my mouth.

I'd wondered what game could take a full twenty-odd minutes.

It seemed Mr. Do had deliberately toyed with Lee Jinsu, tying again and again, and the moment even a sliver of a wish to live arose in him, it had won at once.

How nasty.

"Come on in."

"Well then…… I'm off, Ms. Hwang Juyeon. I'm going, Mr. Seon Yuhan. Jiho, let's meet outside."

Choi Jaeha drew a deep breath and offered his farewells.

"Yes. Do well and come bac…… go on."

If only luck and skill held, I'd never meet this accountant in here again.

I don't think Choi Jaeha will lose with 100% certainty.

Mr. Do wouldn't even start a game it was 100% certain to win.

Because that wouldn't be gambling.

The human side had to have at least a 1% chance of winning for a contest to be possible.

While seeing Choi Jaeha off, I grabbed a single book from an ownerless desk on the way back.

Some kind of self-help book.

"Um…… Mr. Seon Yuhan. You're not feeling uncomfortable anywhere, are you? Anything different from usual?"

"No, nothing in particular."

Hwang Juyeon looked at my hand and rattled off needless little worries.

"By the way, Ms. Hwang Juyeon, what would you want to do first once you're out of here?"

Thinking she might be nervous, I steered the topic toward Hwang Juyeon to take her mind off it.

As I was killing time that way, before I knew it the gambling den's door opened again.

"The contest is concluded."

[Opponent｜Choi** (30s, Emerald)
Game｜Monopoly Yutnori
Result｜Victory
Remarks｜Being uniquely weak at mind games, in the early going they mistook it for a deception strategy and made errors]

Figures.

He's someone who has trouble hiding his emotions.

"Well then, I'm off. Jiho, let's all get out and see your mom together, like this. And Mr. Seon Yuhan. You know how truly grateful I am, right? Stepping up to do everything first, on your own. You'll be able to get out too, for sure."

"Yes. Take care, do well, and go on."

Time passes once again.

Jeong Jiho stayed, as ever, a well-mannered and good child.

"The contest is concluded."

[Opponent｜Hwang** (30s, Jade)
Game｜Heads-Up Poker
Result｜Victory
Remarks｜Their sleight of hand was entertaining]

"Jiho. Time to go."

He can't even meet an adult's eyes properly anymore.

"Mm. Bye."

Time seems to pass slowly.

Quiet. And peaceful.

It feels like ages since I've been left alone this long.

"The contest is concluded."

[Opponent｜Jeong** (Age 7, Lead-gray)
Game｜Dice Blackjack
Result｜Victory
Remarks｜?]

After checking even that line, I closed the folder.

"You."

Mr. Do's pupils looked down at me.

"You will not be able to contend with me."

Strangely, its voice didn't strike me as quite as alluring as last time.

"You really do recognize it."

"Stake your life and you could not trade it even for a single handkerchief. Conversely, your liberation would fall short even if the whole of this Labyrinth were offered up."

"That much?"

"You ask me that? The scales are within you."

"Let's not talk about scales. I've got trauma about those."

Mr. Do let out something like a sneering laugh and turned slowly.

"Now leave. You shall be deemed to have forfeited the contest, and you will lose one stroke of future fortune."

If I left the eleventh-floor Strategic Planning Division without gambling with Mr. Do, some unlucky event would befall me for certain.

And from what I'd heard, the severity of that misfortune was random.

"But you're the one who wouldn't take me on. Isn't a forced handicap unfair?"

"In the gamble called life, you hold the advantage of disregarding death. By that, it becomes fair."

"Doesn't really feel like an advantage to me. Well, whatever."

I opened the self-help book I'd grabbed earlier, set my finger against one of those thin sheets of paper, and……

Sliit.

Drew it across.

"Ah."

A sudden, sharp sting flashed through my little finger.

This was the conclusion I'd reached, brooding the whole time my companions were gambling.

If the coming misfortune couldn't be avoided.

Then couldn't I just trigger an unlucky event on purpose? Under my own control.

"It cut me."

Setting your hand to paper and dragging it doesn't necessarily get you cut.

I'd kept experimenting while I waited.

Changing the angle, the speed, even the moisture on my hand.

Even under the same conditions, the same result didn't always follow.

So I judged that whether or not my hand got cut by the paper was a matter left to chance.

"It is a pity I cannot wager with you. It would, truly, have made a most entertaining contest."

Mr. Do stared hard at the drop of blood faintly welled on my finger, then turned its gaze away.

"You are at present engaged in a gamble that repeats without end. That an 'odd' came up this time does not mean an 'odd' will come up next. Do not forget that the essence of gambling lies in that irregularity."

For it to warn me like this……

Did it mean that cutting my hand on paper like this wasn't a perfect solution that would work every time?

But at least it sounded like it was saying I was fine for now.

"Yeah. Take care."

I left the Future Strategy & Budget Planning Team where the lump-of-flesh gambler had set up shop, without delay.

***

14. Do not gamble. If you lack the confidence to win.

***

The iron door of the emergency exit opened with a clunk.

I poked around the eleventh-floor corridor for a bit, but there was nothing much, so I went straight down to the floor below.

"The fifteenth floor……"

[15th Floor｜Singye Ilbo, moment o'clock]

I checked the information, writing the floor order in the Diary.

Singye Ilbo was a small-to-midsize news outlet.

moment o'clock—what kind of company was that, again. I think I'd heard of it.

[moment o'clock｜moment o'clock]

Seeing the company nameplate up close, it was written in a clean typeface.

"Mm."

The moment I opened the door and stepped in, I stopped short at the scene before me.

For one, there were two human corpses on the dim office floor.

One young woman, one middle-aged man.

The woman lay sprawled any which way, facing the ceiling.

An open bottle of hand sanitizer dropped by her head.

Whitish vomit smeared around her mouth and on the floor.

Looks like she died drinking the hand sanitizer.

More than that, the woman's outfit caught the eye.

Bleached-blonde hair, a black skirt with extremely uneven lengths on each side, black knee-high boots.

A free, anything-goes style that seemed to follow no dress code at all.

"Ah."

It came to me.

moment o'clock.

It's an online select shop. Handling all sorts of clothing and accessory brands.

Lee Nahyeon, Assistant Manager of Team M at moment o'clock.

I checked the employee ID and turned my gaze to the middle-aged man.

A drab suit, a contrast to the woman.

I checked the employee ID hanging from the man's neck.

Kim Yeongho, Department Head of the Social Affairs Team at Singye Ilbo.

In the mouth of this man, curled up on his side……

A necktie?

Oddly, a necktie was hanging out of his mouth.

From the color of his face, the cause of death was asphyxiation.

He seems to have suffocated while eating the necktie.

And what was most peculiar of all.

Beside each of these two corpses lay a single mannequin, in exactly the same pose as each of them.

As if to mock them.

Then.

With a click, the door of the supply room at the back of the office opened—

and a white mannequin walked out.

It came striding toward me without a sound, then stopped to my left.

At first my body flinched for an instant, but only for an instant.

Now I'm just puzzled.

Even seeing a mannequin moving about, I'm not all that scared.

Even now, in my head a formula for calculating my body weight by part comes to mind, and in my ears the sound of my own bones being severed joint by joint, and at the tip of my nose the smell of blood drenching my clothes—

maybe it helped that I'd seen a crash-test dummy, similar to a mannequin, in the parking lot before.

When I reached out a hand to touch it, out of curiosity……

"Ah. It copies me."

The mannequin stretched out its left hand and moved in exactly the same way.

Same pose, same direction.

As if duplicating me.