Life Is Not a Boiled Egg, but a Labyrinth (2)
"This way, please."
When we came back from the restroom, the servant picked up his guidance toward the exit as if nothing had happened. In truth I could have planted the return keyring to the company just about anywhere, but he had no way of knowing that. Thanks to his ignorance, we were still inside the palace.
"The Palace of Crete is a complicated place. Even the servants lose their way now and then. Stay close behind me."
Yeah. It really was a maze. The whole palace was already a labyrinth—what was the point of opening a theme park on top of it?
Still, all this complexity might be an opportunity.
For me, at least. I had to slip the servant's eyes somehow and find Ariadne inside the palace. The mere thought made my heart feel ready to burst, but it beat walking into the maze empty-handed and never walking out again. Damn right. Nothing in the world matters more than staying alive.
...I'll have to ask Hena and Pascal for help, too.
I dropped my voice and whispered to the two of them, who were still looking thoroughly lost.
"I'm sorry for dragging you along without a word of explanation. I'll explain everything, I swear... just bear with me a little longer."
"..."
"Hm? For now, I understaaand."
Their faces were still uneasy, but we'd survived an all-nighter together. That overtime camaraderie had to be worth a little trust.
"Strange rumors have been going around the palace lately, so you mustn't lose your way."
Whatever it was he didn't trust about us, the servant kept rattling off warnings as he led us on. We walked for a while, and then an open courtyard came into view beyond the corridor—a garden at its center, the roof open to the sky in a clean square. Corridors converged on the place like strands of a spiderweb.
A roundabout, basically.
Right. We'd already passed a few spots like it, so I'd been counting on another. I let myself drift, little by little, to the very back of the line. When our party reached the place where the corridor met the courtyard, I eased the vase on its stand toward the edge. It sat there precariously, one breath from losing its balance and falling.
Our procession circled the courtyard the way you circle a roundabout, and just as it was about to feed into the corridor on the far side, I started walking with heavy, pounding steps, as if I meant the vibration to travel through the floor, and shot an anxious glance at the vase teetering on the rim.
Please, please... fall at the right moment...!
I swallowed. For a second I thought the sound of it was far too loud.
Crash!
A much louder sound rang out instead. I shouted on purpose.
"Ah! Someone just went down that passage!"
"Oh no! Wait right here a moment!"
The servant, devoted to the bone, took off at a run after an intruder who didn't exist. Whew. My thanks for your unwavering loyalty to the court. If the passage had run straight, he would have noticed the lack of any presence in no time, but with so many corridors knotted together like a web, the cheap little trick seemed to land.
Quick—I have to move before he comes back...!
"Just a second—follow me!"
"...!"
I hurried the others off and hid us somewhere else. Once we'd caught our breath, I finally had a moment to explain things to my bewildered teammates: the particulars of the myths from the human world, and this world that so closely resembled them.
"...Deciding we'll need Ariadne's Spool of Thread is only my personal judgment. I'll be fine, so would the two of you head back to the company first?"
The truth was, I was not fine at all. I wanted to beg them not to leave me alone in this bizarre place.
Even so, I can't throw a fit and ask them to walk into danger with me.
Right. I'd said it out of guilt, as a courtesy, and I didn't expect much. Break into a royal palace—a client's palace, no less—and hunt down an item? If a coworker had said that to me, I would have dropped them on the spot....
"Too dangerous to go back and leave a teammate alone. This is part of the job. I'll come with you."
"Lee-hyun, why are you trying to carry this all by yourseeelf? It'll be so much better if we look together!"
...You two!
The answers came back more willingly than I'd dared hope. Pascal and Hena, thankfully, had decided to stick by me. Thank you for not cutting me loose. Truly.
And so the three of us set out to search the palace. It really was a labyrinth. We wandered it in earnest until we reached a junction like the one before us.
A mural faced us head-on, with two paths splitting off to the left and right.
"Another fork... shall we try the right this time?"
"Let's."
Step, step. We walked in silence through the quiet palace.
Strangely empty of people.
Well, that was a relief. No one around to call us out for wandering on our own. And then—
"Have you lost your way?"
We stopped dead. A voice from behind had halted our steps. I turned, and an unfamiliar servant was looking at us. There had been no sign of anyone. None at all.
"...Yes. We have."
"Where are you headed?"
"We wish to have an audience with Princess Ariadne."
"Ah, I see. Take that path."
He lifted a finger and pointed down one of the ways. All three of us turned on reflex and looked, together, where the finger indicated.
"...Yes. Thank y—"
We confirmed the path he'd shown us and turned our eyes back to where he ought to have been standing.
"...!"
Strangely, there was no one there. An empty corridor. Only a hallway webbed with paths waited for us, hollow.
"...He must be a fast walkerrr."
"...I guess so."
"..."
We stood dazed for a moment, then set off again down the path we'd been given. Step, step. We walked a while, and came upon another mural.
This one had two figures painted on it. Paths opened on either side of the mural—a layout much like the last.
"This time, shall we try the left?"
"Let's."
Step, step. Once more we wound through the complicated interior of the palace.
"Have you lost your way?"
......
Again, a voice from behind. Again, without the slightest hint of a presence.
"Yes. We were walking in hopes of an audience with Princess Ariadne..."
"You should go that way."
I whipped my head around to check the path, then looked forward again.
"......"
"......"
Sure enough, the servant from a moment ago was gone.
"...Same situation as before."
"...It is, isn't it. How straaange."
Were every one of the servants here a ninja? Or extreme introverts—tell you only what you needed, then flee before you could get another word in...... Feeling that something was off, we walked once more toward the place we'd been shown.
"...Another mural."
"Huh."
......And once again we reached a fork of the very same structure: a mural set between two paths. The picture, though, was plainly different.
Not a single person. Only things like vases, set along the floor. Almost as if someone had left the pottery and gone.
"Don't you think... we keep circling the same spot?"
"The mural did change, though..."
The picture was different, and everything else about the junction was identical.
...The aura around the mural is different, too.
Was there something here? If I looked a little closer....
"Have you lost your way?"
I froze. As always, a voice came from behind our party while we stared at the mural.
"......"
"......"
The difference was where the voice was. At our backs. From directly behind us, a voice asking a question....
Now that I think about it, it's strange.
Why would the servants tell us—outsiders—where the princess was, without a shred of suspicion......?
...Damn!
The voice warped into something grotesque. A chill slid down my spine.
I've heard stories about cursed paintings in situations just like this!
Destroy the original, and sometimes that solved it...!
Without looking back, I reached sideways, snatched up an ornament lying there, and brought it down with everything I had on the earthen wall, where an unpleasant ripple seemed to crawl. If I was right, the mural was the cause of the whole bizarre phenomenon.
The wall gave way in a crashing tumble.
"Cough, cough!"
Acrid dust swallowed my vision. When it thinned, what I saw was not that unpleasant passage, but a room washed in warm sunlight.
......It worked! The strange thing was gone, and we'd made it back to the real palace!
The relief didn't last.
"What—who are you!"
A woman's voice rang through the room, bewilderment and irritation tangled together.
...!
A woman in fine robes sat before a loom. In the basket beside her lay a spool of thread carrying an aura that was anything but ordinary, and I couldn't help but put the name to her.
"Princess... Ariadne?!"
"Yes! What do you think you're doing?"
Oh. We'd actually found her. But the situation was far too absurd to celebrate. Out of nowhere, foreigners in unfamiliar clothes had barged straight into the princess's chambers. Aaaah! Offend royalty and you get executed on the spot, don't you?!
"Good day, Princess. We were invited by the Minotaur Prince regarding the opening of the Maze Theme Park."
Fortunately, before things could turn dire, Pascal's voice cut cleanly through the room—a trustworthy tone, a courteous greeting. The princess's wariness seemed to ease a notch.
"We were told Your Highness's spool would be of help, and came in haste to seek an audience. Please forgive the rudeness of our sudden visit."
...Oh. I'd been worrying whether it was all right to ask for the spool out of nowhere, but think about it: in the myth, hadn't Ariadne been the one to offer the spool first, out of fondness for a stranger named Theseus? ...Was Theseus that handsome? Then Pascal ought to be able to get the spool too—
"What, you want my help?!"
...What came back was ice-cold. Damn it. Theseus was a hero, after all. He probably had one of those healthy, sculpted physiques. The team leader wasn't really that type....
"Honestly, that little brother of mine! I told him over and over that a theme park has no vision. He pushed ahead as stubbornly as ever, and now he means to borrow even my hand."
She seemed to have slightly misunderstood us, but one thing was clear: she did not want the spool used for the maze at all.
"Tell him I can offer no help whatsoever. Now then, would you stop disturbing my rest?"
She waved us off, cold as stone. An attendant, having heard the commotion, came running from outside.
"What is the matter—ah, allow me to escort you out!"
And so we were driven from the palace. Ah, damn. We'd gone to all that trouble to find the spool, only to be thrown out without it. What now....
"Saying we won't enter the maze over safety concerns would be haaard, wouldn't it? The prince seemed kind, though."
"You mean taking the commission without understanding the client's core product. That doesn't fly."
Right. The client holds all the cards. A mere subcontractor has neither the grounds nor the right to refuse a perfectly reasonable order made in the name of research. It was a simple problem—one spool, and it would have been solved—and that made it worse. Ha. If it had been Theseus, he would have walked out with the spool on the spot.
......Oh. That's it.
Right. If Theseus could receive it, then that was the answer. Theseus was a hero who saved people. Explain the circumstances, and he might help us too!
"I've thought of a way to get the spool. Could we stop by the harbor and look over the ships?"
In the myth, Athens had sent people as tribute for Crete's monster, the Minotaur. Theseus had been one of those sacrifices.
This is the period when the Minotaur is active. Wouldn't Theseus, tied so closely to him, be on his way to Crete soon?
Even if this place didn't line up perfectly with the common sense of the human world, its tie to the myth still ran deep. And now, of all times—when maze-related incidents linking the two were unfolding in earnest—the odds that Theseus had already arrived in Crete had to be high.
Ships of every kind lay moored in a row along a Mediterranean wharf. One large vessel stood out among them, olive trees painted across its hull and fittings.
The olive tree is the symbol of the goddess Athena.
A ship from Athens, the city that kept Athena as its patron—no question. If anywhere could give us a hint about Theseus, it was there. I approached a laborer unloading cargo and asked.
"Hello. Might I ask about the people who come from Athens as sacrifices?"
"Sacrifices? What kind of rotten talk is that?!"
The man flared up at once.
"Crete and Athens are friendly nations. So what if our Athens is the lesser state—sacrifices?! We are equal nations!"
?!
It's... different from the myth I knew!
The premise I'd taken for granted—that Athens, held by the scruff by Crete, offered sacrifices every year—had just shattered.
Because the Minotaur was acknowledged as royalty, not a monster...?
Then Prince Theseus wasn't in Crete at all? Damn it. Even this last hope was gone. How in the world was I supposed to get that spool? Was there really a way...
......No. There is!
Inspiration struck, sharp and sudden. Right. This was a world with magic and gods, and a world where science had never advanced. Maybe the conveniences of civilization would do the trick.