The Roster of Managed Things

Jaerae Building Facility Management Registry.

Flip.

I unfolded the yellow file folder to find several sheets of A4 paper inside, headed with the title Jaerae Building Facility Management Registry.

"……."

Figures.

Right from the first lines under the title, something was off.

The author's name was strange, and so was this 'Observer' business.

"Why? Is there something weird written there?"

The moment Yoon Geonmin sidled up close beside me, his name appended itself to the Observer field.

"Hmm? What is this document, that it's censored to bits like this? All I can see is our names and nothing else... huh? Wait, this is a Relic, isn't it? There's no way a regular document would have both our names written down together like this."

Snatch!

Yoon Geonmin, who had been stealing glances from the side, must have found it novel, because he whisked the folder right out of my hands.

"Oh! The name's changing. It really is a Relic. But it's seriously all censored — there's not a single thing to see, so who knows how anyone's supposed to make any use of it..."

...Not a single thing to see except the Observer's name, he says?

When I held out my hand to check the document again, Yoon Geonmin handed it over without protest.

"Ah, that, well, it's not that I've never seen a Relic before, it's just that I almost never get to touch one up close like this. It's fascinating, that's all..."

"Ah, I see."

I gave a perfunctory reply and slowly panned back down over the registry, laid out in a table beneath the Observer field.

It was true that much of it was redacted.

But not all of it.

...At least, not to my eyes.

There were things I could see.

At first I wondered whether it was because I'd entered the 'Head Administrator' passcode to get into the General Affairs Team's office.

But as I read on...

Apparently the redaction lifted only for information I already knew.

And even that, only up to a point.

Which meant the 'Jaerae Building Facility Management Registry' was, in plain terms, a list of the 'monsters' that managed each of the building's facilities.

Though things with no physical form — the ones classified as anomalous phenomena — didn't appear to be on it.

"There's nothing to read, so what are you staring at so hard? Can you... see something?"

Yoon Geonmin had never crossed paths with a single monster in this labyrinth, so ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠every entry read as solid black to him.

"No, it's not that. I just figured if I kept looking, something might eventually show up. It could be one of those rules that only become legible with time, you know."

"Oh, really? Huh. I suppose that could happen."

Yoon Geonmin came back to my side and craned his neck over, and I tilted the pages to make them easier for him to see.

"Hmm..."

Not that the consideration did any good — he clearly couldn't see any of this anyway.

...Though of course, there was plenty I couldn't see either.

Si?

I had no idea what kind of monster this one was.

With its assigned facility blacked out, nothing about it rang a bell yet.

I suspected this long-numbered entity was the server system itself, seated deep in the computer room across the way.

It must have been classed as a monster rather than an anomaly because it had hardware — physical parts.

I didn't think it referred to Hyunjae, though.

Going by the remark that its authority stopped at Floor 12 — Hyunjae had shown himself on other floors before.

Always through a machine, granted.

Mask.

A fitting name.

The way it had shredded Choi Jaeha's corpse and plastered the pieces over itself, as if hiding behind a mask of him. The way it had made its entrance by opening the doors of an elevator that had plunged down like some freak accident. All of it fit.

So it was Do-ssi. The gambler's die made of living flesh and eyeballs.

Its remarks ran unusually long, and were surprisingly interesting.

So Do-ssi losing a wager — the very act that sends its opponent out of the labyrinth — counted as a grave breach of internal regulations?

It made sense.

'The revocation of Do-ssi's rules' could only mean Do-ssi's annihilation.

Of course, the phrase 'disciplinary action' was probably nothing more than the labyrinth aping the format of corporate paperwork.

Given that, there was no need to take every clause at face value by human standards — though for all I knew, annihilation carried plenty of weight for monsters too...

'The only stake you can put up in a wager against me is your life. I never hold a life cheap — and so I never hold a contest cheap.'

That thing, too, was taking us perfectly seriously.

"……."

I had tried, time after time, to enter the Tarae — all for a flashlight to hold back the machine room's darkness.

To keep the trauma of that first 'severing' from triggering a fit, I had pinned myself in place by recalling greater pain, and I had even gone to other floors to suffer greater pain.

By the end of it, I no longer passed out gasping for breath in the Tarae, nor bit and tore at my own flesh in a frenzy to cut off far too many fingers.

But even now, the mere thought of that place still makes me anxious.

Some things never mend.

I have to sew those unhealed things onto myself and go on living wearing them.

The way I always have.

Pipi of Happy Land.

The one who did more than anyone to help me beat those fits in the Tarae.

Ah.

The one that hides every inch of itself under a heavy coat, a scarf, and a hat, and carries Happy Land photos over to press them against the wall.

I still hadn't ever looked beneath, so I didn't know exactly what form it took.

I mustn't look. I mustn't know.

That was the kind of existence it was.

The copycat mannequin from the stockroom of Moment O'Clock — Lee Nahyeon's workplace.

The mannequin that, the instant it caught up to my rhythm and overtook it, turned the game around and made me the one doing the imitating.

I pictured the librarian's face, dying strangled by my hands dozens of times over.

Kim Gilyeong.

Pretty, for a name that had been invented like that — and that was exactly what made it a shame.

If it had been assembled just a little more awkwardly, I would have caught on to the monster that much sooner.

Those creepy monster bastards who had called me Teacher.

The redacted remarks nag at me.

The black horse that had carved up people's torsos and limbs to assemble itself a headless rider.

...I hadn't the faintest clue what this bizarre entry was.

Judging by the broken shape of the name, it seemed like it might be connected to the author.

In any case, this was the last entity on the list whose name I could read.

That said, there was no entry for the thing that kept rupturing the pipework in the machine room.

I couldn't tell whether that was because it wasn't a monster lurking in the dark but a formless anomaly — or because I had never yet escaped that floor, and its name was still censored for me.

And...

Those two teenagers, the boy and the girl I'd met at the SinGYE Daily.

No name that might correspond to those kids had shown up either.

Maybe they were somewhere among the entries blacked out entirely, from name to remarks and everything between.

It seemed I didn't yet truly know them — nor held the right to.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

'How can you kill anyone else when you're not prepared to die yourself? We are prepared. We have been for a very long time.'

'Could I become like you too, Teacher? When I grow up...'

I had been curious, actually. About those monsters' names.

"Hm? You're just going to leave it? You have to take it with you!"

Tap.

The moment I closed the folder and set it back on the desk, Yoon Geonmin snatched it up.

"There's a Relic Management Office on the 8th floor. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠If we go take a look, there might be people there who know a thing or two. Of course, it's nearly all administrative staff over there, so they probably won't measure up to the research wing, but..."

"It's a good idea, but... hmm. The floors are scrambled — I have no idea where that 8th floor actually is anymore."

"Oh, right. That's true. The floor below us was the 3rd, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

Besides, it was an open question whether this document could even be carried out of the General Affairs Team's office.

Would the labyrinth's rules really permit a document hidden away this carefully to be leaked to the outside?

Zzzzip, slide.

So I didn't stop Yoon Geonmin from tucking the folder into his backpack at an angle that kept its contents artfully out of sight.

I was curious what would happen.

"...Hm?"

Yoon Geonmin, backpack shouldered again, arched an eyebrow slightly.

"Come to think of it — why did you come up here?"

"...What do you mean, why did I come up?"

"Well, you said you came up from the 3rd floor after, you know, teaching those students. Why didn't you head back down? You couldn't have known the floors were scrambled back then."

"Ah. Right. I didn't."

There had been a time I went down to the 2nd floor precisely because I didn't know — and only after descending from the 2nd floor to Basement Level 5 did I confirm for certain that the floors had been shuffled.

"I came up here because there was something I needed to find."

Shk.

I gave my answer as I pushed open the General Affairs Team's door and stepped out.

"Something to find? Find wha—"

Yoon Geonmin's voice, trailing after me, snapped off mid-word.

Flip.

I quietly lowered my head and looked down at the single sheet of paper lying exactly where Yoon Geonmin had been standing.

So leaking classified documents really wasn't allowed, after all.

Didn't even need to test it.