The Blade of the Scale
"If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Mr. Seon Yuhan?"
"I'll tell you what I would do, just once. Please remember it well."
The interviewer nodded along, keeping time with the grave resolve in my voice.
I took a deep breath and opened my mouth again.
"Oh. Oh..., I see. Having lots of detailed plans is a good thing, of course."
"Yes, ma'am. This place has become a labyrinth. And I intend to follow that plan."
"I'm sorry?"
"Please ask the Red Weavers under your management to spread the word on social media that the Jaerae Building has turned into a labyrinth. So that no one wanders in here by mistake. Please stand up."
"Uh, yes...? Mr. Seon Yuhan, wait just a moment... You're serious."
"I am."
As I led the interviewer out, a thought occurred to me.
Come to think of it, if news like this spread on social media, wouldn't the fire department refuse to enter even if someone pulled the alarm? And if we were lucky, maybe at least the people on the first floor would make it out.
Of course, I had no way of knowing whether being in the first-floor lobby actually meant escape — that much was nothing more than wishful thinking on my part.
Ah. I honestly don't know.
What if the shriek of the alarm drew the unnecessary attention of some hostile entity and got people killed instead? I can barely manage my own single life. I don't have the capacity to weigh the lives of this many people. It's a little different from the dilemma of writing off a person or two for my own sake.
If I do nothing, nothing changes — those who would live will live, and those who would die will die.
But if I press the button here.
Those who would die might live — but those who would live might die.
Good intentions do not necessarily produce good results. In a labyrinth, less than anywhere. Of course, malice almost certainly produces bad ones, so choosing goodwill is still the wiser bet...
"Mr. Seon Yuhan, are you all right? You've suddenly gone very pale. If you need anything, please just say so."
"I..."
The interviewer's eyes held genuine concern. The kind of eyes you could lean on, somehow.
That, I suppose, is exactly the quality a Red Weaver Agent needs.
And so, despite myself, I spilled my dilemma out loud — that if I pressed the button on this fire alarm, the sound might save someone, or might kill them instead.
"What on earth am I supposed to do at a time like—"
—Press.
RIIIIIING!
"Huh?"
"What do you mean, what to do? If it goes wrong, blame me. Naturally, if it goes well, it was thanks to me."
But it didn't feel merely contrived, either.
RIIING—! RIIIIING!
Amid the metallic shriek of the alarm that made my ears sting, I could only stare blankly at the interviewer.
"What did you just..."
"I simply did my job. Your load looked heavy, so I took some of it off your hands."
I could barely make out her voice.
But why was that?
It felt as though that voice were splitting open the center of my chest along a suture line that had vanished without a trace. Like the blade's edge of some great scale.
"Labyrinths exist so that people get lost in them, after all. Whichever path you choose, it's only natural you can't see an inch ahead. But in the end, you'll never know unless you go. What's waiting at the end, I mean."
The Red Weaver Agent lowered, quite naturally, the hand that had pressed the button.
Pretending not to see the tremor at her fingertips, I regarded her in silence.
The face of someone who, even while afraid, knows exactly what they have to do.
The face I hate most of all.
"I'm planning to stop by the daycare on the second floor first. Any interest in coming along?"
"Ah... well. The power's about to cut out, and the elevator will stop. I'm going to get the person trapped inside it out. Please go on ahead, ma'am. Don't wait for me. You remember what I told you, don't you?"
"Yes, I remember. Then I'll see you later, Mr. Seon Yuhan. Take care of yourself."
RIIIIIING—!
After parting ways with the interviewer, I pressed the elevator button and stared anxiously up at the floor panel.
Even knowing the whole story behind why the alarm was ringing, the alarm itself still had the power to shrivel a person's heart.
8... 7... 6... 5... 4...
The elevator seemed to be arriving a touch slower than usual.
No way.
3... Ding!
The doors are opening.
Choi Jaeha wasn't there.
So the man had gone down on his own initiative, without my telling him to. When he heard the fire alarm.
An exceedingly strange feeling. Was I impressed, or dumbfounded?
But what is that man going to do alone? I have no idea what happens on the other floors. A man like him would die in no time, I'd think.
And yet I didn't want to head back up under the pretext of helping find him. I can't become that good a person. However beloved a baby-of-the-family he might be to somebody, he is not more precious to me than my own life.
RIIIING—!
Hm. I don't actually know whether Choi Jaeha really is a doted-on youngest, though.
Judging by how he acts, somehow it seems likely.
KA-BOOM, WHUMP, KRA-KOOM!
KRAA-KOOM!
KWA-BOOM, WHUMP!
Thud.
The fire alarm that had been piercing my ears like an awl went silent.
Strange. Fire alarms are supposed to keep working regardless of a building's power going out.
Mid-thought, I shook my head. By that logic, elevators shouldn't be allowed to plummet, either.
This is a labyrinth. A place where no one can predict what will happen, and whatever happens, you simply have to roll with it.
Clunk.
When I pushed open the emergency exit onto the second floor, there it was — the scenery that had, by now, grown sickeningly familiar.
This time, too, I started down the corridor toward Uri Saenal Daycare on my way to the Wanna Go Bookshop — and stopped short.
But my feet wouldn't come easily. My legs felt heavy.
No, wait — if they won't move properly, does that mean they're light?
Why is any of it still there?
What if they come back to collect it?
And why do I have this many fingers?
What if they think I stole them?
Ah!
If I get rid of them again, will they believe me?
"Ha. Second floor again..."
Clunk.
An unfamiliar voice struck my dulled ears. I turned my head toward the sound.
In front of an emergency exit — not the one I'd come through, but another one — stood a person.
A woman in her mid-thirties, in a three-piece suit, her long hair drawn back into a single tight ponytail. Her face was flushed as though she were a little overheated, sweat beading on her forehead.
"Huh?"
Spotting me, the woman let an ominous sound slip out of her mouth.
This time, she didn't shut her eyes.
"Uh oh — don't tell me you're stuck too?"
"Pardon? What about me...?"
"No matter how far down you go, you come out on the second floor!"
"Ah."
For a moment I just rolled my eyes around blankly, then blinked several times. My eyes felt oddly dry.
"Yes, that's right. I went all the way down to the basement level, and I still came out on the second floor."
"Right?! This place is seriously wrong. It must be..."
The woman with fox-sharp eyes bit her lip.
I knew what this person wanted to say — no, didn't want to say.
"Yes. This place has become a labyrinth. An invasive type."
"Ha. Honestly. I knew it. Ha... What am I going to do, seriously..."
The woman crumpled down into a crouch and, for a solid thirty seconds, unleashed a dense, rapid-fire lament — then sprang back to her feet.
"I... have no intention of dying here. And you — quit spacing out already. You weren't in there drafting your will on your phone or anything, were you?"
"Ah — no, I wasn't. I have no intention of dying either."
If I die here. If, in the end, I die inside this labyrinth. How utterly wasted would all of those deaths be?
In that instant, my tangled mind snapped clean into order.
My goal is not to solve a locked-room murder.
To survive, and escape the labyrinth.
That, and that alone, is my goal.
"Hwang Juyeon. That's my name. I do freelance magic shows now and then — there was an event at the daycare here, and I'd just arrived when all this happened."
The daycare!
I worked hard to keep my expression under control.
"My name is Seon Yuhan. I came here to interview at Yuwi Guild."
With this woman, I might actually be able to get inside the daycare.
I retraced the route I'd traveled so far.
From the very start, my plan had been to explore every location at least once, hunting for a clue to get off the second floor.
First, the grand auditorium. There, I'd watched something that was either a documentary about the Seonghwa High labyrinth or a snuff film.
Next, the daycare. I'd gone to the forum thread partly to find an employee who could enter the daycare with me, partly to buy the Jaerae Diary I'd seen in the ads, and then — one, two, three, four, five — right, fingers come in fives, that's just what they are, across both hands? And legs are supposed to get lighter and lighter over time.
Then, the library. When I first found the dead librarian and carried her over to the daycare, the goose doll fussed like a meddling in-law — who's this hideous doll you've dragged in? — and chased me out the door.
On the next loop, I went back to the library, only to find the librarian had been attacked by someone yet again.
And then here again. Now.
Round and round I'd gone, and at last I had found a living human being who could enter Uri Saenal Daycare alongside me.
After surviving all of that — only now, finally!
"I was thinking of checking the daycare out first. There might be a clue for getting downstairs somewhere in there. Would you care to come with me, Ms. Hwang?"
Hwang Juyeon. If it's this person.
A freelance magician formally invited to Uri Saenal Daycare is not a complete 'outsider.' Which means she should be able to slip past that cutesy doll security without getting turned away at the door.
Of course, I had no idea whether I'd be allowed in along with her — and since there was a real possibility this woman was the one who attacked the librarian, I would have to keep my guard up.
"Mm, sure, why not? I don't have any particular plan of my own anyway. Two's better than one, isn't it? Might as well check whether any of the kids are still around while we're at it. It's too quiet in here. It's giving me the creeps."
When I'd dropped by the daycare before, the shoe lockers had suggested one teacher and one child. Maybe the rest of the children had simply up and vanished to who-knows-where, exactly like the interviewer.
"By the way — do you think smashing a window and climbing down is out of the question?"
Hwang Juyeon pointed at the corridor's floor-to-ceiling window, which looked out over the maze garden in the Jaerae Building's central atrium.
I hadn't tried it, knowing such a shallow trick would never work — but Accountant Choi Jaeha had.
"Someone tried it. It didn't work."
"Thought so. Figures..."
Hwang Juyeon accepted that easily. Unless you were ignorant of the fact that this was a labyrinth, that would be the normal reaction.
If escape by such means had actually been possible, the danger rating of invasive labyrinths would have plummeted long ago — just as contact-type labyrinths came to be treated like traffic accidents once their patterns were gradually mapped and Red Weaver activity ramped up.
Hold on.
Did Choi Jaeha actually do that?
I don't remember it.
Why do I have this feeling that Choi Jaeha once hurled a fire extinguisher at a window? Frothing at the mouth the whole time?
Well — either way, what doesn't work doesn't work.
"Let's head in, then."
Hwang Juyeon nodded.
I carefully opened the door to Uri Saenal Daycare.
Praying, with everything I had, that this wouldn't turn into another round of "Then why did you even come? Just die!"
"Oh my!"
"Agh — that startled...! What the—?"
Toys drawn up in full battle formation, the goose doll at the very front of the line.
Hwang Juyeon stumbled backward — but the door was already locked.
"You're Magician Hwang Juyeon, aren't you?"
"Don't panic. Just answer honestly."
I whispered quickly to the flustered Hwang Juyeon.
"Uh — yes. That's me..."
Hwang Juyeon stared down at the goose doll, dazed, and answered.
"Your show earlier was so, so much fun! The children loved it, loved it, loved it!"
The toys, expressionless as befits inanimate objects, seemed somehow to be wriggling with delight.
"However..."
The vivacious goose doll's voice went still and quiet, as if modulating from a major key into a minor one.
"And who, might I ask, is this person with you?"
Two dark, desolate periods came to rest upon me.