Until the Children Get Tired
Stay calm.
"Hello, I'm Seon Yuhan. A colleague of Ms. Hwang Juyeon here—we share the same goal. Isn't that right, Ms. Hwang Juyeon?"
Calmly, I talked my way through it. Who ever said a colleague had to mean a coworker? We could just as easily be companions in escaping the labyrinth.
"Oh, right. Of course. We're colleagues."
Thankfully, Hwang Juyeon was quick on the uptake and nodded along.
The goose doll gave no reply for a long moment, like a robot running on a dying battery. As if it were deliberating whether I really was Hwang Juyeon's companion. And depending on how that verdict came down, whether I'd be lynched by those things again would be decided right here.
"Oh! Is that so!"
Ten seconds that felt like ten minutes crawled by before the doll's cheerful voice rang out again. Honestly, I hadn't been able to loosen my guard until then. The first time around, it had showered me with plenty of 'Oh, is that so!' too—right before tossing me out. Into the great beyond.
"Welcome, Seon Yuhan!"
The goose doll cocked its long neck toward the interior.
5-2. Become a companion of an employee or daycare-affiliated staff member, and enter together.
"Both of you, come on in! The children are waiting!"
Good grief. Terrifyingly hospitable, these things, so long as you weren't a suspicious outsider. But make no mistake—they would not be treating children as something precious.
The labyrinth is impartial, and precisely because of that, unjust. There's something contemptible about a place that cuts no slack for anyone, be they old, frail, or small. Granted, that's a thoroughly human-centric assessment—but then, I'm human. Or no, wait—since it kills the strong just as fairly, might it actually be better than humans, who trample the weak and grovel before the strong? Now I've gone and confused myself. Anyway. Children might have different rules applied to them than adults, but those rules would hardly be the kind designed to keep children safe.
"Oh—...! Th-that's a child! Sweetie! Are you okay?"
Look at that. Told you—being a kid buys no mercy here. Despicable things.
I hurried inside after Hwang Juyeon. The belated thought that maybe I should have waited for the goose doll's permission came trailing after me. That was how unpleasant the scene before my eyes was.
A child of six or seven stood atop a round pedestal, arms stretched out theatrically, and the pedestal was turning in a slow rotation. Like the figurine on some dainty music box.
"Um... Teacher, you remember, right? You showed us a magic trick here earlier."
The child's slender limbs quivered, and the small face was a contorted mess, smeared with tears. I couldn't guess how long he'd been standing like that, but this was unmistakably corporal punishment. Abuse.
"Can you hear my voice? Can you come down?"
At my question, the child kept his mouth clamped shut—nodded, then shook his head no.
"Ah...!"
He even slammed his forehead into Hwang Juyeon with everything he had as she tried to lift him, shoving her away. Hwang Juyeon clutched her reddening nose, bewildered.
I recognized what filled the child's brimming eyes. Fear. And that fear wasn't aimed at us. It reached toward something else entirely.
"Ms. Hwang Juyeon, hold on a moment."
I tapped her shoulder lightly and turned to face the goose doll. The thing—still so trivial-looking, so expertly disarming—stood bolt upright, orange beak pointed our way.
"What should I call you?"
"Oh my, you're a funny one!"
A cheerful laugh spilled out from between the stitched beak.
"Who do you think I am?"
A monster? A goose doll? A horrific thing of slaughter wearing the shell of a dim-witted goose doll?
"Why, why—your teacher, of course!"
Right. Of course.
"Teacher, why is that child like that?"
"Oh, you mean Jiho?"
That child, Jiho, was clearly like that because of the labyrinth's rules. I needed to grasp the exact situation before I could fix it. And with a teacher kind enough to answer, there was no need to take the scenic route.
"Can't you tell just by looking? He's learning how to become a well-loved child!"
"And could you tell me specifically what that method is?"
"My, someone's interested in our teaching methods! How rewarding. As it happens, our Uri Saenal Daycare childcare curriculum had far too many shortcomings, so we're taking this opportunity for a complete overhaul."
"Seems to me the next overhaul should be scrapping the whole thing."
"Pardon?"
"Hm? Didn't say a thing."
The goose teacher, who had caught my involuntary muttering with uncanny sharpness, swayed its white neck back and forth. I couldn't begin to guess what the gesture meant.
"Anyway, the method is quite simple. You correct them like that, you see, until the image of a well-loved child soaks naturally into their body."
In the direction the goose had tilted its head, the child was still trembling like a leaf.
"So that they don't cry noisily, don't whine and throw fits, don't run about restlessly, don't twist their bodies this way and that, and don't mumble in ways no one can understand. And look at the result!"
The goose, having chattered on and on about 'the image of a well-loved child,' spoke in a voice fit to burst with pride.
"So pleasant for grown-ups to look at, isn't it?"
Like hell it is, you lunatic.
But regardless of my feelings, I filed every word away carefully. That was the rule that child had to live by in this labyrinth-turned daycare.
"I just don't understand why such a wonderful teaching method was never used before."
Because it's violence, you damned thing.
Children are noisy creatures by nature. They're supposed to cry their lungs out, throw tantrums, run wild until they drop. Otherwise, adults would forget children exist altogether. Adults are the kind of beings who forget they were ever children themselves. ...And I was no more free of that forgetting than anyone.
"But now you can entrust your little ones to Uri Saenal Daycare with complete peace of mind. We've disposed of all our substandard teachers, you see!"
"I'm sorry—what?"
"Oh my, slip of the tongue! We fired them, I mean."
Abhorrent monster. Disposed of, fired—same difference. Unsettling wording even outside a labyrinth; inside one, doubly so. Best to assume they were dead.
"And what's the standard for not being fired?"
"That's a little difficult to say. It's a matter of internal personnel affairs, you see..."
I hadn't expected an answer anyway.
"Then would it be all right if we took Jiho with us now?"
That was the real matter at hand. Whether that torture could be stopped, here and now.
"Hmm, I wonder?"
The squishy, plump white body rippled. As if it were savoring the sight of three humans hanging on its every reaction.
"Oh! All right! We'll have the two of you serve as Jiho's temporary guardians, and he can leave early today."
Just when I thought the goose teacher was being unusually forthcoming, it dropped its bomb.
"No need to wait for Jiho's mother to get off work, after all. She won't be coming anyway."
"What? What's that... What exactly do you mean by that?"
Mindful of the child watching us anxiously, I lowered my voice.
"Jiho's mother is gone now."
The goose bastard answered, beaming as if it wanted to be heard.
"Th-then, come to think of it, the other children. Where are the other children?"
Hwang Juyeon asked, flustered. She must have been reading the goose teacher's mood, because her polite speech came out stiff and awkward.
"Oh my, what a joker. They're right here, aren't they?"
The goose tilted its head and pointed behind it.
"Jiho has this many friends."
There were countless dolls there. Toys that had once bitten, torn, stabbed, and killed me.
Hwang Juyeon pointed at the horde, aghast.
"No. No way. Friends? A-are you saying the children turned—turned into those things?"
Instead of answering, the goose teacher just went hmm, hm, and hummed a familiar lullaby. The freelance magician's face drained white. And Jiho's expression, which had looked half-dead from the start, went without saying.
"The labyrinth."
I walked straight past the goose, toward the wall lined with lockers.
"It likes to deceive people. No—deceiving is the labyrinth's very function. That's how people get lost."
Kang Hayoon... Kim Minjun... Kim Jiyul...
"It likes making people cry, too. That's how they fall apart."
Park Junsu... Lee Nayeon... Lee Hyunji...
"I... those things, they're just too—"
Jiho. Jeong Jiho.
Here you are.
The locker opened to reveal a sky-blue pouch of spare clothes and a backpack small enough to be adorable. I closed the emptied locker and turned around.
Too much...
It turned my stomach. Finding that blood-soaked toy box in the corner, hidden behind the partition wall. Realizing who the person crumpled up and packed inside that toy box actually was. Guessing that a child not yet old enough for elementary school had witnessed his teacher's gruesome death.
"Jiho."
At some point the child had gone limp in Hwang Juyeon's arms, exhausted, tears dripping in fat, silent drops. He was still watching the goose monster out of the corner of his eye, swallowing his sobs between sniffles. It was heartbreaking to see.
I quietly conveyed my meaning with a gesture, then gathered the child as he slipped free of Hwang Juyeon and stood up with him in my arms.
"We're getting out of here now. Okay?"
Even if he needed comforting, it would have to happen outside this daycare. Sniffling sounded beside my ear. No answer came. The arms looped around my neck had no strength in them at all.
"Hold on tight. Let's go, Ms. Hwang Juyeon."
Hwang Juyeon nodded, Jiho's backpack slung over her shoulder, and I settled Jiho properly in my arms and gripped the daycare's door handle.
"Oh my, leaving already?"
"Is that a problem?"
"There's nothing wrong with it, is there? Nothing at all."
Nothing at all, huh. So unnerving, seriously. Not that we could just storm out.
"But how bored our children will be, if the friend who plays with them just up and leaves?"
"So?"
The politeness was bleeding out of my voice.
"Hmm."
The goose teacher, which had been merrily humming its lullaby, waddled closer. The other toys advanced one step at a time. Small and darling as they looked, I knew down to my bones just how blood-crazed these things were.
"How about playing with these children just a little while longer?"
Clunk. Clunk.
"It's locked...!"
Hwang Juyeon whispered, her face tight with dread. Perhaps frightened in sympathy, the arms around my neck tightened a fraction.
Damn it. No wonder it had let the child go so meekly.
"'Play with them.' What, how, until when?"
Don't tell me it meant to keep us here until then.
"You really are too funny!"
When the goose teacher cackled, the toys around it shook their bodies as if laughing along with their teacher.
"I take it you've never played with children before? Asking until when you have to play with them..."
The laughter-laced voice came down like a death sentence.
"Until the children get tired, of course!"