A Story Written Wrong
I have to kill... I have to kill, don't I? This is wrong. I have to kill. Kill. Killing? If I don't kill... should I? Do I have to kill? This is wrong. If I don't kill... can I try killing? Would it be all right not to kill? Kill. This is wrong. I have to kill......
Yes. Let's kill.
This is.
"Seon Yuhan...? What's the matter?"
What I am looking at right now.
"Please don't worry."
Kim Gilyeong.
"It will all be over soon."
...is not human.
"Writing a new history, the children of Munrim Elementary—!"
"You went to Sangrim Elementary, didn't you?"
A thing like the name of an elementary school could be glossed over — she must have transferred, that was all.
Kim Gilyeong was born at 7:32 in the evening on September sixteenth.
Kim Gilyeong stared blankly out the window. Snow-white flakes were drifting down like flower petals. As if celebrating her birthday.
But how was snow falling in September?
"Looks like you and I are the only ones from our old school in this class. Let's eat lunch together later!"
Dark-tanned skin, a mouth that opened wide enough to show his uvula whenever he laughed, footsteps that seemed to bounce at all times. Hong Donghui became Kim Gilyeong's favorite friend.
'Who was your closest friend in elementary school?'
Kim Gilyeong recalled a memory as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. A friend whose charming dimples showed when she smiled, her face pale as a child who had never once seen sunlight. Hong Donghui.
The name of a friend she'd grown close to in middle school showing up as her closest friend from elementary school — and on top of that, a face that looked nothing alike.
[...] So after I finished reading this book, I opened the closet door a crack and looked inside, every single night.
And Alice in Wonderland became Kim Gilyeong's favorite book.
And then, of all things, Alice in Wonderland.
So it really was strange, after all.
It wasn't as though she'd mixed up Alice in Wonderland with The Chronicles of Narnia when she was little, nor had her favorite book simply changed later on.
There were other inconsistencies scattered here and there besides. Worse, they were subtle enough to miss unless you read carefully — and the placement was clever.
'There was something I was curious about while reading. Was Kim Gilyeong's favorite childhood book Alice in Wonderland, or The Chronicles of Narnia—'
'—Seon Yuhan, that must be a spoiler or something. I can't tell what it says. I don't think we need to talk about that part.'
Since every one of those contradictions was proof that the librarian was a monster, it only made sense that anything inconsistent would be censored as a spoiler.
'Just who might this mad person be, dragging an ugly doll nobody would take even as a gift — the filthy thing — across the floor and barging into the daycare?'
That was what the daycare's goose teacher had once said, standing over Kim Gilyeong's corpse.
'As if that would work? Even with a shoddy little defective thing like that?'
But to the living doll monster, it must have looked like Kim Gilyeong herself was the defect — a knockoff doll whose outside merely seemed decent, while its insides had been stuffed with whatever scraps were lying around.
'Oh, right — the Dalumul-ri labyrinth. There were no survivors there either, so no one ever found out what happened. Was there something like a body snatcher there too...? Like the ones at Seonghwa High that posed as students and attacked the teachers...'
Just as Choi Jaeha had said, the two films screening in the auditorium featured the same breed of monster.
Monsters that wore human shapes, deceived people, and kept them trapped inside a labyrinth.
And that kind of monster had been here, too.
Right in front of my eyes.
The moment I realized it, humiliation washed over me — as if someone had pulled every blood vessel from my body, wound them into a tangled skein, wove them into thick cloth on a loom, stuffed my innards into that cloth like cotton batting, threaded the leftover end of red string through a needle, and stitched it up seam by seam to make a doll that looked exactly like someone I could never meet again — then held it up proudly for me to see.
I wanted to die. If only I could have.
But I couldn't die.
So I had to kill.
That took longer than I expected.
That was the last thought I had before I went down.
"Ugh......"
The world spun the instant I pushed myself up. The back of my head and my forehead both burned as if they'd been set on fire.
"Seon Yuhan looks down at the floor."
What?
Even lost in confusion, my body followed the library's directions without a hitch.
"There was a corpse there."
The sight of the marks still vivid on the librarian's neck brought the memory flooding back, like water overflowing a dam too late. What I had done.
"Seon Yuhan examines the corpse of the librarian, who is staring up at the ceiling."
"Ugh, kh......"
I barely forced down the revulsion surging up alongside it and took a deep breath. As the senses that had been dozing at the edge of consciousness woke and rose to the surface, my whole body began to tremble all over again. There was no way I could keep my eyes open and look at 'that thing,' so I squeezed them shut.
A blasphemy and a mockery of everything that lives.
Even now, the urge to tear that thing to shreds and burn it throbbed beneath my skin.
I hated it. The things that weren't human — wearing human skins.
I was afraid. Terrified.
That sickening horror overshadowed even my guilt for showing something unspeakable in front of a child.
"Seon Yuhan, turning his eyes away with effort, finds four fallen books and a child's backpack left abandoned on the floor."
Hwang Juyeon, it seemed, had been too stunned to stop me right away. And rather than try to stop me, she must have decided to buy whatever time she could and flee with the child.
Honestly, I wasn't in a position to blame her.
Suppose a man you'd met for the first time today suddenly went mad and killed a woman you'd also met for the first time today. While trapped in an invasive labyrinth, no less? Of course the sensible move was to smash him over the head and run.
Though... wouldn't killing him for good, to make sure there were no loose ends, have been even more sensible?
Thanks to her not doing that, I — the one who survived — was grateful she hadn't killed me.
I picked up the book I had dropped.
Kim Gilyeong—
A wrongly written story.
Like a collage, cut and pasted together from pieces of different people's lives.
"Seon Yuhan has come to understand. That the librarian is the monster of this labyrinth. That no one can truly escape the library without killing the librarian. That the labyrinth cannot be cleared without killing the monster. That the story cannot end without someone dying."
Granted, in my case that was only natural — I've read it so many times because of the loop that I know it by heart...... But I thought back to the run where Kim Gilyeong's corpse had first been discovered. The wounds that carried the killer's bewilderment and hesitation.
Unless there was some third party I knew nothing about, Hwang Juyeon was the only one who could have killed the librarian.
Which meant that without any memory of regression, she had spotted the contradictions in the librarian's stories and acted — after a single book club meeting.
Hm.
I absolutely could not make an enemy of her carelessly.
I held my phone up for a rough look and found my forehead split open. Apparently I hadn't blacked out from the blow to the back of my head — I'd taken the hit, pitched forward, and knocked my forehead hard enough to knock myself out.
"Ah—uh?"
The moment the dark screen I'd been using as a mirror lit up bright, I nearly said 'Huh?' — a violation of the forbidden-words rule.
Something felt off, so I unlocked the phone and looked again — but the time was exactly the same.
The clock hanging on the library wall showed the same result.
4:14 PM? Don't tell me the concussion hit me harder than I thought. The book club had started at four o'clock sharp. Only fourteen minutes had passed? Subtract however many minutes I'd been unconscious, and......
Ten minutes.
The book club had ended after barely ten.
Sure, I had called it off partway through — but look at how much had been read in that time. At least thirty minutes should have gone by.
...Come to think of it, I hadn't once thought to check the time after the book club began. The thought simply never occurred to me. Not at all. Not even a little. At a moment when escaping the labyrinth even an hour sooner wouldn't have been soon enough — I'd whiled the time away reading.
In other words, literally — 'lost track of time.'
"Seon Yuhan awakens to the power of stories."
Ha.
So bending time was apparently nothing at all.
Well — I have died and come back any number of times, after all.
Kim Gilyeong drifted back into the edge of my nausea-numbed gaze.
"And some stories can only reach a true and complete ending once the protagonist dies. Isn't that right?"
Memories shattered like broken glass stabbed through my skull. The whites of her eyes, burst vessels having stained them beyond white; the confusion inside the black pupils that pinned me like an awl; the breathing that connected and cut off like meaningless Morse code. Hk, wehk, ghhk......
As if.
Why.
Why.
Why......
"The two bloodshot eyes, which had never even been given the chance to close, seemed to be looking straight at Seon Yuhan."
As though asking why.
As though it couldn't even guess the reason it had to die.
As though it truly believed it was human. Right up until the moment its breath ran out.
"Monster."
I ran, right then and there.
"Isn't that exactly what a labyrinth's monster would be?"
To shake off that gaze — the one that clung to me, wet and unyielding.
The moment I was out of Chaekbang-Ollae, I made straight for the emergency exit.
No sign of anyone remained in the second-floor corridor. The auditorium was screening a film right now, its doors sealed from both sides — Hwang Juyeon and Jeong Jiho, who'd fled from me, couldn't have gone in there. And the daycare was out of the question, if only because of Jeong Jiho.
Hwang Juyeon and Jeong Jiho had gone down a floor. That had to be it.
So killing the librarian really had been the correct answer.
Thud.
Gripping the emergency exit handle, I glanced back without meaning to.
The elevator lobby was in view. I thought of a certain big, cowardly accountant. Which floor he'd be on by now — whether he was even alive.
A simple man, sure. But not a bad one.
And yet I couldn't die for someone whose location — let alone whether he lived or breathed — I couldn't even confirm.
...Yeah. That's the kind of place a labyrinth is, and I'm that kind of bastard.
There was no taking it back now.
Click.
The alarm sounded, and the door opened.
Ha.
The instant I opened the first-floor door, I drew in a breath without meaning to. That interminable second-floor corridor was nowhere to be seen.
I had finally escaped the second floor.
Haha.
And that place —
...wasn't the first floor, either.