The Nameless Urn

Crackle, fizz…….

Yu Hyeonjae and I obediently shut our mouths and met each other's eyes, and in that wordless exchange we agreed that this radio sound was not an auditory hallucination on either of our parts.

For a while the music drifted through a haze of static, as though the broadcast were hunting for its frequency, until at last something cleaner came through.

It was a long-running program, one that had shared in the entire history of its station.

Mount Yeongun?

There were people traveling out that way?

A song drifted out with the characteristically low sound quality of radio broadcasts.

However generously one graded it, that was a tune from the early 2000s — hardly what anyone would call "rising in popularity lately."

"Sounds like an old broadcast."

"It would seem so."

And if that was the case, the contents of the story made rough sense as well.

"Seon Yuhan, does anything come to mind when you hear 'Mount Yeongun'?"

I stared quietly at Yu Hyeonjae.

It was not the face of a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠man asking because he didn't know. I couldn't fathom why he insisted on wasting time like this.

"I do."

Yu Hyeonjae widened his eyes, as if to say, go on.

"It turned into a labyrinth. A few years ago."

It was a sparsely visited stretch, true, but the labyrinth zone had swallowed a small road along with everything else, and every vehicle that passed through that point vanished without a trace.

"From what I know, a wildfire broke out a mere week after the labyrinth was made public, and the labyrinth was gone."

Whether it had started by accident, or whether the people trapped inside had set it deliberately.

They were released from the labyrinth. By dying.

"Well informed, as always. Though there's one more thing you need to know."

When I looked at him as if to ask what, Yu Hyeonjae glanced toward the dead radio and continued.

"Besides the bodies of the people who had been trapped in the labyrinth, fragments of an unidentified skeleton were recovered. One that had been lying buried in that mountain for a very, very long time."

"Unidentified……? Ah — now I remember."

Come to think of it, back when the Mount Yeongun labyrinth was all over the news, the public's attention had suddenly flooded toward those freshly discovered bone fragments, and I'd never managed to get proper information on the labyrinth itself.

"From what I heard, the remains were so badly damaged that DNA extraction proved nearly impossible. But they pieced the surviving fragments together somehow, and when they estimated the form……"

The co-CEO of Yuwi Guild stroked his jaw as if dredging up the memory, then abruptly furrowed his brow.

"The conclusion, I believe, was that she was a female of middle- or high-school age."

"Shi—"

…t.

Some twenty years ago. The early 2000s.

A grown man had gone off on a trip around Mount Yeongun with a middle-or-high-school-aged girlfriend.

And there, for whatever reason, that girl must have been struck by a car moving at full speed, her whole body twisted out of shape. Like the pile inside that delivery truck.

Then she was buried on Mount Yeongun.

Part of Mount Yeongun became an invasive labyrinth, was resolved through the total annihilation of everyone inside it, and in the course of that cleanup, some of the girl's bones were discovered……

"Ha……"

"And having learned this much, we still don't even know the child's name. Perhaps the clue is in here."

Yu Hyeonjae flicked the car catalog in his hand and spread it open so that I could read along with him. I began turning the pages slowly, watching for any marking that might catch the eye.

Flip, flip.

The sound of thin paper turning went on and on.

"Ah, here it is, I think. There's a memo tucked into this page."

Yu Hyeonjae stopped and pointed to a dark green SUV.

"Seon Yuhan?"

I slowly reached my hand toward that memo page.

Strangely enough, my fingertips looked as though they were trembling.

"What's wrong with you all of a sudden?"

"The drawing. The drawing……"

On the paper was what looked like a figure sketched in red pen.

A drawing of a balance scale, tilted to one side.

Thunk.

The instant I dropped the memo page, as if it had burned me—

Fizz, crackle……

The radio came back to life. A song bled through the static, sharpening little by little.

At last, the intro ended.

The song began in earnest.

"Seon Yuhan, do you see something strange right now?"

Nothing. No—nothing. I paid it all back.

"Clench your fists, then let go, and breathe slowly. One, two……"

No, it's wrong, too much, and the hands. Should I cut them off?

"105 seconds."

Someone seized my shoulder hard enough to break it and shook me.

"The average of one minute thirty and two minutes is 105 seconds."

What……? What's this, all of a sudden?

"Just now, you muttered 'somewhere between a minute thirty and two minutes.' After Hwang Juyeon died. That was how long you'd measured between the snake bite and the monster's arrival, wasn't it."

Right. Hwang Juyeon died. Because of me. Or no — was that last time? The time before that?

"Seon Yuhan. Forget death and all the rest of it. Focus on the rules. If you know the rules, you can get out of the labyrinth. Think only of that."

Rules, rules, rules. But how am I supposed to get out when I don't know them?

"For those 105-odd seconds, Hwang Juyeon's heart rate almost never dropped below 110. In other words—"

In other words: if a heart rate of roughly 110 or above holds for around 105 seconds, the monster comes.

"And that monster……"

And that monster crudely imitates a Buddha. Telling you to cast off your defilements.

What does 105 mean? What does a heart rate of 110 mean?

Right around 105 and 110. In between.

105, 106, 107, 108…….

Clank.

The moment the footsteps of that blasphemous yet sorrowful Tathagata statue rang out, its voice spread through my head like a flash of sudden enlightenment.

The 108 defilements.

"108."

"That must be the answer, most likely. There's a margin of error, but that's about how long it took just now, too…… Still, please understand that I had no intention of using you as an experiment subject. I didn't expect this to happen."

You don't need to make that kind of face.

Because I don't think it's bad.

"Sorry I couldn't be more help."

Krrunch, crack.

The sound of a car body crumpling and glass shattering rang out.

"If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Mr. Seon Yuhan?"

"……"

No, still — if he'd caught on to the rule, he should have told me in advance.

……Not that he'd have had any certainty or leeway to do so, and even knowing beforehand, I doubt I could have calmed my own heart.

"Mr. Seon Yuhan?"

"Interviewer. This building has turned into a labyrinth."

This time — please, let's break out.

"AAAAAAGH!"

"Wh-what the— are you insane?!"

In the parking lot, we had simply shut down any concern about screaming from the very start.

The loudness of a voice and the loudness of a heart — better to have only one thing to worry about than two.

I never did mention the figures, though — 108 seconds, 110 beats. I hadn't measured them with any rigor, and I had no way of making anyone believe me anyway.

The five of us finally reached the car we'd seen in the catalog.

Woo9356, dark green SUV, D09.

What a hell of an ordeal it had been, getting this far.

Hwang Juyeon had screamed when she saw her old piano tutor blinking up at her from beneath the sedan Go1020, the one where the package had been left. Jeong Jiho, having perhaps glimpsed his mother's apparition inside the delivery truck of Bae9502 — the one holding the crash-test dummies — could only whimper, unable to even cry properly. And Choi Jaeha, inside the red sports sedan Seo8102……

No. Never mind. That man is lucky to be alive.

"Shall we open it up and search, then?"

While Choi Jaeha, Yu Hyeonjae, and Hwang Juyeon searched the driver's seat, the passenger seat, and the back seat respectively, I took Jeong Jiho's hand and went to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠check the trunk.

"Mr. Choi Jaeha, open the trunk on that side, please!"

"Uhh, one sec."

Click.

The trunk opened, and I froze for a moment.

"Mr. Seon Yuhan, what'd you find in the trunk? Doesn't look like much over here……!"

Something had come out, all right.

Five white chrysanthemums, arranged in a vase.

……What ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a remarkable coincidence, that there were exactly five of us.

Ideally, we would be the ones laying flowers in offering. Not the other way around.

"Hey. No answer. What is it?"

"Ah."

I turned my gaze to the vase.

For a vase it was rather squat, with a broad girth — a bit rustic-looking — but it was white porcelain trimmed with a gold rim, painted with an antique orchid.

Ah. This is—

I hurriedly rotated it to face the other way.

And there it was: an inscription engraved in the center.

Just as I thought.

It was not a flower vase.

"It's an urn."

"Huh?"

"Hm? An urn……?"

Everyone gathered around and peered into the urn holding the chrysanthemums.

It was empty except for the flowers.

The chrysanthemums gave off the scent of incense.

"There's no name written on it. It seems we're meant to find that ourselves."

"So the story we heard on the radio, and the skeletal remains that came out of the Mount Yeongun labyrinth — those two are our clues, then."

"Wh- but how are we supposed to get a name out of that, for some girl nobody even knows……?"

It wasn't as if that thought didn't claw at my own heart too.

"We probably can. Labyrinths don't hand out unsolvable problems……"

As long as you stay alive — as long as you simply go on living — a labyrinth can always, without fail, be solved. Theoretically, that is.

The problem is dying midway through.

A labyrinth that's truly impossible to solve even if you die and wake up again? Then it almost certainly means you've missed a clue the labyrinth provided.

I took out my phone and paged back through the photos I took every single time in this parking lot, the things I'd drilled into memory.

Go1020, black sedan, D11.

Bae9502, white box truck, E02.

Seo8102, red sports sedan, A11.

Woo9356, dark green SUV, D09.

That was all the information this parking lot had ever given me, so the odds were good that the answer was here too.

So if you strip away the clutter of digits from the four license plates bearing a Korean syllable — Go1020, Bae9502, Seo8102, Woo9356 — you're left with Go, Bae, Seo, Woo.

"Go — that is, 'the late'…… Bae Seowoo."

I had found the deceased's name.

No sooner had I spoken the name than three neat syllables engraved themselves onto the urn.

"Huh? Bae Seowoo…? Gasp— Mr. Seon Yuhan! The flowers are smoking!"

"Ah, uh……?"

"Hey, put it down, now! Fire — it's catching fire!"

Flames bloomed from the five chrysanthemums, consumed them in an instant, and were gone.

"……"

All that remained in the urn was the ash of the flowers, still wafting the scent of incense.

Like bone powder left over after a burning.

And as I stared down into it, the memory of that day comes back.

"What day—"

The moment that voice rang out — so familiar it was horrific—

My breath stopped, just like that.