Does the Machine Remain?

"Ah. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Ah……."

"Yu…… Hyeonjae? Director?"

Yu Hyeonjae had been alive. For the briefest of moments.

From between lips still shaped in a pristine smile came a dry, grating crackle, and his sharp, quick eyes rolled loosely in their sockets before dropping clean out of his face. With that support gone, his neck could no longer bear the weight of his head and bent at an angle no neck should ever bend, while his neatly upright body slumped, settling with horrible ease into the contours of the chair.

"Seon Yuhan, don't tell me his bones…… all of them……."

I had forgotten I was even supposed to be dealing with a corpse. I simply stared, blank, at Yu Hyeonjae collapsed in the chair.

He looked exactly like a doll.

A doll some child had stitched together out of its own flesh and blood with clumsy hands. A doll whose maker had forgotten the bones, so that far from standing up straight, it had split open and spilled its insides everywhere. A doll that, in the end, was thrown away before anyone could even play with it.

Yu Hyeonjae had died.

For the first time.

The first time.

And strangely enough, that was what……

terrified me.

"I'll move the Director somewhere and catch up."

Scrape. Scrape.

The whole time I spent hauling Yu Hyeonjae's body away and leaving it behind, I had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to keep shaking my head to drive off a fear I couldn't name. I couldn't think about it anymore. I couldn't.

Now it was my turn.

The early run played out the same as before. Riding the rides, the stalls popping up one after another, the game asking for my name.

A? Yo? Eu? Yu? Was it an error? Why on earth was this showing up? What was it even trying to say? I was tilting my head, wondering what any of it meant, when—

…….

No. Way.

Ding!

Only another labyrinth's rules could ever interfere with a labyrinth's rules—wasn't that how it worked?

Just like when my memories of Jeong Jiho had been erased at Chaekbang Ollae, and even the Goose Teacher back at Uri Saenal Daycare had forgotten that Jiho had ever existed.

Rubbing my forearm for no particular reason, I stared at the screen.

A restaurant called the HAPPY RESTAURANT was drawn there in pixel art.

An illustration appeared, showing three dishes: a pork cutlet drizzled with thick, glossy sauce. A tomato pasta crowded with meatballs. A hefty hamburger, juices running down its sides.

The chef's recommendation. The pork cutlet?

How was I supposed to trust that? Not after all the people who had clawed desperately to survive—or, knowing they would die anyway, clawed just as desperately to hurt me at least a little on the way out.

Crunch, chomp! Squish! Crack!

I had to survive.

Just as they had wanted to survive.

A pork cutlet made from ingredients of unknown origin. The chef had surely dusted it with a very special secret seasoning. Poison, gunpowder, whatever happened to be on hand.

Just as I could only eat one of the three dishes, the rules would have allowed the chef to tamper with exactly one.

Which was why it insisted on recommending one.

…….

Dinner, huh. When it came, I would eat without letting my guard down. For certain.

If you're full, you hold back. What was I going to do, overeat and make myself sick?

Crunch!

"Huh?"

Splurch! Gnash-gnash!

Bright-red ketchup spattered across the screen, along with a revolting wet smacking.

"Wha— Seon Yuhan, you didn't just press 'Hold back,' did you?"

"Ha— what the hell kind of……!"

Hwang Juyeon began to raise her voice, then caught sight of the child slumped beside us, worn out and fast asleep, and shut her mouth.

"So even holding back, it eats anyway. It's probabilistic."

"Unbelievable. Just unbelievable……."

The ride in the illustration was a three-car electric train, like a pint-sized subway, rattled up, down, and side to side while it sat in place.

Clank, squeeeak!

A shell game. Or one of those nosework puzzles for dogs, maybe.

With no clues to go on, I simply picked the top option.

Bang! Crunch!

Then came the sound of something as hard as a dog chew yet faintly soft being chomped, chomped, and gulped down.

It ate so deliciously. It was making me hungry too.

Maybe it was because this was the first time I'd made it past lunchtime alive.

……Right. I could read it. I could.

Grammatically it was nothing special, but for a message scrawled in the middle of a disaster it was padded with filler, and the sentences sat awkwardly in context.

"This is……."

"It looks like a cipher."

Even so, the hint was plain enough, and it wasn't all that hard.

"A cipher? Then how do we…… Oh! Don't tell me the '7' is the hint?"

"Most likely……."

I copied the cipher word for word into my diary, then circled every seventh word—just as the 7 on the rate board had been circled.

"W…… H…… E…… E…… L…… P…… I…… G…… G…… U…… N……."

Wheel. Pig. Gun.

There was a weapon in the Ferris wheel's pig car.

I had no idea what a "pig car" was, but odds were a pig was painted on it, or something to that effect. It would be recognizable at a glance—surely that was why they'd bothered to encode it.

Read the note at face value, and the management office was the waypoint, the prayer room the final destination.

I would go to the Ferris wheel and destroy all of it. Their treasure. The weapon meant to kill me.

The twelve zodiac animals, apparently.

Pop, KRAKOOM! Ratatatat—! KRAKA-BOOM!

"Ah."

Over horrific sounds of explosion, the screen flickered and shuddered yet again, without pause.

"Are you kidding me—what is wrong with this thing? Don't tell me that was a trap too?"

"Ha……."

I'd been had.

No wonder it had felt so easy. Hints handed over, plain as day.

Which was exactly why I'd ended up overthinking it.

No—they had made me overthink it. Those things.

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

Come to think of it……

'Anyone who could read that and still skip the restroom for the ticket booth would obviously never take that note at face value either.'

That was the judgment they had made. About people.

All the more so if my choice not to trust the chef's recommendation back at the restaurant had been factored into everything that came after.

……It was studying me.

"Seon Yuhan, you're going to continue……?"

"Yes."

"So I'm continuing, then."