Publish or Die

So this thing isn't the kind that kills you directly?

I moved around the room, testing it from every angle to figure out what the mannequin actually was.

The mannequin gave no response other than copying me.

It kept a slight distance and mirrored my actions exactly one beat late.

Still.

Why did those two die the way they did? Why suicide?

Something in this labyrinth had clearly shattered their minds.

A necktie. Hand sanitizer.

Neither one is a "final meal" you'd order first off the menu.

I looked over the two separated bodies once more.

If nothing else, maybe they'd left some kind of last message on their phones.

"Hm."

I'd cleaned the dead man's face and pried his eyes open for nothing, apparently.

Locked up tight.

There wasn't much to see inside the Moment O'Clock office. At least, nothing right now.

The supply room where the mannequin had come from was unremarkable too.

I stepped back out into the corridor.

Thankfully, the door hadn't locked itself behind me.

Which meant, at the very least, nothing was about to happen inside Moment O'Clock at this exact moment.

If a dangerous presence had been lurking in here, the door would have sealed me in.

I circled the corridor and arrived at the office on the opposite side.

The mannequin, of course, was still trailing after me one beat behind.

The mood was completely different from Moment O'Clock across the hall, and that alone made it interesting. I opened the door.

"Ah."

Well, this was something new.

The entire sprawling office was empty.

Except for a single workstation.

A low partition, a laptop, a desk, a chair.

In the dead-dark office of a blackout, the laptop screen was the only thing giving off light.

If grim ever needed a textbook example, this would be it.

I approached slowly and checked the laptop.

My left-side copycat mannequin settled onto a transparent chair and stared at empty air.

I clicked "Published" first.

Nothing there.

I started combing through "Save Draft" from the top.

World war, schmorld war — my own life is the one hanging by a thread.

When was this one written?

The dates are corrupted, so there's no telling.

Then again, accidents like this had been happening steadily, from way back to now——

A memory surfaced out of nowhere and made me hesitate for a beat, and then I moved straight on to the next article.

Hm?

As far as I know, a nuclear plant has never blown up in this country.

I moved on to the next article for now.

Do places like that still exist these days?

Even so, this article was ordinary enough.

Well, sure.

Ever since the post-labyrinth era began, direct military provocations have actually tapered off and relations have been stabilizing, but.

It's not as though nothing like this ever happened before.

That one was plausible too.

……Yeah, something's definitely off here.

When the hell did Russia attack Japan's nuclear facilities?

If it had been the labyrinthized Seonghwa High School, fine.

But no middle school in this country ever lost its entire student body and staff.

"Ha."

These events in these articles.

They don't seem to have actually happened.

Don't tell me……

Are these events that *will* happen?

Things that might one day come to pass in the future?

I skimmed the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠"Save Draft" headlines at speed, then checked "Publish Failed" as well.

Only two articles.

That lined up neatly with there being exactly two corpses.

And the label "Publish Failed" drove the point home.

Those two seemed to have died in ways that corresponded, to some degree, to the contents of their failed articles.

The man didn't die of gas, but he did asphyxiate — on a necktie.

The woman died drinking hand sanitizer that smelled vaguely of liquor.

So was my job here to carry a "Save Draft" article all the way to "Published"?

And if I "failed to publish," I'd go on to kill myself in some horrific fashion tied to that article's headline?

I had no idea how one went about "publishing" anything.

But it surely wasn't going to be as simple as hammering at a keyboard and editing the text.

Given that every single headline was nothing but ominous disaster, I had to assume these stories needed to be rewritten toward a happy resolution.

Which left two criteria for choosing which article to publish here.

One: which incident looked easiest to actually resolve.

Two: which incident promised the least agonizing death if I failed.

The world, the whole country, every citizen, mass casualties, the government, the presidential office……

Any article with a scope that sprawling had to be thrown out.

By those two standards, the article I chose was:

This one.

A robbery-murder usually means massive blood loss or something close to instant death.

And even if it came down to the fire and smoke inhalation, I figured I'd lose consciousness fast enough and be done.

I'd considered these two as well:

But the restriction that I could only use what existed on this floor ruled them out.

How exactly was I supposed to get crushed to death alone under something heavy in here? And how was I going to engineer a gas explosion in an office building?

If publication failed, honestly, the easiest and quickest way out would be to find a blade and stab myself somewhere vital, or torch that supply room from earlier.

I looked at the two buttons at the bottom of the preview page.

Hm.

My goal was to get it "Published," so……

The instant my brief deliberation ended and my finger came down on "Publish"—

Cool, strangely clammy ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠air flooded my lungs.

"Ahh—!"

Startled by the unfamiliar air that had ferried me across like a prayer, I choked and hacked like something was caught in my throat.

I was now *outside* the Jaerae Building.

……Though, of course, "outside" it may be, I'd apparently only burrowed even deeper *inside*.

The mannequin was still stationed right beside me, for one thing.

And for another — whatever this semi-basement space was — there was a window, a very small one, cut nearly up at the ceiling.

Back in the company it had just turned evening; here it was the dead of night.

Through the tiny window I could see a sky as pitch-black as this room.

The fire in the article I'd read had broken out at around 3:10 in the morning.

The murders would have come some time before that.

And if I was here to intervene in that incident in some fashion and carry the article to "Published," then I'd clearly arrived even earlier than the killing itself.

『What are you doing?』

"Agh—shit. What the—?"

I jumped out of my skin.

From somewhere behind me, a voice came with the sound of something rustling.

If you could call that thing a human.

If you could call that sound a voice.

『What, you don't remember? Again? Well. I guess. After the fit you threw yesterday.』

I sat there in a daze and looked down.

Someone lying flat out on bare floor — thin T-shirt and track pants, long hair splayed across the cold ground, not even a single blanket over them……

Endless broken, shattered, whittled-down sentences tangled and knotted around one another like a ball of frayed thread, until together they took the shape of a person.

『Then just go back to sleep. I'm tired.』

I instinctively checked my own hands and feet.

『Ha. Just sleep. Don't worry so—— ha, forget it. It'll come back to you after you sleep. Again.』

I was fine.

No — was "fine" the word?

My body had little strength in it, and there were bruises on my limbs, but none of that was the problem.

The problem was that my surgical scars were gone.

This.

This body isn't mine.

"Ahh."

My voice had changed too.

……Ah.

*The teenage children of the family — Boy A and Girl B — were found in the living room with stab wounds near their necks.*

So right now, I was that dead 'Boy A.'

I stared at 'Girl B' — a figure made entirely of unreadable black lines.

"So what was our name again?"

『Wow, this time you're genuinely bad, huh. ▓▓▓, you little shit. I'm ▓▓▓.』

A face I couldn't see, a real voice I couldn't hear, a name I couldn't even call.

I couldn't tell if she was my older sister or my younger sister — just that she was Boy A's sister.

"How old are you, anyway?"

Judging by the way she talked, we sounded like siblings born close together.

『Hey. We don't do age around here. Don't piss me off. Sleep, before I beat you unconscious.』

The sentences spilling out of Girl B as she rolled over dispersed into the dark, flat and toneless.

She sounded dead serious, so I decided not to bring up the age question again.

Going by that reaction, Boy A was probably the older one.

Anyway — fortunately, Girl B didn't seem particularly bothered by the fact that her sibling was acting like his memory had been wiped.

Well, of course she wouldn't be. It wasn't exactly an implausible thing.

The bruises on the body said as much.

Look at the setup — middle schoolers and high schoolers being put to bed in some basement-like room without even a blanket.

The guardian — almost certainly that murdered father — appeared to have been abusing his children.

If that was the case, then yes, the memory would lapse from time to time.

That, right there, was the kind of anomaly one human being could inflict upon another human being.

Much like a labyrinth.