You Will Come to Imitate It

『▓▓▓. Get a grip. Tell me about that happy dream you had again — the one from earlier.』

When I turned my head forward again, Mr. C was already trussed up tight with fishing line. While I'd been sitting there in a daze, Ms. B had apparently taken care of it. So she'd remembered every word of my story after all.

『So. Where do we get our throats slit, then?』

This kid really means to do it. Without a moment's hesitation. The thing I couldn't do.

“……The living room.”

As ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I dredged the article up from memory and filled in a few more details, Ms. B nodded.

『Ah. Got it. So that's the vibe. Fine — if we're going out, we should go out with a bang. Okay, first we'll need a lighter ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and... ah, you go grab some booze from the fridge.』

Her humming, half-molded into words, dropped away light and cheerful. Helping Ms. B, I loaded one arm full of liquor bottles from the first-floor kitchen and climbed up to the second, where I opened the door to the master bedroom.

“…….”

Black. All of it, black. Shattered black fragments strewn everywhere. And yet, beneath it, I could smell that blood-scent I had grown so terribly used to in this place.

Chik.

Over it came the sharp, fizzing tang of alcohol. I gathered the bedding and the clothes into a pile and soaked them through with liquor.

『Done? Then pour some here too.』

Down in the living room, Ms. B had already finished her own preparations. Newspapers, textbooks, blankets — everything that would burn well had been gathered into one place.

『I'll take one of these.』

She lifted a bottle out of my hand. At first I thought she meant to drink it.

“Ah— what are you doing?”

Instead she sloshed it over herself in one long pour, then dumped the rest over me too. Like a couple of kids playing in the water.

『What's it look like? We're going out with a bang, aren't we?』

If I ever heard real laughter — genuine, living laughter — could I bear it?

『There.』

That girl took hold of my hand. She folded my fingers tight around the knife so I couldn't drop it, then drew my hand, just as it was, toward her own throat.

『Running away now, at this point? Don't make me laugh.』

When I instinctively resisted and tried to pull my arm back, her grip only tightened. She caught my other, empty hand as well and pressed it to somewhere along her neck.

『Here.』

Sentences broken and shattered beyond reading met my fingertips. Beneath them, something writhed, screaming.

Read it to me.

『Stab.』

Just once.

『In one stroke.』

Can you?

『You can.』

I nodded. And then, slowly, I raised my right hand——

Thok.

I let go of the knife. The blade, still crusted with my father's black fragments, planted itself upright in the floor as though that were the very thing it had been made to do.

“……What are you doing?”

With the same hand that had gripped that knife and killed a monster, I seized her.

Ah. She was unquestionably alive.

“▓▓▓. What's gotten into you?”

My little sister. My ▓▓.

We'll find another way. This is a labyrinth, after all.

“A labyrinth? What's that supposed to mean?”

▓▓ wore a smile so faint it looked ready to shatter at any moment.

“You can only call it a labyrinth if it has an exit.”

Right. So let's get out, then — both of us. Out of this labyrinth that's caged us. Together.

“You really think we can?”

Yeah.

“You're still so young.”

▓▓'s laughter swelled, wide enough to tear the wound open.

“Fine. Go on, then. Show me.”

The moment I led her by the hand, pushed open the front door, and stepped outside——

our▓

“Ah.”

I blinked, slowly.

“Ah…….”

Why did I do that? Why did I overturn a table that had already been laid out — all because of a girl whose face and name I don't even know? Was it just that I didn't want to die with her?

Ha. So then... what happens to me now?

I leaned back until my spine pressed against the chair, and the mannequin drifted into view, precariously close. A mannequin sitting in empty air with no chair beneath it, its upper body bent backward — grotesque in the extreme.

“…….”

But hold on. Didn't that thing just slide a little to the right?

The moment I rose from my seat to check properly, the mannequin rose from its seat in exactly the same way — and extended its right foot.

So did I.

Fuck.

When the mannequin took a step, my leg moved too. Same posture. Same direction. As if I were the copy and the mannequin the original. A revolting sensation that was my own will and yet not my will at all.

So that's it, then. If the copycat catches you, you become the copycat.

There was no resisting — the will to resist never even formed. Only that familiar helplessness remained, the feeling of being made to move along someone else's inertia despite not wanting this at all. The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠mannequin does not tremble, and so I cannot tremble either. Even though there is no existential terror quite like this. Even though nothing in the world frightens me more than that sense of being sealed inside this body, this life, this world — locked in with no way out.

And yet, strangely, my heart was calm. The heart that should have been seething and shrieking — let me out, make it let me go, I want out, I want to leave — was still.

Only then did it finally sink in that I was no longer the person I used to be. Whether that matters at all, I couldn't say.

In the end, my body simply followed the mannequin out of the Shingye Daily offices, and I turned the problem over in my head instead. The mannequin had followed me right into the article itself, which meant the rules of Shingye Daily and Moment O'Clock had to be linked. Which meant — was the escape condition of the 15th floor to finish publishing the article before the mannequin caught up with me?

I arrived in front of the office where the number of stored corpses would soon rise from two to three. When the mannequin on the right reached for a doorknob hanging in empty air and turned it, I too grasped the office's glass door and opened it. The mannequin bent at the waist and picked up something I couldn't see — a demonstration, seemingly. But my body could copy the act without needing to watch.

I picked up the hand sanitizer left beside the head of the young woman who was, supposedly, an assistant on this company's MD team. I pulled a lighter from the pocket of the middle-aged man who was, supposedly, the society-desk team leader of Shingye Daily. I slid a box cutter out of the drawer of a desk with no owner. Methodically, step by step, I prepared to die — like a rite that simply had to be performed. Flatly. Without feeling.

Then the mannequin, preparations complete — and I along with it — walked into the supply room. Confirming my own future, one step ahead of me... I laughed, inwardly, at a reality where I couldn't even scream on my own terms.

Ah, honestly. I don't want to die. Not like this.

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

“Ah, sh—”

I barely clamped a hand over my mouth. I had very nearly cursed and screamed in front of another human being's face.

The sensation of being burned alive with holes bored through every inch of my body faded, like an illusion. So did the smell searing past the tip of my nose — meat sizzling, cooking through. I know exactly what that tastes like... and I know exactly how much happiness it once gave me...

“Mr. Seon Yuhan?”

“Ah.”

I blinked, dazed all over again. I caught the interviewer's faintly bemused expression, glanced once at the ceiling, and bowed my head slowly.

Ha. I really have done every last insane thing there is to do.

“If you didn't hear me, shall I repeat the question?”

Unable to answer, I began turning my memories over, urgently, again and again. The ones I could never digest.

Yu Hyeonjae, who crawled into the gambling den all on his own without me lifting a finger — fine, let him be. But Choi Jaeha, Hwang Juyeon, Jeong Jiho, Lee Jinsu. I persuaded every last one of them and shoved them into that den to die. And it had even been logical, more or less.

Damn Happy Land. It hadn't scooped out some useless corner of my brain — it had taken the essential parts, and plenty of them.

I thought back over what I had done. Things the old me would never have done. But that was me, too. Driving my companions to their deaths. Handling human corpses like merchandise. Carving Mr. C to pieces. Every last bit of it was me.

I have no intention of denying it. I don't even want to.

Whether someone carved out my frontal lobe or my temporal lobe — that isn't some convenient switch that flips a 'good person' into a 'monster' in an instant. It merely lays another filter over the world, or peels one away. It merely clears the noose that holds me down — or the one I'm holding. I've simply... changed a little.

And people change, as a rule.

11th floor, Strategic Planning Department, Future Strategy and Budget Planning Team.

Once again, Do-ssi proposed a wager with escape as the stake.

“I'll ta—”

“—Sir. I don't think you should.”

Yu Hyeonjae raised his hand for the gamble with clockwork predictability, and I stopped him. Then I looked around at the others and made my case — the exact opposite of last time.

“We've made it this far without any real trouble, haven't we?”

Granted, back in the parking lot Jeong Jiho had apparently caught sight of his mother's phantom or something and wailed for close to 108 seconds — the kid nearly died because of it. And by the time we reached NeoSoft, Lee Jinsu was already dead, so there was nothing to be done there.

“If that thing could be beaten easily, it wouldn't have wagered escape in the first place.”

“Well, sure, that's true, but...”

I needled their anxiety a few more times, and they folded without much resistance. It was, at its core, the very same process as persuading them into the gambling den — only run in reverse.

“I suppose one should abstain from bets that cost lives. You only get the one chance.”

Yu Hyeonjae coming around and backing me up helped too.

“Wait, do we seriously have to do this? It's gonna hurt...”

“Better than dying in some bizarre gamble, no?”

“Ugh. Uuuuh...”

Swish.

Five times in a row, the only sound was the quiet whisper of fingers drawn across paper.

“Ugh.”

“Ugh... good thing we packed the bands.”

For better or worse, everyone cut clean through in a single stroke.

“Ah.”

Everyone but me.

Damn it.

Short of drawing my finger across that paper, I hadn't thought of a single other thing.

“Oh no — what do we do?”

“It's fine. Let's get out of here first.”

And so, leaving Do-ssi's crinkled, grinning eyes behind us, we reached the 15th floor.

“It's right below our own floor...”

Ignoring the Howol accountant's murmur, I pointed toward the Shingye Daily side. I wanted to see whether the mannequins would still come even if we never set foot in Moment O'Clock.

“Uh — uuh? What is that?”

By the time we reached Shingye Daily, Hwang Juyeon was shrieking. Five white mannequins were striding toward us down the opposite corridor.

Damn it.

So they open the doors themselves and follow along just fine.

“Whoa, shit — what is that? Quick, get inside, quick!”

“No — wait, Mr. Choi Jaeha, hold on—!”

Slam.

Choi Jaeha, blissfully unaware that those mannequins were not monsters worth fleeing, flung the Shingye Daily door wide open. And the moment we stepped into the newspaper's office—

“Huh?”

“AAAAAH!”

The young woman with bleached-yellow hair sitting at the room's one and only desk jolted upright and screamed. “Oh — oh no — what do I do—!”

I realized at once that she had pressed something by accident, and I sprinted for the laptop screen.

“Ah.”

Are you kidding me. I don't want to die with a necktie in my mout▓