The Whisper Beyond the End
“Seon Yuhan? Are you okay? Seon Yuhan?”
What did I just do?
I shouldn't have. Me. I don't even have the right to. Taking my own life is not something I'm allowed to…….
No. No. That's not what I did.
There were names I must not forget. And those names were my very life.
If it meant getting them back, I could stab myself as many times as it takes.
“Haah…….”
I looked down at the two corpses whose hearts had been torn out by a hand of mercy.
Every single time. We go out somewhere nice and this happens in the parking lot.
Choi Jaeha was dead.
He must have grown anxious after receiving yet another flurry of condolence calls. I thought I'd talked him down from demanding why the labyrinth let him and him alone contact the outside world — what was so special about him anyway? — but his smartwatch heart rate had kept soaring past 108.
Jeong Jiho, who had watched that sham Buddha kill Choi Jaeha secondhand through sound and sight, must have been badly traumatized too, because he died right after him.
And even when I somehow managed to soothe him, it didn't work every time.
Which left only Hwang Juyeon and Yu Hyeonjae.
Well. Gathering seven people and escaping the 5th floor arcade was off the table this round.
【Don't worry! It will hurt. A petty curse shall bring you misfortune: HAND】
I tensed up, thinking I was about to lose a finger again.
“My nails just got a bit shorter.”
“Haah……. Thank god. Really…….”
The freelance magician slumped in relief.
Even though we hadn't been close, she'd watched Choi Jaeha and Jeong Jiho die right in front of her, and then stumbled upon Lee Jinsu's corpse the moment she entered NeoSoft — so she'd been terrified that she'd be next.
Next time, I hope all three of us make it out alive.
“Ah. So this is like breaking a jinx, then. Cutting your hand on paper.”
“Yes.”
Swish.
“Ah.”
Failed.
The paper just grazed over my fingertip.
“Oh no, it didn't cut……?”
“Since you have already failed once, you must seek another path.”
Hwang Juyeon's voice, as she rummaged through the Future Strategy & Budget Planning office to hand me a disposable bandage, overlapped with Do-ssi's, who watched us with detached amusement from above.
“It's all right. I have another idea in mind.”
I had no intention of brushing this off carelessly like last time and suffering misfortune on the level of getting abducted by a subway terrorist.
Rrrrip.
I picked up a utility knife from one of the ownerless desks and extended the blade.
Then, before Hwang Juyeon could even finish asking what on earth I thought I was doing with something that dangerous, I hurled it straight up into the air — and met the spinning blade with the back of my hand, timed to where the edge would come down.
Thock.
Not the blunt butt of the knife, but its razor-sharp tip, sunk in perfectly.
“How anticlimactic. With that kind of resolve, I expected an amusing wager.”
Do-ssi sounded somewhat disappointed as it assessed me.
Success, though.
Which way a spinning utility knife would fall — that, apparently, counted as the domain of luck.
Now I understood how to definitively dodge the unspecified misfortune that was guaranteed to come looking for me.
14-1. Before misfortune approaches you, approach misfortune first. You will be able to control it.
“They keep following us into the corridor, these mannequins…….”
“I suspect they'll keep mimicking us until we leave this floor.”
This time, we stopped by Moment O'Clock's office before the Sinhae Daily.
I wanted to give Hwang Juyeon and Yu Hyeonjae time to adjust to the copycat mannequins.
“If we can't get out, will we end up like that…… that man from earlier, too?”
It also let me share some advance information about Kim Youngho's corpse — the man who had choked to death swallowing his own necktie.
“We'll be able to get out. Don't worry.”
Swish.
When I made a suitably audible rustle and slowly pushed open the door to the Sinhae Daily, there she was — sure enough, a young woman with bleached yellow hair.
“Oh, oh. Hello…… there……?”
Lee Nahyeon looked flustered, but at least she didn't make the same mistake as before, startling and shoving all of us into the article.
“Huh? So we have to actually go into these articles? We can't get out without going in……?”
“Lee Nahyeon. I understand how you feel, but if we just sit still, we can't get out. Not in a labyrinth.”
The Moment O'Clock MD's shoulders drooped in a sulk.
“Ah. Here.”
Yu Hyeonjae, scrolling through the saved articles, stopped at one of them.
“Looks like it might be our alma mater.”
There it is.
“Forgive me for saying this just in case, but Director — you must not rashly insist on editing this one.”
I have to nip this in the bud here.
I did not want another chase scene through a school full of murderous, deranged students.
“Hmm.”
The co-CEO of Yuwi Guild tilted his head with an oddly sheepish expression.
“Was I such a reckless fool in your eyes?”
Yes.
“Rest assured. I don't make decisions that haphazardly, even in a labyrinth.”
Ha.
The brat's actually grown some sense.
The stubborn child who used to dig in his heels about entering this place alone was nowhere to be found. Whether it was because he'd seen an unusual number of corpses this loop, or because — like Kim Youngho back in the Moment O'Clock office — he'd decided he didn't want to die, I considered it a blessing that people's words and actions shifted slightly with every loop like this.
Incomprehensible variance.
That was precisely life's most terrible quality — and precisely because of that, its most important one.
Life, as a phenomenon, is fundamentally at odds with a labyrinth built from rules.
Somehow, I liked that fact.
“I think this article is the best option. The scale is small, too.”
It was the same article from the previous loop — the one where I'd sent only Choi Jaeha, Hwang Juyeon, and Jeong Jiho, and succeeded in editing it with a single child left behind.
“Fair enough……. I mean, worst case, we just have to stop the owner from lighting his lighter, right?”
According to Jeong Jiho's account, when they'd blocked the owner from smoking, whether he was a customer or one of the labyrinth's hostile entities, he'd flipped in an instant and started attacking people.
“Yes. But we should also account for the possibility that the owner refuses, or that the customers interfere. It is a labyrinth, after all.”
Still, with four adults here, as long as nobody let their guard down, I figured we could get the edit done without anyone dying.
“Then I'll press it.”
Lee Nahyeon grumbled about it, but in the end she pressed the 'Edit' button with everyone's agreement.
“AAAH……!”
The first thing I registered was Lee Nahyeon's scream.
“Yuhan, your face looks weird! Like, it changed? I can't recognize you…….”
“Calm down. It looks that way to me too. We've simply entered different bodies.”
Once I finally settled the panic, her attention drifted to our surroundings.
“Whoa, this is a totally different place……? If it weren't for the mannequins, I'd genuinely think we'd escaped.”
We were standing on an ordinary street.
An apartment complex rose on one side, and in the distance, storefronts were visible — a typical residential neighborhood.
The area was quiet.
“Oh, right! But where are the Director and Hwang Juyeon? Those two?”
“They seem to be across the street over there.”
Fortunately, on the opposite sidewalk, two figures recognizable as Yu Hyeonjae and Hwang Juyeon were looking around uneasily.
I gestured roughly toward the shops and signaled that we'd regroup at the crosswalk over there.
“By the way, Yuhan — are you, like, one of those new Red Weavers joining Yuwi Guild or something?”
In that brief walk where just the two of us were together, Lee Nahyeon chattered at me like someone constitutionally incapable of enduring silence.
“No. I'm not a Red Weaver — I'm applying to be a Red Weaver Agent.”
“An agent……? Oh, that, uh, manager-type thing, right?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
By the time I'd fielded her string of questions, we'd already rejoined the other two.
“Now we just need to find a restaurant with two customers.”
“Better to search together. If we split up, reuniting will cost us time.”
This shopping complex wasn't laid out with shops lining the outer walls — instead, a jumble of stores sat packed side by side inside a single building.
The kind of place where, without a floor map, you couldn't pinpoint the shop you wanted in one try.
“Here…… it's here……! Two people……!”
Thankfully, the building wasn't that big, so it didn't take long to find it.
YuYu BokEum
— a faded sign, the lettering peeled so that what should read "Stir-fry" now looks like "Gospel"
Through the aged restaurant window, two customers were visible as pitch-black silhouettes.
Ding—.
『Ye-e-es, welcome! Party of four?』
The owner, pulling her hands out of her apron pocket, glanced at the clock on the wall.
By the look of it, it was around break time.
“Yes.”
We moved exactly as planned.
“Excuse me, kids. Got a question for you.”
Yu Hyeonjae and I approached the two customers, each of us marking one of them.
“Excuse me, ma'am.”
『Ye-es. What can I get you?』
Hwang Juyeon and Lee Nahyeon sidled up to the owner, pretending to place an order.
“Ah, actually it's not about the food — the restaurant smells a little like cigarettes? You're using gas in the kitchen, so I'm worried something might catch fire—”
—BANG!
Before Hwang Juyeon's gentle murmur could even finish.
CLATTER!
The instant the two customers lunged for the spoons, Yu Hyeonjae and I swept our arms across the tabletop and knocked them away.
『Hey, hey, what do you think you're doing over there!』
『You kids — what's the big idea?』
“Let's all leave quietly. Nobody gets hurt.”
Ignoring the bewildered owner's voice, we seized the flailing arms of both customers.
I took the girl, and Yu Hyeonjae took the boy.
『Did we do something that warrants being grabbed like this?』
『No. Where on earth did you people come from?』
“Seoul?”
……I'm pretty sure that wasn't a question about geography.
Honestly, if I were either of those two, I'd have punched Yu Hyeonjae out of sheer spite.
『This one's a real comedian.』
The girl's sentence carried a thread of amusement, as if we'd proven interesting.
The arm I had locked around her tightened further.
These were not beings who couldn't break free of a simple restraint like this.
They were letting us hold them.
They were playing along with us.
Which meant we had to strike first — while they still looked down on us like this…….
“What would it take for you to leave quietly?”
Suddenly, Yu Hyeonjae attempted a negotiation.
A pointless gesture, sure — but if the goal was drawing their attention, it wasn't a bad move.
『Hmm. What if all of you killed yourselves?』
“Sorry. Can't do that one. But anything else, I'll do. Anything at all.”
A contemptuous snort leaked out of both customers at once.
『Anything at all? Every human who talks that big has never once held up to anything.』
『Let's see how far you can actually go, shall we.』
“You'll want to leave, once you hear how far I've gone.”
Like a man about to share a secret, Yu Hyeonjae glanced around, then cupped a hand over his mouth and brought his face close to the boy's ear.
“…….”
The whisper was short.
Barely a single sentence.
And yet that one unfathomable sentence turned everything on its head.
『▓▓▓. Let's go.』
『You'll tell me too, won't you?』
『Yes.』
『All right. Live well, everyone.』
The two young customers slipped out of our restraints as if they'd never once struggled, and walked out the door. Serene, unhurried.
“Whoa — what? They actually left.”
“How did you do that?”
“What did you say to them?”
The shoulders of the unfamiliar man recognized as Yu Hyeonjae gave a casual shrug.
“The 'end of being human,' as children that age can imagine it — is in truth a rather modest thing. I simply…… informed them that there is something beyond it.”
When you rise to a position like mine, you see every kind of thing there is to see, Yu Hyeonjae added.
As if he had no intention of telling us what he'd actually said.
“I…… is that so.”
For the first time, I felt grateful that we couldn't properly perceive each other's faces right now.
That girl and that boy. The children who appear again and again across every article.
They are the beings that count as the monsters of this floor.
Even if they never exceed the physical limits of a human body.
A monster is a monster.
A labyrinth's monster, for whom killing people is the rule.
……What on earth is that sentence — the one that can send a labyrinth's monster away with nothing but a whisper?
How utterly wretched does a person have to become before they can hold in their mouth the single sentence that even a monster would turn back for?
For some reason, I felt that Yu Hyeonjae was ▓