The Blessing of the Cyclops
I had set out boldly, determined to beat Garden of Psyche in the arcade — but the trouble started the moment I cleared NeoSoft's Lost in HAPPYLAND.
Don't worry! It will hurt.
A minor curse will make you unhappy: eyes
"Ugh, aaagh...!"
When I came to, my head was wrapped in layers of gauze, the bandage running right across my right eye.
"Oh? Seon Yuhan, are you... okay?"
"How are you feeling? Here, drink this first."
Hwang Juyeon held out a water bottle and some anti-inflammatory painkillers.
Judging by the state of it, this NeoSoft office had been ransacked from top to bottom.
"Ah... thank you."
"The CEO handled almost everything. The rest of us just stood there not knowing what to do..."
I turned my head slowly and saw Yu Hyeonjae with Jeong Jiho sitting on his lap, gently patting the boy's back.
"Thank you."
"It was nothing. There was a time when first-aid kits were much closer to hand."
I understood the shadow that fell across that sentence, and I had no intention of prying it up.
"Well then... let's head down. We've wasted more than enough time already."
"Are you serious? Nobody in their right mind calls that a waste."
The big lump of an accountant said it with a flinch, like a man restraining himself from smacking the back of a patient who'd passed out missing one eyeball.
"Right. Let's go."
"Haa... I knew this would happen. Here."
Choi Jaeha shook his head and held out an arm.
"Grab on and get up. We agreed to take turns supporting you."
I stared blankly for a moment, blinking my left eye.
With half my vision suddenly gone, my sense of balance was bound to be off.
Sreeek.
I scratched at the rough texture of the gauze with my fingertip, for no particular reason.
"Thank you."
I took the hand someone offered and pulled myself up.
Somehow, it left a bad taste in my mouth.
"...Lee Jinsu. What are you doing over there? Let's go together."
Lee Jinsu, who had been sitting quietly in the corner this whole time, flinched at my gesture.
Apart from being a few fingers short, Jinsu was perfectly fine.
Unlike me, he'd been removed cleanly and painlessly, so there'd be no real trouble from it.
"Whoever defeats me in a contest may leave the labyrinth."
So I'd run into that gambler die again — the one with twenty more eyeballs than I had.
The passive suicide-seeker who'd drifted along on the momentum of it all wore, in front of that life-or-death gambling table, the face of a man who had just found another rope to grab.
My plea to the others not to gamble hadn't even reached the back of his ears, apparently.
"I-I'll do it—"
"—Lee Jinsu."
I grabbed him and stopped him.
"I'd really rather you didn't gamble either, Lee Jinsu."
Jinsu's mouth snapped shut, and he stared at me.
His face had gone a little red, emotions rising just slightly.
"I... can't even do this the way I want...? And, and what right do you even have to—"
"Does saving someone's life require rights?"
The wish to die, easily and painlessly — I understand it.
But do I actually need to accommodate that wish right now?
I cannot die here. I have to get out of here.
And for that, all I need is a Lee Jinsu who is still alive.
"I would like it very much if you didn't die here, Lee Jinsu."
So really, playing the noble sage is easy enough — as many times as it takes.
As long as I walk out of this labyrinth alive.
Hah.
After all that, dragging a barely-persuaded Lee Jinsu along with me—
Lee Nahyun was already dead again this time, too.
She always is, whenever the first aid takes too long.
Bring one person in, and someone else is gone.
Getting seven together really isn't easy.
"Here, hold on."
Leaving the Divine Realm Daily behind and descending to the 5th floor, I ended up leaning on Yu Hyeonjae's support.
I would have refused under normal circumstances, but the article's casualty count had come back with both eyes — then snapped to just one again — and my sense of balance had completely fallen apart.
"Welcome, Seon Yuhan, Yu Hyeonjae, Lee Jinsu, Jeong Jiho, Choi Jaeha, and Hwang Juyeon. I am the master of ceremonies. Please, call me 'Hosu.'"
Beside Hwang Juyeon — who was wearing some subtly complicated expression, perhaps recalling the MC's doppelgänger — I quietly studied the being called Hosu.
"An emcee? What... exactly do you emcee?"
"Games, of course."
"Uh, right, but... what kinds of games?"
"Every game that needs an emcee, I emcee."
The same lines, every single time.
It was as if a pattern had been set for it in advance.
Less a person than a machine.
Do-ssi, even as a cube studded with twenty-one eyeballs, had felt far more like a living human being.
"Haah, we're exactly one short..."
"Someone may yet come up from the floor below."
I turned from the group's chatter and looked at the emcee.
"Can we wait until one more person comes up?"
"Please wait for your friends while enjoying the other games I have prepared for you."
Hosu repeated the words it had said before, smiling with perfect generosity.
"Then I'll go first with this one."
Eliminate the wrong paths in a maze one by one, and eventually only the right one remains.
"No, hold on — Seon Yuhan."
Choi Jaeha looked at me like I'd lost my mind. Again.
"I'm asking because I'm genuinely worried, okay? Did you maybe... forget? Your eye, right now—"
"I'm well aware. Two eyes or one, I still have to get out of here."
What does it even matter whether I'm hurt or not?
Get injured once and am I supposed to lie down and never leave the labyrinth again?
Broken arm, severed leg — I'd still have to walk out, wouldn't I?
Isn't that just obvious? Doesn't it itch, somewhere deep inside my eye socket?
What is wrong with this guy?
He wasn't like this when my ear came off.
Is losing an eyeball really that much bigger a deal?
"No. Don't. Please."
I understand what he means, and I get the sentiment, truly.
But I'm already short an eye — if the people on the other side of the screen start fiddling with things among themselves, I can't keep track of what they're doing in real time.
"Huh?"
"One of your eyes is gone."
I pointed at the orbit hidden under the gauze, and Choi Jaeha flinched hard.
Sreek.
I can't see anything on my right, so my hand had drifted to the gauze without my noticing. If I just pushed a little further here—
"Seon Yuhan, if you keep touching it, it'll get infected."
"Ah."
I lowered my hand and looked at Choi Jaeha.
What if these people drop dead one by one while I can't see?
I'd end it without learning a single thing.
Wouldn't that just be a dog's death?
The fact that I don't grieve, fresh and raw, over each of their deaths doesn't mean it's fine for them to die however they like.
"Let's not rush. One person at a time. There's no time limit here."
If they're going to die, I want them to die in front of me.
Within reach of my hand.
Within sight of my eye.
"...Fine."
"Then, we will begin."
The moment it started, a script I'd never seen before appeared in the bottom-right corner.
The Blessing of the Cyclops?
Oh.
Because I'm one-eyed right now.
The NeoSoft employee had explained it in a completely listless voice.
The Blessing of the Cyclops was apparently a buff that doubled your strength as long as you only had one eye.
Click, clack.
Thanks to that, I made much quicker, easier work of the front yard, which was carpeted with rubble.
But it wasn't purely a good thing.
"Oh, well, at least you got a buff, so... no. Obviously it would've been better if none of that had happened in the first place. Anyway."
"A blessing exists means a curse exists, too."
And the conditions under which that curse triggers were completely unknowable.
"Ah... I suppose so."
Besides, I doubt they'd hand out double strength just so I could tidy up a front yard.
The character — right eye bound in a strip of white cloth — stepped into the maze on the left side of the front yard.
Walking the long horizontal corridor, I came upon another three-way fork.
Last time it was the left, so this time, the middle.
I pressed straight on without turning.
Tap, tap.
Only my footsteps spread through the narrow path.
Before long, a wall appeared in front of me.
"Oh, another fork..."
It wasn't a dead end — it was yet another branching path.
Two ways this time. Left or right.
On screen, down or up.
I reached for the button, then snatched my hand back.
I stopped and stared at the left-hand corner.
"What is it? Do you see something different over there?"
There were hollowed-out marks on the right-angled corner wall.
Irregular, uneven little dents, gathered together into a curve.
"There are teeth marks."
And not the fangs of some unidentifiable beast.
"A person's..."
Human tooth marks.
As if someone had twisted their neck sideways and clamped down hard on the corner.
Hard enough to leave an imprint in this stone-hard wall.
"Wait — then shouldn't we NOT go that way?"
"Hard to say."
I can't know which path is right.
Not until I've walked it.
So left it is.
Just to find out whether it's the wrong one.
The moment the character on screen turned down the downward path—
Shff.
A blurry shadow flickered behind the character as it rounded the corner, there like an optical illusion and then gone.
I whipped back around, but all I could see was dust drifting in the air.
"..."
And yet I can feel it. Vividly, crawling along my skin.
Something is watching me.