Oraculum

If I could save Lee Nahyeon, here and now, and chose not to anyway…

Once more, I stared straight at the host, gold coin in hand.

"Yes. Seon Yuhan, would you like to transfer one 'Life' to Lee Nahyeon?"

"Yeah."

When I held the coin out to her, Lee Nahyeon took it in a daze, her face still flushed scarlet from all that frantic running.

"Th-thank you…!"

I like people who take what they're offered without pretense. It turns my stomach to watch someone put on a useless show of modesty even with death on the line. What kind of life must a person have lived to end up that way? I honestly couldn't imagine.

"I'll, um, use this, Mr. Hosu! ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠So I don't have to drink that tea now, right?"

"That's right. Lee Nahyeon has offset the penalty from True Stories with one 'Life.'"

Hosu said this, leisurely sipping at the tea in his hand.

"Only, please do understand that we do not compensate for any difference in value arising between the items exchanged."

"Okay!"

In other words, whatever Lee Nahyeon would have lost as the price of defeat, it was worth less than a single 'Life.' Which meant that even drinking that tea wouldn't have cost her her life. I couldn't tell whether the penalty ran small because she'd only answered one question correctly so far, or whether it stayed that mild no matter how many you got right—enough to fill a whole coin.

Not that it felt like a waste. From the outset, there was nowhere to spend it even if I'd hoarded it.

"Yuhan!"

A mess of yellow hair came fluttering toward me.

"Thanks to you, I'm alive…!"

Ah.

For an instant, I regretted helping her at all. A look like that made something in me churn.

"You wouldn't have died anyway."

"Oh, come on! How would you know what that stuff would've done to me? So not dying makes it all fine, does it?"

Isn't it, though?

As long as you're alive.

"Anyway, really, thank you so much―"

"―Don't."

"I'm sorry?"

"Never mind."

I shut my mouth. From somewhere deep in my gut, an unbearable nausea was welling up. Or else an uncontrollable, convulsive kind of laughter.

"Please enjoy the other games I have prepared while you wait for your friends to arrive."

Heeding the host's guidance—which was also a warning—everyone filed back from the corridor into the arcade.

"Lee Nahyeon has been through quite a lot, so let her rest. Now then, I'll give it a try."

Click.

Yu Hyeonjae cocked his head as though giving it a moment's thought, then pressed a button at random. The display looked like something you'd only have seen back in the era of ancient CRT monitors.

Project Delphi.

…What the hell. So it prints Korean, too. That was the very first thought I had looking at the screen.

"A question…? Like a quiz or something…?"

At Lee Jinsu's murmur from behind me, I shook off my own stray thoughts and focused on the screen as well. This was a labyrinth. For all I knew, an utterly absurd question was coming.

The screen switched at once.

What?

The moment I read it, a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠torrent of curses at these punk-ass things rose to the tip of my tongue—and right then, a huge number popped up beneath the question.

21?

The notion that this place, like True Stories, was granting twenty-one attempts was retracted immediately.

A countdown.

Well. Yu Hyeonjae was done for, too. How was that guy supposed to get this one right?

"Zero."

…How the hell did he get that right?

So the questions didn't advance on their own.

"How did you know?"

The question tore out of me before I could stop it and lodged itself in the back of that jet-black head. The CEO of Yuwi Guild turned around, wearing an expression that asked why anyone would bother with something so self-evident.

"What use would I be if I didn't know the number of survivors of the Seonghwa High labyrinth? Me, of all people."

"No. What I meant was… how did you know that question was asking for the number of survivors?"

In the ending credits of that piece-of-shit snuff film, beneath the words "Those Who Couldn't Come Out," the names of everyone who died there scroll past—in order of who held on until the very last.

It's a kind of mockery. A thoroughly nasty bit of wordplay: the ordinary phrase for a film's cast—which reads, literally, as "the people who come out"—rewritten as "the people who couldn't come out." Every one of those two hundred-odd students, faculty members, and parents "couldn't" come out of that labyrinth. And died.

How many people appear in the film "Will Spring Come to Seonghwa High School Too?"

Which meant that, in that context, the question's "people who appear" was a trap—it pointed not to the film's cast but to the survivors of the labyrinth. Even someone who had seen the film would likely have answered wrong without thinking it through.

And yet he'd answered it. This was a man who never so much as set foot in the second-floor auditorium while the film was screening, from 3:55 to 6:02.

"Labyrinths do have a twisted streak to them. Or so I've heard—and so I've found firsthand."

I had no choice but to agree with the Yuwi Guild CEO.

"However difficult a question might be, I did not believe it would pose one that was truly impossible to answer. If no one could ever solve them, what meaning would a labyrinth have?"

As he added that, something this man had once said surfaced in my memory.

I had never heard a phrase that pierced the essence of the labyrinth more precisely than that one.

"I've never seen that film, but even if I had, who goes around memorizing the size of a cast? So I assumed it wasn't a question on that level."

Thirteen years had slipped by, before anyone noticed, since the phenomenon called the labyrinth first appeared. In that decade and more, speculation had flourished. Some held up god; some held up simulation; some held up the end of days; some held up judgment. As if the labyrinth harbored some tremendous will and solemn meaning. Or perhaps out of a wish that it did.

"Though whether such a film even exists is questionable in the first place."

The people who seek meaning in the phenomenon of the labyrinth are, as a rule, mad—or well on their way to it. Much like the people who seek meaning in the phenomenon called life.

"I don't recall the title, but I have heard there's a documentary film about Seonghwa High. That one was made in memoriam, so… it wouldn't have carried a title as strange as that."

And yet, if the labyrinth had even one purpose, it could only be liberation. That is what I believe. Because that is what I know.

"I assumed it was most likely one of the labyrinth's tasteless jokes, or a metaphor. In that case, 'people who appear' would mean 'the people who came out of the Seonghwa High labyrinth alive'—and the answer would be zero."

Yu Hyeonjae finished, lifting his eyebrows as if it were nothing at all.

"Ah…"

My admiration was entirely genuine—for the man who had reasoned his way that far in a span of barely two seconds.

So that's the kind of mental speed it takes to hold down a CEO's seat at his age with no rich parents behind you. As head of a guild that manages and supports Red Weavers, he could hardly help being well-versed in labyrinths—but judgment that quick doesn't come from simply stockpiling information.

…I was starting to get a sense of what kind of life he must have lived to get here. Of why this man lives in a way that wears him down so badly.

There are people in this world who live as though trapped in a labyrinth even outside of one. People who have no ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠other way to live.

"Surprised? I do tend to collect my share of misunderstandings."

Yu Hyeonjae joked, as if he'd read my mind. Of course, the misunderstandings he usually collected and the one I'd just made probably ran in opposite directions.

Click.

Yu Hyeonjae pressed the right button; the screen changed, and the next question arrived.

The countdown picked up again from where it had stopped.

"The Monkey's Paw."

Not even a second passed between his reading the sentence and his answer. Reflexes worthy of a professional athlete.

And correct again, on top of everything else.

"Is that genuinely your favorite book…?"

The real problem here was that the former and the latter were difficult to tell apart at a glance. Fail to make that distinction, and you'd fall straight into the trap and give some wildly off-the-mark answer.

"I remember falling into such shock the first time I read The Monkey's Paw that I did nothing at all for an entire day."

"…Ah. Really."

Was he not going to move on to the next question?

"How does a person even write a story like that? If I were given a monkey's paw, I believe I would wish the author back to life—"

Yu Hyeonjae let the words trail off and smiled faintly.

"…"

I spent a moment contemplating the working lives of employees whose bosses had dreadful taste in jokes, then gave up on the exercise.

Click.

At last, Yu Hyeonjae pressed the button.

Green text surfaced on the black screen.

And what in the world was this one supposed to be…?