Our New Day Daycare
A small town where the mountain ridges felt closer than any high-rise. A peaceful scene of residents going about their ordinary, everyday lives.
"You... who are you?"
No — it was simply that no one had noticed yet. A crack had already run through that village's peace.
"My mom... I don't think that's my mom anymore. She looks exactly the same, talks exactly the same, but something's... off."
Tense background music swelled as the grave faces of the townsfolk flashed across the screen one after another.
"Doesn't something feel wrong? People came into our town, but... no one's ever left."
"Why is nobody else freaked out? The whole town's turned into THIS, and you're all just standing there!"
"They're disrupting all communication with the outside...!"
"Snap out of it! That is not your daughter!"
Then the noisy music quietly died away and the scene shifted.
A shot of the winter mountain beside the village slowly zoomed in, and the sound of plodding footsteps grew audible.
Deep in that mountain valley lay a spot too modest to call a lake and too dear to call a mere pond — a place everyone simply called Dalumul.
"Ha..."
The camera caught the back of someone climbing alone up the bleak, leaf-stripped winter trail. Their clothing was far too light for the weather, for the place.
The strange hiker's young face flickered briefly between the branches before the screen went dark.
COMING SOON
Judging by that caption, it had been a teaser cookie video for the sequel.
Chime—!
The stage lights came up, flooding the grand auditorium with brightness.
"The... mo, vie, will, be, gin, at, six!, thir, ty."
My stomach was churning for some reason, and I couldn't bring myself to get out of my seat.
"To, min, i, mize, in, con, ve, nience, plea, se, be, seat, ed, no, lat, er, than, ten, min, utes, be, fore, the, screen, ing, be, gins!"
"Let's go. Now."
Choi Jaeha rushed over and shook my shoulder. He'd been sniffling behind me again earlier; his eyes and nose were red.
"What are you doing just sitting there spacing out...! Hurry up!"
"Ah, ah, right...."
The accountant hauled me up out of my seat like a man pulling weeds.
"Ugh, honestly, calling THAT a movie. I get that it's a labyrinth and all, but... kids died like that. God, I hope I never set foot in here again."
Dazed, I rose to my feet and shuffled out of the auditorium, my head a tangled mess the whole way.
I wasn't sure whether I should watch the next film.
If those two films — including the one about the Seonghwa High labyrinth — were the hints needed to get past the second floor...
Then all the more reason there was no need to watch it.
Because anyway....
"By the way, that thing in the cookie video — that was an invasive labyrinth too, right? From way back, almost the earliest days. The name was..."
"Dalumul-ri, Cheongwol-myeon, Muwon-eup."
"Right, that's it. The Dalumul-ri labyrinth. Not a single survivor from that village either, so nobody ever found out what happened there. Do you think there was a Body Snatcher there too? Like those things pretending to be students and attacking the teachers at Seonghwa High..."
Choi Jaeha, who'd been mumbling to himself, suddenly whipped his head around.
"You've got a pretty good memory, don't you, Mr. Seon Yuhan?"
"It's not that my memory is good. It's that people forget too easily."
The accountant moved his mouth as if to say something, then just clacked his teeth shut and let it go.
"Anyway, let's check out the daycare. I'm not so sure the kids in there are okay."
"Same here."
It was 6:03. Coming out of the movie into what was now the dying hours of daylight, the blacked-out corridor felt far gloomier than before.
[OUR NEW DAY DAYCARE]
A sticker sheet plastered over the glass door blocked any view of the interior. I felt an unease at sensing absolutely no stir of life inside as I pushed the door open.
"Excuse me. Is there anyone here by any chance—"
Thud.
The moment I stepped inside, something bumped against my foot. I slowly lowered my gaze.
"Gah. What the hell are those?"
"Shh. Step back. Slowly."
The reason Choi Jaeha was recoiling in horror and I was bracing myself:
A countless horde of toys and dolls, gathered together. Arrayed like soldiers manning a fortress wall.
Behind them, a toy train and its tracks drew a defensive perimeter. And in front of them, robots and dinosaurs, teddy bears and every manner of animal plush, magical girls — every toy under the sun stood jumbled into a frontline formation.
"The door's... locked?"
Nothing surprised me anymore.
The toys, true to their nature, hadn't moved a millimeter — and yet they seemed one breath away from waking and putting on life.
"Oh dear!"
Oh dear?
I turned toward the direction of that bright, cheerful voice.
"Hello there!"
There lay a goose doll with a somewhat dopey face, sprawled on the floor. The very fellow my foot had just clipped.
"What brings you two to visit us today?"
I stared blankly at the goose doll for a moment. It was about as long as my arm.
Those eyes, devoid of any discernible intelligence. That beak, stitched on so firmly it couldn't so much as twitch.
No matter how I looked at it, this was not a living friend.
"Could it be you're here about enrollment counseling?"
And yet the goose doll spoke just fine.
"Ah, no, that's not it."
I squeezed my eyes shut and answered carefully.
A labyrinth had this quality of being like a temperamental boss you could never quite appease — the possibility of danger lurked in everything you did and everything you didn't.
Some entities would accept your answer and come bounding over the moment you replied to their question; others would fly into a rage because you hadn't answered.
With a contact-type labyrinth, there was at least a body of cleared-run data to draw on. But in an invasive labyrinth like this, everything was a first encounter, and there was no pattern to be read.
"Oh, I see."
So it wasn't going to be a 'Then why DID you come? Die!' sort of development.
I quietly exhaled at the goose's reaction.
"Perhaps you're guardians of one of our children?"
"Uh, no."
"Oh, I see. Of course not."
Phew. Not a 'Then why did you come? Die!' development this time, either.
"You're both new faces, and none of our parents mentioned sending a guardian in their place today, you see."
Wow. If I'd lied, I'd be dead.
"But you ARE employees of Yuwi Guild, correct?"
"Hmm. Well, not exactly...."
I trailed off, uncertain.
Choi Jaeha worked for an entirely different company.
Still, I was technically an applicant hoping to become a Yuwi employee.
"Oh, I see. Mm."
Rather than suddenly flipping to 'Then why did you come? Die!', the goose doll fell silent.
Not that it had ever been open to begin with.
For several seconds, the only sound in the daycare entrance was Choi Jaeha's breathing.
Meanwhile, my eyes were nailed to the shoe lockers.
Little foot-shaped stickers marked each spot where shoes were meant to be placed. And I could read the names written on those stickers.
Because the shoes that should have sat atop them weren't there. Because the spots were empty.
All except two.
A pair of sneakers that looked like a teacher's, and a pair that looked like a child's.
I had no idea why there were only two pairs, but perhaps their owners had vanished the way the interviewer had. Even so, I could make a guess: at least two people were here.
One child. One adult.
"So then."
The goose doll's gentle voice broke the silence.
"Adult men who are neither Yuwi Guild employees nor guardians of any child enrolled at Our New Day Daycare."
Its long white neck, slumped against the floor, began slowly to rise — and like a full stop at the end of a sentence, its black eyes settled on us.
"—why have you crawled into our daycare to poke around?"
The adorable toy soldiers standing guard behind it finally received the kiss of the god they'd been waiting for, twitching to life like creatures born of a divine touch.
"Outsiders are prohibited from entering Our New Day Daycare."
So it WAS a 'Then why did you come? Die!' development after all.
Damn it.
5. Do not enter the daycare under an outsider's identity.
"If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Mr. Seon Yuhan?"
"I would have to find the employees...."
"I'm sorry?"
Shaking off the phantom sensation of being torn apart limb from limb, I shook my head.
What to do about the stairs on the way down, what to say if anyone asked about time, what to watch for in the auditorium, what to do about the Red Weavers spreading word on social media — rule by rule, I'd added them all.
And last of all, I'd added the daycare. That one mattered most of all, because the interviewer would be heading there.
I couldn't be sure what would happen to her once she disappeared, but better safe than sorry.
"The dolls in there... take security extremely seriously."
Thanks to which I got bitten and mauled all over, whacked by a magic wand, had my eyeball impaled on a robot arm — every conceivable disaster, take your pick.
Though in the end the princess with the scissors drove a critical hit straight into my artery, so at least it was quick.
"I suppose the interviewer will be fine, since she counts as an employee...."
Honestly, outside the labyrinth it would have been a rule reasonable enough to get you thrown out for breaking — a restaurant, a school, whatever — so it was more or less forgivable as rules went.
"Understood. Take care of yourself, Mr. Seon Yuhan. See you outside later."
"Yes. Please be careful."
After sending the interviewer off toward the stairwell, I headed for the elevator.
Five... four... three... ding!
"The doors are opening."
The moment they parted and I came face to face with the accountant, my eyes went wide.
"Oh? Mr. Choi Jaeha?"
Having learned my lesson last time, I played the part of someone genuinely surprised by a chance encounter.
"What a coincidence, running into you here! I actually have something I need to discuss with you — could you step out for a moment? Just a moment, truly."
"I'm sorry? No, what—"
A working professional cannot simply ignore someone addressing them familiarly inside their own office building, and so the man fell helplessly into my trap.
"Um, excuse me, but I have a meeting with a client that I need to get to, so what exactly is this about...?"
The blackout would begin at 3:33.
I had decided to stall until then. A moment was all I needed.
"Well, you see, ah... might you have any interest in rock festivals?"
"Hm? Out of nowhere? Why do you— no, wait, I can't for the life of me remember where I've met you before. What was your name, again?"
"Ah, I should have introduced myself first."
I placed a hand politely over my chest and put on my well-practiced interview smile.
"My name is Seon Yuhan. I'm an applicant who came here today to interview with Yuwi Guild — and today is the first time we've ever met."
"What?"
Choi Jaeha froze like a broken clock.
But this resourceful accountant completed his self-repairs in short order and output the appropriate response.
"What the hell kind of crazy—"
CRASH!
"AAAGH!"
WHAM, KRA-KOOM, BANG!
"What was that! What's happening!"
KA-BOOM, THUD!
"It's an earthquake!"
And so the Certified Public Accountant of Howol Accounting Firm basked, against all odds, in the glory of front-row seats at a rock festival he never asked to attend.
"No. An elevator fell."
Falling is rock and roll too.
"So what exactly are you planning to do?"
The accountant, having finally accepted that this was a labyrinth and that we couldn't simply descend to the first floor, asked sullenly.
At some point — probably around the time he started looking at me like a lunatic — this man had dropped all formality with me.
I decided to sweep back through the second floor in the opposite direction from last time.
"Since I don't know where the clue to getting past the second floor is, I'm going to pay every place a visit."
Whether those people would count as employees, I'd only know by going. But at the very least, they'd be less 'outsider' than I was.
"And there's one more thing...."
An item I might need to acquire.
I couldn't quite bring myself to say it, and shut my mouth.
The Jaerae Diary commercial that had played right before the screening in the auditorium.
A labyrinth is made of rules, and every rule has a reason. There's no law saying that reason must fall within the grasp of human understanding, but—
'Oh, and the very first page has information on every floor of the Jaerae Building!'
Even so, this particular case was about as unsubtle as it got.
In that sense, this labyrinth was on the friendly side.
Which meant: if I — who had guessed that descending from the second floor would produce the labyrinth's exit — needed that 'floor-by-floor information', then the answer was one of two things.
One: there is no labyrinth exit on the first floor.
Or two: the floor beneath the second floor is not the first floor.