The Lullaby I Never Finished
Once you learn the future, you become bound to it. Whether that prophecy is an unchanging truth or merely a trap dressed up as a lie, you will be the one to trip over your own feet.
And yet I want to know. Whether I can change the future. Whether I can beat this labyrinth. Whether my rules can outrank the labyrinth's own.
"You mean to do it, then."
"Yes. If we're lucky, I might be able to complete that gold coin."
So in the end, it comes down to self-gratification. Whatever he says about it being a waste, about this or that. I'm the one who wants to win. Not that I want to let them win. In the end, I will use even other people's lives — as my excuse to walk out of here alive.
"Seon Yuhan, you have to get all nine right. If you want to finish it in one go."
Nine questions in a twenty-one-second limit. Barely two seconds per question. Could I even manage it? Yu Hyeonjae had only gotten five, and there were some among them I couldn't solve at all.
"Still... I have to try."
Click.
Ah. Memory is a strange thing.
'Ha! What a joke....'
Whenever it chooses, it drags me back to that moment. And then I am helplessly trapped inside it. For the span of a single blink. Which feels like an eternity.
It's been over twenty years now. It was the day we were clearing out the house I'd lived in with my parents. Even then I was young enough, but the fairy tale books from when I'd been younger still were standing in a row on the living room shelf. She pulled one out, read it quietly for a while, and then laughed like that.
'Reading's wasted on an ungrateful little brat who can't even thank his own sister....'
And then she tossed it into the box before anything else. That book, without a doubt....
"The Brother and Sister Who Became the Sun and Moon."
Click. There was no time left to waste.
I told myself it was a mercy — that Lee Jinsu's breath could give out at any moment. That no one was asking me about this.
.......
'...My life?' Probably not that kind of answer. It asked where it was used — it seems to want something more concrete than an abstraction.
"My college tuition."
That's right. Even in the middle of all that, I ended up punching numbers into a calculator. There was only one thing governing my mind back then: survival. I had to live. Somehow, I had to keep on living. I had to make it through this world. My life was no longer mine, and I had no right to claim it as mine. It belonged to them — the ones I could never bring myself to kill.
'I'll sign. And the name is....'
So the plan my half-grown brain came up with was this: follow the road that most people take. And then.... I could pass as a 'fine,''normal' person. No one would ever know I was a 'pitiful,''unfortunate' survivor. I could hide it where no one would ever look. The inside of me with no way out.
Click.
Time crawls. I think I understand now how Yu Hyeonjae managed to answer within such a sliver of time.
Why does it keep handing me questions like these. Ones that are hard to answer.
"...I'll be waiting. I'll be right there."
A dead stillness fills every direction. It isn't only because I was concentrating too hard. I don't want to look back. Too many eyeballs are reaching for me. I weighed how I might wipe their memories clean, then shook my head. It would be faster for me to die.
Click.
'Finally, a question that isn't about me — I'm almost grateful. Except it's far too long. Worded on purpose to eat up reading time. Underhanded, as always.'
Something that watches those who come in and those who go out.... The boundary between beginning and end.... It's a 'door.' And mythology just happens to have a guardian god of doors.
"Janus."
Janus, who faces both ways, is sometimes regarded as a god who looks back at the past and gazes into the future. 'Was that the answer?' Or perhaps the question came out twisted because I had already grasped how the oracle's system works.
Click.
I nearly turned my head despite myself.
But I can see it even without looking. Those small, round eyes. Eyes still afraid of me. Eyes that had found something in me. I did something to that child that can never be undone.
'Verification.' That child could have escaped the labyrinth for good — never needed to be here at all. And I needn't have been skewered by those ice-awl eyes, either.
"False testimony."
But I will not regret it. I would make the same choice again, as many times as it took. Regret would be an insult. To that child. To myself. To that person.
Click.
Ha.
As if I could fail to know that. After how long I spent in that garden... piloting that character.
"Whenever I heard the screams of thirst."
"Mr. Jinsu...."
"Lee Jinsu...."
Faintly, I can hear voices doing whatever they can to wake Lee Jinsu's consciousness.
Click.
If this one is tied to mythology as well....
The ship that changes without end. The ship that, at the same time, does not change. Everything is bound to change. After passing through all that time, was I still me? After all this time has gone by, will I still be me? Am I, even now, still becoming me? Should I be me? Why?
I don't know. What matters isn't me. That stale debate over change and essence never ends. But that name, at least, will always be fixed at the ship's bow.
"Theseus."
Click.
A question asked of me? First and last? Someone who wanted to be freed, all of us together....
Ah. Don't tell me it means that time.
"Want a sip?"
So it is. Someone I had barely ever crossed paths with came up to me one day, paper cup in hand, and said that. Thinking it was alcohol, I declined politely. It was around the time people were beginning to lose their minds — but this was the first person whose condition was severe enough to plan something that extreme. As in, a plan for everyone to die and be set free.
Of course, I didn't know it at the time, but there were somewhat special outsiders mixed in there, so the plan was never going to succeed. In the first place, it was hard to get tangled up in such a flimsy scheme — hatched by someone too unstable to even think of gathering people in one spot, who simply went around offering people a 'drink' here and there. Though I suppose it did play some part in making the next player's plan a little more meticulous....
Sometimes I find myself imagining the world where their plan succeeded.
Click.
Onto the dark, empty screen — like the world in my imagination — green letters rise. The ninth question, at last. Answer only this one, and a Life token will be complete.
Ah. A voice I could never forget. A voice I will never hear again. The voice I long for most.
"You too."
Don't stop. Don't hesitate. Not now, of all times.
"Die with me that day—"
"—Seon Yuhan, that's enough."
Why? I haven't finished singing it yet.
"Stop. You can stop now."
Why? I wanted to sing it for you, too.
I'm inside that lullaby. That voice changed everything that I am. It is the deepest root breathing within me.
"I know. How hard you've been trying, all this time."
The co-representative of Yuwi Guild, who had rested a hand lightly on my shoulder, gave it a featherlight tap and withdrew.
Ah. So he's dead. What a waste.
"I wish I had been faster."
I stood quietly, looking down at the body.
"Lee Jinsu will surely know it too. That you did your very best."
From what I could tell, he was a good deal lighter than Choi Jaeha. Come to think of it, wasn't there a spare slot in that restaurant freezer? I expect he'd fit in nicely beside the space where I'd put Choi Jaeha.
"Ah." I'd nearly forgotten. Clearing away the body could wait a little longer.
The moment the brief loading ended, the screen changed and the green oracle descended.
Ⅰ｜The Brother and Sister Who Became the Sun and Moon
Ⅱ｜My college tuition
Ⅲ｜I'll be waiting. I'll be right there.
Ⅳ｜Janus
Ⅴ｜False testimony
Ⅵ｜Whenever the screams of thirst ring out
Ⅶ｜Theseus
Ⅷ｜Want a sip?
Ⅸ｜You die with me that day too
"Ha!" I read slowly down through the oracle, went back to the very top, and in the end the laughter burst out of me.
"Seon Yuhan?"
Only when the eyes of the others began to change could I stop laughing. No wonder the questions had felt so easy. They really did go and do something pointless.
This is not the oracle I had hoped for. Nor is it a destiny I could defy. Just a simple message. Nothing more, and nothing less.
....But still.
Yeah. I'll be waiting.