The Good Shepherd
Why hadn't I suspected it sooner?
'Yu Hyeonjae is not a wolf.'
Not a wolf.
And that had never meant he was a sheep. Why on earth had I failed to catch that?
'A sheep may, only once while alive, during the night, point to one person suspected of being a wolf and confirm whether that person is a wolf or not.'
Whether they were a wolf or not.
Not whether they were "a wolf or a sheep."
All I'd had to do was say the word sheep.
Which meant that if there were only two sides in this game — wolf and sheep —
"Then what... what exactly are you?"
"Good question. What am I, indeed."
Turning my head with effort, I found Yu Hyeonjae wearing an unreadable smile. It looked pleased. It looked bored. It looked, perhaps, like all of it was fake.
A strange smile that belonged to neither wolf nor sheep — a smile that hovered, for one brief moment, above the whole eat-or-be-eaten ecosystem.
"Shepherd."
"Pardon?"
"A guardian who tends the flock. An exploiter who pens them inside the ranch. That was my role."
Shepherd.
Shepherd...
Shepherd?
"Oh."
Oh no.
I looked up, past the shepherd's shoulder, at the Moderator holding the wooden staff. The wave-like cascade of black hair. Skin darkened as if it had been raised against the sky itself. Sleeves and trouser cuffs frayed to the point of holes.
'No, not that. I was going to say — he, uh, kind of looks like Jesus, doesn't he?'
The Good Shepherd. The most famous shepherd in the world.
A hollow laugh escaped me.
He'd been throwing me hints from the very beginning, practically begging me to notice. And I'd failed to swallow even one of them.
I deserved whatever came.
'If you are all sheep, then drive out the predators so that only sheep remain in this ranch. And then, freed from every threat and every form of control, enjoy safety and freedom in your fields.'
My victory condition had been to leave only sheep.
"Then..."
Did I kill people who never needed to die? All because of a single misjudgment?
"Ah. I killed them for nothing."
"What?"
When I looked at the shepherd again, he shook his head as if it were nothing at all.
"Was that what you were thinking? Don't be too hard on yourself. It wouldn't have been for nothing. This ranch only ever had one sheep. As far as I could see, anyway."
How much of that should I believe?
'However, I won't tell you how many wolves or how many sheep there are. Every faction is ignorant of the others' identities.'
Even if the Moderator had concealed his own role as shepherd, there was no way that explanation had been a lie. And looking back, the clues had been more than enough.
"You can trust it. My eyes are quite accurate."
"Do you have mind-reading on top of everything else?"
"It's not your eyes I have trouble trusting. It's your mouth."
"Aah. Fair enough. I understand."
He really is a strange one.
So strange, in fact, that even that languid attitude of his had stopped irritating me altogether.
"So. What's the shepherd's victory condition, then? Keep the sheep alive to the end, and then... do something with them?"
Which meant something still remained. Which meant that for me, too, there was still a sliver of a chance at survival.
...Could I kill him directly, without the exile vote? Honestly, he was slightly better built than me, so it wouldn't be easy —
"There it is."
The mad shepherd's eyes suddenly sparkled, as if delighted.
"I told you my eyes are accurate. We're practically the same kind, you and I. In a certain sense."
He'd read it. That I was thinking about killing him.
God, he's exhausting to deal with.
"In any case, I don't win by protecting the sheep. Though I do have the ability to protect. Just once, mind you."
"...Even that second night, when no one died?"
"That's right. I saved you because Hwang Juyeon looked ready to kill you, Seon Yuhan. You're welcome, by the way?"
Like hell.
"Then why did you leave me alive? Sparing a sheep doesn't win you anything."
"I didn't choose you, Seon Yuhan. You chose yourself."
The co-CEO of Yuwi Guild regarded me with an almost childlike innocence in his eyes. Utterly unwavering.
"You read expressions tolerably well, you lie tolerably well, and you're someone who'll follow me nicely. Of course I had to keep you alive."
So I'd been reeled in by this shepherd from the very start.
'I'm a sheep. Me too.'
Those signals, that lie — he hadn't been playing wolf to deceive the wolves. He'd been baiting a hook for a stupid sheep.
Unbelievable.
He really is frighteningly good at this, isn't he.
Shouldn't this guy have gone into acting?
"That reminds me — was killing Choi Jaeha your doing too?"
"Does it matter?"
The shepherd studied my expression, then gave a light laugh and waved a hand dismissively.
"No, of course. That wolf really was Hwang Juyeon, I take it. I'm quite fond of her, actually. I don't dislike people who fight tooth and nail to survive. Do you?"
I didn't answer.
Neither did I. Painfully, neither did I.
"With people like that, doesn't it become something sincere? You find yourself wanting to fight with everything you have. Because they're worth it."
Talking with someone who can read you even through your silence is unpleasant — and yet, in some strange corner of it, oddly comfortable.
"That said, Hwang Juyeon's limits are clear. In the end, she wouldn't have been able to kill Jiho. Even if Jiho had been a sheep. Lee Nahyeon would have been a close call too — but since killing her wouldn't require direct physical contact, I'd say it was well within her reach."
Astoundingly precise assessment. If I thought about the time Hwang Juyeon had killed the librarian of Chaekbang-Ollae — Kim Gilyeong, whatever else she was, had looked on the outside like a perfectly ordinary human woman, Nahyeon's age.
"Why is it so terribly easy to harm something smaller and weaker than ourselves... so easy it's almost tedious. And that's exactly why so many people can't bring themselves to cross that line."
It isn't that they can't cross it. It's that they mustn't.
It's a line that was agreed upon, a line that has been promised, over and over, since forever. The outermost edge of the world we live in is nothing but the sum of so many lines like it.
I knew I had come too far.
So far that the line had become invisible — impossible to find again just by turning around and looking back.
"That's why I was curious, Seon Yuhan."
The shepherd said something absurd.
"How far a person you could become."
I stayed silent.
"Do you happen to know this about me?"
"No."
Somehow, an uneasy feeling crept over me.
"That I believe in the possibility of time-regression phenomena inside labyrinths."
Shit.
"I'd... guessed. As much. You did let me sit through that interview question, after all."
Lying is about momentum. The closer a lie is to the truth, the easier it is to sell.
But would this man actually buy it?
"By the way, why bring that up all of a sudden?"
The co-CEO of Yuwi Guild's eyes curved into something ominous.
"Definitely. Well done — the lying. ...Or was it? I still get confused. It really is impressive, you know."
"So what exactly are you—"
Now even laughter was slipping out from between Yu Hyeonjae's lips.
"Yes. You win. I concede."
"No, so what on earth are—"
"Seon Yuhan. You're experiencing time regression, aren't you?"
"Pardon? No, I— really, what are you— Pardon? Just like that...?"
If there was one person alive who could not find out about this godforsaken loop, it was this man.
He wasn't merely insane — he was insane and competent. If he ever caught on, it would be catastrophic.
"Not 'just like that.' Hmm. How should I put it."
The madman rested his chin on his hand and tapped at his own lips with his index finger.
"You seem to know everything."
"Me? Know what?"
"Everything."
"At least, until the final play," Yu Hyeonjae added, almost playfully.
"Representative. People have a tendency to see what they want to believe, and to believe what they want to see."
"Can't argue with that. Then... are you saying that's what I wanted to see?"
The shepherd let his gaze sink downward. Beneath the table.
"Seon Yuhan, who isn't surprised by anything, no matter what happens? Even when his own toe is being cut off?"
Ah. Damn it.
"I'm grateful you've already forgotten the disgraceful state I was in while in pain."
"Being in pain and being surprised are different things. What I mean is — for ordinary people, losing even the smallest part of their own body doesn't end at something that small."
"My personality has always been like this."
"Even before you were trapped in the labyrinth?"
"Yes."
The shepherd gave a soft ah and nodded. He had no choice but to accept it — he wasn't a man who failed to gauge a truth with not one shred of falsehood in it.
"There are people like that, you know. Blunted to outside stimuli, accustomed to violence, neurologically... distinctive."
That was a self-introduction too.
"Shall I offer another piece of evidence?"
The shepherd looked — somehow — delighted.
Was all of this just a kind of game to him? Everything, from start to finish?
"Seon Yuhan wanted to live too badly. Strangely so."
"...I don't follow. Is that strange?"
"You're not supposed to want to live."
"..."
"You look like someone who's alive because they couldn't manage to die. You, Seon Yuhan."
"Isn't that how everyone lives?"
And then the shepherd smiled, faint and blurred at the edges.
Even that smile was fake.
"You're right. You're absolutely right. Everyone does live that way. So that logic won't work, I suppose."
Because he looked, for just a breath of a moment, genuinely sorrowful.
"Well — so what, either way. If I'm right, good. If I'm not, fine. It's not as though I stand to lose anything."
And then he went on, carelessly, as if remarking on the weather.
"So — what if. What if, I'm saying. What if I kill you now, Seon Yuhan, and somehow, somehow it gets undone. And we meet again."
A voice so flat and calm it made my skin crawl.
"Then I'll have to be far, far more thorough than I was this time."
Black eyes that did not blink — deep and cold as a dried-up well.
"I watch people very, very closely."
Wham!
My right arm shot out in a sneak strike and was caught, pathetically, before it could land. Even the left hand that had hurriedly fumbled out the pen — accepting that my right was lost — was seized in turn.
The grip was stronger than I'd imagined.
Just as I wrenched against it, trying to tear free and get to my feet —
Crack!
"Ghhk—!"
The shepherd's face came hurtling in and slammed into my forehead with everything he had. My vision flashed white; my scalp felt like it was being torn off as the hand gripping my skull wrenched my head sickeningly —
Thud!
"Khh—gah...!"
Heavy blows slammed into my belly, one after another, square into the solar plexus.
"Ugh, khh—..."
Filthy thug of a bastard. Picking out nothing but the vitals...
He fights dirty as hell. Doesn't look like he would.
...Not that I hadn't roughly suspected it.
"But please, believe me on this one thing."
The shepherd looked down at me, pinning me in place with slow, deliberate steps so that I couldn't rise. Even through the swirling haze of my vision, I found myself understanding, somehow, the faint emotion swimming in those eyes.
"I do not like it when people die. Not even a little."
I want you to live — if you can, I'd rather you...
A voice so pitiable I didn't want to believe it scattered into fragments, fine as dust.
"Moderator. Now, if you would."
The shepherd gestured to the sheep.
"Let's proceed to the slaughter."
"Ah... aaah..."
I barely managed to clamp a hand over my mouth and curl into myself. But there was nothing I could do about the rest of my body, shivering violently as if a chill had sunk into the bone.
"Mr. Seon Yuhan. Are you all right? Mr. Seon Yuhan!"
"Mr. Seon Yuhan, can you hear me?"
Every place the interviewer's hand touched burned as if scalded.
"First, look at my eyes. Nice and slow, now..."
No. It's a trick of the mind. A trick, that's all. All of that is in the past. None of it ever happened.
Gentle eyes, and unbendingly upright.
Only what stood before me now was real.
"It's okay. You're okay. You're somewhere safe, Mr. Seon Yuhan."
It was not the truth.
And yet the voice of a person who believed it with everything she had carried a power stronger than the truth itself.
"One... two..."
Following that soft voice, I let the convulsions ebb away bit by bit — and thought about my answer to the final interview question.
A Life.
I had to get my hands on a Life.