The Knight's Missing Pieces
"Given that the alarm cuts off shortly after the monster takes a body part, it probably only stops once it's assembled into the knight. It's not on a fixed timer."
"Ah... yeah, the off periods did seem pretty consistent, though..."
"Right. About fifteen minutes or so?"
As I nodded along to Hwang Juyeon, I organized my thoughts.
I didn't believe the monster would assemble its knight from identical materials, either.
Which meant I was now in a safe position, with nothing left to lose.
In other words, I was the odd one out in this game of survival tag — no longer obligated to compete.
Which meant there was no harm in telling them that completing the knight might be the escape condition.
After all, I was the one who already had an arm incorporated into the assembly.
"And besides killing the monster or finding some other clue, there's one more thing I've been thinking about..."
"What is it?"
Didn't they deserve to know what I was thinking, too?
Didn't they deserve the chance to fight strategically, weighing every possible scenario?
"Whether the finished knight has a head or not, there's a chance this is a floor we can only escape once the knight is complete."
Shouldn't we be adopting a more labyrinth-like way of thinking — that someone, at some point, has to die?
"I'm sorry, so you're saying Mr. Seon Yuhan means..."
"That someone has to lose an arm. Or, in the worst case, a head."
"Yes."
Rather than indulging in that childish make-believe — hunting for clues while the monster sleeps, killing the monster, on and on — speculation even I didn't believe in.
Wasn't this the truth of it?
"You're not just saying whatever happens, happens... are you? Mr. Yuhan, you lost your arm, so now you're saying we should too..."
Ah.
So that's how it could come across.
"Of course not. I'm not saying that's what I want. I'm saying it's a possibility we should consider. And as the CEO said, it's better to assume the worse outcome."
"...He's right, Lee Nahyeon."
Hwang Juyeon, her expression complicated, soothed the anxious Lee Nahyeon.
"And I understand how you feel, but don't say things like that. Look — Mr. Yuhan still has his fingers."
Hwang Juyeon pointed at my mangled little finger, wrapped tightly in bandages.
"Right..."
"If Mr. Yuhan were the kind of person who acted like only he should suffer, we would never have made it this far. Isn't that right?"
When Lee Nahyeon nodded with a tearful face, Hwang Juyeon gave her shoulder a few encouraging pats, looking rather pleased with herself.
Just like a teacher.
Oh, right. She is a teacher.
A piano instructor.
Maybe that's why — whether as an academy tutor or a magician, she must have spent plenty of time dealing with children.
She seemed remarkably skilled at the art of gentle consolation.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Yuhan... for talking like you were some kind of bad person... I just tend to blurt out whatever pops into my head..."
"No, it's fine."
Frankly, sitting on a guess you'd been nursing all along and only bringing it up as if it just occurred to you isn't exactly what a good person does, either.
Besides, even if it wasn't my intention to say only I should suffer, the reality was that only I could afford to suffer.
"If I were in your shoes, I'd probably have thought the same thing."
A short silence followed.
"Still, we can't rule out other possibilities, so I think it's worth trying to break into another car. It'd give us a good angle to attack the monster from, and make running easier, too."
"H-how do you even break into one? Mr. Yuhan, do you know how?"
"No."
I'd never forcibly broken into someone else's car.
I'd rifled through keys in houses and off corpses to open other people's cars before, but.
Even that hadn't been a common occurrence.
"We'll have to smash a window with a fire extinguisher or something. I should have helped you do it before it came to this."
"Ah... no, no, don't say that. What are you talking about?"
"I'll handle the windows. Shall we get moving? Leave Seon Yuhan to rest."
"Yes. Let's do it."
"Head over that way. The monster went this direction."
And with that, the group left me alone in the narrow, cozy nook between two parked cars, behind a pillar, and went off to break into a vehicle.
Truthfully, there was a chance that forcibly breaking into someone else's car would count as a rule violation. But that didn't mean we could afford not to even try in this situation.
Tap-tap-tap.
Tap-tap-tap.
The sound of footsteps fading into the distance.
"...The fire extinguisher from earlier..."
"...That one by the pillar..."
"...Step aside that way..."
"...We don't have much time..."
The murmuring voices grew fainter.
Thwack...!
Then, immediately after — the heavy, muffled boom of something very dense and solid rebounding off something even harder.
Crack...!
Krrrash...!
The fire extinguisher hammering again and again against the same point on a car window.
Shhk...
Riiiiiiiiiiiing—!
The moment the window finally split into a spiderweb of cracks, the siren sang out — the sound that announced the beginning of the hunt.
"...Okay, get in fast..."
"...If we crash again..."
"...Better to just run..."
The group's shouted words, half-buried beneath the alarm, reaching my ears like muffled muttering.
Riiiiiing!
From the direction the monster had vanished, heat came rolling through the air along with the smell of burning rubber.
Whoooosh—!
I could see it — the monster ripping past right beside me, so fast I could almost feel the wake of wind it left behind.
"..."
I could also see the knight — my left arm now neatly stitched onto Choi Jaeha's shoulder, leaving only its right arm and neck missing.
Who would become the owner of that right arm?
Did the hunter have some clear criterion for choosing its prey?
It seemed like it might simply pick whoever was closest, positionally.
Lee Jinsu had been standing at the very back of the group when the thing came sprinting in from behind and took him. Choi Jaeha had been sitting in the driver's seat when it slammed into him head-on. And I'd been a couple steps slow, gathering up the child, when it took me.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiing—!
At last, a man's choked scream cut through the alarm.
"Ugh, ughhh...!"
Surprising.
Honestly, I'd expected him to grab the kid as a distraction and run for it.
It wouldn't have been difficult, by any measure.
...Is it because my expectations for this man's moral fiber dropped so low after the shepherd incident?
That said, looking back, outside of those extreme circumstances he was usually decent enough.
Far more than someone like me.
"Hnn..."
I got up to go check on Yu Hyeonjae, and my left shoulder throbbed all over again.
Suppressing the impulse to just sit back down and stay still, I walked slowly.
Riiiiiing!
The alarm hadn't stopped yet, but the prey had already been chosen — the monster wouldn't attack anyone else, and it certainly wouldn't come for me a second time.
I could tell as much just from the way it had passed right by me earlier.
"Aagh, ugh...!"
By the time I arrived, the monster had just finished tearing Yu Hyeonjae's right arm away entirely and was walking off at an unhurried pace.
"CEO. CEO Yu Hyeonjae?"
Rather than following the monster, I approached Yu Hyeonjae where he lay collapsed.
A acrid, metallic smell of scorched flesh hung in the air, sickening and sharp.
I tapped his left shoulder lightly, and he grimaced, opening his eyes.
He hadn't lost consciousness.
"...You held out well."
Good grief. Talk about sheer stubbornness.
Losing an arm doesn't guarantee survival.
One wrong move and you die of shock.
Where did he find this kind of will?
"..."
Yu Hyeonjae's mouth hung slack, opening and closing weakly — whatever he was trying to say was drowned out by the alarm.
I looked down for a moment at that face — streaked with blood, sweat, and tears, and now oozing serum from the burns besides.
Why hold on this desperately?
Even if he escaped the labyrinth like this, wouldn't it only make him miserable?
He'd have to live on having lost all of yesterday's brilliance.
He'd have to hold his position under more criticism, condemnation, and distrust than ever before.
People who didn't consider themselves flawed in the least — who were in truth flaw-free — would endlessly pick at the imperfections he didn't even see as imperfections, needling him without cease.
He, who had been thrown permanently off the orbit of normal.
They would carve, and smash, and shatter him without end.
'I wanted to live.'
'Because I wanted to get out.'
I wiped Yu Hyeonjae's face. Carefully, so the wounds wouldn't worsen.
Like I said — I don't dislike people like that.
People who want so badly to survive that they'll go this far...
"Ah."
And then, quite suddenly, a certain realization came to me.
"It wasn't a coincidence, was it? Getting taken this time."
I didn't know whether my voice — barely more than a murmur — reached Yu Hyeonjae's ears.
"You let your arm be taken on purpose. There was a chance the knight would need a head, after all. Giving up an arm beats losing your head."
Yu Hyeonjae, who had been staring at me unblinkingly — perhaps lying still and trying to read my lips — opened his mouth again.
"..."
"I can't hear you. Here, take these."
Just as I was handing over the leftover anti-inflammatories and painkillers and some water—
Riiiiiiiiiing—!
Riiiiing.
The alarm finally fell silent.
"Haah..."
The CEO of Yuwi Guild drained the water bottle and let out a long, deep breath.
"How are you feeling?"
"It hurts the same. Exactly as much as it hurt you, Mr. Seon Yuhan."
The strength had drained from that ever-powerful voice.
"You held out well."
I'd wanted to make sure he heard those words properly this time.
"You did well too, Mr. Seon Yuhan."
For some reason it left a bad taste in my mouth, so I changed the subject.
"By the way, what were you saying earlier? I couldn't hear over the alarm."
"Oh. Ah, that."
Yu Hyeonjae shook his head faintly.
"It was nothing. I just kept asking for water. I'd bled so much my mouth felt bone dry. And what did you say?"
"Oh, nothing important either. Whether you could get up, whether you could see clearly around you — I was checking your condition. Seems you didn't hear. I'd lost too much strength myself; couldn't really raise my voice."
Yu Hyeonjae gave a short ah and nodded.
Of course you did.
Helping Yu Hyeonjae up with my right arm, I forced the corners of my mouth downward.
Because every time that man opened his mouth, it was a lie.
"Then I'll bandage this for you."
Exactly as he'd done for me earlier, I gently rinsed the severed surface — which had touched the parking garage floor — with the flowing saline, then wrapped it in bandages.
"Yuhan! CEO!"
Hwang Juyeon and Jeong Jiho arrived first, followed immediately by Lee Nahyeon, who came sprinting breathlessly from another direction.
Lee Nahyeon, who'd been holding her hand over her mouth to stifle her screams, looked like she'd just seen a ghost.
"E-everyone, come quick, over there..."
"What is it? Something else weird happening?"
"Yesyesyesyesyes."
Lee Nahyeon's head bobbed up and down without pause.
"That monster — it's not sleeping anymore...!"
"What?"
"It's walking around over there right now...!"