Some Stories End When the Protagonist Dies
There were two facts I had overlooked.
"Mr. Seon Yuhan...!"
First, that Yu Hyeonjae was not a man you could trust blindly and unconditionally.
"Hh, ugh..."
Though for this particular death, I could probably afford to ignore that first fact entirely. The greater fault lay with my own body, which had failed to keep up with Yu Hyeonjae.
20. There are two paths on the 7th floor.
20-1. Proceed as three teams — if you are with someone you cannot trust.
"If it were possible to turn back time, what would you do, Mr. Seon Yuhan?"
Maybe I should go check the bathroom. And make sure no fire alarm goes off this time.
And what happens when the fire alarm doesn't go off?
"It is time for the reading club."
The reading club begins.
Hwang Juyeon — who in every previous cycle had slipped out of Chaekbang-Ollae by a hair's breadth at the sound of the alarm — ends up sealed inside it instead.
"No additional participants will be admitted until the reading club concludes."
"What the hell is this? I'm not the only one hearing this, right? Right?"
"Yes... I hear it too."
And so a cozy little reading club of four began — Choi Jaeha, Hwang Juyeon, Kim Gilyeong, and me.
For the first time in a very, very long while.
"Reading club participants will gather comfortably in the reading area."
"Reading area?"
"Um, over there — that's the reading area... where the sofas are..."
We were still in the explanation phase of the reading club.
"Hold on a moment."
If small talk was still permitted, I needed to lay the groundwork now.
"Hm? Why? Is something the matter?"
"No, it's not that..."
I deliberately hesitated, as if stealing a glance at Kim Gilyeong for her reaction, before going on.
"As far as I knew... this library wasn't supposed to have a librarian. It runs on a self-service checkout system."
"Huh?"
"I'm sorry?"
Choi Jaeha and Hwang Juyeon echoed the words, momentarily lost.
"I mean, I told you I had my interview at Yuwi Guild today, didn't I?"
"Yeah, you did..."
"Employee benefits came up, and I mentioned I liked that the company has a library like this one. The interviewer gave me a short explanation about it."
I let my voice tremble faintly and stole a glance at the librarian.
"A self-service checkout system... so no librarian at all..."
Everyone fell silent.
At long last — a satisfying silence.
"Wh-what... what is that supposed to..."
The silence was broken by the librarian.
"I really am the librarian here!"
Genuinely flabbergasted, genuinely wronged — the agitation was written all over her face and voice.
"Look! Look at my employee badge...! Kim Gilyeong! It's my face! It's me, isn't it!"
She was probably a being configured that way.
She probably truly believed it, with all her heart.
That she was the librarian of Chaekbang-Ollae, the Yuwi Guild staff library.
"Hmm..."
"The badge does look real..."
Faced with Kim Gilyeong's earnest expression, Hwang Juyeon and Choi Jaeha wore the look of people who couldn't decide which way to lean.
"There's nothing an invasive labyrinth can't fabricate."
"Th-then, then it's you, Mr. Seon Yuhan, who has some kind of scheme...!"
"I'm sorry, Ms. Kim Gilyeong — what exactly would I stand to gain from lying about there being no librarian?"
I turned my gaze straight to Hwang Juyeon.
'Was there a librarian even before the labyrinthification? Because if so, that's far scarier, from where I stand.'
'Uh, uhhh... actually, now that you mention it, no. At first there was nobody at the desk, but when I came out after the fire alarm, there was — so I figured she'd just stepped away for a moment. Naturally.'
That was, verbatim, the conversation the two of us had once had.
"Ms. Hwang Juyeon, was it? You've been here this whole time."
"Uh, yes..."
"Was Ms. Kim Gilyeong here from the moment you first entered the library? She didn't simply appear out of nowhere?"
Hwang Juyeon held Kim Gilyeong's gaze for a long moment, suspicion and trust split evenly in her eyes — then flinched as if pricked by a needle.
"Now that you mention it... uh, no, she wasn't. Not when I came in. I just assumed she'd stepped away for a minute..."
As Hwang Juyeon's voice went on, Kim Gilyeong's eyes wavered.
"Ms. Kim Gilyeong, were you away from your desk earlier?"
As if that question had finally driven the wedge home, the librarian's composure crumbled.
"Ah. Ah."
Like someone whose every root had been ripped out from under her.
No — like someone who had just realized there had never been any roots to shake in the first place.
"One life is one story. That is the theme of this reading club."
"Ah."
The librarian sank to the floor as if she were collapsing into it.
"Are you— are you okay—"
"Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah."
The same syllable spilled out between the librarian's lips, over and over and over.
"And some stories can only arrive at a complete ending once the protagonist dies."
Beneath the library's revelation, the librarian's two eyes — until that moment twitching grotesquely in opposite directions — aligned into parallel and converged upon a single point.
...Toward me.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH"
"Gah— what the hell!"
"Both of you, get back!"
Thwack!
The once introverted, teary-eyed librarian lunged at me wearing that same docile face as always.
Like a robot that had forgotten its three principles.
"Ugh..."
My back slammed into a bookshelf with a heavy thud.
Books clattered down around us.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH"
Locked in a contest of strength, I was being driven back little by little.
"Ngh...!"
I gritted my teeth with everything I had.
So that it would look like a struggle.
How many times had I killed this thing already? I was simply waiting.
"Mr. Seon Yuhan, duck!"
For this moment.
CRUNCH!
The librarian's body before me came apart.
"Hah... hahh..."
Choi Jaeha stood heaving for breath, red fire extinguisher still in hand, his face flushed crimson.
His hands were shaking so violently it looked like he might drop it at any second.
Hwang Juyeon had her pen clutched tight — clearly intending to join the attack if it came to that.
"...Mr. Choi Jaeha."
"Uh. Uhh, um..."
I eased the fire extinguisher out of the dazed man's hands and gripped those pale hands of his firmly in mine.
I had to keep his mind on something — anything — other than the fact that he had just killed something unknown that wore a human face.
"Thank you. Truly. You just saved my life, Mr. Choi Jaeha. That was a really close call..."
Onto the fact that he had saved a man about to die. Onto the warmth of the hands pressing against his own, right here and now.
"You too, Ms. Hwang Juyeon. I know you were about to help. Thank you, really."
Even so, the two of them would never be able to forget this moment.
You are my accomplices now.
If only this could become the foundation of some good, solid mutual trust between us.
"...Would it be all right if I stepped out to use the restroom?"
The no-fire-alarm route carries one fatal flaw.
It leaves no natural opening to 'acquire' the Jaerae Diary.
If the alarm rang, I could simply lie and say I'd killed the librarian alone and picked the diary up in Chaekbang-Ollae afterward — and that would be the end of it.
If I don't want Yu Hyeonjae suspecting, later on, that I'm someone who has experienced temporal regression, I have to reveal the diary.
Only then does it stay at the level of suspicion rather than certainty.
"Uh, sure, go ahead."
"Are you all right, Mr. Choi Jaeha?"
"Yeah, I'm... not really, still..."
So I decided to kill two birds with one stone: manufacture an excuse to be alone, and scout out the labyrinthified bathroom.
These people would need to use it eventually anyway — better to have the intel in advance.
"I'll be right back."
Click.
A bathroom with the exact same layout as the one on the 7th floor.
Four urinals separated by partitions, three toilet stalls across from them, and beside those a row of sinks and a mirror.
The sink side should be harmless.
Yu Hyeonjae and I, who had used water on our burns, were never trapped in here.
Hwang Juyeon, Lee Nahyeon, and Jeong Jiho, on the other hand — all three had gone in to relieve themselves and been swallowed whole.
Which meant the stalls were the culprit.
The women's restroom would have no urinals, after all.
Creeeak...
Cautiously, I eased each of the three doors open one at a time and checked inside.
Toilet, toilet-paper holder, trash can.
Nothing obviously wrong at a glance.
In the end, there was nothing for it but to go in myself.
Creak, click.
[Please hold the flush lever down for at least 3 seconds]
The instruction posted beside the toilet lever was the first thing to catch my eye.
Then I turned around, sat down on the toilet lid, and looked straight ahead.
[Please dispose of used toilet paper in the toilet]
Warning stickers, just like in any public restroom, had been posted at eye level.
An ivory-colored jumbo toilet-paper holder was mounted on the right-hand wall.
[A beautiful stall is one where even the one who lingered remained human]
...What is that even supposed to mean?
I'd nearly walked right past it, mistaking it for one of those tired clichés people slap up in every bathroom.
The labyrinth's hand had clearly touched this place, all right.
Though I couldn't begin to guess what it meant. Might be nothing more than a prank.
This time I turned my head to the left.
[There is a small dot on the ceiling.
— Baek, Office Chief, Jaerae Building Management]
The ceiling?
"...Ah."
Crazy.
My head had almost tipped back on pure reflex — almost looked up to see just what that 'small dot' was.
Slowly, I lowered my half-raised head back into place.
[There are small dots on the ceiling.
— Baek, Office Chief, Jaerae Building Management]
...Dots?
The dots had multiplied.
[Please dispose of used toilet paper in the trash can]
...Didn't it just tell me to put it in the toilet?
[A person who remains human leaves behind a beautiful stall, too]
This one had changed as well.
[Please hold the flush lever down for at least 5 seconds]
Even the time had stretched.
Fail to obey these instructions and something terrible would happen — of that I was certain.
[Please hold the flush lever down for at least 4.5 seconds]
A place where you had to keep complying with instructions that changed from one second to the next, with split-second timing — no wonder people slipped up and got trapped in here.
It was the space where human beings were at their most vulnerable, after all. And nobody reads bathroom notices all that carefully.
[Please dispose of the used trash can in the toilet]
...You have got to be kidding me. Why not just tell me to put an elephant in the refrigerator.
[There is a small line on the ceiling.
— Baek, Office Chief, Jaerae Building Management]
Now it was a line instead of dots.
The dots, apparently, had multiplied many times over.
Suppressing the strange, crawling urge to raise my head, I looked away.
[A person who remains human leaves behind a beautiful stall, too]
...Time to get out of here.
Click, creak.
Thankfully, the door opened without incident.
Meanwhile, the urinals outside carried no notices whatsoever.
Were the urinals simply safe to use? Or did the same rules apply in there as well — rules you'd be forced to follow blind, with no way of ever knowing what they were?
I had no burning desire to find out.
Rustle.
I took out the diary to update it, retracing what I'd recorded so far and the route that lay ahead.
The method had changed a little, but the librarian was dead all the same — all that remained was to collect the child from the daycare and escape from the 2nd floor.
'The late Bae Seowoo'
On B5, I'd need to restore the name on the funerary urn without letting anyone's heart rate climb. On the 11th floor, the Future Strategy Budget Planning Team — no gambling, just get through fast. And at the cafeteria of the 15th floor's Shingye Ilbo, Yu Hyeonjae would make short work of those demented teenagers and the gas explosion article.
If all seven of us were still alive and well by then, the next stop was the arcade on the 5th floor — gather the gold coins and play Shepherd's Silence.
And if we somehow scraped through that too, then on the floor after that — B3 — half of us would die.
Because we would have to offer our bodies and limbs to the Headless Rider.
Next time around, there was even a floor so demented it made you climb with a dismembered body.
"..."
Click.
I closed the diary and stepped back out into the corridor.
"Oh, Mr. Seon Yuhan."
"What — you said you'd be right back."
It hadn't even been five minutes. Why the sulking?
"I thought the bathroom had turned into a labyrinth too."
"...It kind of did."
"What?"
"Sorry?"
"Then how did you get out so fast?"
"I meant to come straight back out, but there was some noise coming from one of the stalls, so I went in to check, and..."
Except for the reason I'd entered the stall, I relayed everything exactly as I knew it, honestly.
"But anyway, you two — look at this. There was a strange notebook sitting on top of the toilet cover, so I gave it a read..."
This part, too, I left out.
"Insane — no, sorry. Anyway, if this is real, it means once we go down, we won't be on the 1st floor."
"Ha... seriously, why on earth..."
Thankfully, they swallowed my story without a shred of doubt.
"Still, if this information is true, we'll be able to escape far more safely."
All that remained now was to keep these two soothed and alive, and get us downstairs.
Here's hoping holding off the fire alarm turns out to have been worth it.
21. There are notices in the bathrooms. Ignore the office chief.