A Father Like a Labyrinth
Whether or not I was cursing him out in my head, Yu Hyeonjae opened his mouth.
"The truth is."
No, I'm not curious, so don't go confessing secrets or whatever. The words just shut up and die quietly climbed to the tip of my tongue. Every time this man opened up in exactly this way, nothing good had ever come of it.
"My father was... a man like a labyrinth."
Yu Hyeonjae, producing a sentence entirely unlike anything I'd expected, added with a bitter smile:
"In the sense that he was very good at keeping people locked in."
A thoroughly nasty joke. Laughter, here, was a privilege reserved for the man himself, so I could not laugh along.
"Ah..."
Only now did I feel I truly understood the shape of the shadow I had glimpsed in them. Only after more than a decade had passed — only now. Back when we attended the same middle school, all I'd known, vaguely, was that they were being abused at home.
"Being locked in so we couldn't set foot outside, being starved — that was routine. When he fed us, it meant that a little while later he would 'take care of' us. And of course, that held even when school was in session."
They were children who missed school often.
"It's been more than ten years since my father died. And yet a part of us is still back in those days. Even now."
"Haha." Yu Hyeonjae laughed, feebly, as if embarrassed, then rolled only his eyes to glance around the room. Choi Jaeha and Lee Nahyeon simply kept their mouths shut, as if they had no idea how they were supposed to react. Or perhaps, by now, they simply didn't care. In a few minutes, they would suffocate and die.
"Is that surprising?"
Not at all.
"No."
Whatever past this man carried, I would not like him any more for it, nor hate him any less. It had nothing to do with me.
"Everyone has a past they can't quite shake off, after all."
"I see."
Yu Hyeonjae's lips curled upward. A smile hazy as fog.
"You're the same as us, Mr. Seon Yuhan."
I didn't want to hear that. And yet... I knew myself — the self who, once upon a time, had ached to hear exactly those words. For some reason a faint embarrassment warmed my face; I dipped my chin, then lifted it straight back up. The water had climbed so high now that unless I tilted my head a little further, it would touch my lips.
"Hic, ugh... Mom..."
In the end, Lee Nahyeon was the first to break into sobs, and Choi Jaeha silently raised the water level by a few drops.
"Please, both of you — don't be too afraid."
The head of Yuwi Guild spoke as he gently patted the shoulders of the other company's employees weeping in sorrow. It was a voice so soft that it came across as grotesque instead.
"It won't take long. You'll lose consciousness in under a minute, and after that, there's nothing at all."
The crying grew louder.
"Besides, with Mr. Seon Yuhan experiencing temporal regression, that means — in one sense — that there is an afterlife, and — in another — that in the end, every one of us will live again. We won't remember it, of course. But still, isn't that rather comforting? Knowing there's a next time?"
They did not look comforted in the slightest.
"Mm. Anyway, this is quite the problem."
Perhaps because he'd given up on consoling the two in such an empathy-impaired fashion, Yu Hyeonjae changed the subject. I was willing to play along with the tune of his own peculiar kindness.
"Is there a bigger problem than the fact that we're about to die?"
"There is."
Yu Hyeonjae lifted his left hand out of the water and pressed it against the ceiling. The silver ring on his little finger glinted like a star in the night sky, and the tiny red gem set at its center looked for all the world like a drop of blood. I know someone who wears the exact same ring.
"If Yu Mirae were ever to find out I died."
Yu Mirae. I hadn't known he was capable of putting that name in his mouth. All this time he had steered around it so effortlessly — this was a man who wouldn't mention her directly even in the Future Arcade, an entertainment floor established and run under the direction of co-CEO Yu Mirae herself.
It must have been that startling — even Choi Jaeha and Lee Nahyeon turned to stare at him through their tear-soaked faces. Then again, I suppose, if not in a moment like this, when would he ever say it? The name of his only family. His partner.
"...Now that I think of it — is CEO Yu Mirae at the company as well?"
"Yes. I heard she clocked in before I did. So she should be somewhere in here."
Whether Yu Mirae was in this very labyrinth with us, however, was another matter entirely.
"She's here. I'm certain of it."
Yu Hyeonjae declared it — that Yu Mirae was in the same place as we were. As if he had read my mind. Or as if he could see straight through this labyrinth. Or perhaps, in the end, simply as if he wished it were so.
"Next time we make our way upward, we may well run into Yu Mirae."
"Well. I suppose we might."
If Yu Mirae truly was here, in this exact place. And if she was still alive, unclaimed by this labyrinth. As the head of a guild, she might not die easily — I couldn't say.
"But is there a reason she mustn't learn of your death? CEO Yu Mirae, I mean."
What catastrophe could possibly come of her knowing he had died? However wretched the relationship between them, surely she had the right to know whether her brother lived or died. Did he not understand how soul-grinding it is not to know whether someone is alive or dead?
"There is. Naturally."
Did he resent his sister that much?
"I don't want to show her. Me, dead."
Not that he showed her his living self, either. I barely managed to swallow the question caught on the tip of my tongue. There was no need to dig into another man's family affairs. Wanting to know something does not mean one must know it.
"...CEO."
I find myself thinking about his courage — confessing his secret so readily, knowing full well it would live on in me after his death.
"I can make sure CEO Yu Mirae never finds your body. If that's what you want. Within the limits of what I can do."
"Yes. Please do. There's no need to overexert yourself."
Yu Mirae's callous yet considerate older brother curled his lips into a faint smile.
"Well then... shall we say our goodbyes? Mr. Choi Jaeha, Ms. Lee Nahyeon. It was a pleasure to meet you. Don't be too afraid. It will only last a moment."
Having soothed the two one final time, Yu Hyeonjae angled his head — raised nearly to the ceiling — slightly in my direction.
"Mr. Seon Yuhan — it was good to see you again after so long. And no doubt it will be good to see you again."
A soft splash.
"Gahk..."
"Holy crap..."
Yu Hyeonjae, utterly unbothered, folded his body down and sank beneath the water. I was the only one who wasn't startled. Though I'll admit — even having watched it this many times, I can't help but admire it.
Bubbles rose from beneath the surface at once. The instant their owner gulped down a full measure of water without holding his breath for even a second, his body reflexively thrashed in a last-ditch bid for survival.
...
The sheer force of will it takes to override the body's own spinal reflexes and sprint headlong into death — it genuinely earns my admiration.
"Hic, ugh, aaah, what do we do..."
The bubbles climbing toward the surface stopped. Yu Hyeonjae had sunk completely beneath the water. The same awaited us.
I simply waited, patient. I had no intention of hurling myself into death merely to spare myself a little pain.
"...Kehk—ugh."
Before long the water rose past the crown of my head and, sliding down my windpipe, filled my lungs to the brim. Glk. Gurgle. Bubbles surged upward. Even the sting in my eyes and the raw ache in my nose were luxuries now; the sickening weight of water sliding down my esophagus to pool in my stomach proved only the miserable truth that I still hadn't died.
But this, too, would be over soon. A few seconds was all it took. Just a few seconds...
I can't breathe. And I have to live all over again.
I will get out of the labyrinth.
I have to get out of the labyrinth.
I want to get out of the labyrinth.
I can't get out of the labyrinth.
There was one last thing I wanted to know.
"Interviewer. I..."
When, exactly, will I be able to get out of this labyrinth?
BANG!
The first thing I did after parting with the interviewer in the third-floor corridor was to stand and watch the elevator fall. Kuu-boom! Kwa-ka-krash! KWANG! Choi Jaeha, who would have leapt out of his skin at that sound, was not beside me. He'd be down there.
Right now, I felt no particular need to keep him alive. Once he found his footing he wasn't a difficult man to handle, but that only worked if I held the informational high ground and had earned his trust. In a state like this — with no information at all about the labyrinths ahead — I was every bit as lost as he was, and looking like that, it would be hard to make a convincing impression on Choi Jaeha. Besides, I didn't need a man like Choi Jaeha at the moment. Not unless another pattern demanding a minimum headcount cropped up, like the Future Arcade on the fifth floor.
Kwa-krang! THUD! So for now, I decided to simply let him die. It was far less of a hassle that way.
The reason I had come to the elevator instead of taking the stairs down with the interviewer — when I had no intention of saving him — was nothing special. It was just habit. Nothing more than the fact that I had saved that man so many times, the act had worn itself into an unconscious reflex.
...
We would meet again. When I restored the building's power in the electrical room, and the time came to return to the machine room down below. Whenever that turned out to be.
Clunk.
Tap, tap. My footsteps rang through the emergency stairwell. The very act of climbing stairs felt strangely, deeply unfamiliar. For the first time, I was climbing this building's stairs.
Tap, tap. What floor lay above the third? It wouldn't be the fourth. The floor below the third being the second seemed to be purely because those two floors were connected through the grand auditorium.
...Hold on. I barely fought down the urge to stop dead in my tracks and kept climbing, one step at a time. I did not go back down. There was something I needed to verify. The emergency exit drew near.
Until now, going down from the third floor to the second had required no conditions at all. Whether I saved Choi Jaeha or not, whether I sent the interviewer down ahead of me or not — whatever I did on the third floor, I could always reach the second. I had assumed that, too, was because the two floors were joined through the grand auditorium. Of course, it was possible there were conditions no human intellect could ever parse, and that I had satisfied them without knowing — but that amounts to there being none at all. Which meant the question that had just surfaced in my mind was this:
Clunk.
"Ha..."
That to go up from the third floor to the one above it, I might need to fulfill a separate condition.
I let my head fall at the familiar scene beyond the door. The place with the grand auditorium and the interview room. The place I had just climbed up from. This was the third floor.
Damn it. To reach the floor above, I would have to find some escape condition here on the third floor.
Ah...
Here it goes again. Again.