The Secret of Well-Being

I started by taking another careful look at the floor map of the 3rd level posted on the wall near the elevator.

According to it, the small-to-mid-sized Conference Rooms A, B, and C sat along the west side, while the larger Conference Rooms D and E occupied the east.

Conference Room A — that was where I'd had my interview. There was no need to go back in there.

There was nothing special inside it to begin with, anyway.

'No clock. What time is it? I want to know the time.'

Besides, if you were still in the interview room when 4 o'clock rolled around, something would come and knock on the door — something with a child's voice, but a body so massive its head brushed the ceiling. I took it as a kind of warning. And the moment 4 o'clock passed, the door would open on its own, and you'd be sucked straight into a strange darkness. Whether the knocking thing and that darkness were one and the same, I couldn't say.

It was 3:35 now. If I could manage it, I wanted to satisfy the escape condition and get off the 3rd floor within the next 25 minutes — without crossing paths with it. Or them.

For starters, I decided to pass by the interview room and make one full loop of the corridor.

Conference Room B, Conference Room C... This side of the hallway showed no visible change, at least on the surface.

Crossing over to the opposite corridor, I stopped in front of it. A sheet of paper was stuck to the door.

A special seminar?

I found myself recalling a conversation from a very long time ago.

"Is the corridor normally this empty?"

"I believe so, yes. The 3rd floor only has the auditorium and the conference ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rooms, and there's no other event on the schedule today besides the interviews."

Then what on earth was this 'seminar'?

Click.

I carefully laid my hand on the handle of Conference Room D. The door swung open with a soft hiss.

"..."

Our eyes met. To be precise — with the roughly thirty humans sitting motionless at their desks. No. They couldn't have been human. Not with those faces, every last one identical, as if stamped out of the same mold.

High schoolers, maybe early twenties at most. Utterly ordinary looks. Faces neither strikingly beautiful nor especially distinctive — the kind you'd forget the moment they turned away. Their eyes were fixed on me.

"...Sh—"

Disgust and indignation surged up ahead of everything else.

"...damn it..."

Not because they dared to imitate humans. Nobody knew better than I did that humans weren't any great prize as creatures went. This was simply a matter between those unremarkable humans, the beings imitating that unremarkable thing, and unremarkable me. A very old problem.

"Hello, Teacher!"

...What? Teacher?

The filthy monsters, who had chorused those words in perfect unison, looked up at me with revolting eyes glittering bright. Come to think of it, that was exactly the figure I cut, standing in this room right now. The interior of the conference room was laid out like a lecture hall — two-seater desks lined up five to a row in three blocks, the monsters wearing identical human shells sitting quietly at them like students. And I was standing in front of the wide whiteboard, facing them all.

"I have a question, Teacher!"

Exactly as if I really were their teacher.

"Uh... ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠what is it? The question."

Click. I shut the door behind me and tossed the question back at the one that had raised its hand. Denying I was the teacher and bolting didn't seem like a particularly wise move. If the labyrinth said I was the teacher, then a teacher I was — one who even had to lecture on The Secret of Well-Being, at that. Looked like they'd picked the wrong teacher.

"What's your name, Teacher?"

"...Seon Yuhan."

Scratch, scribble, scritch. The moment I gave my half-hearted answer, the monsters all wrote something down on sheets of paper laid out on their desks. Curious what they were writing, I craned my neck for a peek, but it got me nowhere.

I'd have to actually be able to read it to know what it said.

"I have a question too, Teacher!" This time a different one raised its hand.

"What."

"Doesn't everyone have a name, Teacher?"

A strange question.

"Not... everyone has one."

I'd meant to leave it at that, but looking into those glittering eyes, the disgust came tangled up with a strange compulsion — like I somehow owed them a more detailed explanation.

"Everything in the world starts out nameless. We're the ones who go around attaching names to things. And every so often, in the process, something ends up never getting one."

Scratch, scribble. What were they writing this time? I supposed that was what they did every time I answered.

"Do you seem strange if you don't have a name, Teacher?"

I stared for a moment at the monster poised on the border between teenager and adult.

"I'd imagine so."

If you were dead set on wearing a human skin and playing at being human.

"Then can we give each other names, Teacher?"

"...Sure. Do as you like."

"Can we take your name and use it, Teacher?"

"No. You can't. I won't give it up."

That one was theirs — not something to hand over to monsters like these.

"I have a question too, Teacher!"

"Yeah."

"When's your birthday, Teacher?"

What was this, a background survey?

"...April 1st."

Scribble, scratch. Even the lie went down without a hitch; they scrawled away all the same. Maybe whether an answer was true or false simply didn't matter to them. Or maybe it would come back to bite me later.

"I have a question too, Teacher!"

"Yeah. What."

"When is the anniversary of your death, Teacher?"

Creepy bastards.

"No idea."

"Why don't you know, Teacher?"

"Because I haven't died yet."

...Debatable, depending on your point of view.

"You haven't died, so you don't know your own death anniversary, Teacher?"

"Isn't that obvious? Show me someone who knows the exact day they're going to die... well, a handful exist, but almost nobody."

Unless you were the type to set a date and go off to die.

"I have a question too, Teacher!"

"Can't you just skip asking permission and raise your hands one at a time like normal?"

"..."

At that, every student in the room abruptly went dead serious and stared straight at me. So that was a no.

"Fine. Go ahead. Your question..."

"When are we supposed to die, Teacher?"

"You could die right now, for all I care."

"But we still want to live, Teacher?"

I didn't want to hear that. Not from monsters.

"Ordinary humans cycle repeatedly between an active state and an inactive state until, at some point, they are permanently deactivated. So when is the appropriate time for us to permanently cease activity, Teacher?"

Ah...

Were these bastards doing this because they meant to live blended in among humans? Or were they simply monsters built to that specification?

"There's no such thing as a right time to die. Not in a country where kids and adults alike are driven to kill themselves any given day. You lot should just pick your moment and die on your own schedule too."

How monsters died was none of my business.

"Who was your first love, Teacher?"

"Oh. They're dead."

Whether I answered that someone had died or not, the atmosphere didn't shift one degree, and a new one raised its hand.

"I have a question too, Teacher!"

"Go ahead."

"When you hear that someone has died, are you supposed to feel sad, Teacher?"

In that instant, the words jammed hard in my throat.

"Is death a sad thing, Teacher?"

"Should we be sad too, Teacher?"

"Is it strange if we're not sad, Teacher?"

"That's..."

Those were the things I had wanted to ask. Questions with no one to ask them, no one to answer. When my parents died, what I felt was fear and confusion. When my aunt died, what I felt was fear, despair, and rage. When the man and the woman died and my brother disappeared, what I felt was...

I believe it was grief. That much, at least.

"If you're not sad... then there's no need to grieve. But if there's someone beside you — someone other than you lot — and that person is grieving, it's better to at least pretend to grieve along with them. Be the only one who's different, and you get treated like a freak."

And in a sense, it really was strange, I supposed. Either way, it sat outside 'normal.' ...No, wait. Why was I answering this so seriously?

"I have a question too, Teacher!"

"Yeah. Go ahead."

"I want things like friends, a lover, a family — how do I get them? Could I perhaps trade something I have for them, Teacher?"

"Ha..."

Trade, it says.

"People aren't goods for bartering... If you want a friend or a lover, then just honestly tell the person you want it with that that's what you want."

Not that many relationships in this day and age actually formed in such a storybook fashion. But I didn't figure these monsters had the social graces to 'naturally' grow close to a person either, so frankly, staking it all on blunt honesty was probably their best bet.

"And family... family is..."

I stood there blankly before the monsters like a child awaiting punishment, murmuring the word family. Turned the whole idea over in my head. Memories that would never digest, no matter how many times I chewed them.

"Beats me. I honestly don't know. Whether any of us has the right to have that..."

"Teacher!"

"Huh? What?"

I jerked my head up at the chorus that rang out again. The identical copies — alike without a hair's breadth of difference — were staring holes through me. So unblinkingly it raised gooseflesh.

"Do you want a family, Teacher?"

The students asked as one.

"I don't know."

"Shall we become your family, Teacher?"

What if we did? We might make a fine family, perhaps — if a good family meant a peaceful one. We would never wound each other, and never be wounded.

"No."

It's just that none of that would feel like family to me. How could that be family — if you couldn't leave so much as a scratch on each other? If you couldn't leave behind a single trace of yourself?

"We couldn't be family."

What my aunt taught me. That you cannot love what you do not hate. That you cannot understand what you do not love. That only someone I hate, and love, and understand can truly wound me. And therefore — that we were family.

"Do you want to see your aunt again, Teacher?"

"Yes."

More than anything.

"Shall we let you see your aunt again, Teacher?"

"I—"

I'd been about to say that if ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠they could truly make that happen, I would give them everything I had. Right up until I remembered that I had never once spoken of my aunt out loud.

"—hold on. How do you know about my aunt?"

"..."

The infuriating things just clammed right back up and went on staring at their teacher.

"Get lost. I don't need your help."

I'd nearly walked straight into it. Things that could read your thoughts and memories like this had to be handled with care — which meant they might be able to lay hands on your mind, too.

"Don't you want to leave the labyrinth, Teacher?"

"I do want to leave."

Half-suspecting a catch, I answered on full guard. Catch or no catch, the things simply kept scribbling something on their papers.

"..."

No more students raised their hands. No more chorusing in unison, either. Honestly, I'd expected a follow-up question here, too — Shall we let you out of the labyrinth? — the way they'd asked, Shall we be your family? Shall we let you see your aunt again?

Scrape.

Suddenly, one of the creatures in the front row sprang to its feet. At once, everyone began passing their papers forward from the very back row, the way exam sheets get collected. Those pages they'd been so diligently filling out with every answer I gave all ended up gathered in the hands of the one now standing.

"You want me to read these?"

"Yes, Teacher!"

A soft rustle. I took the bundle of white pages. At the very top, a title stood in bold block letters.

Ah.

Just as I thought. One of these patterns... A pattern where karma comes due depending on how you answered the questions... And judged by a monster's standards rather than a human's — a pattern impossible to even begin to guess...