The Bunny Girl Handing Out Chewy Rice Cakes (3)

Let’s rewind the clock for a moment.

This was before I sent One-Legged Uncle back to reality.

Around the time my thoughts had finally settled into place.

I put a single question to the constellation.

“One thing I need to confirm. This labyrinth is ultimately a kind of ghost story too, right?”

“So that’s a yes. Then a labyrinth can’t just make anything, right? It has to be built from the anomaly’s identity—from the story it carries. Correct?”

A labyrinth, in the end, is an anomaly’s power taken to its extreme. Put a little crudely, its ultimate technique. People sometimes borrow terms from famous comics and call it a “barrier” or a “domain.”

Whatever the name, the anomaly’s identity has to serve as the root.

I locked that fact into my head and looked around the casino once more.

“Hahahaha! I won! I actually won!”

“Aaaaaaagh! No, please, just one more chance! I don’t have anything left to sell!”

“Shut up! I’m this close to a wish ticket. Just a little more and—”

Someone wins. Someone loses. Someone will escape, and someone will lose everything and be devoured.

There was a limit to how many credits one person could exchange alone, so you had no choice but to steal from others.

Survive by taking what belongs to someone else. In other words, find someone to sacrifice in your place. Pull others in, and you alone can walk free.

I knew a ghost story with exactly this structure. Any hunter would have a hard time not knowing it—it was that famous.

“Changgwi.”

Also known as the water-killing ghost that drags people under to drown them. The tale says that if a tiger kills you, your soul is captured and forced into slavery.

And another thing. The “Jangsan” in Jangsanbeom comes from the name of a mountain in Busan, but “beom” is the pure Korean word for tiger.

Looking back, the clues were there from the start.

When I was traveling with the tiger from The Brother and Sister Who Became the Sun and Moon, the only anomalies that attacked us were insects and plants—creatures with almost no intelligence. Any anomaly capable of thought usually took one look at the tiger and quietly backed away.

The sole exception had been the Jangsanbeom.

At the time I’d assumed it simply didn’t need to approach us directly. That wasn’t it.

The Jangsanbeom hadn’t seen the tiger I’d captured as a threat.

Strictly speaking, then, this anomaly’s name had never been “Jangsanbeom.”

The only animal in the mountains that has no reason to fear a tiger. A ghost story that can command Changgwi and devour a Jangsanbeom to make it its own.

The tiger among tigers. The king that reigns over the mountains.

Sangun.

I had been staring my enemy in the face for a long time already.

I was alone in the casino now.

The staff approached with their mouths split wide in idiotic grins. I was short on credits, and winning more through games was no longer possible. The casino employees dropped the act with startling speed.

“Valued guest. First, allow us to offer our apolohihit.”

“All the other guests have left soiwoniwoniwon”

“It seems you will have difficulty enjoying a normal game.”

“We will now assist youvaluedguestmineallmineallmine with your exchange so that you may exit.”

If I stood still, they would take both body and soul. Those unpleasantly smiling employees would strip me of everything I was.

Just as hunters hunt anomalies, hunters are a special delicacy to anomalies. Even if Sangun released every missing person, it had decided devouring me was the better deal.

The long-awaited banquet hour. I could feel its excitement from here.

A happy occasion for all of us. Sangun, its expectations fulfilled. Me, successfully throwing ash into a finished meal. Everyone was smiling—a picture-perfect win-win, wasn’t it?

But the world is beautiful precisely because it is cruel. Sangun and I could not keep smiling together forever.

I cried out as pitifully as I could, and the staff’s faces went rigid.

“Lord Tiger! Would eating a little creature like me really fill your belly?”

“I-it’s f-fine. Fine. Not fine. N-n-not enough. No! Not not enough. Not enough. Not not enough. Not enough…”

“No! No! Nooooo! Not enough…”

Oh, that was a violent reaction. It looked as if two selves were fighting for control. The staff kept repeating “not enough” and “not not enough” like broken machines.

“Not not enough” was probably Sangun’s true intent, but ghost stories don’t work that way. Thanks to its identity as a tiger, it could exploit the Changgwi tale. And thanks to that same identity as a tiger, it could not escape my trap.

After a fierce internal struggle, the answer I received was this:

“Even… ten of you… wouldn’t be enough… to fill my belly…”

There is a folktale called The Rabbit and the Tiger.

At their first meeting, the rabbit tricks the tiger into thinking a hot stone is a rice cake. At their second, it claims the sound of a burning forest is the flapping of birds’ wings. At their third, it teaches the tiger how to catch fish by dipping its tail into a midwinter stream. The tiger burns its mouth, scorches its whole body, and finally freezes to death when the water turns to ice.

A fairy tale whose entire content is a rabbit tormenting a tiger. The story Sangun would have wanted to avoid more than any other.

The counter should have been to insist I was not a rabbit… but this bastard was far too late for that.

Before this labyrinth had fully settled into being a casino—whether it was a simple error or whether it had just wanted to teabag me—I couldn’t say. But the one who had first treated me as a rabbit was this very creature.

And now it wanted to change its story?

No. Not changing it. No intention of changing it. Go back to the start.

“Lord Tiger! Instead of that, how about some warm, delicious rice cakes?”

“Warm… delicious rice cakes?”

No matter how hard it tried to resist, resistance was impossible. The board had been laid too perfectly for that.

Sangun, who only needed to eat me. Me, who had no option left but to wring out every scrap of wit. Wasn’t this the absolute ideal setup to begin the first scene of The Rabbit and the Tiger?

Sangun and the tiger were inseparable concepts. If it gave me any other answer, it could no longer be a tiger. That meant ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠losing its identity—and an anomaly that loses its identity inevitably collapses.

The proof appeared immediately through the casino itself.

“Bring… them… at o—at once!”

Every time Sangun deliberately slowed its speech, or tried to say something else, the casino building shook visibly. The backlash was so strong that cracks were already spreading everywhere.

And one more thing not to forget: this labyrinth had been designed to favor me more than Sangun. It was a trap built so that I would choose defeat of my own free will. Now that Sangun’s scheme had missed its mark so spectacularly, the casino was, in name and in fact, my home ground.

Normally the next line would be that I would go fetch honey. Sangun would tearfully let me out—and then never, ever allow me back into the labyrinth.

So this was my only chance to defeat Sangun.

With the labyrinth’s support, a little variation on the story would be permitted.

Instead of saying I would go get honey, I began fitting the pieces of the situation together.

Now then—time to accelerate the tale.