The Room You Can't Leave Unless You Do It #1
Seo Docheol, chairman of the Seonam Group, only came back to his senses after staring at the blood dripping from his hand. It seemed a shard from the bonsai pot he’d been tending with obsessive care had stabbed his palm when he smashed it. He pulled a handkerchief from his inner pocket, wrapped the wound roughly to stop the bleeding, and turned the video back on.
His beloved daughter, screaming in silent agony.
The sight of his precious daughter writhing in pain on the tablet screen made rage surge through him once more.
‘How dare they provoke me like this?’
Seo Docheol was a cold man who hadn’t shed a single tear at the funeral of the nanny who had cared for him for thirty years. But when it came to his daughter, everything changed. A child was an extension of their parent. In other words, the one suffering in that kidnapping video might as well have been Seo Docheol himself.
He barely swallowed the curses rising in his throat and struggled to stay calm. In his mind, only three kinds of people would have the guts to pull something like this on him. The most suspicious was the Je-wang Group.
‘If you bastards kidnapped my daughter, then your son and daughter will suffer the exact same fate.’
The person Chairman Wang Jiseok cherished most was his illegitimate son, Wang Jahyeon. Among all his many sons and daughters, that boy was the only one who had become a superhuman. The depth of that love was obvious. Though he never said it outright, Wang Jiseok had been subtly eyeing Seo Gaeul as a potential bride for his son, hoping to bring her into the family as his daughter-in-law.
To Seo Docheol, nothing was more ridiculous or laughable. The Wang family had always been nothing more than servants who handled the dirty work for the Seo family. Even after the dynasty fell and a democratic nation rose, a dog and its master could never sit at the same table.
‘If the parents are dogs, the children are dogs too. Parents and children resemble each other.’
Seo Docheol recalled the boy Wang Jahyeon bowing his head to him at a gathering of chaebol families. He remembered how the kid’s eyes had gleamed with all sorts of desires whenever he looked at his daughter, Seo Gaeul.
If that little bastard couldn’t control his lust and had kidnapped her—
Crack.
Just thinking about it made his teeth grind so hard they felt like they might shatter.
“Those son of a bitches!”
A nauseating disgust twisted his insides and his head spun. In the end, he couldn’t hold back the boiling fury and collapsed.
Thud.
“Chairman, I’d like to report that the underground Great Labyrinth has been opened… Hup! C-Chairman! Wake up! Chairman! Hey! Someone call for help!”
The sound of many footsteps rushing toward his fallen body reached his ears, but Seo Docheol remained unconscious for a long time.
While he was out, he had a dream. A dream of his daughter, his wife, and the days when he had still been happy.
“Then this daddy will have to put in some effort.”
“Wow! Daddy’s the best!”
###
“You’ve fought monsters before, right? You never know what might pop out or where, so it’s best to stay on guard. Though in this entrance area, I guess we don’t have to worry too much.”
I walked through the Great Labyrinth with Jin Ramen Noona, but the place looked nothing like I’d imagined, so my disappointment only grew.
“Dr. Kim! Are those samples ready yet?”
“Hold on! Just scanning the murals in this section—”
I’d pictured the classic ‘dungeon’ from games when I heard the name Great Labyrinth, but in reality it was packed with lighting equipment and researchers in white lab coats. It looked more like a graduate school lab. In short, this was the safe zone of the Great Labyrinth secured by the Seonam Group. They researched the Labyrinth here and secured new technology. Or so they claimed.
Soon, Jin Ramen Noona whispered in my ear.
“That Zero Cola Fresh was actually created by deciphering text found in the Great Labyrinth. See those people over there?”
A bunch of researchers were huddled around a stone tablet, struggling with it. The characters on the tablet were incredibly squiggly, looking exactly like earthworms. Some resembled leaves, others squirrels, clouds, or spiders. They must be hieroglyphs.
Slide.
I narrowed my eyes, examining the letters more closely. That was when the characters slowly floated up in front of me.
In commemoration of the princess’s tenth birthday, we shall brew Nectar…!
Nectar is an extremely sweet and delicious beverage…! It is the favorite drink of us fairies, including the princess…!
The kitchen fairies shall follow the recipe below carefully…!
Ingredients: Sugar, lime, fairy spring water (can be substituted with carbonated water), honey….
“Ah, what’s the last ingredient? The fairy language has no consistency, so I can’t figure out the last word.”
“It looks like some kind of insect. But putting bugs in a beverage is pretty funny, isn’t it?”
“We need to figure out what this is if we’re releasing Zero Fresh this week!”
“Does anyone have contact with that kid Joyno from Class F? These sentences look like they’d only be decipherable with him here!”
Watching the researchers clutching their heads in front of the tablet, I felt a pang of sympathy. Helping with the tablet research would apparently speed up the release of Zero Cola Fresh.
“The last word is honey.”
“Honey?”
“Did he say honey?”
“Honey… that seems right. It is related to insects…”
The researchers all turned to stare at me. Their eyes clearly said, Who the hell is this guy, suddenly butting in?
I answered lightly.
“I have the Emotion concept, you see.”
“The Emotion concept? Wait, I think I’ve seen you before—you’re—!”
“It’s that student from the newspaper! The one from the ‘No Leftovers’ team!”
“Yes, I am indeed Bread Pitt Ha Namjin.”
“The weirdo Ha Namjin!”
“The weirdo!”
“Yes, I am that Bread Pitt.”
“Ha Namjiiin! When you graduate, come to our department!”
“Come anytime! I’ll give you a pass!”
“Then let’s all go home now!”
“Whoa! First time leaving after only forty-eight hours!”
My first exploration of the Great Labyrinth ended just like that. The researchers and doctors kept grabbing my sleeves and begging me to stay, which was annoying, but overall it was a pretty fun experience.
As expected, the Emotion concept I got from Seo Gaeul is incredibly useful.
Every time something like this happened, my affection for Seo Gaeul only deepened.
“I even got a free pass for the Labyrinth. Nice.”
I was about to leave the Labyrinth when I decided to test whether I could open the closed door with this Seed ring. That was when I spotted a familiar butt around the corner of the corridor. To be precise, a big bread butt.
“Hey, isn’t that Bread Butt?”
I didn’t know what she’d been doing, but Baek Yeoul, who had been crouching in the corner, jumped like a rat caught stealing rice at the sound of my voice.
“W-what?!”
Looking closer, she seemed to have been secretly eating a chocolate pie by herself. Eating something that delicious all alone in hiding. What a sneaky girl.
Sadness and panic? Panic I understand, but sadness?
When I examined Baek Yeoul, she instead studied my complexion and asked,
“Ha-Nam-jjin! What are you doing here?!”
“Me? I came with Jin Ramen Noona because we had business with the Seonam Group. So, how is it? Is exploring the Great Labyrinth worth it?”
“Of course! Obviously! I’m Baek Yeoul of the Baekdang family! I even beat up Jeong Uiseon—hup, that was supposed to be a secret. Anyway! I’m carrying the whole team even inside the Labyrinth! Today I dismantled five traps all by myself!”
She looked extremely confident, which somehow made me feel the opposite—uneasy. Still, the fact that she was bragging meant today’s exploration must have gone well.
Just then, someone shouted from around the corner.
“Hey! Baek Yeoul! What are you dawdling for? Hurry up!”
“Hup! I gotta go! See, things don’t move forward without me. Everyone’s always looking for me, seriously—”
Baek Yeoul laughed awkwardly, scratched the back of her head, then waddled off carrying a ridiculously heavy-looking bag. She tripped over a rock a few times but soon disappeared from sight.
Starting tomorrow, I’d be exploring this Great Labyrinth with that bread butt. Somehow it felt ominous! But it should still be fun!
###
Baek Yeoul stuffed the rest of her chocolate pie into her pocket and waddled along. Even though she was an Awakened, the bag was so heavy that walking was difficult. But the reason her steps grew slower wasn’t just the weight of the bag.
Baek Yeoul’s heart already felt heavy thinking about what she would see once she turned this corner.
“Hey, where the hell were you slacking off? Keep that up and I’ll dock your midterm scores.”
“The newbie’s already slacking on the first day. Who told you to act alone? Are you trying to die? In the Great Labyrinth, if you don’t listen to the team leader, you really will die.”
The moment she turned the corner, the active explorer Jeon Somi and team leader Jang Hyunah started scolding her as if they’d been waiting. They immediately shoved empty lunchboxes at her.
“You clean these up.”
“Making your seniors wait, huh.”
There were three lunchboxes total. One each for explorer Jeon Somi, team leader Jang Hyunah, and Baek Yeoul. But for some reason, they had eaten all of Baek Yeoul’s portion.
Since she hadn’t eaten a single meal from morning until evening, Baek Yeoul felt incredibly wronged and sad.
“My lunch…”
“Ppang-daeng-i, you’re the one who came late, aren’t you?”
“We thought you weren’t hungry.”
The reason Baek Yeoul had been separated from them was because Jeon Somi had ordered her, “Hey, go throw this in the trash can at the entrance.” Yet Jeon Somi was now pretending she had no idea what was going on. Jang Hyunah, her friend, knew everything but was playing dumb too. It was infuriating.
They had been openly ostracizing and bullying Baek Yeoul since morning. Sending her ahead into trap-filled areas, for example.
“Hey, Baek Yeoul. Whenever you’re with us, traps always activate, right? So you go first and trigger all of them!”
Or picking fights using her Bad Luck concept.
“Ugh, why does every fork in the road we take end up as a dead end? Who the hell is so unlucky?”
“She’s seriously such a burden.”
“……”
Baek Yeoul’s heart had calluses. She thought she had gotten used to childish ostracism over the years. But after happily spending time at school with her friends from the ‘No Leftovers’ team, her heart seemed to have grown softer.
That was why seeing the male student Ha Namjin at the Labyrinth entrance had made her so happy. She had briefly considered honestly telling the boy who asked if she was okay, but—
‘Even without friends, I can overcome this on my own.’
Baek Yeoul decided she would endure it. After all, she was an amazing person who had fought against terrifying Class 3 wanted criminals.
Jeon Somi felt great thinking about tormenting Baek Yeoul.
‘Should I lock her in the trap room tomorrow and leave her there crying and begging for forgiveness? Honestly, even that might not be enough to repay the humiliation she gave me last time.’
But in truth, there was something far more important to Jeon Somi right now than Baek Yeoul.
“Hyunah, did you hear a male student is joining our team as support tomorrow?”
“I didn’t get the details. But if it’s a third-year male student coming to our team, there’s only one possibility.”
Jeon Somi thought of the boy she liked. The tall boy with pale skin and big eyes—Wang Jahyeon.
“It must be Jahyeon joining our team, right?”
Jeon Somi had a crush on Wang Jahyeon. It was because he was the youngest son of a chaebol family. His tall stature and pale skin gave him a princely appearance that perfectly matched her taste. He was literally her ideal type.
The fact that such a boy would temporarily join their team—
‘If only you weren’t here, Jang Hyunah.’
Jeon Somi had recently found out that Jang Hyunah had been secretly exchanging DMs with Wang Jahyeon behind her back. It was probably because the soft-hearted Jahyeon couldn’t easily cut off the girls who contacted him.
But tomorrow. If she showed him how close she and Wang Jahyeon were, that fox-like Jang Hyunah would finally realize her place and have no choice but to swallow her resentment.
While Jeon Somi was laughing to herself, Baek Yeoul trembled with anxiety.
‘Not only Jeon Somi and Jang Hyunah, but Wang Jahyeon too? That guy is seriously the worst!’
If only tomorrow would never come—.
That night, each of the girls stayed awake with their own wishes. The next morning—
“Yes, I am indeed Bread Pitt.”