How to Die in a Company That Turned Into a Labyrinth

We made our way down peacefully enough, at least until we reached Neosoft.

First, I persuaded Yu Mi-rae in the Legal Affairs Office, and we started heading back down with Kim Hee-sook and Hyeon Je-won.

"But do you both believe that Yu-han died and came back to life?"

Yun Geon-min's sentence for theft was too severe, so I had not bothered bringing him along from the beginning.

Rather than persuading him to come up with us, I left him on the twelfth floor, where we had first met.

"Yes! That would explain how Mr. Seon Yu-han knew about all these artifacts……!"

"I wanted to see them too. What a shame."

Yu Mi-rae pressed her face close to the darkened display cases in the Artifact Management Room and muttered sulkily.

Since all the artifacts had already been sent out, Yu Mi-rae, who was visiting this floor for the first time, could pass through without doing anything.

Clunk.

But the Red Thread team floor, where The Executioner's Stage and the Corridor of Unforgettable Memories were located, was different.

"Looks like we can't get through. Because Je-won and I are here."

No matter how much farther down the stairs we went, we kept returning to the sixth floor.

Even Kim Hee-sook and I, who had already passed through this floor, could not move on to the next one.

It seemed to be a sort of joint responsibility.

"Oh, right. So, Ms. Kim? Do you really believe Seon Yu-han?"

"Well, um, it's hard to believe, but……"

Kim Hee-sook glanced at me uneasily, then briefly looked toward the Agent Team 2 office, where the Corridor of Unforgettable Memories was.

"To be honest, you know too much about me……"

"Yeah, that ruins the fun."

Yu Mi-rae gave me a resentful sideways look.

It was because I had told them which contact-type Labyrinth appeared in the Agent Team 1 and 2 offices.

Because knowing took all the fun out of it. She was sulking at me over that.

Honestly, she was no child.

I naturally lowered the corners of my mouth and pointed to the Team 2 office, where the Corridor of Unforgettable Memories was.

"Ms. Yu, let's go in now."

Yu Mi-rae's lips curved upward.

"This is your first time coming this far with me, right?"

"……Yes."

"All right. I'll go easy on you, then."

Yu Mi-rae nodded readily and took a step closer.

"So, Seon Yu-han."

Her gaze turned cold in an instant.

"Want to make a bet?"

"Pardon? Why all of a sudden?"

"If the first room where the phone rings is my room, you win."

I closed my mouth.

So she had noticed after all.

That I was curious about her memories.

"……What do I get if I win?"

"Isn't winning itself enough?"

The gaming addict tilted her head.

"One round only. There won't be another chance anyway. Watching you, I'd figure out this wasn't my first time here."

……I really couldn't beat her.

"All right. Let's do it."

Swish.

I opened the Agent Team 2 office door.

Ring……

An analog telephone rang in one of the four hotel rooms.

"Room 3."

Yu Mi-rae grabbed the doorknob without hesitation and threw the door open.

A gleaming, smooth tile floor and a high, open ceiling.

All sorts of goods arranged in display cases, accessories, cosmetics, clothes, and more.

People moving between the stands.

Signs and event notices in retro fonts.

It was a department store.

A department store from at least twenty years ago.

"Oh my…… How long has it been……"

It was not mine or Kim Hee-sook's room.

That meant it was Yu Mi-rae's or Hyeon Je-won's.

When I looked at Hyeon Je-won, Hyeon Je-won was looking at Yu Mi-rae.

"Ms. Yu Mi-rae……?"

Yu Mi-rae had her eyes closed.

"You won."

She was speaking to me.

"Hurry up and go. You need to answer the phone."

"Um……? Ah, but you should at least tell us where the phone might be……"

At Kim Hee-sook's cautious request, Yu Mi-rae shook her head with her eyes still closed.

"I can't help. It's a memory I don't know."

"Pardon?"

"Memories I know don't appear in the Corridor of Unforgettable Memories. To me, every memory is unforgettable."

As though she knew Kim Hee-sook's baffled reaction without seeing it, Yu Mi-rae continued.

"I remember everything. Everything I've seen, heard, and experienced in my life."

That was that child's misfortune.

"But there are some things even I can't remember. Things my mind erased on its own. This must be one of them."

That was the viciousness of the Labyrinth called the Corridor of Unforgettable Memories.

It deliberately brought back even memories people had completely forgotten as a psychological defense mechanism, forcing them into unforgettable memories.

"Do you know what that means, Ms. Kim?"

I knew.

I knew what kind of memory would appear in Yu Mi-rae's room.

A memory so terrible that even someone afflicted with remembering everything had forgotten it.

……That was what I had wanted to know.

"It means Seon Yu-han is very mean."

Yu Mi-rae said it in a playful, tattling tone, then giggled like a child.

Without getting angry or irritated.

"Go on. I'll stay here. It wouldn't be good for you if I looked too closely at this memory and had an episode."

With that, she smiled faintly behind her closed eyes.

Like an adult kindly overlooking a child's mischief.

"……I'll be back."

I was the only one who followed the ringing.

Hyeon Je-won and Kim Hee-sook did not want to intrude on Yu Mi-rae's privacy.

Kim Hee-sook, especially, looked at me with even greater unease, perhaps because I had already intruded on her privacy on the way up.

Ring……

I pushed through the crowd and hurried down the escalator.

Ring!

When I reached the food hall, the din of the customers and the ringing of the analog telephone grew louder.

As I struggled to follow the thread of the ringing amid the murmuring voices, searching through the crowded food hall for a familiar face.

"You're eating well."

I stopped walking.

……I thought it was Yu Hyun-jae.

I turned at a voice so chillingly similar to Yu Hyun-jae's, and saw a face unpleasantly like his.

A broad-shouldered, handsome man with a genial expression.

Would Yu Hyun-jae look roughly like that if he were older, with his particular cold, sharp air gone and a more easygoing manner added in?

I would have bet everything I owned that this man was the biological father of the Yu siblings.

Then those tiny children sitting in front of him……

"Ah."

I turned my head without realizing it.

Even though I knew they couldn't see me.

For a moment, it felt like a memory I shouldn't be looking at.

After digging through everyone else's memories to my heart's content, only now.

I faced that family again.

They couldn't have been more than seven or eight.

The identical young siblings, dressed neatly and adorably as if they had just bought new clothes, were stuffing their cheeks full and diligently chewing.

"Oh, you."

When Father reached out his hand, the girl flinched and froze for a moment.

"Is it good?"

Father wiped food from the girl's mouth with his hand and let out a small laugh.

After blinking blankly for a moment, the girl smiled and nodded.

"Yeah…… Yes."

The boy beside her smiled along with her.

……They looked happy.

Click.

I immediately reached for the dial telephone in the middle of the table.

"I'd like to check out of Room 003."

「…….」

I couldn't bear to watch that any longer.

"Our father was like a Labyrinth. In the way he was so good at trapping people."

Just as Yu Mi-rae had been unable to bear it enough to erase her happy memories with Father from her mind.

……If only we could hate them and nothing else.

Why did we feel so much for the things that imprisoned us……?

「Thank you for using our hotel. We hope it was an unforgettable memory. Goodbye.」

Bang!

The moment I was thrown out into the hotel corridor, Yu Mi-rae approached me.

"Did you see what you wanted to see?"

The girl was no longer closing her eyes.

"……It was not the memory I wanted to see."

What I wanted to know was why these siblings were trying to kill each other.

I thought that if I knew, I might be able to adjust something, even a little.

These siblings were the greatest obstacles in the way to the electrical room beyond the Sales and Marketing Division.

There was a way to exclude them both, but……

Unless I decided that was best, I wanted to put it off. For now.

"If you're curious, just ask."

"I didn't think you'd tell me."

"Yeah. That's true."

"How do you know what I was going to ask?"

"I know everything."

"Why do you always know everything? How?"

"If you know the road you've traveled, you can know the road ahead."

As Yu Mi-rae stepped outside the exit, she muttered in an indifferent voice, as though speaking to herself.

"That's not a very fun thing……"

I had failed to do that unfun thing.

Honestly, I thought Yu Hyun-jae would be alive.

I knew he had bad luck, but I hadn't known it was this bad.

【Lost In HAPPYLAND】

【CLOSED】

To think he'd died with the front half of his head gone after clearing some goddamn game……

Should I just find a way to make this man come straight up from the parking garage?

But if I personally took care of him and brought him up, Yu Mi-rae would already have finished her sentence and been sold off to the Sales and Marketing Division. It would be too late.

Was my only option to have Chae Jae-ha or Hwang Ju-yeon deliver the diary?

'I can make sure Ms. Yu Mi-rae doesn't find the body. If you want. Within the limits of what I can do.'

I had agreed to hide it if possible.

I just hadn't expected to see it here.

I cautiously looked at Yu Mi-rae.

"……"

She was not someone who needed a face to recognize her sibling.

Yu Mi-rae silently looked down at the man wearing a ring identical to hers.

"M-Ms. Yu Mi-rae……"

"No, um……"

Hyeon Je-won fidgeted uneasily, and Yun Geon-min, whom we had picked up along the way, also shifted awkwardly.

"Oh dear……"

Kim Hee-sook tried to gently turn Yu Mi-rae away.

"Don't touch me."

Yu Mi-rae coldly brushed away that hand and slowly approached Yu Hyun-jae's body.

Crouching before it, she tapped the dead body gently.

Like a young animal that had found its mother's corpse. Like a child who did not understand death.

"……Yu Hyun-jae."

Yu Mi-rae curled herself tightly around herself, laid her head sideways against her sibling's chest, and quietly closed her eyes.

As though trying to hear a heartbeat that could not possibly be there.

"It's been a long time……"

At that moment, Yu Mi-rae's eyelashes slowly grew wet, and clear tears slipped through her closed eyes.

The tears ran over the bridge of her nose and down her cheeks, soaking Yu Hyun-jae's collar.

Everyone held their breath and watched.

Afraid Yu Mi-rae might turn into a homicidal maniac like Yu Hyun-jae and kill me, I took a few steps back and tensed my body.

"Ms. Yu Mi-rae…… Are you all right……?"

Yu Mi-rae, who had been crying silently, wiped away her tears and stood up.

"Yeah. I'm fine."

Just as I thought.

Her eyes were unpleasantly calm.

As though tears were merely a physiological response.

"Yu-han."

Here it came.