Chapter 178

Upon just arriving, the Director had asked the Hanged Man. With a blade leveled at that precious neck.

"Speak plainly."

The old woman did not fear death.

"What do you want, Hyeon Si-gyeong?"

"Many things."

"I'm asking what you're trying to do."

She did not fear ending up in a state worse than death, taxidermied into the monsters' storybook, either. In this hell-like world and its salvation-less cycle, the old woman had come to want for little.

Just one thing, though—she meant to clear from her domain the single thing her narrow, narrow heart could not forgive.

"What can be gained by offering me up?"

"Mr. Lee Yeon-woo wishes to complete this labyrinth's story."

"A game?"

"This is a game-type labyrinth, but it is in its soft-opening period. Unless the administrator tends to each detail by hand, aids the guests, and manipulates time, the guests can obtain neither a 'correct answer' nor an 'exit.'"

"And so?"

The old woman could not help but be drawn in by this impudent creature's words.

"I asked what can be gained."

"A completed game can be gained."

"Is that the reason all those people were gathered here?"

"I did not gather them."

The Hanged Man said so.

"Fate did that."

"Then what did you do?"

"I intervened in fate."

Saying that even had he not intervened, the story would have flowed the same way.

"Only, had I not, the time required would have grown longer. Very much so."

"What kind of game is this game?"

The Director asked the opinion of the Hanged Man—this microcosm in human form. The cosmos answered.

"It is cruel, and tender."

"…."

"And human."

At those words, the Director couldn't hold back a hollow laugh.

"And you'd offer up people for this human labyrinth?"

"No one is offered up."

The Hanged Man flatly denied it.

"No one will be allowed to be harmed."

"By whom."

"By the person called Lee Yeon-woo."

"Cursed things, the lot of them."

The old woman simply wished that more people would live. She wished that her nightmare called the Foundation would not remain in reality, and at the very least, that the dreadful tragedy would not repeat.

But if so, was this the right thing to do?

"So what you're saying is, you want to grab an old woman in her twilight and roll around in the mud together. Right now."

It was not the right thing.

"Is that your decision?"

"The Clock, the Devil, and the people—all of them wish for it."

"Isn't it cruel? They say it's always been such a world, but there are times I find it hard to bear."

"More people will make it out alive."

The Hanged Man had eyes that contemplated the world from a distance.

"The Foundation will be reduced to a nightmare and lose its place in reality. The endlessly repeating tragedy you have witnessed will have its cycle severed by the hand of a single person."

"Then is this right?"

"There is nothing right anywhere in it."

"Then you—"

Hyeon Si-gyeong, why on earth do you—

"What were you thinking, getting mixed up in this?"

"The cosmos has been twisted."

He answered.

"And so I wanted to find an answer."

"…."

At the baffling answer, the Director could ask nothing more.

"…Fine. Let's do it."

She merely said, withdrawing the blade.

"Let's carve this old woman's name into that game you speak of, then."

"A name is not necessary."

"Then do you want a story, or a body?"

"Neither is necessary."

Just one thing,

"Lend me your wisdom."

So that this young Dokkaebi might watch and learn.

"So that it may understand humanity and the world."

"…."

"This labyrinth is too vast and too deep to be sustained by that one alone."

"…."

"Many people were needed."

The Director was silent for a long while, then at last gave her pledge.

She consented to the offering.

* * *

'I'm not quite sure how that's even possible, but….'

After the conversation had more or less wrapped up, the Director studied the faces of those gathered in the center of the large guest room, talking among themselves. There were ordinary people and there were Artists.

If they had anything in common, it was that their abilities were exquisitely apt.

'It's true that having them all together is useful for survival in this sort of labyrinth.'

There were plenty of big names among the bastards, too. The Hanged Man, Master Nakdo, that Actor Cha Do-hyeon bastard—none of them came up short in renown anywhere they went. Their stats were that good.

"…."

"Do you require a conversation?"

"No."

At Hyeon Si-gyeong's question, the Director shook her head.

"I've already decided, so it's settled."

They'd manage well enough on their own.

"Only, if this matter ends well, I'll have to pass word to the Sensitivity Bureau."

"Will you lower the grade?"

"I'll have to give it a name, too—you can't very well call a labyrinth by its plain self. But as for that young Dokkaebi…."

She wasn't sure. There had never before been a case of a Traditional Dokkaebi being offered to a labyrinth. That is, a case of a once-human Dokkaebi being only half-offered.

"I'd like to have a talk with it."

"A chance can be arranged later."

"It'd be hard right now. And hard for some time to come. Imagine the uproar."

She hoped headquarters wouldn't move rashly.

"It's a center that holds many monsters together all at once. If it's truly the case that the Devil and that fellow Lee Yeon-woo are fused together inside the 'General Manager,' then at the very least… some manner of handling protocol has to be drawn up."

A matter of how it ought to be dealt with.

"Once that 'game' you spoke of is complete, you bastard, the Sensitivity Bureau bastards will be coming and going for a while."

"They will need to grasp the rules."

"They'll need information, won't they."

Seasoned officials—any bastards with their wits about them—would fight tooth and nail to block a subjugation campaign. That is, if they understood exactly how this labyrinth ran.

"The trouble is, I still can't tell what its relationship with the 'Fox Den' is…."

The Fox Den was a labyrinth that made people lose their way and trapped them in its belly. Hotel One was a Dokkaebi capable even of sending invitations to summon guests.

'And those civilians earlier said they'd lost their way and ended up entering this place.'

Lee Seon-hae and Hong Gyeong-yeon had ended up here when their navigation broke down. As for that Contentment-in-Poverty bastard, the Fox Den had made him circle round and round this area for a while before finally, when the time came, showing him the way.

Dan-cheong herself had come in through the byway Hyeon Si-gyeong had left open, so she was likely a special case.

'The Fox Den, which had devoured people indiscriminately, suddenly cut off even the village's offerings this past summer and entered a dormant period. If this labyrinth truly clamped the fox's mouth shut, then that's….'

A kind of symbiosis?

As the Director thought this, Hyeon Si-gyeong's voice reached her ears.

"It is closer to this: before the newborn labyrinth's sheer weight class, that old guardian of Gapyeong has had its spirit crushed and lies flat on its belly."

"Do I not get any such thing as privacy?"

"……?"

"The genuine puzzlement makes the back of my neck sting all the more."

In any case,

"That sounds like the same thing to me. Whether this infant labyrinth meant to or not, I can't say, but it's playing the role of a natural fortress and a gatekeeper guarding this place, isn't it."

It amounted to a vast rampart and security gate that hid the place from outside threats and filtered the guests. To the Director's words, Hyeon Si-gyeong calmly objected.

"I think it would be difficult to call it symbiosis when it has been seized by the collar and reduced to a front-yard landscaping fixture cum guard dog in charge of controlling outside access."

"For a weight class like that, isn't it cutting the thing a lot of slack, from the infant labyrinth's point of view?"

Fundamentally, labyrinths had a habit of devouring concepts smaller than themselves. For instance, if there were a labyrinth called "The Little Mermaid" and a labyrinth called "A Single Mermaid," the latter would easily be devoured by the former and become one.

Which made this labyrinth called "Hotel One" all the more absurd. Multiple Dokkaebi had gathered, yet they didn't devour one another, and instead lounged about enjoying the hotel's services as though they had truly become human beings.

Whether it was part of that, she couldn't say, but—

"At this level it could easily have devoured the 'Fox Den' long ago, yet no matter how I look at it, the thing hasn't been devoured."

"I suspect the answer lies in the two labyrinths' shared root."

"Those Foundation bastards?"

The Director rolled her eyes.

"I suppose that could be it."

The Fox Den was one of the labyrinths created through the Foundation's machinations—the Foundation having needed a hideaway where it could carry out its experiments away from the public eye. Perhaps it had been their aim from the very start.

"To turn the Fox Den's traits—making people lose their way and blocking outside access—to their own advantage, they deliberately built their main labyrinth at its very heart… if it's something along those lines."

"Because both derive from the misdeeds of a group with the same root, it is judged that this young labyrinth may have found it easier to interfere with and suppress the Fox Den's system."

"Only judged? You didn't actually see it?"

"It does not show me."

"Whew, it's quite the finicky one."

If she had her way, she'd truly have liked to nip it in the bud while it was still an infant.

'But no matter how I look at it, it's not a labyrinth that warrants that.'

Whether it should even be called a "labyrinth" to begin with, she couldn't get a sense of.

"…."

The Director kneaded her stiff neck.

"…Then shall we carry on with the rest tomorrow?"

"Yes. Those people need rest."

"Staying this long in a labyrinth can't be good for them."

"Thanks to the General Manager's consideration, there should be no major problems."

"So there are minor problems, then?"

Though even that much was something of a miracle.

"Fine, let's do that."

So long as they could move forward, whatever it took.

* * *

A good while later, Kwon Do-heon, left alone in the room with the owl, blinked.

"…."

"…."

Hesitating, Kwon Do-heon scratched the scar at the corner of his mouth and asked.

"…Sunbae-nim?"

"Hoot."

"Fuck, this is actually real."

"Hoo?"

"No, I've got no complaints, but…."

It suddenly struck him to wonder how he was even understanding these hoots, but Kwon Do-heon gave up thinking too deeply about it. Ever since he'd woken up here, everything had been a mess, and yet hadn't it all somehow managed to work out?

He was simply curious.

"Were we really close?"

"Yeah."

"Huh?"

The owl hooted.

"Hoot."

"What—what is this?"

Kwon Do-heon was dumbfounded.

"So now you won't even bother pretending to be an owl, is that it?"

"Sigh."

"So that really was you sighing?"

"Sigh— hoo."

"And now you're going to try passing it off as a hoot?"

Kwon Do-heon's face, as he interrogated the owl while clutching its fluffy body, soon stiffened. The texture of the downy feathers felt strangely unfamiliar all over again.

The moment he'd first met this owl surfaced in Kwon Do-heon's mind.

"…."

He gently set the owl down on the bed and tucked the blanket over it.

"…."

"Hoot."

Lying down beside it, he closed his eyes, holding the small mound in his arms.

"Sunbae-nim."

"Yeah."

"Sunbae-nim."

"What."

"…."

Kwon Do-heon asked.

"What on earth were you hoping for, doing all that?"

"You have to live."

"Then what about you and the others?"

"Us too."

Seome, as ever, spoke in a soft, measured voice.

"We'll live."

In our own way.

"So no matter what you choose, we won't resent you."

"Quite the admirable folks, aren't you."

"Because there's only one thing we want from you."

"For me to make it out alive?"

"You know it well."

From within the blanket, he felt a small hand patting his back.

"You're doing well."

"I know."

"Do as you wish; we'll help you."

"I said I know."

I know that too.

"…So, I'll handle it myself."

To this "sunbae" whose face he didn't know, Kwon Do-heon said so.

* * *

At them.

"…."

A pure-white crow, hanging upside down from the windowsill, stared.

Its eyes were very,

red.

"■■…."

A cry rang through the darkness.

* * *

"I don't want to leave."

"Oh."

At Kwon Do-heon's words, the General Manager smiled.

"I understand you have gathered all the items I requested—will you be extending your stay?"

"Extending my stay…. Yes, well—I hear there's that party or whatever happening here, too."

"As you say, in celebration of the Grand Banquet Hall's opening, our hotel's head chef is gladly making preparations."

"Can we see it, too?"

Kwon Do-heon hesitated, then added.

"And this… staff member, can you keep this one assigned to me as well?"

"You mean a butler. Yes—that is a service proper guests may request."

The General Manager's gaze landed on the owl staff member.

"I shall entrust your dedicated care during your extended stay, Mr. Kwon Do-heon, to Seome."

At the name Seome, the owl blinked.

"…."

"Now then, would you show me the items?"

"Um, here…."

Kwon Do-heon took four items out of his bag.

A silver comb.

A hand mirror.

A pendant.

"Did you find the last item as well?"

"I found it, but—"

And then….

"…this,"

It was a cotton glove on which crimson poppies had bloomed like veins.

"It's yours, isn't it."

"Haha."

The General Manager laughed a little louder.

"You've caught me."

The white cotton glove on the hand covering his mouth matched the final "memento."

* * *

It was, in fact, a lie.

[Lie!]

That isn't my glove.

There were many people in this world who wore white cotton gloves, you see.

For example—The Devil?