Chapter 232

The desk in the silent Operator's Quarters.

"Now."

A pale, ungloved hand stroked gently down the back of the bloody water.

"It is all right to fail."

"……."

"For all of you, death does not mean agony and ruin; it means you may return to me whenever you wish. You can rest in here and be born anew when you want to, and see the world again."

It was a timbre plainer than a lullaby and lighter than a funeral song.

"So do not fear failure. Until you find your names, and beyond that too, if you wish it. Within the line that does not harm you… I will be with you."

The monster of Room 14 liked the waves that voice gave off.

"They say all learning begins in imitation. I would not call myself a fine teacher, but I too am someone who learned by groping his way through people and the world one at a time. There will surely be something in me worth taking."

It liked that hand as well.

"If you are weary, come back here again."

"……."

"I shall swallow you down."

Since no sky greater than that existed in this world, it called this person 'the sun.'

***

When day broke, the table was gone.

"…How many hours was this night, then…?"

"About three by the feel of it, Boss."

"Genuinely out of its mind, this mountain…."

The bowls that had been steaming, the four sets of spoons and chopsticks polished to a shine, and the thing that had bowed at the waist all night in welcome. The clearing was simply clean, without so much as a mark of pressed grass.

As though nobody had cleared it away, as though there had been nothing there from the start.

'It's like we hallucinated the whole thing.'

Though there was no way a thing three of them saw together could be a hallucination.

The head of yellow hair they called Boss shouldered his backpack. As he peeled the talismans off the rock, one of the genuine ones crumbled like a bone-dry fallen leaf.

"……."

How many words had he spoken all night?

'I'd better not talk for a while.'

Putting what talismans remained into his inside pocket, the Boss held up fingers to the boys. 'Take point.' 'Halt.' 'Get down.' These too had a direction and a purpose, so they were dangerous, but at least they were better than speech.

The boys checked them over again and nodded.

'We only ever used these on patrol.'

When they were jumping debtors, and when they were splitting two alleys between them. Mages being sensitive to wavelengths by nature, the boys under the Boss had learned a few hand signals like these.

"……."

He had not taught them for use in a place like this.

"……."

"……."

At the Boss's gesture, the two boys moved off along the signals without even nodding. In the Fox Den you had to keep 'conversation' to a minimum to stay out of the Fox Den's eye.

So they walked a long while without speaking.

'I used to think the look of it was decent enough. The further in we go the more revolting it feels.'

The mountain, where neither bird nor insect cried, was nothing but quiet.

'Is it because we're in a Labyrinth's belly?'

They say the Fox Den has always been that kind of Labyrinth. Every sound made on this steep mountain was a sound the Fox Den made, and the mountain opened its mouth only when it needed to.

So the Boss walked, waiting for the sound of water to come to him.

'If you hear a stream, go the other way….'

The cry the Fox Den made to lure people out was precisely the sound of water. Hear water, and you go the opposite way to live. Down on the floor of these Gapyeong Gaps, it was an old story even the brats knew.

But.

"……."

He walked an hour and no water sounded.

'Fuck.'

His face crumpled up hard. He was trying his best not to make an expression, and could not help it.

'It's been like this the whole time we've been in the Fox Den.'

A thing like this had to happen once or twice, not more, if it wasn't going to fray your nerves.

The information he had got by digging his elbow into the Pathfinders' ribs was of no use whatsoever. To say the Pathfinders had joined hands to make fools of them ran up against the fact that there was such a thing as common knowledge in the Gapyeong Gaps.

'If the world isn't feeding us a line, that means the Fox Den's rules have changed recently.'

Did not luring mean it no longer had any need to lure?

"……."

Rubbing hard with his hand at the coolness that swept past his throat to shake it off, the Boss moved on. He walked two hours more and still, stubbornly, no water sounded.

It was around the third hour of walking.

"Good morning."

They came face to face with a woman hanging out laundry.

On a slope with no stream, and with no washing line in sight either. Yet the middle-aged woman spread a quilt out against that empty air as though a line were there. Beat it and take it in, take it in and hang it out.

There was not even a quilt in her hands.

"……."

"Good morning."

That he had thought of it as 'a woman hanging out laundry' was itself the part that made his skin crawl.

'We move.'

'Fuck, Boss, how do you look at that and think about moving?'

'Don't give me that shit, you little bastard. We move.'

At the Boss's gesture, the second, near tears, wedged himself between the youngest and the Boss and moved off. It was the moment the three of them passed in front of it.

The voice cut off dead.

"……."

"……."

The woman's hand stopped in midair. Holding an invisible quilt, only her head turned slowly. With the same expression she had worn hanging the laundry, empty pupils moved along the line the three of them walked. Without speech, without the sound of breath.

'…Wow, holy fuck….'

The Boss's spine stood on end and his face went sick of its own accord.

The youngest, without meaning to, pointed a finger that way. The second, beside him, snatched his wrist and pulled it down. He swore at the youngest without sound, but the youngest was staring blankly at the woman.

"…Boss, that's our neighborhood…."

"Shut it."

"……."

It was the face of a person who could not possibly be here.

'It's just a face we know. That's all.'

The Boss looked back at his boy.

If there was one representative thing you must not do on this mountain, in the Fox Den, it was pointing. That was a 'direction,' flat out, and it made you the Fox Den's food. But….

"……."

The Fox Den did not react.

'It's quiet.'

Even the woman.

It simply stayed where it had stopped, gazing steadily at the three of their faces instead of at the youngest's finger. Once again the Boss felt something off in the sight of it.

'The Fox Den has changed.'

And Labyrinths do not change without a reason.

The old man they met at the fourth hour after that courteously showed them to an earthen pit that looked as though one person would fit into it exactly. The well-tamped ground made it seem the grave had genuinely learned that it was a resting place for humans.

At the fifth hour they met the woman from before again.

"……."

"……."

Fuck!

'You piece of shit!'

He felt like tearing his hair out, but not even knowing how that would be taken by the Fox Den's eye, the Boss could not bring himself to do it. Yet walk in the exact opposite direction and they still ended up back in the same place.

"Boss…."

"I said shut it."

"Are we going to die?"

"Ah, fuck, enough."

The boys were nearly past caring. If they were going to be Offered anyway, they looked as though they wanted at least to talk in comfort.

"Just hold on a bit."

The Boss counted the talismans he had left.

'About two genuine ones….'

This could not be called 'losing the way.' Lose it and you wander, wander and somewhere else turns up — that is the way of the world. But this mountain kept setting the three of them down in the same spot.

As though to say that spot was rightly theirs.

'So what the hell is that spot?'

Not knowing gnawed at his nerves.

There was something he had heard a few days back. It was the story of a Pathfinder famous for handling work for the Sensitivity Bureau's investigators. The road those uniformed bastards walked down was that flat and that firm, they said.

'On the same mountain we get something different?'

That the Sensitivity Bureau had better equipment did not explain it on its own.

"Boss."

"Talk and you get Offered. Is that so hard to understand?"

"But still…."

"Bear it."

He had to.

"Until we find a way out."

And so, around the time the sun had climbed high — noon, probably — they witnessed a strange scene.

'A whole slope of it is covered in something.'

Dingy shapes that were nothing like sunflowers lay prostrate, all facing the same way. One had no hands, another's head was bent backward, and the beat of their moving and speaking did not line up.

But he could tell what they were doing.

They were bowing.

"Fox God."

"Fox God, one who lost the way has returned to the god."

"We live in your belly, so grant us the Grace of the Righteous Path."

"Grant us the Grace of the Righteous Path."

The Boss stopped, pushing his boys back behind him.

"……."

One who lost the way, they said.

'Aren't there exactly three such bastards right here?'

It was ominous.

"One who lost the way has returned."

"Has returned."

"Has returned."

It broke off at that very passage, of all places, and began again at that very passage.

"…What in the mad…."

"That's the thing, isn't it?"

"I understood, so shut your mouth, you little bastard."

What the youngest had meant to say was plain.

'They said some of the cult villages the Fox Den farms use prayers like that.'

The Boss caught the second by the scruff as he started to sink down and stood him back up.

"Stand, idiot."

"Y-yes. Yep. Yep."

The Boss followed with his eyes the direction the Fox Den's wraiths were bowing.

'Further down….'

The wraiths went on praying and praying.

'So what they got for praying is the state they're in, then.'

Jabbering with their necks bent, taking in and hanging out a quilt that was not there, digging a pit and telling you a place to sleep had been made ready.

What they got for praying was this sort of thing.

"……."

The fragrant table of last night came suddenly to mind. Three bowls, four sets of spoons and chopsticks.

'We can't go down there.'

The Boss raised a finger. The hand signal that meant 'take point.' Recognizing it, the boys turned their backs and began climbing the slope opposite the direction of the bowing.

Behind them the prayer went on ringing. It was like empty bone resonating.

***

"Do you have a moment?"

"If the General Manager calls, then any time at all."

"Not quite any time, if you please."

Mornings in the dining room were busy by nature.

"You have a great deal of work, do you not — putting this whole hotel's recipes in order and preparing the food."

Some twenty-odd bodies passed back and forth between the narrow counters, and not one of them collided. There was the sound of knives knocking on cutting boards but no sound of footsteps, and the things standing before the fires cast no shadows.

The foodstuffs approved yesterday had come in just at dawn.

"I have adjusted the code, so the buffet side should open up this afternoon as well. What has piled up before it has to be consumed before it moves on to the next, you see."

"True, the buffet has been used far more often than the dining room all this while. I understand. Until then I shall proceed by opening the storeroom by hand."

The old vampire gestured once from the end of the counter.

"There is no shortage of hands, so you need not concern yourself."

At his gesture two disciples turned soundlessly and vanished toward the storeroom. Lee Yeon-woo watched it with a curiously uneasy look on his face.

"Even an army would not be squared away to this degree."

"It had better be better than that, surely."

"I do agree that a kitchen's culture has to run rather strictly."

"You will give 'because people get hurt' as your reason. I know."

"Is there another reason, if not that?"

"For a vampire, serving one's superior perfectly is what proves his honor."

"Thank you for information I truly did not wish to have and which may nonetheless prove useful."

"It is my pleasure, master."

"I believe I told you not to, did I not?"

But it seemed a master-and-servant relation was the ground state for vampires.

"……."

Lee Yeon-woo pressed hard at the bridge of his nose and opened his mouth.

"I came to see whether I might hear an answer on the matter I asked of you last time."

"Aha."

The old vampire wiped his hands on his apron, came out to the dining table, and spread a folded sheet of paper on the counter. Six points in all were marked on a contour map of the Gapyeong area.

"Information my disciples swept up."

"Would you tell them they have done well?"

"There will be some who wet their pillowcases with tears tonight."

"Do not tease them."

"I regret that it sounded like teasing."

The vampire drew out a dining chair and seated Lee Yeon-woo.

"Within the area my disciples found at once, it seems only about one team was discovered. What is marked is not the number in the group but the last area where a trace was found."

He tapped a point with his fingertip.

"Places where someone passed the night without lighting a fire, where a mark of pressed grass or a scrap of paper was left…."

"And yet there was nobody actually in those spots?"

"It will be an artifact. A talisman, that is to say."

"And that deceived even the noses of your disciples?"

"It seems to be an article made for the Fox Den specifically. They were a little confused, which is not like those children."

Presently he drew a long, sly smile.

"Not that they are wholly in the dark, of course."

"Meaning?"

"They are keeping their eyes quietly on them and following still. They are disciples I raised myself; they are not children to be taken in by a Labyrinth that has no self yet, or by a talisman aimed at one."

The vampire tapped one place. It was not far from the traces.

"Roughly about here, they say those outsiders are wandering lost."

"It seems the Fox Den is playing with them."

"Only, if it deceived even our children's noses for a moment, it must be an article of considerable price."

"Who is 'our children'? Restrain yourself."

"It is not certain why people who own such a thing would be spending their nights in the Fox Den."

"Hm…."

Lee Yeon-woo stroked his chin.

"Either they stole it, or they are being chased."

"Or both."

"You seem to think as I do."

Lee Yeon-woo nodded and asked.

"Contact?"

"Not laid a finger on them, exactly as you said. Looked, counted, and came straight back."

"Thank you."

"It was a command, was it not?"

"I believe I asked you to handle it as a favor."

"Not a chance."

The old vampire laughed, all smiles.

"Only, this place is not your domain."

"Because a thing that has lain down and a thing that has become property are plainly different."

The moment you lay a hand on the mountain's inside it becomes not management but trespass, and a thing trespassed upon invariably learns something. What that mountain was in the middle of learning now, Lee Yeon-woo did not know.

"I only hope it does not learn what I have no wish to teach it."

So laying a hand as far as the inside was, a little, awkward.

"……."

Strictly speaking, what Lee Yeon-woo was thinking was an extremely human-centered line of thought.

'That I try to save them for no reason other than that they are people.'

Humans forbade laying hands lightly on an ecosystem for the reason that 'it is nature's providence.' And Lee Yeon-woo regarded Labyrinths, too, as part of nature. So if Lee Yeon-woo laid a hand on the Fox Den now.

'The Fox Den would find it hard to accept.'

Just as Coco had.

"Yes? Yes."

"Thank you for giving me a definite answer."

"Hehe."

The vampire, having guessed Lee Yeon-woo's inner mind from the two of them talking, said.

"You could simply take it."

"How far do you mean to corrupt me?"

"It is a mountain that has already lain down. Who would say anything if you laid a hand on it?"

"The Fox Den would say something."

"Once it has lain down, it does not open its mouth even though it has one."

"Then I would say something."

"So you would."

The Executive Chef, appointed here not long ago at all, did not look in the least put out. If anything his face was satisfied, and it was that reaction that caught at Lee Yeon-woo instead.

'He had the refusal itself figured into the sum.'

That vampire knew it turned out far sturdier that way than by pushing you into it. Lee Yeon-woo knew the calculation and did not particularly correct it.

There was other, more urgent business just now.

"Coco."

"Hello?"

"Whose is the Fox Den's sky?"

Within the shade of the table a round pair of eyes blinked.

"Not applicable!"

"It would be, would it not?"

Lee Yeon-woo narrowed his eyes into a curve.

A den, however wide it grows, is in the end a word that points inward. And Lee Yeon-woo had already once climbed up into that mountain's sky and pressed down on what lay below.

'I had already laid a hand on it, and I nearly shifted the whole responsibility for that onto the Fox Den. Let us reflect.'

Where there is a precedent, it becomes a rule.

"Oh."

"Say it in words."

"It is nothing. Do go on."

"I convey to you that my feelings are considerably soured."

It was always so when that human smiled.

'Perhaps because he knows he is smiling with my emotion.'

That he had taken it away and was putting it to good use was gratifying from the original owner's side, and at the same time there was no shaking the thought that he was a thief's son after all. The fellow had not one scrap of conscience in him.

But soon his thoughts came back to the main point.

'If it has come to this….'

Lee Yeon-woo recalled what he himself had used in the sky that day.

"……."

He folded the map up neatly.

"I had better go up."

"Will you take a meal around noon?"

"Yes, if you would."

"I shall be waiting."

Behind his retreating back, the sound of knives knocking on cutting boards resumed its regular rhythm.

***

The sunlight on the roof was good.

When he opened the door, the flowers in the beds all turned their heads at once. Toward where Lee Yeon-woo stood, which was neither sun nor moon. Every time Lee Yeon-woo moved, the flowers craned their necks that much further.

"Oh my."

Between the flower beds stood the 'Lover of Dawn.'

"Milady."

"Greta."

Lee Yeon-woo took her hand and kissed it lightly.

"Won't you talk with me?"

His eyes curved thin as a fox's.

"I need help."

"The lady never smiled that way."

"Which is what I mean when I say I am not the lady."

"I know."

The woman pulled Lee Yeon-woo into an embrace.

"But I keep wanting to go on calling you that."

"It was a role made for your sake, so that will be why."

"How long can I hold on to it?"

"Until you can stand on your own."

Lee Yeon-woo answered without setting the woman away from him. This person was starved for love, and yet forgot easily. Let go of her hand, and she would forget the very fact that a hand had ever held her.

That seems to be what a Dokkaebi is. A being that goes on staying inside the same hour, however like a person it looks.

"Greta."

"Yes."

"What is my name?"

"General Manager…?"

"That is not bad either."

"Lee Yeon-woo."

"That is right."

He stroked the crestfallen woman's back.

"Well done."

"…Heh heh…."

Presently the face that smiled that way looked so young that she was just like a child.