Chapter 126 |
"How do you tell?"
A question Seome had once asked the Hero.
"That...."
"That, what."
"That someone has already become one with the labyrinth."
Perhaps it was less a question than a refusal — the inability to accept her younger sibling's death-that-was-not-death. It was a time when she still couldn't come to terms with his end.
The Hero, who clearly saw through Seome's feelings, said nothing for a long while before answering.
"Fundamentally, it's time. Though the variation between individuals is large."
"What do you mean, large?"
"From being offered?"
"From being offered."
"Then?"
If not time?
"You said the variation between individuals is large."
"I did. Time alone can't give you a definitive answer."
His pitch was always level. It could sound like praise, or like total disinterest.
"There's no definitive criterion or method for distinguishing someone who's been offered to a labyrinth. A labyrinth is a play rendered with that much precision, and it's even difficult to identify an offering that's been inserted partway through."
"Then Seosang could still be alive...."
"From what I saw, that didn't seem to be the case."
He continued his explanation.
"A being that's already been offered is fixed in a single scene and performed accordingly. Even as the surrounding world changes, it doesn't perceive it — it simply repeats the emotions of a single point in time, like an actor."
"But Seosang recognized you, a change."
"That's exactly what makes labyrinths so wretched. A labyrinth as large and deep as the Fox Den excels at improvisation, like a superb theater troupe. It adapts seamlessly even when an outsider intervenes."
"Then what other criteria are there?"
"Emotional flattening."
Because one who has been offered does not feel emotion — they reproduce it.
"There's no depth to the emotion. It responds immediately to stimuli, but nothing accumulates."
"Responds but doesn't accumulate — what does that even mean...."
"The emotional set point is constant. No matter what happens, they always return to a fixed emotional baseline. Your sibling was like that too, as I recall."
Furious one moment, then composed. Sad one moment, then back to the original expression.
"Emotion has no persistence. It doesn't alter the surrounding circumstances, either. There are also times when its responses to others' emotions feel off."
"For example?"
"Getting angry without changing behavior, or crying along with someone but without tears...."
"That's a bit grotesque."
Just as her younger sibling had been.
"I just assumed it was because he'd gone mad."
"Sometimes that's the case too."
"Can't you be more specific?"
"...Let me think...."
Whether he was deliberating or simply couldn't be bothered. In a drawn-out voice, he continued.
"The fact that physical responses are uniform?"
Another hard-to-understand remark.
"...Uniform? How?"
"Body temperature remaining constant regardless of fatigue or ambient temperature. Or breathing rhythm staying identical regardless of sleep or pain."
"That could just be because they're calm."
"That's not an easy thing to do."
"Isn't there anything more conclusive?"
That my sibling is already dead. That it's certain.
"Just, something more...."
Surely there was a reason you didn't save him.
You saved someone as worthless as me, yet you left him and walked out of the Fox Den. Surely someone as cautious and fearful as you had a reason.
"......"
"......"
...After a long pause, he spoke.
"...Being fully offered means being alive yet dead."
A low, calm voice.
"What offering and death have in common is that there's no future left for that person."
"You've told me that before."
"From the labyrinth's perspective, it means they 'cannot write a new story.'"
"That too...."
"What that means is."
He seemed to be looking at something far away.
"The fundamental behavioral patterns are identical."
To a degree that couldn't simply be called 'rational.'
"With emotion and instinct stripped away, following the systemic calculations that allow the labyrinth to operate optimally. External factors may cause minor variations, but the actions never change significantly."
"...For example?"
"Shall I use your sibling?"
He wanted to show her reality.
"They continuously try to help others. They try to protect their sibling, 'Seome.' They don't lose hope, they seek a way out, they speak of a future that will never come."
"Maybe he was just an optimist."
"The one who fell off a cliff and didn't die, who had his throat torn by a beast and bled profusely yet came back?"
"Maybe he just...."
"The one who acts unfazed in situations where death should be certain, as if it never happened?"
"......"
A painful reality.
"Was that really your sibling?"
"......"
"And not some photo album of things your sibling 'would have done'?"
"...That's a strange way to put it...."
Wasn't it, though?
"'Would have done.' 'Records.'"
A future and a past cannot exist in the same place.
"That's funny."
"That's what labyrinths are."
They all work that way.
"One or two traits alone might just be that person's nature. But when multiple conditions cluster together, you need to suspect them. Someday you too will... come to know what an 'offering' looks like."
It was almost a curse.
"You said it's not common."
"After seeing it once or twice, there's something that hits you, sickeningly clear."
"Someone dead yet alive?"
"That's right. You can just tell at a glance."
Narrative closure.
Emotional flattening.
A static body.
Patterned behavior.
All of it — unable to escape their own labyrinth.
"......"
"You'll know when you see it."
What's already dead.
"At that point, nothing means anything anymore."
"Is that why you didn't save Seosang?"
"Because someone fully offered can't be saved even by death."
"That's terribly unfair...."
"So if you ever encounter someone trapped by a labyrinth, you save them."
Instead.
"Take that blade and...."
***
"......"
"......"
Kill them.
"...Seome?"
Save them, even if only that way.
"You look unwell."
"...Yes...."
"Do you need help?"
"No."
Isn't it pitiful?
"The one who needs help is you."
Night had deepened again. Just as promised, Yeon-woo opened the guest room door and stepped in — and Seome put a blade to his throat, slamming him to the floor and pinning him in a single motion.
A hardness like pressing down on the trunk of a withered, dried-out tree. Atop that exhausted, gaunt body, still gripping the blade, Seome spoke.
"Do you really feel nothing?"
"I'm having difficulty understanding what you mean."
"You never talk about the future."
Yeon-woo had always been that way.
"Your actions are the same every time. When a crisis comes, you unconditionally protect others and sacrifice yourself. You repeat the exact same pattern without a shred of deviation."
"I didn't realize helping people required so many reasons."
"You're calm about everything. There are glimpses of anger, fatigue, sorrow — but they're temporary. They reset to baseline immediately. How can you call that emotion?"
"I didn't realize being rational was a capital offense, either."
"Your sentence structure is always perfect, with no emotional margin. You've never misspoken in conversation. I've never detected a waver in your speech."
"To think I'd be scolded for speaking well."
"Listen, I'm. I'm only saying this now, but."
You, who don't so much as flinch with a blade at your throat, like a boulder.
"Do you know... your body temperature never changes...?"
"......"
He fell silent.
Seome smiled, expression crumbling.
"Your heartbeat and breathing intervals are always the same. Like a machine."
Always cold, as though drowned in ice. She didn't know about the rest, but this alone served as proof. Proof that the being before her was by no means a whole human.
"Even when injured, you only show the same visible fatigue. There's no response to pain. You say you're tired, yet there's no evidence of fatigue."
Not a living body, but a reproduced one.
"Everything you have to do, everything you can do — it's all related to this hotel...."
"......"
"...I'm a mage...."
A mage is, ultimately, spiritual energy in human form. That was how she could tell Yeon-woo was a young being, how she could sense the enormity of his power, and above all.
"I can feel that you're connected to this hotel...."
What a miserable thing.
She'd known from the start. Coming up to this hotel, watching the guests receive him with reverence — she'd felt it. That the color of his soul and the soul this hotel, this labyrinth, projected were nearly identical.
Not without differences, but already mixed beyond untangling — she'd known from the moment she realized.
"I'll help you."
...So, to say it once more.
All of this happened because Yeon-woo hadn't explained 'Nightmares.'
Because she'd judged that 'Lee Yeon-woo' was still alive. And because the way he was alive-yet-dead looked too terrible, and she'd layered it over her sibling again.
"I'll... save you...."
***
Meanwhile, Yeon-woo was simply dumbfounded.
"I'll... save you...."
"......"
...It wasn't as if he'd never been threatened for being too capable.
'But someone trying to kill me as a form of rescue — that's a first even for me.'
Yeon-woo swallowed a shallow sigh inwardly.
Being crumpled on someone else's guest room floor in the dead of night, pinned beneath a sixteen-year-old, brought a wave of exhaustion. For a wellness check, this customer complaint was rather aggressive.
[Hello?]
'My back hurts.'
[Hello.]
But, well.
"......"
First things first — this situation needed to be resolved.
"...Killing me to save me."
A parched voice emerged.
"A rather lazy method of salvation, Seome."
"While you're still human. Before you become completely the same."
"I'd believed myself still human, but seeing you, it seems I've been gravely misunderstood. Don't you think?"
"So please, just die."
"I'll pass."
Catching the blade digging into the side of his neck with his bare hand, Yeon-woo breathed a shallow sigh. Blood seeped through the cut in his glove, but he paid it no mind.
"I'm doing my best too."
Whatever she was worried about, he was confident he could remain 'Lee Yeon-woo' to the very end.
"But it seems you're well aware that I don't die easily. And that even if I did, this hotel wouldn't let me go."
"......"
"What a terrible person."
With that meek face, those tear-stained eyes, clinging gaze. Yeon-woo didn't so much as twitch before that silent scream.
"And yet you'd try to kill me."
Knowing full well it was violence that would fundamentally solve nothing, was she swinging her blade just for the comfort it would bring? Yeon-woo asked.
"Is that sword so special? Enough to pull even someone like me, mired in mud, from the pit?"
"...Perhaps...."
"If you wish, go ahead and try. Blood pooling in a Human Guest's room isn't ideal, but I don't want to embarrass the courage you mustered."
"......"
"Just let me ask one thing."
With his remaining hand, Yeon-woo reached up and lightly tapped the young boy's round forehead, as though pushing it back.
"Can you be satisfied with me?"
He knew what was inside this body — a foolish adult.
"The person you wanted to save by killing...."
"......"
"...The person you wanted to keep alive,"
Isn't that right?
"It wasn't me."
A person crumbles in an instant.
"......"
"...Ah...."
The blade trembled.
"Ah, aaah... AAAHH...!"
CRASH—!!
"AAAAAAHH, PLEASE—!!"
Thrashing, screaming.
The dam of suppressed emotion burst, and Seome seized and tore at the clothes of the Yeon-woo she'd pinned down. She'd grabbed his collar, but her fury wasn't aimed at Yeon-woo, and it wasn't even fury.
She screamed as though retching.
"Please, just why... why, WHY can't I do anything! I wanted to help too, I should have been the one to help! Please tell me you're alive, tell me you'll live. Him, and that person, and you too...!!"
Survivor's guilt. Rage at an unjust world. Self-loathing and helplessness.
"Why am I the only one still alive, you miserable bastards! What makes you so proud, what makes you so relieved! Do you have any fucking idea how wretched the ones left behind are!!"
A desperation to save by killing, and the cry of someone who knows no one will be saved.
"It should have been you, not me! Not someone who can't accomplish anything until someone saves them first, not someone as worthless as me—!!"
And love.
"...Every last one of you, so stupidly kind...!"
"......"
"...Making a person unable to live or die...."
The weeping of an adult who could not grow, trapped in a sixteen-year-old body.
"I just... wanted everyone to, together...."
Yeon-woo looked up in silence at the pitiable, foolish figure sobbing like a beast atop him.
He offered no words of comfort, nor was he carelessly shaken. He simply remained in the same position, quietly waiting for another person's wretched emotions to drain to the very bottom.
"...I just wanted everyone to be happy together...."
Watching Seome heave and splutter like a child until exhaustion won, Yeon-woo said, dry as bone.
"......"
"How unfortunate."
He rolled his eyes and met the gaze of Rawi, who wore a complicated expression.
"Very unfortunate indeed."
I told you. She knew from the start that fundamentally, nothing would be resolved.
'The dead don't come back.'
[Yes!]
That was how it was.
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