Chapter 18: “Welcome to a place like this.”

I have to kill her…… I have to kill her, right? This is wrong. She has to be killed. Kill, kill her? If I don’t kill her…… should I try killing her? Would it be okay not to kill her? Kill her? This is wrong. I have to kill her…….

Yes.

Let’s kill her.

This.

“Seon Yuhan……? What’s wrong with you?”

What I’m seeing right now.

“Don’t worry.”

Kim Gilyeong.

“This will be over soon.”

Is not human.

***

[“Munrim Elementary students who will write a new story―!”]

[“You came from Sangnim too, right?”]

The name of the elementary school could be overlooked by assuming she had simply transferred schools.

[Kim Gilyeong was born on September 16 at 7:32 p.m.]

[Kim Gilyeong absentmindedly gazed outside the window. Completely white snow fell like flower petals. As if celebrating her birthday.]

But how could it snow in September?

[“It looks like only you and I came from the same elementary school in our class. Let’s eat together later!”

Dark skin, a smile so wide you could see her throat, steps always full of energy. Hong Donghui became Kim Gilyeong’s favorite friend.]

[“What was the name of your best elementary school friend?”

Kim Gilyeong recalled a memory as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. A friend with skin as pale as someone who had never seen sunlight, with charming dimples when she smiled. Hong Donghui.]

The name of a friend she met in middle school appeared as the name of her best elementary school friend.

And on top of that, her appearance was completely different.

[(“Omitted”) That’s why, after reading this book, I would open the closet door a little every night.”

《Alice in Wonderland》 became Kim Gilyeong’s favorite book.]

[Stopping in front of an empty space on the bookshelf, Kim Gilyeong placed a novel by C. S. Lewis there. Secretly reading the book she had loved most in childhood, even though it no longer had demand among users of the corporate library, was a privilege exclusive to the librarian.]

And that damned “Alice in Wonderland.”

After all, it really was strange.

It wasn’t that, as a child, she confused “Alice in Wonderland” with “The Chronicles of Narnia.”

Nor that she later changed her favorite book.

There were more contradictory details scattered everywhere.

And they were contradictions so small and placed so subtly that you would overlook them if you weren’t reading carefully.

“While reading, I wondered something. Whether Kim Gilyeong’s favorite childhood book was 《Alice in Wonderland》 or 《The Chronicles of Narnia》―”

“..Seon Yuhan, I think that counts as a spoiler. I can’t understand what you’re saying, but we probably shouldn’t talk about that part.”

All those contradictions were proof that the librarian was a monster, so naturally the inconsistent parts were censored as spoilers.

“Who exactly is the crazy person dragging around such an ugly doll that nobody would even accept for free and bringing it into the daycare?”

At some point, the goose teacher from the daycare had said that while looking at Kim Gilyeong’s corpse.

“Do you really think that would work? Especially with such a defective product?”

From the perspective of those living toy monsters, Kim Gilyeong was probably the real defective doll someone who looked normal on the outside but was stuffed on the inside with all kinds of badly assembled things.

“Ah, right. The Dalumul-ri labyrinth. There weren’t any survivors there either, so nobody ever found out what happened. Could there have been something like body snatchers there too……? Like those monsters at Seonghwa High pretending to be students in order to attack teachers…….”

Just as Choi Jaeha said, similar monsters appear in the two movies shown in the auditorium.

Monsters that take human form, deceive people, and keep them trapped inside the labyrinth.

And one of those monsters was here.

Right in front of me.

The instant I realized that.

I felt a humiliation as if someone had ripped every vein from my body, rolled them into threads, woven a thick fabric on a loom, stuffed that fabric with my organs like cotton, and then, with the leftover red threads threaded through a needle, sewn stitch after stitch a doll identical to someone I will never see again, proudly showing it to me.

I wanted to die.

If only I could.

But I couldn’t die.

Then I had to kill.

***

“It took longer than I expected.”

That was the thought I had right before collapsing.

“Ugh…….”

The moment I raised my body, the world began spinning violently.

The back of my neck and both sides of my forehead burned as if I had been scorched.

“Seon Yuhan looks toward the floor.”

What?

Even in the middle of my confusion, my body faithfully obeyed the library’s instructions.

“There was a corpse there.”

The moment I saw the marks clearly engraved on the librarian’s neck, the memories came flooding back all at once, like a delayed flood.

What I had done.

“Seon Yuhan observed the librarian’s corpse, lying there staring at the ceiling.”

“Ugh, guhk…….”

I barely suppressed the nausea rising into my throat and took a deep breath.

When the sensations sleeping deep within my consciousness awoke and rose to the surface, my entire body started trembling again.

I couldn’t bear to look directly at “that,” so I tightly shut my eyes.

A desecration and mockery of everything alive.

Even now, the desire to tear it apart and burn it alive throbbed beneath my skin.

I hate them.

Those things that wear human skin without being human.

They terrify me.

An unbearable fear.

More than the guilt of having shown a child something he should never have seen, that disgusting terror dominated me.

“Turning his gaze away with effort, Seon Yuhan discovered four books scattered on the floor and an abandoned child’s backpack.”

It seems Hwang Juyeon had been too bewildered to stop me immediately.

And instead of stopping me, she chose to buy even a little time to escape with the child.

Honestly, I couldn’t blame her either.

If a man you just met suddenly goes insane and kills a woman you also just met…

And on top of that, while trapped inside an invasive labyrinth.

The logical thing is to hit that man in the head and run away.

Although it probably would have been smarter to make sure to kill me to avoid trouble later……

But from my perspective, the fact that she didn’t was fortunate.

I picked up the book I had dropped.

[Kim Gilyeong is]

A badly written story.

Like a collage made by tearing apart and pasting together fragments from several people’s lives.

“Seon Yuhan finally understood. That the librarian was the true monster of this labyrinth. That he could not truly escape the library without killing the librarian. That he could not solve the labyrinth without killing the monster. That the story could not end unless someone died.”

Though of course, I was already used to it because I had read it several times thanks to the loop…….

I remembered the round when I found Kim Gilyeong’s corpse for the first time.

The wounds reflected confusion and hesitation on the part of the killer.

If there wasn’t a third person I didn’t know about, then the only one capable of killing the librarian was still Hwang Juyeon.

That meant Hwang Juyeon, even without memories of regressions, had noticed the contradictions in the librarian’s story and acted after a single reading club.

Hm.

I definitely must never make her my enemy.

When I used my phone screen as an improvised mirror, I saw that my forehead had split open.

I hadn’t passed out because of the blow to the back of my head, but because after taking the hit I fell forward and smashed my forehead hard.

“Huh?”

The moment the black screen I was using as a mirror lit up, I almost broke the rule forbidding saying “huh.”

[4:14]

Something felt strange, so I unlocked the phone and checked again.

The time was still the same.

[4:14 | SOS | 86%]

The clock hanging on the library wall showed exactly the same thing.

4:14?

Could the concussion have been worse than I thought?

The reading club had started exactly at 4:00.

Had only fourteen minutes passed?

And if I subtracted the minutes I had been unconscious…….

Ten minutes.

The reading club had ended in barely ten minutes.

Even though I ruined it halfway through, we had read an enormous amount.

At least thirty minutes should have passed.

……Now that I think about it, ever since the reading club started, I never once tried to check the time.

The thought never even crossed my mind.

In a situation where I should have been desperate to escape the labyrinth as quickly as possible…

I quietly sat there reading books.

I literally “lost track of time.”

“Seon Yuhan awakens to the power of stories.”

Ha.

So twisting time is no big deal for this thing.

Well, considering I myself have died and returned several times…….

At the end of my exhausted gaze, Kim Gilyeong appeared again.

“And some stories can only reach a complete ending when the protagonist dies. Isn’t that right?”

Fragments of memories shattered like broken glass tore through my mind.

The whites of eyes no longer white because of burst blood vessels, those black pupils stabbing into me like needles, and ragged breathing connecting and cutting off like incomprehensible Morse code.

Kehk, weh-ek, kkeuek…….

As if.

Why?

Why?

Why……?

“The bloodshot eyes that never even managed to close seemed to stare at Seon Yuhan.”

As if asking for the reason.

As if unable to even imagine why she had to die.

As if she sincerely believed herself human.

Right up until the instant she stopped breathing.

“Monster.”

And then I ran away.

“Isn’t that exactly what a labyrinth monster is?”

To escape that sticky gaze still clinging to me.

***

The moment I left the library, I headed straight for the emergency exit.

There was no longer any human presence in the second-floor hallway.

A movie was playing in the auditorium, so the doors couldn’t be opened from inside or outside; Hwang Juyeon and Jung Jiho also couldn’t have entered there while escaping from me.

There wouldn’t be anyone in the merchandise shop either.

Why would I go there anymore? I don’t owe anything now. I’m not even going to buy anything. I’d just be a nuisance to Tara’s manager.

And they wouldn’t have gone to the daycare because of Jung Jiho.

Hwang Juyeon and Jung Jiho definitely went down to the lower floors.

It seems killing the librarian really was the correct answer.

Tap.

While holding the emergency exit doorknob, I unconsciously looked back.

I could see the elevator area.

I thought about a certain large and cowardly accountant.

I wondered what floor he was on now.

Or if he was even still alive.

To begin with, if it hadn’t been for me, that man would have died trapped inside the elevator from the very start.

With his luck, after escaping when he heard the alarm, maybe he had already died absurdly somewhere else.

It was something simple, but he wasn’t a bad person.

But even so, I couldn’t die for someone whose location or even survival I didn’t know.

……Yes.

The labyrinth is that kind of place.

And I am that kind of person.

There’s no turning back now.

Clack.

The alarm had sounded.

And the door opened.

“Ha.”

The moment I opened the first-floor door, I inhaled without realizing it.

That damned second-floor hallway was no longer there.

I had finally escaped the second floor.

“Ha… ha.”

And that place.

Wasn’t even the first floor.