Baek Mu-jin came and said,
"It seems I ought to repay you this time as well."
Is there something you want?
***
A mountainside where the morning sun had risen.
Through clouds mixed of ash-gray and white, a hazy sunlight filtered in. The thick fog that had swallowed the mountain held that light brimming within it. All around was bright, yet a chill somehow lingered in the air.
Cutting through that dismal air, a single white owl glided soundlessly.
"……."
The owl glared down at the densely packed trees and the craggy, blade-sharp rock peaks. Its pure-white feathers melted into the clouds and blended in, but its two blue eyes alone shone clear and distinct.
"Seome."
The owl staff member, the being called 'Seome,' alighted lightly on Lee Yeon-woo's arm.
"I'm back."
"Your wingbeats are growing more natural."
"I do feel more at ease when I'm inside the clouds, I think."
"Because clouds are water, too?"
"That would be it."
Seome hopped with a flutter and moved to his shoulder.
"Excuse me."
"Ing."
Coco whined and grudgingly ceded the spot, tucking itself into Lee Yeon-woo's arms. Since Coco weighed far less than Seome, this way put less strain on Lee Yeon-woo—so the two staff had judged.
Preening her feathers with her beak, Seome said,
"If my memory's right, it does seem to be a definite 'Fox Den.'"
"This whole vicinity, you mean?"
"It stretched on with no end."
Finishing her preening, Seome went on.
"Everything's tangled all over."
"It'd be a great fix if we couldn't get out."
"I don't think it's a Labyrinth of such low intelligence."
"I'll have to pay it a visit before long."
"And your body."
Seome tilted her head and asked,
"Are you really all right?"
"I've taxidermied it into the hotel, so it won't collapse easily."
Lee Yeon-woo crossed the hotel's rooftop garden and boarded the elevator, whose doors already stood open.
"Though I'll only know by experiment what happens if I go too far from the hotel."
"Constantly experimenting on your own body—it doesn't seem like a very good method."
"I can't lean on the hotel forever. I keep studying the body."
"Then what do you mean to do?"
"Well, now."
The unpressed L button glowed bright, and presently the elevator doors closed.
"An answer will come soon enough."
It was the morning of a day when the cleanup after all the commotion had wrapped up.
***
Eating buckwheat jelly in the Operator's Quarters, Lee Yeon-woo said,
"Did you know?"
"Yes."
"I can go outside this hotel."
What side effects the physical improvement for that might carry, he didn't know—but that he could go out, at least, was certain.
"It got put off so very many times."
The first time, because he couldn't finish the tutorial. The second, because his body collapsed once he left the hotel. The third, he couldn't leave because minor guests came into the basement hunting ground.
'But now that I've checked out every human guest and stabilized myself and the hotel—'
Lee Yeon-woo could at last go outside.
'Not that I have some grand plan to march boldly out into human society right away.'
There were many things to weigh, but the priority was to confirm how well the circuits he'd taxidermied held their stability when he was far from the hotel, and what unforeseen side effects might follow.
'To start, I'll pace right at the hotel's boundary, and after that run a light rehearsal excursion out into the forest surrounding the hotel. I'll need a modest experiment, at least, to check my physical condition….'
"No."
"Oh dear."
Of course, there was also a Vantablack cat who opposed his opinion.
"Hear me out."
"No?"
"What exactly can you do now?"
"Iiiing!!"
Coco made an 'angry face.'
"Remarkable strides."
"Coco anger!"
"In light of your effort, I'll let it pass just this once."
"Hehe!"
Lee Yeon-woo stroked the belly of the flopped-over Coco and offered advice.
"When you laugh, dropping the 'angry face' fits the context."
"Coco confirms."
Coco's expression returned to its original state. That uncanny smile evoking the Cheshire Cat, those round, unblinking eyes.
"……."
"Hello?"
"Yes."
Gazing quietly at it, Lee Yeon-woo murmured.
"It seems it's recovered a great deal."
Emotions that had once been hollow piled up layer by layer, and now that face simply looked adorable to him.
***
The 'Guest Without Taste,' however, was a touch disappointed.
"I rather liked being able to leave a stake of mine behind."
"What kind of preposterous remark is that?"
"Did you mean it in the sense that it doesn't matter?"
"I meant that it's outrageous."
"This land's language has its tricky corners."
The word he'd used—'eoltodanto-anta'—carries two senses at once: 'utterly irrelevant' and 'utterly preposterous.' Recalling that double meaning anew, Lee Yeon-woo harbored a reasonable suspicion.
"I did wonder how your Korean got so fluent—did you, by chance, swallow a Korean dictionary?"
"Something like that."
"You aren't about to tell me you swallowed a person?"
"Astonishingly, I swallowed only a 'Korean dictionary.'"
He said he'd simply memorized the whole thing.
"Hm."
Reasonable enough.
"Sometimes simple rote memorization is a great help."
"An Anomaly of this caliber is not common in the world. Do you feel my sincerity?"
"How does an Anomaly without sincerity manage to wield language?"
"That Velmareth should be this devoid of knowledge—every time you're like this, it makes me feel so strange."
"Berating a man who's already lost even his human rights and is heartsick over it—that won't do."
"Who could possibly berate you?"
The old vampire answered, stroking his jaw once.
"The majority simply find no reason to communicate, but should they wish to interact even so, they inject 'meaning' directly into the target's brain and soul."
"That sounds rather dangerous."
"They do go mad often enough."
"Aha."
Lee Yeon-woo realized anew why Dokkaebi are hated by the world.
"Your everyday conduct being of that sort and shape is why I'm caught under suspicion right along with you. It seems some awakening is in order."
"Am I not already sufficiently awakened, if I do say so myself?"
"A small question has come to me, is all."
Put another way, it was interest.
"When did you swallow that 'Korean dictionary,' I wonder?"
For reference, 'Hoone's' country of origin is England.
"I am always aware that all of you speak in 'Korean.' As you said, were it a method of injecting 'meaning' into me, the very shape of your mouths couldn't match up. Nor is it an overlaid hallucination."
"Oh, dear."
The old vampire laughed as if amused.
"That's simply this place's 'rule,' General Manager."
"Following this place's language?"
"Following 'your' 'language.'"
Coco, on his shoulder, nuzzled its head against him.
"Hello?"
"To some degree, I understand."
Coco's 'language,' too, was similar in tone to Lee Yeon-woo's.
"Even so, it seems it isn't received directly in the head like my co-operator here does it."
"That truly would have been convenient, but sadly, your guess is correct."
"To lodge in this hotel, you went and memorized the entire Korean dictionary of the Republic of Korea?"
"I am a mannerly guest who respects the Labyrinth's rules, you see."
"Sure you are."
The old vampire shrugged, leaning on his cane.
"In the end, the one who made this place and carved in the rules would have been you. It bears repeating, but it really does seem you remember nothing at all, The Devil."
"I'm not that person."
"If the largest part of what makes a 'person' is memory, then that statement, too, is sound."
"This is quite maddening."
He showed no sign whatsoever of having understood, did he.
"……."
Rolling his eyes to look around, Lee Yeon-woo asked,
"Are the preparations for the restaurant's opening going well?"
"Smoothly, as you can see."
He grinned.
"Perhaps because it's a space already prepared beforehand, my disciples had no trouble settling in. On a closer look, this place too seems to reflect the hotel's 'rules.'"
"You can obtain the food and goods needed for operations, but fundamentally it was a place that tormented me and the human guests with various horror elements. From the perspective of the General Manager—me—entirely so."
"Was there an Executive Chef before me?"
"If you mean the Executive Chef, that was my own role."
Menu development, restaurant management, budget control, ingredient selection, and so on.
"Only the personnel who actually cook were placed directly by this hotel."
"Now that's a bit intriguing. You summoned 'personnel' into this hotel?"
"Hm."
Lee Yeon-woo was briefly at a loss for words.
'Would this person understand the concept of a gacha draw?'
[Yes-no?]
It was a pity.
"More precisely, it's closer to the hotel generating them itself. One of the souls taxidermied here is summoned via an 'employment contract,' and among them, personnel with chef skills are assigned."
"Taxidermied souls, you say."
"To explain it in game terms, it's a collection-type gacha system. It uses a medium called an 'Employee Recruitment Ticket.' It's implemented as the same document I handed to your disciples and to Ms. Seome."
In the game too, it had been a resource in the form of an employment contract.
"So no external personnel are brought in. The ones drawn are a kind of earthbound spirit of this hotel. The more they interact with me and accumulate various experiences, the more they recall the story of their own past."
The personnel that could be generated in the Power Generation Room were 1-star employees. Beings without a self, like parts of the hotel. He had no intention whatsoever of treating them as such, though.
"Even so, just as the 'Drenched One' has already settled in as staff at the Aqua Park, I don't see why you couldn't settle into this restaurant. The one thing that nags at me is…."
"The fact that we haven't yet 'contracted,' no doubt."
As if he understood, the 'Guest Without Taste' nodded.
"And I have no intention of contracting going forward, either."
"Is there a reason?"
"As I explained before, a 'contract' is a very intimate process."
"In other words, you're saying you don't want to take on responsibility."
"Haven't my disciples already contracted with you? You've laid a splendid stepping-stone, and for me to settle into this hotel's system, merely having shared blood is enough."
"If that poses no problem for running the restaurant, then…."
It was a kind of workaround, but Lee Yeon-woo didn't force a contract or responsibility on him. Instead he merely drew a single sheet of paper from his breast and slid it over.
"Just sign here."
"Oh, may I ask what this is?"
"An ordinary employment contract."
"You'd no intention of listening to me, had you?"
"It's only a document."
Lee Yeon-woo, rather, made a puzzled face.
"I'm aware I'm one-sidedly foisting a human-centric set of values on you."
"Are you now?"
"I know a contract can feel like just another form of oppression or restraint, but I thought of this as a sort of… game of house, to set my own mind at ease."
It was merely an employment contract to labor-law standards, the kind you'd find anywhere in human society, drawn up with Coco's head pressed to his. Which is to say, it was nothing like an 'Employee Recruitment Ticket' imbued with some grand power.
Even if, owing to the peculiarity of the situation, it was a dodgy contract with somewhat extralegal clauses.
"There's no printer, so it's handwritten…."
"Surely you haven't forgotten what sort of discipline magic is?"
"With that in mind, I put not a single grain of mana into it."
Naturally it was an utterly ordinary, mundane document with all mana excluded.
"Would even this 'imitation' be a problem?"
That was simply what he wondered.
"I affirm each of your unique ways of being. I'm trying to accept them, and I only wish to say this is my minimum line of compromise."
"I understand."
"But it seems even this has put a burden on you."
"I…."
The old vampire pressed his lips shut, as if briefly at a loss for words.
"……."
"'Guest Without Taste'?"
"That name is enough for me."
He murmured with a plainly uncomfortable look.
"'We' have no names."
A name was not merely a combination of syllables one is called by, but a single word that defines the identity of an existence.
"We can fabricate an identity, but we cannot name ourselves. Likely because we cast it all off upon becoming Labyrinths. And so our forms are terribly free-spirited—we drift the world like a plague, or pool in one place like a grudge."
"And so?"
"Naming a Labyrinth is no easy thing for just anyone to do. And you are by no means just 'anyone.' So the name you'd give me would surely be fixed as my one true 'name.'"
"So that."
Lee Yeon-woo tilted his head.
"is what you dislike."
"I dislike it."
The 'Guest Without Taste' let out a low, wry chuckle.
"If you gave me a name, it would surely be a 'person's' name, wouldn't it?"
Lee Yeon-woo couldn't bring himself to deny it.
"……."
"Isn't that so?"
"A sound point."
It was because he always saw everyone as a person.
"But you came back to me because you wanted to learn about people, didn't you. That's why you went to the trouble of settling into the 2nd-floor restaurant and taking hold of authority over this hotel's meals, too."
"There's reason in that as well, but at the very least, not in a way like this."
The vampire wore a rare, troubled smile and quietly pushed the paper contract back.
"To put it simply, it's having a leash put on me."
To lose nothing, to keep my power and my free-spirited form, and merely learn what belongs to people. But the moment a 'name' is bestowed, one's existence is fixed after all, according to the other's intent.
That was why most Labyrinths were extremely averse to receiving a name.
"The 'Guest Without Taste' by which you call me is the same in principle. That's merely the name written on the ticket I received in this hotel. Which is why I take a form you know only within the bounds that name permits."
"The form I know wasn't this East Asian appearance, though?"
"So how merciful is it? That name is only a 'rule' I follow in here—it doesn't limit my essence. Which is exactly why I can shift my form even now into the East Asian appearance you speak of."
The forms the Monster Guests had taken at the grand banquet hall's 'ball' a few days ago were the same. They could take the shape of the nametag bestowed in this hotel, or arbitrarily overlay the shape of a role in the play.
"Then again, your recent informant, the 'Lover of Dawn,' is already a being with a name."
"Yes, she has the name Greta."
"So you don't seem to have a firm grasp of the binding force a name holds—about which the 'Lover of Dawn' or the 'Drenched One' could tell you better."
"Couldn't you explain it to me as well?"
"My field of specialty is blood magic, after all."
The vampire once more wore his particular grinning smile.
"To give a name is a rite with a compulsive force stronger even than a 'contract' of the soul. One might receive a 'name' and leap beyond their rank, but conversely, another might have their behavior or form restricted forever."
He looked down at Lee Yeon-woo with feigned courtesy.
"Your knowledge to understand your power falls far short of the power itself, so you'd best be a little more careful. Should you give me another 'nametag,' I won't refuse, but being bound outright—that I'll pass on."
"I'll have to study the underlying principle a bit more."
"All well and good, but you'd do well to take care that a carelessly thrown stone doesn't strike a frog dead. Unless you mean to turn some gnat crawling across your hotel into a gatekeeper of hell."
He gave a light shrug.
"Of course there are no gnats in a place like this, but personally I feel there's surely a use for it."
"I understand your meaning."
There was a reason Lee Yeon-woo still put off going out. The power he could wield was immense, yet his understanding of it was absurdly lacking—so he meant to avoid causing an unintended catastrophe or side effect.
And also—
"I'll have to study a bit more."
The monster of Room 14.
This being, which had occupied a corner of his consciousness from some time back—how could I face it?
TL Notes:
- "eoltodanto-anta": a Korean expression that carries two meanings at once—"utterly irrelevant/unrelated" and "utterly preposterous." The Guest Without Taste leans on the ambiguity; Lee Yeon-woo clarifies he meant the latter.
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