Theatrical Regression Life - Chapter 5

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Chapter 5

It’s different.

And the reason is unknown.

***

The reason Lee Jaehun requested a name pen was to leave marks on the walls. The other world became more sinister as time passed, or, to put it differently, it was relatively mild at this very early stage.

At least, if you left marks on the walls, they didn’t disappear. Moreover, the name pen was a tool mentioned by Jung Inho in the novel.

The twisted corridor revealed new paths the further you went, and Jung Inho, who had thought only the appearance had changed, now realised that this place had really become a maze.

But even if he knew that, there wasn’t much Jung Inho could do.

He could only do things like gathering the team to prevent them from dispersing or touching the walls and walking, but due to his lack of information, they couldn’t return to the office they had come out of.

There was no tool to leave noticeable marks, so they had to rely on remembering the path we’ve taken as much as possible.

However, Lee Jaehun had no intention of giving up already.

Anyways, when they leave the company and enter the park, the sun will start to set, and they won’t have to waste their mental energy dealing with monsters that may appear in the park to survive.

Lee Jaehun walked through the maze, holding a pipe in one hand and a pen in the other.

He was drawing a black line as they walked on the path they were taking.

The team leader, who was watching it with a puzzled expression, finally spoke.

“Uh, why are you doing this?”

It was a stupid question, but Lee Jaehun, who didn’t want to waste his words unnecessarily on such things, answered nonchalantly.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but the building has become distorted. Judging by the fact that only some of the people from the office were there, it seems like we’ve ended up in a completely different space. So if there’s a way back, we should mark it, don’t you think?”

“So, is this a maze?”

“I don’t know either. Please stop asking, my head is already spinning.”

It wasn’t just playful teasing; it was genuine.

Team Leader Kang Mina was not a bad person, but she was always curious about things, and her judgement was slow. In a situation like this, she was the type of person who could be easily manipulated, which worked well for Lee Jaehun to get things done from her.

Moreover, Lee Jaehun couldn’t reveal everything he knew about the current situation. If he spoke as if he knew everything, it could lead to unnecessary misunderstandings, especially since the Jung Inho behind the team leader was staring at him as if trying to gauge what he was thinking.

He didn’t have the energy to stir up unnecessary troubles.

Team Leader Kang Mina who seemed to realise that she had made a mistake, looked crestfallen. Even though she tried not to show it, her inner thoughts were apparent for everyone to see, Lee Jaehun looking at this sighed.

Handing the pen to her who was right behind him, he said,

“You’ve seen what I’ve been doing so far right?. Just follow along, leave marks on the walls.”

“Uh, me? Oh, okay, yes.”

The biggest reason for her dejected attitude was that she considered herself the most useless among them. While the intern and Deputy Jung seemed robust enough for anyone to rely on, she probably didn’t have confidence in herself to contribute in any way.

And even after that when she realised that she might have made some verbal mistake, she was dejected. However, Lee Jaehun knew that having low self-esteem in the otherworld was not good.

Watching Team Leader Kang bring the pen to the wall, Lee Jaehun spoke.

“Team Leader Kang, you have a good memory too, right?”

“Uh.., yes.”

“Good then If possible, try to remember the way.”

Lee Jaehun sighed as he looked at the crossroads in front of him.

“It really does seem like a maze.”

Is it just as it is?

He had thought about what to do if the story deviated from the novel due to the variable of him recalling his past life, but so far, the content had not changed that much.

It was among the many misfortunes, but it was a surprisingly fortunate one.

Lee Jaehun asked the calmest person among them.

“Deputy Jung, was there originally a crossroad here?”

“I don’t remember it being here.”

“Well, it seems to have appeared out of nowhere. Damn it.”

Lee Jaehun, who muttered a fact he already knew, blinked.

Originally, there was an elevator in this spot. But now, two crossroads appeared in the distance, while the elevator had disappeared.

In the novel, the Jung Inho chose the right path.

It wasn’t for any particular reason; It was just that there was originally an emergency exit on that side.

So, what happened on the left path wasn’t described in the novel. However, in reality, they had discovered stairs at that junction and safely descended to the first floor.

“…”

No, not entirely safely.

“Shall we decide by majority vote?”

He suddenly felt very tired of playing the role of a leader.

Originally, this position should have belonged to No Yeonseok, the intern, or the Jung Inho.

Of course, he made such choices for better survival, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t tired. Above all, the Jung Inho, who was full of suspicions, would have a lot of doubts if given the chance to be the leader.

Why does this situation seem familiar? Why am I the calmest among us? Why did I suddenly grab a weapon like a pipe?

And his guess was right, the Jung Inho had a mountain of questions to ask Lee Jaehun.

Of course, Lee Jaehun had no intention of simply answering them.

“Does anyone remember what was on the left?”

“Uh… there was a vending machine?”

“The right side was the emergency exit. It seemed to reflect our company in its own way. So, shall we go right to reach another floor?”

“Well, let’s go right for now.”

Lee Jaehun gestured to Team Leader Kang, and understanding it, she again placed the pen on the wall.

The place where their traces remained among the two crossroads was on the right.

As the group moved their steps, the strange sensation they were feeling for a while intensified, causing some to furrow their brows or shiver.

The former reactions came from Lee Jaehun and Deputy Jung Inho, while the latter were from Team Leader Kang and Intern No Yeonseok.

When they encountered a dead-end for the third time, Deputy Jung Inho turned his head to one side and spoke.

“…I heard the sound of wind.”

“Wind?”

At No Yeonseok’s question, Lee Jaehun thought of the novel.

Originally, their company had glass walls, allowing a clear view of the surroundings. In the otherworld’s company, however, everything besides the office walls was opaque.It was the same building but, there were no windows, and there was no place for the wind to come in.

So, naturally, they thought it was an exit.

Lee Jaehun muttered,

“This is strange.”

It was a very intentional muttering.

“That doesn’t seem like the sound of the wind,”

Deputy Jung Inho said, having heard a cry that was not a natural sound that wind made but rather the howl of a monster trying to capture survivors from the original world.

As evidence, only Jung Inho had heard the sound.

He was the person among the current group with the shallowest sense of morality. Of course, the word ‘morality’ had various meanings, but in the otherworld, it was convenient to see it as vaguely negative thoughts.

Deputy Jung Inho, like a Jung Inho in a novel, was maintaining a remarkable composure even in the current situation.

And Lee Jaehun himself, not having heard the sound, probably had some trauma in his real life.

“Not that I’m pretending to be stupid.”

He shrugged his shoulders at Deputy Jung, who was looking at him with his dark eyes.

“Just saying. It was completely blocked, and yet there was a sound, so it was reflexive.”

“…Yes.”

Perhaps Jung Inho found Lee Jaehun’s excuse somewhat unsatisfactory but couldn’t voice it out as it was logical.

If you consider the usual image of a stubborn senior manager, he might have thought it was just a needless fuss. It had always been that way.

“W-Well, if it’s the sound of wind… isn’t it an exit? In movies, it’s often like that.”

“Rather than an exit, wouldn’t it be an emergency exit? Everything here is blocked… Still, there must be a hole for the wind to come in.”

“If the sound reaches here, people should be able to pass through.”

Yeah, no.

“If you go there, you’ll die.”

Once again, the current sound of the wind was all made by monsters, and in the novel, Team Leader Kang died here, lured by it.

It was fortunate that the rest somehow survived, but because of this, the entire group was losing their sanity.

They had fallen into a bizarre world, where every breath seemed to scream that it would kill them, yet despite that, they hadn’t considered the possibility that someone could die.

Or it could have been because they unconsciously confirmed what they had known before right in front of their eyes.

Knowing that, Lee Jaehun had expressed mild hostility by saying, ‘This is strange,’ because when everyone else was wrong, the person who had the correct answer, even in their currently weakened mental state, would likely follow the words of the person who had the correct answer.

Of course, that didn’t mean he had any intention of leaving Team Leader Kang to die.

“…Then let’s go towards where the sound is coming from. Deputy Jung, can you still hear it?”

“Yes? Yes, I can hear it.”

“Let’s go in that direction. Team Leader Kang, keep marking with the pen.”

While Team Leader Kang dying and the rest of the group losing their sanity wasn’t Lee Jaehun’s concern, the problem was that Jung Inho not only disliked him but also harboured distrust towards him.

He had no intention of saying anything absurd about being hurt by that.

However, Lee Jaehun wanted to become one of Jung Inho’s group, and for that, he needed to build at least some level of trust.

At least enough that they don’t betray him during a tough situation.

So, he hoped to resolve that aspect of their relationship through this opportunity.

With these thoughts in mind, Lee Jaehun moved forward.

* * *

Perhaps it was due to the thought that they could go outside. As time passed, the other members of the group also began to hear the sound of the wind, and sighed with relief.

The only one who still couldn’t hear it was Lee Jaehun, but he didn’t intend to show that fact.

When the sound of the wind had gotten quite close, Lee Jaehun stopped as he saw Han Inyeong crouching in the corridor as if she was looking at someone.

“Who is it?”

“Oh, ah!”

A woman crouching on the corner of the wall turned her head towards the group.

“Wh-what. N-no, hello…?”

“…Are you hurt?”

“No, no, no!”

Around the neck of the woman who was vigorously shaking her head, there hung a familiar-looking employee ID.

Seeing her still wearing that childish necklace, it seemed she didn’t hold a very high position.

And Lee Jaehun figured out the identity of that woman.

“You were from the Marketing Department… Kwon Yeonhee, I think?”

Kwon Yeonhee, a staff member from the Marketing Department.

She was an employee from another department that the group had encountered in the novel.

Of course, claiming to know all the employees in this vast company would be absurd, so Lee Jaehun vaguely mumbled.

It wasn’t a good time to wait until she introduced herself.

“Oh, I’m Kwon Yeonhee from the Marketing Department! Nice to meet you, well, not exactly….”

“I didn’t think there would be someone else who was sane here.”

Continuing Lee Jaehun’s words, Team Leader Kang, who was standing right behind him, spoke up.

“Perhaps, o-other departments… came together and formed groups, like we did”

It was a reasonable assumption.

In the otherworld, the only departments that had fallen were the Planning department, to which the Jung Inho belonged, and the Marketing department.

Though, in the unfolding story, they were all probably destined to die anyway.

The employee on the opposite side seemed to share a similar thought as her expression changed.

“Oh, by any chance, is your department okay? Everyone in Marketing went crazy…!”

“We may have looked like we were out of our minds too.”

“They tried to kill each other! Swinging knives and everything…!”

“……”

She was probably thinking, ‘Ah, that’s a bit much.’

“Come to think of it… Just last week, Marketing was in a mess like that.”

The otherworld responded very sensitively to the stress of the survivors.

People who were already weakened mentally, their minds had been attacked, so it wasn’t strange for them to try to kill each other.

Lee Jaehun pondered if such descriptions were in the novel but quickly gave up. He didn’t remember the details that clearly, and the real-time decrease in the group’s mental strength was palpable after hearing Employee Kwon’s words.

Having already landed in such a bizarre world, it was an inevitable reaction to hear that they were killing each other.

However, from Lee Jaehun’s perspective, knowing what was ahead didn’t make the situation particularly favourable.

Appearing as if he wanted to ask more, Jung Inho seemed somewhat perplexed, but Lee Jaehun spoke first.

“At least the four of us who seemed the most sane managed to get out. Would you like to join us?”

“…Where to?”

“We came out to assess the situation and find an exit.”

Lee Jaehun pointed toward the bent corridor with his finger.

“We heard the sound of the wind from there and came here.”

“Ah….”

The other person probably had a similar thought.

It seemed like they had wandered outside, bewildered by the massacre initiated by their colleagues from the same department. Then, upon hearing the wind, they must have thought this was the exit.

“Is it… okay, though?”

“I’m fine with it. I don’t know about the opinions of others.”

“I’m okay with it too.”

In a situation like this, there was no figure who would say, ‘What? I don’t want to.’

Whether they liked it or not, as the new group expanded, Jung Inho seemed to be deep in thought.

Given his personality, he probably wouldn’t be bothered by the addition of extra baggage, and he might be thinking about leading this new group as safely as possible.

In comparison to the novel, he indeed appeared to have more composure.

Back then, all his attention was poured into making rational judgments, so he remembered that he was even more silent and quieter in the novel than he was now.

While Lee Jaehun gazed at Kang Mina, who seemed pleased by the addition of the new member in the group, he turned his head to look at the bent corridor.

“…Huh.”

Still, he couldn’t hear the sound of the wind.

Lee Jaehun considered using this as evidence to show that it wasn’t the sound of the wind, but he gave up.

He already harboured significant distrust from Jung Inho and had received subtle resentment from the group as the old-fashioned manager. Even if he explained, they probably wouldn’t accept it easily.

After gazing at the dim corridor for a moment, Lee Jaehun sneakily glanced at Jung Inho.

“…….”

“…….”

A pair of pitch-black eyes stared at him.

Lee Jaehun blinked once at the gaze.

Though he might not exactly know the gesture, at least, he succeeded in grabbing the attention of Deputy Jung Inho, and that was sufficient.

Then, as he stepped into the twisted corridor,

Swooosh,

“…….”

Something resembling a spider leg jabbed his shoulder.

Startled, Lee Jaehun took a step back, and at that moment, the long object stuck in his shoulder was pulled out.

Instinctively, he pressed his hand against the wounded area, and found out that he was bleeding.

Around the time he felt it was difficult for his left arm to move,still ignoring that Lee Jaehun swung the pipe forcefully at the spider leg protruding from behind him.

“Hey.”

Squish!

A disgusting sound, reminiscent of crushing a large insect, echoed. The beetle-like wriggling exoskeleton which was not as sturdy as the pipe, broke apart after getting hit by the pipe. Inside, there was a horrifyingly bluish goo.

Although it definitely didn’t look human, the unmistakable scent of blood emanated from the shattered spider leg.

Lee Jaehun, re-grabbing his sore shoulder, looked at the now pale-faced individuals as if understanding the situation. In a low voice, he uttered,

“Duck.”

As he said that, countless legs began to emerge from the twisted corridor once again.

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