WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈
Episode 111: Room 107, Gate Room - First Trial (2)
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Episode 111: Room 107, Gate Room - ‘Doppelgänger Train’ (2)
- Han Ga-in
Someone tapped me on the shoulder.
When I turned around, it was Jin-cheol.
“Jin-cheol?”
“It’s nothing. Is your Grimoire all right?”
Why the Grimoire all of a sudden?
There was no reason to hide it, so I summoned it.
Jin-cheol suddenly reached out, trying to open the Grimoire.
“Jin-cheol! It’s extremely dangerous for anyone but me.”
Before I could stop him, Jin-cheol slightly lifted the Grimoire’s first page.
Sparks flew for a moment, and he rubbed his eyes.
“It’s real. I guessed when Pero only touched you as it flew past, but you really are the real one.”
“What are you talking about all of a sudden?”
“It’s nothing. Looking at the view outside brought back some old memories.”
Jin-cheol plopped down beside me and began telling me all kinds of stories.
How he’d lost his parents in high school.
How he’d started a business with the little money he’d saved during college and achieved some success.
It went on for about ten minutes. There were heartbreaking parts and amusing parts mixed together.
...
Something was strange.
This was different from the past I knew Jin-cheol had.
...
What he’d said about Pero earlier. ‘You really are the real one.’
A thought crossed my mind, and I asked him.
“Didn’t you say your mother was still alive? And this is the first time I’ve heard about you starting a business.”
“That makes sense. I only just learned that I had a past like this too.”
He and I glared at each other.
The next moment, fake Cha Jin-cheol’s thick hand clamped around my throat!
“Ghk!”
I immediately used the Grimoire’s power to take over Cha Jin-cheol’s body.
As I staggered to my feet, I saw six people looking at me with meaningful expressions.
The bloodbath began.
* * *
---Bang!
Before I could do anything, Kim Mook-seong’s gun spat fire and blew apart the head of the Cha Jin-cheol body I’d taken over.
My consciousness immediately returned to my original body.
Kim Mook-seong! I had to take that bastard’s body!
Gritting my teeth, I got up while using Cha Jin-cheol’s headless body beside me as a shield.
Mook-seong shouted in fury.
“You coward!”
“There are seven of you against one, don’t give me that cowardly bullshit!”
As I charged forward and tried to take over Mook-seong’s body...
---Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Mook-seong suddenly fired every bullet into the floor, then threw the gun somewhere.
What the hell was he doing?
... I understood.
The most dangerous weapon in this train car bloodbath was the gun!
The problem was that if I took over the person holding it, the balance of power would shift to my side no matter how many fakes there were.
Since I was using Cha Jin-cheol’s corpse as a human shield, they couldn’t easily shoot me dead anyway. His plan was to get rid of the gun and force this into a numbers game.
In an instant, fakes rushed at me from every direction.
“You bastard...”
“Die! Die, you son of a bitch! Why are you the only one who gets to leave this hell?!”
“Is it my fault you’re all trapped here?!”
Fakes came at me from all sides!
Mook-seong pummeled me with his fists. Eun-sol grabbed my hair and tore at it.
Song-i held me down.
“Aaaagh!”
In the sudden agony, I had no choice but to summon the Grimoire again.
The moment it appeared, the fakes attacking me flinched and backed away.
I took over Mook-seong’s body, the greatest threat.
The instant I did, I grabbed A-ri, who was standing beside me, by the neck and tried to twist it...
Song-i tried to jab my body’s eye out with her finger!
This was why I couldn’t use the Grimoire!
Once my consciousness took over someone else’s body, who would protect my body in this train car where I had no allies?
If there’d been a gun, I could’ve killed them all in an instant. But Mook-seong had thrown it away beforehand to prevent exactly this situation!
I had no choice but to return to my original body and immediately pull Song-i’s arm away.
---Thud!
At that moment, Mook-seong, freed from Possession again, threw a punch at me.
A-ri, who came running over belatedly, stabbed my shoulder with something sharp she’d found somewhere.
... I’d thought I’d become fairly used to physical pain after being tossed around in this brutal hotel.
Apparently not.
Was this how it ended?
---Bang!
A-ri’s head exploded.
---Bang!
A hole opened in Mook-seong’s chest.
Song-i, who’d regained her senses too late, seemed to turn around...
---Bang!
A hole opened between Song-i’s eyebrows.
The fakes died one after another in the blink of an eye.
...
Maybe they hadn’t expected an ambush from behind, but even setting that aside, the shooting was chillingly accurate.
When I came to, corpses lay all around me. I stared blankly at Elena.
“Why... did you help me?”
“On the contrary, is there a reason for me to harm you?”
“...”
“Like you said, Ga-in, it’s not as if you’re the one who threw us into this hell...”
Elena casually tossed the gun to me.
“Once my head clears a little more, I might go mad with envy too. Kill me before that happens.”
I picked up the gun. Mook-seong had beaten me badly in that brief time, and Song-i had even jabbed me in the eye. It felt like my whole body was falling apart.
As I forced myself toward Elena with the gun, she grabbed my hand and aimed it at her own head.
... I stared at her blankly.
Elena gave a faint laugh and muttered.
“I’m glad you’re real in a place full of fakes.”
“Your real name is...”
“Just shoot. I want to end this believing that I’m Elena.”
---Bang!
...
Now, I was the only living person left in this car.
Just before I dragged my staggering body into the next car, a good plan came to mind.
* * *
- Elena
What kind of place was this train?
I stared blankly out the window, thinking of the past.
Back when I drifted from country to country, I’d held a precious dream.
A dazzling world on television!
Could I someday go out into the world and stand on a stage again?
As I was thinking, murmuring rose around me, followed by strange words.
A-ri’s voice.
“Who’s the participant?”
Song-i’s voice.
“The parrot stared at Elena for a while, then flew away. It’s her.”
Mook-seong’s voice.
“Damn it! Why is she the only one who gets to leave this hell?!”
Huh?
What was going on?
People were approaching me.
Think! Think with all my soul!
What was this? What was this? What was this?!
When Song-i, who was nearby, stepped in front of me amid the confusion, the greatest quick thinking of my life kicked in.
When you didn’t know what was happening, you slapped them first.
That was a drama cliché.
“Elena! Who do you think you are...”
---Smack!
The sound of me slapping Song-i across the face rang through the train car.
Everyone who had been approaching me stopped with startled expressions.
“How dare you behave so arrogantly! Can’t you lower your eyes?”
Eun-sol, who was looking at me with a puzzled expression, spoke.
“Hmm? Are you a fake too? But...”
“A fake? How absurd, to say such a thing in front of me! Where is this fake you speak of? I am...”
Who should I say I was? I should just throw out anything!
“I am the eldest daughter of the sixteenth Earl of Huntington in England!”
The Earl of Huntington? What kind of family was that? I didn’t know either! It just came to mind.
...
Silence fell over the people around me. Had I gone too far?
A sigh escaped Mook-seong’s mouth.
“It seems you must have been taken a very long time ago. When were you taken?”
Would a lie like this actually work?
“It was 1874, the day Her Majesty was crowned Empress of India. The glory of the Empire shall fill Europe. More importantly, who are you before me?”
I turned the questioning back on them.
Fake Song-i, who had been flustered after getting slapped, answered quietly.
“I, I’m still a little hazy, but it was probably 1980 or 1982...”
“Shut your mouth. You’re a talking monkey, and younger than me at that? The nerve! Your master should have trained you properly.”
I didn’t know! I just had to push harder! Confidence was everything in life.
I shoved Song-i away with my foot and glared around with my eyes wide. Everyone backed away, going, “Uh, uh...”
“Who are you?”
Seung-yeop, who I pointed at this time, answered hesitantly.
“Me? I’m...”
“Waaait!”
Fake Eun-sol interrupted.
“I was flustered because you suddenly made such a scene, but aren’t you the one who should explain yourself first? The parrot clearly looked at you before it flew away. Aren’t you the participant?”
“As expected of the descendants of colonial talking monkeys, your intelligence is tragically lacking. Birds naturally like shiny things. This body may not shine as much as my real one, but it shines well enough to attract a bird’s attention. Do you still have something to say?”
“Even setting the explanation aside, what is that way of thinking...?”
Fake Ga-in, who had been listening, stepped forward.
“Hey! That’s enough. Seriously, this stupid hotel needs to stop summoning old people. Why did it drag in some two-hundred-year-old fossil?”
“What? You monkey bastard...”
“I said that’s enough! Who’s the participant?”
“Someone’s been strangely quiet this whole time. Is it you?”
“What did you call me? I, in 1977...”
It was roughly like that. The fakes began fighting among themselves over who the participant was.
Each time, I added a comment after considering how to sound as much like a condescending racist from the British Empire as possible.
“Ha! My majesty! Save me from these filthy Oriental monkeys.”
“Hey! Someone shut that nasty racist old woman up!”
“Answer my question. Why are you confused about your own name?”
As I kept observing, I realized these ‘fakes’ were in considerable confusion because their memories had become mixed together.
Some could recall their original memories fairly clearly, but many others had fallen into an identity crisis without being able to do so.
They began to be suspected because they couldn’t clearly remember their past.
Ironically, I had made up the role of the eldest daughter of a Huntington family that had never existed in the first place. I wasn’t confused at all, and my confident attitude let me avoid suspicion.
Still, was stalling for time like this enough?
* * *
- Han Ga-in
...
...
What was going on?
Possession had one weakness.
While I possessed someone else, my original body was defenseless.
Because of that, I’d left my original body in the passageway between train cars and sent only my consciousness across.
The barrier blocking the way between the train cars!
After ‘I’ killed every fake in my car, I could cross the barrier, but the fakes couldn’t. So I’d left my real body behind the barrier, waited, and possessed someone the moment they came close.
Everything had gone according to plan so far...
But who the hell was the real person in this car?
The mood in the train car was utter chaos.
The fakes were interrogating each other, trying to identify the participant!
The most exhausting person in all this was that crazy racist British old woman by the window.
Every time the ‘yellow monkeys’ looked at her, she got so furious that it was impossible to even approach her.
She kept tossing out comments about how that person was suspicious or that person was definitely the culprit, throwing the train car into chaos.
No matter how I looked at it, that crazy woman must have been eliminated after causing infighting while she was alive.
Who was the ‘real’ person in this car?
I was completely lost.
Footnotes:
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