WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ Escaping the Mystery Hotel ◈

Episode 11: Rest, The Hotel Basement

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[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)

Date: Day 2

Current Location: Level 1, Hallway

Sage’s Advice: 0]

Everyone except one person was completely out of it.

Jin-cheol was sprawled on the floor, making nothing but strange heh heh sounds, while Eun-sol sat at the coffee table and downed around ten cups of coffee.

Song-i was crouched beside the potted plant like before, whimpering eerie words such as, “Happy... So-mi...” Elena sat across from Eun-sol, curled into herself.

As for me....

I just wandered around with my mind blank. What the hell was that?

What had we just gone through?

I went over my memories.

Those insane family members. No, they couldn't be called family.

Monsters wearing my family's faces had violated even my mind.

I'd accepted twisted thoughts as normal, and in the end, I stripped naked in the middle of winter, rolled around, and froze to death.

The others had probably gone through something similar.

Not once did I think of asking what they had experienced.

I didn't want to know, and I had no intention of answering either.

Then...

The only one among us who was still completely fine came back.

“Um, lunch is in about thirty minutes. Shouldn't we start heading to Room 105?”

The five of us fell silent.

I forced myself to speak.

“Right.... We should eat. And Seung-yeop, thank you. Really, really thank you.”

Once I began praising him, the others who had been out of it immediately started talking too.

“God.... I went in acting like I could protect everyone, and now I'm so embarrassed. I never imagined something this crazy would happen! Seung-yeop, no, Hero Seung-yeop, thank you so much. If it weren't for you, Hero....”

“Exactly. If it weren't for Seung-yeop, we'd all have met a miserable end in there. Thank you so, so much.”

As everyone took turns thanking him, Seung-yeop's face gradually turned red, and he waved his hands.

“No! I don't even know what happened myself.... I honestly don't know why I was the one who succeeded in escaping. I just went, huh? Huh? Then suddenly, it just popped up.... Ahaha, really, you don't have to do this.”

Was this the first time he had ever received so much praise from so many people?

It was obvious that a middle school boy couldn't handle it. He couldn't stop the corners of his mouth from stretching into a huge grin.

At least that was a relief.

Watching even one energetic middle schooler remain so normal and smile so widely slowly cleared some of the heavy, depressive mood from the room.

Everyone gathered their things and stood.

“All right! Let's give Seung-yeop three cheers, then go eat. What's life all about, anyway? First, you've got to stuff food in your mouth. Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!”

“Hooray!!! Hooray!!! Hooray!!!”

Half our cheers carried gratitude for Seung-yeop, while the other half was an attempt to shake off memories that had become almost traumatic.

After giving three cheers to the boy whose face was now as red as a strawberry, we returned to Room 105.

* * *

[User: Han Ga-in (Wisdom)

Date: Day 2

Current Location: Level 1, Room 105 (Rest Room)

Sage’s Advice: 0]

Ten minutes before mealtime.

After calming myself down, washing my face in the bathroom, and changing clothes, I kept checking my Status Window.

Neither the date nor Sage’s Advice had updated.

Hadn't I spent more than a day in that hellish place?

I went to a botanical garden in the morning, stopped by a duck restaurant, went to a resort, spent the night there, skied, then died.

I'd slept through a day, so shouldn't the date have changed?

Then I suddenly realized something.

Thinking about it, nothing about the events in that nightmare had been normal.

The problem wasn't simply that everyone had gone completely insane.

There had been no delay at all when we moved from place to place. Whenever I slept, I only had to close and open my eyes for it to be morning.

At the time, I was insane too, so I'd accepted it as normal. Looking back, every part of it had been bizarre.

Maybe hardly any real time had passed.

I hadn't checked the time exactly, but we'd entered Room 101 right after breakfast, so it must have been before nine at the latest.

We had probably all come out around 11:20.

At first, I'd thought it was 11:20 the next day after we entered....

But looking at it now, we had simply gone in that morning and come out around lunchtime.

A nightmare so horrible it could knock out not just me but even a strongman like Jin-cheol in that short time....

What more terrible things could be waiting for us in this hotel?

We needed rest.

It was impossible to dismiss it as “only two hours of suffering.” My heart had been shattered.

“Let's take a break for a while.”

The moment we reached the dining room, even Jin-cheol immediately suggested resting.

“Yeah.... Let's rest today, no, even through tomorrow.... For now, let's enjoy lunch. The one thing I'm grateful for is that the food here is always good. I'd be a hundred times more grateful if it just let us leave.”

“It's too.... Ah, sob.... Too....”

“Stop! Yoo Song-i, enough! Let's all make a promise today! Forget everything that happened in that room. Don't say a single word to each other about it. We just had an awful nightmare for a few days. Everyone, look down and check yourselves. Has anything changed? Nothing, right? We're all healthy, aren't we? It was just a nightmare. Forget it, and that's the end of it!”

The mood began to ease little by little.

“You're much stronger than I am, ma'am.... Let's do that. We shouldn't be saying strange things with meat right in front of us.”

“Yes. Relax and eat, everyone. Also, just in case, I should mention this. I think only about two hours have passed, not several days.”

“Huh? I spent several days with the younger of my older brothers, no, never mind what happened, but I definitely did things for several days?”

“No, I think Ga-in is right. I.... I went over my memories, and the progression was strange. If you think back too, ma'am, no, don't think back, but anyway, the way things progressed must have been strange. You're saying this because you checked the Status Window we talked about before, right?”

“Yes. It's still Day 2 because the date hasn't changed, and Sage’s Advice didn't refresh either.”

“Ugh.... So I went through all that shit in only two hours. All right. Let's really end this topic now.”

After roughly sorting out the situation, everyone continued eating in silence.

Even now, the food was delicious.

Three spoonfuls of spicy stir-fried pork over white rice, a drizzle of sesame oil, topped with a fried egg, then one big bite! That single mouthful made about a third of today's nightmare fade away.

People really do live to eat.

“Hey, you're eating that like it's incredible. Ah, I was thinking about having the spicy pork too.”

“Huh! There was so much food that I just picked it without thinking.”

“No, no, it's fine. I was just saying. These short ribs are really good too.”

The delicious food naturally loosened the atmosphere somewhat.

Around the time everyone had managed to pull themselves together a little, Elena spoke.

“We agreed that we'd all rest together for at least today and tomorrow, right? I've been noticing since yesterday that there are a lot of facilities in the basement. How about looking around today while we rest?”

“Hmm, that's a good idea, but isn't this the kind of hotel where it wouldn't be strange for a monster to appear even in the facilities? We talked about this on the first day, but I think it would be risky to wander around when Ga-in has no warnings left.”

“You don't have any advice left either, hyung?”

“Yeah. It's still Day 2, and the number is zero. I think I used all three in that room....”

“Jin-cheol is right. It's too unsettling to explore this place without Ga-in's ability. Let's just finish lunch, go back to Room 105, and rest on our own today.”

Since we had no Sage’s Advice, everyone agreed that rather than exploring the dangerous hotel, we should get some proper meals and rest, then check out the various basement facilities tomorrow.

“Still, a swimming pool and gym make sense.... But a zoo? A botanical garden? Do normal hotels have things like that? A campground? An amusement park? Eun-sol, you seem like you've been to a lot of places like this. Are there hotels like that?”

“I'm not sure.... Even I think a zoo and botanical garden are absurd. A campground and amusement park are one thing, but can something like that even be underground? Then again, this is a hotel where you can enter a guest room and find something like another world, so I guess anything is possible. Maybe it'll just look like an ordinary room, then you open the door and boom! An amusement park!”

A voice filled with a little anticipation rang out.

“A swimming pool! Most of this hotel's facilities are incredibly fancy and amazing, so don't you think the pool will be incredible too? But what do we do if we don't have swimsuits?”

“Haha, I suppose we'll find out when we go. It seems you're a good swimmer, Miss Elena?”

“I've swum a lot since I was young. Jin-cheol, you seem like you'd be good at any physical activity too.”

“I.... I'm only decent at the basics.”

“I really want to go to the zoo! I feel like there might be some amazing animals there.”

I thought everyone was being remarkably cheerful for people trapped in a hotel full of chaos.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one thinking that, because someone soon made a pointed remark.

“Sure, sure. It makes me so happy to see everyone's thoughts completely occupied with having fun. I just hope the hotel starts liking us too. Instead of only thinking about hiding monsters in every corner.”

At some point...

I could feel a little of the trauma from the terrible suffering on everyone's faces beginning to wash away.

Maybe they had forced themselves to speak cheerfully because they wanted to erase that trauma.

I, too, felt the horrible memories growing fainter.

Nothing else happened.

We lazed around and rested, ate dinner with more cheerful chatter, then lazed around again until we fell asleep.

If only times like these could last, life in this hotel might be bearable.

Footnotes:

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